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“I see that you are taking pictures of A LOT OF buildings, what are you shooting exactly?” a young female police officer stopped me at two in the morning, right next to the Parliament House.

Good question.  What was I doing by the Singapore River in the wee hours of the Boxing Day.

I needed to test out my new tripod system before heading to Hong Kong later in the late afternoon.  The answer is as simple as that.  And I have always been wanted to shoot the beautiful night scene of the Singapore River.  So I chose the wee hours, after attended the evening Christmas Mass. 

Bizarre things do happen in the wee hours of 12 to 3.  A band was playing in one of the pubs and as the party has ended, the crowd started to disperse.  One group - 3 Indian men 2 Chinese ladies - walked passed me, looked at my camera, and one of them asked, “It’s so dark, what do you see?”  Like magic (due to 30 seconds long exposure), first was the sound of the shutter, then came the image.  And they looked at the picture and gasped.  All of a sudden, all the guys were very animated.  One guy told me that he has the D90.  Yes, it is a good camera, I assured him.  He pointed at mine and said, “Yours is much better!”  And I reassured him that a D90 is a good camera.  We chatted and chatted and how a group of 5 managed to squeeze inside a BMW Convertible, I have no clue.  But they waved at me like good old friends do, breath of the alcohol still lingered in the air, and with a touch of the gas petal, the sport car vanished into the dark.

And that was the closest I get next to a BMW Convertible that opened its roof just moment ago.

How I love to be a - quote unquote - photographer.  People are super friendly with me.  Even though … I am a …

I don’t even know what I am anymore.

Note: All pictures shown here are mostly straight from the camera, with some very minor touch-ups - including the 7 dust spots I have discovered on my image sensor.  Thanks to Nikon Service Centre, they are now gone.

As I walked along the river, admiring the beautiful serenity dotted with couples having their own romantic moments, I heard someone said, “Adíos!”.  Spanish?!  Filipino perhaps.  From the band I reckon.

Someone was sleeping on the street with his bicycle next to him.  He must have woken up by the shutter sound of my camera.  He paced around waiting for me to go away.  I stuck around waiting for him to go away.  Reluctantly, he cycled off and that was when I was stopped by two police officers.  I reassured her that I was not taking any picture of the government buildings (common security measure even in the US of A).

Moving away from the quietness of Boat Quay, I was drawn by the light and the sound of Clark Quay.  3am in the morning, people were still doing reverse bungee.  I could hear their screaming across the river.  Some time ago someone raised a concern over such entertainment in Clark Quay.  Too much noise in the wee hours.

I climbed up an overhead bridge and took some pictures of the traffic on the street.  One white lady screamed just another flights of stairs behind me saying something like she wanted to die.  I turned around, saw her in the middle section of the bridge with one leg over the railing.  Her lover (I supposed) pleaded her to stop killing herself.  I saw the hesitant in her so I did not want to get involved.  They went on and on over I love you I love you not with drinks in their hands while I went on and on shooting for that one perfect traffic shot.  There were cars that braked hard right before my eyes (people who think that I was the traffic police with a speed camera?).  There were cars that shot past me with such ferocity.  Yes, that grey Nissan GT-R.  I nearly got your number plate.

I love my new tripod system.  Unlike cameras and lenses that the heavier the gears are, the higher the quality, but rather like the bicycles for the professionals, losing the weight without compromising the performance cost a lot, a lot of money.  I have previously carried a tripod for my entire trip to Italy in 2000.  Anything heavy I just wouldn’t use (unless it is the case of heavy weight that implies good quality).  That much I know about myself.

Night time photography can be a lonely activity.  Each shoot took a minute or more to complete - mount the camera, adjust the tripod head, compose the picture, determine the settings, close the viewfinder blind, use a 10 seconds timer release, wait for 15-30 seconds or more for the picture to be properly exposed, and if the result can be improved, restart the whole process again.  If that is not tedious enough, at times I have to wait for the people to move away, pray that people will not move into the picture (anything can happen during the 30 seconds exposure plus 10 seconds timer release).  I have to observe the wind speed over the river, and the movement of the cloud.

It is all about patience and perseverance.  And this is my passion.

