Gaki N Me If you love to talk about the world, love Asian idols, this is the place.

When I was younger, I really took after my father, wanting to photograph. Ever since he gave me a small Minolta at six years old, I had not stopped. Only that he liked to photograph girls and I like to photograph anything but girls. Very often we go through 8 or 9 rolls of film to get only one or two superb photos. For me to have so many photos that I am pleased with in one trip to Reno, Nevada was quite amazing already.  When I showed them to my father, he was quite pleased with my subject matter. But I am sure if it were him, it would have been even more artistic and better framed.

  
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My relatives come from Montreux, the city in the Swiss Riveria which borders Lake Geneva.  Lake Geneva is pretty impressive by itself at 582 sq. km,  the second largest lake in Central Europe, the largest being Lake Balaton in Hungary 592 sq. km.  But when they went to Chicago and saw Lake Michigan at 57, 750 sq. km, they laughed at their own little pond. 


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This photo I took in 1988 when I first got to the US and went to the San Francisco Gay Parade. I can't post most of the photos I took of the gay parade because many of them were really too lewd. For me, it was an eye opener.  I saw many Asian men with hard bodies in leather wear in S&M setups. The entire street was closed off with gays and gawkers and everyone in the city.  San Francisco is really very different in that sense from other cities - a city with more guys than gals, more gays than any other cities in the US.  Perhaps that's why I have become more open towards homosexuality. Anyway,  this is one of the best police photo I have taken.  My father chose this out of the pile of junk I took. Obviously he had more appreciation of the female body than the male body.

This Seal Rocks is a favorite tourist spot. On this day, I didn't see any seals on the rock but lots of birds. But the waves are definitely refreshing to watch and I spent enough time waiting for the right waves.

I spent so much time photographing that I forgot we have two coffee crunch cakes in the back of the car from Eastern Bakery, San Francisco.  The cake that we all used to have for everyone's birthday, and now we had to buy two to eat our fill. (We froze them and then drove 12 hours home and they are still intact!)
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Just a couple pix of the beach off the race track in Albany.  We used to take our dog for swims out there.
In the background is a para sailing surfer.

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In general, there was not much change to San Francisco except that the traffic is still heavy on 80.  A few photos here.

The bulk of our shopping dollars went to Japantown because our children love anime and manga.  I picked up every single magazine that has Kinki Kids, Junichi Okada in them.  My husband loves Japanese paintings and art.  So we spent a whole day shopping in the mall there.
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When we lived in the city, we saw Alcatraz Island every day we went on the Bay Bridge.  We never really thought of taking a boat ride to visit it.  But this time, having left the city, it was imperative for me to visit this island especially now that the boys are old enough. Fine, we were too late to book for on the island tour, but let's tour around it at least to give the kids an idea why one should stay away from jail.

We took the Blue and Gold one hour cruise that went under the Golden Gate Bridge and on the return leg, circled around Alcatraz. Sure enough, this island, most famous for having housed Al Capone in its cells was something to mull about. I could imagine how the prisoners wanted to leave this island and swim back to the night lights of San Francisco beckoning them with fun and games.  The waters in San Francisco is always cold and no one should really swim in it extensively unless they have a dry suit or wet suit on.  I think this prison left an impression on the boys.
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We have visited this Six Flags Marine World theme park 3 times now. But the youngest who left California at 2 year old has no recollection of it at all.  We don't usually like zoos and we only visited it once every three years because I feel sad about confined animals.  But my youngest coouldn't really envision what dolphins can do. (Yeah, they don't have the killer whale anymore. A pity yet a relief because killer whales should be, like all animals, out in open sea - not in a tank.)So for a fourth time and a last time, I hope, we visited this roller coaster laden theme park.

My youngest was really keyed to see elephants rolling  and shaking its bum and standing on two feet, and begging. Gosh...poor elephant.  I doubt if elephants do that in real life.
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It had been 5 years since we left San Francisco/Bay Area and last week, we stayed for a week at our friends apartment to enjoy the cool foggy summer weather and to pig out on Chinese food.  So how was it? It was nice to breathe the sea salt again as we took highway 80 down and as we reached Albany, the feeling that we have never left before surfaced.  The first thing we did was to visit our house. Our tenants kept it in very good shape and like us, the main tenants, a technical writer and a pastoral counselor, are into Japanese tansu and designs so it almost look like our own place. The subtenant, a stem cell biologist was moving out and we got to meet our new tenants, a New Zealand couple both in criminal law. 

As we drove around and tired the kids out from Monterey market to King's Park, Aquatic Park to Berkeley Marina, that was when it hit us that we no longer live there for we couldn't just drive to our Albany home, dump our shopping and lie around.  That's when it really hurt because we love the ocean breeze, the KKSF and the cool air.

