病了一整個星期，渾渾噩噩。但一切還好。回看照片，什至算得上過得精采。哈。

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live/work

上班三星期，每天早上逼巴士，旁邊的女士紮馬化妝，真羨慕早幾個站的乘客可以坐着睡。公司在殯儀館附近，人少安靜去七姊妹道吃午飯不用排隊。沒有網可以上，只可工作或等工作或doze off 或聽 draftsman 講爛gag。沒有起伏，沒有八卦（暫時），不痛不癢，不來也不往。其實也不錯，又有 O.T.錢。周末悠閒慵懶，漫遊老香港。小屋都是我喜歡的，舊樓圖則都好整齊，不會三尖八角，會有小露台佈滿花盤藤椅，地下 shopfront 精簡燈火光度剛好。風吹草動，肥狗扒地郁都唔郁，郊遊也可填滿幻想，修補缺了口的圓。Big Apple 好吃到不得了，加一點點鹽更加不得了！

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Skylines 最後一星期，仲未去嘅朋友仔，去吧，a moment of delight is probably the best thing I could ever offer for our friendship.
你去咗未？不是說八月會去嗎？記得嗎？

嬉水

在水中飄浮度日，水面微弱地閃閃發光，同學仔用力地撐小船，而我沒做什麼，被大浪拋起一次兩次三次，第四次狠恨的迎面沖過來再擱淺。一個spontaneous又愉快的下午，仲玩到d手腳dislocate咗。

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今個夏天，你玩咗未？

有朋自遠方來

不亦樂乎

simple life

a thursday afternoon in shek-o instead of studio. very nice :) weather is getting cold with breezes. but still very comfy to soak our feet into the water. see it comes and goes. all the negative feelings seem to have washed away as the water swirl around my feet. very few people in the beach and mostly are gwai-los. oscar helped us to take one of these, and another teenager whom i forgot to ask his name took the upper left corner one. his family is from england and his dad took his family to visit coz he used to live here when he was 7-9. and spent most of his time in this beach. during that time his dad (the teenager's grandpa lol) worked on some 'radar' thing in hk. i suppose that was in the late 60s. i wonder whats that for. it must be a complicated feeling to re-visit a place that u used to live in long ago. esp these childhood places, primary school lol and dormitory!!

had two 'egg-son' today. lol both shops are in shaukeiwan. the one call 'low-profile-master' is really good. haa. search on openrice and you will definitely know. 'egg- gei' in tai-on building is not good. dont try. ha. anyway. it was a very chill and lazy afternoon. ha. so glad to be with you too.

shoe cleaning madame?

There is one thing VERY annoying about Leh, that is the shoe cleaners.

I guess every tourist would agree.

Whenever you pass by one of them, they would raise their voice and ask ‘shoe cleaning madame?’ Regardless of what are you wearing. Hiking boots, flip-flops or like me, canvas shoes.

As far as I know, there are 4 of them next to the food market, 2 always lingering around the café that I go for breakfast, and 5!! stationing themselves outside the laundry shop.

But Leh is too small to avoid anyone, not to mention the vast network of these shoe cleaners. Last Sunday, since everyone is out of town and having a good time in Nubra, I went to stroll around this small town, again, without destination. And of course I bumped into several of them.

‘Shoe cleaning madame?’… once

‘Shoe cleaning madame?’… twice

‘Shoe repair madame?’…

I went on, like how I behaved for the past hundred times.

Then I paused.

Wait. How did he know?

Did he really pay that little attention as I passed by 5 seconds ago?

(And all architecture students are trained to spot that, attention to details!)

On both of my shoes, there are big holes as the rubber base around my ankles went off. On a rainy day, my socks do get soaked. It is that irreparable. But it is a usual thing too, all of my converses got thrown away at last because this.

So I turned, walked to him. Took off my shoes. Sometimes even the very irritating ones do deserve a chance to prove their value.

He first traced my shoes on some rubber sheet, cut out the silhouette and then put glue on them, and some small cracks at the sides of my shoes. Let them dry for a while under the sun. The kind of glue he used is like caramel but translucent. After 10 minutes, he put the new rubber on top of the old shoe base, started stitching around it with a big needle. And as if it was a meaningful finale, he hammered two small pins on each of the new bases, just like how we tear off the masking tape as we finish a hand drawing.

