Root Directory:

Huckool.Com HuckoolBlog.Com Blog 2010

Index Menu:

Index Bullet Points Photography

Entries:

January February March April May June July August September October November December

05/02/10 - Keeping myself as socially active as possible, spending time with my brother (Stuart) and his girlfriend this past weekend, and am in West Sussex for Isaac and Charlotte's wedding this weekend. It was nice to meet with Stuart for the first time since before Christmas; I shouldn't really rely on special events or occasions to meet with people. It's not much for me to go to Folkestone for a weekend, and getting to Charlotte's place costs as much as a High Speed ticket to church in London.

Today has been really good, helping Isaac and Charlotte with their wedding preparations, though Isaac seemed set on distracting himself from it by trying to help me out with my camera memory card, and with bits of my website. It seems as though my deleted photos from Asia in November could be eternally doomed, as Isaac could only recover them at 10% of the size. I'm intriged at how Jessops managed to recover a handful of images at full size, but Isaac could recover almost all of them at thumbnail size. Quality beats quantity, though I'd still love to have all my old photos back. It seems as though my card being formatted did the main damage; shame I can't rely on the services of a country I want to settle in in the future.

This evening has been great; Emily, Sanju and Jonny all arrived at the same time in the evening, and we're all staying together at the house of a senior lady, Elizabeth, who's a friend of Charlotte's family. It was really nice, meeting again after so long and catching up with what everyone's been doing. It's amazing how after so long, our time together in Malaysia four years ago has made such a solid bond between us all...

12/02/10 - Had an awesome time at Isaac and Charlotte's wedding over last weekend. Took 1,206 photos on the day, which I cut down to 821 worth keeping, then published 190 on the site. This was definitely the best wedding I've attended, but weddings are usually more enjoyable when you are close friends with the bride and groom, and know most of the head table, and are even more special when you're assigned an important role as part of it.

Isaac's mother had quite a journey trying to get from Ghana to the UK; there was a ridiculous delay in her being able to obtain a visa for her to enter the country to attend the wedding, then when she did get her last minute visa and plane ticket, her plane had to do an emergency landing in Algeria due to engine problems. So she had to wait for another flight, and after being scheduled to arrive 6am on the wedding day, she arrived at about 11pm, during the last song at the reception, which they then extended just for her arrival. Would have been much easier if she just came in illegally...

Despite the incident with Isaac's mother, it was still a great weekend, catching up with everyone again; it was intriging to hear about Sam's experiences with Elisha in India, and how she was also spoilt with luxuries at her own expense, despite it costing Elisha another generous donation (like with me). It was a shame I missed Emily and Sanju's wedding two years ago, but the past weekend certainly made up for it. Everyone was certainly impressed with the job I did, hopefully I'll have some more photography assignments in the future...

19/02/10 - February 14th was a big day on the world calendar, with Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year. Tesco was packed on the Saturday, thanks to last minute Valentine gifts, plus a few days of heavy snow, whilst on the other side of the world, billions were celebrating the Year of the Tiger. I made myself a little badge with 'Gong Xi Fa Chai' on one of my Featured CNY photos to try and spread a little multi-culturalism, but there was nothing else but a meal deal on Chinese food to acknowledge a proper festival like CNY, unlike the marketing leech that is 'Saint' Valentine's Day.

Went to church for only the second time this year so far; I caught up with Mercy recently, who told me she's also cutting back on her trips to her Tamil church in Croydon. Managed to get a third week off work to visit Malaysia in June, but the trips still atleast three months away. Yans, who I did teaching for in Taman Tun, has been in the UK the past week to visit her kids, who are studying in Somerset. Hopefully she has brought some blessings over to the UK as I have an interview for a volunteer teaching placement next month; can't believe almost two years have passed since I last did teaching for Yans, and haven't done any more since...

26/02/10 - Had the Sky box upgraded to Sky+HD over the past weekend, and HD TV is definitely a big step up from standard definition. I had never really personally cared about getting the upgrade to HD, but it definitely is the next big step forward for home entertainment. Overtime had work is getting pretty competitive, but despite getting some, I've had about 17 hours of it cut for over the next couple of weeks, but this tends to be a usual thing towards the end of the financial year...

It's dissapointing to have missed another Chinese New Year in Malaysia, I would have loved to have gone hunting for Lion Dances to capture with my new camera, but obviously I'll have to wait another time. I'd been browsing Flickr a little and seeing people's professional shots, and can't wait to be taking such beautiful, detailed shots round Malaysia in a few months time...