As I Xi It v2.3

It appears that they defy gravity.

Floating shoes

This post is a bit out of sync, but the week before the trip to Stonehenge, I was on a roadtrip with some chums around Brittany, France. I had to pack light due to negotiating the transfer between Gare du Nord to Montparnasse in Paris and had read that there was a fair bit of walking up and down corridors so only took the G11 with me. There were probably two instances where I really missed my DSLR – shooting the insides of churches with an ultra-wide angle and a kestrel perched on a menhir with a telephoto.

It’s been a couple of weeks since France and I can’t remember precisely the day to day details of it which is probably a good thing since it’ll keep this post at a reasonable length. There seemed to be lots of eating, especially huitres, moules et frites! It’s got to be said that they’re really rather fond of their fruits de la mer in Brittany. In Cancale, Xiao and I shared a massive platter. In Perros-Guriec, I had a great meal, moules for my first starter, lobster for my second starter, steak and chips for my main course and a slice of far Breton for desert. Mmm… it was all very tasty. I do believe that we were the last to leave the restaurant that night, they were pretty much shutting up shop while we were still lingering there.

The other thing Bretons seem to be quite fond of are menhirs. There were lots and lots of menhirs, tululi, dolmens and all those prehistoric mysterious relics.

I guess if I had to sum Brittany up, it’s just full of oysters, mussels and menhirs. Ooodles and oodles of them.

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As if it wasn’t enough that I’d spent part of my time in France the previous week looking at menhirs after menhirs at Carnac, my parents decided that it’d be nice to visit Stonehenge one weekend. Unsurprisingly, there were lots of people about. It seemed somewhat pricey at around £6 to be walking around some mysterious stones.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge silhouette

I’m writing my second consecutive entry! My day was pretty dull so I’ll write a bit about the trip up to Northumberland a few weeks ago when Jac and Randy were in town! So we four (including Kamil) went up north with the main objective of landing on one of the Farne Islands to shoot puffins! Jac, Kamil, Vincent and I tried with Skomer a few years ago but were turned away due to adverse nautical conditions. I was successful in my puffin hunt while I was in Iceland (you couldn’t miss them on Grimsey) but Jac wasn’t there with me, however, being the thoughtful person I am, Wingo and I sent her a postcard.

On the way up, we stopped off in Whitby (not impressed, just another quiet seaside town) and Newcastle for dinner (ate at a chain, everything was pretty much closed) before arriving at the hotel for the night. It was one of those service station roadside affairs, but I’ve got to say, it was much nicer than a Travelodge, there was even free WiFi.

The next day, the weather was looking very uncooperative, clouds, rain and choppy seas. Unsurprisingly, when we got to Seahouses, the boats weren’t going out. Nevermind, we still had a few more days to try again. So we went to Berwick-Upon-Tweed, it was cloudy and fairly unexciting, on the way to our next destination we stopped off at a place called “Pot-a-doodle-do”, with an amusing name like that, you can’t really ignore it. It was one of those places where you can paint your own pottery. Really a kids thing. We had lunch there and decided that we’d head up to the Scottish Seabird Centre where we amused ourselves in the gift shop. Once we had lost interest, we went to the near-by littoral zone where we reconnected with nature, there were more jellyfish than you could shake a stick at along with the usual suspects of barnacles, limpets and periwinkles. The weather had perked up and the others wanted to go to Edinburgh. Everytime I’ve been, I’ve been less than impressed in its gloomy, rainyness, I wasn’t particuarly keen on this occasion eventhough blue skies and sun had broken through. So, off to Edinburgh we went, its quite amazing what nice weather can do for a place, no longer was Edinburgh this dreary miserable place, it actually looked kinda aesthetically pleasing. I’ve never noticed before, but it’s a bit of a wannabe city, a lot of their monuments were reminiscent of existing ones in other European cities, some of the churchy things reminded me of Bruge, cobbled streets like Vienna, there was a statue opposite Jenners (I guess that itself is kinda like a Selfridges) which wouldn’t look out of place at Hyde Park where the Albert memorial is.