The whole process took less than 30 minutes, and cost, 200 rupees.

A little overpriced, but okay, I gave it anyhow without bargaining.

And after a day of walk, its time to examine, how well did these new bases endure.

Some stitches already broken. Hmmm… not at all satisfied. Comments held back, I will tell again after a month.

Be patient, it takes time to prove justice. Thats how I comforted myself. 

on the surface of things

It seems to be a place too chilled, when the sun shines onto us and from time to time, we get that feeling of wanting to have a nap. The breezes come together with that thin layer of dust swirling in the air.

‘Oh, there is such a lot of world to see’…

Think Aladdin and Jasmine on the flying blanket.

But Leh is a small town, two main roads connecting to the mosque and settlements scattered around hillside. They have been there for years and years, and the newest are always those at the highest, the immigrants came and build them without government permission. Anyone bothered? No answer yet.

The interesting thing is seeing how everyone knows how to build, making their own bricks with dust and water, letting the intense sun to dry them. The usual colour is pale brown. What if the colour is not right? (Sometimes it turned out to be more like donkey shit) You smash it with the shuffle and reuse the dust. Simple. I guess that is why ladakhis like to keep a huge mountain of dust in front of their doorway, they say ‘it might come in handy in the future.’

The chances of them being useful are there. Yet the reality is, it is habitual to have all the trash lying around, in the drainage, on the rooftop. That’s why you always look up, you see everything in their most exquisite form but whenever you look down, you see your neighbours’ rooftops being filled with pet-bottles, logs of different sizes and the Tibetan Buddhism flags hanging randomly.

The minds, too rigid and opinionated; and things, too static to allow any remedies.

Difficult.

Andre said whatever Ladakh do wrong, Bhutan do it right.

But we don’t need another Bhutan, everybody knows, Bhutan is only opened to the rich now. Come to the thought, how could the entrance to nirvana (if there is any) be exclusive to certain population.

You know, after 11pm, you can see milky-way in Ladakh.

3600m above sea level, the sky has never been so near and at night, speechless. It is also probably the moment when the mind starts questioning, times of our lives. Then next morning, when you wake up and time has slipped away. Suddenly we get to tomorrow with the same routine. But is it still the same?

The Buddhists say, to be a good Buddhist, he must be prepared for change because nothing is permanent.

So it is more than heritage, architecture, maybe there is something to be learnt from here. ‘Ancient Future’, a Swedish anthropologist put it that way as her book title. Being content, responding to seasonal change as we live. The Muslims here only work in the summer, long hours no holidays, and in the winter, since it’s too cold, they do nothing. Simply nothing, and stay in sipping cups and cups of butter tea.

(Butter tea, ewww…)

Tough times actually, not the hours but how one has come to this part of the world. The feeling of being shadowed but when the eyes are opened to new dimensions, maybe it doesn’t matter afterall. What counts, are the encounters. Embrace change, sees how it goes.

Comforting enough, Haruki Murakami books are available here, and the guesthouse is installing a solar panel, so, hot shower soon! Very, very uplifting.

being a tourist

Though lived in Hong Kong nearly all my life, it's only the second time I went to the Peak. Long queues as its 5.1, we felt like 1/10 of China's population headed down to this little island. And some very barbaric behaviour too, when people were pushing and squeezing themselves in lines for the tram. We didnt bother, so even we were the first few in the queue, ended up standing during the ride. 

Sunny with breezes, a perfect day to be spent outdoor. We ice-creamed, walked and thought the route is a loop but it isnt. Art talk, school talk, girl talk and how we managed to take some really nice shots of Hong Kong without paying extra to go up to the very top viewing deck. 

Hong Kong is beautiful, it really is.

lost and found

It is a very bad (or manly!) habit but I tend to put notes in my jean's back pocket. Sometimes the note would just 'slip up' as I walk (hmmm, anyone know why?), and I did once lost 20 pound in London because of this. It happened again this evening but very fortunate, a secondary school girl picked it up and ran to me with my 20 dollar note! She wore blue cheung-sam, in HK island, hmmm.... so I wonder, yea it is that school badge. =] GDD you should be proud.