Happy go Lucky

Cloud dance

2011-10-25T23:46:00.001+08:00

Coming up next week is the exhibition of our photos in the Exhibition Gallery in our very own Cultural Centre, TST.

A few of my pictures will be exhibited :) I am a virgin in this and am very excited about it! Well, may be I should try letting more people know about this exhibition first… but, I will survive if I didn’t!

The “Cloud dances” was one of the 3 sets which I wanted to submit to the exhibition, I gave it up in the end thinking the other set is better - of course you will let me know which set do you like better. I love the idea though, the changing shapes of clouds, so mesmerising. These pictures were taking during my wander-abouts in Hong Kong, the sky was so blue, the clouds so white, and the dance so elegant.

See you sometime in the exhibition hall next weekend!

Heart of Hong Kong

2011-10-21T17:21:00.001+08:00

Date: 21 August 2011

Venue: Sai Kung, Hong Kong

The weather was amazingly beautiful: super blue sky with patches of clouds dancing around. Ban-sir nearly killed me when I arrived at the pier, I was about 10 minutes late, but luckily I wasn’t the last one to join this beautiful tour! 3 other students were also late… it was quite comforting :p

It was a truly wonderful experience, to witness the growth of the earth, with the traces left visible to the naked eyes. There is nothing anyone can do but to sigh and praise the wonder of Nature. Hong Kong is one of the best places to admire old rocks - millions of years of work. It wasn’t a very easy journey, with many people trying to get the best view (to shoot pictures) of those rocks on a BOAT! Chan-sir had to remind people to keep the balance of the boat :) Sometimes it wasn’t so easy but it was always fun

Look at the sea! The serenity of it and how small we humans are! How can we ever fight with the nature? How would we stand a chance? Compare to the vast of the universe, we merely are dusts.

Fishing has never been a hobby of mine, I suppose I will never understand those people!

Standing on the deck, my seasickness almost drown me! Poor Chan-sir was really seasick! You can see many our my classmates shooting at the rocks and the imbalance of the boat! :) Apart from our boat, there are little boats like that sailing next to us, just in case anyone wants to land. They charge you a small fee though - not sure how much, we didn’t really use their service.

You can see “The Heart of Hong Kong” in the picture on the right. It was a natural mountain with the shape of a heart :) Very romantic place, isn’t it? We stayed there for a while to take pictures. It was like another world - to land finally, my poor head!

The picture on your left is our group of people, haha, every one was very busy engaging in their own business! On the right was a team of mountaineers, they were well equipped and looked like they were really experienced!

Reflections. Anna & Ricky. Dr Wong. Chan-sir. :)

Since we were all taking pictures on the boat, all our pictures are more or less the same - depends on where you actually shot at of course. After we landed, our techniques, equipment, i.e. the model of cameras and lenses, from all these things you can tell good photographers from the bad. Of course most of us are only amateurs, but some of us do take very nice pictures. My pictures are not as impressive as I thought but they are not bad of course. Going to see those rocks on a boat is not a every-day experience, it was my first time to explore this part of Hong Kong, it was so amazing! I have enjoyed it and was so glad I didn’t throw up. When I was shooting (with all my concentration), I thought little about the sea, but after a while my head just went spinning. Haha luckily I didn’t embarrass myself!

Last… here is a picture of me - sunburnt horribly :) Picture by Anna (yes, I looked awful!)

Mid-Autumn Festival

2011-09-17T12:53:00.001+08:00

Date: 4 September 2011

Venue: Victoria Park, Causeway Bay

I was an hour early for the shoot. But then I really couldn’t get myself to work on my assignment anymore. I waited patiently in the MTR station, leaning on the wall, drinking Vita lemon tea and reading one of my favourite Jinyong book (The return of the condor heroes 神雕俠侶), I really was enjoying myself, until… when my beloved Chan-sir found me hiding from the crowd - he was about half an hour early :)

It was a total disappointment in Victoria Park, to me anyway. There was only a really really really huge fish made of a thousand lanterns, and few lanterns of small fish, that’s IT. Geez. I stood there and thinking what to shoot, when I saw this guy…

And he was clearly enjoying himself (though he was swearing when he saw us shooting at him).

While we were waiting for the real, paid model… here came another: less sophisticated yet more interesting one!

She was just a doll! So cute! Very curious too, when we took her pictures and my teachers showed her her own pictures, she just kept coming back for more.

The gold in her hair!!

I wasn’t interested in taking pictures of our model. I am not going to say anything bad about her, it’s just I wasn’t interested in her.

Well, I found things to shoot in the “nothingness” of the park.

Like the nice décor..

And finally, the fish.

Look at this Guinness-record-breaking giant fish, it’s outrageous, isn’t it?

While we were all waiting for the lanterns to lit up…

Here it goes :)

These 2 are badly tilted.

It wasn’t so bad actually. It was just so different from what I had in mind before I went. Anyway, Mid-Autumn festival is over now, I hope you all had a great time and had a lot of mooncakes (no, thanks!)!

time

2011-08-01T00:06:00.001+08:00

is passing by.

Good bye July.

Shek O

2011-05-15T22:22:00.000+08:00

Date: 15 May 2011

Venue: Shek O

Photography class. We went to Shek O while it was drizzling. Luckily the rain stopped a while after.

We were exercising with the shutter speed with the wave. Here are what I’ve got:

Shek O is a famous place for barbequing. Actually I’ve been there for quite some times yet I haven’t been to the other side of the island, where there were full of rocks and there was even a nice little bridge.

Later I learned that it is a very famous spot for wedding pictures. I can’t imaging myself taking my own wedding pictures there but… well, obviously it isn’t or others.

The rocks were crazily slippery. I almost felt, my right knee got a huge bruise but well, I got lucky and didn’t fall of course. But the picture taken on the right was quite worth it!

This actually is one of my favourite picture of the day :)

Bun Festival

2011-05-10T23:16:00.000+08:00

Date: 10 May 2011

Venue: Cheung Chau

In May I was invited by Anna to attend the annual Bun Festival - she lives in Cheung Chau! It made things so much easier for me. I stayed a night at her house and went to work together with her the next day!

We were almost steamed alive… too hot, too sunny, but it was good for the buns!

Anna lives close to the main street, where the parade was to go on. We picked a bad spot because we got all the sun on us. Anna said “oh it was wrong calculation!” It certainly was!

Poor kids had to stand a few hours on a stick of metal. I can understand why some of them were looking upset or grumpy or emotionless. These 2 little kids were perfect actors, they were professionals!

There were quite some interesting things to see.

Bad photos, but I tried my best.

Anna and I had a walk along the coast. It was really nice and on our way back to her house, we ate some hot and freshly made buns!

There was a bit of a show going on too!

Before, during the contest and after - the perfect view at Anna’s balcony.

While the contest was going on, the other bun “trees” were being cleaned up.

Another hike

2011-04-24T22:28:00.000+08:00

Date: 24 April 2011

Venue: Long Ke

I can’t believe I went to Long Ke twice shortly! With different people and even happier! This time no Nikon D90, only a Ricoh! I’ve got tons of pictures so I am only posting group pictures :D

Group photo after getting off the mini van, before actually hiking.

Another group photo in the summit of the hills :D Look at the back of us! So many mountains!!!!! So beautiful!!!!

After we’ve made it to the beautiful beach! Not quite a group photo… but still interesting!

And girls only :) A few girls anyway!

Yeah! Had to keep on hiking!

After we got to the dam.

While we were waiting for the taxis to come, and the sun was setting… so got a few shots, taken by Po :D

How look at breathtaking the view was! I love Hong Kong!

In the end… I am looking sooooooo dark! (picture taken before dinner in a seafood restaurant!)

I love to be dark :D

Butterflies!

2011-04-03T22:15:00.000+08:00

Date: 3 April 2011

Venue: Fung Yuen, New Territories

Our photography class activity was to go to Fung Yuen! I went to Fung Yuen last year in June (but I didn’t post any pictures on my blog!!) so you can say that I am ‘experienced’ this time than the last! Here we go!

There are quite some species. See those butterflies mating? Haha amazing!

The butterflies were looking directly at me! Quite human, no? Actually I think they looked more like aliens…

I remember on my first shooting butterflies, Ricky asked me to shoot in manual mode. I didn’t even know how to focus using my 200mm lens. This time I am well prepared and being soberly alert when I see them. Hah, I’ve got better pictures this time! I think I’ve got a good eye.

You see many of the leaf-coloured butterfly on the left. Camouflage. The picture on the right is one of my favourite this time.

Now this is a rare species. It’s got tails! You find them in Asia.

This is another very human-like butterfly…

And we’ve got ugly dragonfly and a cicada!

My butterflies are very beautiful, yeah!

Hiking plus Big camera

2011-03-27T21:31:00.000+08:00

Date: 26 & 27 March 2011

Venue: Long Ke and TST

Went hiking with Yan, Kimmy and Molly on 26 March in Long Ke. It was quite hazy and windy too.

On 27 March, Chan-sir and Ban-sir showed us how to use BIG OLD cameras (the one they have… wow, are too expensive for me to buy in the coming 10 years! and it’s unlikely I would be using them even).

The harbour is too hazy again…

Shenzhen

2011-03-11T21:19:00.000+08:00

Date: 11 March 2011

Venue: Shenzhen

Was my first time to this side of Shenzhen… the bright side.

We were in Children Palace… actually I don’t even know what that building is for :p but it looked futuristic in a way.

With this great dome. What’s the use of this? Anyone knows?

At night we went to the library :D

My photography buddies :D Everyone was very serious about their work!

Nam Sang Wai

2011-02-20T19:53:00.000+08:00

Date: 20 Feb 2011

Venue: Nam Sang Wai in New Territories

Invited by Anna, Ricky and I joined her and went to Nam Sang Wai on a cloudy Sunday - it wasn’t a very cheerful day! Now when I think about it, it could only be a cloudy day that you could take some moody pictures…

This is what you see when you get into NSW.

After crossing a stream, you step into Nam Sang Wai. The vintage wooden floor… hm, I had a nice feeling about this place.

There are indeed people living there! Actually NSW is a huge wetland area where is home to many birds.

There was a fire broke out earlier this year… as you can see from the photos, it kinda giving some eerie feeling… a cloudy day, burned wood… all was quite depressing.

Grass is slowly growing back - there is always hope.

There is a pond inside NSW, and a pier too. Many couples love taking their wedding shots at that spot (on the left). I don’t see how special it is. The colours of the place inspire me.

We walked a long way in NSW. It is a huge place. You can spend a whole day walking there. I am serious! We bumped into this man who uses Nikon too. He lent me his glass lens and I took some shots. Wah. The colours are vivid!

And we walked pass those abandoned houses… Anna said she felt she was touched by someone - Ricky and I said we didn’t - may be she was touched by something… that idea was very scary!!!

The whole place gave me a very nice feeling. When we were about to leave (at around 5pm), there was a fog coming… Anna said she couldn’t stay because she had to catch a ferry home, I didn’t want to stay on my own… So we left. I wish we had stayed for the fog.

As I said earlier, NSW is home to many birds. Even though I didn’t bring my 200mm lens, I still got a nice bird shot :D

And we left.

(Anna found this nice grass on our way out) (and that’s her on my right).

Leonardo da Vinci

2011-02-05T23:47:00.000+08:00

Spent some time in the Museum of Science for a while. Leo da Vinci amazes me!

My mood was unbelievably light. Everything I saw, I saw beauty in it.

…able to observe and record every experiment phenomenon precisely. He was left-handed with written from right to left… difficult to read and understand…

He’s DA VINCI! His notes were a mystery, he’s attractive, he’s mystic.

