For Muslims sprucing up their homes for Hari Raya Puasa, there is a wide selection of carpets at the Ramadan Night Bazaar.
Carpets with modern designs with modern designs and abstract patterns. Both photos taken with a Nikon D600 with AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G ED VR lens. Photo credit: John Tan.
From traditional geometric patterns to more modern designs with sceneries or abstract shapes, you’ll be spoilt for choice when choosing a carpet to decorate your home.
Apart from selling food for breaking of fast, the Ramadan Night Bazaar also sells plenty of interesting and beautiful stuff to help Muslims prepare for Hari Raya Puasa at the end of the fasting month.
Baju Kurung in many colours for the men. Both photos taken with a Nikon D600 with AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G ED VR lens. Photo credit: John Tan.
Once the fasting month of Ramadan ends, the first day of the next month (Shawwal) is celebrated as Eid al-Fitr – the Arabic term meaning “festival of breaking of the fast”.
The day is known as Hari Raya Puasa in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei; and is also known as Hari Raya Aidilfitri or Hari Raya Idul Fitri.
Hari Raya means “celebration day” in Malay.
Since this is the month of Ramadan, I will be featuring photos that I took during a visit to a night Bazaar in Geylang Serai in Singapore.
After sunset, Muslims who fasted all day file into the night bazaar, while food stall holders dish out freshly cooked food. The Arabic term for the evening breakfast is Iftar, while in Malaysia and Indonesia, the breaking of fast is termed “berbuka puasa” and “buka puasa” respectively.
This is the first in a series of photos that I will be posting on the Ramadan Bazaar.
The night markets bristle with activity especially around the Islamic month of Ramadan, which culminates with the Hari Raya Puasa.
From tomorrow, tech4tea.com kicks off a new photo story series that features the editor’s pick of interesting photos, either from daily life, issues of the day, or product related photos.
Photo of the Day photo series (POTD) – contributions from readers are most welcome.
The photos will include photos related to the day it is published or a snapshot from the past.
An island fortress, a rock church, and plenty of fun for the kids, Helsinki is a suitable family destination with long daylight hours in the summer.
Located in the central Senate Square, the Lutheran Cathedral was completed in 1852 and is a symbol of Helsinki. Taken with a Nikon D600 with 24-120mm lens.
Our first glimpse of Helsinki was gloomy and grim.
It was raining and we’d arrived at the central railway station, an imposing mostly brown building clad in granite, dragging our luggage.
The Uspenski Cathedral is a classical onion-domed Russian church that sits majestically on a hill overlooking the Market Square by the harbour. Taken with a Nikon D600 with 24-120mm lens.
Our mood improved as the weather cleared up.
Sunshine really makes a difference, although it was to rain intermittently over the next few days.
As a prelude to the Singapore Science Festival 2013, the Kids Science Fest is being held at the Science Centre Singapore from 13-19 July (10am – 6pm).
Just take a look at the keen face to see how engaged the young (and older) participants were!
Science Buskers explaining how a coke can can be tilted and balanced on its edge.
Jointly organised by A*STAR and the Science Centre, the carnival is targeted mainly towards families and kids/students between ages 6-13.
Testing out the wind vane that a young girl had made for herself.
The activities are located within the Marquee in the Science Centre Singapore.
One girl is creating a simulated Jovian Landscape while her friend is filled with curiosity about what it’s like on Planet Jupiter.
2,518 participants took part in the Singapore leg of the Canon PhotoMarathon Asia 2013, at Suntec City International Convention & Exhibition Centre Singapore.
The two Best of Show winners – Kok Hou Cheng (Open) and Zhou Tian Qu – will be going on an eight-day all-expense-paid photo clinic to Kansai, Japan.
Winners of Canon Photomarathon XI in Singapore, together with management and staff of Canon Singapore.
Beginning at 9am in the morning, this year’s attendance of the day-long competition was an increase of 99 participants (4%) compared to last year.
“Instant” by Open Category Best of Show Winner Kok Hou Cheng.
There were two categories of participants – Open and Student. For each category, there were three themes – Tradition, Communicate and Instant.
