Listen.

I really have nothing in mind to show this week…

Erm can I say that my dog, Xiao Bi has a rather ‘pointed’ muzzle??? I’ve always feel it that way… a bit too pointed for a Golden Retriever, I think. :/

Happy Hunting everyone!

Over the last few days, almost my whole family, especially me, my mum, and my sister-in-law, have been busy with one mission. We woke up in the morning, discussing which is the best time, deciding which outfit to go with the chosen spot, and secretly prepared for it. And when the time came, we excitedly dressed up my little niece, combed her hair, played her favourite music, prepared fan and reflective board (by my brother, the father) , and started our home-studio photo shooting sessions!

The truth is, it’s really exhausting shooting babies. @.@ At times they just won’t smile, no matter what you do. There were a few days, whereby she just refused to smile whenever she saw the camera. And then everyone there at that time turned into monkeys and clowns trying their very best to bring out that tiniest smile on her face.

And then there were times when they just won’t sit still. We used what we already have at home as backdrop but this fella just won’t sit on the spot and prefer to crawl around, either playing with her ball or trying to join the monkeys and clowns behind the scene. She just couldn’t understand that she was the focus!

It’s been almost one week of repeating funny experiences, and we are now one step away from getting her homemade photo album ready. It’s supposed to be one of the highlights during her upcoming birthday in less than two weeks. Here are a few handpicked photos that I like. More can be seen in my Flickr. Most of them have undergone some editing, particularly those taken during the first two days, as we were still lost with the lighting and so. And to the Mac users out there, iPhoto can really come in handy at times like this!

Although I’m not very particular about this, but once in a while I got quite curious on how many readers actually visit this blog. My initial intention of having a blog is to keep a record of my personal secrets *ahem* but looking at the fact that I don’t really have a lot of secrets to share, this blog has turned out to be more of a life-sharing one. Oh well. That’s me.

Some time back I was playing around with the RSS feed - you know, I’m really not good with all these seed-feed thingy and honestly, I still don’t know how it actually works. It’s though, happy to see the subscribers count goes up day by day - or rather month by month. LOL. I’m waiting for the day when I can proudly showcase the count on the sidebar.

And then I was trying to know if the readers are actually more into subscribing to RSS or just simply bookmarking the URL. Hence I created a survey but oh well, it didn’t went so well.

Today I found out something new to reach the readers. It’s a FREE email marketing tool for bloggers. Yeah FREE. While it claims to be an alternative to blog feed subscription, it seems to me to be a potentially useful tool to reach readers in a more pro-active way. You get to design your own email template (which is what I like best!) or choose their existing ones, and then schedule to broadcast to your subscribers in either one-off, or recurring, say, everyday, every week, or every month. And what does it do? To tell the readers that your blog is updated, of course.

It also offers real-time reports, which, I’m normally lazy to read through and analyse. LOL. Yeah I’m lazy, I know that. But I try to do it once in a while, like once a fortnight. LOL.

Oh and by the way, it access mobile users by emailing blog content in text format too. Sounds good hor? I think I’m giving it a try. Let me know if it’s good to you as readers or have I SPAM-ed you too much.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention the name… it’s Zookoda. Check them out if you are a blogger and wanna reach your readers.

As Satkuru was asking me of what I was going to post for this week’s theme, I dug around some photos taken early this morning and found a few that seem to be quite suitable. We were trying to snap some home-made studio photos for my little niece and compile into a nice, pretty photo album for her upcoming birthday. But this morning itself, I tried to use the glass door to our small garden as the background, and with no surprise, the background was too bright.

Here is she in her ladybird outfit, from my aunt. LOL.

While some of the photos were not usable, some just need some minor editing in iPhoto. We’ll be taking more photos with her in other outfit and hopefully, we can complete it on time.

Happy Hunting everyone!

Yesterday both me and DARL took a day off because his sister was coming to Penang for a day tour with three of her friends - one from Taiwan, one from Ipoh, and another from Malacca. The locals knew each other at work as air stewardess and they somehow knew the lady from Taiwan.

Apparently they were having city tour around Malaysia. They will be leaving today and the next stop would be Ipoh. They arrived around noon yesterday and me and DARL went meeting them at Dorsett Hotel. First stop, food of course. So we took them to the famous Sister’s Char Koay Teow. To be honest, it was the first time for me too. Well maybe because I’m not really a fan of Char Koay Teow and big prawns. I was too busy eating and was kinda ‘phai seh‘ to shoot photos of the food while our guests were eating.

After that, DARL thought of bringing them to the Butterfly Farm. The ladies didn’t have much opinions at first but when we arrived there, they started to say that they actually wanted durians, and we eventually found out that their main purpose was actually food! LOL. So we drove up Balik Pulau and first arrived at the Tropical Food Fruit Farm. I was believing that they had this buffet meals but apparently durians were only offered as a testing and according to them, the durians weren’t so fresh. :/ So we left the place (with the boss cursing us I think ) and went to a nearby roadside-stall. This is the only time I got to shoot some photos because… I don’t eat durians!!!

While the ladies were busy checking out the stall, DARL’s sister who was also not into durians saw a unexpected guest…

See the snake? It was sleeping just right on top of the place where you were supposed to wash your hands. LOL.

The durians. There were only four of them eating (including DARL) but they ordered quite a big portion and ended up very full.

Since I was never a durian-fan, this was also my first time there. Check out the choices of durians available. And btw, they have weird names.

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