Contact lenses with HD optics?!?

Ok, you got to be kidding right? That was my first reaction when I was given the opportunity to try out this revolutionary contact lenses with High Definition Optics by Bausch+Lomb. These lenses boast of outstanding vision in low light conditions, sharper details, enhanced contrast and reduced halo and glare especially while driving at night.
Now all that sounds too good to be true but I have been given the contact lenses to try them out for a month and shall give you my verdict soon enough! You can be sure I am pretty familiar with contact lenses as I've been wearing them since I was 14 years old. That's like 20+ years ago.... let's not start counting how old I am now, shall we?! :p


Anyway, you can win yourselves some of these awesome HD contact lenses in the following contest:
Name 3 benefits of Bausch+Lomb 's High Definition™ Optics contact lens vs normal lens - email your answer together with your name and contact number to [email protected] before 30 January 2011 and stand to be among five winners to each win a month supply of SofLens Daily Disposable contact lenses(worth up to $110)!]*
*Contest winners will be picked via a random draw and will be notified via email, within one week after the contest ends. Winners’ list is final and no further correspondence will be entertained by the organisers.


My first experience with the Bausch+Lomb's HD Optics contact lenses was when I went to catch the movie Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol with my good friend Qing Shan. More on the lenses in another blog post but meanwhile, here's a review of the movie by my friend. He's a total MI fan but really, the movie was great!


Mission Impossible 4 : Ghost Protocol movie review by Qing Shan

When the trailer surfaced, it was hard not to get excited about the movie. The infectious Mission Impossible tune cleverly mixed into the action and edited with Eminem and Pink's song. And the selected scenes (mostly the action scenes) shot with IMAX cameras, there was a lot to look forward to.

The forth in the series, Mr Tom Cruise's pet project since he bought the rights to the franchise, has his main character Ethan Hunt behind in a prison cell. For those who remember the last movie, you will have many questions like what happened to his wife and how did he get there. Of course, he gets out and we start the roller coaster ride for the next 2 hours with the answers revealed along the way.

Director Brat Bird's first live action movie (wrote/directed and won Academy Awards for The Incredibles and Ratatouille), sets the tone early with the animation style get-away chase scene together with the fun, understated humour jail break sequence. Dean Martin's 'Ain't That A Kick in the Head' is well used as a song and fight soundtrack and trigger for the escape.

This time, there's no IMF and Ethan's team disavowed after being tagged as terrorists responsible for the bombing of the Kremlin. He's joined by Benji (Simon Pegg, the comic relief), Brandt (Jeremy Renner who lands some credibility) and Jane Carter (Paula Patton, the eye candy and necessary female balance to the group).

Ethan and team uncover a plot by Cobalt to 'restart' the world with nuclear devastation. They have to act fast to save the world with the newest BMW i8 car, retina scanning device to "blue is glue, red is dead" gloves. Tracking down the bad guys from Russia, to Dubai and to Mumbai.

Those who have been following the series would have a sense of minor deva ju, as some of the scenes; like the dropping and hoisted in midair, to the high building jumps and even Mr Cruise's haircut is nothing really new. But Brat Bird's manages a fresh treatment of those familiar and keeps the audience pacing from suspense to heart pounding thrills.

One of the main attractions of the MI series, is watching Mr Cruise doing all his own stunts. Yes, he's the one hanging outside the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa tower and running and jumping all over the movie. If you are afraid of heights, do be warned its been said to cause some vertigo.

Ever since the second movie's reported argument between John Woo and Tom Cruise wanting to do his own cliff climbing WITHOUT safety ropes, I think it's his way of wanting to do all these crazy stunts, get them on film and get paid doing so!

I have to say, I wished there was more of a romance factor, previously brought along by Michelle Monaghan's Julia as Ethan's wife, but as you watch the movie, you'll understand why it is so. If I  go on any more, I would be spoiling the movie for you.

