UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

Dennis Reggie

Denis Reggie is a 25-year veteran in this arena. Based in Atlanta, he became famous for a new style of wedding photography called “wedding photojournalism.” He’s shot hundreds of celebrity weddings, and probably took the most famous wedding photograph of all time - that of John Kennedy Jr. to Carolyn Bessette - the groom kissing the bride’s hand as they step out of the one-room church where the ceremony was held:

Reggie described it in his own words:

They asked me to release just one picture of the wedding that I thought told the story, only one and it was to be my choice. There was a special energy about the moment. It’s one that I actually had to take in silhouette because it was a very dark island, no electricity for miles and there were candlelight’s only. I am focusing on her silhouette and I noticed that John had reached for her hand to bring her hand to his lips and I thought: ” gosh what a wonderful moment”. And I’m thinking in slow motion, although they were moving pretty quickly and I was able to get that one picture off with my Hasselblad and it was a moment for me that said it all. It’s one that that was later to be used on over a thousand covers of magazines and newspapers and it was a great honor. Of course it was a bittersweet as well because of their tragic demise three years later and that moment will always be a happy moment.

Hundreds of celebrity weddings. A thousand magazine covers. Hasselblad camera.

Top that!

Joe Buissink

Joe Buissink of Beverly Hills. Question: What’s so special about him? Answer: None other than Annie Leibovitz has hired him, not once but twice: to shoot her sister’s wedding, then to shoot her cousin’s. If you didn’t know, Leibovitz is the USA’s most famous photographer, who took many famous photos, amongst them Demi Moore’s pregnant and naked photos in Vanity Fair, Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” and “True Colors” album covers, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” album cover, Gisele Bündchen and LeBron James on the April 2008 cover of Vogue America and Miley Cyrus’ controversial Vanity Fair photo in which she appeared to be semi-nude.

Having said that, in the past more than 10 years Buissink himself has shot weddings almost the same number of celebrities as Leibovitz, including for Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Lopez.

Jerry Ghionis

Jerry Ghionis, based in Australia has won two “Album of the Year” awards at the prestigious annual Wedding & Portrait Photographers International convention, where he’s been the winningest photographer of the last four years. Although based in Australia, he draws huge crowds in the U.S. as a speaker.

Kevin Kubota

When Kevin Kubota charged USD10,000 per wedding a few years ago, and still people hired him. He even has his own line of Photoshop add-ons, Kubota Image Tools.

That’s it. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading my list of photographers whose creations are worth our picture frames.

Source

After disappearing from the blogosphere for months, the man dubbed “Malaysia’s first and last drug blogger” is back. In fact, he claimed that his blog was “the first totally non-anonymous drug blog in the world with photos and videos of myself using (drugs).”

Poh Huai Bin, 27 of sixthseal.com’s first entry in a long time was dated 28th March 2008 with the title “Hail to the King, Baby!,” complete with an image of him drinking straight from a bottle and a single line:

Contrary to popular belief, I am not dead.

IMHO, he should also be called Malaysia greatest and bravest, or even perhaps most reckless blogger who ever lived, so much so that top local paper The Star ran a feature on him on the 12th of July 2008.

Back then, in a post dated 30th August 2006 he eloquently described his suicide attempt (slit his wrists), which prompted responses such as this:

Let me, someone just a bit older than you and someone who has seen some shit in my time on this planet, break it down for you. In order of least stupid to most stupid, here goes:

1. wanting to kill yourself (can happen to almost anyone)
2. trying to kill yourself (if you succeed, then much respect –you’re a success)
3. trying poorly to kill yourself
4. making goodbye calls or writing notes prior to trying poorly to kill yourself
5. failing in an attempt to kill yourself
6. telling anyone who doesn’t have to know about it that you tried poorly to kill yourself and failed
7. posting about trying poorly to kill yourself and failing on your public blog

I have enjoyed your blog until now. Now I know that you are a sad attention-seeker. What you did is the sort of thing we expect from some spoiled, rich 16 year old girl here in the USA. It’s a terrible disgrace for a man to behave like this. It’s the opposite of going out like James Dean –which is actually pretty stupid too.

