A mere 8 weeks ago, Grace and I were stepping off a plane in Istanbul, throughly amazed by the architecture and people. We were there on assignment for a shoot with Edwin & Dawn, a lovely Malaysian couple with a passion for Turkey.
Over the 2 week period we were there, I documented faces, activities and locations, then stitched the footage together into a video. Here’s my mini-documentary from the first week’s footage (perhaps I’ll do another edit, if time permits).
Travel has always been food for my soul. I absolutely love seeing new places, meeting fascinating people, experiencing different cultures, and eating the local cuisine. Every time I travel, I recharge. I get inspired. I am alive.
Turkey, just like its spices, adds a lot of flavour to my life. The people here are friendly and always willing to strike a conversation with you. Even if they are trying to sell you something, I don’t feel harassed, like some other countries I’ve been to. I love the feeling of the old meeting the new. Walking into buildings centuries old brings me back to ancient Bible times and makes me wonder how life was really like then.
A kaleidoscope of colours, smell and taste. I did not imagine India to be anything else but interesting. In my list of countries to visit, India is definitely not one of my top 10. But at the end of June 2010, I had a taste of India. AND, felt the burning heat of the sun, all 40 degrees of it. I was in India for a corporate shoot. 8 days, 4 internal flights, many hours on the road and 5 cities later, I felt I had seen two different sides to India.
On one hand, you have poverty…
Children with growths on their heads, young girls who barely look like teenagers holding on to babies, begging on the streets…
And then you have development…
Fancy buildings that look so futuristic. Offices with coloured glass windows. High end apartments that only few can enjoy.
What a contrast.
A few days ago, we started our first day down the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Together with Jenny & Ju, we rented a car for our coastal road trip. The rental of the car costs about RM1,500 for about 5 days. Each driver you register incurs extra cost. I suppose it’s because of insurance coverage. So Ju and Alex were the designated drivers for the trip. Firstly, it’s important to get your orientation right. It takes a while to adjust to driving on the right side of the road. So Ju made some little reminders, just in case…
The coast on the way to Santa Cruz was just beautiful. We had excellent weather even though it was a little chilly with the breeze.
Alex clowning around as usual.
Alex showing off…
According to this sign, not every American knows how to spell properly.
One of our other stops was at this picturesque lighthouse. I can’t recall the name of this lighthouse. It’s so nice that it deserved a vintage treatment. :)
How amazing it would be if I had a bride and groom to photograph here.
The waves in California are huge and intimidating!
The view at Santa Cruz. The weather was a little gloomy when we arrived.
The seagulls here are so bold. They don’t really bother too much with people around. Caught this one stealing someone’s leftover food!
In the States, equality for all is a big thing.
I guess these doggies know where to go to have a good time.
Since we are arriving in Las Vegas tomorrow to kick off the WPPI conference, I thought of sharing some crazy stats that I found online about the city. Some of them really make you sit back and think…
1. Number of Las Vegas citizens 500,000
2. Year first casino licensed 1931
3. Number of annual Vegas visitors 40,000,000
4. Number of hotel rooms 137,000
5. Number of pillowcases washed at MGM Grand (the hotel & casino that houses WPPI) daily 15,000
6. Annual no. toilet paper rolls used at Bally’s (it’s a 67,000 sq ft. hotel & casino with 2,800 rooms) 1 million
7. Lucky The Clown marquee sign at Circus Circus has 1,232 fluorescent bulbs, 14,498 incandescent bulbs, and 3/4 mile of neon tubing light (no wonder they’re replacing it!)
8. Average number of Vegas weddings per day 300+
9. Cost of Nevada marriage licence $35.00
10. Average cost of filing for divorce $450.00
(Seems getting into marriage is always the easy part, but getting out of it is sticky AND expensive! Its no wonder lawyers are richer than priests.)
Stats from: Frugally Vegas