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Shopping in San Francisco is no different from shopping at any other US cities. You get the same malls, same overseas products.  We had been careful to choose goods not made in China because of poor quality and our aversion to its treatment of its people. So when I was in Chinatown, I was virtually clapping when I saw a T-shirt that my daughter eyed and it was made in USA. There was a slightly different version of this one without the stripes cotton T-shirt made in China at half the price, but no, I refused to buy it.  So for US$16.99, we bought her this nylon one that needs handwashing and line drying.


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I stumbled on this Taiwan picture site at LiveJournal and it has beautiful photos of Taiwan 40 years ago of  Xi Meng Ding (西門町) posted by butterpixie over here.  It's amazing!!! I know Hong Kong 40 years ago but Taiwan looked almost exactly the same as Hong Kong back then!

http://community.livejournal.com/taiwanpictured/6996.html?view=59476#t59476

Here are a few photos that I took and would like to share.  This is a very old banyan tree by the river.  This is the type of tree that the founder of Buddhism sat by to meditate and the Vietnamese people love sitting by one of these trees to chit chat.

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This photo was taken in Stanley.  It remains to be my favorite photo that I have taken of coastline of Hong Kong.

This is Central, the business district on Hong Kong Island. I took this photo around 10 am in the morning around Alexandra Building which connected with Swire House.  I used to work in the Swire House owned by the British conglomerate, The Swire Group.  Central at lunch time is a zoo.  This is a subdued version of it.  Very often in my dreams when I could remember them the next morning, these buses and trams do appear occasionally.  The trams are especially romantic as you hear it chugging along its tracks.  You meet a temperamental driver and trams have the ability to jerk you backward and forward which is something you find more often on buses.  But riding a tram sets you back definitely in a Wong Kar Wai setting, especially in the evening with a cool breeze in your hair as it speds through a bit faster, and you feel your life moves a bit smoother and you could breathe a bit easier.

In the old days when families hold wedding banquets at a Chinese restaurant, they would order one of these red placards to announce the marriage by putting the surname of the families who are marrying. But here is the deal.  In Hong Kong, the guys pay for the wedding banquet, the wedding cakes in general.  The girls distribute the wedding cakes, pay for the beddings, and the parents of the girl should supply her with wedding jewelry to show off on the night of the banquet.  Naturally the more the better. 

So on the placards the following words are written assuming a Mr. Chan 陳 and a Miss Li 李 are getting married.

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Children on a school outing in Hanoi up in the north of Vietnam.

Breaking rocks was one job this youth chose out in the countryside.  No need to do body training!  Good looking dude too.  I couldn't take my eyes off him.  He could easily be a film star.  Too bad my husband and the extended family was with me and thank goodness the weather was hot and my face was flushed red not without a good reason.  I would have asked the boatman to steer the boat closer to take more closeups had I been alone....    Definitely the highlight of the trip...

Washing vegetables in the river.  They must have a very strong constitution for they eat the salad raw.

Instant entertainment while on the job.  These two are photographers for tour groups going to the temple.

Here is some honest living that humbles me.

Would you live till old ripe age and still be happy like him?

Or like her?  This reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon.

A man tells his wife, "If we take a late retirement and an early death, we'll just squeak by." We might not live to ripe old age peacefully like these people.

I have never seen such colors in the fabric shops in Hong Kong and such neat a display in so small an area. 

Like Hong Kong, street hawkers are forbidden because they did not pay for a licence.  These street hawkers would inform each other as soon as a police saunters by and they would grab their stuff and run.  The unlucky ones get their wares confiscated and fined, if not induced to pay a bribe.

These poultry are destined for your dining table.  You have a choice to pay for it prepared in half an hour or you could twist its neck and pluck its feather in hot water by yourself at home.  I've seen enough of this ritual killing by my grandma when I was growing up.  Only that she didn't twist the neck.  She slit its throat open and hung it by the yard against the wall and let it flap itself to a bloody death.  Perhaps she was trying to make it kosher....hahaha...

The last supper....

Chicken on the wheels.  The delivery person is actually very pretty but she knew I was taking a picture of her so she turned away.  Too bad.  Perhaps I should have handed the camera to my husband.

Cat fish in the front, blue crabs on the left.  The seafood in Vietnam is extremely fresh and cheap.  It's a feast over there everyday.  I think I put on 5 lbs after 3 weeks there.

This is Cholon, Ho Chi Minh's own Chinatown.  They are selling rice dumplings, preserved sausages called Lap Cheung, and steamed buns with meat inside.  The Vietnamese  rice dumplings usually come in a square block, or a cylindrical rolled shape with a bit of pork, pork fat, yellow beans and glutinous rice, black pepper and slightly tasteless.  The Chinese ones are pyramidal in shape. The savory ones have more meat, mushrooms and seasoning, and the sweet ones could be plain glutionous rice served with a dollop of sugar, or those with red bean paste.  I think the Chinese ones taste better.  Of course I'm biased....haha...