~ Dec 26, 2008

When I saw the DVD of “The Duchess” selling in HMV Hong Kong, I was wondering how I could possibly miss a movie by Keira Knightley on a big screen in Singapore.  We thought we did.  So, Cynthia and I watched it on our way back from Hong Kong, inside the cabin of our favorite airline, SIA.  Then we realized that “The Duchess” is now showing here exclusively in GV.

Some titles do take long to arrive.

I seldom read reviews by others - no disrespect to other reviewers - because I wish to form my own view.  I do however check the aggregated score from time to time.  And I welcome controversy views.  Hence, I do pay attention to movies that are both loved and hated by many.

Since “The Duchess” is based on true (or historical) events, I think it is rather pointless to comment too much on the storyline.  Or how the story could have ended in a better way.  It is what it is: a series of scandals that involved the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Charles Grey (2nd Earl Grey) the would-be Prime Minister of UK, and more.  I wish to say that ”The Duchess” is about one lady’s strength amidst the harsh reality of needing to produce a male heir, a non-existence love relationship, trapped within her own home, and more.  But true story being as such, there is - in my opinion - no satisfactory triumph.

So I gave it some thoughts and to me, the take home message is that Every Decision has its Consequence.  And working within this theme, I think “The Duchess” really shine in portraying how Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (played by Knightley) lived through the decisions made in such a male dominating environment more than 200 hundred years ago.

How civilization has advanced since then.  It was procreation in the most contractual form.  A man’s lifelong quest to foster male heirs and a woman’s lifelong commitment to care for her children.  And in the mist of all these chaotic lust filled desire from the both sexes, how less complicated it would be if they had the various means of contraception in our today’s world.

The choice of Keira Knightley is good and she works well in a costume drama setting.  What lovely accent she has.  In “The Duchess”, she plays an innocent young girl, a mother, a wife to a man doesn’t know love, a lover, a friend betrayed, and more.  If you stop and think, it is a pretty wide spectrum of emotion.  She has done well, in my book.  In contrary, Ralph Fiennes’s acting as the Duke is mostly being the same sternness and loveless towards his wife - as demanded by the plot.  However, his performance is equally as good to watch.

“The Duchess” reminds me of “The Other Boleyn Girl” at times.  Perhaps this one track desire to have a male heir.  I am rather happy to live in 2009 in this part of the world where having a child - be it as a boy or a girl - is a blessing from the above.

Blue sky came with a price.  As the blanket of thick cloud finally got lifted in our last few days of stay in Hong Kong, the temperature dropped dramatically.  This morning, I was greeted by a cool chilly temperature of 11-degree Celsius.  I kept sneezing not used to the cold weather.  Tonight, as I am typing this blog entry, my nose doesn’t stop running either.  Gosh, I miss the heat of Singapore.

There are good and bad being cut off from the news.  Someone at the dinning table started a conversation, “So you heard the news about that London Eye in Singapore?”  “The Singapore Flyer you meant,” I interjected.  “Yes, have you been up?”  “Yes, once.”  Someone else cut in, “There was a recent power failure.”  OK, I have vaguely heard this news before I left for Hong Kong.

“People were stuck for 6 hours!”

“6 hours?” exclaimed I.  “Do you know what was the first thing people did when they were rescued by the ropes?”  “I have no clue.”  “They dashed to the toilets.”  “How do you know?” I asked.  “It was all over the news!”

Here in Hong Kong?  I wonder if they have seen the video of the guy getting pounded by the tiger from the Singapore Zoo.

“I am surprised that Singapore has power failure,” another someone chipped in.  I too am surprised.  “Do you know what caused the power failure?” it was my turn to inquire.  Everyone at the dining table shook their heads.  And like all good gossips in Hong Kong, the topic switched from Singapore’s “London Eye” to local economy in just a heartbeat.

Hong Kong doesn’t change much.  Still full of people, still very vibrant.  The food is so fresh and good, so value for money.  When visitors see rounds of dessert as well as plates of fruit served at the end of a Chinese meal, their eyes beamed out rays of delight and they asked, “It is free?”  Yes, when you dine in Hong Kong, in such a competitive service oriented environment, the restaurants want you to be happy and come back to them.  Besides, what good is a Chinese meal without the dessert and the fruit?  I wish Singaporeans demand the same level of freshness and food quality, as well as the same level of service quality.  I wonder why we don’t.  Are we happy being charged for every single item in life?

