Portraits

Portraits don’t always have to be formal and posed. I’d call this a portrait shot of my daughter showing off her face-pulling skills. There is one technical thing to note here, which will help all your portraits a lot – notice how everything in the background is really blurry. There isn’t much background in this shot (and that’s another good thing in a portrait) but if you look at the curtain in the left, the check pattern is almost hidden. The fact that the only thing in sharp focus is the subject of the portrait really makes it stand out. This picture also works because the subject is really in contrast with the background, but also has a couple of highlights that are brought out (her eyes go really well with our kitchen wall!). Your camera will have a “Portrait” mode which will automatically try and open the aperture really wide, to get that nice “crisp subject, blurry background” look – and try zooming your lens to something like 50mm.


Then there are more “classic” portraits like this one. While this wasn’t staged, I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted on the day – a really nice picture of my daughter with her Sido (grandfather). Something that *really* helps with all photography is good lighting, and if you can’t afford vast sums for both a professional light rig and a team of monkeys to lug it around for you, then natural light is your best friend. Direct sunlight coming from the side will often give your subject a lovely dark / light contrast, as in this picture.


If you look at a lot of “professional” pictures of babies, you’ll notice they are very often wrapped in a plain, white blanket (preferably natural fibres with a good texture). This makes the whole picture really cosy. You can also try taking a picture of them “along their length” making sure you focus on their face or other interesting feature (toes are a favourite).


Composition & The Rule of Thirds

I’ve added in some rough lines dividing this image into thirds, to show you something about composition called the “rule of thirds”. If you imagine the frame of any imagedivided into thirds, you get four points around the centre that make excellent points of interest. This particular one isn’t perfectly on those points, but is near enough that the whole thing feels “balanced”.

One of the great things about modern high resolution cameras, is that you can crop an image quite a lot and still have something that looks great. Don’t be afraid of shooting “more than you need” and then composing the image later in your computer (or even on the camera if it has that feature). This is something I did a lot in the darkroom years ago, and it isn’t cheating!


Forget the Rules

You can, of course, forrget all the rules (although it does help if you know them before you break them). Personally I love this picture even though it was an accident, the composition is weird and the colours are all wrong, and no-one else seems to like it much. For me, there’s something about her perfect little hand and the fact that you can just make out she’s having a nap in her favourite chair.

Ingredients

• 4 salmon fillets
• several sprigs of tenderstem brocolli, some french beans, or other green
• good cherry tomatoes
• wholegrain mustard
• honey
• thyme
• white wine (optional)

Method

Turn the oven on, quite hot (200 degrees or more).

Cut the salmon into good sized chunks, and the veg however you like – chuck all this in an oven dish with a lid.

Mix a good tablespoon or so of honey with a couple of good teaspoons of mustard, a teaspoon of thyme and some salt and pepper with either 200ml of white wine (or water) and a tablespoon of cornflour (or normal plain flour). Combine very well, pour over the fish and vegetables and stir.

Cover and put in the oven.

After about 25 minutes crack the lid and stir again. Cook for a further 15 minutes.

Serve with rice. Yum!

I must admit that although it’s ok for short posts I can’t imagine I’m going to be writing any very long posts on a touchscreen keyboard (although I am starting to get the hang of it even after only two days of light use). Please pardon any smelling pistakes!

The application is open source, which I’ll definitely appreciate if I ever get around to building an app myself.

You can work with multiple blogs, both self hosted and on wordpress.com. Once you have set up a blog you configure the amount of recent posts to show, I found that he default 10 was a usefaul number

When writing a post, you can set both the tags and choose from the current categories or create ones. Draft posts are saved locally, and when you have finished editing you can either publish immediately or at some future date. You can alternatively set the post as a draft or pending review, which will upload it to the server.

There is also support for adding images to posts – from the photo library or a new shot although no ability to control where in the post the images appear – you only get them defaulting to the bottom of the post.

Overall I would say that the app is as good as the iPhone allows.

