Recreation

Welcome to my personal and less serious side of the site.

Fishing: I enjoy all forms of fishing – spinning, fly, bait, trolling, etc. but fishing grounds within Singapore island is basically history.

Stamps: I collect First Days Covers from UK, New Zealand, Sweden and occasional covers from around the world. I have a full set of first day covers from UK since the 1980s till about 2017 which I will revisit individually when time permits.

Gardening: I am the green fingers of the house. I enjoy planting herbs, fruit tress and flowering plants. The weather and insects in Singapore are particularly challenging for gardeners. There are actually lots of life-lessons and values to be learnt from gardening.

Cooking: I enjoy cooking all kinds of food, but particularly, Chinese and Peranakan food. Baking is next on the list.

Aquatic plants/Crystal red shrimps aquarium: It is always great and satisfying to see and enjoy these green,luscious beautiful landscapes and plants. Watching life and photosynthesis process in action never fails to amaze me. I use chillers to keep the water temperature constant between 23 to 25 degrees Centigrade to suit different kinds of plants. I started rearing and breeding CRS in a planter tank without fishes, and there is much to learn to keep the water conditions really good to support breeding and growth of these delicate CRS.

Chinese ceramic and porcelain: I fully appreciate these wonderful crafted art especially birds, flowers, traditional Chinese and snow scenes.

Chinese water colour and calligraphy: This is one of my past favourite past time, particularly in painting lotus flowers and plum blossoms.

Photography: I enjoy all forms of photography including aviation, nature (birds), landscape, travel and people photography. I am blessed with many trips to different parts of the world due to the nature of my work. I have met many people and friends while engaging in photography in the last few decades since the days of film cameras, DIY black/white and colour processing. I now use Canon camera equipment having used Yashica, Contax and Olympus in the past.

I have used a range of Canon camera bodies over a period of time: EOS 300D, EOS 40D, EOS 5D Mk2, EOS 5D Mk3, EOS 1D Mk 4, and different lenses.

Incredible circular and full frame fisheye L lens introduced in 2010. Opens the creative world of ultra wide photography, distortion and special effects.

Useful for cramped area and where a good wide angle of view is required. This used to be my walkabout lens for sometime.

Very high quality and sharp lens for a useful wide angle and portrait lens.

Great versatile walkabout lens ranging from short wide angle to short telephoto for travel and general use.

Great in low light, sharp and particularly good for portraits.
Essential macro and close up lens for flowers, insects, stamps, etc. Also, sharp with nice looking bokeh for portrait photography when aperture is set to F2.8.
Mid range zoom with good optics and value suited for not-so-far objects like animals in the zoo and aircraft spotting.
Good long range zoom that I use for sports, nature and aviation photography. Can be hand held for flexibility although a monopod or tripod would help for more static shots.
This surely must be one of the sharpest fast prime lens delivering amazing optical quality and bokeh. I used this lens for sport, nature and bird photography where distance and sharpness becomes a priority. It cannot be handheld due to its weight. A sturdy tripod and a Wimberley mount is almost necessary if this is to be used for the whole day.
Great accompanying and cheaper alternative to extend the focal range of prime and zoom lens. When used with the EF 300mm, we get an equivalent 420 mm and 600 mm with a loss of one to two F stops respectively with little or no image degradation.
Remote switch, Timer remote control and wireless remote control are important and useful gadgets for time-based and astronomy photography, and to minimise camera shutter-body shake and movement. Good sturdy and light monopods and tripods are other essentials for photography as are travel camera bags for photography assignments and trips.

Some photos and videos that I have taken in the past can be found in the Gallery page.