Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Pain and Thoughts

What would it be like if you cannot use or move your right hand...

Never thought about this before, until early last week, I was (un)fortunate enough to "gain" this experience...

What happened was - I accidentally poured half a bowl of burningly-hot, thick corn soup onto my right hand.

If you have burns before, then you'll know how it feels - yes, IT HURTS - like HELL!!!

I can be a clumsy person sometimes, but this was definitely the most tragic incident caused by my carelessness.

Fortunately, the mistake was tragic but not fatal.

Mike immediately ran out to buy me burn medicine and bandage, while I ran my seriously-burned hand with cold tap water.

It hurt so much that day that I had to numb my hand in a bowl of cold water for most of the afternoon. =(

My burn turned out to be a second degree burn. Big, puffy blisters over the burn area and extreme redness of the skin followed the next whole week... (It's still not healed yet.)

Mike was so worried and urged me to see doctor several times. But my "doctor-phobia" (as Mike called it) made me reject such idea, despite my inability to move my hand nor the bad pain from the blisters.

I was almost like a "disabled" person in the following week: couldn't really use/move my hand at all, and had to have my right hand medicated and bandaged the whole time.

Poor Mike - he took care of me like a baby.

I felt so guilty watching him cook me meals everyday, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, peeling me fruits, and even going out to buy me desserts just to keep me from being totally depressed. Yes, I was pretty depressed because I couldn't do anything except coding to keep myself distracted from the pain. >_<

I have been very emotional in the past two weeks. Before the burn happened, I was already very sadden over the Sichuan Earthquake and all of the heart-broken stories behind it. Tears ran down my cheek everyday watching sad stories one after another... And then this burn... It made me realize something else...


True, the burn was very painful and it might even scar me after it heals...

However....

My burn will heal someday, but how does the pain of the people who lost their families, their loved ones, their homes, their everything in the earthquake, pain of such great magnitude be healed, be relieved, or even just be reduced... just a little....

......

I don't know...

......

I just hope that they'll find peace and be strong to continue to live...

My heart goes out to all the victims of the earthquake and their families...

Be strong!!!!


Wednesday, May 07, 2008

"Small Planet" by Naoki Honjo

I heard about this photography gallery by a Japanese photographer called Naoki Honjo a few weeks ago. The photographs that he takes are supposed to be pretty different from mainstream photos, so I was very excited waiting for the opening of his exhibition this week at the petite art museum at Tsim Sha Tsui's Harbor City.



Surprise on the street - Lion Dance



Though before getting to the gallery, we saw some interesting scenes along the way as well.


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In the busy center of Tsim Sha Tsui, we saw this gigantic pink crowd in the middle of a road.


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Lion dance!!!! (A bright pink one!!!)



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There were two!!! I think the black one looked even cooler!!



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I was not sure what was the occasion that called for this celebratory lion dance, but the crowd were cheering and taking pictures happily regardless (including Mike, of course).



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It reminded me of the days back in high school when I was volunteering at the Oakland China town police station, where the Oakland Youth Lion Dance Team would always gather before practice.


I got to hold the lion head and pretended to "dance" a few times. I was told that I barely moved, even though I thought I was dancing very energetically at the time, hahaha....



The Gallery - "Small Planet"


I was really looking forward to this gallery because it is a very "fun" gallery.


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The photographer, Naoki Honjo, specializes shooting from helicopters or very tall buildings using a "tilt shift" lens, which allows allows maximum control over the depth-of-field of the photo, distorting its focus in such a way that the human eyes are fooled into believing that they are looking at a miniature or a model.


Though they look incredibly like models, these photos are all of real landscapes and architecture and haven't been digitally post-processed.


Here are some of Naoki Honjo's exhibition photos, ain't they "fun" to look at? =D


Swimming PoolSwimming pool, Tokyo, Japan, 2006


Horse Race

HonjoNakayama Horse race track, Chibe, Japan, 2005


StationTaxi Stand, Tokyo, Japan, 2006




Kings Cross, London 2007 by Naoki Honjo

Kings Cross, London 2007


With the special tilt-shift lens, focus can be restricted to a single, narrow band, with everything else around it rapidly blurring away, creating the miniature effect you saw from the photos.