“Tradition” by Student Category Best of Show Winner Zhou Tian Qu from Anderson Junior College.
18 prizes were given to the top three winners of the three themes for each category. Prizes given included Canon products such as the Canon EOS camera and PIXMA printer.
2,518 avid photographers participated in this year’s Canon Photomarathon XI.
In addition, Best of Show awards were given for each of the two categories – for the best collection of images from all three themes.
White nights, midnight sun and paying a social visit to Santa Claus at his hometown at the Arctic Circle.
Uspenski Cathedral in Helsinki. The clear blue skies was a relief from the haze back in South East Asia. Taken with Nikon D600 with 24-120mm lens.
It all started back in 1991 with the liberation of the Baltic States from the Soviet Union which was subsequently followed by the collapse and breakup of the Soviet bloc.
The old town square in Tallinn teems with tourists and artisans celebrating the city’s history and traditional crafts. Photo taken with Nikon D600 with 24-120mm lens.
Since then, my wife and I have always wondered about what these three brave Baltic States were like – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
As students then, we’d heard so little about these three newly-minted (then) countries.
So it was that – two decades after those tumultuous times – we decided to visit Estonia’s capital Tallinn during the children’s school holidays this year.
The easiest approach was via Helsinki.
We flew direct to the capital of Finland via Finnair and then made a day trip via a 2-hour ferry across the Gulf of Finland.
The PhotoNote app digitses analog material into an online photo notebook – for more efficient management and more effective communications.
New freemium app from Fuji Xerox: PhotoNote – an online photo notebook.
SkyDesk PhotoNote captures and stores analog content into digital form for more efficient storage and access and enables these content to be easily shared with co-workers, partners or customers for more effective communications.
PhotoNote’s digitisation uses Fuji Xerox’s proprietary character-recognition technology for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that includes recognition of hand-written characters.
The technology mimics a human’s visual information processing and this is the first time such technology is used on commercialised software.
Currently, only English and Japanese are supported.
Most of the features are free, with additional storage and Excel conversion feature available as paid options (prices within).
The app works with iOS and Android and is available in Singapore, Australia and Japan.
PhotoNote digitises physical memos or meeting notes jotted down during business discussions and stores them in the cloud – enabling easy access by the user and quick sharing of the information with others.
To digitise printed material, forms, handwritten memos and whiteboards, simply snap a photo using a smartphone or digital camera and upload the photo onto SkyDesk on the cloud.
The PhotoNote app automatically conducts image processing and OCR conversion, storing the image together with tags and additional text annotations, as well as text data from the conversion.
Easy search can be done on the database of PhotoNote records based on recorded time/date, tags, and the converted text.
To all mothers out there … Happy Mother’s Day!
Flowers for all mothers on Mother’s Day. These beautiful flowers adorn a florist’s shop in Kumamoto, Japan. Taken with Nikon D800.
And to all mothers-to-be or newly-minted mothers, here’s a book to find out what not to expect when you are expecting.
Muddlehood (S$25.90). Available online, at Popular, Books Actually, Thomson Medical.
“Muddlehood” is a collection of essays by parents on life in the first year of parenting.
It was written by my wife and a few of her friends to share the trials and tribulations of motherhood, or how they “muddled” through it all.
The authors noted that when they were going through their first pregnancies and looking for advice and things to pay attention to, it was difficult to come by a book that was truly honest about the difficulties and psychological rigours the expecting mother was to encounter.
So having gone through it, they decided to pen down their own experiences as honestly as possible – to share what “expecting mothers never expected”.
However, despite the rigours of motherhood, the consensus among all the authors was that – at the end of the day – motherhood is the most rewarding thing a woman could experience, and it was worth every bit of angst or trouble they had to go through to have the baby.
This is an excellent book for the expecting mom to find what they never tell you to expect.
It’ll make a handy book to buy yourself if you’re contemplating having a baby, and an excellent present to give an expecting or newly-minted mum.
“Translucent” flowers at a greenhouse in Beppu, Japan. Taken with a Nikon D800.