The movie's well paced with humour, action, entertaining pop corn fun and a good balance of human drama. And if you can, you must try to watch it in IMAX; the 25+mins worth of footage is beautiful, sharp and really immerses you into the movie, especially the Burj Khalifa scenes.

For a taste of the action view this featurette from the movie :)

Goodbye CM, Hello P1

He spent the last four and a half years in this pre-school. It's been a place of learning and building of character. It was here that his first friendships were forged and many goodbyes along the way. Today Kayden bids farewell to his kindergarten, friends and teachers who have all been a wonderful and important part of his young life.

The school organised a farewell party for all the K2 children and they were to come dressed in their primary school uniform! Very apt! We parents were invited as well and all of us brought too much food for the party. The kids had a ball, Kay was a little shy as usual to see us in the classroom with him :) Flashes of him on his first day here in Character Montessori came to me and I marvel at the young man he has become, ready for the next chapter of his life - primary school.

Here are a few photos from his first day and last day in school!

last time signing in... 

group shot of everyone with the teachers 

Kay with his BFFs, Alden & Keafe 

the budding photog felicity 

laughing at himself when he appeared in the video of their 4 years in CM 

Last friday was the graduation concert and there was no stopping my tears as I saw him go on stage receiving his scroll in his graduation gown, performing in a skit and a spanish dance. I'm so proud of you Kay! You have certainly come into your own and mummy and daddy are really lucky to have you as our firstborn :)


(Kay is the second boy out on stage)

Hello Siri!

No iPhone 5!!!!! Drats! I've been making do with my iPhone 3Gs for so long now it's starting to look like an antique :( So when the announcement came from Apple early this morning our time that it is actually an iPhone 4S, I was totally disappointment. BUT WAIT! As I watched the video, I got more excited. The big big thing for me as a photographer was of course the new 8MP camera and optics that also shoots 1080p HD video! Not only that, they have added a 5th lens to the camera plus a larger f2.4 aperture allowing for low light photography. There's an image stabiliser when shooting videos too, so no more Blaire Witch projects :p WOO HOO!


However excited I was about the camera, there was this new assistant they introduced which you can't help but love. Her name's Siri! Check her out below.

Now THAT'S AWESOME and did you see that baking section of the video, that's so ME! I am always checking the damn phone apps for conversion of temperatures, cups to grams etc with my oily and floured covered fingers. Now Siri can help me :D *dancing around the living room*

*added on 16 oct* Ok I dunno how Siri is going to respond to Singlish but here's a rough idea from Mr Brown with S.I.M.I! HILARIOUS! If you are Singaporean, you got to listen to this podcast :p LOL!

One last great news is iCloud. iCloud stores your music, photos, videos etc wirelessly and pushes them to all your devices. Automatic, effortless and seamless they tell you. Now that's just spiffy isn't it? Here I am trying to delete photos and apps I don't use from my iPhone just to be able to store new data. So iCloud is gonna save me all that storage problem :)


Ok, you know where to find me when the iPhone 4S starts selling in Singapore, at the phone shop :D

Rah Rah video (ok ok, it's a slideshow)!

Sorry for the plug again...we finalists for the Singapore Blog Awards have been ordered told to make a video of our blog to garner votes :p Here's my little video slideshow made with iMovie. It took me way longer and way more effort than expected as it was my first time using this software. Stuff that I could easily do with professional software like Final Cut Pro or Premiere are not possible with iMovie. But please do turn up your speakers, I have edited the video to the piece of soundtrack :) Hope you enjoy it! Please vote for me once a day till 3 July under Best Family Blog category, thank you! :)

xoxo,
maryann

ASIA Exposed episode 2 - Unveiling the Third Gender

"Baby photographer, Maryann Koh, who is used to capturing the innocence, purity and well-defined genders of her subjects, sparks a personal interest to break away from gender-biasness by photographing “The Third Gender”, the Hijras (transgenders) in India."

