A little bit of Mosaic

Was wondering what to do last Sunday, so I checked out the Esplanade website for some ideas. So it happens, the annual Mosaic Music Festival is on, and there are many free performances at the venue.

Incidentally, I’d found a very decent offer for a second-hand Carl Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 2/100 lens on a local photography forum, and bought it just before heading down to the Esplanade.

Armed with my latest acquisition (I’d added the Nikkor AIS 24mm f2 just the week before too), I took some photos of the performances at the cosy HTC Living Room, a free venue, while enjoying the music at the same time.

I hadn’t been shooting gigs for quite a while (not since the Brown Eyed Girls in 2010 and a mini J-rock concert in 2009), but I think I might get started on doing more of this…

Nicholas Tan of jazz sextet V-v-v-voyager in his element at the HTC Living Room. The group is one of the few groups under the "Bright Young Things” programme to mentor young jazz musicians in Singapore.

The Kyoto shrine I almost missed (again)

My first trip to Japan’s cultural capital was in the autumn of 2007. After a friend encouraged me to do more with my time in Japan, I packed my bags, took a week of absence from university exchange classes and headed off to Kyoto on a cheap night bus for my first major trip of my one-year stay.

My guide book then was a book about viewing cherry blossoms and autumn foliage in Kyoto, and it included several classic walking trails, including one to Kinkakuji (金閣寺) and Ryoanji (龍安寺), another to Kiyomizudera (清水寺), and others to less well-known destinations such as Kurama (鞍馬). I thoroughly enjoyed that trip, and on my second visit there in February 2008, I revisited many of the same places.

Bathe me in luscious red and orange

So when I visited Kyoto again in February 2012 – this time with my family and my girlfriend – I’d planned to stick to my tried and tested itineraries. But my independent-minded sister insisted on going to the Fushimi-Inari Taisha (伏見稲荷大社). Who was she (someone who’d only been to Japan once) to tell me (with many trips within Japan under my belt) where to go?