Sometimes... Good Things Should Come To An End

It's rare to hear something profound coming out from me wifey. So if something of that nature is posted on she blog, then it must be quite serious.

You know what they (the wise people) say that you always fail to treasure something until it's gone. I've been struggling with myself on fulfilling my personal goals and meeting my family duties.

I realise that some of my personal goals do not quite complement with my family duties. I tried to find a balance and understanding over the past months, but it looks like it's not developing positively.

At the same time, family time is increasing since Mayenne. Last Wednesday I attended the Shichida Parent Course. The director, Jocelyn Khoo, gave a long and inspiring speech about how the importance of bonding between parent and child will determine the success of the programme for the child. The Shichida Method is not a course only for children, but also a learning journey for the parent. It is a family life-changing commitment, starting from the fundamental emotional attitude towards the child, to finding the right materials to enrich the child's mind.

I appreciate me wifey's understanding over the past 20 months, from the time she got pregnant till this moment when Mayenne is reaching one year old. I thank her for letting me explore and develop my personal goals.

One of my affiliates doing wedding videography recently ended his business to concentrate on his career and family. I too am looking at following his footsteps.

For the regular blog readers, some who are my past clients, a few probably are my current clients who have booked me, would be sad or even worried that I won't be able to fulfill their assignments. For those that I committed, I will definitely do. As for the rest, I might still take on assignments selectively. Definitely will not stop doing assignments altogether, unless I lose the use of my hands.

Well, that's my current plan for now. You never know what will happen in the next 8 months, but at least I know where I am heading - an end.

Piano Spa 4 - TV Commercial

Finally managed to record the TV Commercial of my latest Piano Spa album. The background music they used for the commercial is in CD1 track 2, "Colours".

One More Reason Why I Dumped Friendster

With so much competition on the network community portal, it's no wonder the once-popular Friendster is trying so hard to keep up by introducing new features. But unfortunately, some of the features are flawed and will cost them dearly.

There was one feature called 'Fan Profile'. On one look, I thought it will tag your current Friendster account with this new feature. So I went to add it to my current account.

Ever since I added that, I realised that I am no longer able to view the profiles of my friends whom I've added. They became 'restricted profile'.

So I emailed to Friendster support and this is what they replied.

Please note, if your profile is converted to a Fan Profile we will not be able to switch it back to a regular profile. Fan Profiles are for entities looking to promote themselves to millions of friendster members. Regular profiles are for people that want to keep a network of friends. Please take this into account before submitting this form.

OK so I screwed up. On one action, I have converted my friends to become 'fans' and now I can no longer access to their private information.

Help me here, but I think Facebook has such a feature allowing you to create 'pages' that works just like this 'fan' thingie, except that Facebook lets you create a separate fan profile and not affect your personal profile. I dare not try in Facebook, lest I get the same irreversible result.

So what are my recourse? I could a) Create another Friendster account and add all my friends and photos and profile details all over again; or b) Delete my account; or c) Leave the profile alone and totally give up on Friendster.

I choose c).

So, so long, Friendster. You no longer serve any purpose since I cannot view my dear friends' restricted information.

Social Networking Portals Are Also Doing Networking

It's amazing how social networking portals communicate to one another seamlessly.

Yesterday, I wrote the Madeleine's Photo Story article from my Flickr account, which seamlessly posted to this Blogger site. Within minutes, the same article was imported into Facebook as a Note, and as well as my Multiply site as a blog article.

One action, 3 instances.

Talk about social networking portals doing the networking themselves. Bravo.

Photo Story: Madeleine - Sun Day

Madeleine - Bikini-000 cover w
Originally uploaded by photodiary

After 670 photos and 100 shortlists, I've completed the photo story for Madeleine.

It took me a while to get this photo book layout done because of some other ongoing assignments. But I'm glad I finished it so that I can move on to other assignments.

This is my first photo story that is done with just one outfit. Fortunately, it's not quite a bore because Madeleine is a stunner.

I've always wanted to use the title 'Sun Day' to refer to a day of great sun and a day of relax (as opposed to the calendar Sunday).

Madeleine is quite a personality herself, with a small following of fans. I suggested that she should sell photo books for some income but she said she wants to wait till she's more popular.

Would you buy this photobook if it is on sale?

Red Nano for the Red Dot

Today, the Straits Times (and probably many other national newspapers) features large prominent adverts on Red Nano, the new search engine created by SPH (Singapore Press Holdings) solely on the Singapore market. It makes sure that all the search results are localised to Singapore context. One of the methods is to pick up keywords unique to Singapore, for instance, street names, food terms, even Singlish.

So this morning I tested it out, using keywords like "Chester Tan", "Piano Spa", "Dance Photographer", "Ballet Accompanist", "Piano Composer", "Photo Story", "Rock On Piano". Happy to say, my site came up as the top of the search list, while some other keywords like "Wedding Photographer", "Portrait Photographer" came up within the first page.

What really surprises me is that when I search using the keyword "Timeless", my first CD album also came up tops on the search engine! Seriously, I have no idea how it got there.

Haha this is so exciting! Feels like as if this search engine is created for me!

Red Nano is really great, not just because of the above. Now, using Red Nano, I can search for sites that is truly from within Singapore. No longer do I need to dig through pages of Google to find relevant local sites.

You See, You'll See

Just want to share this music video of a song I love many years ago. It was written by Madonna and my favourite music producer, David Foster.

I don't listen to it anymore because the song is rather depressing and it doesn't relate to my current emotion. But it did during my teens.

I always pay attention to the melody and the music arrangements of songs more than the lyrics. So I love to get hold of CD singles with extended versions (NOT club remixes) or minus-one instrumentals. This song has it, and so is another of my favourite Madonna song, "This Used To Be My Playground".

I am a selective music listener. I listen what I like, and I don't bombard myself with hundreds of songs just to expand my music knowledge. I really should, but I can't. With my listening behaviour, I cannot do that. What's my listening behaviour? I pay attention to music. Music cannot be just a background noise. Everywhere I go, when I hear something that I like, I'll pay attention to it and forget everything else.

So imagine if I'm plugged in to the radio or MP3 playlist all the time, I will not be able to do any work. Nothing. So even at home when I am doing photography editing, I do it without any music playing on the background.

It's so ironic that a musician like me is unable to listen to music at all times.