I'm such a jacka**. Last night, I tried opening the CDR I burnt on my father's laptop in China which contains the photos I've taken on his digicam during my hol there, in HK and Macau. Alas! The CD wasn't burnt in a proper manner and is faulty, i.e., I can't retrieve my photos from it. Sob sob... Which means I can't share with you my holiday moments (and show off my mastery of photography) on this blog -- yet. Hopefully, my dad hasn't deleted the original folder of my photos in his laptop. But that would mean that the pictures won't be in my possession until some months later. Nevertheless I've made the 'Jackie minus ie Chan' shot taken on my sis' hp (I didn't bring mine) the wallpaper of my hp. I can show you if you wish. Hehe. I realised how terribly lousy and inadequate my Cantonese is during my stay in HK, more so than in Shenzhen (where many residents originate from other parts of China and so don't speak Cantonese well). Which translated to my reluctance to use Cantonese for fear of mispronounication which leads to disgraceful embarrassement -- imagine the 'huh?' looks you receive in return. I'd rather converse in Mandarin (or English, seldom) with sales personnel if I could since either way (Cantonese or Mandarin) the locals can tell I'm a tourist. The young HK sales(wo)men speak Cantonese in an unintelligible manner to me because words simply roll off their tongues in a quick rumble. I'd have to struggle to make out the contents of their speech -- in vain; that's when I'd ask my mum for help to translate. But their Cantonese sounds very lyrical. And the standard of their service simply beats its Singaporean counterpart hands down. Shame on the Singaporean retail/service industry (not my first time brickbatting it on this blog). Orchard Road pales in comparison to the shopping street of Kowloon, Nathan Road, which -- what -- stretches from the MTR stations of Prince to Tsim Sha Tsui and perhaps even beyond (at least 4 stations). Shops, malls, boutiques, food outlets just run on and on without end seemingly... I can now truly appreciate what a HK Chinese University medical student on attachment in NUH meant when she told me during the CSFC period that the shopping experience in Singapore is nothing compared to that in HK -- 'very little (sic) things'. I'm trying to substitute a photo essay with words here, if you haven't realised by now. In HK, I took many pix of a local market (so Kindred Spirit aka Zheng Qing), of Nathan Road scenes in the day and at night, of the various street markets (Ladies' Market, Fa Yuen St, Temple St) and the Giant Buddha (Did you know that there's a prayer tablet for Anita Mui within the Buddha? You can see offerings placed by her fans underneath her tablet. There's also a Buddha relic higher up within in the bronze statue itself.) in Lantau island. And numerous pix of food, glorious food. I love food photography. In Macau, of Ruins of St Peter's (which I had always imagined to open out into a huge, boundless plaza -- a perception derived from a HK drama The Return of the Cuckoo starring Julian Cheung and Charmaine Sheh -- but really not so). I could have taken more photos if not for the storage space on the digicam running low. In Shenzhen, nothing much even though it was where I spent the majority of my time during this trip. Boring place, may I say.