Visio

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/visio/default.aspx

Probably the easiest is something like Microsoft Visio. It looks and feels like a lot of the other Office applications (Word, Excel, etc) so getting started with it is fairly easy. Visio is for any and all sorts of line-drawn stuff, from flow charts to floor plans. It will have a library of ready-to-go things, and you’ll be able to add to that for re-use of your own stuff. To be honest I’d recommend this to start with, since you should be able to get stuff out it and into another package if you decide to get something a bit more powerful or tailored to architectural design later.

Smart Draw

http://www.smartdraw.com/
http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/floorplans.asp

Smart Draw is a popular piece of business graphics software, and has a whole suite of tools especially for doing floor plans. There is a free evaluation version, and the full software costs $197 (so at the moment that’s about £197 isn’t it!?)

Google Sketchup

http://sketchup.google.com/
http://sketchup.google.com/training/videos/new_to_gsu.html

Sketchup is a really amazing piece of software, and there is a free version. It’s incredibly intuitive in fact just watch the introductory video and you’ll get the idea. You can use it for floor plans and also very easily turn those into full 3D models. Definitely download the free version and give it a try.

Be aware though that Sketchup is a 3D package, and while it will work well for 2D floor plans, it only shines when you step into … the third dimension. I think you should be able to export stuff from the other packages in order to create 3D models with sketchup later, if you fancied giving that a go.

Floor Plan / Architectural Software

I don’t really know anything about the more specific software for this, but this looks like a decent “top 10″ roundup of software aimed at home / small business users:

http://home-design-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

And you might want to try a few google searches:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=floor+plan+software
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=best+floor+plan+software
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=floor+plan+software+reviews

We’ve got to make one final trip to a mall – which is as appropriate a way as any to say goodbye to Singapore – to drop off our internet equipment, visit the bank and buy books for the journey back to the UK.

Then we’ll just be hanging around for a while until the landladies come and pick the keys up, and it’s off to Changi to fly back to Heathrow on Emirates.

We change at Dubai and the second leg will be on an Airbus A380 “Super Jumbo”. I’m planning on pleading with the check-in folks about Laura’s being pregnant and having a bad back for the very remote chance that they upgrade us … either way should be interesting.

So – see in England!

We’re not exactly sure where we’ll be living, I’ve got a couple of interviews lined up, but we’ll probably be staying with my parents in Somerset until we have something sorted out.

We’ll be moving fairly quickly – before the end of the month – since Laura is pregnant she won’t be able to fly safely for much longer.  Personally I think anything past 30 weeks is getting a bit close and we’ll be around 28.

Our landladies have been absolutely great after an initial freak-out that we were breaking our contract.  They’ve found another tenant for the flat who wants to move in quite soon, which has meant we’ve actualy ended up with a bit of a refund, *and* they even bought our cot and pram (which, I’m pretty certain, they have absolutely no use for).  They’ve been great, and although I doubt they read this blog, I’d like to say a big thank you anyway.

All in all, we’ve had nice little adventure in coming here – Singapore is a great place to live if you like hot weather, incredibly clean and green surroundings, and a fantastic melting pot of peoples and cultures. See you all in the UK sometime soon!

Kit

• Lens filter (UV or possibly “skylight”) – a UV or skylight filter will help a bit with outdoor photography, but you will want to get one and leave it on your lens all the time to protect it from dust and scratches. Filters are glass rings that screw on to the end of your lens, and can do all sorts of different things – see for example this Camera Filters website (actually a lot of the warm / cool / soft focus / cross filters offer images you could replicate with software.
• Photoshop – this is an expensive piece of software, but is the absolute industry-standard photo-manipulator. You might want to leave off getting this, and use an online service like Picnik for basic colour correction / cropping and the like. If you do want to get Photoshop you can definitely look into buying an older version to save yourself a lot of money (on EBay for example) without really losing much in terms of functionality.
• Tripod – this is more-or-less a requirement since you’re unlikely to find something else handy that you can just sit the camera on for long periods of time, in low light, and many other situations. Tripods are a pain to carry around and difficult to find a place for, but they do give you much more creative freedom. There are some interesting products like the GorillaPod which you might think about.
• Remote control – either wired or wireless, your camera will almost certainly have some kind of remote control capability. It used to be easy in the old days, when almost all cameras had a standard fitting, but you can usually buy fairly cheap, unbranded wired remotes for models that have a connector. It’s worth trying a shot without one, but even at exposures of 1/8 of a second the shake from pressing the button can ruin a photograph.