On the following day,  the weather had improved, but there was still some swell which prevented boats from landing on Staple Island (Farnes is a collection of little islands), however, we did manage to get a boat out to Inner Farnes and Jac finally saw her puffins. The island was all a bit zoo-like where we could only walk along the designated path, there were terns everywhere, babies and adolescent birds walking aimlessly across the paths more or less oblivious to the humans they encountered, puffins were there too, but I wasn’t all that impressed with the whole set up, you could get up closer to the ones on Grimsey, but to be fair, it was good for puffins in flight shots. Saw some other seabirds too, cormorants/shags and kittiwakes. The whole Farnes thing pretty much took all day. Once we were back on the mainland, we brought a kite and flew it. Jac had excellent command of the flying device, too bad I couldn’t say the same for Kamil, needless to say, there was much crashing involved.

We decided to head over to Holy Island on the last full day which could only be accessed by car during low tide while the tarmac road was uncovered by the sea. There, we explored the ruins of the old priory and took some interesting group photos. After than, we decided to head over the Northumberland National Park which was much further than we thought, drove along a bit of Hadrian’s Wall, picked up free light bulbs and drove along forest drive which was suppose to be a bit off-roady, but it wasn’t really. But of a waste of £3 really (yes, it was £3 to drive on a poorly maintained road). When we came out of the national park, we crossed the England/Scotland border again and made a brief visit to Jedburgh. It was rather quaint and we were greeted by three cats, a black one, a black and white one (looked a little like Cici, but not) and a ginger and white one. All rather friendly, but the ginger and white one wanted to fight the black and white one. They were all smaller than Cici, probably around 4-5kg, Cici’s almost a monster weighing in at 6kg (perhaps more since I last weighed him). He’s not obese, just bulky and ever so cuddly.

On the way back to London, we stopped off at York, I can’t remember if I’ve ever visited during those family staycations we used to have in the UK. We probably have, I distinctly remember we stayed in a place in the Yorkshire Moors so it’d be odd if my parents didn’t take my brother and I to York.

I quite like travelling (difficult to guess isn’t it?), and like most of my trips, it was pretty tiring. I was looking forward to coming home, not to sleep in my own bed, but to see Cici. He really is just that cuddly!

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Well, having had a moan in my last post about lazyness in blogging, I now feel like getting through the backlong of things to post about.

First up, the New Forest! The last time I was there was when I was a kid, we were passing through on a family holiday, probably back from Corwall or something and I remember Dad going on about Robin Hood. Jac was in town and I thought it might be nice that we pop down to the New Forest. It was only about a 2 hours drive from London and Kamil our driver would be chauffering us… in his three doored compact (indeed it was, especially for 4!).

It was a Monday like no other, out in the country with chums I haven’t seen in a while. Driving through the forest reminded me of Kruger, the sound of gravel parting under the wheels of the car, the sun and that anticipation in looking out for four legged mammals. Kamil and I reminisced about Kruger as we’ve both been on separate occasions, but Jac hasn’t, poo her!

So yeah, the New Forest was good. Not sure what else to say about it really. We had fish & chips for dinner, earlier, Jac and I had scampi & chips for lunch. How imaginative.

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Some pics from my trip to Iceland last month. It was awesome! Bone, Wingo and I did the ringroad route counter-clockwise.  It really was a photographer’s paradise, there’s something for everyone, glaciers, broad expanses of moss covered lava fields and more fosses (waterfalls) than you can shake a stick at!

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Since I’ll be off to Switzerland soon, I thought I’d best write my entry about Austria,  which I visited two weekends ago. We flew into Vienna first which turned out to be much warmer than I’d expected. Like most cities on the continent, it was pretty walkable, all the main sights are conveniently located around the inner stadt, however, Schloss Schonbrunn was located a bit way out, but extremely easy to get to especially if you’re staying near the Westbanhof train station. It’s well worth visiting, the gardens are pretty and good for a long stroll, especially up to the top of the hill where you could see the Schloss and the rest of Vienna.

