After almost 9 years in service, I'm finally decomissioning my 4 footer tank. This is my 3rd marine tank; I started off with a 1 foot tank back in the days when I still kept Titan, my oscar fish, followed by a most precarious 4 footer right outside my bedroom. This was finally upgraded to the system as we know now, and in her heydays she was a full-fledged reef. Unfortunately, due to multiple and very costly equipment failures, she is now out of service. This morning, one of her pipes sprung a small leak, and I have now shut off her circulation system. The house now seems very quiet (almost disquieting) without the familiar sound of running water. It will be a few weeks yet before all her presence is gone from the house.
Will I get a new tank, in the new house? I can't say right now. Reefs take an extraordinary amount of effort to upkeep, both in monetary terms and in the time invested. And even if I do eventually get another one, it'll be a nano system, no more than 2 feet in length.
Reefkeeping has evolved much, even from the first years of my venture into them. During my 1 foot tank era, the Jaubert Plenum system was all the rage. This evolved into a period of deep sand beds, massive amounts of live rock, and all of a sudden, we've reverted back to the very basics of little/no sand and aggressive protein skimming. Then came the technology. New wavemaker technology, lighting technology and complete reefkeeping computer systems that measure the Redox potential, pH and whatnot. Still, after seeing the real stuff during dives, I've come to realise that no matter what I do at home, it will be but just a feeble imitation of the great reefs out there - a bonsai reef, if you will. The reef tanks of today are but a hard-fought battle to bring into control an equilibrium that has existed for millions of years, a laboratory glass box filled with probes and pumps, but woefully still lacking the biological processes and planktonic life that sustains the seas.
I still relish the thought of bringing back a minuscule slice of a reef in my own living room, but until then, I concede defeat.
The weekend passes so quickly when you're working! =(
Attended a dinner on Saturday night, it's a school function. Quite a few things happened regarding this, and I'm a little flummoxed, to tell the truth. I can be a lot of things, but of others ... I certainly am not sure if it's trust misplaced. And there comes a whole load of responsibility together with appointment, as I have learnt through the years. Just feeling a little wrong-footed. Met with a previous JC senior who was also dragged into this, and it really set me thinking a lot over the weekend.
What am I searching for, all these years? What do I really want?
My veggie diet is going well, but alas, such is the bane of modern living. My schemes get disrupted by work, calls, and family dinners. We ate japanese today, and I was hard-pressed to get anything non-starchy. Eating sashimi for the entire meal would have qualified, but seriously, I can't eat that much sashimi without puking.
I'm quite amazed at how full you get can with just veggies. Bought some macadamia nut oil cheaply today, so I'm all set for the week ahead.
Another silly thing in the works .. just did up a "new" food blog. I know, Gastronomia's not really updated *that* frequently, but I just fancied spending my time in a less useless way. Click on the picture below to get to it! My old food blog will still remain as it is.
It turned out to be a fun night! We decorated the house with the usual .. cobwebs, UV lighting, dry ice effects, Stan the skeleton sitting in the rocking chair, Bob the creepy hanging skeleton with flashing eyes, one of my scorpions in a tank with UV lighting, and creepy music. The weather was perfect too - stormy, with lightning and thunder. Everyone came dressed to the nines =)
Me - Julius Caesar Yx - Cleopatra Anna - Vampiress Sebastian - Dracula Anne-Merle - She-Devil (gotta love those blood-red contact lenses!) Christian - Chinese zombie Clarice - Geisha Andrew - Indiana Jones Kelvin - Saudi royalty Felicia - one of the rich Saudi's wives (the 499th, to be exact) Alvin - Captain Jack Sparrow Serene - Pirate Girl (Jill Sparrow) Brownie - Spider Dog
And the food!! I made some creepy stuff. Breaded frog's legs with pumpkin sauce, dried cadaver meat (beef jerky actually), cadaver stew in a carved pumpkin (beef stew), maggotty fruits (vanilla ice cream, avocado, fake maggots made of rice puffs and bandung) and a few shots - Brain Haemorrhage, Graveyard and Eyeball Mojito. Jenny made this totally disgusting dessert called Dirt Cake that's SUPER GROSS, but SUPER NICE. It looks like a piace of garden earth, complete with earthworms. I think she used chocolate fudge, oreo and gummy earthworms. Oh, and Brownie completed the horror set-up by attacking Anne-Merle and leaving 2 bleeding marks on her. =o
We headed down to Raffles Town Club after, for some bowling in our costumes. Ha .. got some stares. Seriously, it's one of those things that you can only do with a group.