Here is a picture of his handwriting…

I focused all my attention of flight. How much had he contributed to the world! To all those places I’ve been… a plane.

My physics was so bad it would make you cry. I liked the model :p

You must have seen this before!

… and a projector! He used this to make light for working at night!

History repeats itself again and again. I will have to break through.

On the peak

2011-02-04T21:04:00.001+08:00

Date: 30 Jan 2011

Venue: The Peak, Hong Kong

This was the first outing with my photography crew, missed the last one because I had 2 exams. It was actually quite fun, didn’t quite work as I had imagined, but our teacher Ban Li gave us advice when we started shooting. It wasn’t very helpful though, the weather was quite bad - too hazy!

The view was of course magnificent, it was freezing too! We were all waiting patiently for the haze to “unveil” but it got worse as time went by…

The sky was beautiful though!

We waited till 7pm, after the magic hour… Multi-exposure pictures :) The result looks rather nice though!

Anyway, it was a very nice experience to shoot with a group of people, who actually have better gears! I didn’t even bring my bigger tripod! Haha, our photography teacher said I should just throw it away :p And he thought I was a university student!

I wish I had one of those cameras too! Ban Li is a pro!

On a sunny day…

2011-01-20T23:20:00.001+08:00

Date: 8-9 Jan 2011

Venue: Home / TST

It was a really beautiful Saturday… but I had to stay in to study for my exams, agh. The weather was amazing.

Being inside made me wanting to go out even more!

When you get too bored studying, and get distracted by the view outside of your room, I believe you’d take pictures like that too. In 22 minutes the skies turned totally dark. WINTER!

Alright, pretending to be diligent! Really am NOT the diligent type…

And then the next day. I couldn’t stand the boredom anymore. Ha, so I invited Po and Yan to the museum :p

Have a bit of silly time in the Museum of Arts after visiting the…

SHOW, where you could touch the sculptures from the Louvre! Oh well, yeah, they are all replicas and you are not allowed to take photos! :) The best thing? It costs only HK$10!

Yes, once you’re out, the weather isn’t so good anymore… (!!!!) nevertheless it was a very nice photo!

Ciao! …I also suspect I have failed my Econ exam, BUT, I will certainly survive!

Fujian - last day, 5th!

2011-01-07T21:41:00.001+08:00

Date: 6 April 2010

Venue: Wuyi mountain

We got up at 5am super unwillingly. Luckily it was drizzling outside and it was reasonable enough to tell the stout woman that we would not go with her for rafting because it was raining. Went right back in bed after the call. Haha.

Of course then we went to Wuyi mountain, but, yeah, without the woman’s guide. It sort of stopped raining when we were there, but the roads were all wet and was a bit cold.

The view was rather nice. We took our time and strolled along the 九曲 river.

The boatmen were all gone owing to the rain. They started to pack their boats back home!!!! Well, lucky us then the weather got better again and we had our chance to see the famous river! :D

This was where the boats were laid out.

Da da! We were in the boat :D without raincoats! The 4 of us! Our pants were all wet…

The view on the boat!

After all that, we were all soaked and were really cold. We had no choice but to go back to the hotel to get changed! Finally we had wonderful dinner in a local restaurant - super good fried eggs with Wuyi beers!!

Eh. The end! :p

Warsaw, Poland

2011-01-01T23:48:00.003+08:00

Chapter 3

Leaving Dresden to Warsaw via Prague wasn’t too bad.

Janis took me to the Hauptbahnhof in the Neu Stadt, there was supposed to be a train to Prague yet it wasn’t there. I freaked out. The train officer said the train to Prague would stop over in the Hauptbahnhof in Alt Stadt. People asked me to take a taxi - taxi in Germany? Taxies are notoriously expensive in Hong Kong, I didn’t think I wanted to bet on my luck or in this case… my wallet - so I opted for the S-Bahn. I was all sweating when I was on the train, it took 5 minutes to Alt Stadt, wasn’t it? How come it took so long! The bugs were eating my guts. I ran after I got off the S-Bahn in Alt Stadt, ha, believe me or not, there was a delay to Prague so the train was still in the platform! I was almost in a rapture, I flew to the ticket office yelling for a ticket on the train. The lady immediately proceed to buy a ticket to Prague for me on the ticketing machine… but, it only showed the tickets to the next train. Damn it. I ran. I hopped on the train, no delay, I couldn’t afford it. My connection train to Warsaw was no joke.

I couldn’t believe my luck, but then, lucky has always been my middle name - haha, yes, we Asians have all kind of names! - so I settled myself down neatly on the train, and started talking to the couple sitting opposite to me.

Stopped by Prague

I wasn’t disappointed in Prague because I had no expectation. It reminded me of Salzburg, but it turned out to be so very different. I stayed there for just 2 hours, lying on the grass daydreaming then I was off to my Warsaw! The officers in the train station in Prague were terribly unhelpful and rude, deduct two marks.

Warsaw

Finally! After several hours on the night train, I arrived Warsaw at around 6 in the morning. The hostel I booked was not far from the train station, 10 minutes walk. I had sobered up and was breathing in the nice communism air in Warsaw - I was ready for some adventures!

Funny that I had to call the hostel manager to open the door for me at 7am in the morning. I felt bad for doing this but why didn’t they just install a bell or something? Ivan, the hostel manager, doesn’t even live in the hostel. I had to laugh when I told him I had no money to pay - all Euros - but he was really nice and said I could pay whenever I had the money! Aw, death to capitalists!

This was how my room looked: bright, big and a balcony included!

That day I got a room mate - Thomas. He’s from Germany and was travelling by car. He had stayed in Warsaw for a few days and was leaving Warsaw the day after, so he suggested we see the city together for a day. I had no concrete plan for the day and thought it would be nice to have someone who knew the city (and the rules) to guide me. Then we set off after I smelled nice and looked fresh after a shower!

Thom took me to the old town. He thought it was the nicest part in the city - which was true. The sun was burning on my skin, but it was a lot worse for Thom, he got several shades of red on him. At first I worried about spending a day with a complete stranger, but it turned out Thom was good company, we never ran out of things to say. I guess it was because he was curious about my culture and things and I was interested in his stories. The first thing we did after we stepped in the old town: found a nice restaurant and had a delicious lunch!

We had a stroll in one of the parks there - they’ve got a few HUGE parks, they were sooo huge!

And then we wandered around the city, aimlessly, talking. You can see my friend there in the picture below :)

Warsaw was so cheap! The city itself was beautiful, people stared at me, at us, they probably don’t see a Caucasian with an Asian girl every day. I liked the Warsawers, they were so helpful, so nice and enthusiastic. The way people dressed reminded me of the old movies I watched on TV of people in communism era. They didn’t look very… modern. This I noticed too: girls wore heavy make-up with bright red lips, that was very communism - I am not being mean or critical, that’s the way they made me feel. Their skins were not very good, but they were very warm and so willingly pointed out the directions for me whenever I needed them, and they always tried to speak English with me, which was great.

I went back to the old town the next day after Thom left. It was so beautiful, I couldn’t leave without going back once again.

I took all the time in the world sitting somewhere in the old town, daydreamed and wrote postcards to my friends. And I had ice-creams.

Warsaw suffered greatly back in the world wars and afterwards. I went to the scariest museum in my life, Pawiek Museum; went to the Jewish cemetery - hundreds of thousands tombs - on my own talking to the workers; visited a once-palace-now-a-museum without understanding much - all was in Polish; stumbled my way to Marii Curie’s museum; enjoyed the aimless walks ended in finding the river Elbe and went to the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers which was under construction.

Apart from the regular sightseeing spots I wanted to see in Warsaw, I was also ready to partake in the gay parade. In the end I changed my mind and left Warsaw the day which the parade was supposed to take place. I didn’t have enough time for Krakow and I felt too lonely to stay in Warsaw.

Warsaw is amazing because new and modern as well as old and ancient co-exist in the city in harmony. Warsaw is mysterious because… I couldn’t understand a word of the language! Warsaw also made me think, after all the Jewish places I visited. In the end I was invited to a party by our hostel manager before I left :)

The road back to the hostel. I became familiar with the banks there, haha, I had to change money every day when I was there: to pay the hostel, buy food and enjoy myself :p Warsaw surprised me and in return, I fell in love with her. I know I will go back, only next time I won’t be there alone.

Great wall and 798

2010-12-04T23:43:00.001+08:00

The Pride

Yesterday I was talking to the security guard who works in our building. She had taken a few days off so I started to ask her if she went to somewhere during her holiday. Well, of course she did, she went to Fujian, which I actually went too back in April early this year. As the conversation flew, she asked if I had ever been to Beijing and, proudly, I said YES!

I was in Beijing for the national day even :) The trip was, well, not long enough, I didn’t really see much (I am very greedy)… I might go there again in the future, who knows?

I was in Beijing to see a friend. On the first day, we went to see the great wall. Now I can say I am a real woman,cockily :) The great wall was really great, it took my breath away. We didn’t go to the very touristic spot, therefore “my great wall” was more “original” than artificial. Actually we climbed some mountains, got us all bruised and bleeding before our arrival to the great wall… Well, it was a stupid story, I will just skip it here. The only thing that disappointed me about great wall was, I actually couldn’t see it from the plane, needless to say from the moon.

I went to the famous 798 art centre the next day, alone. It was so huge! It reminded me of our annual industrial estate workshops, which I went with Jan, my now-not-so-new German friend. This art centre in Beijing was far bigger and had more exhibitions. It opened my eyes and the artistic side of me was truly satisfied :) I hardly spent enough time in this huge art centre and I wasted some time at the beginning going to empty galleries inside those empty buildings. Worth going to another time, to at least spend a day!

What I didn’t expect was the couple who were taking wedding pictures in the art centre. Are they really THAT artistic? I am never ever going to take my wedding pictures in any art centres.

There were so many interesting exhibitions in the art centre…

I was even in time for a Cuba exhibition!

Though I went to Beijing alone, yet I wasn’t lonely, I managed at least to meet my friend in the evenings during my stay. I made quite a few friends and talked to many interesting people, as always, despite the fact that my Mandarin wasn’t as good as my English… I feel kind of stupid to admit this fact, but sometimes I find it so much easier to use English words to replace Chinese words - it’s a bad habit that most of us Hongkies have. I felt quite ‘handicapped’ because I couldn’t utter the right Chinese words, very strange feeling. May be one day I would go to Beijing to learn Chinese - like so many Japanese do these days - because it seemed to me that so many Beijingers loved me…

Lamma!

2010-11-07T19:41:00.001+08:00

Went to Lamma Island with Yan for a relaxing afternoon.

Got a few pictures :)

My current wallpaper!

And the one and only windmill…

The Golden World

2010-10-27T23:56:00.001+08:00

Sometimes something great just comes out unexpectedly.

Kristof and I went to explore the old messy yet beautiful Yau Ma Tei on a romantic evening. It was romantic because we spent a moment in one of the roofs on an old building where we could see the beautiful full moon.

To my surprise, we’ve got quite a few good photos :)

This is one of them that impressed myself, haha. I love my camera!

It looks like a total different world, a Golden World, a hidden world from our eyes.

Dresden

2010-10-24T13:38:00.001+08:00

Chapter 2

Dresden was a very beautiful city! It’s known as “Florence on the Elbe”. I explored the city by bike - you can borrow it for free from the hostel I stayed in. The main problem that I had with the old bike was that, it wasn’t designed for a small Asian like me, it was slightly taller for my size! Though it was old, I had a great time riding it, going everywhere I wanted - I sort of felt like I was a whirlwind :)

90% of Dresden was destroyed back in the World War II, the restoration started in 1950s by the communist regime. It was a bit disappointing to see the Frauenkirche (picture on the right) looking as good as new, other than that, everything was quite to my taste - serene, beautiful and old. Picture on the left is the Hofkirche, one of the landmarks in Dresden (I didn’t get in when I was there though, it’s a pity!).

