mother’s day | shimworld

On Friday 11th I had a long-planned photo shoot of Mr Baker’s Bakeshop business that would take me from the showroom all the way back to the heartbeat of the bakery. On this day, Cyril joined me on this very early road trip from Seria to Batu Besurat in Gadong where Mr Baker’s Bakery is located. It had to be early for a number of reasons: to capture the essence of their very busy kitchen before shop opens for business and to avoid the traffic jam along Tungku link road that would inevitably delay the shoot. Mr Baker is a well established name in the healthier eating community with cafe outlets at Jerudong Park Medical Centre, a newly opened cafe at the Airport Mall including, in case you didn’t know, Fitness Zone at Serusop — the healthy goodness of Mr Baker’s breads (choice of Rye, Low GI, Sovitol, etc) can now be found right up the stairs.

Wu Chun explaining about the Fitness Zone and Mr Baker’s joint promo to newly head shaven Rano (not pictured).

Fitness Zone chose Mr. Baker’s Bakeshop because they are the healthier choice and due to their strict policy of no added preservatives, dough improver and as much as possible, no added stabilizer / emulsifier is used. For instance, you may notice that the sponge used in our cakes is less spongy but firm in texture and most of our cakes are less sweet.

According to Eric, the founder of Mr Baker’s Bakeshop, “In conjunction with the upcoming Mother’s Day celebration, we are having a 15% discount on our top selling cakes, Fresh Fruit Vanilla, and on top of it, we are also giving complimentary gift voucher worth $140 to the first 50 customers which entitles holder for one-week free entry to the #1 Health Club courtesy of Fitness Zone.” In addition, Wu Chun added, “We are thankful to Mr Baker’s Bakeshop for allowing FZ Members to have the privilege of having their cakes made to order and have them delivered to Fitness Zone free of charge.”

Eric Pui, founder of Mr Baker’s Bakeshop speaking to Sin Chew and United Daily News journalists about the mutually beneficial partnership with Fitness Zone.

Mr. Baker’s Bakeshop is also baking their record-breaking biggest fruit cake ever baked specially for Fitness Zone’s Mother’s day activity which is to be held on 12th May Saturday at their Serusop Branch. This coming weekend, there is also a ‘Surprise’ Mother’s Day promotion and Fitness Zone will also do an open house for all families to enjoy their state of the art facilities plus free gifts as well! Start living healthy and start SAVING MONEY by becoming a member of Fitness Zone today!

Size matters! Wu Chun unboxing Mr Baker’s biggest fruit cake ever baked specially for Fitness Zone’s Mother’s day activity including an FZ open house for all families to enjoy their state of the art facilities plus free gifts as well!

Mr Baker’s best selling fresh fruit vanilla cake specially upsized for this Fitness Zone Mother’s Day promo. Why is this best selling? Stay tuned for behind-the-scenes photo documentary of how the cake is assembled.

The best selling fresh fruit cake looks and tastes ever bit as good from afar and up close (remember, if you find the cake a tad too creamy, you can order one with less cream).

Wu Chun says, “Good health not only add years to life but also add life to years! Quality of life is so important to people nowadays and this month, we are giving very good promotion for all mothers which we believe it’s one of the proudest ‘Gift of Love’ that a mother can own on mother’s day!” Photo courtesy of Fitness Zone

Founder of Mr Baker’s Bakeshop, Eric Pui, poses with Wu Chun holding their bakery’s largest and most popular Fresh Fruit cake for a press photo. Just how big is the cake? According to Eric it’s about 15″ in diameter.

The massive cake makes it inside a drinks fridge at Fitness Zone and staff checks for clearance before closing the door. I understand the cake didn’t stay inside very long — frankly I would be surprised if it did. :)

How time flies! Catching up with Chun for a quick photo op after 5 years since our paths last crossed at the launch of Fitness Zone Kiulap in 2007. In case you missed that launch, click on this photo to check out the massive media event.

Tweet from a fan of Wu Chun who initiated a comment my Facebook Page.

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A NOTE OF THANKS to LILY CHIAM, a highly accomplished musician, business owner, a friend and most of all a Mom for her invitation to the DREAM ASCENDS concert tonight where she’ll debut and perform tracks from her album TOGETHER! It’s much appreciated. I’m certain I will enjoy the fascinating aerialist and New York dancer, the lighting effects, the different instruments and cultural dances that you so eloquently put but most of all, your performance! Regrets, however, I have prior commitments on this celebratory weekend. I believe DREAM ASCENDS is going to be a great finale to Mother’s Day.

May 12, 2008 UPDATE: THE DREAM ASCENDS GALLERY BY DAVID CHEOK
May 14, 2008 UPDATE: CINEMATOGRAPHY BY DAVID CHEOK

Meanwhile, according to THE HOMEROOM, an LA Times blog, …

a group of mothers are staging a protest on Friday to send the message that the only thing mothers really want for Mother’s Day is a decent education for their kids … Their target: the millions of dollars the governor has proposed cutting from the education budget.

While nothing of the sort is happening in our education sector, we all want better education for our kids, our legacy for the future! And what better subjects to educate our kids than love. A love for education, a love (and respect) for the family, a discipline that’s taught at Chung Ching Primary School in Seria as early as kindergarten. Education including family values begins at home as much as it is at school and he school instills the culture at an early age. Today, on the eve of Mother’s Day, students, teachers and parents celebrated the occasion with roses, cake and a whole lot of attention!

Primary 2 students playing a Mother’s Day piece to the delight of their parents who looked on from the side walk.

A teacher with an empty red box that contained Mother’s Day cards, a surprise from the students to their moms along with the red roses, chocolates and abundance of smiles.

A student and her mother poses for a deserving photo moment.

Besides greeting cards, students also surprised their moms with a written declaration of their love in more than one languages while hearts remain universally symbolic!

I don’t remember anyone teaching me the notion of giving flowers to my parents at school but if I did, I might have done so quite innocently. But I grew up and eventually understood the meaning of roses fairly well :)

On April 28 2008 The School Leadership National Conference and Workshop 2008 was officiated by the Minister of Education. The ceremony, a first joint collaboration between MOE, UBD and Microsoft, was held at the Chancellor’s Hall and the event carried the theme ‘School Leaders for Tomorrow’s Education‘. The Minister received a token of appreciation from Microsoft Brunei, a photograph I took at the Rimba Primary School captioned “In Every Child There Is A Potential To Be Great.“

Chosen from a series of photographs from the LEARNING STYLES AND POWERPOINT project with Microsoft, Country Manager Wan Kong and I deliberated over the selections and mutually arrived at the same piece differing only in our interpretation of the photo caption.

“Learning Styles (LS) can be defined as the way each person begins to Concentrate on new and difficult information, Process this information, Internalize and retain this information and; Use this information … The Dunn & Dunn Learning Styles Model operates with 20 elements that are fundamental to our learning … is aligned with the learning sysems of the brain … thoroughly researched and has already proven its strength.” You can learn more at www.learningstyles.net.

As a token of appreciation for the efforts of the teachers and students at CCMS in making the shoot possible, Microsoft had goodie bags for the team. On Microsoft’s behalf, I handed them to the teacher in charge on this day to coincide with the school’s Mother’s Day celebration!

The following two photos were candid moments at CCMS. Photographing them candidly can be difficult given the available space to move around in relation to direction of light in order to maintain a natural looking ambient including the right body language and behaviour.