What we do demand, I think, is our constant up-to-date dosage of high quality Hollywood entertainment.  This could explain why Singapore has more varieties in movie titles.  And some of the titles come out much faster in Singapore too compares to Hong Kong.  In addition, if I am not wrong, Singapore has some of the best cinema systems (at least our Cathay Cineplexes do).

When I first touched down in Hong Kong, my brother-in-law Benny told me that in every corner, you can see someone carrying a dSLR camera.  How can that be?  At times I feel uneasy carrying my rather gigantic dSLR camera around in Singapore.  I walk into a mall in Hong Kong and I can see a dozen of people shooting pictures with their dSLR cameras (yes, inside a mall).  I visited a garden with my parents today (see picture above) and I saw two groups of people.  The Nikonians who carried a D200 and above with jaw dropping lenses.  I have not seen what appeared like a 200-400mm or a super long telephoto lens in real life and I saw one guy carrying one like a hand held bazooka.  It is freaking long, take my words.  I think he must have shot all that he can in that garden with his other lenses and was aiming for some out-of-the-world-no-one-else-but-he-can kind of shots.

Another group was the non-Nikonians who appeared to carry much smaller camera bodies.  No conclusion drawn.  Just my observation.

Inside the MRT, I saw a couple carrying the exact camera as mine with a huge tripod.  I feel so at home in Hong Kong carrying my mini-bazooka even with my rather gigantic flash gun attached.  For a brief moment, I was one of them.

Some names in Hong Kong tickle us.  Cynthia found the name “Po Hon Building” funny because in her language, pohon means tree.  I spotted the road name “Average Road” and we both had a good laugh.  There is a GP called “Porky Chan”.  Hmmm.  We have yet to meet someone named Porky in our lives.  And one day I was inside a mini-van and saw the road sign “Opposite Sea”.  I asked my mom where “Opposite Sea” is and she looked at me in puzzlement.  Maybe it is as simple as somewhere facing the opposite sea?

Time flies when you are having fun seems to have some truth in it.  And so we have come to the final leg of our Singapore-Bandung-Singapore-Hong Kong-Singapore trip.  I ponder where we will visit next.

Out of over 7,000 photos taken with my barely 2 months old camera, if I could pick one picture as my Nikon moment, this is it.  Friends of mine perhaps rarely see this look of mine that is ecstatically happy.  And indeed I was and more, overwhelmed with emotion.  I passed my camera to my dad during the Tea Ceremony – a Chinese tradition to formally accept the wedding couple into the family – and after Cynthia and I have drank the long awaited, most expensive cups of tea offered by Lora and Benny, I was pointing at our wedding gift that I just put onto Lora’s wrist and asked the crowd if the diamond filled bracelet was beautiful.  Together with my mom and dad’s wedding gifts and more – each of them gave my sister a one carat diamond ring – an interesting comment was that our bride wore more diamond than gold on her wedding day.  If there is one thing Lora and I are in common, that would be our quest for quality and perfection.  You can imagine the unspoken minimum requirement of the color of the diamonds.  Note: From right to left: Benny, Lora, my mom, me, and the bridesmaid.

Uh-huh.  But Lora looked lovely on her wedding with the blink-blink.  That’s all that matters.

I am happy that my beloved little sister has found a good man, although by saying that I have found her a good man – as I know Benny before Lora does and partially because of me, they met – is not entirely untrue.  Either way, as a big brother, I am happy that my sister’s future is well taken care of, 24×7.  That is just lovely and I couldn’t be happier.

A Fruitful Year – A Reflection

It started with a small revelation of mine that I have shared with a few friends of mine.  I look back 10 years ago when I was younger and full of energy, how I wish I could have done much more.  Hence, I have decided that I don’t want to look back to where I am today, 10 years from now, and say the same thing.  I am a true believer of New Year Resolutions though I brand it more positively and call it a New Theme for the New Year.  The theme for year 2008 is “Do It” and not only have I not shy away from new opportunities, I have also proactively sourced for new things to do.