There was too much to see and feel in Dresen. The weather was wonderfully sunny, I went up to one of the museums in Zwinger overlooking the city.

Inside the Zwinger - you should note that the Galerie is closed on Mondays - it was not as huge as I imagined it to be, it didn’t even look very much like a castle, but well, I learned to enjoy myself. Besides, Jonas (the friend whom I bumped into in the tram when I first arrived) and I spent a good afternoon lost ourselves in all those great paintings. I felt very artistic :)

Here is a pictures of myself lost in the city… and was writing my friend an email (you can even see my old bike there!).

There was so much going on in Dresden, with all the construction work and those muscular young construction workers! Wah! It was all so lively! (Actually, there were so many galleries and exhibitions too)

I rode and rode and rode on. There I was, sitting by the River Elbe, enjoying the beautiful view, listening to the singing of birds, staring at the amazingly blue skies, looking at the casual passers-by and writing postcards to my friends. Everything was just perfect.

Watched the World Cup (Spain vs Holland) with a Spanish guy and his mother sitting in a beautiful restaurant (you can even see it in the picture below) , had a lot of good food (not so expensive!) and a beer. It was a bit weird because all the time I supported Holland but I couldn’t cheer for them with the Spanish sitting next to me, haha, I dozed off in the end because of jetlag.

At the beginning I thought Dresden was a bit boring, and couldn’t enjoy it much. Everything was old, the styles were more or less the same and I was feeling very lonely. Even my butt was hurting from riding the bike. However, after staying there for 3 days and saw more of the city, I fell in love with it. I think it is a very nice city to settle in if you love art and enjoy the quietness. (It wasn’t quiet where I stayed, there were so many pubs and bars!) Dresden has everything. It is one of the German cities which you just have to see and spend a good afternoon strolling the beautiful Elbe river bank.

Europe trip 2010

2010-10-23T12:08:00.001+08:00

Chapter 1

I was off to Europe again in July for 3 weeks. At the beginning I journeyed alone, then my best friend Yan joined me. I’ve seen a few more places, met and talked to some very interesting people, learned so much about Europe history and of course, took so many beautiful pictures!

Anyway, I will lift the veil now and show you what I saw.

The Schonefeld airport in Berlin was quite small, unfortunately. I had, however, successfully managed to find my way to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof for my train to my first stop - Dresden. I saved my yoghurt on the flight, and only swallowed it when I found the train to the Berlin city centre!

I was showered in the beautiful Berlin sunshine. The weather was so awfully nice! I had an hour or two walking around the Hauptbahnhof, I wrote my first journey entry sitting under the bridge shade, overlooking the beautiful River Spree.

A good start!

…or not. I wouldn’t say my short train ride from Berlin to Dresden wasn’t eventful. First, silly me forgot to bring the credit card which I used to buy my train tickets, so I had to buy a new ticket (and holy cow, I bought a few tickets using that credit card!); and second, the air-con on the train was kaputt! Now that was very unforgiveable! Those nice people who shared the little compartment with me on the train were really nice, they thought I could speak German - well, I sort of do, but it just wasn’t so good as expected - so they kept talking in German to me, haha, to my surprise I understood them quite well! The picture was a good one :) We had to fan ourselves! It was too damn hot! Even I was sweating!

Things got weirder.

After I arrived Dresden looking quite as un-beautiful as one can be (well, that’s how you’re gonna look after 13 hours on a plane), I bumped into my friend on the tram to my hostel. Now, that was a very curious thing. This German friend I had never met before, he’s a friend’s friend, whom I supposed to meet only afterwards. I was sitting there when he got up the train, we were staring at each other, he basically just came up and asked me “Are you Joey????!!” and I was dumbfounded. How small is Dresden! How amazing is this world! (Until now I still cannot explain why he could just recognise me as we had never met before, may be it was very obviously that I look like… a Joey!) Anyway, he was leaving town at that time, so we were to meet later on.

My hostel overlooking a beautiful European-style building.

So finally I was there in Dresden, alone! I managed it! This was the first time I travelled alone to so far away, alone. It was wonderful experience, I fell in love with it only afterwards - I didn’t enjoy it so much at the beginning, this I have to admit.

Purpose

2010-06-10T00:15:00.001+08:00

To cheer myself up…

P.S. I am not alone in this world.

6.4

2010-06-06T16:05:00.001+08:00

Date: 4 June 2010

Venue: Victoria Park

Charles asked me whether I would join the memorial in Victoria Park, of course I could join.

I nearly cried. Cannot forget what happened on 4 June 1989 in China.

China has too much to do in order to be a democratic society.

This day.

Another hour in the park…

2010-05-28T23:06:00.001+08:00

I couldn’t love photography more. Taking pictures makes me really happy, I am so contented when I could just shoot.

Anna and I went to Hong Kong Park (again, yes I know) during our lunch break. It was a very beautiful day, summer has finally come :) Sunshine, blue sky, white clouds and green grass. My whole body was shining under the golden sun!

D90 really is an amazing camera!!!!!! I’m lovin’it!

Let’s start the “just another Hong Kong Park” day tour :)

A testing picture. I forgot how Nikon D90 was like, wow, the colours were so vivid - may be it had something to do with the beautiful weather!

This is my 3rd favourite of the day :)

The Koala building - Lippo Centre where I once worked. Oh, I even bumped into my first Scottish boss, he was walking right pass me, probably didn’t recognize or see me.

CPL is a really great tool, it enhances the colours of the objects! My best picture of the day!

The colour was too vivid it hurts my eyes.

So very 3D…………

My colleague told me she bought a heart-shaped pan. When I saw the plant I immediately thought of her and wanted to show her this. I suppose it’s a very romantic kind of plant :)

MY FAVOURITE FLOWER! Have to capitalize it - just in case you forgot :)

This plant dazzles me… it’s not dead! This is how it looks! Don’t you look down on it!

The light captured my eyes right away when I saw the great big leaves (the left picture was my 2nd favourite of the day).

On our way back to the office… It would be nicer to see Bank of China in the back though. The composure isn’t bad :D

The weather was too good to be true. I sneaked into the conference room with Anna, closed the door behind us and started shooting. The main problem was the reflection. I got good angles so it wasn’t so obvious. :) This isn’t a great picture but this is what I wanted to capture - what I see when I daydream in a meeting, HAHA!

LeSportsac

2010-05-18T21:18:00.001+08:00

I’ve got my first LeSportsac bag :)

It’s a very nice bag!!!!!

Special edition :) I simply love the calligraphic print in front!! I love words, they mean so much. The bag was quite expensive (in my opinion anyway), but, haha, lucky me got some sponsor! Hoorah to my good karma (special thanks to Anna)!

Do you see how lovely is that Matryoshka doll?! I fell in love the instant I saw her! (Of course with the 2 yellow birdies on the cute little house too!)

And… I put every little thing in there :D

Fujian - Day 4 Wuyi Mountains

2010-05-11T23:43:00.001+08:00

Date: 5 April 2010

Venue: Wuyi Shan, Fujian

The train from Xiamen to Wuyi Mountains took 13 hours. It was a night train, and I could hardly get any sleep. There wasn’t much to see at night, some tourists groups were getting on and off the train in the middle of the night… I don’t think I enjoyed it all that much anyway.

Upon arrival, the train assistant came over to talk to us about the hotel. Molly insisted we should get off the train to compare prices, the rest of us didn’t have any opinion - hey, we were exhausting, I could hardly open my already-too-small eyes. After talking to 2 assistants, Molly gave in and said we would stay with them (it was rather funny though, when those 2 assistants tried to talk us into staying with them, the 3 of us didn’t understand what they were saying, I sort of waved at them saying “we don’t understand you, talk to the other girl”, haha, aiya, our poor Mandarin!).

Hotel was once again very cheap, Yan and I were staying in one room while Molly and Kimmy were staying in the other. Very quickly did we take a shower and out we went again.

Breakfast was easy to get, and yeah well, cheap. We got on a bus then got off in front of the gate of Wuyi Shan. Immediately, a few rough farm women came up to us, asking whether we were to buy tickets. Molly did all the talking then before we knew it, we were following one of the women. Molly said they were the aborigines of Wuyi Shan, they knew their way to avoid checking tickets. Haha, to be honest, I was glad we followed her in, that saved us so much money! In was the famous Yunv Hills (少女峰) at the back in the left picture.

The woman led us the way was rather stout and very strong as well. She knew her way, she was talking very fast without taking a break. Ay, it was very sad, city girls like us have no chance outrunning her! A shame really!

On our way to the “Tiger Howling Rock” (虎嘯岩). Very very very steep. Our lead said “OK, you follow this path and I will meet you at the end, here is my number, if you don’t see me later then call me!” then off to the other way. Hah. Smart move.

We took way too long to walk the trail. We enjoyed taking silly pictures and having fun :) Do you think the rock in the picture looks like a fish? Yan was posing a fish - in case you can’t tell. Haha!

It really was a very nice trail - except it was way too steep. Very quiet and very green.

There were so much to see on the way. One of them - the very steep natural rock at my back. It wasn’t a very good picture but well, you see how steep it was at least!

At the bottom of the steep rock, there were some sticks ‘supporting’ the mountain, there was a story behind these sticks: old people believe if they put the sticks there to ‘support’ the mountain then their backs wouldn’t ache anymore. However, nowadays, they said if you put a stick there, you’d have a 靠山 (it means someone who’d be there to look after you)! How superstitious!

If it wasn’t so challenging to climb all those crazily steep rocks, here was another: The Thread of the Skies. You have to squeeze yourself between two narrow (way too narrow!) big rocks and thereby see “the thread of the skies”. Haha. Very silly, isn’t it? But we were tourists, that’s what tourists do, being silly and do whatever that is stupid! It wouldn’t be bad if the weather was nice and if there was a blue sky… but the point was, it was very wet and started raining. Hahaha, the rocks were all wet and so we were half soak after this. I won’t ever go inside again, “I will see you on the other side, bye bye!”

On our way back to the hotel, we saw the rafts - it was one of the must try in our list. Looking very romantic, yeah?

There wasn’t much to do in the end, we went to this temple. There was this middle-aged Hong Kong man walking next to me eating some candy, I asked him what it was, he gave me some to try. Haha, obviously he thought I was a local girl and said my Cantonese didn’t sound very native. HAHA! How was that even possible?! He later on caught up with us and helped us take this picture :)

We talked about how horrible the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing was. Haha, what a day!

P.S. The stout lady said we should get up at 5am the next day to climb more mountains and take the raft. We had to obey. That night Yan and I slept at 8pm, HAHA, crazily unbelievable, right?!

Stay tune for our last day in Fujian :)

Sleep, sleep and sleep

2010-05-09T14:03:00.001+08:00

Dear kitty,

You keep staring at the metal tripod, and scared when the camera was pointing at you. You should know that it won’t eat you! It doesn’t even move!

You are such a timid kitty, but I love you nevertheless.

Here are some pictures of you.

With so much love,

Joey

2010 Flower Show

2010-05-08T17:36:00.001+08:00

Date: 21 March 2010

Venue: Hong Kong Victoria Park, Flower Show 2010

It seemed to be the most sensible thing to do, going to Victoria Park and taking pictures. It turned out it wasn’t such a productive day. Anyway, I liked the colour of the flowers!

There were many flowers, and… people.

Chrysanthemum isn’t my favourite flower. I don’t like Chrysanthemums, they smell awful!

