Luica’s Blog

After living in Hong Kong for 25 years and having never seen snow before the age of 21, I am always excited to see snow. Even thought it would have been nice to have had a white Christmas, I still had fun sliding down Alan and Mary’s driveway with only an inch of snow two days later.

It was a beautiful snow scene where I live, with the red brick walls contrasting the white flakes (sorry - it is not the beginning of Snow White!) My mum would be so pleased to see it snowing, althought I am not too sure if she could cope with the cold.

A present from my office secret Santa - a tin of Jelly Belly beans.

I was messing around with my 350D last night and took some shots of my favourite sweets. Toasted Marshmallow and Buttered Popcorn are the best flavour and Blueberry Muffin (two Blueberries and one Buttered Popcorn) is my favourite recipe. Brad likes the Juicy Pear, Dr Pepper and Cherry, and can never be bothered to follow any of the recipes.

Well done to Brad, who made a perfect Christmas dinner (with a little bit of help from our head chef Mary) in our tiny little kitchen.

The chicken (none of us were particularly keen on turkey) was tender and juicy; the stuffing was tasty; the roasted vegetables were sweet and excellently done, and of course the gravy (my little contribution to the dinner) was just right!

The organic Christmas pudding wasn’t exactly my favourite dessert but Mary loved it so much that she said she would eat the rest (which is half!) for breakfast tomorrow morning. I heard that it is nice when fried in butter, but I don’t think I will find out for real some how.

Mary and Alan are staying with us in London this year, after having spent Christmas in Newmarket for the past 35 years.

They arrived on Christmas Eve and we had a nice but simple dinner - pasta with cabbage, pine nuts and bacon, and of course plenty of drinks (Port and Lemonade for Mary and me, and various Ale for Brad and Alan).

We enjoyed Catherine Tate’s Christmas Special. Brad and I exchanged our first present at mid-night. I am already reading the photography book today and Brad is yet to try his Hugo Boss stainless stell shoe horn.

We didn’t get up until 10am on Christmas Day and we started opening our presents before noon. Brad got me a Crumpler photo bag - Bunny Man 002. The leather gloves I got him was a perfect fit - size 10 hands are huge!

Mary and Brad are busy cooking Christmas lunch now and I should better give them a hand soon.

Being a Lomo LC-A enthusiasts and a proud owner of this classic Russian-made camera for over four years, I am always interested in checking out the latest activity available to the lomography community.

We had a good day at the Coloursplash Green Space Day and thoroughly enjoyed meeting the other ‘lomographers’. I was excited to see the new competition marking the end of production of the LC-A and was looking forward to submitting some of my favourite shots under the various themes, including cross-process and vignette.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed by some of the details. I was asked to sign an agreement to give up the copyright of my photos. I am more than happy to share my photos with others and I wasn’t too bothered about the prize of the competition (the winner gets an LC-A camera). However, as I said to the girl at the Photograhpers’ Gallery, I am not ready to sign-away the rights to my pictures.

It is a bit demanding to ask anyone to give up their rights of the photos, which were funded by themselves in terms of equipment and developing the films in the first place.

I was so excited to receive a postcard from Taiwan today - thanks Agnes!

It is always exciting to recevie things from the post, even though emails and MSN are more convenient and preferred these days. I enjoy sending postcards to my mum and my friends when I go travalling. I think they are by far the best souvenirs.

For those who don’t send postcards, you have no idea how much effort one has to put in when hunting for a post office and stampes, especially if you are only taking a long weekend break, which gives you a few hours on Saturday to sort the stampes out.

Postcards also carry an intimate emotion, which can’t be bought with money and much more meaningful than one of those tacky plastic Eiffel Towers or Big Bens.

Some people even share their secrets anonymously by mailing a home-made postcard to PostSecret

The first Lomo event I’ve ever been to - The Greenspace Lomography Project in London.

We weren’t sure what it would be like when we saw the invitation, but decided that we should give it a go. It turned out to be a fun day. To my surprise, Brad also borrowed a coloursplash camera and participated in this group execrise.

We picked up the borrowed cameras at the Big Chill Bar in Brick Lane and signed-off our rights to the photos we were going to take. Our journey began there at mid-day and we followed the route set by the organisers: Amira from the lomgraphic society and two friendly helpers, Linda and Karen from their PR company.

Colombia flower market was our second stop after Brick Lane. Docklands was also one the list - we spent some time in Canary Wharf, Mudchute Zoo and Greenwhich before we headed back to the South Bank. We were then asked to take photos of one of the bridges: Waterloo Bridge, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Southwark Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge and the Millenium Bridge.

We stopped by Piccadilly Circus to complete the last task before heading back to the Big Chill Bar for free Heineken at around 7pm. It was quite a long day, but definitely good fun. I enjoyed meeting other lomo fans (or lomographers).

It was good to see Simon (Black Carrot) again after our brief meeting the day before; we were out taking photos of St.Paul’s Catherdal on Saturday when we were stopped by Simon as he spotted my LC-A camera.

Thank god the weather was fine today as we had our first BQ Market, which had been planned for months. Most stall owners met up with the organisers, Mark and Maria, at 9:30am to pick their favoured spot. My pitch was at the corner under the big tree which managed to block the sunlight from 10am to 3pm - the entire duration of the market day.

My 6′x6′ pitch looked spacious as I only had a small table for my A3 portfolio and a white sheet for a few more framed photos. My neighbouring stall owner was Steve - he had a number of interesting prints from his university project that showed repeated images/symbols to create a sense of balance and harmony.

Other people were selling a mix of things including cute little hand-made greeting cards, 50s crockery, some modern crockery, printings, etc. It was a delightful day to spend with my neighbours. I met more people in a few hours than my entire three years living in Bow Quarter.

I also received my first ever photo order on the day - once again, my Shanghai Traffic was picked. A framed 8″x12″ print for £45 - I think it’s a reasonable price!

The weather was too nice to stay indoors this weekend. We drove out of London for some fresh air and stayed away from the scary public transport. We both agreed that it was a wise choice. Brad watched a programme on telly praising the interesting beach at Dungeness and I wouldn’t give up any opportunities to go outside and be in the sun.

Dungeness is on the south coast of Kent and it was only a couple of hours by car. To be honest, I had never heard of Dungeness, but was surprised by the sparkling, silver beach. It was low-tibe when we arrived and the sea was actually about a kilometer away from the beach.

In between the sea and the shingle beach, there was a long walk of soft sand covered by water only up to my ankles. Regardless of the funny texture, it was cool to walk on the water in an hot, sunny afternoon.

Surprisingly, the beach wasn’t as busy as it should be and we had a quiet afternoon in the small town. It wouldn’t be complete going to the sea-side without having some fish & chips and we called it a day after spending half a day at the beach.

On our return from Barcelona, we visited Hatfield House. It was a totally random choice without much planning or thinking in advance, but we all enjoyed it. Mum liked walking in the woods as it was something you don’t or can’t normally do when you live in a city like Hong Kong. Brad had a good time taking photos of the trees, flowers, old buildings, etc. And I was happy to spend some quality time chatting with my mum in a nice, relaxing environment.

We took my mum to the Hatfield Galleria afterwards and she ended up buying loads of bizarre things, including cutlery from T.K.Maxx and quite a nice jacket for my brother from the Pringle outlet store.

We finished the day with Mum’s delicious fried rice with seafood and Chorizo (which she bought from Mercat de la Boqueria).