My band has finally performed live at The Hereen.  Having my music played in public is a dream came true, enough of talking about it for years.  My passion for writing has been elevated to a higher ground, with the advent of the Internet era that transforms my old hobby into something called blogging.  This year, I have reviewed a few books for McGraw-Hill, attended a few events from my favorite brands such as Nokia, HBO, and Intel, and I have participated the first ever blogger challenge by BRANDS (and Singapore team has won!).  Even without all these memorable blogger events and blessed opportunities, I would have continued to write the way I have always been.  Simply because writing has been my passion since young.

I have picked up a few new passions as well.  I reckon hobbies take 12 years to mature so I better start now.  I have picked up Spanish and with luck, I shall pass the exam and move onto level 3 next year.  And I have become serious on photography after pointing and shooting for decades.

I don’t usually talk about work here because it is simply, work.  Blogging is my hobby and these two seldom mix.  Personally satisfied with my career in the year of 2008, I look forward to season 2 of the game of survivor.  I have counted: more than 10,000 email messages I have received and sent in 2008.  My role as an electronic postman has surpassed my role as a coffee boy.  That much I can share.  And God knows how many emails will be in my mailbox when I am back from my 3 weeks compliance leave.

My Sister’s Wedding

So I was the direct wedding family member, Benny’s backup Best Man, and the backup wedding photographer.  One moment I was playing the role of a big brother at the Tea Ceremony, another moment I was chasing behind the bride on every step she took taking photographs; one moment I was the ring bearer and accompanied Benny to crash the gate, another moment I walked into the Church right behind Benny and as the service drew to an end, I quickly grabbed my camera from my Uncle and resumed my photographer’s hat.

The official wedding photographer took over 600 pictures that evening, I took close to 500, and we both took different things.  He used a Nikon D3 and since we both are Nikonians, we have immediately become good friends swapping cameras.  He shared some of the valuable tips and I put them to use immediately.  These tips, they work wonder.  And surprise, surprise, the videographer is from the old film days and my dad as an awarding winning photographer 4 decades ago, both of them conversed in names that I could only imagine as legends.  Maybe my dad was a legend too, I wouldn’t have known.  He seldom talks about the past.

I have not seen my dad in suit and tie and black shoes in my entire life before my sister’s wedding; I have seldom seen my parents so proud and happy as they mingled from tables to tables during the wedding dinner.  Now I truly believe that wedding dinner is indeed for the parents.  It has been a long time since I am moved to tears, as I did so at the Church.  My eyes went watery when I saw my sister in white wedding gown with my dad by her side.  Both sides of the parents broke into tears inside the Church including the wedding couple.  I could only deduce that when love is so strong, it moves those who connect.

What a joyful wedding, what a lovely way to end year 2008 with a bang.

A Happy New Year to my readers and thank you for your support over the years.  I will strive to write better in the year 2009 to come.  May your dreams come true too.

47 movies, 47 blog entries, in 1 year - 14 awards our Movie Review Squad has dreamed up with, and here are our nominations.  I don’t even want to start calculating how much money three of us have contributed to our favorite Cathay Cineplexes.  And if you see any bizarre conflict within the list of nominations, well, within the squad, we do have dividing views at times.

PS. What hard work it was to collate and type out the nominations with links!

1. We Love It Award (Best Picture lah)

Iron Man · Juno · Made of Honour · Quantum of Solace · The Dark Knight · Vicky Cristina Barcelona · WALL·E

2. We Love It Though We Don’t Understand A Thing They Say Award (Best Foreign Film lah)

10 Promises to My Dog · Accuracy of Death · Black Book · Murder Of The Inugami Clan · Persepolis · Sky Of Love · Under the Same Moon

3. Why Did We Choose That Award

20th Century Boys · My Blueberry Nights · Summer Rain · Sweeney Todd · Tokyo!

