MLai - Reflecting my Life

Yesterday afternoon / evening, after work, I headed into Circular Quay on the way to the Rocks to meet up with the parkour guys and snap up a few more shots armed with the 50mm. The Rocks Markets by Moonlight is on every Friday evening this month and last night, Paris Wells and the Potbelleez performed. After that, a nice walk along the harbour where I snapped a few shots of the guys I was with. Photos:

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

So today and tomorrow, EA games hosted a launch party for Mirrors Edge outside Customs House in Circular Quay. The parkour guys (all from around Australia) were hired to perform each day, and several promotional pieces over the last few weeks. More about the parkour inspired game at http://mirrorsedge.com.au

So I took out both the fisheye and the wide angle with me. The stage was set up already and the performance was kept to a small scale. I would’ve preferred to have seen some work around Circular Quay. It was more of a documenting day. The photos:

Not having fisheye shots all the time is slightly more pleasing to the eye. Finally I can get some rest before tomorrow.

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

Monday night was a late night after going out to dinner for a friends birthday.

Last night ended up being another night out catching up with a mate of mine over dinner… and today… left work early and shot for … about 6 hours. Met up with the parkour guys at UNSW and had a great session I would say. Used the fisheye the whole day today which is a change and I’m not 100% if its good or bad, but impressed with the overall images. I do have to say that some of them are a bit soft and not as sharp as I’d like them to be.

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

Bought the D200 off my brother on the weekend and just in time for some high shutter action. I think I was a bit too trigger happy and shot quite a few in burst, and the results are below.
Week and weekend was a bit slow. Work is back to its usual self, but now with proper deadlines.

I’ve been wanting and finally have what I’ve viewed as quite a necessary rule in working on projects where deadlines should be set and should be adhered to. We’ve lacked that a bit here, but things are progressing which is good, and its keeping me going.

The weekend involved a good rest day for my body before a good long session at Pyrmont. Photos are from after class and although most aren’t deemed as parkour, they are somewhat relevant to your preparation and only tackling certain movements when ready.

Lets hope the gifs work as well…

Cheers

Written by Milton Lai

Not that I’ve got any photos to show for the trip on saturday - left home at about 5pm, so the light conditions weren’t the best - and my friend was shooting that day - showing him the in’s and out’s of photography. I did take just the one shot:

Maybe my mate has a few photos to show, I did see a few which looked pretty good. Come to think of it, possibly they should make fisherman as a sculpture.. I think it’d look pretty cool.

The rest of the weekend was just kicking back. Didn’t turn up to parkour class, but rather found some interesting areas around home and a few things I need to work towards. Currently working at home, I’ve got some sort of allergy with my eyes. Didn’t feel right to drive to work today, but its been a good day of programming at home.

Written by Milton Lai

Turned up to classes today for the first time in a while to actually participate. This is just all a part of my new plan to get back into shape and focus a bit more on parkour and parkour related photography.

A few quick shots of what happened after class.

Quite a scorcher today. Body is aching a bit too much to be able to do anything right now.. and possible not even for the rest of the week. It was a good session.

Written by Milton Lai

Currently sitting at Le Montage here in Leichhardt/Lilyfield on their free wifi. Well before I start talking about these endless weeks, I’ll run through whats happened since I got back from my trip.
My first week back was… not the worst thing in the world. I ended up leaving work a bit earlier than usual because driving at about 6pm or so was kind of dangerous considering how tired I was. I’ve been placed on a few projects to get me back into gear. Of course these projects have stretched on a bit, not my fault necessarily but rather having to deal with other people and awaiting responses on testing and correct information.
I’ve been developing my own IDE for our “Dynamic” forms that we have at work, which I also developed. It allows me to simply drag and drop and align widgets on a window and calculate all the necessary information and create me insert statements to stick into the database. On top of that, I’ve written a procedure which creates another procedure once run. With the dynamic nature of these tables, to run a report on the particular table, you would normally need to statically name each attribute. Here I would rerun my procedure which will recreate the procedure with all the correct attributes negating the need to change any existing stored procedures when the table structure changes. I’ve also been writing a few stored procedures to move data around because new databases needed to be set up.
With all my photos, I’ve been trying to write my own slideshow application - suggested by Kenny - who just got a summer internship with Google! So I’ve been trying, but its been a bit buggy, so I’m nearly there to show you all my photos. I’ve finished the design of my album / coffee table book and its been printed and distributed… only 5 copies were printed… I’ll have the images up as soon as I get my slideshow app going. I’ll give it another 2 weeks or so, since I’ve been a bit busy.
I’ve been training a lot more - in fitness and parkour. Its been going quite well. Supposed to be meeting up with Kenny every tuesday - not for the past 2 - been busy and hard a car accident… Otherwise, since daylight savings kicked in early, I can get home and still go for a run and its still a great temperature.
So since I’ve gotten back… this is the 6th wedding - 5 which I’ve worked at… I don’t feel as though I’ve had much of a break as yet… At least the follow few weeks it’ll be just a single wedding for the weekend and I can end up having a day to myself. Cousins wedding yesterday, so it was one which I could actually turn up to and enjoy. Some how I ended up with a few responsibilities like working the video and taking a few photographs here and there… but overall, it was a great wedding - relaxing - not the waking up at 5:30 this morning though.
Car accident - in short, a guy rear-ended me. He was a nice guy, spoke to him, he wanted to sort it out privately… most people recommend against that, but he returned my phone calls and sms’s. I got a few quotes for the damage - $1500 as a starting quote - he gave me a cheque on friday for that amount and hopefully thats as much as its going to cost. Most people don’t end up trusting others - saying people may run away and refuse to pay… but I think that there are some kind hearted people out there and so I guess my first accident wasn’t so bad. At the end of the day, he has to pay one way or another, and so I’ll run by whatever he suggests.
Oh - I got glasses - I need them for seeing in the distance - like driving… at night…
This week - full driving license and possibly make these projects end so I can move onto others.
In a few weeks I should have a bit more spare time on my hands.

