Weekend Cruisin'..

Went on a cruise the weekend before last with my mom and bro. I remember the 1st time I went on one with my family about 10 years ago, it was filled with laughter and yummylicious food. However, this time was quite a disappointment. Not only was the food not up to par, the entertainment was also.. well.. let's just say.. nothing special. And here I thought that the bigger the ship, the better the quality of everything. But as a friend just told me, sometimes bigger things aren't necessarily really better.

Also, it's completely not worth it going on a 3D2N trip coz I think they've changed the embarking time to 5pm. Yes, 5 freakin pm on the 1st day. And we disembark at 10.30am on the 3rd day! So basically we were only on the ship for 1 day plus? They should just say that it's a 1D+ trip instead of a 3D2N! What a load of crap.

So what can we do? We whiled away about 3 hours in a shopping complex and I wandered into the National Geographic shop and took some photos.

To be honest though, I did have fun on the cruise mainly due to my family. Our first night in the tiny cabin and we had a painting for a window.

and my poor bro cracked his head on the ceiling numerous times coz it was super low..

Decided to go for chinese for breakfast and the first dish that arrived..

there were other stuff of course, like porridge, etc but I was too busy eating and forgot to take photos of 'em.. heee

Followed by a 3 course lunch..

hmm.. I do believe I again forgot to take photos of our main courses.. hehe (probably coz I was again busy eating.. although for the life of me, I honestly can't seem to recall what we had.. either I'm really forgetful or the food really wasn't that memorable.. )

My bro giving me the evil eye coz I was playing with my camera nonstop as we were waiting for our food..

Our one and only good dinner on board. Luckily this really nice waitress offered to take a photo for us (if you can make us out in the photo..)

Below was my main course and dessert and if you look very carefully in the photo above, you'll be able to make out part of the caesar salad I had (in the lower right almost-corner). :)

Had to do some exercise to try to burn off some calories by playing basketball.. during noon.. (I had no idea what I was thinking at the time coz after that both my bro and I were almost as lobsters.. nice and pink... and now I'm almost nut brown!! *sob sob*)

and.. my bro (the one acting cool above) also happily gave me a partial black eye with the basketball... and apologised most profusely after.. although now I'm starting to wonder about the 'accidental' part...

Another one of my bro trying on his Godfather look..

My lovely mom who was kind enough to be my model for a few minutes.. :p

And the black-eye-giver actually won the karaoke contest on board.. just check out his cheeky-but-still-maintaining-his-cool smile.. jeez... but I was proud of him.

singing Forever Love.. full of emotion and expression..

Some random photos of the ship as I wondered around the ship..

One of the better photos that actually has me in it courtesy of my bro.. the rest were more or less complete disasters unfortunately.. sigh..

Finally a better quality family photo taken by another staff..

Then it was bye bye cruise and hello Singapore..


So yeah, it was a fun holiday with my family but for anyone out there thinking about taking a cruise in the near future, I'd suggest you do something else..

just a little something to remind myself..

.. you should not change what you love, or you never loved it to begin with ..

our place in the universe

I recently watched How The Earth Was Made. It's a 2 hour documentary on Astro's History Channel. What can I say, I'm a bit of a science nut, mostly on astronomy. It's really quite amazing to learn the history of Earth. At least what they know of it so far (which is actually after a couple'a hundred years of research, mind boggling thought, isn't it?) and all I can say is if you've any interest, at all, in this, go check it out. It is worth the 2 hours.

What I got out of the 2 hours is this - homo sapiens is actually the most insignificant in the scheme of things but also the most significant element to life on earth.

We, humans as we call it, are actually at least the 6th or 7th generation of lifeforms on earth. Starting from microscopic organisms (which is actually our common ancestor), to more complicated organisms to giant insects to dinasours to cavemen and finally to us. And we, who think so highly of ourselves are not even the first to populate the earth. But we're definitely the first to start killing it. Yes, we are indeed murdering the host that is supporting our life. And we've only been here for about 10 thousand years. If we do not start taking care of the earth, we will eventually kill ourselves and unfortunately, the majority of us are still marching blindly towards that end. All in the name of power, money and what? fame? The more technology we develop, the faster we use up the earth's resources and the faster we're pushing towards our own extinction. So yes, we are indeed very significant to the life of our planet earth.

On the other hand, it's like everything has it's place in the universe. Look at the mass extinctions before us. Why is it that everytime life flourishes, at least 70-90% of the species gets wiped off the face of the earth? Billions of years of evolution, gone, just like that. Every single time. It's like there's a timeline to every generation. When the time comes, there will be ice ages, plate tectonics movements, mass volcanic eruptions, the asteroid strike that killed off the dinasours, etc. We're talking mass planetary extinction that are completely out of our control. What use is technology in this? Money? Power? Completely useless. All these happened in the past and it definitely looks like a cycle to me. It's already happened 5 times that we know of.

It's like the earth makes the decision because it is alive too. It is evolving along with us and most of us are either too ignorant of the fact or just plain not paying attention. I do believe that we have no say as to how long we have on this earth. The only difference is whether we'll leave enough of the earth for a next generation of lifeforms after us. Which is pretty slim to none if what they predict comes true - in about 2 billion years, earth will become another Mars. Which brings a question to my mind. Since they discovered traces that water possibly existed on Mars before, was Mars a previous Earth? Another planet that was perhaps killed by similar lifeforms like us? Possibly thousands or millions or even billions of year ago?

Anyway, the sobering thought is that we are truly insignificant because we'll be completely helpless to forces beyond our control should it come time for us to cease existence. If we take care of our planet, and if we're lucky, we might go out with a bang (fast and with the least amount of pain), but if we continue damaging it, it acts like a slow poison, and our descendents might have to go through intolerable sufferings before the end.

So I say, live well and appreciate your life everyday but try to be friendly to the earth too. Think of what really matters... don't waste your lifetime on unimportant things.

Photography - good or bad?

I recently read a friend's blog on the different interpretations on photography and it got me thinking. A reverend commented that "photography is not a good thing to do". He associated photography with memory.

Quote

"A good mind is a mind that works like a sieve, it is able to retain the things it needed and sieve away the ones it does not need. More importantly, a good mind - is one that is able to remember what it wants to remember and forget what it wants to forget. A photographic memory is not exactly that good to have as many old people suffer at their ending days because of their 'good' memory."

To be honest, I haven't really thought much about the meaning that can be attached to such a simple word - photography. I mainly think of photography as capturing a moment in time. Sort of like giving voice to a memory? The 'voice' being a picture. After all, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Not all of us are blessed with a good mind - to be able to keep the good and forget the bad. I believe many people suffer from 'tunnel vision'. They tend to only focus on one thing and forget everything else at different points of their lives. And slowly, due to neglect, the memory will fade away, be they good or bad.

So is it true that having a photographic memory a bad thing, especially when we're old and gray? I think there is no life without both the good and the bad. You can't have one without the other. Also, everytime we get through a hurdle, we grow wiser. So I have to disagree with the reverend here. I think it is important to remember the bad so that we would be able to appreciate the good. After all, would you really want a monotonous uneventful life? Would you really want to have a life like this _________ (a straight line)?

Not me, I'd prefer to learn from my mistakes and have a colourful life filled with memories that can bring tears to my eyes be they happy or sad.