Nikon
Once again Happy Lunar New Year of Ox 2009! Lunar New Year of Year of Ox 2009 started on 26th January and the celebration is going to last for 15 days, from the 1st day of lunar calender (Nian Chu Yi 年初一) to Yuan Xiao (元宵), the 15th day of Lunar New Year. I had a long 10-day-holidays in conjunction of this our biggest event of the year… LoL ! 
During this period, we had endless lunch and dinner celebrations with our families, parents and friends, all were of course appetized with our proprietary Yu Sang (鱼生). Our friend Eunice wrote some interesting introduction on Yu Shang.
As usual, all my 4 brothers and sister gathered together at my parents house in K.L. on the 1st day, had our vegetarian lunch together, giving away Ang Pow or red packet (红包) filled with little pocket money to each other’s children, joining our uncles and aunties on poker games (‘Bet more… win more!’), and off course drink, drink and drink! While dinner in the evening was eating out with my in-law family (used to have it in Genting casino when I was still bachelor ), we had our supper with my childhood friends at one of their homes!
On the 2nd day, we went to visit the ‘must-go’ travel destination during Lunar New Year, the Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Dong Zen Temple (东禅寺)in Jenjarom, near Banting, Selangor. Operated by the Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Malaysia Chapter, the Buddhist and charitable organisation from Taiwan, which is better known by its founder, Master Hsing Yun, the monastic order with millions of followers around the world.
The best time to visit Dong Zen Temple is during Chinese New Year. Additional lanterns are mounted and floral fests, floats, cultural exhibitions are staged.
Though the best hour to visit Dong Zen Temple is then to be in the evening when all lanterns are lit up, you would have to first be patient to follow other cars’ brake and flood lights in the massive traffic jam of the access road for hour! 
We opted to visit DongZen temple at day time, for lesser traffic and different perspective. Without incandescent lighting, we had sun lighting instead…
At the side of the main entrance, there is a pedestrian access path way with a name called ‘The 33 Quan Yin street‘, which displaying 33 different perspective view of Guan Yin (观音) statues along the street.
Once entering the compound of Dong Zen Temple, you will see another Guan Yin statue in the middle of a lotus flower pond.
Next to the lotus pond, there is the Lumbini Garden, the main theme park of the temple with all sorts of magnificent scenes of flowers, statues, ponds, landscaping and lighting (at night)….
Here comes the main temple building. ‘Shhh! I need to send out a prayer….’
Wait a minute! I can’t believe it! It is the first air-conditioned temple that I’ve ever been to!
Opposite the temple is another square displaying a ‘paper’ feeled pagoda in the middle….
… and a ‘paper’ feeled buddha statue on top of a buddish showroom.
The second theme park of Dong Zen Temple, there are 2 rows of luo han (罗汉) statues stood as guardians at both sides of the side entrance.
The Meditating Luo Han…
You can’t have these kind of shots if you visit Dong Zen Temple at night…
These 2 devils really made Jean insane… at time.
Look at those sweat marks on my shirt, I was nearly soaking wet under the hot sun. You wouldn’t believe that I could still smile when posing for this shot!
The best part was, the sky turned dark and started to rain when we were about to leave Dong Zen… LoL !
Jenjarom is known locally as Ling Ka Long in Chinese (Hokkien). There are quite a number of seafood and Bak Kut Teh restaurants in town. Visitors could stay here for seafood dinner if they are too lazy to drive for another 20 minutes to Teluk Gong, a more well known seafood paradise of Klang. – Travel Feeder.
All photos above were captured with Nikon D60
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Hooray! ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Yeeeeaaar’ …. Once again I wish all readers Merry Christmas and a happy New Year 2009! This year I had a wonderful Christmas, not the BBQ turkey we had, not the 5 bottles of red wines we had (a mixture of French, Chilean and Australian, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot… Yucks! ), not even those Dannemann Moods cigars, BUT the Christmas present that I bought for myself, a Nikon D60 DSLR! Though I bought it a week ago and took a few shots, I purposely packed it back and unpacked it on the Boxing Day! What a feeling!!
As I mentioned earlier, I’m already a happy owner of Panasonic Lumix FZ28. I brought it along as my travel camera on my Shanghai vacation and have captured some beautiful photos of my trip. It is no doubt a perfect camera for travel (Read my Top 5 ‘Wow’ Factors about FZ28 here). So, what is the motivation for me to buy another camera for travel, albeit it is bigger, heavier than Panasonic with the same amount of pixels but more expensive? Here are the top 5:-
- My children are growing up and they are extremely active and energetic - Babies look different every day. Though my son, Dylan is 15 months old now, I love to capture those special moments of him when he runs, plays and laughs. More to say, I couldn’t expect him to pose for me standstill. I need to react fast and so do I need a faster camera. My Panasonic Lumix, being the nature and characteristics of a compact camera with a small light sensor, doesn’t serve very well in this department;
- I love potraits and my 2 children – Potraits are always my favorite section of photography. When I realised DSLR could capture sharper and better defined face of my children, it has become my biggest motivation to get a DSLR;
- My best friend ‘motivated’ me a lot - He owns 2 Nikons, D60 and D90, and plenty of lenses. I could always borrow his 18-270mm zoom lense if I need to. I’ve been poisoned by this devil a lot. ;
- To be a motivation to travel even more! – Naturally, when you buy a new camera, you would think of whatever reasons to visit more places than before and the same ‘chicken and egg’ philosophy applies. Either travelling a lot so motivated to get a camera or, got a new camera so motivated to travel, are the same to me, and
- The price of DSLR has dropped tremendously – They have a price tag similarly to an advanced compact, like Canon G10. Nikon D40 is selling even cheaper than some compacts! Recent price drop of Nikon D60 to RM1800.00 has motivated me to getting it fast, before it’s being replaced and repriced.
With the above strong motivation pushing behind me, though it was only less than 3 months after I bought the Panasonic FZ28, I decided to buy a second camera for my travel. With the priority of taking fast action children movement and nice potrait, I chose DSLR. With my past experience of owning both Nikon and Canon film SLR, I chose Nikon. For its lightest weight among other DSLR in the market (better to my shoulder during vacation travel), I chose D60. With the recent economic down turn, I chose to pay by credit card… – Travel Feeder.
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This year is the first year I celebrate Christmas with my 6 months old travel blog, Travel Feeder. My family and I would like to wish all our readers to have an immaculate Christmas celebration today! We would also like to wish all travelers from around the world to have a memorable Christmas holidays this year. Lastly, [...]
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