Some of them looked pretty fake… but they were for real because there were so many bees!

And no Chrysanthemums!

A tripod and a remote

2010-05-06T21:27:00.001+08:00

Date: 24 April 2010

Venue: Ng Tung Chai

Went “hiking” with Yan at 2pm in the afternoon. Destination was Ng Tung Chai. We were never there. For the first time in my life I bought a tripod and a remote: the experience was very interesting… and my bag was very heavy!

The entrance to the small village was not far away from the van stop, luckily. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, it was a bliss. The weather was so wonderfully beautiful!

There were not many hikers too! Everything was serene and nice. I could smell the spring!

Entering the village, there were many dogs as well as cows, but you couldn’t really see any cows, but to smell them, by which I meant their shit. Haha. The buildings immediately caught my attention, they were very new and old at the same time.

Ay, what can I say? I miss the blue sky.

My dearest Yan, you look so small!

It was a very tough trail, to my surprise. It went on and on, we kept climbing mountains and rocks (haha, yes, I am only exaggerating!). I was all soaked with sweat, the view was breathtaking :)

After taking a small video, breathed in some nice fresh air, we took a very MK picture :D God bless Hong Kong girls!

(Oh my friends, please don’t exclaim when you see me dressing like that for a hike. Sandals are my all time favourite and my jeans are not all that tight… I am very agile!)

The waterfall was, honestly, slightly disappointing. It was the largest I’ve seen in Hong Kong though… that thought comforted me somehow. I will definitely come back!

This is not the main fall, but the volume was far better than the largest one above. All was very nice :D

This was the bottom fall.

It was getting quite dark after we rushed to the bottom fall, we had no choice but to leave. We will be back, I promise you!

Hong Kong, Hong Kong, I love you!

The other side…

2010-05-05T23:56:00.001+08:00

The other side of the world…

A world full of green.

@Ng Tung Chai

Fujian - Day 3 Gu Lang Yu

2010-05-01T18:22:00.001+08:00

Date: 4 April 2010

Venue: Gulangyu Island, Fujian

After a night’s rest, we got up early, had breakfast at McDonald’s and got each of us a nice hot heearl milk tea (Yan was dying for some pearl milk tea, haha) then boarded on the ferry and found ourselves at Gulangyu Island. Molly really wanted to go there.

Needless to say it was again packed with people. So many people, too many people - and all of them Chinese, very very exciting! The weather wasn’t all that good, it rained when we went out, was very cloudy when we were walking around.

We had lots of fun taking pictures actually… too many tourists, it kinda reminded us: we were part of them too. We had to do all kind of crazy things when we were travelling, isn’t that true?! Actually it was one of the pictures that I liked very much. I liked how the picture was overexposed and how I was laughing so heartily.

The island was very westernized - that’s why it was so touristic, there were really some very nice looking buildings like this one. I didn’t have any special feeling regarding all those building, but I did scowl at those people who stood in front of me taking pictures of the same thing I was shooting when I got there first.

Very far away was Mr Zheng Chenggong. If you want to know more about him… Wikipedia welcomes you!

You see? We really were enjoying ourselves :D

The European style hotels and the famous Piano Museum! I was happy enough to be able to pronounce those made in Germany pianos :p

We walked and walked and walked, finally we arrived at the highest spot in the whole island. I have to quote a Beijing guy who sat downhill at the temple “What the hell is there to see at the 100m tall pavilion?” (in Chinese: 一百米高可以看啥呀?) Yan and I joked all our way up there at the pavilion at what he said.

There were too many people up there, we had to wait very patiently. Ah, all the pushing and cursing made me so angry!

Feel free to spot out the mistakes :)

After queuing for a millions of hours, finally we got up the cable car!

Yan and I were the first one to get off the cable car. Before anyone could walk in front of us, we rushed in front to take pictures :p Silly us :D

Saw some very interesting looking animals and then left!

All we could eat in Xiamen! There were some very nice looking buildings :) Afterall, Xiamen was once a colonial city!

I have enjoyed everything :D

Fujian - Day 2 in Xiamen

2010-04-28T23:23:00.002+08:00

Date: 3 April 2010

Venue: Xiamen, Fujian, China

We left Yong Ding early in the morning. We took the morning bus to Nanjing (南靖) then changed another bus to Xiamen. It didn’t take all that long, may be 2 or 3 hours the whole journey. Very cheap :)

After settling down in the hotel, we wandered around the neighbour which was actually the Buxing Jie, we ate so many snacks and really enjoyed ourselves. My first impression of Xiamen: it was very nice and clean, quite like Guangzhou actually, so many people and many of them are very modern looking - ‘modern’ probably isn’t the word, but well, I surely saw some quite fashionable young people. It was all very delightful.

Unlike in Hong Kong, taxies are very cheap in mainland China - we took a taxi and headed straight to the Nanputuo Temple.

After we paid a very small admission fee (RMB3), we went in the famous temple. To our delight, we followed a Hong Kong tour which was (I believe) organized by some Hong Kong secondary school. The tour guide told us everything we needed to know, but some students eyed at us, haha, when I asked the guide a question regarding the history of Buddha - I simply couldn’t help it, you should know how curious I am about things and how I always ask questions!

It was more like a big park than a temple. Inside was packed with tourists who spoke Mandarin. In the end we found out the reason why there were so many of them - it was the birthday of Guanyin (our Goddess of Mercy). She protects me whenever I go, you see!

This was what I learned during our quick stay:

Come what may… is the best translation in my opinion.

We took a stroll to the famous Xiamen Daxue (university), it was only 5 minutes away. Didn’t go in though - the stalls on the streets caught all our attention. Cheap goods! Cheap magazines and shoes! At least that was what I bought: a pair of shoes and a travel magazine. It was all very nice, we were very cheerful. That was when we decided to spend money on some good food. The taxi driver took us to a dapaidong (大排檔), we had some really good (and cheap of course) seafood and drank beers! We talked about Xinjiang people and their weird traditions and laughed our hearts out! A waiter asked if we were overseas Chinese, haha, I said we just came back from Indonesia :p

A foot massage was the best after-meal activity! HAHAHA! It was so so so cheap in China! I love it! The sifu for Yan loved her too much that he kept massaging her feet with his best of skills, Yan screamed silently in her heart and was cursing/killing him in her head! Haha, poor Yan! Everyone seemed to be interested in us Cantonese.

We went back to the hotel very contented though we were already very tired. Yan and I spent so much time in a bookstore - haha, how extraordinary, our hotel was inside of a bookstore, can you believe it?!! I bought a very nice bag with a Germany map on it and called it a day.

In retrospect, I think there are so much to see in Xiamen, it was huge, new and somewhat exciting. May be I was in a really good mood then. It’s worth going second time. I will be back!

April is a busy month

2010-04-25T16:50:00.001+08:00

April has been very busy, for me at least. Many things going on and things to do, many new ideas, many friends to meet and… many work to do.

On the first day of April, I went to Shenzhen right after work for the train to Yong Ding which was a small county in Fujian, China. What is it famous for? Tulou, the earthen buildings. Kimmy and Molly joined Yan and me to the Fujian trip, rather unexpectedly.

Date: 2 April 2010 - Day 1

Venue: Yong Ding, Fujian, China

After 8 hours on the night train, we arrived at Yong Ding at 5 a.m. in the morning on 2 April - with way too many other HK tourists. Everyone was going on a trip during Easter holiday!

I had already booked a (tulou) hotel in advance, the hotel manager sent a driver to pick us up from the train station. In the one hour drive, we couldn’t help but dozing off. Poor driver, life mustn’t be easy for him.

The room was very clean and simple, with 4 beds inside, a TV and a table, 4 pairs of slippers. There were 2 toilets on each floor - clean. The water wasn’t warm enough, but we were staying in a few-hundred-year-old tulou! We really couldn’t complain so much!

It was cloudy at first, then rained. The manager helped us get some tickets for the tulou clusters. Molly was the know-it-all, she haggled all for us: the price for the tickets and the prices for our breakfast, lunch and dinner. It really is easy when you travel with the locals (or someone who knows the way), it saves you a lot of trouble. Thanks especially to Molly :D

We had a very Hakka breakfast prepared by the quiet hostess, and drank numerous cups of good tea steeped by the good nice manager, Molly left with the manager negotiating our route to see tulou clusters while the rest of us went to explore our ancient hotel. Traditional would be the word I use to describe the building. Oh the air was really fresh!

When we arrived the Tianluokeng Tulou cluster, there were already too many tour groups and with the heavy fog! Our driver was a local who knew his way around, very good guanxi he had with the tulou clusters gate keepers, so we wasted no time in walking and waiting (of course in order to have good guanxi with him, I bribed him with some candies and snacks).

Finally I’ve got my shot and well… got a even better shot with 2 MK mui! Haha! OK, I was being mean. There were too many Hongkies!

At the beginning, tulou was actually very interesting but after a few, you realised you were looking at the same thing over and over again, with the same stalls and people who were sad one way or anther. I suppose tulou has grown too popular and the residents have seen too many tourists and become so commercial themselves.

There are delighting things like the newly born dogs and the hardworking craftsmen. You don’t see many young people (except kids) in all those old buildings, they all gone to work in the cities, I mean, I can understand that of course… when you are young, you find so many flaws in your city, you don’t like it, you leave.

The air was cool and fresh after the rain, even the green looked greener. I was taking a small break waiting for Molly to leave. I was, literately, bored.

Left the “Four dishes with a soup”, we went to another tulou, which was my favourite actually. Very spacey and nice, with a kitchen in the middle of the building :)

The firecrackers startled me. In Hongkong it’s no longer allowed. Kids rushed to pick up the unburned ones and were smiling like flowers.

I found it very strange when we were walking upstairs in all those tulou - it stank! There were so many buckets full of urine on the corridors, must be really convenient!

We went to see so many tulous and they didn’t excite me anymore. It was more interesting to take funny silly pictures, talking about whatever that came to mind and joking around with my friends. One day spent in Yong Ding was good enough, 2 days would be too much!

Interesting how they have different cultures on marriage and such.

Another cluster, in the end, we didn’t even bother going in anymore. Walking in the rain in this weather was killing us.

Hu Jintao took a picture at the same spot where someone took the same picture for us. He kept saying "beautiful shot” after each picture. So when I got my camera back and I was like “WHAT?! BEAUTIFUL SHOTS?!” haha, well, let’s just say everyone has different tastes :p

By the end of the day, the hostess took us out to show us the night view of the town. It was amazing!

Our hotel at night :D

The too touristic Yong Ding at night!

It was actually very nice to have the car stand-by when we were sight visiting all those old yet still standing tulous, as there are way too many of them. If the weather was nice, I am sure I would have enjoyed everything twice as much. It is also very important when it comes to choosing your travel companions! Molly and Kimmy were both very easy-going and nice, I was glad to have travelled with them :)

Anyway, this was our first day in beautiful serene Yong Ding.

Fillens

2010-03-07T22:02:00.001+08:00

One of my pictures was published on the online photography magazine, Fillens.

A good start, eh?

*the picture of the clock tower in TST (top left).

On and forth

2010-02-28T20:56:00.001+08:00

Haven’t been updating the blog for a while… but then I’ve been extremely busy. Work, classes, friends, movies, many things are keeping me occupied. I am enjoying myself very much, thank you :)

My memory fails me. I suppose it really is best for me to put something down here so that when I look back again, there is, always, something.

***

Date: 5 Feb 2010

Venue: Hung Hom - Stephanie Suen Concert

She was brilliant that night! I thought it would be boring… but it turned out, wah! :D I had a great time!

