JCCAC

Visited the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre with some friends last night.

The building was originally the Shek Kip Mei Factory Estate, built in the 1970s as a low cost rental space for light industry. Today, it's home to over 150 local artists and creative groups.

http://www.jccac.org.hk/

We arrived a bit late so most of the studios were closed, but it was still interesting to walk around the building and look at the various art forms.

Nessun Dorma

It's been 2 years, listening to Paul Potts sing this still gets me every time. Seriously, a cup of raw onion juice poured directly into my eyes still wouldn't make them water up as much as this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA

FYI, the translation of the lyrics can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessun_Dorma

Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate

Street photography is a tricky thing. You need to take something that you see everyday and somehow make it look interesting.

Last week, I heard a news report on Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate (牛頭角下邨), one of the last remaining old style Public Rental Housing estates left in Hong Kong. It's scheduled to be torn down in May so many people have been flocking there to snap photos of the place before it's gone forever.

Although I've been there before, I've never taken any photos of the place, so I took the opportunity to brush up on my Street photography skills.

Public Rental Housing estates are pretty much the same so I tried to focus on the items that make Lower NTK Estate stand out. One of these features are the stalls that sell street food

Security was beefed up because the residents were complaining about too many photographers walking around inside the buildings (there were actually police officers patrolling the hallways). I finally found an unguarded entrance and made my way inside (without intruding on anyone's privacy, of course).

Some sentimentalists have tried to keep the buildings as historical landmarks, but I'd have to disagree. The structures are so dilapidated that the area is just 1 step away from becoming a slum. Let the estate live on in our memories, but they've served their purpose and should be torn down for something better.

I was actually relieved when I went back outside. The dank halls were too prison-like for my comfort.

On a lighter note, it was nice to see people making memories in their own different ways

Earth Hour

Some random pics from Saturday night. My friend and I were planning to take advantage of the 60 minutes of lights out during Earth Hour but it turns out that HK (and pretty much every other city that joined) is still too bright even with most of the buildings gone black.



My biggest disappointment was Lan Kwai Fong. If any where, I'd expect LKF to embrace the spirit of Earth Hour. But sadly, not the case. Really, what's the point of individual restaurants turning off their interior lights when all the signs outside are blaringly active?


The thick fog and rain didn't help much either. So while hiding from the rain, I took some snaps of the HSBC HQ and played with some camera movement techniques

Didn't want to leave empty handed so I snapped some shots after the lights came back on:

The April Fool

Chip Tsao (陶傑) has been making the headlines lately. His controversial article in the March 27 edition of HK Magazine - entitled "The War At Home" - has been received with widespread accusations of rascism, culminating in the Philippine government declaring him as an "undesirable alien" and barring him entry into the country (can't help but wonder if this is some twisted form of April Fool's Day prank...)

I've never been a fan of Tsao. He's pompous and so very much the "Old Oil Stick" in the way he speaks SOOOOOOO slowly and never gets straight to the point. He's always thrived on controversy but in recent years he's been relying on this trick more heavily, possibly because he has nothing interesting left to say. A few weeks back, he argued against the government's Drunk Driving policies because he claimed that they would affect the business of bars & clubs. He compared the government's new random breath test law to chemotherapy; it kills both good and bad cells. OK Mr. Tsao, if that's the metaphor that you're going for, let me counter by saying that while taking chemo may kill good cells, not taking ANY medicine at all will result in death from cancer. So unless you can invent a new wonder drug that only kills cancer cells, I suggest you keep quiet. And not to be harsh, but I sincerely doubt that you'd have the same opinion if someone you knew was affected by an intoxicated driver.

But...in all fairness, his article reads as a Satire rather than a commentary (judge for yourself, I've included the article in its entirety below). Should he have shown better judgement in writing it? Probably. But are people overreacting to the sarcasm? Definitely. And it's funny how quickly HK Magazine has distanced itself from the article. If this essay is so offensive, why did the editors approve it for publication in the first place?

Chip Tsao...he wanted to be a smart-ass but came off as just being an ass.

***************************

The War At Home, by Chip Tsao

The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen onboard. We can live with that-—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That's no big problem-—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke.

But hold on-—even the Filipinos? Manila has just claimed sovereignty over the scattered rocks in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands, complete with a blatant threat from its congress to send gunboats to the South China Sea to defend the islands from China if necessary. This is beyond reproach. The reason: There are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working as HK$3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don't flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.

As a patriotic Chinese man, the news has made my blood boil. I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell everyone of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.

Grimly, I told her that if war breaks out between the Philippines and China, I would have to end her employment and send her straight home, because I would not risk the crime of treason for sponsoring an enemy of the state by paying her to wash my toilet and clean my windows 16 hours a day. With that money, she would pay taxes to her Government, and they would fund a navy to invade our motherland and deeply hurt my feelings.

Oh yes. The Government of the Philippines would certainly be wrong if they think we Chinese are prepared to swallow their insult and sit back and lose a Falkland Islands War in the Far East. They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher. Some of my friends told me they have already declared a state of emergency at home. Their maids have been made to shout 'China, Madam/Sir' loudly whenever they hear the word "Spratly". They say the indoctrination is working as wonderfully as when we used to shout, "Long live Chairman Mao!" at the sight of a portrait of our Great Leader during the Cultural Revolution. I’m not sure if that's going a bit too far, at least for the time being.

My D700's first living model

Ironically, ever since getting the D700 I've been too tied up with work to do any meaningful shooting. But the other day, I saw this little critter clinging outside my bedroom window. The glass had an interesting pattern from being wet with rain, and macro lens I used made the background become an interesting blur of mixed colors: