Friday, February 27, 2009

Beijing Bikes

Look what I made! (Ok, you probably saw it over at LJ, but I thought I would bring it over here)

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Distracted

Must admit though, I did get a little distracted from my subject of bicycles... just once or twice... (hell, I was somewhere I hadn't been before and there was all this other stuff going on)... so... some more of my non-peddled shots from today...

One of the guys had mops as his subject. We kept trying to name all the mops after famous rock musicians. This trio of mops were 'The Pointer Sisters'

I felt sorry for the broom, however and ended up with 'Cinderella & her three ugly sisters'

There were lots of hole in the wall shops selling chuan'r (street food), this one looked particularly inviting.

The little fella was after what looked like some marshmallows that were toasting. Can't say I blame him!

It's almost off my subject... but look closely!

There is even a bicycle behind me, tricky little tricksters! (And you can see what I mean here by needing to tweak my framing a little)

A mosey around the hutongs

Managed to book myself in for those photgraphy lessons and today was the first. We went on a fieldtrip beginning at the Lama Temple (we didn't go in), into Confucious' Temple and then walking through some of the hutongs in the Dongcheng district. Our teacher, Lukas Birk, asked us to chose a subject so as to narrow our focus (so we wouldn't just take happy snaps). I chose 'Bicycles' as my theme, thinking about my Nine Million Bicycles project and hoping to advance that along a little bit.

I wasn't disappointed...









These are some of the better shots I took (more over at my Flickr), mostly I am happy with them, I could tweak my framing a little more, though Lukas said I had a natural eye for framing (shucks)...

Anyway, yes. Hutongs are an awesome place when you really look through them. At first they appear very grey and stark (especially in winter), but when you explore the nooks and crannies and begin to actually notice what is going on, it's a whole other world with lots of colour, movement and life...

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

On a day like this, it's all about her...

This morning when we woke up, we were confronted with this:

"Look, P!" said Mummy "Snow!"
P looked outside at the snow falling past the window, "Snow! Wow!" then she looked down at the playground and said "What happened???!!!" (with all the wide-eyed wonder that you can imagine seeing settled snow for the very first time would muster).

And that was how we started our day. Was an awesome way to start it, with P's first conscious realisation that snow makes everything white. So naturally, we jumped on Dad, got him out of bed, showered, dressed and took off downstairs for a bit of a play..



Her very first touch of snow. Wow, huh?


First snow-fight... at Mummy!


Packing one for Daddy. Is my kid gorgeous, or what?


A kiss for Daddy before he goes to work.



Seriously, what an awesome way to start the day. I love my family :)

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens...

So excited, we got snow today (those who read my LJ will already know this). It's expected that we will have snow for the next couple of days! Woot! I love it, the snow is beginning to settle now, the place has that eerie quietness about it and the snowflakes are way cool (so to speak...)

So here's some pics...


I couldn't resist...


If you look closely enough, you can kind of see how beautifully formed the snowflakes are. I haven't worked the macro out on my new camera, unfortunately, but there is one star-shaped flake in the middle and to the rightish that's cute...


This is lookibg down from our balcony, onto the play area park downstairs. See? It's snowing!

I never thought in my life that I would see snow in Beijing. So yeah, I'm pretty chuffed actually. I'm off on an excursion to a Hutong village tomorrow, about 90kms away. Hopefully it will still be snowing, which could be loads of fun!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Excursion to Hou-Hai

Ok, so it was Tai-Tai Tuesday today and a heap of us went for lunch at Hou-Hai. I was hoping to take some photos of interesting stuff people do on ice, but the ice is melting now (17 degrees today!), so they have stopped people from going out there.

So we went for a bit of a wander...



This crazy dude had a subwoofah on the back of his bike, playing very loud (and extremely obnoxious) chinese music. Doof-doof, it aint.



More tea, viccar?



There yer go! Strawberries onna stick onna bicycle! Tah-dah! The guy wasn't real happy that we didn't buy anything. I did fully intend to go back after lunch, but a full tummy and pregnancy vagueness distracted me somewhat... next time, Gadget!

And there you have it, an outing at Hou-Hai with some Tai-Tai's. Lovely, eh?

Monday, February 9, 2009

Again with the boom-boom!

So, last night while the soon-to-be-opened Mandarin Oriental Hotel (right next door to the CCTV building) burned, we enjoyed (very much) some fireworks!



Just wanted to show you this picture so you can see that we are above the fireworks, looking down onto the road below.

Pers didn't really sleep through these ones. 500,000RMB worth of crackers is enough to keep a little girl awake...




But hey, it was worth it!

Friday, February 6, 2009

Woot!

11 degrees! Double digits! You bewty!

Bummer...

...and that was probably the last image you will see on this blog of a photo taken with that camera. It has been left in the boot of a taxi in Jakarta. Not completely The Bloke's fault and yes it is replaceable, the photos on the memory card - not so replaceable (and have some very special pics of Pers on it too...). Thankfully I have most of the photos on our pc, so will get to and back those up pronto!

The Bloke's feeling pretty blue about it, so while I am sad, I'm won't be staying annoyed for very long...

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Oh my god, it's 9 degrees, maybe we'll break single digits today! This is so exciting, I could pee (3rd trimester, bladder, excitement, you do the math).

And here's a photo of Mr C looking like he might eat some strawberries onna stick, but instead, gives them (all bar one, which I got) to his daughter, who hoovers the lot. This was taken at one of the temple fairs that are so popular this time of year. Fruit onna stick dipped in toffee's pretty popular too! I must try to get a photo of fruit onna stick onna bike...