Long Exposure

You’ve probably seen long-exposure photographs, one of the most common types is of streaming traffic lights along road networks. This kind of photography is pretty easy and quite fun.

Setting up your camera on the tripod is fairly straightforward, and you should refer to the manual for your camera on how to set it up for long exposure. By default this will expose for as long as you hold down the button, if you are using a remote it should have a “lock” so you can just leave it in the “exposed” position (ooh err) and go have a cup of tea.

Set Up and Settings

Ideally you should have a low ISO number set, as this will give better results. “ISO” is a term from the film days and refers to how much light the film needs for a good exposure, with higher numbers needing less light (you may even remember 100 speed film for daylight, and 400 speed for indoors). The faster the film, the more “grainy” the image will appear. Your DSLR probably goes from ISO 64 or 100 up to 1600 (or even 3200). You can step up the ISO if you have to, which will let you shorten the exposure time.

You’ll probably need to experiment with setting the “aperture” and how long the exposure lasts. Start out with narrow aperture (f16 or higher) and a short-ish exposure (5 minutes). If everything comes out black, then try opening up the lens (a lower f number) and, if the shot you want permits it, lengthening the exposure. Some shots you want may require you to have a specific length of shot (for example, the stars moving) so work around any single “fixed point” that you require.

Besides the “traffic” idea for a long exposure shot, you might also consider a river (flowing water turns all smooth and blurry with a long exposure) or even, if you’re in an area with a clear view of the night sky, the stars themselves:

[flickr]photo:628497091(medium)[/flickr]

This shot was taken over about 40 minutes, pointing up, and shows the movement of the stars visible because the earth’s rotation. Kind of cool really :)

Impossible Focus

Auto focus is great much of the time, but there are plenty of photographs you might want to take where it just won’t work. For example, looking through some trees at the person you’re stalking … uh, I mean “the person modelling for you” … is almost impossible for auto-focus, which will inevitably focus on the greenery.

There are no special kit requirements for this, and you will simply need to set either the camera, or the lens into “Manual Focus” mode (which are both probably physical switches near each other where the lens meets the body).

Now, as well as “zooming” (assuming your lens does that, which it almost certainly does) you can use the other “ring” on the lens to manually focus. It takes a little getting used to to do this properly, and if you’re camera has a “Live Preview” mode, this is the point to leave it behind and look through the viewfinder (since it’s going to be bascially impossible to tell from the digital screen what is in focus).

Here’s a floral example from Singapore’s Botanical Gardens. Using autofocus would have honed in on the foremost flowers, whereas I thought making the central ones appear crisp, and having some blur in the foreground and background would look more interesting

[flickr]photo:3037281032(medium)[/flickr]

The Hichcock Cameo

“The camera never lies,” or so the saying goes. In fact, the camera *always* lies – a photograph is a 2-dimensional representation of a 3 (or 4 if you include time) dimensional event, and by definition is manipulated and shot from a particular perspective.

You don’t have to be in a studio to manipulate the scene you want to shoot. Careful positioning of yourself, or other objects and props can add a lot to an image. Look at this picture, which is striking immediately, but also includes an image of my friend Ben, who was doing the shooting:

[flickr]photo:2311707171(medium)[/flickr]

This is a relatively obvious example, but you could place a mirror in a scene, angled just right to show yourself.

I know I said I would only be discussing technical ideas rather than creative ones and I think getting your head around the idea of controlling your shot and its environment counts, just about.

