Picture in the paper!

Also on October 1, 2007, South China Morning Post, the biggest English-language daily newspaper in this part of the world, published my picture. I didn't even see the picture until a few days after. So I got it from the net. This is a screenshot (you know, that other thing you can do with pictures instead of 'adding to shopping cart') of what they show in their online archives.

Okay, so it's a rear side profile, that captures the pattern of my shirt a lot better than the features of my face. It's still me, it's got my name in the caption, and it was a total surprise, so I'm not complaining :D ... and here it is for all to see (I think I already mentioned my being shameless in a previous post.)

SCMP was doing a story on the activities of the NGO where I volunteer to teach English. I happened to be there the day they came to take pictures. At the time I had no idea who they were. Potential sponsors are often given tours of the facilities, and I assumed this was the same.

They later ran an apology for the caption. The women in the picture (from Nepal) are not 'refugees'. There are other refugees who also visit the NGO, but the people in the picture are HK residents, not carrying refugee status. The refugees are mostly from Bangladesh and various African countries, and have to go through a process through the UN to decide whether they stay in Hong Kong or get transfered to other countries. (I see the caption has also been revised in the online picture.)

October 1 fireworks

China's national day was celebrated with a fireworks display over Victoria Harbour. I saw it from Wan Chai. Took my camera and tripod and tried to get a good spot to set up. But that was futile. The place was packed. So all I managed were some single-handed over-the-head shots, which got boring after a while, so I stopped.

The fireworks were nice. I'm sure they'll take out all the stops at the Olympics. This was just a short preview, or maybe not even that. Particularly liked the ones that burst to make an '8' in the sky (a lucky number for the Chinese). Some others were, I think, were bursting into Chinese characters. The wind was strong that day (we're talking mini-typhoon proportions), everything got carried off (erased?) towards the left of our giant sky-screen.

The pictures aren't very useful for getting a flavour of the fireworks. But they'd probably make good illustrations for someone writing a dissertation on 'The effects of gale on a fireworks display'. (If you're that person, just leave a comment on this post.)

By the way, the bright yellow dots aren't fireworks, merely street lamps. Couldn't get them out of the frame from where I was, unless I zoomed in a lot, and then the hand-held, wind-blown pictures would be way too blurry.

Cheers to China, and viva Hong Kong!