A pinhole of my life.: Awkward Chinese, Nikon D3200

Monday, December 17, 2012

Awkward Chinese, Nikon D3200

Being an extremely helpful person, I helped Jun Wen make a phone call for an advanced reservation at the restaurant Bosses (黑社会) Vivocity for his Christmas lunch with his colleagues. Had formed a simple sentence in my mind few seconds before the phone call to avoid stammering later on. My perfect sentence would go like, "Hi, good afternoon, I would like to make a reservation for 7 for the coming Monday at 12 30pm."

But the Chinese waitress caught me by surprise. She greeted me in Mandarin! As I always have the habit of replying people in the language they first spoke to me with, I accommodated to her but stammered in Chinese throughout. "嗨你好，我想订一个桌子给coming的星期一。” How much more cui can I get? Can you believe that I literally translated my sentence to Chinese? As much as I wanna complete my sentence in Mandarin, the anxiety got better of me and no Chinese character to replace "coming" came to rescue me out of that frantic moment.
How can I not think of practising my sentence in Mandarin too to save myself from such unnecessary embarrassment? 命苦啊！

How do you say "make a reservation for the coming Monday" in Chinese? Let me try it again here. "嗨你好，我想订一个七个人的位子在下个星期一的十二点半。” Sounds much better but still it might leave an awkward impression. Well am glad it's over and gonna throttle Jun Wen afterwards. Lol.

A xmas present came knocking on my door early this year. It's Nikon D3200! :D

This is an entry-level DSLR for beginners like me.

I'm so going to Gardens by the Bay for some intense scenery photo-taking after the knee is ready.

Not saying that I wanna learn or cultivate ultimate photography skills and be one of those hardcore photographers but just wanna try my best to capture vivid beautiful moments of the places I may visit later on in life.

Was inspired by my friends who own professional cameras and take good quality images. Some have exceptional photography skills and make their photos one of the kind - you may not be able to recapture that candid momentary shot ever again no matter how much you try to get everyone in the picture to cooperate and relive that moment. Once the moment has passed, it passed.

I shall let the following photos which were taken by my friends' professional cameras do all the talking now. Thank you Miao, Ling, Sharon and Kevin for all the spectacular photos. They will remain as my favourites! :D

Photos that got me inspired into getting a professional camera

Photos are in chronological order.