Wedding of a local boy..

Another opportunity to attend a wedding knocked at my door last night.. Ali invited me to his cousin's wedding... In fact, Ali mentioned to me about the wedding more than two weeks ago. I did not really think it would materialise as we never talked about it until yesterday morning. Then he reminded me about the wedding in the morning... As usual, I jumped at the opportunity.

I never wanted to miss the traditional sword dance again.. I missed the dance at the last wedding, remember? It was the wedding at The Diplomatic Club.. I was quite unlucky to miss it last time.

For this wedding, I took along my not-so-new camera. At first, I thought I would be bringing only my 50mm lens as I did not want to be seen as official cameraman for the wedding.. Honestly, I did not want to intimidate the official cameraman.. hehe.. Ali insisted that I must bring the camera with 24-70mm lens (I am sorry Kerel, I really need to mention about my lens. I am proud of it..hehe) for me take shots of the wedding..

Funny enough, I met the videoman from the wedding at The Diplomatic Club.. He recognised me! He still remembered my compact Canon A70 PowerShot I brought to the last wedding. He was trying to tell me that I came with small camera then. Now, I came with this huge camera. He spoke to me in Arabic. Rather unfortunate that I could not speak Arabic. I knew what he was trying to tell because he kept pointing at my camera... Ali was also next to me to be the translator..

It was the 1st time I tried to take photos of a wedding. I was nervous, obviously. I had to take 20 min crash course from Asings The Guru. As I was not sure of the venue, it made it harder. I had 50% chance of getting it right. It could be either in a hall or tent. As I was not sure what to expect, I had to borrow Kerel's speedlight. So, my crash course revolved around the use of speedlight SB900 ie the angle, the camera set up etc. After all the crash course, I just tawakkal..

For the wedding last night, I was not particularly alone. I meant, I was not the only one without thob unlike in my last experience where I was a complete stranger in the middle of the tent.. There were few guests came with office attire. I was fine.. That alone took a big load of my shoulder. The job for the night came 50% lighter...

The wedding went well. The guests congratulated the groom, took photo together for the memory.. Then came the most waited moment for me for the night-the sword dance... Apparently, they took few minutes rest in between the dances. I realised that the swords were actually heavy. Now I knew why the twins were sweating after each dance.. I stayed till the end of the wedding. The event after the wedding was also interesting. It was more of a send off event for the groom with few cars performed some kind of stunt with loud screeching sound. It was very loud with smoke & smell of burning tyres filled up the air..I reckoned it caused a massive traffic jam as well.. hehe

Strobist with the experts..

They call it STROBIST.. New term to me.. hehe. Nevertheless, it was interesting especially when you were with the experts. I wanted to ask many questions but I was to embarrass to prove my stupidity.. haha.

We started the night with a dinner at Thai Smile. We bumped into Aizal, Khimie & Nije at the restaurant.. Marhaba to Aizal!! Welcome home!!

Then we headed straight to The Museum of Islamic Art, the location of our photography session for the night. Everybody took out their equipments and ready for action. For the session, we had 5 cameras, 3 speedlights and 2 tripods. The models were ourselves.. hehe.

It took a while before the session started as the gurus were busy setting up our cameras, the speedlights etc. Once it started, everything went well.. Only minor hiccups when the young models refused to pose.. They ran around outside the shooting area..However, the night did not start without a drama.. When I reached Thai Smile, I could not take my car key out. I decided to keep the car key intact and went to the restaurant. What the heck.. After all, we are in Qatar. Not in Malaysia.. What worry me most was that the car boot was full with football equipments such as 15 balls of QR350 each, training cones & about 10 pairs of brand new football shoes of less than QR500 each.. I still could not take the key out when we reached Museum of Islamic Art... I just left the car by the road side and headed for our target location for the photo session.

Only when I reached home I discovered the real reason behind the stucked key. Apparently, the gear did not fully disengage when I put it at P. Something stucked in between. I suspected it though. I could not do much as I was very excited to have my dinner and photo session. When I removed it, I managed to pull the car key out. What a relieve! As you can see there were 3 speedlight SB900 in place to get the strobist effect..

You can view few more photos from my flickr or Asings The Expert's or Kerel Let's Go Wide's or Kharul Panjang's.