Multiple Exposures

You can of course get a multiple exposure effect using software, but it’s quite a lot of fun to do it directly on the camera, and certainly can help you avoid getting bogged down in endless photoshop tweaking.

I don’t have any examples to hand, but a quick search for multiple exposure on Flickr gives plenty of results.

One of my all time favourite multiple exposures was made (ibn the days before digital) by Albert Watson for a portrait of Mick Jagger. the photographer superimposed a leopard’s face onto Mick’s, with fantastic results:

Portrait of Mick Jagger by Albert Watson

Stop Frame Animation

This is a fairly straightforward technique, and could in fact be done with any camera at all. Set up your camera on a tripod and point it at your scene. Snap, move your subject a tiny bit, snap again.

Given that you will probably be working at (at least) 12 frames per second you would be well advised to dramatically lower the image resolution – something like 800 x 600 (or whatever your camera’s “low quality” setting is) should be fine for video.

You’ll need some kind of software to stitch these images together into an actual movie. Drop me a comment if you need some suggestion.

General Techniques

To get the best of many of the kinds of shot I’ve listed here, it will be well worth your time getting your head around some of the more technical aspects of photograpy.

Aperture and Shutter Priority

Your camera will have various “scene modes” such as “Sport”, “Portrait” and “Landscape” which are usually very well set up for their respective environments. You will benefit from understanding what their doing in the background, and simply mimicing them with the more manual modes your camera offers is a great start.

Aperture priority lets you adjust how wide open the lens is (the “f stop”, or how much light it lets in) while the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed for a correct exposure. Shutter priority is the opposite – it lets you adjust the shutter speed while opening or closing the lens accordingly.

A very open lens with a low f stop setting (1.4 to 4) will narrow the “depth of field” or amount of things that will be in focus. Look, for example, at the “Impossible Focus” shot of flowers above – only a small area (I’m talking in terms of distance from the camera rather than surface area of the picture) is in focus. Contrast this with a landscape shot, where you will almost certainly want a large depth of field (achieved by having a high f stop of f16 or more) and everything from a nearby tree to the mountain in the distance to appear crisp.

Shutter priority lets you control the shutter speed – the amount of time the lens is actually open. If you are taking a shot of a hummingbird you will probably want a very fast shutter speed, otherwise you will only see a blur. If you want a very dramatic shot of a runner, you might want to slow the shutter down so you get some motion blur (something like 1/15 of a second).

The modes mentioned above will work out something like this in manual terms:

• Sport will have as fast a shutter speed as possible to stop any motion blur of fast moving subjects.
• Portrait will have as low an f stop (as “wide open” a lens) as possible, so that only the subject is crisply focused.
• Landscape will have as high an f stop as possible, so that as much as possible is in focus.

AE and AF “Locking”

AE (Auto Exposure) and AF (Auto Focus) “Locking”, and also a combination of the two, are fantastic things to understand and use as they give much greater freedom over how your picture is framed, while still being in control of how it is focused. I’ll assume that you are using locking on both AE and AF at the same time, but bear in mind that you can just do one at a time.

If you want to take a picture where the subject is not central in the frame, it can be difficult to get your camera to focus in the right place, or even if you are using manual focus, the picture may end up being exposed for a dark background rather than the well lit, but off centre, foreground that you wanted. AE / AF Locking is the answer, and here’s what you do:

Point you camera directly at teh actual subject of your picure, and half-press the exposure button – this will set the focus and exposure. Now press the AE / AF Lock button and keep it held down. You are now free to move the camera about and point it at anything – and the focus and exposure will remain as they were when you began the lock.

Bracketing

As you experiment in more manual control over your camera, you will inevitably find shots that weren’t exposed correctly. In many situations you can just try again, but if the shot was a “one off” then sometimes you just have to write it off to experience.

Bracketing can help you here, as what it does is take a series of shots (either 3 or 5) as quickly as possible after each other with slightly different settings – both under and over exposed. In the case of 3-shot bracketing, you will get one shot exposed as the camera thinks is “correct” and then one underexposed and another overexposed – fairly obviously 5-shot bracketing is the same, but with two steps of under- and over-exposure.

