Sunday, August 31, 2008

Emerge 2008 Talent Time

Emerge 2008 so far was great, although I'm a bit tired, I'm a happy man. Anyway, the talent time was held yesterday. The talent time was divided into several category - vocal, song-writing, band, dance, and free style. Here are a few photos of a few bands that I really enjoyed.

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The lighting was great as shown in this photo ( I forgot who's the performer here, haha )

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Ambrosia (vocal : Joey) representing Local U cluster !

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Hunter from VU cluster in the song-writing category. I really liked the song and I managed to find a video of Hunter performing his song during their semifinals.



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This girl has really great vocal, she was competing in the vocal category

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This guy was ultra-cool, during the entire song, he didn't even smile for a bit (vocal category)

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Not forgetting some artsy-fartsy photo. Exposure 1 second (yeah I can hold my hand steady for 1 second)

At the time of writing, the winner hasn't been announced, it'll only be announced during the Emerge Grand Finale. Woohoo..

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Dreaming of First class on the A380

As an aviation nut, I bookmarked Airliners.net and check for "cool" photos on the site everyday. This week, I drooled over some interior shots of Emirates Airlines Airbus A380. The pictures of economy class are nice, but honestly who really likes economy class ? Frankly, I was having plane-gasm when I looked at those first class suites' photos.

For those aviation illiterate, A380 is the latest and BIGGEST double decker passengers airliners. Here are the photos :

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This is Airbus A380 landing at JFK international airport, NY

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The first class suite of Emirates A380(with the bed folded down)

Whenever I played Flight Simulator (on my pc), I usually leave it on autopilot while cruising and then go to take my bath, sleep or doing my chores. Well, before A380, whenever you are traveling long-distance, you have to sit down on your seat the entire time and the only thing that you can do is either sleeping, eating or watching some crappy in-flight movies. Let's say that you are a CEO of a multinational company and you forget to take your bath before your flight to New York, fret not, now you can take your bath in flight.

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The bathroom for first class suite

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The bar for first class passengers. I wonder how those stuffs gonna hold on during turbulence

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The stairways to heaven the upper deck

Let's compare with the little red dot airlines, Singapore Airlines, which operates A380 as well.

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Fish eye view of the first class suite of Singapore Airlines A380. No sex here please, we are Singaporean.

Double bed, checked, free flow of champagne, checked, BUT no sex allowed ! Only God knows what those Singaporeans were thinking.

Moving on, after being impressed by the Emirates Airlines A380, I decided to pay their website a visit.

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The frontpage of Emirates website

So, I remember I have holiday during the month of November, so maybe I could travel to New York for two weeks ?

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From Dubai (DXB) to New York(JFK) on the First Class

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The price quoted was AED 36530.

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Of course, they have this thing called currency converter which converts AED to MYR which showed RM 32081.

Then when I wanted to proceed to confirm my flight itinerary...
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Dang, blame the Emirates IT team for their loss of RM 32081 worth of business deal.

Friday, August 22, 2008

How to improve the Olympics

It's not that I do not like Michael Phelps or something, but it's just seems like something is wrong with the current Olympics. I mean, Michael Phelps got 8 gold medals from swimming alone while for soccer (the most popular sport in the world) the winner only get 1 medal for them to share between 11 guys (plus the reserve) ?

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Anyway, do you want to know why Michael Phelps won so many golds ? Because it was all the same thing. It turns out that he can swim real fast when he swims one lap, two laps, four laps - alone, or when 3 other guys go right after him. You want to win multiple medals, fine, join another events. By another events I mean something other than swimming, like gymnastics or judo.

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Photos from Mark J Rebilas (check out his site, damn artsy-fartsy olympic photos and great travel stories)

To improve the competitiveness of Olympics, the International Olympics Committee, IOC should introduce the "shame-dal", which is for the worst three athletes in each events. The country with the most "shame-dal" will be kicked out of U.N., stamped "loser" on the passport for the next 4 years wherever they go, lose any war they're currently waging(if any). On the other hand, the winner of the Olympics should get something more realistic, e.g. the citizens can visit another country without visa, the rights to put it's flag on each airplanes in the world, permission to own nuclear weapons etc.

And to determine the best Olympians or the sportsman or whatever they called it, all the athletes will have to live under one roof and complain about one another to the cameras. The athletes with the most complains will be the best Olympian.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The random Lawrenz project

Not so long ago, I blogged about the random sombrero guy. Well, a few days ago, due to insomnia, I was going through my photo library and found photo of me in simpsons style. Basically, you just upload your photo to sodomize simpsonize me and it will show what you will look like if you are a character in the simpsons.


Anyway, the random Lawrenz project is a project where I'll put the simpsonized version of me into some random photos. Here are a few examples :

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Lawrenz spotted during gig with indie band Hujan

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Lawrenz during photoshoot with the Beatles

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Lawrenz spotted during the Nov 10 2007 Bersih rally

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Lawrenz also spotted from the reflection during the moon landing

For the complete collection, just go to my facebook album (you can view even though you dont have facebook).

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The magic hour

Yesterday, as I was doing my freelance assignment at KLCC, I managed to reserve the "magic" hour so I can shoot some photos of KLCC. Since I got my DSLR, I've never pointed my camera to the twin towers as I've seen far too many photos of the twin towers around.

