First off, let me mention that a tropical thunderstorm is not merely rain. It is probably closer to standing under a waterfall in pretty much full flow rather than a ‘down pour’.

I enjoy a good rain. Having lived in the tropics all my life, rain is usually a welcome treat as it lowers the temperature and as a kid, reduced my chores too (one of my tasks was to water the garden, heh). To me, rain is a reason to celebrate. I never shy away from soaking in a good shower and do nor run of hide when it drizzles. many a days, I bike right through in the rain and it is refreshing if you try it out.

This morning started out pretty warm. I was under the impression that the commute was going to be another sweaty one and I have to spend an additional minute or so in cold water to cool down after the ride. It was sunny from the east and it seemed that the west end was cloudy. I was happy that I might avoid the sun for at least part of my ride. But about 5Km into the ride, the rain started and very rapidly turned into a roaring thunderstorm.

That’s the beauty of weather in these parts. Very rarely do we have prolonged phases of drizzle that so irritates the soul and causes mass depression. The  climate changes rapidly and as I am typing this it is so sunny and hot,  that the earlier floods have dried up without a trace. Anyway, i digress…

So I approached the storm expecting it to be ok. Soon I realized that the sunglasses (with orange tint for night time visibility) have been enduring prolonged abuse and has been peeling over the past weeks. If you ever have had peeling plastic in wet weather, you might know that it is not in anyway water repellent. On the contrary, it retains moisture and water within the cracks and makes seeing through almost impossible. So the sunglasses had to go to the top of my head. Then the full impact of the storm hit me. The droplets were large and fast and never missed the eyes. My head was soaking wet and water was pouring through the temples and onto the eyes. I had to squint to prevent water entering my eyes and try to focus on the traffic in front and back. It is interesting in its own way, I should mention.

In the past year or so, I have completely stopped using a helmet and instead use a ‘buff’ for protection from the sun. I guess a helmet with a visor might have helped today but judging from the amount of water, I doubt it, I would probably have needed one of the wide brimmed hats.

Next came the floods. Singapore has great infrastructure but occasionally, the rains can get too large for even the best drainage systems and flash floods are frequent (especially in low lying areas). But I was still surprised by the amount of water on main arteries leading in to the city and too often, my wheels were at least a foot under water. Thank goodness for my Ortliebs. I trust them so much that it never occurred to me to stop and check if things were fine. I just assumed my clothes will be dry (and my wallet and phone) and was not disappointed.

I have fenders and flaps on my bike but they do not help if you are riding in a foot deep pond and my shoes got soaking wet and dirty from all the grime and rubbish kicked off from the street.

Next came the vehicles that pass by at extreme speeds in the rain. A curious observation, it seems that the heavier it rains, the faster cars  go. I suppose they do not understand the concept of hydroplaning or may be don’t really care. I suppose the reason has to do with the fact that the traffic gets congested when it rains and everyone is trying to avoid a jam or catching up after being stuck in one. Either way, it does not help since they are going to be late anyway. All they ended up doing was kick up enough water to spray me on my face, head and above. Frequently, I was dealt with a strong wave kicked up by a passing car or a bus. And they don’t really seem to care.

I have been riding in the rain many a times but this was probably the heaviest till date. Crosswinds are not fun when your wheels are a feet below water and I guess overall the experience was, I should say, interesting.

Would I venture out in thunderstorms again? I suppose it does not matter much, as long as you know how to manage the road and the traffic, it should be fine. Just need to fix my glasses and I should be ready for the next one…

One of my frequent blog haunts is the one written by al. I enjoy his stories much and dream of travelling on weekend jaunts around some of the places he has been to. Apart from bieng a good writer / story teller, oldy is also an exceptional photographer. Check out his photo essays when you have time. I especially enjoyed the one on his trip to Lake Toba and it very high on my to-do lists when I can sneak a week off work. One of these days, I promise myself.

In a recent post, he mentioned this nice looking set of islands off the South coast of Singapore. Looks perfect for a weekend run out of the country and enjoy a day or two of camping and riding. Seems like a perfect way to go out there and enjoy the outdoors without obsessing over preparations. Must. Visit. A. Few. Islands. This. Year.

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Update: realized that the Grand daddy of exploring biking around Singapore has made a mention of Kundur too.

Sorry guys if you have been trying to comment on this site. By some strange vodoo, some settings were lost and ended up insisting users needed to be logged in.

Everyone is welcome to comment now and I just need you to type in basic info (which should be cached on your browser) to protect myself from spam. House is back in order and ready for guests…

As most should be aware by now, Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest today.

I grew up listening to MJ and have fond memories of singing along with his songs with my brothers while cleaning up the front porch or washing my bike or other household chores thrown at me by my folks. blasting MJ while working almost transported me out of the job in hand and I would forget when / how the job got completed.

I am a loyal fan and though his latest album Invincible did not live up to the high expectations we  set for him, I found a few gems in them that I do enjoy listening often. I love the fact that he innovated extensively and brought MTV to main stream and at the same time, could stun the listener with his soulful ballads. I personally love his ballads and at times try to ape his singing style (pretty much without any success).

I guess I could try to make a list of my favorite songs but I’d rather forget the list and go back to listening his albums back to back and relive my teen years.

I was really hoping MJ would be able to release another album ad return to prime form once again before he retires but I guess that was never meant to be. But although MJ (The King of Pop) is dead, his music will live on… And if I we you, I would dig out that album in you closet and listen to it again and appreciate the mastery of voice. Or if you prefer watching him gyrating with Naomi Campbell, head to YouTube.