The hotel we stayed at was right by Mariahilfer Strasse which is the Viennese equivalent of London’s Oxford St. They had the same brands as in London so I felt fairly at home, but the main difference was that there seem to have more alfresco dining facilities. Since it far less busy than London, the pollution’s rather low which makes it more plesant to sit outside in the summer months. I had the best croissants ever at Cafe Westend around the corner from my hotel. The coffees are generally pretty good, quite enjoyed my iced viennese coffee at Cafe Sacher, however, I didn’t find the famed Sachertorte to be as impressive as its made out to be. It was a touch on the dry side. When in Austria, one must have apfelstrudle! Hmn… not bad, not bad at all. One thing that annoyed me, and it’s probably because I’m used to a 24/7 city, is that everything shuts around 7/8pm and nothing’s open on the weekends. It’s quite typical of most European cities.

We’d had enough of Vienna and took the train cross country over to Salzburg, home of The Sound of Music! Unfortunately, the night we arrived, it poured down with rain. Mum and I were searching high and low for something to eat for dinner and ended up at Burger King by the Hauptbanhof, it was only 8pm. Anyway, the next day, we went and explored the ‘city’. The old town looked remarkably like the new town. We visited Schloss Mirabell which was famously featured in the do-re-mi number in The Sound of Music. Of course, being in Salzburg, we just had to join one of those tacky Sound of Music Tours. The tour guide was a brit, and it was actually not as cringeworthy as I thought it’d be. The coach took us out to some of the sites where they filmed the movie outside the city, however, it didn’t get as far as Germany where they did the famous hill scene (you know the one, the opening number where Maria is twirling around in the hill). One thing I will say about the tour is that there is some singing involved, but one doesn’t feel under pressure to perform. Salzburg is also the birthplace of Mozart! They certainly capitalise on that by selling those Mozart sweets. I find them to be a bit too sweet.

We were only in Austria for a few days, but there are a couple of things I feel like I ought to do, like visit the Krimmel waterfall, and the salt mine and ice cave by Salzburg. Maybe next time.

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From a stroll along the Thames a few weeks ago.

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Ahead of my upcoming trip to Austria, I picked up a new tripod! It’s far more compact than my other tripods and extends up to my eye-level with the centre column down.

The original ballhead it came with was fine with my Canon G11, but I wouldn’t trust it with my 40D, so I’ve swapped it out for my Manfrotto 486RC2. The whole thing weighs around 1kg with a maximum carrying capacity of around 2kg, fine for a semi-pro DSLR and standard zoom/prime, but definitely not for telephotos.There are variable leg locks and you can remove part of the centre column to further reduce weight. It’s reasonably sturdy, but won’t replace my Gitzo for shots up in the Arctic. Further specs are available here – Slik Sprint Pro II GM.

Given its petite proportions, its easy to pack making it ideal for weekend city breaks around Europe.

So, here I am, back at my desk in London having returned from a very chilled out tropical holiday. It was hot, hot, hot.

Spontaneous Singapore 2010 from Xi on Vimeo.

Sometime last week, Marcus and I went to Fika, a Scandinavian restaurant in Little India which I thought was a little odd location-wise. You’d expect that sort of European cusine to be somewhere along Orchard Road. It was quite good, but I didn’t see any reindeer on the menu. No elk either eventhough the logo was the shiloette of an elk. On the menu were the usual Scandinavian type things, potatoes, salmon, meatballs. I was a little surprised not to see chopped dill in the boiled potatoes. After Scandinavia, I had my much awaited cendol at some Malay place, shooting the breeze in the outdoors table. There was a bit of a confusion where our cendol ended up on another table, but then it eventually wound up at ours. It was mighty good and some of the green snotty bits looked like leeches. Nice. While we’re on the topic of deserts, I managed to have my much awaited ice kachung! It was very colourful and artificial and syrupy. Mmmm…. muy bien.

