Idle hands and all that...

The below picture is basically what happens when I get bored.

I was meeting a friend for lunch and I arrived at the restaurant early.  I didn't have anything to do so I started rearranging the table.  The below picture is the end result.

At least I managed to while away 10 minutes.
:)

Buh-bye!

One last photo to round out the Paula Tsui (徐小鳳) collection.

Buh-bye Paula!

The boys in the back

To be completely honest, I'm not actually all that fond of the next picture from a technical quality point of view.  However, for reasons which will soon be obvious, I couldn't NOT include it.

The problem was that the orchestra was on the other side of the coliseum and the lens I had on my camera couldn't zoom in enough to get a good quality picture (obv, what you see below is cropped).  Add in the fact that this was taken in the dark and handheld - well, you can see the results for yourself.

In case you're wondering - yes, those are primary school kids.

In brief, Paula Tsui (徐小鳳) had invited the school orchestra, school choir and Chinese drum team from the school where my kids study to support during her concert.  My older son was in the drum team and my younger son was in the orchestra - and now you know why I had to post a picture of the kids above!  My only regret is that the kids were all on the opposite ends of the Coliseum so I didn't manage to get any decent pictures of them performing. :(

Still, it was a pretty amazing experience for them and something which very few people get the chance to do.  A lot of hard work in preparing for it but they both had a good time so it was all worth it in the end.

For reference, the below video (not by me) is the winning performance of the Ying Wa Primary School Symphony Orchestra earlier in the year when they went to Bratislava to take part in the 5th International Youth Music Festival.

And the below video (again, not by me) is the winning performance of the Thundermakers (Ying Wa Primary School Chinese drum team) at the 16th Hong Kong Synergy 24 Drum Competition (Primary School Section) last month.

Putting on the Ritz

One of the hallmarks of a Paula Tsui (徐小鳳) concert are the fancy gowns that she wears during the show.  In fact, some of them are so fancy that the weight of the gown is such that she has to extensively practice wearing the gown and walking with that excess weight prior to the concert.

Compared to what I've seen her wear in other concerts, she was relatively reserved in her most recent concert.  Which isn't to say that her gowns weren't impressive though!

In this first picture, she has a bunch of primary school kids waving a massive white sheet to give the effect of waves. 

More about those kids in a future post but for now, a closeup of the dress she's wearing.

Concert at the Coliseum

Paula Tsui (徐小鳳) is one of the biggest cantopop icons from yesteryear.  Well, I say yesteryear but she recently held a concert at the HK Coliseum with all 4 sides open.

A bit more context on that last sentence as most of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about.  The HK Coliseum is one of the biggest indoor multipurpose venues in HK with a capacity of around 12,000 people.  It is sometimes used for big sporting events as you can have spectators sitting on all 4 sides around the center of the court.

It is also often used as a measure of how popular a local singer is.  Basically, only the biggest local stars will book the HK Coliseum and even then, not all of them will open all 4 sides if they don't think they can pack it with enough fans.

Paula Tsui, despite being 70 years old, is still popular enough to open all 4 sides.  Impressive!

Dim sum with dad

One of the nice things about travelling to the UK was that I got to visit my dad who is still over there.  Given I'm on the other side of the world (or is it that he's on the other side of the world...), it's nice to get a chance to visit and eat dim sum together.

A spot of history

One of the things I like about travelling to rural destinations is seeing stuff that you wouldn't normally see in a big city.  As a general rule, it seems that things in big cities tend to be very modern.  But travelling outside the big cities can open you up to some interesting sights like this old style car.

I call it an old style car but you can see it's clean and well maintained.

Camping the spawn point

Just a quick post today.  Why?

Well, this pic from last night might give some clues.

An idyllic rural town

As you can probably guess, I actually plan in advance which pictures I'm going to post.  Somehow, this ended up in my mind as being equated with actually having posted the photo.  Oops.

That said, funny how the mind works sometimes.

Anyway, when you visit the UK, one of the things you have to do is visit a rural town.  I'm very much a city slicker so I don't know if I would want to live in a rural town but for a couple of hours, it's great to just wander round and soak in the atmosphere.

Two photos today to make up for the fact that I missed a couple of weeks. :)

Thomas the Tank Engine

If you've been following my pictures here, then you will know that I was in Thomasland over Summer.  At this point, it should be fairly obvious what the next picture will be.

Yup - Thomas the tank engine.

As you would expect of Thomasland, they had a giant model engine railway setup where Thomas, as well as several of his friends, trundled round (and round) an impressively large model railroad.

Ticket to ride

One of the places we went to while we were in the UK was a theme park called Drayton Manor.  Primarily, we wanted to go to the Thomasland section within.

Gordon had a great time there.  Gerry though is now a bit too old to really enjoy Thomasland so he spent most of his time there in the main Drayton Manor theme park.  Still managed to get him a ride on the Thomasland train though. :)

The new manager

As promised, here come the holiday snaps!

