The Ghetto

On one of our few nights in New York, our lovely guide Nina took us on a whirlwind drive through where she used to live -- Chinatown. As far as I could tell, it had a fairly stereotypical movie feel. You could well imagine the triads having a shady deal on one street, whilst the mafia puff on some cigars in a basement round the corner.

A nice meal

After a surprisingly hot walk from Ottawa to Gatineau across the Alexandra Bridge, it was a pleasant to find that the beeline for the nearest bit of shade was the Café du Musée, part of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Lunch consisted of cold white wine, vichyssoise, baked salmon (with a kind of tasty foamy sauce, dauphinoise potatoes, summer veg) and a pretty good view of the Ottawa River and Parliament Hill.

Best Pizza in New York

On a food tour of Greenwich Village, one of our first stops was the "best pizza" in New York. It's all to do with the water, apparently. Oh, and that they cook pizza fresh. Two pizzas max on the counter top. Oh, and it's also where Spiderman is fired from in the second film.

Robin's Egg

Blue Robin's Egg broken,
What happened?
Nature is cruel but beautiful.

The Modern Era

A typical lazy hazy day in Fujian province in the south of China. Jump on the tourist boat!

High Dynamic Range - St Mary's Church

Did I blog this before? Or did I just think of blogging it, then decide not to? Anyway, I distinctly remember wanting to say - corpuscular rays.

On a slightly cloudy day, we climbed 199 steps to St. Mary's Church and graveyard to completely miss the last entry for Whitby Abbey. At least the HDR experiment worked out in the end!

Staircase of Wonders - Bugs

This is not that creepy. Not as creepy as say, a drawer full of stuffed birds.

Staircase of Wonders - Tin Soldiers

Taken at ROM - The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto in the Staircase of Wonders connecting the different levels.

Whale Watching in Tadoussac

In a series of four pictures - after a rather bumpy Zodiac ride out to sea where we glimpsed some whales (but too wet/bumpy to even contemplate taking camera out), we stopped by the Sanguenay Fjord to enjoy the warmer air and still waters. After about ten minutes, we got a glimpse of this pair of mother and calf feeding.

1 - The first sign of the location of a whale is usually a fin or a more likely a whoosh of air from its blowhole.

2 - As the whale surfaces to get a better angle on muching down on some food, it exposes a bit of ventral fin to help expand its jaws.

3 - Just as its turning over, we notice a little fin (the calf) coming up alongside.

4 - Loads of different species of whale come up to Tadoussac along the St. Lawrence River to feed on krill, capelin and plankton every summer. Quite spectacular to see some of the world's largest mammal a few arms lengths away.

New York Graffiti

Walking back from taking pictures of Manhattan and Brooklyn at sundown...

Rotting Metal

It looks like this photo has been edited with that photoshop function "make into oil painting" or something to that effect. Actually the blotchiness is because it was taken with a 2.0mp cameraphone. This entire street in Penang had really interesting faded painted walls and a sense that there are only remnants of people remaining. Wish I had a better camera back then, Penang is definitely a photogenic city.

Bananas in Hanoi

Dentists in Hotan, Xinjiang

Walking around various towns in Xinjiang, there seemed to be quite a high number of dentists in towns. With see through doors, young men and women in white lab coats and various dental equipment in the room, it definitely was not a "shop front" for some other sinister purpose. Conclusion is, rest assured that if you have a toothache in urban Xinjiang, there will be plenty of dental facilities at hand.

Yum yum chilli!

One of those kind of shots














Kashgar Sunday Market

Will you hold my hand?

Only Slightly Amusing

So, of course it was slightly amusing to return from travels in Xinjiang in the far West of China to see this clip of a video by The Killers, where it looked like they filmed exactly where these ancient city ruins lay.

Top- The Killers "Human", filmed in some desert.
Bottom- Gaochang Ruins, 1 BC oasis city in the Taklamakan desert on the Silk Road.

A story from Kashgar Old Town

Taken in Old Town in Kashgar, we stopped as I noticed fire reflecting off the panels in a dark alleyway and peered in. Looking up, he grinned and gestured for us to enter. At first glance we saw a young man cooking something over a fire. At second glance, we saw a pile of white goat skulls in one corner and a pile of charred goat skulls in another.

Goat Head Soup is sold throughout Xinjiang, but why char them over a fire first?

Scarborough Seagulls will SOY

No more posts until next week.

Somewhere...

someone is having a holiday.

Wenshu Temple, Chengdu, China
January 2008