I’ve been deciding whether to get this EC-20 2x Teleconverter, or the Sigma 50-500mm (so-called “Bigma” since it’s got this huge zoom range), for my long range needs. The Sigma is heavy, plus there’s not weather sealing (unlike the EC-20), so I’m leaning towards the EC-20. It’ll turn my Zuiko 50-200mm into 100-400mm, pretty rad. I’m talking about all these since I saw a deal on Ebay today, $379 “factory demo” (brand new price would be something around $450). I think the demos are okay, as long as the glass isn’t scratched. I’ve sent an email to the seller asking about the condition of the item, see if he’ll respond.

Also trying to set up this old old Athlon machine that used to sit in Wendy’s car’s trunk….used to be her “carputer”. I took it out of the car since it’s getting old and slow. I was trying to set it up so that my mom can use it when she comes in June, but I failed. Somehow the Linksys Wireless G USB adapter wasn’t able to detect the wireless signal from my new router (too good?). I gave up. I’ll just let her use my Fujitsu laptop….. Now I’m not sure what to do with this old AMD machine…

I picked up this drama when I was reviewing the 2008 year end list of dramas. I looked at the posters and saw an abundance of teen girls and boys and I thought it couldn’t be too bored of a drama (usually the case). It turned out to be a real enjoyable drama, right from episode 1.

Meichan no Shitsuji talks about a poor young girl that originally lived with worked with her parents in a tiny udon noodle restaurant in the countryside. Until one day her parents died in an accident and she was told by “a guy” that she was actually the grand daughter of a really rich guy that was owner to an enormous cooperation. The guy turned out to be a “servant” from this crazy crazy, rich-girls-only high school that accepted only the richest girls and had a size of 1/3 of Tokyo (lol). The school claimed to provide the best environment for the students so that when they graduate, they would become the most elegant ladies ever - the “Ojousama”. Anyway, this school was really interesting since every “student” had her own servant, kind of like an assistant, and he would take care of the girl’s daily chores, basically acted as her guardian. I wasn’t really sure whether this was possible at all in reality but it was a really crazy idea that lured me into watching it. The grandfather of the girl had asked the girl to attend this crazy school in order to learn how to become a real “lady”. The grandfather had appointed this guy to be her servant at the school.

In the beginning, the girl had this really ghetto look and she was hated by the students a lot. As the story progressed, she had done a lot of good deeds and had won the heart of most of the students. Also she had fell in love with her servant and there you go, a love story between the two of them, even though part of the school rule stated “No love affair is allowed between any girl and her servant”, lol. This drama was actually a mixture of romance, comedy, and action. Since the fundamental idea was just hilarious (girl students with their own servants), I found it very enjoyable to watch all the funny/weird things that happened between the girls and their servants and I got addicted fairly soon.

Oh almost forgot to talk about the cast. Well actually I hadn’t seen any of them except for the girl (barely remembered her) which was Eikura Nana / 榮倉奈々, and Mizushima Hiro / 水嶋ヒロ. I first saw Nana in Proposal Daisakusen / プロポーズ大作戦 and she was a good friend of the main girl…I wasn’t really too familiar to her acting nor her face, but she was really good in this one. And I saw Hiro in Hanazakari no Kimitachi e / 花ざかりの君たちへ, and I still remember his name there was Nanba, lol. The rest of the cast was loads of teen girls/boys, some faces were familiar but most were not.

It is a highly recommended drama! Very refreshing to watch.

These days, I tend to do my blog posts the following day, just cause I usually work till really late and don’t have the time to prep for the image that I wanted to post. I guess it’ll get better when my project (due in June) is done.. Anyway yesterday I had my favorite Chirashi Don (mixed sashimi rice bowl) at Ichiro Tei Japanese Restaurant with Alice for lunch. I finally remembered to bring my camera with me so here’s the picture of the awesome food.