Back in August, I went to the UK for a couple of weeks.  I'd been really looking forward to going for a couple of reasons.  One of which was because for a whole month before we were due to go, we had been reading about a heatwave in the UK.  Coming from HK, I can imagine that the "heatwave" would have been really comfortable for us! :)

Naturally, the heatwave ended the week before we got there...

Anyway, being a Liverpool fan (did you know that before?) - I had to travel to Anfield.

Wait, did Liverpool get a new manager?

Oink!

Back from holiday and back to posting pics.

I do have some holiday snaps but before I get to those, I want to wrap up my series of food close-ups.

Next up - Viet style pork chops.

I'm pretty sure this was grilled (and not fried).  Either way, it was yummy and that's all that counts!

Do you want fries with that?

Just a quick post before I head out on holiday.

Continuing my current series - Fries!

Not much more to say really.

Did you mousse me?

After several photos showing off the sights of HK, I figure it's time for something completely different.

One of the things I love to do with my camera, even with the full knowledge that it doesn't result in particularly good photos, is to take close up photos of food.  To be clear, I'm not talking about food photography which is about making food look appetizing.  Instead, all I do is take my macro lens and take a close up pic of food.

I have no idea why but I find close up pics of food fascinating.  For some reason, I just love looking at the texture which shows up when you look at it through a macro lens.

Another dream broken

Woo - things have been a bit crazy recently which resulted in this post being a bit later than I would have hoped for.  Still, better late than never, right?

In a move which is, I suspect, normal for beginner photographers, I tend to take lots of photos of things but only find 1 or 2 photos actually worth keeping.  As a result, you also tend to find that I only post 1 photo of each "thing" before I move onto a different subject the following week.

So I figured there would never be a better subject than a Guinness record breaking ship made out of lego to break this "personal record" for.  Below, a close up of the lifeboats from the lego World Dream - because after a setup like the above, I'm gonna need a lifeboat!

I have a dream

The World Dream is a massive new luxury cruise liner that launched last year and services Asia.  To mark the occasion, the company owning it created a massive model of it made out of Lego.  And when I say massive, I mean Guinness world record breaking massive.

At this point, anything I can say is superfluous to the model itself so here you go:

Just jiving in TST

While I was in TST, I came across an awesome guy who was having a party by the harbour.  The guy had an old style boombox from which he was playing a selection of classic 80's rock music and all he was doing was just sitting by the harbour and jiving to the sound of the sweet, sweet beats.

I got several pics of him but the best, surprisingly, was actually this one taken from behind him and with the Exhibition Centre in the background.  And seeing as, for some reason or other, I'm doing a tour of the HK tourism board website - http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/see-do/highlight-attractions/top-10/golden-bauhinia-square.jsp

The Hong Kong Clock Tower

My tour of the HK tourism website continues as I visit the old clock tower.

The clock tower is a landmark in Hong Kong with almost a hundred years of history.  I suspect it's also one of the most visited tourist attractions in Hong Kong owing primarily to the fact that it's situated in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui and placed right next to the ferry.  Even discounting the number of people who go there deliberately, the amount of foot traffic just passing by on their way to somewhere else is enough to elevate it's status.

Naturally, I had to follow the standard image composition when taking this picture. :)

A crowd of Lights

Every night, in Victoria Harbour, people in Hong Kong are exposed to "one of the world’s most spectacular light shows".  At least, this is how it's described by the HK Tourism Board.

Speaking for myself, I wasn't that impressed.

Regardless of my own views though, the attraction does attract a crowd every evening.  Given I wasn't impressed with the light show itself, I've always found it more interesting to take pictures of the crowd instead.

Still on Ying Wa Street

Wow - last week got crazy busy and passed by quickly!

A week late on this but better late than never.  This picture was taken at the same time as my previous picture of the new law court.  Again, it primarily came out of playing around with the camera when I wasn't taking a picture of the actual law court. 

Although, with that said, you can see the law court in the background.

Ying Wa Street

The West Kowloon Law Courts Building is a new court being built in the west side of Kowloon.  The building isn't finished yet but it's close enough that you can get some decent photos.  Well, you could if you know what you are doing.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a good photo of the building itself but, while playing around with the camera, managed to get this picture of the street it's on. 

The West Kowloon Law Courts Building is on the other side of the road on the left side of the picture.

Half of the West Kowloon Law Courts Building

The return of the Meister

Wow - been over a year since I posted here.

To be honest, I had initially decided to stop updating the blog at all.  Frankly, it was taking too much time.  However, I realised recently that I need to spend more time taking photos if I want to actually improve my photography skills.  After all, what's the point in having a decent camera if you don't know how to use it!

So in that vein, I'm going to try to post a picture once a week.  Hopefully, that will force me to take photo's on a regular basis.

Below is a recent photo of Gordon to get us started.

I think he likes the noodles...