Hello, my name is Sandy. I'm an artist in Perth, Western Australia.

A while back, I chatted to a friend about photography, who told me I had an eye for taking photos with a lot of feeling. Because it was MSN and we haven’t hung out in awhile, I wasn’t sure whether to read him as being heartfelt or just polite. But his words made me feel really good.

When I was younger, I asked my dad for a fancy camera. In return, he told me a skilled cameraperson could take good photos even with a crappy camera. I forget when that was. Let’s guess at least 12 years, since I’ve not been in school for at least that long.

It could have been nothing more than Asian dad-speak for, “No, I’m not buying you any more toys,” but it made logical sense. Every time I felt hampered by equipment or budget, I fell back on this thinking. Eventually, my desire for a fancy camera was replaced by a desire to take good pictures. I wish for a nice camera now, but with restraint. I want to be satisfied with my picture-taking on an average camera first before I will daydream about owning a fancy one.

How cheesy, right? I kind of like this romantic Cinderella-esque ideal of being somewhat poor but decent.

A couple years after uni, my dad gave me his old digital camera. It was a Minolta of some kind, but I forget which. By 2004, it was already a couple years old. Silver, squarish body, shaped like a DSLR, but wasn’t. By no means an amazing camera, but still quite nice. Definitely fancier, to my impressionable mind, than the compact cameras I was familiar with. I still had no idea what I was doing. This was during the era where I’d bring home pictures similar to the one on the left. To which Dad would exclaim, “What the hell is this?” because there were no subjects, nothing for the eye to be drawn to.

My proudest moment with the Minolta was the picture on the right – a very lucky one-shot out a bus window as I rode past The Quadrant on the way home from work. It’s not great, but I felt it was miles better than anything I’d taken before. It gave me confidence to reach for better pictures. I still don’t know why I liked that picture. I guess it was the way the creepy trees reached over a cold corporate building. The composition is crap, though.

Oh hey, hooray for emo self shots of the mid-2000′s – this is the Minolta! :)

I like taking photos that capture a feeling. I think that’s what I was clumsily trying to get at with those subject-less, direction-less shots. It’s like when you’re sitting in a waiting room, a train or a bus, surrounded by white noise and a million things to look at, but nothing you really care to see – or maybe one small thing that takes you away from having too many things to see. Pictures of nothing sometimes feel special to me because I regularly space out and look at nothing.

The first camera I bought myself was a Pentax Optio S5z. I was in love with it and grew to love it more as time went on. The colours were so vibrant, it would snap a shot so quickly, the super macro was super, and it had a slight fish-eye effect that forums and review sites looked down on, but I think it gave the pictures a bit of charm. Above is an extreme closeup of my pink clamshell mobile phone and its pet cladophora algae ball, taken with the S5z.

And here is me with my Pentax. I’m really glad now I was a narcissistic self-shot whore back in those days, because I have many fond memories of a stunning camera to look back upon. One of my friends got the next model up from this, but I much preferred mine. It was slightly heavier and bulkier, but the speed and interface of the S5z better suited my “just fucking take a picture” attitude. It was reliable, I guess, and easy to get a feel for.

My first mobile phone with camera was the Samsung E530 PINK CLAMSHELL <3 <3 <3 I was stoked at having a camera that fit in my pocket. When I figured out how to get pictures from that camera onto the internet, I felt like a god. Looking back, I think I took for granted how charmingly lomo the pictures were. I feel a bit silly now, forking out for a Diana when a mobile phone achieved the same effect.

Yeah, I did buy a Diana – how hipsterish. Well, I got some nice pictures out of it. Above are two from the medium format film roll. I got the 35mm backing too, but had no luck with those shots. Sold camera to colleague after only 2 uses.

I was impressed by the iPhone 3G camera and the multitude of apps that could help it along. Instagram and Hipstamatic were rad, still new by the time I moved onto a WinMo7. Whose camera was pretty good too. I liked it because the photos were huge.

The phone I have now, Samsung Nexus S, saves smaller pictures. Still good, possibly a little better now with the Ice Cream Sandwich OS, or maybe I’m just more used to its quirks. The digital compact camera I use now is a Nikon Coolpix of some kind, which I struggle with. It takes good pictures, but I don’t feel I’m using it right. Maybe I’m just not over the death of my Pentax.

