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WARNING: 26 PICTURES AHEAD.

We’ve had a homecoming potluck party for Suet yesterday night, with Esther and I tumpang-ing Andy’s car to go to her house at about 7.45pm. I brought along some 40 pieces of mini currypuffs my neighbour next door, Kak Sue, cooked for me on my request (paid her RM10, shared between me and Heng), and my DSLR kit in a snuggy Tamron bag (could’ve been better) to test out.

In fact, just two hours before leaving I took a slight break from reading up my Macroeconomics book and finally, for the first time since my Nissin Speedlite Di622 flash unit arrived a few days before, I opened the manual and read it wtf. I had to be prepared since being new to the DSLR world and all, I hardly knew all the necessary functions of my own flash unit, and played with it for a while in my room.

While waiting for Andy, my youngest brother requested that I snap pics of him and I obliged:

Very cute, but it wasn’t as sharp as I had hoped, probably due to the low-light conditions (had to Photoshop it later with Smart Sharpen).

Another shot of my cute bro near the Malaysian flag (yes we have a big one hanging in the garden ‘cause my bro insisted on having it there). The above two pics were taken with a 50mm f/1.8 II lens. Love the bokeh (photography term from a Japanese word meaning background blur).

When we arrived, Geok Leng and Sarah were already there, and then Ding came alone after the three of us.

Esther, Sarah, Ding, Geok Leng. First picture of the potluck party taken using bounce flash, and the results were professionally stunning :) (to me lah anyway).

Then Shawn and Heng arrived.

Shawn, Andy, Sarah, Ding’s legs wtf.

Many of the pics that follow are snapped by my friends who were incredibly trigger happy and I had to wade through the 100+ pics and remove those I consider as rubbishy. But in the end I kept most of them wtf ‘cause I don’t know if I should remove memorable snapshots even if the pics turned out to be ugly, never mind that each pic is now roughly 3-4MB in size thanks to the larger megapixel resolution and that I’m mostly shooting in Fine, rather than using Normal quality.

Esther and me.

Geok Leng, Ding, Esther, me.

Sarah.

Esther – head-on flash turned her into a little doll of sorts.

Shawn expressing dissatisfaction towards Heng.

Suet Teng and her friends (Fatin and Raessa) were already in preparation for the moment when Suet, Jason, and their mum would walk through the door. We were contemplating a variety of plans to surprise her but ended up sticking to the original.. because it seemed to work best.

SURPRISE!!! Hahaha I love Suet Teng’s raised arms and Mrs Liew’s mock/genuine surprise look.

Suet peering in.

Suet screaming, “Don’t take my picture I look very ugly ah!”.

So at about 8.30pm we could finally sink our teeth into our dinner.

The lovely explosion of tasteful colours on the cupcakes that Suet Teng had designed herself. The whole assortment said “Welcome to M’sia” or something.

We had Thai Fried Rice (Andy’s), satay (from Esther, Sarah, Geok Leng, Jess), currypuffs (mine and Heng’s), char kuey teow (Mrs Liew’s), and apparently failed agar-agar (Shawn and Ding’s). Only Esther, me, and Jon seemed to like the agar-agar as the rest (including Shawn) said that the Ribena part was too sour.

Shawn’s middle finger pose.

A mini group picture – ugly head-on flash, Shawn asked to remove the external flash ‘cause it was too heavy wtf (ironic coming from a big guy wtf).

Andy and Shawn’s yum photo.

A few souvenirs that Suet brought back, the one on the left for Jess and the one on the right Andy took LOL.

Welcome back banner.

Shawn with the Mini Zen Calligraphy Board that Suet got for me.. with his new name written on it. (My intended focusing was on Shawn and not the board, but didn’t realise the mistake until I uploaded the pics ‘cause the LCD screen didn’t show this nagging bit of detail – or I could’ve overlooked it altogether.)

The lot of us.

Heng and Suet.

Joe, Jon, Ryui Bynn, and Jess dropped by separately as time went on.

Us laughing at a filler TV programme Just For Laughs.

Queen of camwhores managing a perfect self-taken pic with a heavy DSLR. Damn cantik lighting hmm I wonder whose camera was used wtf.

Ryui Bynn. We’ve also had a joke going about the fei kei jings in our group that if Ding’s a Firefly (for FFK-ing yesterday’s lunch with me and Andy wtf and it ended up with me and Andy eating at Tien Tien Fatt), Shawn’s an Airbus A380, RB would be a NASA rocket LOL.

Suet pretending to talk on the phone.

And that’s all we had to go back ‘cause Suet was already tired from the jetlag and had spent 24 hours on the plane. We then went to Melur USJ 19 for a bite and reached home at 1am.

I think I should stop with all the photography-speak like bokeh, bounce flash, 50mm f/1.8 lens wtf in my entries from now on because most of you probably wouldn’t understand them, much less care about ‘em. But I still have light years away to perfect my photos and I need all the comments and criticisms I could get (*hint to Raymond wtf).

I liked how some of the pics turned out (maybe I should start numbering them too hmm) – personal favourites include the ones of my bro (more because of the model than anything else :)), first potluck party picture, cupcakes, and food on the table.

This is the beginning of my new voyage into the limitless horizon of the photography world, and I’m excited at the prospect.