***

Date: 14 Feb 2010

I hope all of you had a great Valentine’s Day :) I got my first Valentine’s chocolate :D

***

Date: Chinese New Year holiday

Venue: New Territories, Kowloon

Dragged my arse out of the warm bed and visited some relatives… ah, talking about which, I should open all my Lai See!

***

Date: 20 Feb 2010

Venue: Ma Shi Chau (Horse Shit Island)

In short, I had a great day; in long, there was a long story made it a less interesting day but I’ve decided, against my better judgment, that it was a good day instead :D

There were so many piers and very quiet, it really deserves more time than just half a day.

There were so many rocks… they all dazzled me!

I was the Rock’n’Roll rich guy :D I should’ve won the Oscar, no? Haha.

Only Po is missing.

Fotanian

2010-01-31T21:10:00.001+08:00

Date: 17 Jan 2010

Venue: Fotanian

No update, no update, yes update! Finally!

No more shooting still, don’t have time for it yet, a shame. Anyway. Was invited to Fotanian on 17 Jan :) The weather was so beautiful, it felt just like summer! (Actually it felt like summer as well, today, the weather was just brilliant! It revived up my dying soul!!!!)

Thanks to Jan, I had a great time :D

(No more nonsense, just pictures - all pictures taken with my Nikon DC)

The first studio.

Isn’t this amazing?!

I’d love to have such a book shelf!!

One of my favourite art work.

Cozy :D

This guy was funny. He saw me taking a picture, stared at me, I stared back, he lose, turned away. Haha.

Very nice.

Environmentally friendly?

Don’t pee here, my friend!!

Hello from Joey Leung :)

Here are a few of artwork that I liked…

This just feels right for me.

The texture…

The meaning behind!

For those of you who know me well… haha, I am sure you know why.

Hong Kong… in memory?

Very cheerful.

Had ‘so much exercise’ that day, walking countless stairs. I didn’t really talk much but I couldn’t help smiling to myself too often that day because I was too joyful. It was a very sweet feeling.

…I just hope my new friend didn’t think I was such a bore! I had such a beautiful time that day!

***

What’s keeping me busy?

My Kindle! Definitely no glare (and it’s better than owning iPad in my opinion)!

Looking forward to February! :D

Quick Review of 2009

2010-01-09T19:44:00.001+08:00

I admit I am not really motivated to take pictures these days, the cold and grey weather brought out the laziest of me. Hopefully soon I will be back with my gear and will shoot again.

Let me have a quick recap of the year of 2009.

January

1 Jan 2009: Went to Muji, and checked out its exhibition. It was beautiful.

11 Jan 2009: Po, Yan and I spent an afternoon in Tai Po Market.

17 Jan 2009: Getting ready for the Annual Dinner - I was unwilling to put on the make-up. I won $2,000 cash coupons for a Spa in the end. Er, only made use of them before Christmas :p

28 Jan 2009: In Kaiping for the first time.

February

15 Feb 2009: Obviously I didn’t take many pictures in Feb.

March

15 March 2009: Cycling with Joyce, Ming and her boyfriend in Tai Wai.

21 March 2009: Went hiking with my mum in Choi Hung, haha!

28 March 2009: Checked out the Waichai Livelihood.

April

4 April 2009: Tai Po Railway Museum. My mood was super sour, I remember.

27 April 2009: Shooting with my first Holga.

May

9 May 2009: Finally got rid of the long hair by end of April. On Foggy Mountain, will never forget the breathtaking view. I laughed too much that day my mouth hurt.

17 May 2009: The museum (or rather exhibition) of Tao Heung Food Museum of Culture in Fo Tan.

June

7 June 2009: A day on Stanley beach. Bumped into a colleague haha. Getting irritated by my longer hair.

July

1 July 2009: Marched for the first time - and another hair cut.

22 Jul 2009: The eclipse of the sun - could be seen in Hong Kong! (Picture taken in a conference room in office using a X-ray stolen from Anna, haha)

August

15 August 2009: A fabulous (short) trip to Vietnam.

22 August 2009: Cheung Chau with Cindy.

23 August 2009: Taking a break in Stanley with Cindy.

25 August 2009: I was transparent! Picture taken by my Nikon DC.

September

9 September 2009: Building my own Lomo camera in Po’s crazily messy house.

October

2 October 2009: Li Han got married. We (Yuki, Joyce and Yi Ting) went to the zoo in Pan Yu in China.

17 October 2009: Hiking on Dragon’s Back.

November

1 November 2009: In Yim Tin Tsai with Kimmy Wong. Kimmy Wong if you’re reading this, I want to remind you that you never send me your pictures :)

11 November 2009: Man Yee Highland Reservoir with Joyce, Anna and her crew.

December

3 December 2009: Practicing my new lens with Anna in Hong Kong Park. I’ve got my most amazing shot.

12 December 2009: ASA3 BBQ in Causeway Bay (it’s illegal to BBQ in a building :p) after hiking to Wu Kau Tang. So stupid I forgot to take the SD with me for the hike. No picture. Befriended Jan, a professional hiker!

24 December 2009: Had a really beautiful dinner with Vivian. Great to see her.

Ah. Looking back, my year wasn’t bad at all! I even went to a hot spring with my mum during Xmas holiday!

Next year hopefully get even better :)

Chocolates

2009-12-29T21:53:00.001+08:00

I’ve forgotten. I’ve forgotten to unwrap one of the few Christmas presents received this year.

Wonderful Agnes b. chocolates - so cute!

“Paris” tasted good, well, going to Paris again would be even more beautiful…

In Nostalgia

2009-12-24T12:53:00.001+08:00

More than once, my brain brought me back to Europe. All the never-forgotten memories wander in my heart and again and again I am there.

Here are some really exclusive pictures I’ve never shown anyone. Looking at them really makes me smile. Christmas is coming, may I wish you all a joyous Christmas.

To my beloved Po and Yan, here are the forgotten ones. May our friendship last forever. All the memories shared, no one can ever replace you.

ICH LIEBE EUCH!

Right outside the Schönbruun in Wien.

The crazy strong wind in Alkmaar.

Wandering around in Venice.

Just arriving Innsbruck.

I remember I was in a sulky mood therefore you were too.

Making really stupid faces in the ruin site in Rome.

Some moves in my beloved Füssen.

Outside mini Europe and inside McDonald’s in Brussels.

Meeting Mathias for the first time at mama & papa’s.

The cold and lonely time in Rothenburg o.b der Tauber.

Po posing in the hostel in Nürnberg.

Amazed at the fake sakura in Frankfurt am Main.

On the festive Queensday in Amsterdam.

Went insane for a while in Köln.

A sunny day in Düsseldorf.

Eating bananas in München.

Hiking up to the fortress in front of the alps in Salzburg.

Didn’t know what to pose in Brugge.

Taking really beautiful pictures in Zaase Schans.

It was my all the time favourite of the favourites in Keukenhof.

We grew up together, let us grow old together.

I am really looking forward to meeting you again, Po and going to eastern Europe together! Together we’re invincible!

blah blah blah

2009-12-21T22:08:00.001+08:00

It’s been a really busy December.

Anyhow I still watched A Christmas Carol (Julie and Julia was brilliant!).

(click on picture to see IMdb rating)

From a westerner’s point of view, I guess it was a very festive movie but… I was slightly disappointed. The movie wasn’t as funny as I’d liked. It was funny to see Jim Carrey’s face though, it made me giggle :)

I had a little accident the other day… I’ve got a “beautiful” picture of the victim:

My poor little toe. To those who care… I am surviving - just no Converse anymore! Still I am proudly announcing the lucky star of the month - JOEY LEUNG!

Thank you :D

It’s December, it’s all about generosity! Here comes 2 more pictures:

May I wish you all a merry Christmas :)

Vote Earth!

2009-12-03T21:46:00.001+08:00

It’s a wonderful Thursday.

I could stare at the cloudless sky all day with the sun glimmering but I didn’t. Rather went to the park with Anna and took some amazing pictures.

My favourite of the day and is currently my wallpaper:

It took my breath away. I am mesmerized by this picture… by every single detail. Wah! I am starting to like myself more after this. By the way, I don’t photoshop my pictures… all my pictures are realer than real originals.

Here is another picture of the same flower - slightly overexposed like always :p

Typical lotus picture… with a bug on it.

There are many species of butterflies living in Hongkong. I’ve spotted only 2 today.

Haha and then here comes the turtles :p

And the last butterfly of the day :)

With a super lens, I felt like a magician. The world is so full of colours and full of wonderful small creates, they are struggling with their lives to survive. We human are stupid to bother with things that are out of our control!

It’d be good if you could vote the Earth then!!! I have already voted!

See the world with peculiar eyes, people!

P.S. After my colleague girl saw all of my pictures, she said “This is Hong Kong Park?! You photographed it like this?!!!!!” (你把它拍成這樣呀?!) HAHA and then both of us laughed our heads off :)

First try-out

2009-11-30T21:16:00.001+08:00

Date: 29 Nov 2009

Venue: somewhere in Ma On Shan

Finally I couldn’t wait to try my beautiful new lens.

Here is 2 snapshots:

It really is nice... the depth of the picture! So nice! I felt supreme!

And this... :D An over-exposed picture of a big tree truck! I need to stand at least 1m far from my shooting subjects! So not used to it!

Exhibition - Japan

2009-11-28T10:31:00.001+08:00

(picture from http://www.no-ma.jp)

There is an exhibition of Rinko Kiwauchi in Shiga, the very famous contemporary art photographer from Japan.

Her works are all very light, all emerged in a slight of sadness yet you couldn’t help feeling peaceful. Feelings are hard to catch but that’s what she does.

Details of the Exhibition - Touch the World

http://www.no-ma.jp/

Interview of Rinko Kiwauchi (in English)

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/kawauchi.html

I’d like to see more from her.

Man Yee Highland Reservoir

2009-11-23T22:47:00.001+08:00

Date: 15 Nov 2009

Venue: Man Yee Highland Reservoir

The wind brushed my cheeks, I was tremulous from my bones and walking just like a penguin - at least in my imagination.

It was cloudy plus windy on 15 Nov, started getting cold. Joyce and I joined a local tour organized by Sporthouse to Man Yee Highland Reservoir, well, actually originally Yan was my companion, but she had a class to attend… therefore, I got Joyce :D My crazy Joyce! Anna, who initiated it joined the tour with some of her favourite friends, such was our Group Tour!

Grandeur! It’s the east dam. Super windy and cold - will get back only in summer again, haha, at least when it’d be sunny!!

The Landmark

The famous hexagonal volcanic columns! If only those volcanic rocks could talk, we’d learn all about the earth. The history of our beautiful planet. How it grew like it is today. The tour guide was a young experienced woman, she definitely knows her stuff! She also got books to show us! :D She said Hongkong was just a baby if our planet was a mother, Hongkong is so young, geographically speaking.

Basically everywhere you looked was a scene. Every rock has its story to share, every stone has a personality. The grass, the trees, the rocks and the sea. I was thrilled, by everything. Even the air thrilled my nostrils. Haha!

Shame was that I didn’t take many pictures because I forgot to recharge my camera! Good thing was, I did my very best to let myself be photographed - there were so many shots of me in Anna and Joyce’s cameras! HAHA! Hell yeah I am so beautiful!

This is the famous landmark of Man Yee Reservoir!

Here is a brief introduction about how it was formed:

“Hot volcanic lithogenous mass cooled down gradually when it was exposed to the air. Eventually it contracted into hexagonal rock columns. At this stage, the column was still in a semi-plastic state. As the lava below continued to gush up, it generated a vertical upward thrust and corresponding horizontal shear force.”

Wasn’t it marvelous and amazing?

