Be happy

Yes be happy that you aren't allergenic like me.

Don't show this picture to your children as you may end up sleepless when they get nightmares of some red-eyed monster on the loose.

This is me.

I have nothing to hide and I really don't need to be glamourous for you at this hour.

This is my reality. When some random dust mite or dust or whatever it is decides to pop by and test me _ a very allergenic being_ resulting in a pair of swollen red eyes with swollen corneas which crumple when I move my eyeballs from left to right. Yes they gather in folds.

Aside from this ever-so-often talent which I seem to have acquired, my nose starts to clog up and mucus will back-flow down my throat. With some luck, the back-flow will result in a mild asthma attack.

Needless to say I have eye drops, a nasal spray and a Ventolin inhaler on hand, backed up by anthihesthamins.

Screw you SINUSES.

Bye Bye Car

So my car was sold within a week!

Felt a little sad when it left but it's nothing like the first.

Somehow, I still hold a lot of sentimental feelings toward my other car, the Suzuki Jimny.

Nontheless this car has served me well.

Now moving on.....

Artichoke

If you are looking for refreshing tastes, comfort foods and a laid back atmosphere do drop by at a friend's restaurant. I love the place so much, if I could turn it into my home, I would. (Bjorn hint hint)

It's called Artichoke located at Sculpture Square on Middle Road.

I especially love their Risotto served during lunch. It's got the king of spices in there, and it's not too heavy.

There are loads of stuff which I still haven't tried and will be heading there once more before I hit the road for a month for an assignment where i'm sure we'll be eating at odd hours if we ever get to eat at all.

In the mean time, enjoy the shots that I helped him take. There were too many to post but i shall leave that to him when his website is up and running.

The photo shoot was fun because it was more conceptual and the chef (Bjorn) and I have a good working chemistry which is very important when you aren't shooting solo. I'm sure many of you snappers who work with graphic designers and art directors can attest to that.

When the wavelengths are aligned, we come up with art that is not only fun to look at but great to eat.

A very different type of photography that i'm used too but hey.. photographers should be able to shoot anything. But it felt like school again where you can make images that feel good without having to worry about storylines and angles.

It was refreshing.

Artichoke Cafe + Bar

Telephone : (65) 6336 6949 (reservations highly advised for weekends)

Email :

wassup@artichoke.com.sg

Address : 161 Middle Road Singapore 188978 Inside Sculpture Square (beside NAFA)

Opening Hours: mon closed tues - thurs noon - 10pm fri noon - midnight sat 11am - midnight sun 11am - 4pm

The end of that excursion

The Berlin Nakroma arrives - I see a rainbow (Home)

The crazy queue to load up and launch

A young boy waits in front of cloud clad mountains for potter work

Guido, our AP fixer looking very upset and tired. I feel the way he looks too.

Everything goes along

My most expensive 2-meters travelled

Corridor residents

So did I ever mentioned that we were bumbed off our U.N. flight from Oe-cusse enclave back to Dili?

My gawd. We were ready to leave the island which only has electricity for about 10hrs starting from 7pm and automatically switches itself off. The place is so untouched that we hardly found any available places to live in.

The rooms which we stayed in were simply furnished with beds and a toilet with some running water and a huge pail.

Which is a luxury compared to some of the places i've slept in - which includes the floors of an outdoor restaurant.

Nice for adventure and I was all for it but by this time I was tired and have been having a pretty long year at work fresh out of Thailand.

Believe you me, i'm totally for roughing things out and working in extreme conditions but by the last day, when you are mentally prepared to go home, there's no looking back.

So, we got the the air field and found out that we were bumped onto the waiting list of passenger departures because a whole group of U.N. police had to leave Oe-cusse for some meeting but I strongly believe they just wanted to get off Oe-cusse and back to Dili where the women are. A 1hr flight out otherwise there is no real decent means for getting off the island quickly.

Then we started to get desperate because we had all our gear and no more place to live. We remembered that we had a number of an Australian pilot who had chartered flights out.

Then we got the go-ahead to leave on that flight. Yes we chartered that flight out. An hour and a half after a few phone calls, we heard propellers arriving but only to get bad news that the flight which we chartered had to medi-vac some people from the hospital.

Standing there with all my luggage and camera gear with everyone else, all ready to leave and almost boarding the plane, but being rejected again left me feeling miserable.

So. The only other way out was by a 15hr ferry ride.

I had no idea what to expect.

So 4 hours later, the mother ship arrived.

I saw a group of a couple of hundred people standing by the jetty, with motorcycles, spare bike parts, cars, goats, chickens, pigs, vegetables and dogs.

IT was like NOAH's ARK.

At this point, my eyes lit up.

If we're gonna be going home the adventurous way, might as well do it all the way.

The Berlin Nakroma provides a ferry service from Oe-cusse to Dili 2x a week at USD$14 a pop.

I paid an extra $USD2 for a 2-meter boat crossing - probably the most expensive 2-meters I will ever travel in my life but I really didn't want to get wet in waist deep water.

It takes people, animals and vehicles but those without seats will sleep on the deck.