Yes! After weeks of waiting and in the making, tonight will be the telecast of my episode on Channel Newsasia. I don't know what to expect as it will be my first time viewing the episode as well. I am hoping that in any small way, I have made a contribution to the Hijra community by raising awareness of the prejudice against them and may they live in a world without prejudice in the near future.

View the episode trailer.

View the opening sequence.

Do join me in my journey by tuning in at 830pm tonight :)

You can also get more information and follow the rest of the documentary series from their Facebook group.

Asia Exposed - the trailer

Some weeks ago, I blogged about my first 2 days in India. Most of you would have been in the dark about why I was there as I didn't elaborate. Well, wonder no more! I am one of 6 photographers being featured in a documentary series on Channel Newsasia.

ASIA Exposed is a 6-part series that follows established photographers on eye-opening quests in search of the true meaning of their role behind the lens. Through the experience of these 6 individuals, social issues and humanitarian causes are brought to light. For the first time, we will understand the sacrifices they make and the price they pay for their art.

Premiering 29 June, Tuesday, at these times:
- 830pm: sing/ hk/ mnl
- 900pm: del
- 730pm: jkt

EXCLUSIVELY on Channel NewsAsia

View the very nicely edited trailer below. Beware, you will see one drama-mama crying like a fool! More on my experience in another post :)



ASIA Exposed facebook group

World Breastfeeding Week 2009

It's the World Breastfeeding Week again! This year we will be participating in the event organised by the Breastfeeding Mothers' Support Group. It will be on Aug 22nd (this saturday!) at HealthZone, Level 2 of the Health Promotion Board. More details here. Come on down from 11am onwards and join us for treasure hunt, games, shopping, food, talks, contests and craft activities! The Studio Loft will have a shooting booth there complete with backdrop and studio lights. For just $10, get a professionally taken picture of you and your child to participate in the parent-child lookalike contest or if you are shy and prefer to let your child have all the limelight then dress your little one up for a solo shoot. 10% of all proceeds collected from the event will go to BMSG so do come on down and lend your support to breastfeeding mothers :)

We also helped BMSG produced the TVC for the event, as usual Candida from Funhouse Digital did the editing.



We look forward to meeting everyone this Saturday, see you there!

Happy Breastfeeding Mother's Day!

Last month I got an urgent request by the Breastfeeding Mothers' Support Group to help them produce a TVC with just a few days left to submission deadline! I thought it was mission impossible as the concept they had was not suitable for a television commercial. Plus everything was so last minute and it was just chaos when they came for the shoot for their initial concept. I did a photoshoot for them last year and was quite happy with what I shot and I was determined to convince them to shoot a proper video instead of the idea they had which was just to use stills and text. I contacted Candida to see if she would like to take up this pro bono project with me and she was up for it so hurray! To cut a long story short, we did the shoot at The Studio Loft over an afternoon a couple of days later and Candida edited the TVC within a few days and we made it for the submission deadline!

The Happy Breastfeeding Mother's Day event they have is this saturday so if you are in the west area, please drop by to give the event your support.

One more month...

Of cos the big news leading up to his 11th month was that Dylan walked! And curiously about the same time as big brother too. We haven't been able to stop him since, it's walk walk walk all day long and I must say he's really steady from day 1, no fall forward accidents or anything like that. If he loses his balance or had to fall, it will be sitting down. He's like Momo (our cat), he knows how to fall without injuring himself. Amazing this boy :D I am so proud :)

And he shocked me too a few days ago, I was introducing him to a wind up duck toy during his bath, saying,"Look Dylan, it's a duck!" and he went (in that oh so cute little voice) "A duck!". I was stunned for a moment and got him to repeat it and he did! So off I ran to get the camera but knowing in my heart that he probably will not repeat it and all I have to boast about will be my account of the incident :s Flashes of people nodding their head in mock belief came to me BUT ho ho ho! he did repeat it for the camera and well, just watch the video!