Our group didn’t follow our guide because we decided to check out the cave not so far away.

I wished I had paid more attention in my Geography classes! Now I understand the true meaning of education (this is the definition of “education” from Devil’s Dictionary: that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding). There are so many things I want to know and so many I don’t know still!

Joyce, was using her boyfriend’s Canon DSLR; Anna, who enjoys taking pictures more than I do, also got a super pro Canon camera. Looking at my Nikon D40… I couldn’t help but feeling small!

Here are some pictures by Anna (as Joyce never sends me back her pictures taken):

Her lens is so much better than mine - wider angel. I really need a better lens. That’s the Christmas present I am getting myself - yes, I am spoiling me :)

The dam was very impressive. The Reservoir itself is just too huge to hike in one day. Anyway, I liked all of Anna’s friends, they were so nice, warm and funny - just like my dear Anna.

Here, I give you your dearest… and most beautiful Joey Leung :D

May be I am a people-person…?!

Weirdos

Last but not the least… there were some weirdos that we bumped into…

Graduates taking pictures on a hill of rocks - please pay close attention to their shoes. Thank you… and worse…

A couple taking their wedding pictures amongst those… barracks! Check out the guy who was holding the reflector board, it was the groom.

Praise to wonderful and adventurous Hongkies! :p

Afterwards we still went to a mining site which wasn’t so fun because it was drizzling. Cold and rain. Nevertheless I had a great day and loads of fun!

Special thanks to Joyce, who dumped her boyfriend for the day and accompanied me to the beautiful Reservoir!

3 apples + 3 bottles of water

2009-11-12T22:48:00.001+08:00

Date: 8 Nov 2009

Venue: Yim Tin Tsai Village, Sai Kung

A touch of coolness announcing the arrival of the winter. Being a Hongkonger, I still am so amazed at how dramatic the weather is here: last weekend the sun was shining above my head, boiling my black shiny hair; the next day the temperature dropped 10 degrees and I found myself wearing a sweater to work. After a week of sunshine, finally it’s time for winter.

Last week I had a little trip with my colleague-friend, Kimmy, to a small island in Sai Kung, it was some unknown island years ago - I didn’t even know it exist - but today it is a hot hide-away spot. It is called Yim Tin Tsai Village.

Next to the Sai Kung pier, there are quite some stalls selling boat tickets to different islands, take a look around, you’d notice this little stall with all the posters and newspaper clippings of Yim Tin Tsai. A return trip costs only HK$35.

Sai Kung is not far from where I live, it’s always been my favourite district. You get to see the sea, the boats, the mountains, the islands, BBQ spots, great seafood restaurants… it has basically everything, oh and green curry :)

Off we go to the treasure island!

It was a 10-minute voyage. There was a local tour on the boat with us, they had fliers of Yim Tin Tsai! I peeked and saw one of the pages introducing the history of the village… ah, how I wish I had a copy. I listened to Kimmy, forgetting not to give her some proper response. It was very pleasant, being on a boat, enjoying the sunshine, feeling the breeze… making it hard for me to concentrate. I want to live under the beautiful sunshine every day!

Da da! Here we were! The small but nice hidden village, far from the city noises and pollution. One day I will buy a house in Sai Kung!

The first thing we saw: a deteriorated house. The front door was looking sharp still, I went inside the house on my own as Kimmy was too scared (:p). It was a very old-fashioned house, everything was broken but it fascinated me somehow. The sunlight shone through the broken roof, it was cool inside, I was very much at ease, wondering why would Kimmy be scared…

creative, no?

The next thing - I saw a group of primary students, they were in school uniforms and chirping like birds, lively and kicking. I can’t remember I was ever so enthusiastic about any school trips. Since I had forgotten my bottle of water, I went into a furnished store - full of visitors, so loud and crowded.

This was what made the village so famous. The villagers made their living by trading salt… hm, I don’t have anything else to add :p

Being adventurous, I “ventured” to take pictures of the very fast-moving crabs!! They were so ugly, so colourful, so small yet so incredibly quick!

We walked, walked, talked, talked and definitely enjoyed everything else.

It was the first time I hiked with Kimmy. The experience wasn’t like the ones I had with Po and Yan, but still, it was amiable :D

There was a new (well it surely looked like it) church en route, we didn’t go inside because of the mass, we heard people singing. When we were walking pass those empty houses, my imagination ran wild and we quickened our paces whenever there was a house, haha. Girls, we are so sweet!

Here is a picture of beautiful Kimmy Wong! She’s amazing, cheerful and smiling all the time!

Unfortunately we didn’t stay long… I’d have loved to stay longer to explore this island, it was small but we didn’t really walk around it all. Next time then!

The last picture of the day :) Crazily busy Hongkies, take some time off to see how beautiful this place you’re living in!

Back to the Sai Kung pier, it was all very romantic: the sun was setting and thousands of people dream-walking. 3 young guys drawing with water colours drew my attention immediately, wah, they were amazing! I want to be able to draw as well… soon I will check out the drawing classes!

Conquering Dragon’s Back

2009-10-22T21:48:00.001+08:00

Venue: Dragon’s Back, Sau Kei Wan, Hong Kong

Date: 17 Oct, Saturday

It was a beautiful place, the Dragon’s Back, in Sau Kei Wan. We quickly made up our minds to go for a hike on the sunny Saturday.

By 3:30pm we reached the mouth of the Dragon. To our surprise, we finished it at around 7pm! Less than 3.5 hours! The suggested time was 3 and a half hour, haha, we were above average! Well but then we had a piano concert to catch at 7:30pm so we had no choice but to.. run a bit.

It really is a beautiful trail, worth recommending!

I have, obviously, collaged my pictures :D Probably better this way :) The view was really nice. Almost as nice as the view from Foggy Mountain, but just almost.

Here is a collection of plants and even a butterfly I saw on the walk. There were quite some butterflies and they were all flying around! One of them was purple! It was always flapping its wings that I couldn’t capture it with my camera. There are so many things to see and learn in the nature!

This… I definitely will try one day. When we were taking a break, there was a man talked to us, telling us about… publishing a book. How interesting.

In that 3.5 hours walk, we still had time for fun :D

Last but not the least, this is a project that I’m working on. A collection of the Posts on the trail. I will be collecting them from now on :) It’s nice to take pictures of them, I mean, if we would get lost then… we could just call the police and tell them where we’d be at and they’d send a helicopter to save us! How convenient! How grand!

Isn’t it wonderful to live in a modern world?

del.icio.us Tags: paragliding,posts,trail,hiking,fun

Surrogates + Ikea

2009-10-01T15:19:00.001+08:00

It was a rainy day, yesterday, gosh, it was raining for a handful days, got me so annoyed.

Then. I went to movie with my brother. We picked Surrogates. A disappointment. Snack was my favourite Ikea hot dog!

Anyway, got the Ikea 2010 catalogue, but, where are my friends?!

I’d love to have a super-oversized book shelf!

del.icio.us Tags: Ikea,Surrogates,catalogue,rain,movie

Impressive Vietnam - Day Trip

2009-09-28T21:49:00.002+08:00

Venue: Islands round Mekong River and Saigon

Date: 17 Aug evening to 19 Aug 2009

After our beautiful days in Mui Ne, we headed back to Saigon, by bus. This time, no more Germans. Saigon probably isn’t all that attractive for tourists, hm, not for us for sure!

It was fairly easy for us to find our way to the travel-agencies’-street in Saigon, we nearly walked there every day! To find food, to check flights, to check daily trips. So we booked our trip to Cu Chi for 18 Aug. So everything was settled and we had our dinner in one of the “Tai Pai Dong” - it wasn’t very Vietnamese I suppose. The local beer was nice and cheap. Spring rolls were not bad. Well, don’t forget we’re always food-craving… so Po and Yan in the end got us some mid-night snacks. (Oh yeah, Vietnamese are really good at playing featherballs! Many guys play!)

Anyway… here comes the best part. We arrived at the travel agency at 8.35am on 18 Aug for the daily trip to Cu Chi, just as Po told us to… surprise, the bus was already off! The bus to Cu Chi left at 8.15am, Po got the time wrong!!! Yan and I wanted to kill her literally, I thought we would have to spend a boring day in Saigon… however, the bus to Mekong River was still there so immediately we paid extra money and joined this other day tour to Meking River! What a twist of fate. So… boys and girls, never say never :)

First time ever to join a local tour. There was a Belgian couple sat in front of us, and we kept saying “ik ben mooi” which means “I am beautiful” in Dutch (our Belgian friend, Kristof, taught us. OK, we made him teaching us). Well, either they didn’t understand or they simply chose to ignore us. I guess the French newspaper the guy was reading explained it all.

Right in front of the Mekong River. Do you know that it’s the 7th longest river in Asia? Neither did I. The figure doesn’t mean anything to me, however long this river is has nothing to do with me, I wasn’t going to travel all along it… The yellow colour of the river made me wonder how Yellow River (Huang He) was like. Oh wait. I was at Yellow River once, when I was in Zhengzhou! Oh well. I wasn’t thinking then :p

This is a map of the boat trip. We haven’t been to all islands, we’ve only been to 5 of them.

:D Did you see that he was staring at me? Does it make you wonder how that hammock didn’t fell? Obvious it was one of the questions that I asked myself quite frequently when I was in Vietnam. We probably couldn’t make any use of the hammocks here in Hong Kong.

My beautiful friends and I were finally on a speedmotor boat. :) Very nice picture :D

Wah. Can anyone explain to me why a cargo ship like this couldn’t sink?

Another poster picture? If only the colours were more vivid…

As you can probably imagine from the picture on the left that the Vietnamese probably are leading a not-so-easy life. The view was rather nice though.

I never say we aren’t silly! We were really lively as you can see :) I think we were very cute :D

While our tour guide (who was really nice, he taught us so many Vietnamese and was always very funny!) was telling us the process in making the famous rice paper (middle picture), we went off to take pictures of the marvelous VIETNAMESE BANANAS! Did they impress you like they impressed me?

Then we had lunch… before we had lunch, we took a couple of pictures and one of them was really really funny… being so generous, I’m really willing to share with you, in hope of brightening up your day. So here it is:

Hahahaha, I looked so stupid! And a very convincing Vietnamese too (not that they looked stupid, but with my hat and my skin colour and everything else you see fit!)!

Yan and I got our Vietnamese hats there (very cheap!), Po got her red Vietnamese cap at the pier and we befriended an Italian model, Angela.

We were on the boat again to another island and our hats proved to be really useful… look at pregnant Po :) We were exploring the beautiful jungle, it felt like sailing through Amazon (not that I know how that would feel like, but that was how I imagined it to be).

It was cloudy that day, lucky it didn’t rain though :)

On this other island, we drank some genuine (!!!) honey tea. There was a guy took the hive out, we had to show our bravery of course :D We also rode the cart with the horse (isn’t she pretty with a big flower on her head?) pulling. The picture on the right… shows you Yan, her “horse like teeth” and the cute horse!

I personally think that was a very cruel act… I hope, my dearest readers, that none of you are working in SPCA… if you do… please note that it wasn’t our fault!

Those are bricks! I wonder why are they using bricks like this!

We also enjoyed some very exotic Vietnamese fruit and music :) There were some singers singing in Vietnamese, we couldn’t understand a word. They were probably singing love or war songs. The Belgian couple gave us information on the famous and traditional water puppets show! We also forgot about it!

Brave Yan, screaming Po and wanting-to-escape Joey! I still remember the terrible texture on the snake’s skin! Ugh! Horrifying!

We went to another island again after the snake-episode… The tour guide asked Yan and I to do Titanic, haha, we did, but the picture taken by him wasn’t as good as I’d want!