3 birthdays, 1 belated celebration...

Last Friday, our big extended family in Doha celebrated 3 belated birthdays for March borns.. I was one of them.. Che Le & Nije were the other two..It was rather a surprise party organised at Che Le's villa. Surprise but no surprise. What surprise were you talking about when the party was organised almost 1 month after the birthdates? hehe... You knew it was coming.. You knew your family would never forget about your birthday.. The only question was WHEN? Then you needed to find out when everyone was available...

Thanks to Ija & others for taking the lead and made it happen..

To be honest, it was quite normal for us here in Doha to celebrate the birthdays much later than the actual dates. Reason being.... it was a challenge by itself to have everyone around! When you have big extended family members who are busy with their careers, it is next to impossible to have all of us around at the same time. This is very true when we have mix of professions in our family members... Few need to be on the air most of the times.. Some need to work on shifts. Some need to work on Saturday.. Only the lucky few (read me & Che Le) are available all the times. Aren't we lucky? Nevertheless, we try to have the all members to be present...

Somehow, the ladies had been very lucky to have their surprise parties organised on the date they were born.. We do treat our ladies extra special in that manner...

We started with 'fat yourself ceremony'... The curry noodle was good, honest!! We had two types of fried rice. One what we called Tounge Burning Fried Rice or Nasi Goreng Kampung and another one prepared by Nije & Sha for those with sensitive tounges.. haha.. Pengat Pisang prepared by Abe Zu & Kak Diba was also excellent!

Then came the surprise birthday cakes.. I shared the cake with Nije.. Che Le had one on his own.... Not fair! Luckily, our cake was a lot bigger.. As Nije's name was smudged, it looked like my personal birthday cake.. hehe. Sorry Nije..

We also took the opportunity to present Baby Amir Ashraf with his present. This was long overdue... He is now almost two months old... Since Baby Amir Ashraf could not make it that night, his big brother, Aidil accepted the present on his behalf...

My 1st & 2nd outings...

This is my 1st & 2nd outings with the new toy.. Rather challenging due to the fact that I needed to take shots of football games.. I tried my best.. What else could I do? Luckily, there was not so much action on the 1st outing though due to the fact that Ali, who requested me to take the shots, did not play on that night..

On the 1st outing, I realised that my lens was only sufficient for medium range photography...

The next day was real photography for me. This was the 2nd outing.. Lucky me, I managed to borrow a longer range lens for that night. Thanks to NKhairil79.

On that 2nd night of outing, the real challenge was to capture the best moments of the game.. It was rather difficult being a beginner! Trust me.. I did not manage to capture the moments when Ali scored two goals for his team. To begin with, I came late to the match.. hehe. I missed the 1st goal. He nearly scored three goals! He missed one goal. If he did not get cramped leg for the last 10 minutes of the match, he probably would have scored more... Well done to Ali & his team for winning the game hands down, 4-1!

I managed to capture his 2nd goal on video though. Could you imagine how busy I was that night? At points of time I needed to take photos & the other points I needed to record the game on videocam. A real challenge for me! They required skills and extra pairs of hand, definitely... I was very sure Ali was happy with the results of my skills.. Else he would not give me one of the medals presented to the players from Qatar Football Association (QFA).. تسلم.

There was actually official closing ceremony to mark the end of Season 08/09. All players were given a medal for being part of the tournament. Since they had extra medals, Ali took one and gave it to me. I hope we would not get into trouble with QFA.. hehe. I had yet to take photo of the medal.. Will do it soon and upload it here, InsyaAllah.

(As promised... here is the medal.. updated on 12 April 2009

The goal shown down here came from a free kick... At least I managed to get one shot for the goal.. Not bad for a beginner...Still I need to learn a lot more... It will take more time & effort to get the best out of this camera.. Luckily, I have few friends who are ever willing to part with the knowledge and skills... Thank you, guys...

I feel like home!!!!

What a feeling today... Got up in the morning ( was it really morning? hmmm..) to the sound of rainfall!! At first I could not believe it. The exact same thing happenned like last weekend. RAIN!!!