If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, update its OS to 3.0. The spotlight feature for ‘desktop’ search is revolutionary. it is such an ye opener to me, and I love it to search for contacts rather than opening the contact app, looking for the search bar and typing it.

The best part is, when you switch to spotlight, the app opens instantly, the cursor is in the search box and the keyboard is ready. So it reduces a 5 step operation to 1. Insane!

Additionally, I use it to search for music. looking for a specific artist or a song was painful (even though the iPod app interface is very cool and effective). Spotlight pushes the usability with a 1 step operation (2 if you have to scroll).

Really, you got to try it to realize how cool it is.

That was a long while. More than a month I suppose since I posted last. A combination of trouble with word press, lethargy, and lack of things to discuss led to the hiatus.

Recently, I have been impressed by the increase in the number of commuters on bike. Some of them I tend to see on a regular basis, heading towards city for work in the morning and heading back home in the evening. I have been generally glad that people are doing their bit to reduce congestion on the roads and gaining fitness and karma points in the bargain.

That is until now. There are a few regular bike riders at my work place. Most are commuters from a nearby MRT (train station) and ride a few blocks in bat up rusty bikes. Thy seem to have little worry about theft and leave the bike, most of the times, unlocked. I do not have any secure bike parking facility and have been repurposing a lighting mast to secure my bike. Adding to that, a continuous presence of security at the work facility, gives me confidence that my bike will remain safe.

Additional to the lighting mast, there is no other place object I can improvise for securing. I had a nagging feeling, it is a matter of time when I will be challenged for the space. And competition did come. In the form of not one but 2 bikes taking over both sides of the mast. Now I am being orphaned (unless, of course, I find a solution to bring my bike into my work facility ). it is kind of a bitter-sweet reaction I have… On the one hand, it is nice to know that there are others who are biking too and on the other, the consequence of congestion in parking space makes me worry.

Well, may be it is about time, I started to ping the management to look into providing some proper bike parking facilities for the benefit of all… there should be strength in numbers. I just hope I can regain a secure bike park soon…

Another Deep zoom composition. As you can see, the technology is not only useful to show off panoramas but one can shoot images at different resolutions and layer them to bring out more details. Microsoft site does a better job of showing off this technology, but here is my attempt.

I should have carried my tripod to get the best possible sharpnedd but unfortunately I did not. High ISO, hand held shots in extremely low light are not the ideal combination. But Still I like this…

The insets are amazing pieces of art and a dying one at that. My dad managed to find working artists practicing the art-form and commissioned these images. Good collection to have.

Technical Details:
Shot with 35mm f/2.0 and the insets are shot with 105mm f/2.5 AIS lenses. All handheld on a D200.

Another deepzoom image You can say, I like to make panorama’s.

The trouble with tea estates is that there is too much green wherever you look and it is difficult to see good photo opportunity. Especially when you are walking about with a 35mm lens. So I resorted to looking at wide vistas and given I knew I could stitch images and get a good shot, I decided to go for it and shot numerous sequences to be stitched.

Back to this image, the nice 400-500 ft Rock face look very enticing if you are a rock climber and if there had been an op, I would have tried my hands (and legs) at climbing. But the reality is that climbing this rockface is exclusive to the local Irula Tribes (the natives of Nilgiri mountains). They climb this often to get hold of bee hives and harvest honey. You cannot see beehives in this shot but just to the right were a few nicely developed bee colonies ripe for harvest and the locals climb with improvised creeper / rope ladders.

Technical details for those interested:

• Shot using D200 with 35mm f/2.0 AIS lens.
• Stitched with a really cool panorama stitching tool (hugin).
• 5 images shot from bottom to top.
• Some minor adjustments made with lightroom to match exposure and white-balance. Hugin has options to match exposures when you process the images for stitching, I decided to match them manually when pre-processing though.
• One of the shots turned to be slightly out of focus, you will see when you zoom deep in.
• About 12 MB jpeg file made into a deepzoom object using free deepzoom creation tool from Microsoft.

On a separate note, hugin allows a lot of control on stitching the panorama and though a bit more tedious than using photoshop elements, I prefer the output from hugin.

Enjoy exploring.

I love deepzoom. I posted an earlier image out of my window to try out the technology. It is pretty addictive

So when I went to Coonoor recently, I shot a bunch of panoramic images hoping to stitch them and share. Here is one of them…

I don’t have equipment to shoot a technically perfect panorama but flaws aside, I think the technology allows to share extremely large images with exceptional details. Enjoy exploring the nice vista and have fun finding all the flaws…

To those interested, the panorama is made of 21 raw files and stitched together in photoshop elements. Each image was shot on a Nikon D200, with a 35mm f/2 AIS manual Nikkor lens. I shot them in a sequence by standing in approximately the same place and turning a bit for each shot. Shot hand held and approximately the same exposure settings. Had to adjust exposure to match the brightness of each shot. Some minor exposure adjustments (eye balling) were made in Photoshop Lightroom. The stitched image it a 500MB Photoshop (psd) file and when saved as a high quality jpeg, is about 70MB. Converted using the deepzoom composer and hosted on this site.

Had a short run out of the country to India for the week. vacations are always good especially when company is good and you get to meet good people. In all a good trip to recharge the batteries.

Have a bunch of nice images to show but will stat with one that I kind of like, it is jubilant and colorful and has little girls dancing. Cant ask for better (apart from a better camera for iPhone).