Random city photos

100+100, that’s 200, right?
For a mini celebration, may I ask for your footprint as a gift? Especially if you are anonymous, John Doe, Jane Doe, frequent visitor or silent visitor, just pop in and say hi, join the party, your footprints are the greatest souvenirs for this occasion ;-). Heading towards #300 now!

Muchas Gracias/Merci beaucoup/Viele Dank/Ringraziarla/Dank u/Obrigado/спасибо/Takker De/Hvala/takk/謝謝/ありがとう/당신을 감사하십시오/شكرا

Links: Post #1, Post #100

Clear night sky, new moon, a very bright star…kind of romantic.
And a spaceship! It didn’t turn out as good as I’ve hoped, but I want to show you the new moon last night. Does anyone know if that star above the moon is Polaris (no, it’s not dust on your monitor)? The “spaceship” is the edge of a buildng in an area called CyberPort, where I took this photo in May.
Links: another view of the “spaceship”, moonlight in Barcelona and Taipei

We do barbeque quite differently in HK, instead of using a grill and putting food on it, we use a 2-tine fork/skewer to grill our choice of food individually. It takes longer than western barbeque but we get to hang around with each other longer and everybody gets the chance to show off their skill (or no skill). As you can see from this (not so nice) photo, we wrapped some sweet potatoes and corns to be cooked by the fire as well. How do you do barbeque in your city?

Some psychedelic colors I spotted at the Big Wave Bay beach ;-)…nonono, I was and am absolutely sober…I have a whole week of work and study to do!
Have a good week everybody!

I took this photo at Big Wave Bay Beach yesterday. It was a relatively quiet weekend but you can still see lots of things going on…friends chatting, kids playing, and of course, people swimming. Big Wave Bay Beach is on the eastern coast of the HK island and is usually not as busy as other beaches for tourists such as the Repulse Bay. Sorry for the late post yesterday, I was there until past 11 pm

Have you ever wondered what’s behind or around those fancy images you see in tourist guides? Well, in this night shot of Central you’ll see what’s really around those fancy sparkling lights and skyscrapers — road works.
Have a good weekend everybody!

Ok, so we’ve got some bananas ;-), jade pendants, beach balls and teas, and here are our last stops. This is a part of the open-air market mainly with stalls selling home decorations, accessories such as cell phone covers. Feel free to browse and search through the piles of merchandise and pick the ones you like.

A streetside stall selling tea leaves, herbal tea and medicinal tea ingredients including some dried flowers, dried fruits, dried melons, leaves and roots. The stall owner was really friendly to me (contrary to the banana old lady ;p) and gave me a big smile when I showed him the image on my camera. Look closer and you’ll see some lavendar in the lower left corner.

These beach balls and toys were hung up high under the canopy of a toy store, and this is how kids see them when they look up.
Actually, once upon a time, this could be how toys were to us, up high and out of reach…well, unless you were a tall kid or have very obedient parents!

Aren’t these beautiful? I think so even if they are a bit of cliche. These are some inexpensive lucky charms and pendants made of jade (or some kind of semi-precious stones) at the Wanchai market. Look closer and you’ll see some Chinese zodiac animals, the rabbit, ox, tiger, horse and etc. I got one of those by mail from my mom years ago when I was in Canada. She said according to Chinese zodiac, that was not a good year for me and the charm would do me good. I knew that actually meant she missed me and couldn’t think of anything else for an independent daughter who never got homesick. Well, now that I’m back in HK, I am near mom and that’s better than having all these lucky charms
Link: wiki page on Chinese astrology/zodiac animals

I found this in a small street in Wanchai and at my first click an old lady, a street-side fruit vendor, came and stopped me. She definitely went bananas and said a bunch of things. Well, I was really going to compliment her on the artistic display matching the marks on the bananas with those on the wall! ;p
(Just to clarify, most other vendors in the open-air market don’t mind people taking photos of their merchandise.)

This is part of the power station on Lamma Island. We have many of these chimneys from coal burning stations, while only one wind turbine as wind power is still at a testing stage here. That partly explains the polluted air you see in this photo.

A scene at a busy open-air market in Wanchai this afternoon –
(men from left to right)
1) Geez, I’m just glad we didn’t go to LV and Tiffany’s, shop till you drop Honey!
2) Geez, I’m caught on camera shopping at this cheap place;
3) I hate shopping, I hate shopping, I hate shopping……I also hate being photographed

Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you?
Where are you going to? Do you know? Do you get what you’re hoping for?
When you look behind you, there’s no open doors.
What are you hoping for?Do you know?

I really can’t think of anything better than this song to go with this photo :-), and here’s the complete lyrics

This is no fancy restaurant but a neighborhood Beijing dumpling eatery. I took this photo just a few hours ago while I had (late) lunch there. Of course the red Chinese paper cutting art is beautiful, but I think the colorful menu posters contribute to a great composition. By the way, the dumplings are good!
Links: wiki pages of Chinese paper art, Chinese dumplings

I took this photo yesterday at around 6:40 pm. I was trying to see if I should go to the waterfront for some sunset photo but then the low clouds told me not to. But I got this photo with four types of clouds (if I remember right, it was from geography at school, that means long time ago ;p). I guess it’s not necessary to point out that we are looking at the western part of HK