But the main thing for the day was that I finally got a flash for my E-3 DSLR. I had been wanting the bigger version of the flash (Olympus FL-50R) but it was too pricey plus I’m not always doing flash photography so I decided not to buy it. These days I tend to take quite some outdoor photos for Wendy so I figured I should really get a flash, maybe the smaller version (Olympus FL-36R) of it (Olympus has 2 flashes, big and small). Peter was able to get it for me at Futureshop for a much cheaper price since he works there, so I decided to go for it. Ended up being about $200 + tax, which is a pretty good deal. I’ve actually never seen a real digital flash before, when I looked at the user manual I was a little overwhelmed by the complexity of it, like all sorts of different settings, and tilting the flash in different angles would give you totally different results…etc. Oh and I also tried the wireless function of the flash, you can actually place the flash somewhere else, and then wirelessly trigger it through the camera….it’s so cool…. I guess I have so much to learn now but, it seemed to be quite an interesting thing to know about….and hopefully will also help in other areas of photography that I take, like macros. See the picture of my flash with my camera body, it’s so frigging huge!

At night I had cake at Berry Good with Wendy. I tried their Black Forest cake (which is one of the kinds that I always asked my mom to get for my birthday parties), it was pretty good. I kind of forgot how it’s supposed to taste since I haven’t had it for so long, but I liked the one I had. Wendy got a Strawberry Shortcake, which even though I wasn’t sure what a shortcake was, tasted pretty good. Berry Good remains one of the best places for late night dessert cravings.

I had a craving for bbq grill yesterday so Wendy and I went to the market to get some fresh meat and seafood to grill at home. We got some pork, beef, and for seafood we got huge huge scallop and huge tiger prawns =D We got some veggie as well like some fairly huge shiitake mushroom, onion and orange pepper. Also got a brand new bottle of Japanese yakiniku sauce (very sweet and tasty) Not much preparation was needed as the food were all raw, just had to slice up the meat and the veggie. I also found a bottle of rose wine in the fridge so we had some of it as well. Just like how we did it before, we made use of my Hamilton Beach grilling pan. It doesn’t get super hot but it’s alright as it’s safe and easy to clean. We also made instant miso soup =D Wendy lighted a bunch of candles and it was looking pretty nice when the sun went down =D We ate a lot, and spent quite some time grilling things as it took a while to cook the prawns and the port due to the low temperature, but we found that when we place the food there longer it would get crispy and thus much more tastier - we know what to do next time. Overall it was a very satisfying and tasty dinner, especially the huge scallops and the prawns!

After all that waiting for Spring to come I finally got a chance to go to the Queen Elizabeth Park yesterday! All-I-can-take pictures of flowers and plants. It was such great great weather, blue sky, warm, not too windy. I grabbed my Sigma 105mm Macro and my Zuiko 12-60mm zoom but I ended up using the 105mm macro 99% of the time. It was actually my fist time being able to test out my macro lens to the max, i.e. being able to take as many shots as I could, on as many different kinds of flowers as possible, under a maxed out nice sun/weather. It was real fun to walk around the area, search around to find the prettiest object and framing angle, and also to look at how different people enjoyed the sun with their friends and family (it was packed). I guess the best views were the fields of tulips….they’ve made sure that the flowers were planted at the best location and arranged in the best patterns - I could totally see the effort. Loads and loads of tulips. There were also all kinds of other varieties of flowers and plants, that caught my lens’s attention. I’ll be going back soon for the next round of blooms.

Here’s a collection of the photos I took

Oh, last weekend by the way I went to the Granville Island with Wendy on a nice day. We always like to walk around the area not just for the abundance of art / gadgets / street performance, but also the great, fresh food and produce. It was quite cold and windy but the day was nice. We stayed inside the market most of the time, and went out to take some nice sunny shots as well. We had some tasty pot soup with baked bread covering the top of the pot. Also had icecream at the usual place we go for it. We wandered around the area and got to some places we’ve never been before, where there was a mini lake and a lot of ducks and pigeons. It was a great day.