In photography, the "magic" hour refers to the short time frame where the sun has set and the sky is glowing colourfully. Back in my hometown KK, the magic hour is around 6.20 pm (+- 10 mins). However, due to geographical location, the magic hour in KL is around 7.35 pm.


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This was taken at KK waterfront at around 6.20 pm

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Airplane and towers don't go well together

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Narcissism is one of the characteristic of bloggers

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I don't know why, but I keep on using this technique lately

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Roger that, the magic hour is indeed at 7.37 pm

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Done !

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Past the magic hour, the sky is pitch black

Friday, August 15, 2008

Emerge Bowling Competition

Last week I participated in the Emerge bowling competition which was organized by CHC. It was held at Holiday Villa Subang, where I played against my fellow church members from another cluster. I represent the local uni (local u + ktar & utar) cluster against VU (varsities universities), MINT (Monash Inti Nilai & Taylors).

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Before the competition began, me and Hon Kiet (person in charge of the bowling team) and another bowler camwhore around the resort.


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You don't mess with Lawrenz

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Can you imagine I was jumping around before the competition..

Anyway, I left all my bowling equipments at Sabah, so I have to make do with the house ball and shoes. But for the first game, I got like 200+ pin fall and from that moment on, I knew I could take this one out. Long story short, I won the competition, but not without a fight. On the semifinal, I was losing 30-40 points to my opponent (it was 1 vs 1 format) at the 5th frame, but I managed to recover and striking my way to the final.

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Angeline was my high school senior at Tshung Tsin, we used to represent our school together last time (what a small world), and Roy, my opponent at semifinal.

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(L-R) Angeline, Nickey (cluster leader), the great bowler, and Hon Kiet.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Olympics events you might not know

The Beijing Olympic 2008 has officially kicked off yesterday. You can expect to see a lot of pictures in the coming days on the mass media.

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However, this time for Malaysian, it's more unique as the government has offered RM 1 million for Malaysian athlete who managed to bring home a gold medal.

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In mass media, the events that you'll find are most probably are those "boring" events like badminton, swimming, running etc. However, only in The L-oh-rama, you'll read these very low profile events as listed below.


1. 1.1km hurdle driving

Contestants have to drive in a 1.1km long track where there will be tables and chairs lying around (International Olympic Committee has yet to confirm whether there will be humans sitting on the chairs). The fastest driver wins, extra bonus for drivers who don't hit any "hurdles".

Chances of winning (for Malaysia) : 98 %

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2. 1 km Bus sprint

In this event, athletes (a.k.a. drivers) have to drive a bus (the size of rapid kl bus) full of people (with a few people dangling on the bus door) along a 1 km track where the fastest athlete wins.

Chances of winning : 89 %


3. 4 km SMS driving

In sms driving event, the athlete has to drive a car while composing a short message which will be provided by the organizer during the day of the competition. The track is 4km long.

Chances of winning : 93 %


4. DVD sellers 4x400m relay race

In this event specially for dvd sellers (especially from petaling street), in a team of 4, will run for 400m each person, extra bonus for athletes shouting "DVD PANAS !" while running.

Chances of winning : 88 %


5. Long spit

This event is almost same as long jump, however, in this event, instead of jumping, athlete will have to spit. The winner is the athlete who spits the furthest with the biggest spit.

Chances of winning : 85 %


Stay tuned and bookmark this site more events and results which will be posted as soon as we get the results "live" from China.


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And by the way, if you feel like you have nothing better to do, then please look at the right hand side bar and complete the survey. All the information collected are confidential and anonymous.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Passion World Tour : KL

The passion world tour at KL was awesome ! A blog post wouldn't do it a justice, it's something that you must experience yourself to know the real feel. But I'll post a few photos here for your viewing pleasure. On another note, when I was queuing up, the official photographer for the Passion world tour approached me and asked me for my portrait. Armed with a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark 3 (worth RM 30k) , and (most probably) Canon 17-40L lens, he shot me. In that moment, I feel like I'm the Top 100 sexiest men alive. Anyway, here are the photos.

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We need to exchange our ticket for this wrist band and a poster

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A couple of people who are losing their way as they were looking upwards when they walk

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Stairways to heaven haha..

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The crowd

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The entrance

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The stage

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Trying some artsy fartsy style

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This photo was achieved by zooming in when shutter was open

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Same style as the above

When the concert began, I put my camera away to enjoy the whole thing. So, that's all.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Who the heck is Beau Bristow ?

I love music, to put it more clearly, I love live music, especially those unplugged and acoustic, where you just chill out and enjoy the vibe from the songs.

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(This has nothing to do with Beau Bristow) This was an acoustic performance by the church members of CHC

Songs from album, however, are too "clean" to my liking. I prefer to listen to something where the musicians were playing by the heart (as I do play some instruments and I play by heart, haha) and the vocalist will try to render the song a bit differently.

Anyway, as I attended Connexion student conference at Pj on friday, which after that there was a mini concert by this dude from US called Beau Bristow at connexion BU. He is a singer, songwriter and a guitarist. He's got an acoustic guitar, and a boxful of passbox and effects filter. At the end of the chain was an electronic unit that can record and playing it over and over again. So, in his 1 man band, he can create the sound of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, drum (by banging his guitar), and backup singer as well. His performance on the night was awesome by the way, though I don't have any video or photos of him performing, I managed to find a video of Beau Bristow on youtube.



In the end of the day, I bought his album for only RM10, where the songs in the album were a bit "clean". But no complaint though, it's very nice and I give it two thumbs up.

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