First Time in Europe

In May 2010, I finally made it to Europe! I was planning to travel to Europe in 2004 when the SARS outbreak came about and I had to cancel the trip. It has been six long years before I finally fulfilled my dream of travelling to Europe. Although I only visited Germany (Munich and Frankfurt), Austria (Salzburg) and Switzerland (Basel, Bern, Interlaken, Zurich), I really enjoyed the scenery and the experience of free-and-easy travelling.

When in Germany, I attended a wonderful wedding of Julia and Dominique Walter in Munich and stayed with a friend, Christina and her wonderful family, in Freigericht. Christina and her boyfriend, Sebastian, are very kind to spend their precious weekend bringing us sightseeing, shopping and to taste the local specialty food! They are the BEST tour guide one could hope for!

Christina's parents (Fred and Melitta Bayer) are very kind too. They not only let us stay in their lovely home, every morning we get a big breakfast too! There are variety of bread, sausages, and homemade jam! Christina also has a wonderful Oma (grandmother)! When she saw my jacket is torn, she insisted on mending it for me 11pm plus! She is very creative too, she showed us how to make paper carrier bag the wonderful Christmas cards she made over the years. I’m sure people who received her cards would be very delighted. The warm hospitality of Christina's family gave me a "home-away-from-home" feeling! I hope one day, I will be able to go back to visit Christina’s family again!

Switzerland is a country with lots of beautiful scenery. I travelled through Basel, Bern, Interlaken and Zurich and the scenery never failed to impress me! During my stay in Grindelwald, I lived in a Jungfrau Lodge and right outside my window I have a spectacular view of the majestic mountain ranges! How I wished I could live there forever! The only problem in Switzerland is the cost of living, everything is so expensive. A plate of roast pork rice cost $23.00 Swiss Franc! For that price, I could eat at least seven or eight plates of roast pork rice at hawker centers in Singapore! Well, I guess that is the price to pay for living in such a beautiful place.

It is coming to a month since I returned to Singapore and I only managed to edit 4 days of pictures and upload it on my Facebook. There are still eleven more days of photos to edit. Here are a few pictures taken on the first four days of my Europe trip.

The Helix and MBS

Yesterday was Labour Day and the first weekend for our newly open Marina Bay Sands (MBS) Integrated Resort. As usual, I went to explore the new place and to take some pictures. I took the MRT from Bras Basah to Promenade Station after buying some stuff from Sim Lim Square. Then walk from Promenade to MBS across the Helix Bridge.

When I reached Raffles Avenue, there were thousands of people walking around and crossing the Helix Bridge in the scorching sun! I think the temperature must be around 34-35 degree because it is really burning hot! It was a cloudless day and the sky is very blue, which is superb from a photography point of view.

There are countless photos opportunities at crowded places. You can take pictures of families enjoying their outing, older folks strolling along on crunches or wheel-chairs, couples walking hand-in-hand and snapping pictures of each other on compact cameras or their mobile phone. As usual, there were enthusiastic kids running ahead of their parents, lazy kids who wanted to be carried and sleeping babies in prams. There were also many foreigners and foreign workers taking the May Day holiday to visit the MBS.

Guess what?! Even Elvis Presley was there in Viva Las Vegas style, but luckily he did not sing “Heartbreak Hotel” otherwise no one would want to stay at the hotels! When I was taking Elvis and his partner, I heard a crowd of man said, “Wow, got Elvis Presley leh!” Strangely though, when I peeked at their camera, all I saw was Elvis’s partner, the Viva Las Vegas lady, being framed. Well, man will be man, who does not like to see beautiful lady.

I heard on the news that during normal weekday, there were long queue of Taxi but no passenger before the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) operation around 4pm. Thereafter, there were long queue of passengers but no Taxi because all the Taxi is not willing to pay the $3 ERP entrance fee to pick up passenger after 4pm. Yesterday was a public holiday, there wasn’t any ERP in Operation, hence there were many Taxi and the passenger queue is moving very fast despite the large crowd of people. The bus stops were also packed, so after taking photos around the Bay Front, I walked all the way back to Funan Digital Mall to take a bus home.

Here are some pictures taken on my Olympus EP-2 and a Panasonic 14-45mm lens.

Drifting with Olympus EP-2

Last weekend, I was down at the Singapore F1 Pit to take photos of the Drifting competition. A huge crowd had already gathered at the arena when I reached. As I'm lazy to carry my DSLR and long lens, I have to slowly inch my way through the crowd to get a better view.

There were many photographers with state of the art cameras and super telephoto lenses and they were rather annoyed with me as I inched my way to the front. I'm much bigger and taller than most of them and though they were standing on top of a two steps ladder, I probably still managed to block some of their view. When I turn around, I could see many angry faces staring back at me. I guess they were even more disgusted when I open my bag and took out a compact Olympus EP-2 camera. Luckily no one hit me with their super telephoto lenses!

Well, I couldn't help it, I'm also there to take photos and I would like to have a good view too. Those people on the two steps ladder were also blocking the rest of the people behind them. The only thing I could do is to duck down after taking a shot and let those behind me take their photos.

The Olympus EP-2 is very compact and light-weight camera. It is very good for sceneries, portraits and travel photography but it is too slow sport photography. I ended up having to pan in order to get reasonably sharp photos of the cars. Well, I guess there is no "perfect tool", as long as we understand the limitation and learn to overcome it, then it is still a great tool to use! Following photos were taken on my Olympus EP-2 camera with either a Panasonic 45-200mm lens or a Panasonic 7-14mm lens.