4. Eye Candy (Female) Award

The Dog (10 Promises to My Dog) · Carice van Houten (Black Book) · Haruka Ayase (Cyborg She) · Isla Fisher (Definitely Maybe) · Michelle Monaghan (Made of Honour) · Yui Aragaki (Sky Of Love) · Natalie Portman (The Other Boleyn Girl) · Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) · Kristen Stewart (Twilight) · Scarlett Johansson (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

5. Cool Dude Award

 Takeshi Kaneshiro (Accuracy of Death) · Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises) · Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) · George Clooney (Michael Clayton) · Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace) · Christian Bale (The Dark Knight) · Keanu Reeves (The Day the Earth Stood Still)

6. LOL Award

 27 Dresses · Forgetting Sarah Marshall · Iron Man · Juno · Made of Honour · Tropic Thunder

7. Got Us Thinking Award

Accuracy of Death · Black Book · Cyborg She · Juno · Persepolis · The Day the Earth Stood Still · Tokyo!

8. Tissue Award

10 Promises to My Dog · Black Book · Cyborg She · Sky Of Love

9. Adrenaline Rush Award

[●REC] · Hellboy 2 · Iron Man · Quantum of Solace · The Dark Knight · Wanted

10. Jaw Dropping Effect Award

Hellboy 2 · Iron Man · Jumper · The Dark Knight · Twilight · WALL·E · Wanted

11. Incredible Acting Award

The Dog (10 Promises to My Dog) · Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises) · Ellen Page (Juno) · Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) · Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) · Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) · WALL·E (WALL·E)

PS. In case if you wonder where are the rest of the 3 award categories, that will be our individual picks!  Stay tuned.

As someone who has close to zero prior knowledge on the phenomenon of Warren Buffett, hedge fund manager and financial blogger Jeff Matthews has done a marvelous job in painting a holistic picture of a world according to Warren Buffett.  Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s Omaha is highly assessable.  Supported by close to 90 quotations from various sources, it touches onto a brief history of Berkshire Hathaway, the partnership of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and their collective views on numerous topics, Warren Buffett’s personal life and personality, and what’s next for Berkshire Hathaway after Warren Buffett.

After attended the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting in the year of 2007 through an invite from his friend, Jeff Matthews has started a travelogue within his blog.  Year 2008, he has bought the B shares just to gain a pass to the annual meeting.  Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s Omaha documents what happened during these two meetings.

For those who are new to the unique Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, each year, shareholders from around the world gather at Omaha to hear two old men - Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger - answering questions of all kinds asked by the crowd.  In year 2008, 31,000 were gathered to listen to what the oracle has to say.

Jeff Matthews has the gift of keeping even the driest and most complicated subject engaging and easy to understand.  Seamlessly, he explains the background - be it as a person’s or a company’s history or the meaning behind a particular financial instrument - mixes it with his observation and his research, and in some moments, interjects with his own thoughts.  I in particularly enjoy reading what Jeff Matthews’s views are.  I wish there were more.

Besides the questions that are directly relevant to Berkshire Hathaway’s business such as growth and profitability, sustainability issues such as dams and climate change were raised by the audience.  Some shareholders wished to hear Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s views on abortion and Jesus Christ.  One 17-year-old asked what he should do to become a great investor.  And my favorite question from a 10-year-old (too bad, the answer was less than inspirational): What would a 10-year-old do to make money?

Being able to create 62 billion dollar of wealth from $100 invested in 1956, I think there is only one Warren Buffett.  Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s Omaha is a terrific read in gaining a balanced, well researched insight to the human side of a financial genius.  And how exactly does Warren Buffett do it so well over the years?  It could well be as simple as the basic principles that Buffett has hold onto as clearly layout in this book.  And why can’t anyone else do it?  Some myths do remain.

External Link: Jeff Matthews’s Financial Blog

OK.  This photo of the waitress at Bambu Desa looks lovely.  The authentic Indonesian food from the lovely city of Bandung is lovely too.  Now before I get into that, here comes the second batch of our selected photo collection.

If you notice from the previous batch, I have reversed the order of the batches because … I simply want to do something anti-chronicle.  On the last evening of our Bandung trip, the sky had finally opened up after days and nights of rain.  So we headed to one of the cafe at the peak.