I feel pretentious writing this post, as it makes me sound like a serious photographer, when in reality, I’ve not given a shit about this for years. But it’s been on my mind lately. I want to take this hobby a bit more seriously – or at least, see what I can learn from a whizzbang camera with detachable lenses and stuff. Still with dad’s cameraperson advice in mind, of course.

Eventually. This seems like an expensive hobby and I’m not cashed up. If you’ve got a DSLR, ping me your make/model, what you like about it, what you dislike about it, what sort of photos you take and what made you decide to get it instead of all the other similar looking cameras out there.

None of the pictures in this post have been Photoshopped, by the way, except to resize and arrange – save for the ones processed by mobile phone apps. Now that I think about it, this kinda makes all the cameras seem nice and a bit fancy – which I guess is relative anyway.

Permalink. Posted 21 February, 2012. Tagged: cameras, hobbies, photography, thinking too much.

This is the first Capsicum flower in the planter box next to my desk. Quite pleased we’re seeing progress as I was worried the UV tinting would block out too much light. The temperature in here is about 24 degrees C, varying by a degree or so every now and then. The internet reckons this is decent growing temperature. My window gets afternoon sun.

Permalink. Posted 20 February, 2012. Tagged: gardening, hobbies, office garden.

Today, I harvested a Sugar Baby watermelon planted back in September. I’ve spent the last five months watering, fertilising, training and protecting this little one. It’s been through a repotting, a super-hot Christmas with no water, a slug invasion, and possibly a slow execution by the other melon plant sharing its pot.

Notice how the vine on the right is dead while the vine on the left is flourishing? I’m pretty sure that’s not just a coincidence. These two watermelon plants have always shared a pot. Growth of both of them had plateaued during the heatwave at the end of January. After adding fertiliser, I noticed the one on the right looked lively again, while the one on the left had stopped. Then the vine started turning brown. I thought pruning it would help, but it seemed to only hasten the inevitable. Lucky Leftmelon was choking out her sister.

So I harvested the sister, who was a little smaller than my fist. Not sure where all the scratches came from. Maybe a bird or a neighbour’s cat had come to inspect. No sign of pestilence or disease.

Got Niaal to cut it for me cos I was too excited to do it myself.

BEHOLD MY WATERMELON!! :)

Not as sweet as I expected from a variety named Sugar Baby, but it was okay. Tastes like melon, is juicy, full of seeds for next year’s crop. I have the one remaining melon still growing. Gonna let that dry out a bit before we harvest – that supposedly concentrates the sugars inside to yield a sweeter fruit.

I am happy with my garden. ^____^

Permalink. Posted 15 February, 2012. Tagged: gardening, harvest, hobbies, watermelon.

Doug is my deskmate at work. We’ve been trying to level up our gardening skills because plants are cool and working with computers is soul-sucking if you don’t have other hobbies to keep you sane. Inspired by the cress postcarden from Swee, we took to growing microgreens.

Microgreens are germinated seeds that are allowed to grow a few centimeters before harvesting. They can be grown from the seeds of any edible plant – most common are salad type plants like lettuce, basil, kale, mustard, garlic and so on. Presumably because they are delicious. ‘Microgreens’ is a fancy word for sprouts. I promise we’re not being wanky, calling it that. The internet reckons that the word ‘sprout’ has industry obligations around it, so commercial types have to call them ‘microgreens’ because that’s a silly made-up word that isn’t likely to attract a lawsuit.

Scatter your seeds densely in any shallow grow medium – soil, blotting paper, kitchen paper, whatever you have on hand. Shallow is fine because you’ll be eating your microgreens before they require space for extensive root systems. Densely because these plants won’t hang around long enough to weed each other out of the competition.

I’m not sure if we did it wrong, the harvest. Doug washed the scissors with hot water, then with boiling hot water, to make sure we didn’t accidentally eat germs from weird stuff that scissors often find themselves cutting. It was a pinch-and-chop deal, which seemed to work okay. Felt surreal cutting and eating something just like that. We didn’t wash the greens before eating – I’ve been spraybottling the shit out of these things while they’ve grown, and not used any worm tea on them, so as far as logic reasons, they were clean enough.