Indeed, it was raining again today. For Qatar standard, I would consider it as heavy rain. For Malaysian standard, it was probably nothing.... However, it was slightly heavier around solat Jumaat time..

In fact, there were deep pool of water everywhere especially near Al Bayyan Gardens where I normally go for solat Jumaat.. It was quite deep really. I was lucky. I did not get stucked in the pool of water. Else I would have spoiled my car engine..

Thanks to the rain... I also realised that my Skoda's windscreen was not fitted properly when they replaced the windscreen long time ago. Traces of water & wet interior clearly visible near the driver's side..At 1st I thought I forgot to wind up the driver's window last night. Then I realised that all windows were properly wound up.. A good reason for me to send the car to my Transport Department for service..The rain did make me felt like home today. It would be perfect if the flash flood was also there, just like in Kuala Lumpur... hehe..

One weekend, two birthdays

Finally, the weekend is here... Time for birthday celebration!!!

Somehow the celebration started yesterday. The celebration started off with lunch at Bennigan's yesterday. The only reason we celebrated it a day earlier was because someone had to earn a living today.. My wife is on call today on my birthday! It is not that bad considering I already received my birthday present 1 month in advance..hehe.

During the lunch at Bennigan's we asked Alisha what she had for me for my birthday... She spontaneously presented me with a bottle of root beer. It was so cute. She realised she did not have any money to buy me present. What she did was to give me the unopened bottle of root beer drink in front of us! How lovely... Thank you so much sweetie for being so thoughtful... It was at that point I realised the true meaning of the "Thought That Counts".. hehe. Alisha also presented to me a lovely birthday card... Thank you so much sweetie for being so thoughtful...
The mood was already also in the air yesterday because little Abdullah, Ali's son, celebrated his 1st birthday yesterday, 27 March 2009. For that, we presented him with a little present. It was only appropriate for me to continue with my own birthday celebration.. I always created reasons to celebrate anyway..heheHappy 1st Birthday, Abdullah. May you grow & become the proud of your parents. May you take care of your parents as much as they take care of you now.

And today? Early in the morning I received fews sms wishing me Happy Birthday... It was as early as 6.54am! Thanks guys.. So thoughtful.. You people must be dying to wish me happy birthday.. muahaha.. It is also good to note that people do use technology nowadays to wish happy birthday. Gone are the days people send you card for birthdays. Now, Facebook replaces cards! With Facebook, many of our friends are forced to remember our birthdays.. hehe. Good or bad? Bad when they keep reminding us about our age..

Happy Birthday to me...Here are the presents that I received for my birthday on top of the doas from all of you. One of them, I actually bought for myself as my birthday present. I let you guess which one.. hehe. Thank you so much for the presents!! Thank you so much for the birthday lunch. I shall remember to return the favours when the times come, InsyaAllah.During the birthday weekend, Allah The Almighty poured Qatar with rain. We seriously felt at home. It was heavy rain in the afternoon & at night... It must be the present from Allah for Abdullah, the people of Qatar and me... The rain actually started from Thusday morning till afternoon and continued over the weekend...

A Wedding Reception of A Qatari

It was not in my original weekend plan last weekend. The original plan was to have coffee with my good Qatari friend. Unfortunately, it did not materialise.

What happened instead? Ali invited me to join him at his friend's wedding on Saturday night. One tricky issue was that we were supposed to attend football training on the same night! It was not really a football training for me. It was more of an exercise to stay fit. Ali was actually the coach for the team. It was mandatory for him to attend the the training session.

In order for me to attend both, I had to prepare for both occasions ie sports gear for training & dinner suit for the wedding reception.

We stopped in the middle of the training, quickly got changed and rushed to the wedding reception. Luckily the reception was held at The Diplomatic Club not far away from the training ground. It took us around less than 10min to get there. I was a bit embarassed when we reached inside the tent as I was the ONLY one wearing suit. The rest of the people were in dishdash. I was so stand out for the wrong reason.. hehe. It was really an experience... Imagine, hundreds of eyes were watching you... What you have to do? You act normally & try to stay cool.. haha.

It was rather unfortunate I missed the traditional swords dance that night... It would be a great experience, otherwise.. I did not miss the opportunity to have photos taken with the groom though.. For the precious memory..