Jac and I caught up with Cherlyn who neither of us have see since Biology and went to the Sunset Grill & Pub in the middle of Seletar airbase. It was really cool, all the roads were named after places in London and the ambience of the place was quite good. Ate outdoors, I believe Jac got nibbled by some mozzies, I didn’t surprisingly.

We also visited Pulau Ubin, one of the offshore islands where we shot some insects and I managed to get attacked by both the sun and those pesky mosquitoes. It was seriously hot, hot, hot! While I was reeling off a couple of shots of a katydid, I could feel myself get drenched from all the sweat. For an offshore island, it wasn’t as windy as I’d expected. However, when we sat down to lunch, the breeze blew the spicy hot chili fumes towards us causing us much occular and nasal irritation. I also managed to get myself sunburnt with the most spectacular effects. In the pics, you can clearly see where my sleeves end and the sunburn begin. I’ve never been so sunburnt, my arms were red hot during the night and turning down the AC to 16^oC didn’t seem to help all that much. I was radiant like a cooked lobster.

I guess no entry (or series of entries) about Singapore is complete without an account of the shopping. Well, there certainly isn’t a shortage of shops there. The other day, Jac and I visited Vivocity where the Singapore branch of The National Geographic Society shop was. It was very much in the same style as the one in London on Regents Street, but I reckon the London one is bigger (spread over three floors) and it has an integrated cafe which the Singapore one hasn’t. There were far more NG London tees than Singapore ones which I thought was odd. Vivocity also had the Japanese equivalent of a pound shop here. It has some pretty cool crap for only $2 (£1). I brought a whole bunch of miniature wooden clothes pegs and other things I never thought I needed till I saw them. There was also a pet shop with some neat pet things (duh!) and everything was laid out so much more neater than the typical British pet shop. It didn’t even have that characteristic pet shop smell of dry cat/dog food and woodshavings. I was a little disappointed not to find a cute little house for Watson. Vivocity had a whole bunch of shops selling odd, useless but very cute things too. Although I didn’t see one, I’m sure there was a Giordano’s in there. There’s always a Giordano’s.

After yum cha with The Lau’s, Jac dropped me off at nearby Raffles City since I had some errands to run and of course more shopping to do. I had a wonder around, popped into the supermarket downstairs and stocked up on a bunch of snacks. I then strolled over to Suntec and got bored there walking round and round the endless collection shops.

On my last night in Singapore, Jac, LK and I went to Fort Canning Park. Marcus was being a poo poo head so didn’t come with us. Apparently, Fort Canning is suppose to be haunted, but I didn’t see any ghosts or poltergeist activity. I’ve also been informed that there are lots of mozzies there, but I failed to get bitten by one. I thought I was attacked, but it must’ve been psychosomatic. Unless they were phantom mozzies… woooo….

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Oh, I should probably say something about my flight home. There were no problems with the first leg apart from me possibly missing my flight due to a combination of Jac and I waiting ages at some food outlet at Changi airport for a rather bland French toast, odd tasting coffee and a rather dry and pathetic so-called “English” muffin and whining about said “edible” items. The last call announcement was made, but I wasn’t the last on board. There were still plenty after me. Didn’t get a chance to do browse duty free. Obviously haven’t shopped enough.

On the way back to London, the transit time in Dubai was only about 2 hours. I browsed through duty free and there were many novelty camel figurines and stuffed toys. None of which I had the desire to purchase. I suppose it would’ve been nice to get a wooden camel to keep the wooden giraffe I brought at duty free in South Africa. I guess I could start up a wooden duty free zoo then. No calamaties for me between DXB and LGW, however, the man sitting in the aisle (I was by the window) did have water spilt on him. Normally, when flying solo, I prefer an aisle seat, however, I predicted that on the flight to LGW there would be a good chance of flying over those man-made islands. I was right. Now I feel like I’ve seen Dubai and can add that to my list of places I’ve visited.