Microgreens on cream cheese and crackers! :) Can I recommend the light Salada crackers cos they feel less oily/creamy. The extra dryness of the cracker goes well with the cream cheese. I like to think these sproutlings had a flavour – a lettuce flavour. But it could just be enthusiastic thinking on my part. We’ll be looking for greens with stronger flavour next time: mustard, radish and garlic.

This is what remained after our delicious deforestation. This afternoon, I tilled the stumps back into the soil and re-wetted the mixture. Will leave it for a couple days then plant some more seeds in preparation for another snack. Sown more densely next time, maybe with some kind of cover to keep the moisture in.

Would totally recommend this office passtime to anyone. Best part is that you don’t even need natural sunlight. The sprouts presumably grow from the energy contained in the seed. This is pretty sweet if you’re into the raw diet thing, or at least the healthy snack thing. And it’s so, so nice to have something ALIVE at your workstation.

Permalink. Posted 8 February, 2012. Tagged: desktop garden, food, gardening, microgreens, snacks.

Went with Sasha for ramen yesterday, then we spent the whole afternoon at the Free Range Gallery on Wellington St., making zines. I was nervous beforehand cos I’m not much of a scenester and don’t know a lot of people in my city’s arts crowd. I found out about the Perth Zine Collective‘s zine-making event through my friend/ex-housemate Miko, who’s super community-oriented and pretty much the only person I knew, so I ummed and ahhed a bit before deciding to go.

The event was part of Processed!, which is a subset of the Fringe World Festival going on in town at the moment. It’s a 24-hour thinger, spread over 2 days, in a little room full of stuff you can use to make zines. It was so peaceful, no obligation to chat to people, but after about an hour of sitting in the same space as everyone, you can’t help but feel comfortable and used to their presence. Talking, listening, eavesdropping, speaking up – it all felt cool and totally not awkward. A very nice change from an office environment where from the outside, it looks like the same kind of motion, yet any kind of noise or overhearing is like a disturbance.

Best way I can label the afternoon would be as an “introvert party”. I’m glad I went.

I made a zine called “Thoughts That Changed My Life” – you can see it at my portfolio - but the pictures I really want to show you, the part I’m most proud of, is my little sister’s zine. Sash came with me blind, never having seen a zine before, then proceeded to make a beautiful piece of art. Here be pics:

My talented little sister. ^___^ She wants to design t-shirts in her spare time. I’ll keep you posted on her artistic journey.

A nice day. Relaxing and fun, zero pressure. Would totally do again.

Permalink. Posted 5 February, 2012. Tagged: art stuff, hobbies, perth, zines.

I had a nice time at training last night. Unlike usual, my head didn’t run its anxious post-mortem of things I said or did that might be totally stupid. I’m getting comfortable with saying and doing stupid things; I mean silly little things, not like property damage or endangering other people. That’s beyond stupid.

Today was nice too. I bashed out in 3 hours  a flyer design that I thought I’d get stuck on for days. Then played support for a winning team with awesome teamwork in a ranked LoL game.

I have a little desktop and windowsill farm at work, noticed some lettuce seeds I sowed for microgreen experiments have started to peek out their sprouting faces. The capsicum plants in my windowbox are responding to sunlight. Do plants respond to all light or only light that gives them food? Well, I’m hoping it means they’re not being deprived of precious UV by the window tint. They get full blast sun for about 5 hours every day.

Can capsicum thrive indoors? We’ll find out. More to come as things progress.

Permalink. Posted 1 February, 2012. Tagged: football, gardening, hobbies, lol, thinking too much.

We were surprised a couple of weeks ago to find four little tomatoes growing on the vine. This is an heirloom variety known as Tigarella, which we picked up at Bunnings last year. I don’t know much about heirloom veggies other than not being able to get them at the supermarket. I feel pretty special eating something not found in a shop. :)

It tastes salty, doesn’t have the sour tang of shop tomatoes. Wonder if it’s the breed or our garden. We’ve treated this plant organically with lots of runoff from the worm cafe. I was worried it wouldn’t have enough room in its little pot (5L, I think?) but looks and tastes like it’s happy.

I learned that tomatoes don’t need to be hand pollinated – just give them lots of fertiliser and it will just happen. Yay!

Permalink. Posted 28 January, 2012. Tagged: gardening, hobbies, tomatoes.

Gong Xi Fa Cai, everyone!