Tilt-shift photography
Another tilt-shift photo that I really like, by mcsixth


Here are more info on tilt-shift photography, if you are interested.



The Harbor


Besides the framed, enlarged photos on display, the exhibition also featured Naoki Honjo's latest collection book "Small Planet". I was curious enough to flip through the book page by page.


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While I was busy playing the "find the focus of this photo" game on each page, Mike's attention was already attracted by the beautiful harbor outside of the museum.


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Victoria Harbor will always be the prettiest harbor to me!!


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I couldn't resist the temptation of the harbor and joined him outside.


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Looking at the blue water....



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Enjoying the light wind blowing onto your face...



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So peaceful and pleasant....


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It reminded me of the time when I was still living in the Bay Area in California, Mike and I would go walk near the bay every weekend...


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I wish that the place that we choose to settle down in the future will have such a beautiful bay nearby also.


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See how the harbor makes me so happy that I actually "glow"? hahaha....




Yummy Fruit Juice


After enjoying the gallery and the spectacular harbor view, we needed something to recharge our stomach as well.


Since we were not near Mong Kok and thus couldn't get our favorite mango cococut juice, we settled for a fresh cup of juice nearby.


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Somebody was apparently having too much fun with the camera when I was busy trying to get attention from the fruit stall owner.


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"Hey You!!!!"

And yea - the fresh strawberry juice was yummy!!!! =D



Saturday, May 03, 2008

Acrobatic Drama "Journey to the West"

We went to see an acrobatic drama/dance performance "Journey to the West" by Guangzhou Acrobatic Troupe of China (中國廣州雜技團). The drama was adapted and based on the Chinese classic novel 西遊記.




I haven't seen any large scale live acrobatic performance before. So it was a real treat for me!! (Especially after the depressing experience and emotion from yesterday... sigh.....)


Anyways, back to the drama. I loved all the acrobatic stuns and the group dance performance. The girl dancers were all hot and pretty, hahaha....






My favorite scenes were the:



the "Monkey's Swaying Pole Climbing and Fighting" from Act I, where the acrobatic artists portraying monkeys performed risky acrobatics on bungee cords swaying thin poles.


the "Hoop Diving on the Trampoline" from Act IV, where 15+ acrobatic artistics jumped, dived and threw themselves through various small golden hoops of varying heights in amazingly crisp and quick moves,


and the eye-opening "Hand-to-Hand Stand" from Act III, where a male and female artist danced and posed in a series of impressive-looking, hard-to-balance and massive strength-required moves. I could never imagine two separate human bodies can combine and bend to form straight horizontal lines like that.



This performance had won a bunch of international awards and is on a world tour.



This promotional video gives you some highlights of the performance:




I wish my parents are here... I think they will be excited to see this with me!! =)



p.s. Sorry about the "nano" size of the photos. No camera is allowed in the theatre, so I can only "borrow" the pictures from the HK government website. ;)



Friday, May 02, 2008

I cried today....

I cried today....






During the Olympic torch relay today, I witnessed a young guy standing next to me, silently holding up a half-A4 sized human rights poster.



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When the crowd discovered him and his poster, they attacked him immediately, poking at and trying to destroy his poster with their red flags or umbrellas.



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During that whole time, the innocent guy was just repeating "Freedom of Speech" in Chinese and English.




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He then got taken away by the police, got interrogated and was finally forced to leave the site after the police recorded his ID and other personal information.


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In the midst of that kind of blind patriotism and violence, I couldn't stop my tears.




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I haven't cried like that for years... since my grandma passed away.



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I am not ashamed of admitting that I cried in the street out in the public (got eyed on by many passers-by), but I am ashamed of my own country, of the city that I have always loved so much...


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Where did the freedom of speech in HK go....?