Year 2000, I was at the exact spot.  To cut a long story short, it was my first meet-Cynthia’s-family session, and Cynthia’s mother passed me her antique van to drive up to the peak.  Looking back, I often joked that it was one of the tests to assess the suitability of erm … you know lah. Both Cynthia’s mother and brother are better drivers and are familiar with the Indonesia road structure while I …

OK.  I stalled the handbrake-less van once at one crucial steep hump and the villagers were kind enough to help us to hold the van while I engaged the first gear.  Ahem!

8 years have passed and instead of the same cafe we have visited in 2000, we chose the more classy Cafe Sierra.  You can see from the evening photos at the peak.  A lovely cafe.  By the way, I love that photo of the balcony with kids running round.  Look closer and see if you can see Cynthia and her mother!

The next day, we had our lovely lunch at Bambu Desa (Bandung) before heading to Jakarta for an overnight stay.  As you can see, we took the SIA flight.  I love the last picture a lot (the one with Cynthia holding a Starbucks coffee and the SIA plane as the background).  It was time critical as the plane was moving away as I was trying hard to adjust the flash setting.

Thanks for viewing!  More are on the way.

Note: the dude in our collection is Tong Kiat, our good friend.

Related Tag: Bandung December 2008 Trip

Wow.  How Kristen Stewart has grown up from the 12 years old Panic Room diabetes into one fine young actress who is in love with … a vampire.  Twilight watched like a mix of my favorite TV series Buffy and Felicity.  Add that with the cool rock numbers by Linkin Park, Muse, Paramore, and more - OK, this concoction is rather appetizing.

Cynthia and I are both big fans of vampire stories (for different reasons of course).  Watching Twilight to me is like watching a chick flick.  A film adaptation of a young adults book, I am not surprise on how far the film wouldn’t go.  So we have vegetarian vampires, vampires that shimmer in light of diamond under the sun (?!), and a lust so strong that … turns into a series of friendly, cosy conversations on the bed.  Now, if I was the filmmaker, I would have created a Twilight Reload and chopped it with a R(A) rating.

There are moments of awkwardness - at least to me - like the attempt-to-be Romeo & Juliet style of courtship at the woods, or those Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kind of flying and flirting scenes.  But there are also moments of tenderness and fresh ideas such as vampires playing baseball games (I know) that is really cool to watch.

Pairing the talented Kristen Stewart with the rather stiff looking one dimensional vamp Robert Pattinson to me is like pairing Natalie Portman with the dude who plays Anakin Skywalker.  Hey, I am a guy.  Maybe girls do love Robert Pattinson for his cool factor.  Who knows?

I think Kristen Stewart has potential.  I am keen to follow her acting career.

By the way, Merry Christmas to y’all and watch out for our Movie Review Squad’s nomination for the Year 2008 Movie Awards.  It will be fun, I promise.

I know I have been slow in publishing the photos from my trips and now that I am heading to Hong Kong in less than 72 hours’ time, it’s a high time to release the first batch of … erm … teaser. Recently, I have added a telephoto zoom lens into my collection. Though it is rather chunky and heavy and make my entire setup (with flash) weights more than 3kg, it adds a lot of fun to what I couldn’t have done with a wide angle lens. The widened space between my subjects and I have created new means to articulate my vision.

In this collection, half of the photos are created using the telephoto lens, from the casual pictures taken inside Indonesia eating places to the garden of Cynthia’s home in Bandung. Inside the car, I use the wide angle lens (see picture above). I took a picture of that “Satay Building” (the government building with a pole that looks like a satay stick on top) and later at night, I attempted to capture the light of the sunset around the estate, hand held.

Coming soon, I intend to share sets of the selected photos from the close to 2,000 shots I have made during the trip. At the end of this mini-series, I am pretty sure that you would fall in love with what Bandung has to offer. Proposed blog titles are as follows.