Been pondering a little about life lately... maybe more on this later.
I just realised that hosting a Halloween party is very hard work - one of the most difficult ones to host, if you ask me. You need to be in theme. And the trouble is, everyone knows the theme, and have some sort of expectation. Some think of a costume party, some like to have the sh*t scared out of them, some think it'll be cheesy neon lights and fugly lame costumes. Oh dear.
My decor isn't great. Just the usual cobwebs, a little creepy music that Yx found (I'm actually thinking of the songs from Pan's Labyrinth), and of course my skeleton, Stan. Hmm. We're getting some dry ice for a bit of effect, and there's also the food.
This is an irritating time to get sick. Down with a cold, and aching everywhere. I suspect it's part of the reason why I was so irate yesterday. Had a shouting match in my clinic with some dumbass.
Read all about Marcus, the ophthalmologist who passed away in a diving mishap this week. Too young, too soon - hope he rests in peace. According to the press and hearsay on dive boards, he was using a rebreather instead of the usual open circuit scuba that most people are familiar with. I don't know - he's really experienced, and if you ask me, I would say equipment malfunction probably has a lot to do with what happened. I think the dive operator needs to be hauled in for questioning and the rebreather seized and inspected. And it doesn't help that the press makes the whole sport look like it's some high risk thing.
Just out of curiosity, I went to dig out some figures. According to statistics from DAN (Diver Alert Network), the annual accident rate for diving works out to be between 0.011-0.02% per year, while US data from the National Safety Council reports an incidence rate of 0.094%. These numbers account for both fatal and non-fatal incidents. DAN is a non-profit association providing emergency medical services and evacuation for divers where you subscribe to them like you would for insurance, so the difference in numbers above can be attributed to both different populations (world-wide average vs US data) and demographics (divers who do plan for emergencies vs those who may or may not have emergency evacuation plans). The numbers do look small, but I suppose it's one of those things that are like a comparison between train collision rates vs roller-skating accident rates - when things do happen, they have a higher chance of being fatal in the former, safety figures notwithstanding.
Just as an aside, we had an interesting exchange with Grahame - our AOW instructor - about how some dive shops operate locally. As someone who's been through this before during our basic open water, I can say that it's just not safe, and accidents are just waiting to happen. Very typically of Singaporeans, people want to get certified asap. The basic open water cert requires 4 open water dives. What local companies do is to leave S'p on Friday evening and return on Sunday evening, as locals don't seem to want to take a day off just for this. So you basically arrive at your destination on Saturday early morning (4am, in our case), and go for your very first open water dive of your life at 7am. Safe? I think not. I knew we had a bad time, and it was really not enjoyable at all.
I probably won't stop doing dives, but will still stick with what we usually plan for - shallow dives (above 20m) so we can do a controlled emergency ascent within 1-2 minutes, tight buddy system (Yx, you need to quit swimming *above* me so that I can see you!), prepare to surface as soon as the tank pressure gets to 50 bar, and of course reputable operations with competent divemasters/guides - that extra $5-10 of savings per dive just isn't worth the risk.
Our next trip should be somewhere in Feb next year. We can't afford Palau (or rather, *I* can't afford it), so we're making do with the Gili Islands in Lombok instead. Not world-class diving for sure, but I don't need spectacular cliffs and drop-offs to make my day.
Been feeling sort of disgruntled lately. I think it's a post-holiday kind of thing, and I'm itching to go away for more. Financial constrains, however, dictate that I'm not about to go anywhere till next year at least.
We were discussing places to go for our honeymoon, and I went back to look at the wondrous place we stayed at in Bali. Oh wow .. I never realised it was that expensive. Or maybe I've just gotten used to spending $100/night max recently. Or more likely, my less-than-decent salary these days have changed perspectives a little. I mean, the Oriental goes at >$200 a night for a tiny room. =) Haha, good way to feel better about spending on accommodation.
Time to go figure out how to manage those funds ..
Finally back from our trip! OK, other than the diving and meeting up with friends, there honestly was nothing memorable about this trip .. which says a lot about our accommodation and food.