He also has a thing about doors shutting in his presence. If we go into a room and shut the door with him outside, he will give a blood curdling scream and start crying his eyes out! This never fails to happen each time I go into the bathroom to take a bath. He will cry and scream outside the door like I have left him for dead. Same thing happens when I have to bring out the garbage and shut the main gate. What can I say, my boy loves me :)

All these developments are also making me nervous, signalling to me his birthday is approaching. Arrgh my problem now is I can't schedule his birthday party before the actual day and they say it's no good to celebrate after. The weekend after we come back from Perth is already booked with shoots, the following weekend we will be busy manning our booth at the Motherhood Exhibition and the weekend after that his birthday would have past already! How? :( Sigh, maybe it's destined my poor son will not have a grand 1st birthday party like his big brother did. I think I will just organise a small one on his actual day (which is a weekday) and get him a nice cake and take plenty of pictures of course. The more I think about it, the more guilty I feel, so unfair to Dylan. Arrgh!

Don't worry son, Mummy will think of something. Hope you will have a great vacation with us in Perth next week! Please go easy on us! :D

M-O-M-M-Y

This is my first Mothers' Day with Dylan and as a mother of two and I wanted to take some photos of my kids and me at the studio to celebrate the occasion. Disaster! Both of them did not cooperate and the father was tearing his hair out trying to be the photographer for the day. He commented that the two of them had to be my worst clients, I do not disagree! Hahaha! I don't think I even managed to get a decent shot of the two of them together. I left the studio feeling rather upset but was cheered up when Kayden sang me this song he learnt in school, so cute! It didn't matter that he stumbled slightly trying to coordinate the actions with the words, I loved it :) Thank you boys for being the best Mothers' Day present ever!

Keeping Kayden

With the arrival of Dylan, I have been spending considerably much less time with Kayden and of late I have seen him distancing himself from me :( To salvage our relationship, I made a conscious effort the past few weeks to have some quality time with my first born.

Last month, I brought him to a children's play "Bear and Chicken go Camping". We took the train (his first time as a toddler) and generally had a great morning together, just him and me :)



Using his EZlink card on the MRT












When we first walked into the auditorium and he saw the colourful set on stage, he said excitedly to me, "Look mummy! A big TV!" Hahaha!


One Sunday, we did some baking together, oatmeal raisin cookies. Here's the proud baker with his bakes.


Besides asking lots of questions every chance he gets, Kayden also makes interesting and sometimes funny observations. While watching Animal Planet (his favourite channel), he saw a stingray and commented that it looks like a roti prata :D He sees me breastfeeding Dylan and will pretend to breastfeed his own "baby" when it "cries"!



He is extremely sensitive to our emotions now. One morning when I had a big fight with Erwin and stomped out of the house to work, he cried and made Erwin find me. I feel really bad to quarrel in front of the kids and mentally told myself it will be the last time I did that. He has been expressing himself better through language and emotions, sometimes coming up to give me a hug or kiss for no reason and saying "I love you". :) Makes my heart expand with joy. As his grandma would say of him, "Dio hor siok!" meaning "so good to love" :D He has started speaking Singlish but the placement of "Lah" and "Lei" is like that of a foreigner trying to speak Singlish on purpose :p His chinese has also been described by my China cleaning lady as "rotten". He loves to sing the chinese songs he learns in school but they often sound funny, again like some ang moh speaking mandarin. But I really enjoy these moments when he sings with wild abandon, the joy in his face as he does.

In case you haven't noticed from the pictures, he gives this horrible cringed up face when we ask him to smile for the camera. Like so:




But when he doesn't, it's such a handsome face don't you think?


His photography skills have not improved very much since the first time we let him have the camera. But occasionally we get some good shots with no heads cut off :D




We brought him for a cable car ride last weekend, he had a great time and I hope he will be just as easy going when we head for Perth later this month.