Bracketed shots can also be used not only in case of problems, but also to create “high dynamic range” images. These are really interesting images where more detail is brought out from the shadows and well-lit parts of a photograph than is possible with a single exposure. You’ll need to find some software to create HDR images for you though.

That’s a Wrap!

Well that was another mammoth post! Hopefully it’s got your creative juices bubbling!

Introduction to DSLRs

The first thing to understand, as you’d find out if you search around is that with DSLRs one is actually buying into a system rather than just buying a one-off piece of kit. The lenses are interchangable, and if you do end up with more than one, it makes sense when you want to upgrade the camera that you only need to upgrade the body as long as you stick with the same make, you can keep all your lenses and they should work fine.

In this regard, I’m really only going to suggest the two big makers in the market – Nikon and Canon. You could also look at Sony or Olympus – who make very fine cameras – but if you are thinking that you may want to take your photography further in the future the former two will, I think, give you more options.

Lenses and focal lengths

The biggest thing about DSLRs, apart from the manual controls you get, is the wide variety of different lenses and filters you can slap on the front of your camera. You will probably get at least one lens with your first camera (they cost much less to buy as a “kit” with a lens included than to buy the body and identical lens separately) and they can vary so it’s worth getting an understanding of the numbers and acronyms that infest the industry.

Focal Length is a number given in millimeters, and refers to how “telescopic” the lens is, with a bigger number magnifying things more (a very small number will give you a super-wide “fish eye” kind of effect). These numbers usually range from about 18mm (wide angle, good for landscapes, group shots and indoors) right up to 300mm and beyond (super telephoto, good for sports, wildlife and portraits). Your first lens will ideally be a zoom lens (this means it has a range of focal lengths) and will give you a range somewhere between 18mm and 135mm. The next lens you will likely want will be a higher focal length, up to 200 or 300mm.

IS & VR refer (in Canon and Nikon terms respectively) to lenses that can help reduce bluriness due to shaking. This is especially great with a long focal length lens (high power magnification also magnifies the movement of your hands) and also in low light. It’s not 100% necessary, and will not remove all camera shake, but it helps (and it costs a lot)

F number or “F stop” is a number in the range of 1.4 up to 6. This number (lower is better) describes how much light can get into the lens; the more light you can use the more freedom you get over exposure controls (as well as just a better image anyway). A seemingly identical pair of lenses with a high F-number and a low F-number will cost a huge amount more and less repsectively. Note – this number refers the minimum f-stop that the lens is capable of, and you will be able to “stop up” to a higher number. That probably doesn’t mean much to you, but if you get into photography it will!

Macro lenses can truly magnify a close up object to appear larger than it does with the naked eye – imagine looking through a very low-powered microscope. Some lenses you will see will offer a “macro” capability, and this is a nice feature if you like taking picures of flowers, bugs, cat’s noses, jewellery, needlework or anything else very close up.

Budget

It will probably help if you have an idea of how much money you want to spend. You are likely to be able to get a camera-and-lens kit for under £400. Are you happy to go up to £600 if you get a lot more for your money or a better lens?

If you are really counting the pennies – and who could blame you at a time like this – then definitely look at trying to get a second hand one, preferably not more than about 2 years old. This can be an excellent way into the world of DSLRs because if you save yourself a couple of hundred pounds by buying an out-of-date camera body you could put the money towards a really nice lens which you can keep for years (even when you become a pro and upgrade to supery dupery £10,000 camera body in the future).