Today was busy. Wonder if it’s foretelling the new year. I do like getting 2 new years. It’s like the first few weeks of the western new year is just a practice run for the real one. If this weekend is anything to go by, I can look forward to good times with friends, fun projects and more food than I can imagine. ^___^

We woke up early this morning for a mate’s baby shower. I don’t enjoy this sort of thing,but as far as family friendly parties go, this was okay. Nice and relaxed, participation in organised games completely optional, bacon and egg rolls.

Terrarium workshop in the afternoon at Mr Sparrow in Subiaco. The pic for this post is my terrarium – minimal. It’s a “tiny house in a landscape” like on Tiny House Blog. The class was so much fun. I wanted to get to know some of the other terrariers better, but after two days and an early morning of socializing, I’ve used up all my chat.

Will post more pics later. And I have to tell you about this cosy little bar that only just opened up recently. Later.

Permalink. Posted 22 January, 2012. Tagged: hobbies, terrarium.

Chinese New Year is this Sunday. Usually, we have noodles, meat & rice, low hai and sometimes shark’s fin soup. But my family are umming and ahhing this year because of the sad, sad shark video we saw today. Not gory, but – wow – how difficult to watch. Even if you try not to think about how much it suffers, seeing a shark without its fins just looks so wrong. :(

Controversy over shark’s fin soup has been going on for years. Giam Choo Hoo made good points about the public seeing selective imagery of mistreated animals and assuming the industry is lax and corrupt. At least, that was my assumption when I first saw the video.

Shark’s fin soup is delicious – taste and texture – and always served at happy occasions. Growing up eating it as the norm, it’s difficult to associate this meal with cruelty and suffering. And you know, when you learn about industry and practicality, you can pretty much figure it doesn’t make sense to do this kind of thing.

But it still happens. You see evidence of it happening, even with laws and regulations. What can you do?

Earlier today, I thought I would stop eating shark’s fin soup made with real shark’s fin (you can get gelatin-based imitation stuff) until this kind of thing stops. But will it stop? Even with more vigilant patrols, harsher penalties, stricter regulations, you still have to catch the culprits first. And if demand does drop and shark cruelty does stop, would it create a diminished industry with fewer jobs to offer hungry people? Could that be incentive for other bad stuff happening elsewhere?

As a consumer with very little control over how the rest of the world operates, I have no idea how to approach this in a right and meaningful way. I feel anxious that I don’t know what to do, and maybe even a little desperate to pick a side so I’d at least have something fixed to use as a reference. But there’s just so many uncertainties.

Maybe it’s all just Western propaganda. Maybe we Chinese have evil diets and superstitions. Maybe this is the nature of a dominant species. Maybe intelligent sharks are plotting against us and this is all part of the conspiracy. Maybe things just are what they are and all we have are equally correct and justified points of view. Maybe none of these things.

There’s still have half a packet of shark’s fin in the pantry. If all is as we hope, it is a genuine discard of a good fishing industry and okay to eat. If not, throwing it out would only add insult to injury. Many facts, many claims all over the world and the internet – but no way of knowing for sure.

We’ll probably eat what’s left over and not get any more. Forgetting right or wrong for a moment, it’s just hard not to associate it with sad things and maybes. I imagine this may be the unspoken topic at our dinner table. As an individual, perhaps the most meaningful thing I can do for now is consider and appreciate.

Image source: chee.hong

Permalink. Posted 19 January, 2012. Tagged: chinese, food, terra serenus, thinking too much.

A dinner at Lapa, as we would learn, consists of meat. Lots of meat. Joe told us about this place just before Christmas, selling us on their $49 all you can eat deal. Yeah, you heard me. I was skeptical at first, picturing a Sizzler-esque buffet chamber – or maybe $49 was a special Scoopon offer that applies only to grey lamb and expiry-date mince. Lapa is none of these things.

In a nutshell – Lapa is amazing. Lapa will make you look down your nose at ‘food & wine’ steakhouses and novelty smörgåsbord dining halls. Lapa is… well, this…

In the beginning, there was sausage. Meager on the plate. In our naïveté, we chortled at the sight of it. Little did we know that the menu’s description of an “endless feast” really does mean an endless feast.

Lapa’s endless feast comes in two phases – the first is the twelve course introduction to their wonderful, wonderful meat; second is the choice to order more of any dish on their endless feast menu. Sorry for the blurry picture, I got a bit excited.