Day 1 We set off in the wee hours, taking this dingy little van up North (4 hours including a rest stop), followed by a 1.5 hour ferry to Tioman. The main purpose of this Tioman trip was to complete our advanced water course, plus the enriched air nitrox course - in preparation for an upcoming (real) holiday somewhere early next year.
It turned out that the resortchaletdecent hut we were living in was situated right at the eastern end of the beach, while the dive company was at the western end. In any case, I was slightly disappointed as all the instructors were busy then, and we ended up with no dive at all on our first day - just 2 large books to read and study. The horrid place we stayed in was called Nazri's Place, which for some unfathomable reason was rated as "recommended" by a couple of diving discussion boards. Fascilities were spartan (to put it really nicely), water literally trickles out of the shower, the room smells, and worst of all perhaps, was the indescribably poor fare the restaurant offered - at a premium, no less. We paid RM7 for a plate of "fried rice" .. who would ever imagine that the ubiquitous fried rice could be end up being gross, right? Wrong. Dinner was settled elsewhere, as you might have guessed.
We went out snorkelling at the house reef, and it was dismal compared to Berjaya's (a 10-minute boat ride away, but alas, at 3-5x the price for accommodation). We did see a couple of eels though, plus a nice fat little blue-spotted stingray and some other critters.
Day 2 Yay! Compressed air day!! The usual pre-dive knowledge review, going through worksheets and theory, and then we were in! Our first dive was the Peak Performance Buoyancy lesson, which was taught by this remarkably cheery Australian chap called Michael. He was actually here on a dive holiday, and roped in to teach as well (and yes, he's more than qualified!). On hindsight, this was actually one of the most important lessons we went through, and I felt really good about it at the end of the dive. We got through all the exercises quite well, I'm glad to say - including weighting ourselves down correctly, hovering, breath buoyancy control, and at one point even a head-down position in which we were suspended for a while.
Second dive (Navigation) was taught by Grahame, this elderly Englishman who looks to be about 65 but has a fitness level to put the vast majority of us to shame (refer to our first Nitrox dive the next day). Yx was initially quite intimidated by him, as he was strict and spoke in a booming voice. But as with all things when it comes to learning, strict can be good. And anyway he turned out to be a most amicable chap with a Londoner's sense of humour. We did all the exercises in navigation, and right at the end of the dive, Grahame decided to test us on our buoyancy! He put a weight (about the size of a wallet) standing up on the seafloor, hovered right over it in a kneeling position, grabbed hold of it with his knees, floated around for a while, and replaced the weight - all without using any fins! Ha .. a master at work indeed.
Our last dive of the day was a night dive, one which I enjoyed very much indeed. I was initially a little apprehensive - going into the deep in pitch darkness isn't anywhere on my to-do list - but in the end we did it. The sea was totally calm, with no currents at all, and all the fish were sleeping. We almost trod on a blue-spotted stingray in the shallows though, and when we reached the sea floor at about 10 metres, we blocked off our dive lights and waved our hands in the water - whoa! Bioluminescence! It was really, really amazing. Yx didn't have such a great time though - she got stung by something (maybe an urchin?) and kept pointing at her calf. I got thoroughly excited, thinking she had a cramp in mid-water, and proceeded to do the usual thing for cramps. Anyway, we eventually surfaced after 35 minutes, and floating on my back paddling back to shore in the depths of darkness with hundreds of stars in the night sky was one of those magical moments I had.
Got back to the hut, and studied our nitrox tables and formulae well past midnight.
Day 3 Still bleary-eyed, we got up super-early and headed off for our first dive at 9am, which is a deep dive at a small island called Cheveh. Got down to 31m, but neither of us felt any nitrogen narcosis symptoms. Oh well. There were loads of giant seafans around, and we were just a wee bit disappointed cos Grahame actually spotted a manta ray at Cheveh yesterday, but we just weren't lucky enough! Tonnes of great marine life here, with low to moderate current.
Our second dive was done with nitrox 32% at a shipwreck site, and this one was HORRID. I swear, I almost drowned on this dive - at the surface. The surf was horrid, and I ended up battling waves for 5-10 minutes (seemed like forever) to get the the marker buoy which marked the shipwreck spot. The waves kept crashing over my head and getting into my snorkel pipe, and it really seemed a futile exercise cos I'd fin hard to get ahead by 1m, and another wave crashes over and brings me 1m away again. So I really started panicking at one point in time, and by the time I reached the marker buoy, I was puffing away like I just ran a 400m sprint. Not a good start. =( On the other hand, Grahame was perfectly fine and looked as if the surf wasn't there at all! (When I bitched about the surf to him later on, he replied simply with "Those were great conditions! You should try diving the south coast of England ..") We eventually reached the first wreck at 28m, with Yx snapping away at photos. I ate through my air extremely quickly for this dive, partly due to the moderately-strong underwater current running against us, and partly cos of how I started this dive.
