I guess splurged for the month. I bought myself a Panasonic Lumix GF1, one of the more popular Micro Four Third cameras in the market to-date. 

There are plenty of reviews around, here are a few i find really helpful:

• Danny Choo's Review
• Digital Photography School by Chas
• Digital Camera Review
• Digital Photography Review

I owned a few point and shoot cameras before as well as a DLSR. After using all sorts of crap, big and small, good and bad, i find myself looking for the middle ground. That was when i decided to look around for a compact size DLSR camera.

Below are few things you might want to know:

• Its a lot smaller than any DLSR cameras that i come across, BUT, its still not small enough to put it in your pocket. I'm speaking of the prime lens 20mm 1.7, the smallest lens i know of for the GF1. Even that could not fit into my pocket. 
• The camera body is light. The lenses are on the heavier side.
• Really good lenses. The 20mm 1.7 lens and the 14-45mm lens are both of great build quality. 
• You can zoom with the 20mm lens. By foot.
• The picture quality produces some impressive bokeh.
• There is no viewfinder built-in. You can get the optional add-on, but i have not found a need to as yet. 
• There are a lot of built-in functions. Aperture priority, Shutter speed priority, high ISO range, different focus modes etc etc
• You can record 720i videos.
• Pricy! I fork out about 1.5k SGD, for camera body, 20mm lens, 14-45mm lens, 2 x UV filters, 16gb SD card and a full carry bag.

Definitely a joy to use the Lumix GF1, takes the hassle out of bringing a bulky full DLSR bag around. Here are a few shots i took while one of my friends came to visit last week.

(download)

Click here to download:

panasonic-lumix-gf1-FIxmDauABADqIlvfhEGD.zip (5.41 MB)

Came across this article regarding the benefits of pissing people off. I would avoid it if i can, but in reality, this is required more often than not.

Some excerpts:

Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It’s inevitable, if you’re honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you’ll avoid the tough decisions, you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you’ll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset.

Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally “nicely” regardless of their contributions, you’ll simply ensure that the only people you’ll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization.

A group works best when they all strive for a common goal, not personal goals. Clear the obstacles and get it done. 

Good to see people are still learning through repetitive tasks.

I was in a busy food stall the other day, like a lot of smaller size stalls, you have got to work fast to get a the orders through. So its pretty simple. Higher turnover = more orders = more profit. One of the more obvious things to do is to pass those in the queue a menu, so they can decide what to eat before they sit down. Trust me, these guys aint going to wait around for you to decide.

The other thing that they do is speed up the payment. Usually, you ask for the bill, the waiter goes to the counter, gets the bill, walks over to you, you look at it, take some cash from your wallet, he walks back to the counter etc etc. Its truly painful, for both sides. So some stalls have a slot next to your table where they put the order/bill on it, so they can skip going to the counter to grab it. Others tend to grab the bill, check the total damage, anticipate what the customer will pay you and prepare the change to go along with the bill. Since we are talking about food stalls, they are not dealing with credit cards here. So if it is going to cost 9.95SGD, he'll have 5cents ready just in case you pull out a ten dollars note. Cuts it down to just one round trip.

Another example. fancy going for a hair cut in a shopping mall? You know its packed, all 15 stations. All hair stylists are on the clock, literally (they have a timer just as they attend to you). Back at my home town where things are alittle slower, i guess it does not matter all that much. But over here, how do you avoid a potential bottle neck where everybody needs a hair wash? Well, they do that on the same spot as where you get your hair cut. They wet the hair and apply shampoo, and head massage that goes with it. After that, they will direct you to get your hair rinsed through, and back to the seat again. So there, no hogging of rinsing stations. And by the way, the shop looks busier too as everyone will be in their stations most the time.

Its a win-win scenario.

During the last long Easter weekend i was in Mumbai. For a day.