As the first phase progresses, waiters bring round skewers and trolleys of meat that they slice or tong onto your plate. They ask you before serving whether you are interested in that particular dish, so you always have the option to refuse, but unless you’re a Lapa veteran or are there for a specific meaty purpose, you wouldn’t feel like refusing. At least not for the first six or seven courses.

Steak at three different levels of cookedness. This one’s a team effort – waiter slices, you tong. In this photo, Joe is tonging while Chips spectates with lust. See that little green coaster off to the side? That’s not a coaster, it’s a sign – green side up if you want more food; other side is red for when you need a break.

Well, in theory. The staff here are really happy to see you eat, and look very proud of you when you accept their food. So, you can flip the sign red side up, but you will cop a ribbing (GET IT?) when the next delicious meal comes out that you very reluctantly try to decline.

Don’t mistake the waiter’s expression for surliness. This is a look of concentration. At the time of this post, all the staff we met were passionate about the food and passionate about giving it to you. When you smile at them, they smile back. They joke, they flirt with the table. It is wonderful and we felt very special. This kind of proactively friendly service transforms the humble all you can eat gorging into even more of a dining experience.

It would have been about round 7 that my food coma started to come on, so memory gets a bit fuzzy. I think this is a piece of beef rib with crackling. Not sure, though. Everything began to look the same at this point. My forehead was radiating with warmth and meatiness. I accepted this bit of pasta-less eggplant lasanha from our vegetarian escort only out of curiosity and needing something to assist with meat digestion.

One of our lady friends has limited space in her pregnant belly, so she ordered a tasting plate à la carte. Lapa doesn’t usually offer the menu option if the table is going for the endless feast, but they very kindly gave us an exception for both mum-to-be and vegetarian. The taster looked awesome, had almost all of the dishes we had in the feast. This would be a very good value meal.

Close up of the yes/no signs.

Lapa interior vista.

And that’s it. No one left hungry, felt sated until the following morning. All went home happy because of the cheerful, friendly staff.

Aaaah, thinking about this place makes me smile. I’m already planning to go again.

Permalink. Posted 18 January, 2012. Tagged: food, perth, sandy's notes, subiaco.

It’s beautiful! (Photo by Doug)

But I didn’t water and then it went flat!

We were cressfallen. :(

But then we put a bit of water in and now it’s picked up!

And then we tried eating it and it was gross. Not delicious at all. This was fun, though. More desktop gardening to come soon, I hope. :)

Permalink. Posted 17 January, 2012. Tagged: cress, gardening, hobbies.

Cress sprouts showing green bits. This stuff does not smell nice at all. Hopefully will smell fresh and tasty when it’s grown up a bit. Sorry the picture’s so blur, I used Camera360 again, which doesn’t seem to handle macro shots very well. Or maybe I’m just not very good at using it.

I meant to post this on Thursday, but must have forgotten to come back to it. There’s also a Day 5 picture that was meant to go up on Friday. Slow me. Here it is:

Hyper growth overnight. I’m stoked these seeds grew under office lighting conditions. If the sprouts are good to eat on Monday, I might look for more cress and chia seeds online for more office desktop garden experiments.

Permalink. Posted 12 January, 2012. Tagged: cress, gardening, hobbies.

For Christmas, Swee furnished me with a cress postcard garden. As per instructions, I scattered the seeds and wet the paper, and sure enough, SPROUTS! As far as the eye can see. The picture above is day 2. Literally, overnight, young cresslings grow, reaching ever upward to a delicious end.

Permalink. Posted 10 January, 2012. Tagged: cress, gardening, hobbies.

I played like crap tonight. Two weeks off for Christmas and my football skills have worn down to a nub. Ow, and my callouses have become tender, ow ow ow.

For football – competition in general – I’ve decided I don’t mind losing, so long as the game was good. By good, I mean good sportsmanship, fair play, human concern for teammates and opposing players. Better to lose clean than win dirty. I decided this last year after observing people who behave in all sorts of ways, and myself experimenting with behaving in all sorts of ways.

Read the rest of this post…

Permalink. Posted 5 January, 2012. Tagged: chillies, football, gardening, thinking too much.

Today has been super productive and I am happy. ^__^

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Permalink. Posted 4 January, 2012. Tagged: animals, drink, dunsborough, food, gardening, holidays, wa.