I don’t know how long you have been using drugs at a serious level. What I see is someone who may have stunted his psycho-social development at the teenage years.

Kill the blog. Get off the stage. Get some help now. Life is not like a movie. Behave like an adult. In the event you try this shit again, go vertically on the wrists. A warm bath will help stop coagulation. And don’t do it in a hospital. Killing yourself is so damn easy –how could you screw it up?

… and this:

JUST DIE, next time get a saw and saw your hand off… there are so many danterous equipments in ICU JUST grap those things they use to cut bones. CUT both your hands… or better still your legs… OR HEAD! OR STAB YOUR HEART! JUST DIE ALREADY!

If you choose the path of death to escape, do it properly. If you really wanted to die you would have died. You want to live, that is why you did what you did.

WHY? ultimately all of us reject death, we want to live. But for your disrespect for life just DIE!

DO drugs and be proud of it… get a life, quit your job la if you want to die earn money for what?!

haiii… you don’t need GOD you neeed some good time lock up in a padded cell… or a cozy mountain cottage… or monestery. Get away from humanity, be away be quite DON”T even talk while you are away… and just set a date, survive for 3months. Then decide if you want to die. IF you do then make sure you die properly. Buy insurance for parents to make 100’s of thousand form your death… hahahahah [of course after checking life insurance rates]

Of course there were many detailed explanations of drugs use: how he got them, and what he felt, complete with timestamps, but probably the one that stood out was the time he described in vivid detail his experiences (or rather Veritas’ experience) with heroin. It was posted on 25th January 2003. About half an hour after snorting about 25mg of heroin he described the feeling:

this just feels so good. it’s not like other drugs, its not the ecstatic happiness of MDMA (feels like you’re about to go on a really good vacation you’re really looking forward to), it’s not like stimulants where you go “fuck i can take on the world!!!”, this is like a comfortable, very comfortable feeling that you lose as soon as you go into puberty. its an innocent sort of comfortable where the best thing is that you’re feeling comfortable and safe and warm in your house. and that’s all that matters, nothing can hurt you. its the feeling of picnics and reading books and eating cheese cake and nice weather and mom taking care of you when you’re sick and i’ve got it! its the feeling of being a kid, where there are no real problems, only little ones, and you don’t need to do anything, you just hang around and feel comfortable and they’re parents there to take care of you. damn, thats what it feels like. return to childhood. its the feeling of waking up on a saturday morning to the smell of french toast and you just lie around in bed waiting for your mom to call you down to eat breakfast and you’ve had a great nites sleep and the only thing you want to do is read a good book, a safe book where there are no great problems and everything turns out to be okay in the end. jesus, you just don’t get this feeling anymore after you grow up. no wonder people get addicted to this shit. it’s really comfortable.

I think it’s 100% confirmed that Kenny Sia will never ever do posts like the two above…

But for those expecting the same old fireworks this time, there’d be disappointment. Although he still uses his existing domain, all his drugs-related posts are gone. He said he was asked to remove them by the Narcotics Division “as part of his appeal for a reduced charge.”

Nowadays, he blogs about anything but drugs. But perhaps that’s a good thing because back then I wondered whether he’d make it alive at all.

At the peak of his powers then, he was up to 13,000 unique visitors a day.

Sometime in 2007 it was gone.

In his recent interview, he was reported to have said:

My problems with drugs and alcohol were spiralling out of control since my early twenties and it started to affect my personal life in visible ways. I was admitted to ICU once for renal (kidney) failure and had an emergency dialysis done through a vein in my throat. I was in the ICU for a week and suffered permanent liver and kidney damage. I have also been hospitalised for overdosing and suicide attempts. I wasn’t in a good frame of mind and it was decided that something needed to be done before I killed myself.

