colinwoon

We made a short trip to San Antonio last weekend as a farewell trip for Zoe. It's also one last trip the three Siow sisters made together before Zoe fly back to Malaysia for good.

It was a fun trip! Even though it's short, it's definitely an interesting one. Good time, good time.

The hotel we stayed in is right on the San Antonio River Walk. While everybody was busy getting ready for bed, I was on the River Walk snapping away. Results weren't very satisfactory, definitely need to improve my night shots. I love night shots, just not mine, I could never get the setting right. Any advice?

Busiest stretch on River Walk. This is around 1am on Friday night. Noticed a girl in the picture is pointing her DSLR at my direction as well, funny. (f/11 for 30s)


This potentially could be a great shot but I didn't have long enough exposure to blur out all the motion. I felt that the motion blop is kind of distracting. You think? (f/2.5 for 2.5s)


Our hotel is on the left side of this photo, across Market St. (f/2.5 for 30s)


Light, what light? I like the reflection of the light from the water. Personal observation, to get the star effect from the light, set aperture to at least f/11. Can somebody confirm that? (f/16 for 30s)

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Adrien's birthday party was 2 weeks ago but I never got around to post the pictures taken at the party because I was lazy busy.

All the foods are awesome at the party(Min and her mom-in-law spent 2 days preparing all the foods) but most of my shots were "bleh". So I just post 2 of my "OK" shots here because I know my picture capturing skills just don't do justice for those delicious foods.

I was too busy eating so I forgot to ask Min what this is called. I know it's very tasty though.


I think this is a "No Bake Cheesecake". Very delicious!


Birthday boy, Adrien!


Benjamin must be thinking, "Itchy gum! Me need chew!"


The car is mine, it's mine! Muah ha ha...

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Yes, our first new car! We're still very very excited.

It's a 2008 Toyota Highlander Sport Edition, much bigger than our old Camry, definitely a plus when we need to haul something big.

Amazingly the Highlander is not as much a gas guzzler as I thought it will be. It's rated for 18mpg(miles per gallon) in the city and 24mpg on the highway. When we go to San Antonio over the weekend we observed 24.5mpg on the highway and 21mpg with city and highway combined, not bad for a SUV.

Things we like about our new car:
- 3rd-row seat (7 passengers total)
- backup camera
- power rear door
- automatic climate control
- 2nd-row seat center stow (interchangeable and removable)
- 19 inch wheel
- 7 airbags (holy cow!)

Things we would like to have in our new car:
- navigational system ($2500 option is a bit too much, I'm cheap)
- leather seats (yeah, too much again)
- split 3rd-row seat (Toyota engineer, what were you thinking? Honda has it!)

Look at that new paint shine!


The dealer still owe us a runner board(side step) which will be installed once the parts arrived. I think it will look better with the runner board.


Itty bitty backup camera, can you see where is it?

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We got a new car!!! Our first new car! Very very excited. I will post more later once I have more photos!

Yes! Only 20 miles on the car when we got it home!

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Zongzi(a.k.a. rice dumpling) is a traditional Chinese food for Duan Wu(a.k.a. Dragon Boat) festival.

This year we were lucky to get the chance to taste some really good Zongzi made by our friends BK & Joanne. I have to say they're both really good cook. Zongzi is not easy to make, to get the taste and shape right required some pretty good skills and they did it, amazing!

The finished form. Bamboo leafs are used to wrap Zongzi.


Stripped.


Filling galore! Beans, fat meat, and many other good stuffs inside the sticky rice.

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Too many food post lately, time for something different.

I got a new bluetooth headset!!! It's a gift from FY, Faye's youngest sister, who won it at her company's lucky draw game, very cool!

It's the Aliph Jawbone! The military grade noise cancellation is really cool! Now the voice recognition on my phone actually work and I don't have to keep yelling just to have it dial a number(like my Jabra BT500v). The sound quality of the Jawbone is nothing to phone home about but it works. All in all, I love it!

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I remember my grandma and sometime my uncle will bring some very colorful candy from Australia when I was a kid. I have no idea what it was other than the fact that it's very colorful and flavorful.

Now I know it's called Licorice (Liquorice in UK). I found it at Candylicious last Sunday. I haven't had one of these for years, I guess the last time I had it was when I'm still a kid. And it still taste like how I remember it, very interesting.

The color of the candy make an interesting photo.

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Zoe decided to go back to Malaysia for her career advancement so we had a small farewell party for her at our house last Saturday.

We're sad that she's leaving but in the mean time happy for her because she'll found happiness in the path she's pursuing. And we know she will enjoy some pretty good food there! We wish her all the best!

Thanks to Faye and Zoe, we all enjoyed some pretty good food last Saturday as well. It took them almost a full day to prepare all the food and it took me only 2 hours to grill them, talk about easy.

My favorite dish of all is the beef and chicken satay, combine with the satay sauce they made, super delicious!!! I heard the chicken wings was pretty good but I was too late.

The easy part!


BHL took this photo for me while I was busy grilling. That's the chicken satay and veggie skewers.


Cute J playing with bubbles.


Cool A is probably wondering why my camera is so much smaller than his mom's.


Huh?

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