It has been a week since she went on her overseas trip and I miss her dearly.

Personally, I always regard an overseas relationship to be one that I will probably get into. Afterall, I am overseas. I also regard an overseas relationship to be one that is not very hard to maintain. As people say: as long as the two of you love each other, nothing can get in between you. My parents too are prime examples of how an overseas relationship is entirely possible. Now that I'm experiencing it myself, a mere 7 weeks one, I am completely torn. The sense of longing and loneliness is almost unbearable. Knowing that you are there and I am here, knowing that no matter what is happening, I can't be there for you and help you, it feels bad. Well, 1 week down, 6 more to go. Let's hope that the rest of the weeks will pass quickly.

Now, some things I used to distract myself with recently, PS. I've been finding out a few techniques in photo editing and trying them out. They are pretty fun and amazingly effective.

The best way of removing blemishes is not by blurring. In general, there are only two type of occurrences on the skin that people consider as blemishes. One, lack of smoothness. Two, redness. Healing brush is used here to remove shadows and highlights.
A Lighten layer was used first to remove shadows. Lighten should always be used first since we aim for overall white skin tone rather than darker tones. After that, Darken layer to remove highlights and unnatural lighter tones created during Lighten layer. Finally, another Lighten layer to ensure overall skin whiteness.
This maintains skin texture while remove spots, unevenness and unwanted moles on the skin. It is crucial to remember that this process is a "dot" based instead of "patch" based one and if imperfections were to be widespread, covering up would be most difficult. In other word, only for people with decent skin.
A Hue/Saturation layer is used to remove redness. Standard dropper at normal skin colour area while minus dropper at red zones after changing the channel to red. After that, make hue negative full and adjust the right arrow in between the two layers of rainbows until result is satisfactory. Finally, just put hue slightly above 0, somewhere about 10-15 should be good.
Finally, desaturate, give a brightness of about +20 to +30 and trace out the teeth. A 40% opacity should do.

More or less the same done here. Though as the people are not taking up most of the frame, editing became easier.

This shot is problematic. Lighting was really bad so I resort to putting it black and white both to stress our dress and to hide the bad noise.

Much better lighting.

美女你一路注意身体哦!

More practice sessions, I'm getting better both at shooting portraits and Photoshop. Although I am still bad at posed shots. Mmmm... Time to learn some new poses.

It was an amazing day! Right after starting our fire, the rain came. And it poured for almost an hour before the sky cleared. Everybody was feeling pretty hopeless about the BBQ and suddenly, we realized that the fire didn't die! After fanning for a while, it came back to life and everything was on the right track! Hahahahahaha! Really hoped XiaoQi would be there but she has her own things to do... Oh well!
=\ (o_o) /=

Overall a really pleasant experience, with new and old faces. I am really thankful for being invited1













































Some happy issues about relationships and not so happy issues about trust. Let's discuss them together since they are somewhat related.

Right.

Happy happy, cheese and daisy. Our love continues to grow as time goes on. Sometimes I do wonder if it is growing too fast, that bubble may form and grow and burst, I manage it. Breaking love into small little pieces and take it in one piece at a time, plan for what is coming (in general) is the rule of my game here. Anyway, things are going great, we are slowly becoming accustomed to each other's goods and bads, habits and behaviours. My work has moved from making things happen to keeping things happening~ It is nice.

Some pictures from Night Safari where we visited. The lighting condition is so bad that there is no way I can take decent pictures most of the time. I manage to grab some ok shots though.


My animal.









A Japanese tourist, quite a chill guy.







A really scenic location.

It was really fun.

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Right. Now, the not so happy stuff, trust.

Well... I've forgotten what I wanted to say. And I definitely don't want to remember that. So, nothing more for now! ;)

[1 hour later...]

Ah... And my mom must remind me. Well, trust. How much trust should you place in your loved ones to do the "right thing"? How much righter is our own "right" from their "right"? While I can understand my mother's worry at times, I cannot comprehend how she can feel such superiority that her opinion should definitely overwrite mine. While I respect her thoughts, some of her opinions are simply, opinions. They command neither factual support nor experience based knowledge. In fact, they are like (or in this case is) just like "the 5 second rule", just fallacy. So why can't I in turn tell her that she is wrong and what she's doing is bad? She must lash out on me and then crack down on what I do. This is not acceptable.

I will be heard, even if it means to cause more anger in her.