The coconuts island. They make fresh coconut candies :D

All were very tired by the end of the day… It was a very nice (and cheap) day trip to be honest :) I liked it :D

On the bus back to Saigon. The traffic was soooooo unbelievable! Impressive!

We bought our tickets to the water puppets show right after we got off the bus. Before going to the show, we still wanted to get our friends some souvenirs but we couldn’t find any! It was so crazy! All those shops were closed and the markets too! Well, at least we had a lot of fun asking people for directions and got super cheap coconuts again!

This is the water puppets show. If you ever go to Vietnam, you should watch one of these. It’s one-kind-one! Hahaha, means it’s one of the kind :) I was just showing off my Singlish :p

Venue: Vietnam International Airport

Time: 4:09 am in the morning on 19 Aug 2009

Can you believe how many people were there already at 4am in the morning? Vietnamese, you are all very diligent!

Believe it or not, this was how I looked like, a walking-dead-Vietnamese-looking Joey Leung :) The officer at the Custom kept talking to me in Vietnamese… I could barely open my eyes but still I managed to utter “I don’t understand”, haha.

Anyway, this is the end of our Vietnam trip. We did have great fun. It was the last trip we went on together before Po left to Germany. Bye bye Vietnam, we will be back, someday.

del.icio.us Tags: Mekong River,Featherball,Water Puppets,Horse,day trip,airport,traffic,motor bikes,islands,snake,Vietnam,hive,rice paper,hammocks

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne (end)

2009-09-19T18:27:00.001+08:00

Venue: Mui Ne

Date: 17 August 2009

We were off to the road again after a short break, we didn’t have much time. One point worth noting though… the coconuts were sooooo super cheap in Vietnam!

Arrived the next destination within 5 minutes, the red canyon was just around the corner… and it was such a disappointment. At least I was expecting something much more marvelous than that… Death to the touristic posters.

We did our best to capture the grandeur of the place! Those beautiful legs belonged to Yan :)

It was nothing much to see, we were surrounded by the red soil. In Hong Kong you can’t see such red soil, we have many mountains and different kinds of rocks, never this. The sun was killing us but… we decided to take more pictures.

This picture would be great if you could see the whole of my head… but well, I developed this picture in 2R size so as to fit my wallet :) Friendship is a beautiful thing. Some say you can’t see sadness in pictures, I guess it’s one negative way to see things. I say if you had really great eyes, you capture the most beautiful (and natural) moments thus you’ve given the most powerful power to freeze the moments.

Waiting impatiently for the shot. Gee, my Vietnamese colleague said we were really lucky to have the sun with us during our stay. The weather was capricious in August in Vietnam and would normally accompany by packs of rain, however, it was all sunny for us! The sweat and sand, oh, what a perfect combination…

OK, the timer’s blinking, forget about the sun, the sweat and sands on your body, just remember to smile!

Alrighty then! It’s my favourite spot during our trip, the little fishing village, which wasn’t far from the red canyon! When we were approaching, a sick smell filled our nostrils. It was the mixed smell of the sea and dead fishes. Awful to be honest. The village was very colourful and I’ve got many postcards like pictures!

The sieves… well, it should be called a fishing basket, were really really huge. The 3 of us could sit in there without feeling crowded. They bring the basket to their boat after they catch fishes, they then put them in those baskets. So huge!

OK, my very own postcards :) You should have seen the happy faces on the villagers faces. I wonder if they could smell the dreadful smell like we did.

Beautiful place, isn’t it?

The business must be thriving there… look at the seashells. May be it was our looks, or may be it was our behaviour that attracted some young villagers there. They were yelling and whistling, asking for pictures. We said no :p

Finally we saw the ‘work force’ working under the straw shed. The terrible smell was stronger the closer I got. Hm, they were getting the meat from the shells… the whole thing was very… unhygienic. They didn’t pay much attention to me, an intruder, and were totally occupied by the work in front of them. May be it really is better not knowing how the food is prepared.

Here is a picture of a better look at the ‘food processing’.

Strange enough, when I was standing there and looking over at the little dead fishes pool, they just didn’t smell anymore. It was a sight. I wondered where did they export the products, of course the question left unanswered.

Obviously my right hand and my left had different colours, so I changed my seat and sunbathed my left hand :)

On our way to Fairy Spring, we saw those very beautifully dressed Vietnamese students! I want one of those!

Coming up next is… the Fairy Spring! It’s got a really beautiful name and everything justifies it.

First, the very energetic Po and Yan! Did you see the grass growing by the sides? My colleague told me that they only grow by the clean waters! Haha despite the colour of the stream, I guess it really is clean. There was seaweed on the ‘streambed’ and it was really shallow. Extraordinary!

Did you see the little guy on the left? He was our little guide. Right after we stepped into the stream, he came up and offered to walk with us. By then we understood it was his chance to earn some extra money and we were quite generous about it. A minute later, however, there were some other little guys came and offered the same service! At first we thought they were the same gang but well, those latecomers, they started to blackmouth at us after we refused their company. After we refused “their service (by merely walking with us)”, they asked us to pay them to go away. That was insane. We ignored them totally. You just have to be tough when something unreasonable like that happens. Anyways, it was all sand in the picture!

In the end we paid him, how much I forgot already… but he asked us to pay him a bit more because there was a boss there and he would ask our guide to pay him (protection fee????) so we did. There was no need to make this kid’s life uneasy. He plucked 3 “4 leaves grass” and wished us luck. Upon saying goodbye he told us that there was a WATERFALL about 1km away. We, dying to explore everything, went there.

The little guide took a picture of us in front of the 3-coloured sand hill. He insisted.

There was much to see in this Fairy Spring. It was a shame that we know nothing about geography…

Even though the sun were roasting our bare skin, the stream was soothing, it helped in some way. This picture is one of my favourite, haha, Yan was ready to use her sunbrella and I was posing in the far end :) Po was an asshole to focus on Yan!!! (but great picture nevertheless)

My comment is that… the kid had no idea what a WATERFALL is. The “waterfall” in Hong Kong Park is bigger than this sh!thole “waterfall”! But well, we were there and… whatever!

Oh no, we didn’t go down to the stream from this way ;) It’s just a nice picture to share.

We later on came back to the hotel, had some food at the restaurant where we ate in our first evening. Wah, it was so delicious! Hahaha! Special thanks to Nam who helped us get our food in 5 minutes…

He was a really nice guy :) Nam, we will come back one day! Wait for us!

I had really fond memories in Mui Ne… this is the last picture to share for the day. The sun, the beach, the boat and a friendly Vietnamese.

del.icio.us Tags: Red Canyon,Fairy Spring,fishing village,sieve,Vietnamese,dead fish,shed,luck,waterfall,Mui Ne

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne (Con’t)

2009-09-09T23:58:00.001+08:00

Venue: Mui Ne

Date: 17 August 2009

A view full of sand. Friends asked me if I really was in Vietnam, haha, who would have guessed? This is the Vietnam I know. A magical place.

It was never like anything I have ever seen in my short life… It simply took my breath away. It surely did. When will I ever go to Sahara? It must be a fascinating place!

After “woos and wows”, we were ready for the sand slide. This is the best thing about backpacking, you don’t have to fight with other tourists when you are in some touristic sites. You totally just own the place and you can do whatever you want! The car driver was on the other end of the sand dune, it was just the kid and the three of us (now I really just want to beat him up!).

It was quite steep, you definitely have to be there to witness the whole sand slide thing, it was very… sandy. Haha while watching Po sliding down, I was too busy getting the sand out of my dress. We were all sweating like hell, can you imagine the sands sticking to your body like your second skin? That was how I felt at that time.

Getting back on the sand dune for another round of slide… wasn’t so easy either. The whole thing was very exciting but exhausting at the same time!

Yan wanted to kill the kid (well, we all wanted to in the end)… anyway, it was a real picture of us being roasted under the hot sun!

While we were taking pictures, Po’s got another round of slide done and wow, her super cool model pose! No wonder she’s my best friend :D In the end we wanted to do the final round together… but obviously it was only Po who made it. All I could do was laughing at my own clumsiness and Yan was catching up!

That was when we made our second mistake. We gave up hassling too easily! That FSOB (sorry for my language), he was too greedy, he cheated us money! We paid 10 times more than he deserved. Such an a-hole! If he didn’t lie it would be fine, but! AAAAGH! Will ask for our money back if we ever meet again!

Anyway, after taking a break in the jeep and absorbing water like a sponge, we were ready to see something else again!

I really have to say that Mui Ne is very touristic. Many restaurants, many bars, not many houses, not many stray dogs (our best bet was that they eat dogs) and many tourists.

We rested under a tree on another sand dune (by then we no long were excited about sand dunes), saw a fox-looking dog which was also resting under the shadow. It really was too hot and the dog started digging a hole for a cooler “hideout”. Funny that.

Even the temperature differences were huge between the shadow and right under the sun. The sands were burning hot and we could no longer walk on them, you could even feel the heat with your sandals on!

:) Just a silly picture. Typical Joey Leung!

We had coconuts at this store. Very convenient, some Chinese soap opera was on TV when we were there. Haha it was very funny, the program was dubbed but by only one man’s voice in Vietnamese. Now I see that Hong Kong TV productions are very professional! At least when we dub programs, you can tell whether it was a man or a woman, or a kid talking… but in Vietnam, you’re not that fortunate. Had such a great time in the store, and wah those super juicy fresh delicious cheap coconuts…

Did you see the half-naked man in the picture? Haha, almost as sexy as the Singaporean that we saw in Santosa! HAHAHAHA!

del.icio.us Tags: coconuts,sand,sand slide,dog,model,poses

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne

2009-09-08T23:25:00.001+08:00

Venue: Mui Ne

Date: 17 August 2009

It was officially Yan’s birthday. Yan is actually very sweet, you’re welcomed to let me know if you want to get to know her!

The weather was incredible, the sun must be in love with us! We got up really early today and had a very nice breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel, though I didn’t really eat much. The most interesting thing about Vietnam is that they have green bananas instead of yellow mature bananas, which are actually quite small but super tasty!

That’s the hotel where we were staying. It was considerably cheap by Hong Kong standard, nevertheless it’s got a swimming pool, a bar with free Internet access and a gym (though we never got the chance to go in), the view of the sea (and a perfect beach!) was simply superb.

Good morning Vietnam!

Alright, here comes the typical Vietnam banana - well, this one was yellow but never mind :p

Later on we paid 300,000 Dong for the very exciting jeep trip that we never had before (special thanks to Nam, our new Vietnamese friend, who confirmed us that it was a very good price for such a trip)!

We were on the highway in no time, there wasn’t anyone around and it made me wonder how other tourists see this place without driving or renting a car…

First time in my life to ever lay eyes on sand dunes. It wasn’t any other sand dune either, it’s the RED sand dune! We didn’t stay very long but we had enough fun jumping on the sand dune and taking pictures :D Gosh, it really was beautiful! I just wished we had stayed longer!

Literally speaking, we were being roasted under the sun….

Don’t underestimate our power in enjoying ourselves :D We were driving along the coastal line, wah, no one absolutely but us! If the taxi driver were to rob (and kill) us, I strongly believe that we wouldn’t be able to make it back to Hongkong alive… well, too much thriller movies these days, haha!

Basically you see all sort of things on the road… from cows eating grass among so many graves to a plain to red rocks… to…

sheep, to mountains, and to OASIS!!!!

Sitting in the front seat, [ONLY] my right arm was getting a tan, oh well, I’m still glad we were in the jeep anyway, aren’t you?

A silly picture of Yan waiting for the toilet on our way to the WHITE SAND DUNE! There was a store where we got some bottles of water - how could you survive without water under the merciless sun?