Written by Milton Lai

A lot has been happening in the last week - change of internet providers, voip, getting glasses, work and photos. This weekend, just got back from a wedding - had another one yesterday. So it really has been a long week, and possibly this week might be a quieter one I hope. I was working on these yesterday and just thought I’d put them up. These photos were taken in Evry and Lisses in France - the birthplace of Parkour. The traceur in it is Rhys James - a parkour practitioner here in Sydney, who I consider one of the best practictioners here in Sydney. check out http://www.sydneyparkour.com/ and http://www.parkour.asn.au/ for more information.

Written by Milton Lai

The last leg of my trip was in Japan. Headed into Akihabara, the technology town, and Shibuya, the youth fashion town. Japan was humid as anything when I was there. Akihabara - nice place if I lived there, too many 7 story stores of just technology. Then there were the alley ways where both sides were lined with tiny little shops which sold everything. Prices were average, nothing special, then again, I can’t say I was after anything. They sold a larger variety of gear than they do in Sydney thats for sure. I didn’t end up buying anything. Shibuya was full of kids shopping. Fashion wasn’t really my thing, but I had been told to go there. Nothing that special apart from shopping, but I don’t think Japanese fashion is really my thing. Not really liking guys with handbags and purses.. It was a really tough day, just because it felt like I had been up over a day, so anytime I sat down, I would fall asleep. Not the best thing to do when you are in a country where you don’t know where you are going.

So I haven’t experienced jetlag before, but I have now. Its been a relatively short week, because I’d fall asleep quite early and wake up at a reasonable hour. Left work a bit earlier - just so I wouldn’t need to drive so late in the day. Since I’ve been back, its been pretty hectic trying to get all the images sorted. I’ve cut 5000 or so images down to about 800 reasonable photos. I think I’ve just got too many shots of churches and what not, places which I barely remember, places which look the same everywhere. I’ll have some photos to show soon, give it about a week.

So the week was slow to begin with, since the boss didn’t want to put me under too much pressure too soon. Just a small project to get me going again. I’m off my original project for another month or so, just to reduce more frequent releases and so hopefully everything settles down a bit. Weekend, slept a whole heap, caught up with friends and slept some more, and there was a post-wedding shoot as well on the saturday morning. The day turned out to be lovely and hot..

Written by Milton Lai

Currently sitting at Heathrow airport awaiting for this board to tell me which gate to go to for my flight to helsinki. I’m not too sure what all the fuss is about when people say its a terrible airport. I think things ran quite smoothly. So with the past 3 or 4 days, I’ve travelled from Brusells to London.

Brussels was our last day of the trip together - hostel was quite good, reception / common room / computers locks out from 1 to 4 in the afternoon which is a bit annoying. Brussels was somewhat different to the other towns we were in in Belgium. It just seemed a whole lot busier. The squares here were quite nice, the churches look amazing. Beers, mussels, vietnamese food and waffles was the diet for the last day. In my opinion, Belgium seems like a boring town - maybe because we weren’t at the best hostels who knew where we needed to go to have a good time. It was relaxing and quiet. Then again, sunday, monday and tuesday aren’t really party days.

I left for London on the Eurostar from Brussels. It was a pretty quick journey. I found my way pretty easily to my counsins place. Turned up, tried calling, but he was in a meeting - so was then… homeless for another 5 hours or so. I asked around for lockers or a place to store my bag for a few hours - everyone turned me down in the area - found my way to Victoria station where there are lockers - most major train stations will have a place to leave your bags. Went for a walk to Westminster, the Clock Tower, the Parliament and the London Eye. For dinner - thai food - properly cooked rice for the first time in 6 weeks… Next day - travelled out to London Tower before walking all the way back along the river thames and checking out the Tate Museum and Shakespeare Globe. I saw St Paul’s Cathedral, but it was closed by the time I got there. Dinner - steak - medium-rare came out a bit rare for my liking. Walked around Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Convent Garden after dinner.

Yesterday I headed off to the national gallery before Buckingham Palace and did the tour for the 14 or so rooms they have open to the public. The one way system is a bit stupid. You end up about 700 metres or so at the other end of the palace at the end of it - 600 or so metres of checking out the garden, a bit ridiculous, especially since I didn’t take any photos of the front of the palace before I went in.. so I had to walk all the way back. Then had lunch before walking up regents st and then walking up and down oxford st. Dinner - Vietnamese place - with a decent serving of food. The weather wasn’t too good for the first time here in London. I escaped the weather by going into the museums and what not.

This morning - tired as anything - packed everything last night. My gate just appeared so I should head off. Next stop helsinki - stop over for about 2 hours - then flight into tokyo - 12 hour stop over - i calculated id be awake and walking around tokyo during normal hours of the day there, but my body will think its midnight to 6am…

Written by Milton Lai