Spring Is Finally Here

Seems like after a long delay, spring is finally here.

March had been riddled with strange weather patterns this year, starting with warm temperatures at the start of the month, and then suddenly having steep temperature drops starting from mid-March.

The bizarre weather pattern has caused the famed sakura trees to bloom very late this year, with Tokyo announcing the official start of blooming only just a few days ago.

As the temperature stabilizes and the flowers start going into their full blooms within the next few days, without a doubt it will be a spectacular sight to see.

While I have no exact authority to say this, I would just like to put this out here - please be nice and considerate when enjoying the view, and as much as you want to get a picture perfect shot, please do not pull the branches or flowers, or worse shake the tree just for your 5 seconds of fame.

I have had seen enough bad behavior regarding people trying to get their perfect shot through means of trespassing private areas or doing inconsiderate things like climbing trees or what not, so I really do hope that such behavior can be eradicated so that everyone can enjoy the views and be respectful of nature itself.

So yup, be considerate, be mindful of others, respect privacy and rules, and go ahead and enjoy the splendid views of Japan’s beautiful spring scenery!

Difficulty Following Action RPG Stories

I have been playing Last Epoch lately, and in all honesty I am enjoying it very much - it just feels great to have an army of skellies roaming with you causing mayhem to everything that has a red life bar. I plan to write about it in more detail once I complete the main storyline, which is taking a bit longer than expected as I have to juggle with taking care of the little ones too.

Now, I am not sure if I am alone in this, but I do find myself getting lost regularly in the storylines in most hack-and-slash action RPGs (ARPGs). Not just Last Epoch, but even other titles like Diablo (and its subsequent versions), Grim Dawn, Titan Quest etc.

It is like most of the time at the beginning I learn a bit about what is happening, get to know a few characters, and as the story progresses I know I need to whack the big bad guy, but suddenly I cannot seem to recall why is a certain NPC helping me or why a certain quest is required to reach the said big bad guy - I end up having to search online for a synopsis every now and then to read up again on who’s who, who’s whose friend, and why I am doing certain things.

It is really strange that this only happens to me for hack-and-slash ARPGs, whereas in other RPGs like Disgaea series or Shining Force series (back on the Sega MD when I was a kid), or even Yakuza Like a Dragon, I tend to remember what is going on pretty well and have a deeper impression of the characters.

I wonder is it because the nature of hack-and-slash ARPGs they make you more focused on skills and items that you tend to click through the conversations?

Or perhaps the design of the dialog boxes with just a static portrait just does not leave a deep impression in the brain?

Or perhaps I just have a really short attention span and am clicking through dialog boxes really fast?

Just really intriguing.

That said, Last Epoch does have a pretty interesting and entertaining story so far, and although I had to refer to summaries online a couple of times now, I am certainly impressed with the attention to small details the developers gave in the storyline.

What Happened to Crumpler Products in Japan?

Just really curious about what happened to Crumpler products in Japan.

I own several Crumpler bags, from simple messenger bags that I used when I was in college, to camera bags and laptop bags that I still use now.

One of the ones that I still use frequently now is the Flying Duck Sling 4000 bag, as it is a very lightweight bag yet provides adequate protection, on top of being the perfect size for my kit when I need to go compact.

If I remembered correctly they used to have a flagship store here in Tokyo, but during COVID I guessed the dealership contract with the official distributor here in Japan ended and was not renewed, so the flagship store is gone and most, if not all, products have been pulled from shops and retailers.

It’s really quite disappointing as I do really like their products for their practicality and toughness, and their camera-oriented products have always been well-regarded and are reasonably priced as well.

I do sincerely hope their products will make their way back here again soon.

Wireless Keyboard Woes

Just thought of sharing this sort of hilarious incident I had with my recent wireless keyboard purchase.

At home when I am using my desk-bound laptop, as it is elevated on a laptop stand I had a wired keyboard attached to it - nothing fanciful, just a simple full-sized US-layout membrane keyboard.

In the sea of JIS-layout keyboards available here, it was seriously difficult to find a proper US-layout keyboard that did not cost an arm and a leg, so I was happy to be able to grab that wired keyboard at a very reasonable price.

As the little human is getting more active, when she’s sitting with me in front of the PC she tends to want to type on my keyboard too - I am sure anyone can imagine what sort of interesting text strings can arise from that.

So I thought of a simple solution - if I got a wireless keyboard, when she’s sitting with me I can just turn it off, so even if she hits on the keys nothing would happen. Perfect!

