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Wednesday, April 28 All in all I went through 5.5 rolls of film. Two and a half with the Horizont, a couple on my brand new Cosina CX-2, and a Holga 120 roll that I quickly exposed whilst on a brisk one hour walk through the streets of Amsterdam in search of cheesy (affordable)picture postcards. It helps that we were blessed with absolutely gorgeous weather and that Amsterdam is most of the time a rather photogenic city. I now face the head-scratching dilemma of whether to just go with my regular lab or risk it a little by venturing into the unknown and going with the online folks at Peak Imaging, whom I've heard plenty of good things about. I suppose as always, I'll succumb to the daylight robbery, i.e. convenience, of Metro as I'll be spending the better party of today in the West End anyway. Highlight of the trip came in the form of meeting in person my net friend Lok Man, who is probably best known for his role as the hard working web master behind wongkarwai.net. Even though I'm not really a fan of meeting up with online people in real life, it's always a nice surprise when the encounter is with someone whom you find yourself clicking immediately with, and where there is always an ample supply of fresh conversation topics. Naturally we spent an unhealthy portion of the evening discussing films, but he also gave me the opportunity to curiously poke around his life as a HK Chinese growing up in a non-Chinese/English speaking environment, something that fascinates me more and more, although I suppose Holland isn't quite what I'm describing as everyone speaks near-perfect English. Still, there's something so intriguing to me about growing up in a place where the language/culture is so far removed from that of your own, whilst not necessarily embodying something more 'mainstream' like English or American. Biggest disappointment on this trip was being too broke to catch a train to Leiden in order to catch up with a dear old HK classmate whom I hadn't seen since 1992, one whom I'd located by a pure stroke of luck on the internet only a few weeks earlier. To make matters worse, my London SIM card ran out of credit in Amsterdam faster than the speed of light, so we didn't even manage to scout out other options as I stood stranded in Amsterdam Central station trying to figure out what I could do. So close yet so far. Hopefully we'll have better luck if I manage to find a cheap ticket to play with tstgu at a festival in August. Otherwise we're going to have to wait until the tour in October. Poop. p.s. Some photos from Norway on my LomoHome.
Tuesday, April 20 Sorry things have been rather silent around these parts. I guess it's been the predictable hectic combination of work, gigs, lethargy and... MSN solitaire showdown! Ha. Anyhow, this is just a tiny little update to let all of you faithfuls know that I'll be heading off for Amsterdam in a few minutes, but instead of the usual mundane journey involving the tube and heathrow airport, my friend Jamey and I will instead be travelling in style. Boy it's going to be quite an adventure, in fact I'm looking forward more to the journey itself! I get back on sunday, hopefully with plenty of photos and embarassing band stories to keep this site interesting for a change. Don't miss me too much.
Friday, April 2 It's rather strange to think that it was exactly a year ago that HK lost a great talent to suicide, a talent that I failed to appreciate until my discovery of Wong Kar-Wai films 5 years too late (for a glimse of what I mean, check out Happy Together, Days of Being Wild and Rouge). At that same moment in time, SARS still had a reign of terror on the lives of most people in Asia. And of course it had only been a few weeks earlier when people of the world shared a mixture of feelings and opinions on the so-called 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'. These days, time flies by like the blink of an eye, whereas when I was a great deal younger, I recall it always being such a test of patience waiting for the next birthday, christmas, summer holiday, etc to roll around. With two months to go, my life will undoubtedly be transported back to Hong Kong before I am truly ready. In all honesty I have nothing specific in mind in terms of what I plan on doing once I get back there, apart from the firm belief that my inevitable means of employment should never take precedence over my dreams and desires - unless of course the two ultimately fuse together and I can generate a source of income through doing the things I love. At times, I also find the prospect of finally returning to my hometown a little daunting. So far my moves across the globe have all consisted of uprooting my life and replanting it somewhere new, on fresh fertile soil. This time though, I'll be completing a full circle. Back to an incredibly familiar and comforting place, yet defining my life in a whole new way, without my parents and without a home to fall back on. The first task would naturally be to find a roof over my head. Thankfully temporary accomodation will come in the form of Ben's soon to be moved into North Point apartment as well as Josh's luxury apartment in Tin Hau. But before overstaying my welcome for too long, I hope to brave the triads and pimps of Yau Ma Tei to find a cheap and clean three bedroom apartment with 'the legendary Joe'. Three because it is a lucky number, because we are greedy bastards spoiled by the spacious living of the US, and more importantly because we want to have an extra room available for friends and relatives to crash in. If anyone has any recommendations, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Thursday, April 1 We had a fabulous time in Norway the weekend, one with plenty of drama. Ann has summed it up a whole lot better than I can so you should just head over to the official site for a dirty badass rocker's account of the trip. Nothing planned until the european tour around the end of May, although I'll be heading over to the Netherlands in a couple of weeks to appear at a festival with tstgu. It'll be good to see that lot again as well as being able to test out my sweet looking Horizont on the canals and sinking architecture of Amsterdam. I developed my first roll today and here are the results. Not quite as amazing as what I've seen other people do with the camera, and I've kind of stuck to rather boring subject matters - basically the mundance locations and occurrences of my day to day existence, but it's a good start and things should pick up once I get comfortable with not having built-in automatic exposure. In other photographic news, the jacket that I won for my february entry of the Lomo BMW comp arrived today. Unforunately they had ran out of small sizes so I received an M instead. A bit too big. Shame really as I actually don't mind the jacket design. I suppose I'll can either bless someone else with it or wait until I'm a little chubbier a decade or two from now. The march deadline is today so get your entries in by midnight Vienna local time! |