burabura

Hanami in Beijing

Gloria — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Sorry about the lack of photos, they’re all in my film cameras and I’m storing enough to send them to my friend in Taiwan for developing and scanning because there isn’t a decent one over here and it’s ridiculously expensive as far as China goes.

Don’t have the chance to see it in Japan so I had to settle for the ones in Beijing. Yuyuantan (玉渊潭) Park is located between subway stations Gongzhufen (公主坟) and Muxidi (木樨地). It’s quite a walk from the subway so if you’re unable to ask for directions, it’d be better that you take a cab. It might be unfair for me to say that the cherry blossoms in Beijing are unimpressive given that I haven’t seen them anywhere else. Maybe it’s because the grounds had more earth than grass with the exception of random spots like in the photo above.

Midi Music Festival and Strawberry Festival this weekend! I’m going for Midi (flea market, yay!) and probably White Rabbit, post-party. It’s a shame that I’ve never been to Zoukout or The White Rabbit in Singapore; gonna make the effort to if I go home…

BestWrites

Gloria — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:52:20 +0000

BestWrites is a project started by my friend, Kegan, who aims to help children from middle-low income families write better. Find out how you can help!

AWAY

Gloria — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:49:26 +0000

burabura AWAY is based on Kegan’s and my experiences learning and teaching other languages abroad.

ZAKKA-ZAKKA

Gloria — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:31:12 +0000

ZAKKA-ZAKKA is a little shoppe selling handmade crafts and a blog covering craft book reviews and other ricracs.

The West Lake

Gloria — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:15:49 +0000

上有天堂，下有苏杭。 There’s heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth.

You’d think it’d be easy to row the boat but I tried and failed miserably. It is much harder to steer than it is to actually move the boat. That man is strong and barely flinched as you can see, casually smoking with the other hand.

Hangzhou was the first place I visited when I arrived in China. The West Lake was amazing during the day and even more magnificent at night with the free musical fountain performance. It surprised me that they actually installed all those machines in the West Lake. What’s more epic is Impression West Lake by Zhang Yimou, the guy who also directed the opening and closing ceremonies for the China Olympics in ‘08. The sheer scale of the production is breathtaking with what must have been hundreds of dedicated performers, dancing on the illuminated waters in winter. I had to buy a cheap blanket from the supermarket before the show to keep myself warm, imagine getting wet!

A Week of Sunrises, Sunsets and lots of 白酒

Gloria — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:14:13 +0000

Visited 张家口 (Zhangjiakou) last month on a photography excursion with the China Photographers Association. Temperatures were below zero and we woke up for sunrises every day and took photos of sunsets every evening. There will be a Seasons of Zhangjiaokou exhibition held and I hope some of my works will be showcased. Here’s a sneak preview.

A real shepherd

One of his sheeps

Moo

Special thanks to Josh for being a great companion on the trip. He also taught me how to take silhouettes. Photos taken with a Canon Mark II (I think).

Spring Festival

Gloria — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:13:11 +0000

庙会

Is it raining outside? Afraid not. It’s just endless fireworks day and night since the eve and it’s still going on. We went to Chaoyang Park Temple Fair (庙会) to rub off some of the festive atmosphere. Entrance was 15rmb and I don’t quite understand why this counts as a Spring Festival fair as international food stalls greet you. Lots of game stalls, terribly stingy with the prizes. We had a good time on the bumper cars though, I love bumper cars.

Touch my Toes

Gloria — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:55:38 +0000

2010-01-08 0941: Orange

This is my kitchen. My new IKEA chopping block and knife. That’s me, standing on a wobbly stool that the tenant left behind. The door of my front-load washing machine left ajar with fresh dirty laundry in the queue. This could have been a better picture if I had paid more attention to the horizontal lines. Photoshop won’t fix it now, my toes would be cropped. I could have taken another shot if the orange hadn’t been eaten. But I like this photo because it tells the story of a moment in my life right now.

New year’s day came and went like a regular night’s out with some friends and a couple of drinks and work the next day. Browsing through my friends’ blogs, Twitter and Facebook with my new paid VPN subscription, reminded me of the good ol’ New Year’s resolution.

Ever since my spine operation (about 8 years ago?), I’ve lost my flexibility. I wanna touch my toes again.
Join a yoga/pilates class.

I’ve quit my first job in Beijing. If overworked and underpaid aren’t reasons enough to leave, send me your resume. Awaiting results from my second interview at a reputable English school, thanks to my CELTA tutor for introducing. Fingers crossed that I get the position as an ESL teacher; working 25 hours per week would give me plenty of time to explore this city and take more pictures. I want to improve my photography. I also wanna learn Japanese, maybe Spanish, or learn to play the guitar.

11:50am
Beautiful day for a photo-walk. Gonna go grab some 1RMB meat buns off the hutong I discovered near my estate yesterday.

Pre-Christmas in Fukuoka

Gloria — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:08:16 +0000

Stuck in Qingdao for two days due to technical problems with the plane to Fukuoka. The airline put us up at the four-star Queens Hotel for a night then took us for a 15 minutes spin in the air early next morning at 730am before returning to Qingdao airport. Reason: plane not fixed.

Can’t be bothered writing the full story because I accidentally deleted my blog’s database last night and I tried to recover it via Google cache. This was one of the pages that I couldn’t recover completely.

Long story short, I got to know Zhao-san, Chinese studying in Fukuoka who brought me for some wicked nomihoudai with free cosplay costumes for rent. Stayed at Kaine Guesthouse, great location and very friendly staff. We even had a nabe Christmas dinner together, along with a mini gift exchange session. I got a cute ceramic, bouncy tiger from an Okinawan guy. Some lady got my 2010 schedule book; boring, I know but it serves the purpose.

All-you-can-drink KTV

Juxtapose

Photo by Yohei-san

X: Goodbye, Europe

Gloria — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:01:16 +0000

View from my apartment

Realised I left out a lot of information about my Europe trip after going through the digital footprints on my laptop. Particularly fish and chips from North Sea Fish near Passfield Hall, with vinegar instead of mayonnaise. My last couple of days in Europe were spent getting wasted every night with Hert and Kyle, two American soldiers I met in Paris who really changed my perspective on wars. I can never watch another war flick or read news about wars the same way again.

The previous posts are a year late and I’m currently in Beijing embarking on the next chapter of my life. Snow cheers me up in these negative temperatures.