2010 - Happy New Year!

Avatar flowers

Avatar the movie is really something! Makes you wish for a world that glows with flowers, plants and trees and the ground you step on lights the path you have taken. The trees interconnect underground and a powerful lifeforce flows through their roots while the Avatars live above tapping into this invisible source of life through their understanding that nature is to be loved and protected. Well, that is just my interpretation. In any case, no one should miss the movie especially the 3D movie. It is a superb visual treat and if I were to die having to watch the destruction of the world I would hold in my dream the possibility that the after-life is a place like the planet Pandora in the movie. From my collection of photos I have selected these flowers that remind me of the surreal versions seen in the movie and pray that they will not go extinct because they stand in the way of greed.

Gustavia Superba

When a flower is just a flower
until someone sees something extra
The 'X' Factor in the seemingly ordinary
and the flower is a transformed beauty
Gustavia Superba

Post in a hurry

Sometimes I give myself tiny deadlines like putting up a post within 5 mins before shutting down the computer. This includes searching in my folders for a flower that I like. Not easy for recently, I have not been taking any photos on flowers. But, I found these and now I can shut down the PC and take my son out for a meal!

Christmas Day was filled with variety - eating, spending time with family and friends and kite-flying at the Marina Barrage. Kids relived their childhood and the adults too had a great time.

Alpinia Purpurata

This flower was a lone bloom sheltered from the sun by palm trees. It is a beauty on the decline and yet it has an elegance that I could not help but notice. Most times when age catches up with us, we forget how we have come so far in our lives with lessons learned through experience, reflection and the bonds of close relationships. We are bent over and weighed down by the happenings in our daily lives and do not realise that as long as there is breath in us, we can look forward to living our lives in the best way that we want to. This flower shows us how.

Morning Glory

Today I bought the latest Kelvin Chen （陈伟联）album Moving Notes because I like the songs he sang in the drama serial "Together(永远）" that I have been faithfully following on Channel 8. The album came with a bonus DVD containg 4 of the best songs in the album.

Kelvin Chen is blind and he said that the colours he sees is "black, black and black". Yet that has not stopped him from lighting up the world of others with his music and his singing. These morning glory flowers are for him, this talented singer who did not let seeing black make his life bleak and dreary.

I have to spend some time to understand the lyrics of most of the songs. My lack of understanding has not hindered my appreciation of his music. Time, I need time and I will try my best to find time to learn to read the lyrics in Chinese.

Meanwhile, I shall just keep listening to his songs and the beautiful guitar and piano music that for now helps to draw out the deep emotions in his singing.

Clerodendrum paniculatum - Pagoda Flower

"There is no charge for awesomeness, or attractiveness" - Kungfu Panda. I could not describe this flower more accurately. Sometimes an idea comes knocking at your door. You only need to recognise its value and not let it slip by. Aha! I got this one just as I was watching the movie on TV.

Ginger flower

We will be leaving
one by one
our friends
say goodbye
till it's our turn
to bid farewell

Heliconias

Okay, so I had fun taking these photos. I love using large aperture settings to blur the backgrounds.

Against the light

Today I took the DSLR Canon 400D. I like the speed, the sound of the shutter and the tele lens and decided that I should take shots against the light.

The same palm tree leaves.

This one's taken on the glass.One of my favourite shots.

The bolo bolo flower.

Thunbergia flowers.

Frangipani flowers.

Cordyline leaves.

Palm leaves.

Heliconia.

Ferns.