Inspiring vision.

Engaging leadership.

Neither of these two things have happened recently with the Yum Cha Challenge.

Dissent in the ranks.

That’s what you get if you don’t keep your team focused.

To stop a coup within the ranks of the Yum Cha Challenge it was necessary to get back out and into the fray that is a weekend Yum Cha Challenge. For better or worse, Zilver was the lucky venue this time around. This place was great, even if we did have to wait for it. You know what they say - Good things come to those who wait. I don’t know who said that but we waited and good things came so they definitely were right! Zilver has has taken the lead in the Yum Cha Challenge with a score of 4.2. For the benefit of all you avid readers of the Yum Cha Challenge (you both know who you are), let me recap the sores to date:

• Marigold Citymark in July 06 - 3.3
• The Regal in July 06 - 3.7
• Kam Fook in Jan 07 - 3.2
• Golden Jade Seafood Restaurant in March 07 - 3.6
• Palace Restaurant in May 07 - 4.1
• East Ocean Restaurant in May 07 - 3.9

The Good

• The great food, including variety. This place is the first one to get a perfect score for Quality.
• The Mango pancakes were the best going around!
• Getting to see a Chinese Dragon dance (I think that’s what it’s called).  This was for Chinese New Year apparently.

The Bad

• The wait - a good 45 minutes to an hour. We managed to head off for some refreshments and came back.  Maybe the Chinese New Year thing would explain the wait for a table!
• The unhappy staff

The Ugly

• The quotes (see below)
• Jason cleaning Neil’s blackberry nipple

Quotes

“The steam stuff is all exceptional quality” - Michelle after gobbling some steamed dumplings.

“I got a look at Ernest Chan and he’s quite a good looking man” - Che after seeing Enest and wishing she was his numero uno.

“My ball is clean” - Neil after realising he just likes saying ball and clean in the same sentence.

“The only reason I’m sticking with 4 on variety is that it took us to the end of the meal to get BBQ pork buns” - Che voicing her discontent with the time taken to getting pork buns and subsequently marking Zilver down in the wrong category (personally I think it should have been a frequency mark down).

“A lot more ‘high end’ items which we appreciated, like duck pancakes and soft shell crab. Very impressive” - Jody getting excited over the snazzy plates, most of which we didn’t order.

word.

A handy tip…  If I ever needed to make adjustments to my photos.  I think the letter M is wearing off my keyboard.

word.

word.

No, it’s not Movember.  It’s the Abercrombies annual Cinco de Mayo fiesta.  This year saw little of Gordo teaching the girls to dance and more of stuff dangling between legs.  Check out the pics here.

This one is a bit late but, as they say, better late than never. Here’s some happy snaps from Tom’s 30th birthday. He doesn’t look a smidgin over 29 in my book!

1. I couldn’t work out how to do it.
2. I regularly make mistakes in adding keywords to a bulk set of images
3. I only recently migrated to Aperture from iPhoto and all those imported images are tagged with “iPhoto Original”
4. When I upload images to flickr I don’t want the weird tags on the images (ref to point 3!)

Anyway, because basically I’m dumb at that stuff, I found this little gem.  It’s a great tip that essentially goes like this:

1. Select the images that you want to blast those nasty bulk mistake keywords from
2. Complain to yourself mentally that you wouldn’t need to be doing this if you hadn’t made the mistake in the first place
3. Make sure the keyword controls are visible (Window -> Show control bar, Window -> Show keyword controls)
4. Type the keyword you want removed in the keyword box, and (Wait for it)
5. Press Shift-Enter.  Now this is very important.  Shift-Enter.

My life is bliss.

• Best portrait
• Best Landscape
• Best series

Let me tell you, it came as a shock to me to win one of the categories.  Which one do you think?  Well, I won the best series category.  Here’s the series of still life pics that scored me that illustrious accolade.

If you’re in the market for a course where you’ll get to meet some people, (re)invigorate your photography passion and hopefully come out the other end taking better pictures and enjoying it, then I’d recommend it.  If you’re already familiar with photography and need a creative injection then I’d still recommend it.  I was already familiar with SLR photography but still found it fun!  There’s one downside though - you want to by all the great gear!

If you’re interested, you can find more of my pictures on Flickr.  I’ve only just started using it so be kind

I’ve also managed to start putting my photos over on Flickr.  It’s all going well and I’m getting them on scrambledminds.com by using the Slickr Gallery and Shutter Reloaded (a Lightbox variant) plugins.  Quite a few people think that Slickr/lightbox is slow but I think it’s worth it for single or small sets of photos.  For larger sets I just hard link to the slideshow url on Flickr.