After a brief shore break, it was time for our second and final nitrox dive, once again done on EANx32. Thankfully it was a shore dive, and we went to this area called Ghost Town. It's an artificial reef, made up of maybe 10 pyramid-like structures. Very, very eerie. The bottom was super-silty, and we kept stirring it up no matter how we concentrated on buoyancy. In the end visibility dropped to 2-3 metres cos of all the sediment. On the plus side though, as we were heading back to shore past a staghorn reef, we saw a huge hawksbill turtle. His carapace must have measured more than a metre in length, and he was blissfully oblivious to our presence, munching on goodness-knows-what amongst the Acropora. Nice!
By some coincidence and a little planning, one of the airforce MOs was also on the island, and we took a water taxi to visit him at the Berjaya Resort in the evening. What we didn't count on though, was bumping into Freddy too! He's with the navy and they were also doing some exercise there, and it was his land break day. Nice to meet up with friends in the middle of desolation. Loads of drinks then, followed by a spectacular episode where Jeff tumbled right off his chair to land spread-eagle on the beach after a jug of Blue Lagoon. =)
Still on the subject of remarkable mimicry, check out the halimeda ghost pipefish. A member of the order Syngnathiformes and related to seahorses, this particular species mimics the Halimeda plant. In the second picture, there's one of them nestled amongst the Halimeda.
2 more days to go before we start breathing compressed air again! And this time, it'll be Nitrox. =) As we'll be on course actually, I don't think we'll be having like holiday fun. But still, it's a getaway of sorts. I remember our first trip to Tioman, when we stayed at the Berjaya and snorkelled their excellent house reef every single day - we couldn't get enough of it, even with urchins everywhere. Accommodation this time will be much shabbier, however. Shall see if we can squeeze in some time to do a bit of photography using our new toys.
Dreaming about Bali again. It was such a nice place.
Oh yeah, and I chanced upon this amazing sea slug while browsing through some critters. It's called Phyllodesmium rudmani, and feeds on Xenia corals. The amazing part? It actually looks like Xenia! Check this out -
Brownie went nuts this week over a bitch, who I believe is a stately lady some 2 times taller than him. Yes, he tried to mount a huge labrador, and is now pining away. Seriously, the number of times I wake up to him howling this week ..
Yx and I went nuts yesterday. We dropped $850 on a lightbulb. And also on a little plastic box to put our camera in.
Spending my time today during weekend call, salivating over some prospective holiday locations. Right at the top of the list is actually Palau, in Micronesia. But alas! It's horrendously expensive (akin to a trip to Japan, I suspect) and getting there is a complete nightmare - expected for somewhere that's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I suspect the total expenses for a decent trip there (week-long) will cost in the territory of $3000-$4000 per person. I'm really whacked by the thought of swimming in the Jellyfish Lake and the spectacular diving there though. Maybe for honeymoon? Or when I get richer.
Talking about diving, Yx and I will be going for our advanced certification soon. We've originally convinced ourselves that we don't need anything more than a basic open water cert, since we love the shallows, but a look at some of these potential holiday places showed that many of the dives require an advanced certification - at least for the night dives, and deep dives. To be completely honest, I don't think the advanced certification will help very much. And I'm honestly not that fussed about night diving (think "sea monsters"). We did a couple of rather difficult dives at Nusa Penida in Bali such as drift diving, which is only covered in advanced level, and chances are we'll never go diving without a guide anyhow. =) Oh well, at least we're also getting certified for Nitrox at the same time! This one will be really useful, especially for oxygen monsters like me. And maybe one day we'll go back to Bali with an advanced cert to see the Mola Mola.
Still trying to get my paws on the underwater casing for Yx's G10.
Ah, Miss Singapore World has quit at last. Seriously, was it that difficult? I see no reason why she had to hold on so tightly to something that she didn't deserve in the first place.