I guess i can no longer push back on travelling to India. After all, how can you say no when your boss is going to make sure you get there, by being in the same flight. Getting an Indian visa is straight forward enough from Singapore. I would have never guessed the first visa/stamp on my new passport would be of India's. 

My expectation for this trip was quite dim. I expected nothing less than a struggle to with an uncontrollable case of diarrhea and having a first hand look at poverty. The real poverty, not the 'I can't afford a Mc value meal' kind of poverty. I was repeatedly told to bring along a can of spray-on insect repellant, which in the end was helpful (mozzies galore).

Woke up at 4am Sunday, got ready, took a taxi and reached the airport by 6. Checked in through SIA's Business class queue and had the privilege to get into the SIA lounge. This was pretty much the closest i have been to experiencing flying business class (By having a tag on your hand luggage, with the sign "Business Class"). With the amount of travel that Steve does, i'm surprised they didn't roll out the red carpet for him. 

By obtaining the highest level reward program in Singapore Airline (PPS), air stewardess will know you by your name, regardless of whether you are travelling in first class, business class or economy class. He gets constantly asked if he needs anything. Water, pillow, blankets, magazines, newspapers etc etc. Pretty sick. I guess it helps if you travel on that route often enough and live in the same hotel as the whole airline crew. You are literally like family.

The hotel we stayed at was the ITC Maratha Mumbai, located just 5 minutes from the airport. I guess i was the culprit who wanted to stay away from the city. I wasn't that eager to venture around Mumbai to say the least. The hotel was exquisite, despite being told 5 stars hotel in India is generally about 3-4 stars in Singapore. I kinda disagree on this occasion. Security was tight. Bunkers outside the hotel, a check point before the gates and scanners before you step into the lobby. It certainly does feel strange when you have so many AK47's around you.

After spending a few hours testing out phones and carriers (which is the reason i was there in the first place), we headed off to get a drink in the rooftop bar called AER, on top of Four Seasons Hotel in town. It took a while to get there, despite skipping most part of the city and driving on the Sea Link. Four Seasons Hotel is sandwiched between some low buildings and huge patches of shacks which form the slums. Once in the gate, you can feel how grand the hotel is. The bar was mostly visited by wealthy locals (and trust me there are plenty) and expats. Despite having an awesome view of the city, it was hard to enjoy myself just to see so many others in the city struggling to make ends meet.

We had dinner at the Taj Tower, a pretty good restaurant with Mediterranean food. It is another spectacular hotel but it was a pity that some parts of the hotel are still off-limits after the bombing a while back. At this point in time, me and Steve have been on the road for close to 22 hours without sleep and he almost dozed off while having his dinner. Let's just say he was snoring on the way back to the hotel in the cab, more than an hour.

Mumbai, to me, is an interesting place. You can see the extremes of human living conditions. At one end you get to see one guy's 27(?) stories apartment building in progress (richest guy in India). On the other hand, more than half the population in mumbai are slum dwellers. According to this article:

Another interesting fact that the report has thrown up is the presence of slums in Mumbai—about 54% of the population comprises slum dwellers. “And the relevant dimension is the area they together occupy—just 6% of all land in Mumbai, explaining the horrific levels of congestion,’’ it said. 

Watched Slumdog Millionaire? Yea thats how it looks like in real life. People begging everywhere. As soon as the traffic light goes red, people swarm towards the windshield, knock on it and beg for money. Woman with their young child, gesturing for help to feed the kid (you can't give them anything either as everyone else will swarm your cab). And right on the walkway, toddlers playing by themselves on piles of rubbish without a care in the world. Their notion of having toys is having rubbish that looks like toys to play with. This is not an isolated incident at one traffic light, it is recurring at almost every traffic light. 

This part of Mumbai (and India in general) was what i wanted to avoid. It is depressing to see it in real life, no matter how much i prepared myself for it. Steve summed it up quite nicely on the flight back home...

It is tough out there. You can hardly find your way out of poverty that your best hope is reincarnation.

Life. Such is.