As I Xi It v2.3

Ahead of my upcoming trip to Austria, I picked up a new tripod! It’s far more compact than my other tripods and extends up to my eye-level with the centre column down.

The original ballhead it came with was fine with my Canon G11, but I wouldn’t trust it with my 40D, so I’ve swapped it out for my Manfrotto 486RC2. The whole thing weighs around 1kg with a maximum carrying capacity of around 2kg, fine for a semi-pro DSLR and standard zoom/prime, but definitely not for telephotos.There are variable leg locks and you can remove part of the centre column to further reduce weight. It’s reasonably sturdy, but won’t replace my Gitzo for shots up in the Arctic. Further specs are available here – Slik Sprint Pro II GM.

Given its petite proportions, its easy to pack making it ideal for weekend city breaks around Europe.

How exciting could a mug be? Well, apart from all that commotion with the Canon mug in recent months, I came across the Sea to Summit X-Mug which is just so neat that I had to share!

Basically, the X-Mug is a drinking vessel by Sea to Summit made of food grade silicone, acepting both cold and hot beverages . It folds down to a disc shape approximately 1.5 cm x 11.3 cm and has graduations on the inside for measuring things out. Being fairly light and compact makes it ideal for those travel adventures. It seems fairly robust and there is also the X-Bowl and X-Plate in the collection of X items which all nest together when squished down. I’m pretty confident that this will replace the Lifeventure mug I usually pack for my next globe trotting adventure… assuming that this dastardly cloud of volcanic ash moves along.

So, here I am, back at my desk in London having returned from a very chilled out tropical holiday. It was hot, hot, hot.

Spontaneous Singapore 2010 from Xi on Vimeo.

Sometime last week, Marcus and I went to Fika, a Scandinavian restaurant in Little India which I thought was a little odd location-wise. You’d expect that sort of European cusine to be somewhere along Orchard Road. It was quite good, but I didn’t see any reindeer on the menu. No elk either eventhough the logo was the shiloette of an elk. On the menu were the usual Scandinavian type things, potatoes, salmon, meatballs. I was a little surprised not to see chopped dill in the boiled potatoes. After Scandinavia, I had my much awaited cendol at some Malay place, shooting the breeze in the outdoors table. There was a bit of a confusion where our cendol ended up on another table, but then it eventually wound up at ours. It was mighty good and some of the green snotty bits looked like leeches. Nice. While we’re on the topic of deserts, I managed to have my much awaited ice kachung! It was very colourful and artificial and syrupy. Mmmm…. muy bien.

Jac and I caught up with Cherlyn who neither of us have see since Biology and went to the Sunset Grill & Pub in the middle of Seletar airbase. It was really cool, all the roads were named after places in London and the ambience of the place was quite good. Ate outdoors, I believe Jac got nibbled by some mozzies, I didn’t surprisingly.

We also visited Pulau Ubin, one of the offshore islands where we shot some insects and I managed to get attacked by both the sun and those pesky mosquitoes. It was seriously hot, hot, hot! While I was reeling off a couple of shots of a katydid, I could feel myself get drenched from all the sweat. For an offshore island, it wasn’t as windy as I’d expected. However, when we sat down to lunch, the breeze blew the spicy hot chili fumes towards us causing us much occular and nasal irritation. I also managed to get myself sunburnt with the most spectacular effects. In the pics, you can clearly see where my sleeves end and the sunburn begin. I’ve never been so sunburnt, my arms were red hot during the night and turning down the AC to 16^oC didn’t seem to help all that much. I was radiant like a cooked lobster.

I guess no entry (or series of entries) about Singapore is complete without an account of the shopping. Well, there certainly isn’t a shortage of shops there. The other day, Jac and I visited Vivocity where the Singapore branch of The National Geographic Society shop was. It was very much in the same style as the one in London on Regents Street, but I reckon the London one is bigger (spread over three floors) and it has an integrated cafe which the Singapore one hasn’t. There were far more NG London tees than Singapore ones which I thought was odd. Vivocity also had the Japanese equivalent of a pound shop here. It has some pretty cool crap for only $2 (£1). I brought a whole bunch of miniature wooden clothes pegs and other things I never thought I needed till I saw them. There was also a pet shop with some neat pet things (duh!) and everything was laid out so much more neater than the typical British pet shop. It didn’t even have that characteristic pet shop smell of dry cat/dog food and woodshavings. I was a little disappointed not to find a cute little house for Watson. Vivocity had a whole bunch of shops selling odd, useless but very cute things too. Although I didn’t see one, I’m sure there was a Giordano’s in there. There’s always a Giordano’s.

After yum cha with The Lau’s, Jac dropped me off at nearby Raffles City since I had some errands to run and of course more shopping to do. I had a wonder around, popped into the supermarket downstairs and stocked up on a bunch of snacks. I then strolled over to Suntec and got bored there walking round and round the endless collection shops.

On my last night in Singapore, Jac, LK and I went to Fort Canning Park. Marcus was being a poo poo head so didn’t come with us. Apparently, Fort Canning is suppose to be haunted, but I didn’t see any ghosts or poltergeist activity. I’ve also been informed that there are lots of mozzies there, but I failed to get bitten by one. I thought I was attacked, but it must’ve been psychosomatic. Unless they were phantom mozzies… woooo….

1234...678►

Oh, I should probably say something about my flight home. There were no problems with the first leg apart from me possibly missing my flight due to a combination of Jac and I waiting ages at some food outlet at Changi airport for a rather bland French toast, odd tasting coffee and a rather dry and pathetic so-called “English” muffin and whining about said “edible” items. The last call announcement was made, but I wasn’t the last on board. There were still plenty after me. Didn’t get a chance to do browse duty free. Obviously haven’t shopped enough.

On the way back to London, the transit time in Dubai was only about 2 hours. I browsed through duty free and there were many novelty camel figurines and stuffed toys. None of which I had the desire to purchase. I suppose it would’ve been nice to get a wooden camel to keep the wooden giraffe I brought at duty free in South Africa. I guess I could start up a wooden duty free zoo then. No calamaties for me between DXB and LGW, however, the man sitting in the aisle (I was by the window) did have water spilt on him. Normally, when flying solo, I prefer an aisle seat, however, I predicted that on the flight to LGW there would be a good chance of flying over those man-made islands. I was right. Now I feel like I’ve seen Dubai and can add that to my list of places I’ve visited.