Forgetting outside, feeling inside

Took a series of photos was taken on the plane at the JFK airport in New York on departure back to Singapore. It was raining and we spent one hour in the plane in darkness, waiting for the weather to clear up a little more before the plane could take off. A rather long delay. And strange in that it was dark in the plane and outside the plane. You’re strapped to your seat with nothing to do and little you can see. Just the world moving outside and around you with random lights flickering from other planes roving the runways. Then there’s the fleeting rain, like fleeting troubles that blur your vision and make things look different. Everything is changing, yet in the plane everything is still as everyone is belted down, but yet again everything inside everyone is stirring. Stirring of thoughts and stirring of emotions. Because when you’re tied down with little control of what you can see and nothing you can do in the dark, you can only see and move everything inside your head and your heart. Everyone in the plane was surely pondering or feeling something, each a unique rumbling predisposition, just like faraway rolling thunder.

Me? I was trying to remember/forget New York and remember/forget Singapore. It was like trying to straddle reality/escape. And I was trying to forget/remember -ships. I was wondering if you knew what I was thinking and feeling and if I really knew what you were thinking and feeling. And I suddenly felt not so sure for a moment, then I thought hey, maybe you‘re not too sure either. Then I felt a bit surer, because there was the possibility that you were not too sure either.

26 Jan 08: Derrick & Huifang’s pre-wedding

Rushed down after my Italian class to join my boss, Jon Keng, in a pre-wedding shoot. When I arrived, they were midway through the studio shoots. Then we headed to NUS, Arab St., and City Hall area. The couple was so comfortable with each other and with us, they kept making funny faces and joking with each other. A good thing about that is the couple will be more natural in the photos and in expressing themselves. This is definitely a great contributing factor as more truth will be spoken through the pictures. But we had to occasionally remind them to get “in the mood” a bit so that there’s not too much clowning around and ‘unglamness’ (or so I’d like to phrase it).

Never noticed it before, but because of Chinese New Year approaching, suddenly the peaceful Padang area had been lit up with so many red lanterns. Does this usually happen every year?

27 Dresses

Just back from watching the movie. I loved it because I love romantic comedies and I love weddings. The show is about how Katherine Heigl is 27 times a bridesmaid but never once a bride. There’s just something about weddings and the feel-good factor, that naturally movies about weddings seem hard to fail. That is of course from a girl’s point of view – I wonder if guys feel the same. The last movie about weddings that I remember resonating so deeply was Wedding Crashers. I guess it goes back to the essential fact that humans like familiarity. When watching the movie, I felt so comfortable because everything was so familiar.

“Love is patient, love is kind, love is slowly going out of your mind.” – I laughed so hard when I heard that line in the movie. It’s amusing in a way how a bible verse has turned into an all too familiar speech phrase at weddings, and now how a movie has put a funny twist to it. Yet, ultimately, at the end of the day, the very same verse holds so much meaning to the people who fully appreciate the depth of it.

19 Jan 08: Shalini’s mum’s birthday dinner

Shalini, one of my friends from SMU who co-owns the student-run bar Frujch, held a surprise birthday dinner for her mum together with her family. It’s one of the sweetest things I’ve seen because they put in so much effort to invite 10 tables of guests and they managed to make everyone keep mum about it. They blindfolded her mum to the venue and when they finally took off blindfolds, the mixture of emotions so visible on her mum’s face was ever so touching. It was like genuine surprise, happiness, excitement, and being touched to tears all combined. I must say kudos to Shal and her family for pulling it off so well – think this is the first perfect surprise large-scale event I’ve seen. Usually, all the surprises my friends and I try to pull off usually comes off as almost perfect but never 100%.

I think it’s really sweet that after so many years of marriage, such tender love still exists. So to all you cynics out there, love after marriage is not a distant concept.

19 Jan 08: Arrow service photography

My first service serving for photography was pretty significant for me. I believe every time I serve in God’s house, my photography gifts supernaturally multiply as God’s blessings are poured out. Anyway, the theme for this service was “Just Play” and they had many different games stations for pre-service activities. One of the stations even included a Wii set. Never played with one before and would like to one day. Can’t remember the last time I played with a play-station or Nintendo or something.

19 Jan 08: Kevin & Myrna’s wedding

The weather was once again perfect for a poolside ceremony and lunch at Goodwood Park Hotel. Thank God for that. Blue skies and nice sun. Myrna’s pink dress was a pretty shade of colour and Kevin had matching neckwear in the same pink. I felt the colour matched their bubbly personality very well. Today I had an assistant with me, Rachel – think it’s pretty cool to have two female photographers at a wedding. It’s about time the world changed their stereotypical mindsets about photographers being only male and being uncool.

The most amusing thing I saw at the wedding was the lifesaving rings by the poolside were also adorned with leaves as part of the decoration. It seemed like an unintended pun – marriage being lifesaving?

18 Jan 08: Franco & Diah’s wedding

This is one of the rare weddings I see a groom take charge of so many wedding preparations, it’s pretty awesome. Franco is an artist so he put a lot of thought into the details of everything, right from designing each individual invitation card to the lighting and flower set-up on the actual day. They had their ceremony and dinner at the sea-facing garden of one of the Aloha Resorts bungalows. Thank God the evening weather was perfect even though it had been raining every evening for the past few days. The most unique part of the evening was when Diah couldn’t find a suitable electrical socket in her room for the electrical hair curler and had to go outside and curl her hair on the balcony. It was a pretty difficult task with sea breeze and all blowing her hair everywhere. Eventually, Franco found one in the room so she could finally move in to do it.

New York City

Every time I travel to a place, I find that I soak in so much more. I leave a little of myself behind and take a little of the place back with me. It’s the strange but true interaction of culture. Ultimately, the greatest interaction is everything that goes on in my head when I go to different place. Thank God, I always get a freshened up perspective and new revelations on a lot of life as well.

I was asked by someone what my vision of New York was and I guess the montage pretty much sums it up in pictures. In words or in a sentence, I’d say New York is a soulless city. The vibrancy was amazing, there was always something to do, there were people everywhere and of course, a Starbucks at every corner was a bonus. It was a fast city. A tad too fast, the buildings too tall, the people too blurry, and the city too cold. It seemed to me that everyone was so caught up in their pursuit of everything but not life itself. Everyone always seemed to have somewhere to go and something to do but I really wondered as I looked at the blank faces around me in the sea of strangers, did they really like what they were doing and did it really give them meaning in life. What was behind the perfect opportunities and lifestyle that New York seemed to promise the world? All that glitters is not gold.

2008

Yet once again, the new year has sneaked up on us. It’s already the middle of January and I still feel like I just came back from New York yesterday. (I came back on Christmas day by the way.) The year ahead presents itself in a myriad of changes for me and it’s going to be exciting. I’m trusting God that it’s going to be more than good – an explosion of dreams. Yet at the same time, it will be so restful. I believe in the balance of juxtapositions.

2008, bring it on!