Try out some cameras – but go prepared

One thing to do before you make up your mind is to go to a shop and actually try out the cameras in question. This is worth spending some time thinking about before you go especially since not only the cameras, but the very things you can do with them are going to be new to you and having a list of things to remember will help a lot. Here’s a few points:

• Make yourself a “call-sheet” of photographs to take that will be easy in a shop environment. For example: a portrait of the sales person; a close up of some small print, or a piece of jewellery you take along; a “landscape” of the front of the shop and also the view through the front door (to check how the lens and camera handle very different ranges of lighting and shadows). If you can, also try some shots that would not be easy (or even possible) with a compact camera, e.g. a manually-focused photograph with a small item off-centre in the picture is actually visible and most of the frame is blurry.
• With as much research into what these things mean as you are comfortable with, try various manual settings with the camera in your hand in between actually taking shots to see how comfortable it is. For example: “aperture priority” and “shutter priortity” modes; white balance; manual focus; bracketing; flash forced to be on and off; focus type (spot, average, weighted, etc); exposure compensation
• Take a laptop with you, and load the pictures you take with each camera onto it so you can view them more closely. Any decent shop will not mind you doing this at all, and they should really provide you with a memory card reader so you can get the images on to your machine. You shouldn’t need any special software as you aren’t going to edit the photos, just preview them.
• Be prepared to go and look at the cameras available in a shop and go away without buying anything, but with some more knowledge of what to research on the internet. Speaking of which …

Search the web!

There is a huge amount of information out there about all the cameras you might be interested. In fact, since the entry level DSLRs are by far the biggest selling, it’s often a matter of sifting the signal from the noise. Possibly the most comprehensive site available – it certainly has exhaustive many-page reviews – is DPReview.

Gizmodo has a review of four recent entry level DSLRs, which is quite good aside from a couple of points. I feel that “Live Preview” modes more or less completely defeat the point of having a DSLR. I haven’t handled the supposedly best-in-class Olympus but I really don’t think one could realistically get an equivalent experience looking at digital screen rather than through the viewfinder – so I consider those points irrelevant.

That’s all!

I guess that wraps it up. For what it’s worth, I am a Nikon fan and have been since the days of 35mm film. I currently have a Nikon D80 with the 18-135mm lens that came bundled with it and a cheap and cheerful Sigma 70-300mm lens with a macro capability. You can see some of the stuff I (or in fact, we since Laura has been getting into photography) do with it over on my flickr account.

If you’re interested let me know and I might write a post on some project and photograph ideas to try out with your new camera once you get it!

Will be taking a camcorder, so hopefully will have some nice stuff to post in 2009!

[Update 01-01-2009: Here's the Video!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We were left too stuffed for desserts, but the coffee was spot on.

The ambience of the place is fantastic and the friendly owners and staff have found the perfect balance of being on-hand and helpful while also letting you enjoy your meal and companions.

We found the food to be excellent, and I must admit that I will find it hard to order something other than the duck if (or more likely when) we go back!

The Raw Kitchen is a real hidden gem!

We had some wonderful news yesterday, following a trip to the Obstetricians and a scan that we were hugely looking forward to. It appears that we are having a little baby girl!!! The doctor was about 80% certain: baby wouldn’t fully uncross her legs (she’s a lady of course!) but nevertheless doc seemed pretty confident. In any case this will be verified at our detailed 20 week scan (when all the organs and body parts are checked) on the 28th of November. Now we can properly decide on a name and buy a few lovely things for our little one! Girls names are far easier too.

Pete brilliantly took a video of the scan yesterday, so that we could have a record. You may be able to hear our doctor’s voice in the background, as well as mine. Her name is Dr. Evelina Wong, and in addition to being highly professional, she’s a really lovely, softly-spoken lady, with a very kind disposition. I’m so glad we came across her.. Nice for baby when she first emerges into the world to see a friendly, smiling face..

So here is the video of our little one at 4 months (thanks Pete!). Hope you enjoy it as much as we did! – Laura x x x

First off, and this is worth noting, you absolutely need hard copies of any qualification certificates – Education, Degree, professional, etc – on which you are basing your application.  I stupidly did not properly sort this out before I left, so had to wait for a copy of my degree certificate to follow me out here.

The process is actually fairly simple once you have all your documents in place.  You fill out a form about yourself and the company, and then submit it along with copies of your passport and other documents at an post office. It’s worth noting that you should *keep a copy of the application form*.