It was then that he went to a drug rehabilitation programme in Kuala Lumpur that was supposed to last a month but it didnt work. He tried again: failed again. Then he tried for a 3rd time:

I was sent to a third drug rehabilitation centre, which was a little bit more restrictive than I imagined. I was stripped naked and forced to wear a sarong in addition to being handcuffed and shackled (even during bowel movements) due to escape attempts. The punishment for escaping was being restrained in a jail cell and I only had The Bible for companionship then. Food was sent in through a tray with plastic utensils and I was in serious withdrawal and bored to death.

Apparently it worked, and how he’s blogging again, albeit about healthier topics.

He claimed that sixthseal.com was not a drug blog but rather “promotion of harm reduction and drug education via self-experimentation and use.” Personally, I doubt the authorities would take kindly to this explanation!

His advice to blogging pretenders:

Don’t get into trouble with the law with photos of yourself with the Big Two – drugs and sex. You can write a controversial article, get in the limelight, and then fade away. No one would even remember you, it’s just a matter of time before someone out there gets you.

Source
The Star, 12th July 2008

I don’t think I have seen a youtube video that brought a lump to my throat. Collectively, judging from the comments section, it’s responsible for many a throat-lump. Even more amazingly, it’s a true story more than 30 years ago.

Before watching the video, some background info: Christian the lion was a 3rd generation London zoo lion that at a young age was separated from his parents and put up for sale at the world-famous Harrods Departmental Store in London sometime in 1969.

Two Australians living in London, Anthony “Ace” Bourke (also known as Ace Berg) and John Rendall saw him there, paid the money and brought him home. Christian was a mere few weeks old then.

The bond between human and beast became very strong, but cute lion cubs grow to become huge in no time. It was then that they decided to release Christian into the African wilderness, to become a wild lion. Within a year, he already was, heading his own pride.

Then Ace and John decided to go to Africa to visit Christian one last time.

A documentary on this was filmed sometime 1970 (some say 1974).

Excerpts of the documentary was uploaded to youtube, including that pivotal moment when Christian is reunited with his owners after about a year in the wilderness.

They actually went into the wilderness without any visible protection and apparently after being specifically informed that the lion would not remember them (read: there’s a possiblity they’d get mauled to death).

This is what happened.

Click here to see the video

Yes, Kaamatan 20008 is done and over with, but surely better late than never right?. Gogds has uploaded surely the highest resolution images of Kaamatan Unduk Ngadau 2008 contestants made freely available on the web.

Each image is 2000×3008 pixels, at over 3MB each.

Add to that a big plus: no visible watermark.

But first a slideshow of the images in the gallery:

Last but not least, view / download the full resolution pics here.

This has been making the rounds for some time, with at least one source saying that this is actually in use at an IT firm in Mumbai, India. unfortunately there’s no proof of it being actually in use.

Well, I think it should! This, and perhaps other pictures showing similar message, should be put up everywhere, not least KLIA’s and KKIA’s smoking room…

Source

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and in yours truly’s eyes, in the officially-sanctioned Unduk Ngadau’s almost 50-year history, Sylvia Sandralisa Orow’s the fairest of them all.

She was in her mid-teens when she was crowned the State-level Unduk Ngadau in 1991 (pics courtesy of Sylvia herself):

Interview session

Unduk Ngadau 1991

By 1993 she had won Miss Sabah/World and was top 4 at the Miss Malaysia/World pageant. She could very well be the first Unduk Ngadau who went on to win the Miss Sabah/World pageant.

She moved to New York in 2000 and based herself there ever since, working in Corporate Sales. Ah, the Big Apple, reminds me of the famous New York Moving Company.

Apart from that, she’s active in a Malaysian Dance Troupe, promoting Malaysia and of course Sabah; she’s also a volunteer with UNICEF.