Looked through Amazon and found a keyboard that suits my requirements - US-layout, long lasting battery life, properly sized chiclets-styled keys.

Enter the HP 230 Wireless Keyboard. It is a simple wireless membrane keyboard that promises 16 months of battery life, and cost about JPY 2600. Perfect balance of everything for me.

Upon receiving my new keyboard I took it out of the box, plugged the USB receiver into my PC’s USB port, and searched for the On/Off switch on the keyboard.

Wait a minute..

There is no On/Off switch on the keyboard.

Anyway I just booted up my PC to see if it works, and the USB receiver and keyboard were pre-paired and could recognize each other instantly - and a tap of any key on the keyboard would bring it out of sleep mode as long as the USB receiver is active.

I do not have any issues with the keyboard itself - it works as advertised, being very comfortable to type on for a membrane keyboard, and is responsive to wake up from sleep and hibernates automatically when not in use.

The issue is with myself - I bought a wireless keyboard wanting an option to quickly turn off the keys to prevent accidental typing by the little human, but this keyboard though ticks all the other requirements for me, and just misses out on this one little feature that I was truly after.

I won’t be returning this keyboard as I like it much more than the previous wired one I was using (and not having an on/off switch sounds like a really bad reason to return the product), so I guess I’ll be putting up with more random text strings by the little human for a while more.

Trust Issues

If there’s one thing I really despise in life, it’s empty promises.

Guess I ought to do a better QC on people whom I invite into my social circle.

The Hunt for the Elusive Garlic Chilli Sauce

If there's one craving that I am unable to satisfy, it's having proper garlic chilli sauce to go with my fries.

You know, the tasty spicy sauce that you get for free in SG's McDonald's?

Yea, that sauce.

I’ve tried purchasing various bottles of what are labeled as “Garlic Chilli Sauce”, but none of them seems to hit the correct notes for me - be it the viscosity, or the spiciness, or the acidity, or a combination of any of the factors.

If any importers are reading this, please be a pal and bring in the SinSin sauces at an affordable price. You'll have my eternal gratitude.

Disappearance of an Apple Pie Store

Been talking about apple pies recently which led to me having a craving for it over the past few days.

Thought that since I would be passing by Kita-Senju today, I'd drop by this apple pie store along the sweets corner of Lumine. And having a 10% off promotion for card holders meant that the idea was only more enticing.

Hurried to the corner after work and wandered to where the store is supposed to be.

Weird.

No apple pies.

Now this was not a shop I frequent very often - i’ve perhaps bought from it 5 times or so in total.

Did I remember its location wrongly?

Circled around the entire sweets section a couple of times, and am pretty sure that it was the right spot.

Alas, I went up to the counter and asked the staff what happened to the apple pies.

And the devastating news was delivered to me - apparently it was a sister brand, and they stopped selling the apple pies a year ago.

Sigh.

Baby Steps (Or Rather, Handprints?)

So after a few months of rolling around, a couple of weeks of sliding backwards, the little human has started inching forward today on all fours.

Really interesting to observe her movements and actions.

Lifelong Learning

It had been a crazy rollercoaster month with almost no breathing space for me, and finally I could manage some down time here to rejuvenate and catch up with every one around me.

So yesterday I met up with an ex-student of mine for coffee, and one of the topics that we were talking about was career choices.

I told her about my story - my initial plans for a career in science, how participating in the JET program widened my horizons, and the path that I am taking now.

In hindsight, I guess I had never told this in depth to any of my students before, so she was pretty surprised at my thought process, and also at the fact that I was influenced and changed during the time I had spent in the small city where I taught.

I also shared with her how much I was learning from the students from my time spent as an educator, and till this day I am still very grateful to the many people whom I had met and made connections with.

To be honest when I was first tasked to teach them English, I was quite worried if I would in fact be of any help to them. But under the guidance of the veteran teachers I slowly came to understand how to best help the students out in their English education.

And as I found out that I was learning so much from the students just by listening to their experiences, I realized that I could bring more to the table by sharing my own experiences and thoughts as well, so as much as I could, I tried to chat and have discussions that are not academically related with them as well.

If any of my ex-students is/are reading this, I hope I somehow manage to do a good job hahaha. (Or at least I hope I inspired something in you!)

I believe that education is a lifelong process, and we never stop learning and discovering new ideas. By sharing what you know, you would also discover what you do not know, and that would definitely help you mature and grow into a better person.

Short Local Trip

Took a little trip out of town to the suburbs last weekend for some much needed break from the city.