1. Last Day of Our Trip and Sierra - A Cafe at the Peak of Bandung
2. North of Bandung - Air Terjun Maribaya (Waterfall) and De Ranch
3. South of Bandung - Kawah Putih (Volcano)
4. My Family My Friends & A Good Driver / Tour Guide to Recommend
5. Pigeons, Lots of White Pigeons
6. Shopping at Rumah Mode & Paris Van Java
7. High Speed Street Shots
8. Wildlife at Taman Safari

Oh dear me, the Spanish Exam for Beginner 2 was mind blowing.  I dragged myself out of the bed just hours before the exam, having a fever of 38°C.  Oops, that was no good.  My body ached (still does) and I have these non-work related appointments coming into my mobile phone’s Gmail application as I was trying my last ditch effort to memorize as many Spanish words and phrases as possible.  I think nothing really entered my head at the last minute of studying, even at my heightened mental power with the help of BRANDS Chicken Essence.

Leveling up to Beginner 2 is easy as there is no exam at the end of Beginner 1.  Our beloved Spanish teacher Anna remains vague on what the exam is like and got the whole class hopelessly guessing.  OK, she did hint to us that we have to work hard on …

1. Describe our families, our cities, and our home.
2. Able to understand and give street directions.
3. Able to describe objects and where they are.
4. Describe what we like and don’t like to do in our pastimes as well as what our day-to-day life is like.
5. Able to … duh as it sounds … converse in Spanish.

I think I have too many theories for my own good.  People in general panic when they come face to face with exam.  I do too but I had a theory that I used to calm everybody around me, including me.  You see, Beginner 2 is level 2 of 20.  If Las Lilas School fails too many students at such an early stage, think of the potential loss of income!  How many would retake the entire course of 10 lessons just to pass level 2?  I wouldn’t.

It is rather strange that the exam is smacked right into the Christmas holiday period.  Most of our classmates have been holidaying overseas.  So Cynthia and I have missed our last Wednesday’s lesson - the supposed day of exam during our Bandung trip - and instead, we took up today’s slot.

We were expecting the Director to appear as the independent examiner and instead, there came a lovely lady from Peru (I have another theory on ladies who speak Spanish as first language).  We were expecting one hour of revision and then one hour of oral exam like what Anna has told us but instead, we had …

1. Listening Test
2. Written Test
3. Oral Test
4. Reading Test (too bad it didn’t happen as it is my strength in a larger scheme of work)

I had a splitting headache when I was pulled into a room for my oral test.  Gosh!  Okay, Mamy - the Spanish teacher from Peru - is very friendly, which is good.  Conversing in Spanish is my weakest subject.  I struggled so hard and fortunately Mamy has been very encouraging.  She asked me what I like and don’t like to do in my past time (thanks Anna!) and I said … me gusta comer … (means I like to eat) and I paused.  That got her laughing and I continued … las tapas (some kind of Spanish food).  Everyone laughs when they hear me saying me gusta comer las tapas.  A lovely piece of icebreaker.

Then she asked me (I think) what my home is like, what kind of furniture I have inside, what I do in my daily life, and that is!  End of oral test!  I seriously don’t have a lot of high hope on that test.  I really need to work on the Spanish grammar.

Written test was OK.  Fortunately, I did 12 lessons worth of Spanish exercise (a separate book from the text book) over the weekends.  Our Spanish teacher Anna is not that into drilling us on exercise.  And I bet most of us in our class have not been working hard on those exercise, except Cynthia of course.  Many of the examination questions came straight from the exercise book.  I did a lot of brutal memorization over the weeks and it helped.  To give you an idea, I would keep writing Monday to Sunday in Spanish non-stop till I get it.  I take every hobby of mine very serious, Spanish included.

Oh, and we needed to write a mini-essay about our daily life (40 words).  That too went OK.

Listening test was OK too.  Two Spanish people on tape asking each other about the time.  The conversation is fast and furious but Mamy was kind enough to pause between each conversation and to replay it again.  I asked if we could listen to it again.  Mamy looked at our answers and smiled, you all should go home now.

One student from the Monday class (Cynthia and I are from the Wednesday class) asked when the class for the next level will start.  Mamy said, let’s see if you can pass first.

Oh gosh, I really hope that Cynthia and I will pass this exam.

PS. I was at Vivocity’s Coffee Bean studying for my Spanish exam while waiting for Cynthia to finish her facial.  Right in front of me was a “No Studying” sign.  It takes time to finish drinking a regular cup of coffee right?