Now I know why she won - birds of a feather. The people at ERM are just as unapologetic as her. "With her good performance and beauty, she excelled in the competition."
Erm. Beauty? Take a look at her predecessor in 2007: Or in 2008:
I honestly, honestly do not think she is in any way beautiful. Heavily-photoshopped, yes. But not beautiful.
And there's more: "The incident was a one-time interview which misled the Singapore public to believe she spoke English poorly" Seriously people, it takes just 1 blip for your reputation to go crashing. It's no excuse. I don't see Miss Universe 2008 stuttering in any interview, period.
"So perhaps her spoken English could also be an effect from her Bipolar disorder." WHA- ?!? That's a new one. Bipolar causes lousy English. Perhaps my teacher friends should send all their students who fare poorly in English to the psychiatrist. "Please assess for bipolar disorder and start on anti-psychotics, in view of poor command of english. Signed, concerned English teacher."
"Ris Low committed this offence as a young offender ..." "... the treatment would be different if she was over 21 years of age" True, she was a minor under legal definition. So maybe join a beauty pageant when you are more mature, perhaps? (which I think will take a lot of work. Boomz indeed!)
I've been having a waning interest in my specialty of choice over the last 6 months especially, and also doesn't help that incidences and people have been tempting me to go over to the dark side instead. Oh well. I sat in during a clinic with my boss today, and somehow found a little spark again - the same feeling I used to get about this subject. We'll see.
Anyway, I found myself amazed by this song, sung by none other than the King himself.
Celine recently did a duet using this very same clip, and it was amazing!
Yikes, the weekend just flew past again! The passage of time is getting quite alarming - just the other day, I was going through facebook while on call. This time, I didn't just browse the first page when you log in; that's what I have been doing for ages. I actually clicked on individual friends' pages, looked through their photographs, and hit the stark realisation that everyone's grown up. Some have families, some have the most interesting jobs, some .. well some just seem to spend all their time bitching or playing flash-based games.
There're quite a few things I am trying to settle right now, outside of work.
1. Anniversary trip - gotta get this one sorted out before the end of the year, we both need and deserve a break. But before that, we've got to get ourselves certified for the advanced open water course, in particular the deep diving and night diving stuff. While leads to ...
2. Advanced open water. Dive season for the east malaysian coast is drawing to a close, so I need to move fast. We've entertained the possibility of doing it locally, but from what I've read, it's not a good idea at all. Poor visibility, unpredictable currents - basically, a scary combination. We could also do it as part of the anniversary trip, but we both wanted to do recreational dives during that time, rather than being on a course. And there's still the issue of funding the trip(s).
3. Still looking for a small fibreglass pond to place on the balcony. My turtle is actually getting very, very large (he's currently a tad bigger than my 13" MacBook), and even the largest of RubberMaid containers isn't going to keep him happy for long. The next best thing to do, I suppose, is to get one of those fibreglass boxes that people use for their "water features", and do up some sort of makeshift pond with it.
*** Singaporean photographers are nasty ***
I usually browse the local photography forum, but just the other day while on call, I discovered a nice international forum. Oh dear, what a stark difference in the attitude! If anyone ever dared to ask some question on the local forum that had been answered before, they usually get rebuked with "There's such a thing called a search button." or some other generic you-are-so-dumb answer like "It's been discussed many, many, MANY times before." Whoa. What a nice and pleasant place. On this other forum I found, although people *still* get annoyed when repeat questions are asked, they still oblige with an answer, or - better yet - say "it's been discussed before, look at these threads" and proceed to provide hyperlinks.
Perhaps it's got to do with the differing levels of professionalism between the 2. The bulk of people on the local forum are simply hobbyists, while I see a large portion of professional wildlife photographers or photojournalists on the other forum. Of course, for both forums, there's the occasional name-calling which is tends to happen when people start discussing things they are really passionate about.
Just an observation, and I'm glad there's a more pleasant avenue to read about stuff. =)
This is one of those weeks that don't seem to want to pass peacefully. =(
As usual, I'm struggling to juggle several things at once, and work keeps coming my way. I'm sure everyone feels this way from time to time, so I'm trying to make the best use of the situation and try to see if I can sort things out.
Planning a weekend getaway isn't easy, I just found out. This is why being a student is one of the best things that can happen to you - you can just skive off school without a care in the world.