Stayed in a traditional inn (ryokan) for the first night there. I can't really remember when was the last time we stayed at a ryokan. I'm guessing 4 years ago?

Absolutely wonderful ryokan we had chosen.

When we reserved our room earlier last week, I kind of just left a note at the memo column indicating that I do not take meat or fish dishes, so if possible it would be great if they could remove the meat and fish from my meals and perhaps just replace them with some more vegetables. Never did I expect that they went all out to arrange a special menu for me entirely, matching the normal menu one-for-one as much as possible.

And the meals were absolutely delicious.

The ryokan was not too crowded when we were there too, which I assume was partly due to the off-peak timing and partly because of COVID, so I could take my own sweet time enjoying and relaxing in the onsen - once before dinner, once after dinner, once after breakfast.

Spent the second day (and the third day) with our relatives living in that area, and crashed at their place for the second night. Our relatives are a cheerful bunch, and take things slow and easy with optimism. Really wonderful time spent there with them. Kind of felt so much more positive about things just being around them.

Also, I last met their cat, who was adopted from my ex-vice principal, 5 years ago when he just joined their family. He's much bigger now, and is still such a friendly fluffball. Greeted us in the morning, played with us, showed us his tummy for belly rubs..and never once did he bite or claw us. What a stark difference from the furball I have at home - I am sure to get bitten at least once a day. I'm guessing (and hoping) this is her way of showing affection to us?

Though there is one little issue with their cat - seems like he is wary of big black cameras. The moment I took out my camera he started running away. Sigh. Could only manage to take a handful of shots of him.

Anyway, it is grape season over there now, and my love for shine muscats could not be contained. That juiciness. That gentle grape flavors. That sweet, delicious nectar exploding in the mouth. Totally awesome. I cannot count how many shine muscats I had consumed in my time over there. And that's not including the 3 extra bunches we bought and brought back to Tokyo.

We left on the evening of our third day there, feeling totally revitalized, and stuffed as well from all the eating.

All in all, wonderful and fulfilling trip.

Sold Off My Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art Lens

Just very recently I had sold off my F-mount Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens.

This lens holds a special place in my heart, so it was really quite sentimental to have to let it go.

Let me start by sharing a little background story here.

Some time back in December 2012, when I just started my first full-time work on campus, I decided that I would splurge on a lens using my paycheck. I had only two prime lenses at that time - the Nikon AF 35mm f/2D and the Nikon AF 50mm f/1.8D, and both were fantastic lenses coupled with the D700 that I was using.

But alas, the lure of the f/1.4 was huge, and since I vastly preferred the 35mm field of view then, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my 35mm lens to a f/1.4 beast.

My chain of thoughts was pretty simple at that time. Nikon only has two 35mm f/1.4 lenses in production then, and I did not want to deal with manual focus, so the logical upgrade path from the AF 35mm f/2D was to the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G.

Headed down to this local store (in Singapore), which was highly recommended by my other photographer friends, and asked if I could have a look at the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G. Tested it out for a while in the shop, and found that while it has a generally pleasing rendering to it, it felt quite soft at f/1.4, and its AF speed was nothing to write home about as well.

I chatted with the staff attending to me regarding my concerns, and asked about the price. And although the price that was quoted to me was the best in town at that time, it still felt pretty steep. Told him that I might need a couple of days to consider, and would get back to him again.

Slept on the thought for a few days, and then went back to the shop. While I could deal with the slight softness since it is part of the lens' rendering character and adds to the overall artistry, I wanted to make sure that the AF could at least keep up with some of my subjects (the fluffy four-legged ones), so I intended to do a more rigorous test on the AF in the shop and would decide on my purchase based on that.

Once again I asked for the demo copy of the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G, played around with it in the shop, trying to finalize my decision on whether to go ahead with the purchase or not.

But what happened next was definitely fate playing its cards.

The same staff who attended to me previously told me that Sigma had recently launched a new series of lenses (their Global Vision lenses), and one of it is a 35mm f/1.4, the first in the Art line. They happened to receive a demo set earlier that day, and he mentioned that it was pretty highly rated by people who have already been testing or using it, so asked me if I wanted to give it a try as well.

Now prior to this, the only fling I had with Sigma lenses was a brief 15-minute encounter - I was trying to get a normal-range DX zoom lens in the past, and was deciding between the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 or the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 OS, but among the 3 copies of Sigma I had tested, all of them had focusing issues (jittery AF/back and front focusing), so went with Tamron at that time.