Here's a shot he took of me with Dylan sleeping in the ergo.






This is his horrible look when we ask him to open his eyes for the camera :s


He demands your attention every now and then, "Mummy, see the crocodile!" pointing to the tv. I will murmur "Yes Kayden." and nod my head but all the time my eyes were still on the computer. He will then reply haughtily, "No you didn't see!" "I did Kayden, I saw." "NOooo! You were looking at the computer!" ahhh hahahaha :D On days when he's adament on his way, he will come right up to your face and put both his little hands on your cheek and speak right in your face "Look!" :s

He has the memory of an elephant but does not refer to time correctly. Something that has past will always be "yesterday" no matter how long ago it was. "Yesterday someone stepped on the snail, so poor thing." He was referring to a crushed snail shell I pointed out to him a few days ago. Yet he knows how to say "just now" when it happened not too long ago. Really wonder how the brain of a kid works, it's fascinating :)

My dear Kayden boy, no matter how much time mummy spends with di di, you know that you will always be my "big baby" and mummy loves you both equally - with all my heart!

Dylan Walks!

On Wednesday evening, 12 days shy of his 11th month, Dylan decided that he will walk! Yes, just like that, he removed his hands from the coffeetable and started to walk 5 steps towards me! Kayden and I started clapping and shouting HURRAY! that Dylan too started to clap for himself :D What joy! At his next attempt, I hurriedly whipped out my iPhone and captured the moment. Would love to upload the video here but I can't seem to download it from the phone :s Anyway it's full of my voice screaming praises at him bwahahaha!

The next day, he couldn't stop walking and did it the whole day! So pleased he was with himself, I have to take a picture of that smirky glee on his face :)

Then today I managed to get him walking recorded on the Lumix. See video below for the cutest penguin+duck walk ever :D



Time to do some shoe shopping for my baby :)

That toothy smile

Ok I am almost a week late posting Dylan's 10th month old entry! My apologies to the toothy smiler, this is THE smile I so love from him, showing all 4 teeth with 2 more on top peeking through the gums:


He also has a new toy, a finger lollipop:


Dearest boobu,
I have to say I am rather disappointed that you have not started walking unassisted yet! You started standing with support at 2 months old and I really thought you would beat your brother's 10.5mths record at walking but nooo, you are such a cautious little thing that the moment you feel unsafe, you drop like a hot potato and revert to crawling :p You still have a week left to match your bro's record so "jia you"!

Friends and family say that you have slimmed down, we can now see your neck and your face is sharper. It's no wonder, you've been stuck at 9.something kg for the longest time and you have grown longer/taller. Lookwise, I would say you look better as your features become more defined. The double eyelid on your left eye is quite permanent now but the right eye's fold remains hidden. Your daddy say you look weird like that but I think it just makes you unique :)



You love your brother so much, evident from your big smile each time you see him in the morning and when we pick him up from school. I enjoy seeing the both of you interact and play with each other. You respond to your talkative brother's ramblings with squawks and soothing noises which sound like the whale's singing.

We have to be wary of how we speak around your presence as you are sensitive to speech tones and patterns now. For example when you misbehave or fuss for no reason, I just need to give a stern "hey" and you will instantly turn your mouth upside down and drop your head with exaggerated force to rest on me, apologetic and acknowledging that you have done wrong. When your brother raises his voice, you scrunch up your face and wail immediately, looking to me for justice, tearless of course :p If you get no attention from us, you will stop just as soon as you started :s

There are a few words which you understand and respond to. They are "Bye", "Clap", "Pose" and "No". I don't know where you picked up "pose" from but it's certainly not how I tell my clients to do while shooting! hahaha! Your brother started this pose too on his 1st birthday exactly. Looks like it runs in the family :D



Oh and you had your first hair cut at the barber's on Good Friday!