Once that’s done, you will be able to check the status of the aplication online.  You will need a Singapore ID number to use the online service, so you may need your employer to do the checking for you.

After a while (actually only a couple of weeks for me) your AIP (Agreement In Principle) letter is sent out to the company.  This document will contain your new FIN (Singapore ID number for foreigners) which you need for all sorts of things like your landlord, the utility company, your broadband / tv / phone provider, etc, etc.

They can then take this along with your passport and a signed medical declaration that you don’t have HIV or hepatitis (you just need to sign this, no medical examination is required) to the Ministry of Manpower.  If you submit the documents before 2pm on any day, you will get them – along with your new Employment Pass – the same day.  The Pass is not the most grand affair in the world, and in fact informs you that it should be kept with your Passport at all times, since other than the FIN number it states, it’s other function is to allow entry to and exit from the country.

Now to the second slight hiccup in our plans.  When completing the EP application form you are required to list the details of any dependents who will be joining you (at the time only Laura – we will have 40 days after our child is born to register them) which I did.  The form did *not* explain that you also have to fill out a separate application for the dependent, so we’ve only realised this now that my pass hass arrived.  This has meant that, while I can now stay for two years, Laura’s visa will probably expire before we get her pass sorted out!  Fortunately we’re planning a few days in Malaysia, so we’ll be doing the required “leave and come back” thing but it’s all a little annoying.

There are two ways to apply for a DP – you can submit the documents by hand at the MoM, or you can do it online.  The former has a considerable delay compared to the latter (5 weeks and 7 days respectively).  However, to submit online you need a SingPass (which you can get from all Community Centres) and you have to wait a while (I’ve been told 10 days) after your get your EP before you can get one of these.

I must admit that the delays have mostly been our own fault, and so far I’ve found Singapore’s bureaucracy to be efficient, and a considerable amount of activities can be done online.  Had a one-liner been added to the EP application stating that “dependent’s passes must be applied for separately” we would have been 100% sorted by now.  Still – ever onward!

Saw this bunch having a good old scrap out of the spare bedroom window.  They made enough racket to actually wake me up – no mean feat as Laura will tell you!

These are Javan Myna birds, not the Hill Mynas that can imitate human voices, and are *everywhere* in Singapore.  In fact Wikipedia has it that one is allowed to kill these birds legally.  Although considered a pest by many, in fact I’ve heard them referred to as “the garbage bird” I find them much more pleasant than London’s equivalent.

So  – somewhere between a Seagull and a Trafalgar Square Pigeon – here you have the Javan Mynas generally kicking ass.

In Singapore, it’s perfectly acceptable for *anyone* to ask how much you paid for *anything*, including quite large things like your apartment.  Given that rent is always a negotiation, this is somewhat embarrassing to my temperament since it would seem to be a reflection of one’s ability to haggle.

Perhaps I’m just oversensitive :)

Mad as a box of Frogs

And pretty cheap too!

Now THAT is what I call branding

I guess quite a few people who read this might already know that, but for those who don’t I thought I’d share the news :) We’re really excited about our family growing, and its a daily joy counting the days and gradually watching Laura’s tummy grow! 

Laura’s about 14 weeks pregnant now and baby is 13 weeks old (did you know that there’s some confusion about exactly how you count that? Different places use different systems) and we’re due middle of April 2009. About 6 months to go!

Given that this blog is about living in Singapore, I’ll write about what the pre-natal care has been like so far, so there’ll be more posts on the subject soon.

In the meanwhile, here are some pics (taken last week) of our baby. We still don’t know the sex, that we’ll find out when we have our detailed scan at 20 weeks. Exciting!

I’m in much the same situation here – it’s about half an hour to walk and 25 minutes by bus.  However the problem here is that after walking for more than about 10 minutes you get very sweaty, and it’s not a nice way to arrive at the office every day.

It’s a shame because I find walking to work a great way to get some gentle exercise.  Fortunately since we live in a Condo, we have a pool right on our doorstep!