That is to say I did not exactly have the best impression of Sigma lenses then.

So even when he recommended the lens, I was still pretty wary given my prior fling with Sigma. Mounted the lens onto my camera, took a couple of shots, and immediately I forgave every single AF mishap that happened in the past

The lens was impressive - sharp even wide open at the focal plane, with a pleasing rendering as well. The AF was accurate and snappy too, especially when compared with the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G.

I think how I felt must have shown on my face, as he next told me that this lens was actually so popular that there was a long line of backorders for it. I asked for the price, and the price quoted was exactly half (ok, maybe take and give $10) of what the Nikkor cost.

It was a simple decision then - I told him to put my name on the list too.

So fast forward a month, I received a phone call from him, and went down to collect my shiny new lens. Mounted it on my camera again, and felt the same excitement as the previous time as I played back the test images on the back of the camera.

Since then, the lens had been more or less glued to my D700, used in my travels, landscape shots with friends, family events, chasing after the furry creatures at home, etc.

I have made numerous of my favorite shots with this lens.

And tons of memories.

Even though I had added several other lenses to my arsenal in the years to come, this Sigma lens was still the lens I go to most of the time, part of it being that it was the widest prime I had and gave me the most flexibility and versatility.

But alas, after I started working as a staff photographer with a studio, the pace and constraints of most of my shoots meant that a 35mm/85mm prime pair set up was not feasible, and a standard zoom was required.

I got a Sigma 24-105mm f/4 Art as my workhorse standard zoom (this will be a story for another day), and together with my telephoto zoom (was using the AF-S 70-200mm f/4G, before upgrading to the lovely AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8E) I was pretty much set for work.

With that, my 35mm started seeing less time outside the dry cabinet, as I only used it on my off days, but changes in my preferences and the presence of my workhorse zoom lens did affect the use of my equipment.

If I wanted to take landscapes, the Sigma 24-105mm f/4 covers that ground pretty well, since it is going to be stopped down anyway.

My 50mm/60mm lenses saw more action as my tastes in environmental portraits of my cats have also shifted a bit more towards the telephoto side, with the added advantage of being smaller and lighter too. The 35mm was only used when I wanted to include a lot of environmental elements into my cat portraits, which to be honest, did not happen very often.

I tried to make sure that I took the lens out every once in a while to give it a little workout, and even though every time I was still (and still am) impressed by the qualities of the images it produces, my tastes shifting towards the telephoto end does make me find myself losing touch with the 35mm focal length, and unable to frame and compose elements properly at this focal length..

With that in mind, I started dabbling with the idea of letting the lens go.

Sat on that thought for a good 5 months or so.

Thought very hard of finding a way to incorporate it into my workflow.

But it just was not feasible.

Pragmatically I started thinking of what kind of shots I would no longer be able to take, or could not be covered by other lenses. While using other lenses did not produce identical images, I did realize only a small amount of shots were unique to this lens, such as being able to do close-ups at f/1.4, which did not account for much of my photos.

With that in mind, I finally came to the heartbreaking decision to let it go.

It was not that it was a bad lens. It was a good lens. A damn good one in fact.

And it deserved better than just sitting inside my dry cabinet.

Gave it a nice last round of cleaning, packed it up, and brought it down to a used camera store downtown.

Told the receptionist that I was looking to sell the lens, and placed it on the table while they prepared the paperwork for me.

As I started filling out the paperwork, the gentleman at the reception put on his gloves, and gently placed the lens on a felt-covered tray, and told me that he would be bringing the lens to the back of the store for condition checks and testing.

And that was the last time I ever saw that lens.

After about 15 minutes or so, he came back out with only a little slip of paper indicating the results of the screening, with its rated condition and buyback price.

I agreed and signed on the slip, took the payment, and left the store.

If there was one regret, it was that I wished I could give it a proper goodbye - I wanted to at least take a snapshot of it one last time on my smartphone before it got scurried away into the back.

Dear lens, thank you so much for all the memories you have created for me, with me.

Wherever you are now, I hope you are getting your opportunities to once again create gorgeous images.

Starting a New Scribbling Spot

I have another spot to scribble down thoughts and stuff, but recently due to backend PHP errors and what not it is getting really frustrating, especially more so since I do not have direct admin control (am just leasing a bit of storage and bandwidth from a friend who owns the account).

Decided since my gallery is now at Squarespace I might as well look into the blogging tools available here and see if it is feasible to consolidate everything over here at Squarespace instead.

So, without further ado, hello world.