Even with her busy schedule, she still finds time to “balik kampung” to Tuaran once a year.

Here are relatively recent photos of her, all sourced from her friendster account, with her kind permission.

Click here to see more pictures

If you think you’ve seen one too many boring wedding photographs, this one should make you sit up and take note.

On 12th May 2008, a wedding was taking place in a 100+ year old church in Sichuan, China.

It started off the usual way, around 2pm, photographs being taken, like this one on the church steps:

Suddenly, at 2:28pm local time, the great 2008 Sichuan earthquake hit, the deadliest and strongest earthquake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. The earthquake was felt as far away as Beijing (1,500 km away) and Shanghai (1,700 km away), where office buildings swayed with the tremor. As of 13th June 2008, nearly 70,000 were confirmed dead and more than 17,000 missing.

The earth shook for 3 minutes and the church came crashing down. Luckily the 33 attendees were not inside the church at that time.

The photographer, camera already in hand, kept taking photos, and these are among what he captured.

The church building crashing down:

The groom was barely visible in the choking dust:

Click here to see more pictures

Cao Lu, 46 and partner Yang Chunxia, 46 are operators of the “China Restaurant”, the only Chinese restaurant in Baghdad, the city which global consultancy firm Mercer rated in a report as the world’s most dangerous out of 215 surveyed.

Baghdad has 6 million people.

It opened for business about 6 months ago, and small: it’s the size of a bathroom and only has 2 tables. Still it never fails to fill with Iraqi customers every lunchtime. The restaurant is decorated with red Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling and posters of kung fu film stars Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee on the walls.

Cao Lu

If you think you’d be spoilt for choice when it comes to Chinese delicacies at his eatery, think again. Cao had to cut back on his Chinese menu because “they couldn’t get the materials and now make quite a lot of Iraqi dishes.”

They currently make USD40 to USD50 per day. This is good enough for Cao to consider expansion.

Definitely not for the faint hearted, this is what they have encountered so far:
- a bomb blast rattled windows and a panicking co-worker went back home to China
- there are explosions almost daily in the city in the last 5 years
- electricity is very unreliable, routinely shutting off, leaving one to swelter in Baghdad’s scorching heat. In fact, the building the restaurant is operating out of receives only 2 hours of electricity daily. However, the restaurant is open morning to night.

Click here to read more

Conditions:
- based on looks alone
- if she’s allowed to participate by the Unduk Ngadau rules
- if she decides to participate

Joanne Kimberly Majalap, 18 was 1st runner up at Miss Sabah / Malaysia / World 2008 held in April, and I must say she’s as, if not more, stunningly beautiful as the winner, who’s none other than the 2006 Unduk Ngadau, Devenna Jaikob, 20.

Some photos taken during the said pageant. All courtesy of bennyliew.com.

The moment the winner was announced - and it was Devenna (left), but it could’ve been very easily Joanne right?

The hair’s not quite right for an Unduk Ngadau pageant, but she looked every inch a future Unduk Ngadau:

And she looks stunning in batik:

Click here for more pictures

Yves Saint Laurent (1st August 1936 – 1st June 2008) was considered by many as the greatest fashion designer of the 20th Century.

When he became the chief designer of the House of Dior at the age of 21 after the death of Christian Dior at age 52, he changed the look of the fashion industry, designing clothes that reflected women’s changing role in society: more confident personally, sexually and in the work-place: he introduced trouser suits, safari jackets and sweaters. He made “ready-to-wear” popular.

He retired in 2002, was ill for quite some time, and died of the effects of brain cancer at this residence in Paris.

He once said:”I found my style through women. That’s where its strength and vitality comes from because I draw on the body of a woman.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid his tributes, saying Laurent was “the first to elevate haute couture to the rank of art and that gave him global influence. Yves Saint Laurent infused his label with his creative genius, elegant and refined personality… because he was convinced that beauty was a necessary luxury for all men and all women.”

Source
The BBC
wikipedia