Chinese New Year

Another first for me – the first time I have seen London’s Chinese New Year celebrations.  Unfortunately the website to publicise the event was not very precise, and despite the early start, I only managed to see the tail end of the parade – twice!!! We thought, if we were quick enough, we would catch up with the parade, but when we did, we saw the same part of the parade again!!!

However, it didn’t really spoil the day.  I was quite amazed by the number of people that were out and about. Everyone seemed to be in a happy mood, which made for a lovely atmosphere.

The streets of Chinatown along with Trafalgar Square, were decorated with Chinese lanterns:

Most of the lanterns were red.  In China, the colour red carries a largely positive connotation, being associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness and passion. Part of the Chinese New Year traditions is the giving of red envelopes, which contains money, which usually ends with an even digit, which again signifies good luck.

As with all holiday celebrations, food plays a very important role. We were too early for most of the restaurants, but I did witness some of the preparations:

This chap was busy making Dim Sum.

The one thing I would have been disappointed to miss, would have been the lion dancers. So I was so pleased when we stumbled across this group getting themselves ready:

 

They put on a fantastic show, just wished I had a video camera with me.

I really enjoyed this event, and I have a feeling this day will now be an annual event in my diary, and hopefully next year, I will get up a little earlier to see the parade.

I have more pictures from the day on my flickr stream, and to see them click HERE.

Good Place for a Haircut

Good Place for a Haircut, originally uploaded by gary8345.

Spotted in Shoreditch. Looks a great place to get a haircut, although I would want to make sure the staff only had cocktails at the end of the day 🙂

Exhibition Road – A Shared Space

Shared space is an urban design concept aimed at integrated use of public spaces. It encourages traffic engineers, urban planners and experts from other fields to consult with users of public space when planning and designing streets and squares in both built and non-built environments.

Shared space removes the traditional segregation of motor vehicles, pedestrians and other road users. Conventional road priority management systems and devices such as kerbs, lines, signs and signals are replaced with an integrated, people-oriented understanding of public space, such that walking, cycling, shopping and driving cars become integrated activities.

The Exhibition Road Project is a plan by the local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, to improve the street’s design to reflect its cultural importance, Exhibition Road is home to a number of national museums, The Natural History Museum, The Science Museum and The Victoria and Albert Museum. 

The scheme, devised by the architectural firm Dixon Jones, also looks at surrounding streets. The scheme has a completion date of 2012 to coincide with the 2012 Olympic Games. The general aim is to discourage through traffic and give pedestrians greater priority over any remaining traffic. The project also seeks to improve the artistic and architectural merit of the streetscape of Exhibition Road.

It sounds perfect, when you read the press releases from the local authority, but in reality, it is rather confusing. There are signs up all over the place warning drivers to give way:

However, as you can see above, the signs seem to be a waste of time. I found that motorists expected me to give way. Also, where was the road boundary? There are no markings to be seen.

It has though created more space for pedestrians, and the council have placed more seating areas. This gave me the opportunity to do some people watching, and get some candid photos:

Considering this was on a cold January day, the project does appear to be a success with the general public.

 

Holocaust Memorial Day 2012

Below is a message from the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom regarding the Holocaust. He brings up something that I never really thought of, the lack of protest by the general public.

 

Is It Dead?

What an unusual piece of art work. This was in grounds of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. However, I cannot find any information about this poor cockatoo.

Gung hay fat choy!!!

Happy Chinese New Year, welcome to the Year of the Dragon:

 People born in the Year of the Dragon share certain characteristics:

• Innovative
• Enterprising
• Flexible
• Self-assured
• Brave
• Passionate
• Conceited
• Tactless
• Scrutinizing
• Unanticipated
• Quick-tempered

I was born in the Year of the Dragon, many moons ago, and I share some of the characteristics above, but thankfully not all of them.

A New Lap-top-a-me-bob

Those meerkats have made another advert:

Poor Sergei

A Firework Picture That Went Wrong

Here is another image from the set of pictures I took of the Lord Mayor’s Show fireworks back in November. This is not what I intended to have captured, I obviously got the shutter-speed wrong, or it suffered from a huge camera shake. However, I think it has a good abstract feel to it, that it actually merits being displayed in its own right. What do you think?

It looks like rods of light falling from the night sky. I am really pleased with my happy accident!!

I Love Black and White Pictures

I seem to be more and more drawn to black and white images. Given the right subject, they can produce very atmospheric pictures, and actually lift pictures. That sounds quite an odd thing to say, as you always think that colour does this. However, the following image in colour was rather boring, and in fact the colours I felt actually detracted from the picture. Converting the image to black and white not only made the picture more interesting, it also made the man towards the back of the picture more prominent.

This is Mr Mudge…..

I was very lucky that Salvo aka Salvo The Clown – Legend of Southend-on-Sea, spotted the above picture on Flickr, and added the following comment:

“The Clown in your photo is called Mr Mudge, in case you’d like to know more about him his website is www.thecrazyworldofmrmudge.co.uk 🙂

I always think a named clown is better for we all have a unique face which is registered on an egg as a kind of trade mark many of which can be now be seen at an excellent Clowns Museum / Exhibition at Wookey Hole, Somerset, BA5 1BB England.

For further information you might contact them direct on the following link www.wookey.co.uk/welcome.htm or either Matthew Faint one of the Clown Museum directors on 0870 128 4336 (office hours only) or failing that even myself. Yet another four sources of information on clowns is The Annual Clowns Directory www.annualclownsdirectory.com , Clowns International www.clowns-international.com, Clowns of America Internationalwww.coai.org, and The World Clown Association www.worldclown.com/

I trust this information will be of interest and you will stay happy and keep taking photos of Clowns!”

Thanks for the information Salvo.