Larry 'Flame' Moore died a year ago to brain tumour, in his memory the Light Foundation was established to further encourage fresh young photographers. The grant is worth 5000. This year's winner is Chris Burkard, a 20 year old from Arroyo Grande, California. To see all his work, go to burkardphoto.com

On another thing altogether, my three boards has been sold off, leaving me with one board, and a new one flying in from Padang after Raya, I don't need that many boards, but it was nice trying to collect them, especially the ones given by the pros. Plus, collecting them is not as cheap as collecting cds. Daymn, but it doesn't matter, what matters is I'm getting a 6'4', 19 1/2, and 2 1/4 board, with permanent fins. How cool is that? It'll be a bitch transporting it with the fins everywhere, but to hell with it, for the waves, anything man.




Priorities, funny how this particular word doesn't mean jacksquat to kids, I mean all that mattered to me when I was a kid was to try to get good grades for me parents, and stay alive. Then as you get older, everything changes, and I mean everything.

All of a sudden, whereby your peers finds it easy to just resign of their jobs and get other jobs, you find yourself not being able to do so. A bit of a sticky situation wouldn't you say, if you leave your job and definitely get lower pay elsewhere what with the amounts of commitments you're finacially tied to. So priorities changed, you can't leave your job when you feel like it, especially when stupid ass said country companies refused to pay higher than what you're already earning. No problem there, work is work, it is your number one priority.

Next would definitely be your lifestyle, when in comes a factor that in some way or another disrupts your lifestyle, what do you do? Do you reprioritise, whereby the defining factor is given more of a headway than your lifestyle? Or do you kick out and bolt on the said factor? Or you at least give it a shot to balance it so as that you do not allow the said factor to disrupt your lifestyle, when it clearly doesn't bother it, just that you feel that it does, with your overambitious behaviour for chasing waves? In short compromise.

Then there is the change, that ultimately shaped most of yourself as a person, when you realised that your incessant spendings and pulling in of money, is not exactly helping, and you try to cut down on the trips and boards, and lo and behold, you might have just grown distant over the one man that has always treated you like his lil kid. But you also hoped that over time, he might see the reason behind your choice, and be understanding. You need to prioritise your work, the thing that's making all of these into a reality. You wouldn't want to be seen as a leech, leeching of money for things that you want instead of needing. And you know of a few who does that. You wouldn't want to stop that low. Though, he could easily argue and said that you're officially sponsored by said company. To which you would have to remind him again that it's actually unofficial, seeing that you're malaysian, and the only reason you get sponsored is because of your ties with him. And that doesn't make you feel good, coz you don't know whether you're being sponsored because you're really good or due to connections.

Then there is the guy, whom you have been seeing, whom is or has been very anal about organizing everything, not that you can blame him, seeing that it does help actually being organized, but you also can't help but feel that you're like a kid ( you are one actually ) and he's being too grown up. Which makes you wonder, can this actually work, seeing that both of you hardly have the time to really spend it together and find out more about each other. Yes, incidentally he's over at your place alot, while you're still around, but he sleeps early, whereelse you sleep late, either due to work or answering international calls, or because you want to catch up on the shows on the telly. He wakes up early and you're still asleep, you can't remember he kissed you goodbye, sat beside you on the bed, looking at you, and pulling the covers up for you, coz again you had a late night and you're not a morning person. He hates malls, and crowds, you love malls but you hate people, he's homey, you're not. He'd rather stay at home, eat and watch a dvd, you'd rather eat out, and go for movies. Every weekend your urge to go anywhere is normally shot down, for you are sharing a life with someone now, and it wouldn't be fair for you to pack up and leave for your surf trips. Reprioritising has somewhat made you feel resentful of things and you want to be left alone again, coz you want time for yourself.

Priorities, priorities....., kinda makes you think what is there to life other than priorities.




Funny how it seems now, that I actually do come home to somebody, or rather somebody and a lil tyke by the name, Kassim Selamat Neo The Grease Monkey, my or rather our newborn 1 week old kitten. I saved him, from under my car, I reckon he was trying to give my month old car an oil change, silly thing.

He has been great with Neo, feeding him at the oddest hours ( while being careful not to wake me up, seeing that I haven't been sleeping enough ), giving Neo a lil bath, changing Neo's water bottle whenever he could.

It is rather fast, both of us that is, we are still in the early stages of getting to know each other, but we are almost living together, I wonder how does other corporate dating couples make this work, what with both of us being in corporate, and pulling in long hours, to make it even harder, while caring for a newborn kitten, it's hard not to have him staying over. ( I don't really fancy staying over at his place seeing that in compare to my place, my place is spacious, and I like spacious areas ).

Of course we soon found out our differences too, he's rather organized and a neat freak, and I am a scatter brain and quite messy. It helps having a maid, coming in every Sunday, to clean up that place of mine. The whole apartment is organized accordingly too.

I dress up rather differently, he dresses up rather differently too, in turn I look way younger than he, which is more than OK with me, seeing that he is 6 years older. Though it doesn't help that I do carry myself and dress up in surfer togs nowadays. The volcoms, the rip curls, the billabongs, whatever there is, I don't own much roxy though. Alot of cults, yes. Where else he, lets just say we haven't been going out much with each other for me to know much yet. But he does look damn fine in his corporate do. So when we are in our power suits and corporate clothes, yeah we do look like a set of incorporated silverware from Sachs, but otherwise, we do look rather mismatched. More than often when I am getting ready to go out with him, for some event or something, we both would find ourselves looking at how different we are in that ridiculously huge sliding mirror of mine. More often than enough, we would agree that I do look like a childish rich spoilt brat, and he in turn looked like a chaperone.

He attributed our lifestyles for the differences in our outlooks, I am a surfer, and he is a Beamer ethusiast. Therefore, he had always said " Both of us are very corporate, the only difference is, I'm the New York kinda corporate, and she's the California type of corporate ". Well, absurd as it seems for him to use the states as an example, it does work in this kinda circumstances.

It's still a learning phase between us both, heck, I just found out that he doodles comics and he illustrates quite nicely for a corporate guy. He just found out that there is no artistic bone in me at all. None, zilch, zip, nada, elek. That I am all codes, logic and problem solving. He's laidback, and I 'm agro, but I'll be laidback when I'm in surfing mode.

It has been hard for me to adapt to having somebody, him, in my life, I have grown rather fond of him, and he's bracing himself for me to bolt by the end of this week, because of the reputation I have for bolting on a potential. I don't think I will any time near in the future, maybe in the distant future, but not now yet. My friends seem to adore him, apparently he portrayed an air of maturity. LOL. Maybe. Mr Evil approved of him so much that when I freaked out about this whole thing, I was given an earful.

I haven't really talked about him with my surf boys, the ones who knows are by accident, and they are some who didn't think it was a good idea for me to date somebody exclusively, seeing that the comps are just around the corner, and I'll be competing and this will disrupt my training. Our friends seemed happy for us. He has also been very supportive over my surfing, and for that I am grateful.

He might not be much of a looker, but he does know how to make me laugh amongst other things. *wink. For that I think I'll give this one a try, at least.