私のレンズを通して

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Visit to the zoo

Babirusa

I love visiting zoos, a lot of people find it mundane, repetitive, or just a little too much great outdoors for them to cope with. Maybe it's because of my interst in photography, I thoroughly enjoy looking at animals. The only downside is that the animals are captive, but for the convenience that is offered, it's a small price to pay to be so close to these marvels of nature. I decided to process these in black and white, not your usual zoo pictures but there is just something magical about B&W, with the right lighting and properly processed gray tones, it's quite something.

Zebra

Meerkat

Giraffe

Orchid

Unknown Miniature Deer

Ring-tailed Lemur

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Religion?

Stumbled across a Hindu temple atop the famous Penang Hill. Exuberant colours and magnificent detail on the temple and the statues of the Hindu Gods. This here is Sri Krishna with a peacock specially caught my attention, notice the highly contrasting colours used by the artists. Peacock denotes romantic love and how one can learn to direct it to God. Story has it that Sri Krishna was lost and in dire need of water and a peacock leading Sri Krishna to water using it's feathers, by the time Sri Krishna found the water, the peacock was devoid of feathers, so Sri Krishna in memory of the peacock carries feathers on his head.

Religion has always been a vital part of every society in human history, from Kings to Vikings, every step of human history is laced through and through with religious beliefs some more so than others. It's of particular interest when one tries to decipher the secrets of religion, humans has always been preoccupied with their own religion but until contemporary era, we had failed to study the significance that religion has on our social interactions.

William James, famously known as a religion psychologist segregated the psychology of religion into two main parts, one of interest is the personal religion. Within personal religion there comes two flavours, the healthy-minded and the sick-souled (take note not "sick-minded" which brings on a totally different topic altogether). Healthy-minded religious individuals focuses on the positives and optimistic parts of their religion and how it can improve themselves with it, on the other hand sick-souled individuals only focus on the negative side of things representing the pessimists. This provided a nice classification for study of religion, but since the explosion of science how has this changed people's views of religion?

It lead to secularisation of religion, in support of separation of religion from politics, ethics and psychology, thereby effectively stripping power grip of religion has over modern society. But this helps scholars in further studying religion in a scientific way. Since secularisation religion has been studied as a social phenomenon, in Sweden 2003, there was a study that confirms correlation between low density of serotonin receptors and religious experiences. Now serotonin plays a significant role in regulation of mood, appetite, and sleep. Then in London 2006, a study showing positive correlation between antipsychotic medication that block dopamin receptors typically reduces religious behaviour and religious delusions. These studies themselves doesn't really proof anything after all there are only correlations, there's no cause and effect, but in a way these studies could help weed out the "pretenders" amongst religious organisations.

How could we talk about science without mentioning the name Einstein? In his paper in 1936 Ideas and Opinions, he suggested that belief should be replaced by knowledge, belief that did not itself rested on knowledge was superstition. This heavily correlates with Rene Descartes' idea of clearing out all the apples in the barrel because we never know which apples are rotten, we should be highly suspicious of knowledge and how it's established. But after reading Einstein's paper I had a very strong hunch that Einstein means for us to find an equilibrium of science and religion and not to find contradictions amongst them, but one has to be curious and highly vigilant to achieve the best of both worlds. Not that any of this helps with anything or answer the tough questions, but afterall this is the beauty of philosophy, we always come out a little bit less than we started with.....

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Penang 檳城, Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, 喬治城張弼士故居

Otherwise famously known as the blue mansion. Striking blue colour of the mansion is the result of mixing lime with natural blue dye made from the Indigo plant imported from India. As the name of the mansion suggests, the mansion is of Chinese origins, but the distinct colour of the mansion is very much against Chinese traditions. No reputable traditional Chinese person would paint their house or any building in blue because it traditionally is the colour that represents death. This shows a clashing fusion of East and West culture. Unlike contemporary fusion of culinary skills, this blue actually worked very well for this mansion and people from all over the world, but mainly around Asia come to Penang to visit or experience the mansion in all it's bluish glory.

The mansion much thanks to it's long heritage and history is also famous amongst the paranormal community. During my stay in the mansion nothing much happened and I failed to capture our non-materialistic brothrens through my lens but my wife is quite convinced that we weren't alone through our entire stay in the mansion (YMMV).

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Singaporean and food

The ultimate in food fusion technology. Singaporean cuisine is the very essence that represents it's very successful cultural and racial diversity and the emergence of a new blend of cultures. Singapore food is mainly influenced by native Malay, Chinese, Indonesian, Indian, Peranakan and Western traditions. As Singapore grew due to it's strategic location other influences also enter the scene like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Philipines and the Middle East. This is a country where anything goes in a culinary sense, you'd find Chinese chefs experimenting with Indian ghee or Malay tamarind, or you'd find Western chefs serving up a fried noodle with salads.

Eating out is a favourite past time for Singaporeans, most food consumption happens in hawker centres and food courts, not in restaurants. This is primarily why eating out is so fabulous in Singapore, you can find all sorts of cuisines in these places from Vietnamese pho, to fried kway teow, or cockle omelette with fried carrot cakes, the combinations is just endless, but most of all it's the price that counts. A very standard dinner with a main, a soup and a drink would run anywhere from $4 SGD to $8 SGD, no matter where your from this is a killer price for such a broad diversity of food.

Food plays a vital role for Singaporeans, it's declared as a national pastime, a national obsession. Food is often a topic of conversation among Singaporeans. Religion, just like food is also a very significant part of Singapore, in a way that it's very diverse and well respected. There are a few common dietary strictures in Singapore that visitors should know before stepping abroad, Muslims do not eat pork and Hindus do not eat beef, Buddhist do not eat meat, some Taoist do not eat beef, then there are vegetarians and vegans who are not religious also. People of different backgrounds often eat together, while being respectful of each other's culture and religion, and this is where the beauty of hawker centres come in, you have numerous small food stalls in one place, everyone can have what they want and they can buy it themselves.

Singapore cuisine has been promoted by the Singpore Tourism Board as a tourist attraction. That's why the governement organises the Singapore Food Festival every year in July to celebrate the multiculturalism of the local foods. With themed celebrations, culinary workshops, also competitions organised island-wide, the month long festival has escalated Singaporean diversity of food on an international scale.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

To the Botanic Gardens

Singapore Botanic Gardens 新加坡植物園, like many gardens of it's kind in the world, it's located right in the heart of the city, just near the opening of Orchard Road. It's the only garden in the world that opens from 5am to 12pm, parking is available on site and it's cheap as chips, couple of bucks for a whole day, there's a wonderous species of plants and animals within the garden for all to enjoy and to top it all off it's free admission.