You screamed the shop down and by the time they were done with you, your face was a mess of tears, snort and hair :s I am dreading your future visits already.

Little boy, I hope your toothy smiles will be with you always, even when you are an old man with just that many teeth as you have now.

Love,
MUMM-Ma (that's what you've been calling me lately ;P)

*photos (except the last one) taken with the iPhone at Marche*

Her Morning Elegance - Oren Lavie

This video by Oren Lavie is so god damn AMAAAAAAAAAAAAZING! During the first few seconds of watching it, I thought it was shot as a video and during post, frames removed to get that staggered motion. But NO...get this, it's actually a video put together by still photos! 3225 of them! I am so inspired to do a video like that, it puts my love for photography and my background in film production together :) Definitely on my TO DO list now, arrrgh, I need more than 24hours in my life!

Fun Facts of the video:
* The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.
* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.
* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.
* Some of the bed sheets used in the video were taken from Oren’s own bedroom and are now considered collectors items, worth at the moment not very much and therefore used as bed sheets.
*Each of the wonderfully talented people above have worked on the video for a fraction of their normal rates (except Oren who worked for his normal rate of zero).

My favourite scene is the underwater one :)

Boom De Ya Da!

This is one of the greatest commercial I've seen and my fav ad for the moment. Same for Kayden, he can sing it ;)

The mischievous one

I'm so guilty that I've not been posting about Kayden so here's an update :)

Since my last post on him regarding my suspicion of him having selective mutism, he has made marked improvements in his social skills. During the parents teachers meeting yesterday, Ms Juliana (his form teacher) told us that he is very mischievous and chatty in class and since the last assessment, "he has shown tremendous improvement in his social, emotional and language skills. He is very expressive when relating his experiences to his teachers and friends". You have no idea how happy that made Erwin and I :D HURRAY! He's normal!

Kayden loves to talk back now which gets annoying at times and hilarious on other occasions. When we tell him to stop being a copycat, he will retort with,"Stop being a copydog, copycow, copydonkey." etc :s His vocabulary is also astounding and we are constantly surprised by the words he knows. Example, he likes to touch the bonnet of this green car in our block and one time when he touched the car, Erwin asked him if it's hot or cold to the touch. He replies,"It's warm." :p He is starting to stop referring to himself as a third person. He used to refer to himself as Kayden this Kayden that. Now he is learning to say "myself", "yourself" etc.

Music is still very much in him. After hearing any song once, he picks it up just like that and is able to sing or hum the tune the next time he hears it. It's really amazing. Currently he can sing to Queen, Rihanna's "Disturbia" and Pink's "Rockstar" and all the other regular nursery rhymes of course. Here's a clip of him singing Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why" :p



They say the child's mind is very imaginative and I never knew how much till I had children. Kay will draw a big irregular shape with a blue colour pencil and when I asked what it was, he will say,"It's a big blue whale!" Of course it looks nothing like a whale but to him it's probably the best looking whale ever :p Looking at the picture below, I don't think you can guess what the items are, the thin green piece of playdoh is a "small roti prata", next to that is a bunch of "broccoli". The next picture shows a "big cake" and an "aeroplane" :s





One time he excitedly ran out of the room to tell me the dog and the pig and the cow and the sheep are eating his lego, I followed him to his bed and saw this:

Kor Kor & Di Di

For awhile, Kayden has been confused as to who is the big brother (Kor Kor) and who is the baby brother (Di Di). Finally he got it right in this video!

Hip Hop Bobbing Boi

Thought you guys might enjoy another video of my son dancing. I think he's got some black genes in him, check out his hip hop moves ;)

I Shower Solo

<<< CAUTION! Video contains nudity >>>

Kayden likes to shower solo nowadays, even wipes himself dry quite well. Here he shows you how he towel dry his armpits, kukujiao (penis) and bum :)

Name that fruit!

now if only he will eat the real things! so far he only likes apples & pears :s