London Bridge Is Down

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary WINDSOR

21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022

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Image via 4chan. (B22001)

The Naked Listener 1,000th Milestone Post

THIS IS is the 1,000th post since the day this blog migrated to WordPress on 19 August 2008 during a Force 8 gale storm.

That comes to 1,641 days (or 4 years, 5 months, 27 days including today) — or an average of 0.609 post a day.

This blog has been around much, much longer than that, of course.

Pretty good going, isn’t it?

It’s a milestone — a milestone of my utterly breathtaking disbelief that I managed to churn out such utter crap over such an utterly long period of time for utterly no remuneration whilst waiting utterly so many nights hand and foot on utterly indescribable customers.

The good news? Utterly worth the utterly abject effort for my utterly lovable and adorable readers — you, you, and you there — and YOU RIGHT HERE!

Yours truly and Ratta
Realising the stuff I could write about her, it’s better to contourise her appearance.

About the Polaroids above:—

Graphic designer Mr Jacky Chow took the Polaroids of me and Ratta in the streets with an old-school press camera — something I literally hadn’t seen used since the 1970s. He plonked himself in the middle of a busy street thronged by piles of people, and graciously took Polaroids of anyone who cared to want one from him. In return, he asked for nothing but a voluntary donation (of whatever amount we wished) towards the cause of keeping alive non-digital instant photography. Truly smart personal gig.

Date taken: 11 and 12 Feb 2012
Place: Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island
Photographer: Jacky Chun-kit Chow | Facebook
Equipment: Mamiya Universal Press camera with 100mm ƒ2.8 lens and Polaroid back | Photo
Media: Fujifilm FP-3000B Professional Instant Black & White Film ISO 3000 3¼×4¼ inches

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TO MARK THE OCCASION, The Naked Listener’s Weblog, in its inestimable might of hindsight, foresight and rifle-sight, present a super small selection of pictures taken during the Chinese New Year:—

Day before the new year

Edamame (twig beans) as hors d’oeuvres

This was the day before the actual Chinese New Year (“CNY minus 1”). A couple of us wanted to have a traditional Chinese meal, but ended up doing Japanese instead — well, all the Chinese restaurants were abso-jam-packed-lutely to the hilt.

Napkin in very traditional Japanese style
Remember the phrase ‘pigging out’? It’s cross-cultural…

Yeah, we were so famished that we forgot to shoot pics of the main deal… *sigh*

Weird chrysantho-plum-blossom-lilacky-purple-DayGlo lights at the Times Square shopping complex. Great fun for everybody though.

You decide what they’re supposed to be.

Visitors and their kids love ’em, so that’s what counts.

(click image for larger size: 800 × 600)

Street posters on my way home. The above are for some music magazine, and the below is rather atmospheric for some club party thing.

(click image for full size: 800 × 600)

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Actual first day of the Year of the Snake

Light displays inside the Times Square shopping complex in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island.

Every traditional Chinese household should have live, blooming plants to symbolise rebirth and new growth. After all, Chinese New Year is properly called the Spring Festival. It’s not called Spring Festival because it’s spring (it’s actually in mid-winter), but because it’s for want of springtime. It is preparation, not celebration, folks.

Chinese culture is a culture of flowers (only the Japanese are more so). As the Chinese New Year approaches, people will start to display plum blossoms (méi huā 梅花, the national flower), red azaleas (yìng shān hóng 映山紅) and red gladiolas (táng chāng pú 唐菖蒲) as well as large pumelos (pomelos, a.k.a. shaddock), oranges, tangerines (jú-zi 橘子) and mandarines (jú 桔 or gān jú 柑桔) with their leaves still attached.

By the way, the Cantonese for pumelo is ‘luk yau’ (碌柚), or ‘sha tin yau’ (沙田柚) in Hong Kong. The colloquial Cantonese is “bu luk.”

Mandarines are mandarin oranges (Citrus reticulata) — ‘kut’ or ‘kat’ in Cantonese (or quat in old-style English). Quat is different from kumquat (金橘 : Citrus japonica). Interestingly, the Kumquat Capital of the World is St. Joseph in Florida, USA. The annual Kumquat Festival is held on the first Saturday of January at nearby Dade City there.

So the Times Square management decided to make petal-shaped lounge chairs from fibreglass for people to take pictures in. They’re actually quite comfy, so inevitably some people just doze off in them.

As all of you probably should know by now, The Naked Listener doesn’t notice mundane things like how comfy chairs are. Instead, he notices life-inspiring things like how nice-looking this lady’s derriere is…

Err … umm … best forget that remark quickly…

Moving on to other sights quickly:—

(click image for full size: 1280 × 960)

If you’ve ever read the About me and the Fun facts about me pages, you’ll know I’m absolutely fascinated by light and motion, such as this blinking, winking, funky-wunky shop window display.

(click image for full size: 1280 × 960)

The actual shop window

On the way home, noticed this WTF creepy thing in a “scavenging lane” (that’s Hong Kong lingo for the gap between two tall buildings). No idea what the words say in Chinese.

I honestly don’t want to know.

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On the second day (‘CNY 2’)

First order of the (holi)day, cup of joe at the local IKEA bistro

I’m used to using cups and saucers, but don’t use them anymore after long living in Hong Kong, so I make do with my pocket notebook instead. And that’s not a Moleskine either — I wouldn’t pay US$13 for such a thing, ever. Notice my two Roman torcs, one of which might give the wrong impression about me for some people.

During any festival, nearly all buildings are lit up and no lights turned off because that’s considered poor taste and bad vibe by the Chinese.

This building would be considered ‘darkish’

Tree-lined street leading home

I think it’s a ‘she’

Whenever this stray and I meet up, I always meow out to it. It meows back, always. And always the same number of meows that I made to it. It’s got some really humanlike behaviour too, and kind of hard to explain right now.

The stray is my neighbour. It roams in the vicinity of a ‘hipster’ coffee shop just a street away from my home — so it stands a good chance of getting a running supply of good-quality leftovers from customers who only ‘touch’ their food. The kitchen staff also obliges by leaving out newspaper for the stray to keep itself clean and as bedding near some warm-air vents — useful on cold days. This cat looks cleaner than some people, to be honest.

Smart thing, cat, well played, well played.

By the way, cats in this part of the world don’t meow — they “weeow.”

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© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2013. (B13057)

Images: All by author, except Mamiya Universal Press Camera by Jacky Chow Chun-kit.