Finally! 360° sand view! Amazing! To be totally honest, I didn’t know sand would burn your feet before, eh, I mean, I knew but it didn’t occur to me back then… but now I do know!

By the time I’m writing this, my heart is filled with joy and a sense of contentment. Suddenly every single detail in our trip I remember, and the laughter we had, the freedom and easiness of things.

Damn, I think I was born to be a nomad!

del.icio.us Tags: Mui Ne,birthday,breakfast,beach,sand,white sand dune,red sand dune,jeep,trip,toilet,joy,freedom,contentment,cows,sheep,rocks,mountains,swimming pool,bananas

Unlimited Sky

2009-09-02T23:21:00.001+08:00

Venue: On the way back to Hong Kong

I really just wanted to share this breathtaking view with you.

This world is amazing!

I have to sigh.

del.icio.us Tags: Plane,Sky,Mountain,Snow,Wing

Impressive Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh

2009-08-30T22:01:00.001+08:00

Venue: Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh City

Date: 15-16 August

It wasn’t so easy when it came to this trip to Vietnam, it was quite eventful, but it all turned out quite well, lucky for us! It was my first time to Vietnam, people told me that it would be a boring trip but the other said the exact opposite, finally I’ve got the chance to see it for myself.

Starting off by getting Dong, the Vietnam currency, upon arrival. Wow! Suddenly Po, Yan and I became millionaires! Money money money! Our hotel was not an expensive one - we were just some poor backpackers! - therefore there wasn’t any car to pick us up from the airport. After hassling with a local taxi driver, we agreed to pay around HK$70 for a 20 minutes drive to the hotel. Hm, that was the first mistake we ever made in our trip, we gave up asking for further discount too quickly, the hotel manager said we should’ve paid half for the drive from airport to hotel (!!!).

According to the guide book, the hippest bar in town was called Q Bar, Po thought it would be a good idea to check it out.. so we did. Aw. I swear I didn’t enjoy any of that. Well, at least we tried the local beer.

We then headed back to the hotel and slept for the night.

On the next day, first thing first, we went to a street stuffed with travel agencies, originally we were planning to go to Nha Trang on 17th August for a day but there was no seat for the return flight (which comes back to Ho Chi Minh city ridiculously early, leaving at 4pm!), so out of the blue we found bus tickets in our hands to Mui Ne in the afternoon. We always take what we can get, so it was alright.

On the first day, already we saw many “spectacles” in Ho Chi Minh city.

One the top left, there was a homeless man sleeping right under the tall building. The weather was really hot that day, and the sun was burning. Life isn’t so easy in Ho Chi Minh as you can see. On the top right, there were 2 tires appeared out of no where, on the far end there were so many motor bikes… The telephone box on bottom left was a container for rubbish (!!) and the electric wires crawling all over…

We don’t understand any Vietnamese… (actually we do!) whenever we needed help in directions, we just walked right up to people and pointed at our travel guide book, and they showed us the way. In this regard most of them were really helpful, unlike Shanghaiese!

This definitely has something to do with the bad economy.

In Ho Chi Minh they’ve got those mini size traffic lights for bikers. Po’s tall (and she looked like a sailor)!

Right in front of the gothic Cathedral. It was a mimic of the Dotre Dame Cathedral built back in 1877. There were people taking wedding pictures there and many tourists. Shame that we didn’t get a chance to get in, it should be really beautiful inside.

Next to the Cathedral was the Central Post Office. Really French, no? It wasn’t very interesting inside, nothing much to see... but still I got my own souvenir - some very nice stamps :D

And we went to the Reunification Palace which was not so far from the Cathedral and the Post Office. We were in such a hurry (needed to catch the bus to Mui Ne!) so we didn’t really take many pictures… but this is one of the funny ones, we were pretending being ravaged by the tank :p

And the famous Ho Chi Minh, and silly Yan :D

A very nice picture taking in the highest of the Palace. I think it looked quite like the Champs-Elysees in Paris! Most of the buildings in Ho Chi Minh were not so tall.

At 3pm local time, we got on the bus to Mui Ne, talked to a German guy and a local girl on the bus and worried about the weather - it was raining like crazy (and flooded!) on our way to Mui Ne - finally we got there at around 9pm. After swimming in our luxurious hotel, we were so terribly hungry that we went to a nice restaurant nearby - the hotel restaurant was closed by then. Befriended a Vietnamese kid and learned some more Vietnamese :D

After all that, Yan and I got on a taxi to a pub which was closed and Po was already sleeping like a pig in the hotel.

That was when we called it a day.

del.icio.us Tags: Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam,balloons,dinner,restaurant,rubbish,motor bikes,tank,Reunification Palace,traffic lights,Cathedral

7.1 March

2009-07-10T23:20:00.001+08:00

Venue: Causeway Bay to Central

Date: 1 July 09

Not much to say. Just want to post some pictures.

There were more than 100,000 people marched peacefully that day. I was so proud.

My favourite of the day :)

After all that… we went to eat SUSHI :D

Hahahahahahahahaha! Creative, eh?!

I LOVE WASABI!!!!!!!!!!!!!

del.icio.us Tags: March,7.1,Hong Kong,Sushi,sticker,Donald Tsang,demonstration

A day at the Beach!

2009-06-09T22:39:00.001+08:00

Venue: Stanley beach

Date: 10 May 2009

The day wasn’t particularly beautiful - there were even patches of showers, but well, the “major” elements were there: the sun, the suffocating heat and the desire to spending a day at the beach.

The first thing we did after arriving at Stanley… we went to Taste. Haha, we came back out with one box supersized strawberries, 2 boxes of Sushi and 4 bottles of water. It’s a shame that you can’t really see those Sushi in the picture… SUSHI! I have already started to miss them.

There was the beach! :D Despite a few showers, it was packed with people!

Hmmmm, it’s not so easy to post pictures that I consider “appropriate for all” on here… we didn’t take many pictures then, the main reason was that, I was too lazy to move my arse. We all were too lazy, it was just too relaxing…

This is one of the best shot I took of the day. I assure you we all look better in real :D

The father was obviously having fun with the kid and the mum smiling sweetly :) It all looked really beautiful! To our surprised, we bumped into my colleague! With his girlfriend and brother (?)! :D Hong Kong is indeed small.

The time was passing by very slowly but still too quickly. We didn’t even have time for HAAGEN DAZS!!! Though we still had Green tea Frappuccino :D The little sparrow was stealing food :) Actually there were many sparrows dancing around…

del.icio.us Tags: Stanley,Hong Kong,beach,sunny,chocolate cake,sparrows,sushi,strawberries

Tai Mo Shan (Foggy Mountain)

2009-05-26T19:12:00.000+08:00

I didn’t write for a while again, my reason for this is that, there are so many things going on in my life at the moment. I can’t complain about it, life is still very beautiful! Right now I’m sitting on the balcony, hearing the sound of the running tap water, the sun was shining right outside - the rain has gone, the sky is as clear as crystal.

Po, Yan and I had been real lazy, we didn’t manage to hike at all over the pass couples of months. It was on 9 May, when the sun was shining and the humidity in the air had finally evaporated under the mildly warm sun, it meant we had to go out. Here we came, Tai Mo Shan :D

This is the beautiful and hilarious trio. Joey the fly, Po the mask, Yan the Beatles lover. (Note: The Swineflu didn’t even attack Mexico yet - that is crazy Po with her fake cold!)

Just in case you’re wondering what happened… I assure you, I was wondering about the same thing too. With Yan running towards me with her distorted face and HK Po *yeahing* at the back. What a beautiful picture! (Actually I amaze at how energetic we really are!)

I bet Po would force me to post a really beautiful (and feminine) picture of her just so she could clear her name. HEY! SHE’S MY VERY BEAUTIFUL FRIEND! DON’T YOU DROOL OVER HER!

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Tai Mo Shan (Foggy Mountain) really was breathtaking! I was stunned when I saw the view. I didn’t even know we had such a beautiful plain here in Hongkong!!!!! The last time when I saw such a plain was when I was in Germany then. As the name suggests, there is *forever* foggy, no matter how clear the weather is - trust me, it’s not because Hongkong is *forever* smoggy :p Being the highest mountain here, of course it’s crazily windy… and chill.

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3 pictures taken on the mountain. Aw, suddenly I miss the mountain! (Fact #1: Po went back to the mountain top the week after this, she was smart! I want to go back again too!)

*warning: I’ll be posting extremely funny pictures here, if your heart is not up to the excitement, please stop reading. Thanks*

Hahahaha this is very Po-typical picture! HAHAHAHAHAH! She’s the Kungfu Master, I tell you that! We, every Chinese, can do Kungfu! Huh! Don’t you look down on us!

Well… we’re still young and imaginative, we love “dirty” snacks :D For the sake of carving my beautiful image inside of your head, I decided to NOT post all those thousands of crazy posing pictures of us girls here. Sorry but you have to be in the exclusive club (which only contains 3 members, bye bye)!

When you laugh too much after posing crazy poses… this is how you’re gonna look when others took your picture!

My friends had done a great job to entertain me that day… this is the final picture I’m gonna show in this entry, as you can see… hey, Po is not crazy :) She won’t just beat anyone up, you’re pretty safe!

del.icio.us Tags: Tai Mo Shan,Hong Kong,Snacks,chill,clear,mask,Swineflu,sunny

Holga pictures

2009-05-02T22:16:00.001+08:00

Finally I got my Holga pictures from the traditional photo store (the one in Yau Ma Tei). Those stores are being ‘wiped out’, people use digital cameras now - too many really and we hardly develop pictures, er, not for me. I love *real* pictures.

It shocked me, when I got them.

They sucked. My pictures sucked!

Overexposed, underexposed, out of focus, shaking… here are some of my first-attempted Holga pictures.

These were supposed to be good pictures among the lot…. hm, I guess they are not as good as I’d wanted.

Haha, one of the best! Flowers! Could you imagine!

These pictures didn’t turn out quite as what I had in mind…. Hmmmmm.

I can’t quite manage the skill just yet. I’m giving myself 3 cartons of films to do whatever I want to with my toy camera. I am sure it’d be fun.

Right now I’m working on a project. Hold your breath and wait for my upload in the future!

del.icio.us Tags: Holga,toy camera,TST,clock tower,sandals,flowers,harbour,reflection

*Happy go Lucky*

Cloud dance

Heart of Hong Kong

Mid-Autumn Festival

time

Shek O

Bun Festival

Another hike

Butterflies!

Hiking plus Big camera

Shenzhen

Nam Sang Wai

Leonardo da Vinci

On the peak

On a sunny day…

Fujian - last day, 5th!

Warsaw, Poland

Great wall and 798

Lamma!

The Golden World

Dresden

Europe trip 2010

Purpose

6.4

Another hour in the park…

LeSportsac

Fujian - Day 4 Wuyi Mountains

Sleep, sleep and sleep

2010 Flower Show

A tripod and a remote

The other side…

Fujian - Day 3 Gu Lang Yu

Fujian - Day 2 in Xiamen

April is a busy month

Fillens

On and forth

Fotanian

Quick Review of 2009

Chocolates

In Nostalgia

blah blah blah

Vote Earth!

First try-out

Exhibition - Japan

Man Yee Highland Reservoir

3 apples + 3 bottles of water

Conquering Dragon’s Back

Surrogates + Ikea

Impressive Vietnam - Day Trip

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne (end)

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne (Con’t)

Impressive Vietnam - Mui Ne

Unlimited Sky

Impressive Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh

7.1 March

A day at the Beach!

Tai Mo Shan (Foggy Mountain)

Holga pictures

Happy go Lucky