Oh yeah, and I'm getting increasingly irritated with Citibank. It's the only bank that calls to harass customers to get you to sign up with their many schemes - loans, insurance, you name it. And their telemarketers don't seem to understand English. Like yesterday, when someone called me and I told her firmly yet politely that I'm not interested, she went on with a "but ...". That really did it - it's like an invitation to get snapped at. Lady, exactly which parts of the 3 words "I'm not interested" do you not understand? Do you want me to email you the words so that you can look them up in the dictionary? Or should I enroll you in prep school again?
Just learnt from first-hand experience, that inviting your boss to the wedding is an inevitable but very nasty thing to do. Had quite a grueling time at a friend's wedding, sitting on the same table as my boss.
I have found something interesting to keep me occupied for a couple of days! We went to the Butterfly Park at Sentosa to break in Yx's new compact camera, and I found a lovely pig-nosed turtle there. I wonder if I can get any of these now. They used to come in really small sizes at $40 apiece. During my search, I found this whole forum dealing with freshwater stingrays. Granted, I've seen them for sale commonly in local aquariums for the longest time, but somehow they never did interest me. Maybe it's the fact that they are so large, and correspondingly need a large aquarium. But they seriously do look nice. Hmmm nevermind. I do not have the space, or the time, for them at this point in time.
Woke up intending to run, but once again I procrastinated.
1. I came across this site - Atmospheric optics - while doing a Google search. It's really very entertaining and educational, worth a look!
2. Yx and I got ourselves a nice compact camera yesterday! =) It's a Canon G10, 2nd hand in mint condition. Very objectively, the Panasonic Lumix LX3 has way better performance and looks, but I really can't justify dishing out thousands of dollars just for a 3rd party underwater housing (compared to canon's $200+ housing). More to come later!
3. Fresh Italian autumn truffles are here!! At S$800/kg though, and with my indecent pay right now, I shall have to pass and make do with truffle oil at $30 per bottle which lasts indefinitely.
4. Itching to go on a dive holiday. Been 9 months since we've had compressed air!
Greenwood Fish Market & Bistro A review of their crabmeat spaghetti vongole
After doing up that spaghetti vongole the other day, I had the chance of going out for lunch with the guys at Greenwood Fish Market. I think you probably know about them for their fish & chips (which, personally, I do not find spectacular).
The portion size was good, even for a glutton like me. The pasta was cooked al-dente, which was a nice surprise. Number of clams included was good too, and the shredded crabmeat (tinned, no doubt) added a nice touch.
However, there was plenty of grit in the clams. I'm not talking about fine sand (which, strictly-speaking, shouldn't even be there) - there were 3-4mm pieces of grit in the stuff. Not good eh.
Just had my first session last evening, and it was good. Just that the children were inevitable. Still trying to get used to writing strangely and using alternative names.
Anyway, I must admit that I chickened out of the EPS. Called in to cancel it yesterday afternoon, and I'm expecting a call from my doc today. Maybe I should call him first to inform him, out of courtesy. It's just too harrowing to deal with the risks, and Yx agrees too. I'm ashamed of myself. It's almost as bad as last November's very complicated episode of affairs. It's never easy to do things like this, but sometimes it's necessary.
It's been quite a while since I last blogged! (has it?) Anyway, I'm now kinda stuck with a few sticky situations, and it's quite annoying when things don't really work out. Some stuff I managed to do:
1. Got my car serviced! I hate it when the salespeople look at me in that way when they learn that it's done 15,000km since the last servicing. But anyway, I pampered the damn thing today by getting new spark plugs, new fog lamps, air-con coil decontamination treatment, fuel injector cleaning and whatnot. And of course, I got the main problem settled - the squeaky noise during start-up from a loose belt.
2. Made spaghetti vongole Yeah I did it today, from a sudden stroke of inspiration while walking around the fish market and seeing nice clams. It was well-received! And mom ended up teaching dad to mop up all the juices with bread, lol.
3. Mopped the house Sigh. Had to clear up some of my studio equipment today and mop the dust-magnet of a house, as dad's having friends over.
5. Did some edits Thanks to a colleague, I finally managed to get my paws on Lightroom 2. It's just one of those things that makes you wonder how you could have ever done without it. It makes sorting, categorising and editing of photos such a breeze! Check out the belated Bali trip photos on my facebook. I'm working on our ROM photos, which in itself is quite a PITA - mostly cos unlike the Bali photos, I simply cannot ruin them.