We were lucky to buy over officer's bunks because of our equipment. But when I stepped out of the door form our "rooms" I realised I was just a step away from stepping on a mother and her young baby sleeping right outside. Breasts exposed because they both had fallen asleep from the nursing.

I didn't sleep much in the end. I was enjoying the ride, the wind the sunset and the sounds of people chattering, and babies crying and the occasional goat/chicken/duck quack from below deck.

Much better than the helicopters I say. It pretty much completed my enclave adventure but i'm glad that our ship didn't get grounded for another 6 hrs from corals beneath the sea.

Will gladly do this again, but not right now. (:

5 days ago

5 days ago, it was October 20, 2010 also written as 20.10.2010

Adelino Quelo

Making our way down that steep and rocky hill with all our camera equipment for about 1.5-2km, we started complaining a little and wondering if the end was ever near.

Of course there was nothing really wrong with us except that we were tired.We - consisted of our Associated Press reporting team (TV camera man, Reporter, Fixer, Driver, and Medical Officer and I) were tired from driving off-road for about 3-hrs through mountains and across rivers to what we called the end of the earth, Melalat. A sub-district once believed to be a leprosy colony in the Oecusse enclave.

We were enroute to see one of the leprosy patients and we didn't know what to expect. Over the past couple of days, we had seen people with stubs for fingers and a man which had toes bitten off by rats and I thought it would be another one of these cases. When we reached the bottom of the mountain, we were told to climb over some fences made out of tree trunks and branches until we reached a teepee-shaped hut.

"Ohm Ohm!" I gathered our fixer was calling out to someone elderly.Instead of seeing a figure walk out, there was silence for a minute and then later, we heard shuffling but still saw nothing. A few minutes later a frail little man, folded waist down started crawling out of the hut.His name is Adelino Quelo.He may look frail and weak but his heart is strong. He was a victim of leprosy and was one of the worst cases left in Oecusse enclave.

He can't stand up or help himself in the bathroom. He had lost all his digits to leprosy and didn't have an option of cure at that time.

The moment I saw him, I felt bad for all that complaining and immediately felt guilty about complaining about the hike. What's even more amazing is this man's faith and spirit to fight on.

East Timor is predominantly Catholic so we threw him a deeper question in relation to the disease being a biblical disease.

"Are you angry at God"

But his answer was admirable. "God is in the wind. He is everywhere and he is my creator. He made me this way. If he decides that I should die today, I am ready to see Him."

He went on to talk about his beautiful wife and how she loves him so much til this day.

"I have nothing to complain about, I have a great family and a wife who loves me."

Isn't that amazing people?

If I were in his state, i'd prolly be angry at God and feeling sorry for myself but let's learn a thing or two through his attitude in life.

After that visit, I climbed up the mountain with new energy, in half the time and a better attitude to life. I also started thinking about how much more faith I need to have and my relationship with God.

Not only was Adelino a man of faith but he was a man with such a strong fighting spirit, I forgot that I was there to interview a former leprosy patient but instead I feel like he left me leaving my assignment with the questions instead.

Another reason I love my job.

See the Interactive piece here

Suzuki SX4 SOLD!

Hi all, Thank You for your enquiries but the car has been SOLD.

Also to all who re-tweeted my advert and to hubby for persuading me not to take the lazy route of selling it over to any dealer which would have fetched me a lower price.

xoxo

Maye-E

East Timor Assignment : DONE

So finally after months of interruptions, it's on the wire.

This is the story that Margie, my colleague and I put together in text and photos and in a multimedia interactive about Leprosy and the fight to eliminate the disease.

Putting a multimedia together is a lot of work and a very tedious process. Layering sounds, editing photos, piecing the story together and weaving them all together. We feel sick looking at it after a while but the results are rewarding and i'm sure the help these leprosy patients will get will be 10-fold better.

Let's just hope we did them justice.

Of course this is just in the post production.

The real learning process is the "journey" of the assignment itself - and I don't mean literally.

For best effects, please use your head phones, you will get to hear the ambient noises as well as the narrative better. Click here to see the entire interactive put together with graphics by our team!

I hope this touches you just like it did, for me, and maybe it will widen the knowledge of the world for many of us, or even encourage us in some way to not take life for granted and remember a lot of others out there who aren't as lucky as us, and most importantly, with our able bodies and comfortable settings, be able to help another in some small way.

Click here for the story by Margie Mason, AP's health writer and my partner in crime.

SX4 for Sale

Hi, anyone interested in buying a one year old Suzuki SX 4 Hatchback car.. New ones retailing for $89,000. Here's the details of the car for sale.

I've learnt in the process of selling a car on the internet that there are certain standard things to write under the headline "Features" or "Description".

Like:

1. Lady Driver (I don't know exactly what that means- worse driver or more domesticated so drives less)

2. Like New

3. Mileage

4. Registration date

5. Accident Free

Anyways, feel free to get back to me if you are interested.

For the link, click HERE Let's see if posting an advert on the internet really works.

????

Maybe this graphic was funnier when we were hung over from lethargy during the Singapore Grand Prix.. Check out his neck! I don't know about you but the moment we saw this graphic (which was breaking down the F1 driver's safety suit) i couldn't stop giggling.