Arrival of Cara Cara Oranges

I was delighted to see my favourite oranges, Cara Cara, arrive at one of our supermarkets. Not only these red-flesh oranges are relatively cheaper than those ordinary orange-flesh ones, they have a slightly different, unspeakably sweet flavour which I love most.

My target of the day was to buy 32 such oranges in the early morning (cause I could select better ones as soon as the supermarket opened at eight) to supply two families of a total of 7 members for a week.

My bags were then filled with a heavy mass of orange stuff and a small quantity of apples and mandarins. A disappointment came to me that those green pears from U.S. totally disappeared except those from South Africa, otherwise one of my shoulders would lean on one side. To me, last Saturday was a day of fruit-hunt.

The New Year Gathering at School

CCSCOSA organized a New Year Gathering at CCSC school hall on February 4, 2012. It was a function that old students and teachers met.

The gathering began with a ceremony of marking the eyes of a Chinese lion head by the school manager and followed by a lion dance and the presence of “Choi Sun” (財神) who give everybody a red pocket, inside which there were a gold coin of chocolate and a small card reminding every one, the date, time and venue of the OSA annual dinner. Presents (those neck-pad vibrators sold by students at the New Year Fair, Victoria Park during Chinese New Year) were given to the teachers attending the gathering.

Managers of the school board, teachers and old students did not miss the chance of taking photos together. Of course, I was glad to see some of my students come back to chat and take photos with me.

驕小的蘭花

我們的屋苑經常以花圃作舞台展覽一些獨特的花卉。今天的主角正是這些驕小的白色蘭花。驟眼望過去，它們有點似白蘭樹的花。但看其修長的葉，枝和接近底部的球莖，已經肯定這是一棵蘭花植物。對我來說，其名稱仍然是個謎。要找尋它的真正名字的話，相信都要花一段時間才可以。

Two water-worlds

Here you can see two water-worlds, one on Tolo Harbour and the other at a swimming pool.

The fun outside was water-skiing. A speed boat is towing a man on skiing-boards on the surface of the sea. Clear enough the speed boat needs fuel and the skier skill.

The fun at the swimming pool on land comes from the twisting slides that bring the swimmers at a certain height down to the pool below. The swimmers slide down smoothly with the help of some running water as accelerator and the force of gravity.

A Message from a car owner

“ My baby is happy,” says the owner of this car. It is a message the owner wants to tell the public that his/her baby son/daughter is happy. We hope it is true to the baby.

See if I find other interesting messages of this kind at other times.

乍暖還寒的日子走了

先前乍暖還寒的日子，似乎過去了。大部份在香港的植物都趕緊在最近暖和的幾天爭著開花的開花，結果的結果。

這幾張相正好給大家知道其實春天巳經到了。近幾天有霧，試過濕度接近百分百，洗淨的衣服整天都濕漉漉，我家要出動新買的抽濕機才有效地把濕氣趕走。周圍的植物倒喜歡又暖又濕的日子，開始活躍起來。相信馬鞍山那邊的杜鵑花正合時長出應本年度的馬鞍山杜鵑花節。

後記：廿一日早晨時分往買早餐時，天色灰暗，微風吹過，有點涼意。迎面而來的途人穿的大多是長袖衫，而自己則短袖，忽然有點今天的我把昨天的我推翻的感覺。不過，我知道我和周圍的花草樹木都可以抵擋一下這般溫差的改變，繼續挺著身子向前走。

Stacking up

Stacking up wooden blocks makes Elly feel proud of herself in constructions. Her careful hands and patience have given her successes. Her delight and satisfaction all come from the structures she builds by herself alone.

Every time she has finished the building, she will ask us to see her “masterpiece”. There are times that her blocks fall and the building shatters because of instability. She then just grunts a little to express her disappointment. I do like this because she must learn to face failures in daily life.

Andes’ New Dress

The new packing of Andes chocolate (see the one in the above photo) at a supermarket reminds me of the approaching of Easter. In western countries, it is a custom of hiding Easter eggs by adults in one’s garden and children are asked to find them.

In Hong Kong, we only see Andes’s Creme De Menthe Thins (奶油薄荷夾心黑巧克力). One such thin cannot satisfy either of my grand-daughters. Very often they request for a double.

Unbelievably there are other varieties of chocolate produced by Andes which I cannot find on the racks of supermarkets.

Peppermint Crunch Thins (胡椒薄荷巧克力),
Mint Parfait Thins (薄荷巧克力),
Toffee Crunch Thins (咖啡巧克力),
Milk Chocolatey Thins (牛奶巧克力),
Chocolatey Orange Thins (香橙夾心巧克力).

兩個小驚喜

區區一個奇異果和一個蘋果今天竟然帶給我兩個小驚喜。

第一個驚喜是首次在超市可以買到意大利出產的奇異果。這款奇異果和紐西蘭出產的在外貌上沒有分別，前者果肉特別硬淨，横切面的圖案精彩細緻，適合做蛋糕、雪糕或飲品的配搭，我相信原因在奇異果果肉的綠色特別有美麗吸引力。

第二個驚喜是不明國籍的「紅粉佳人」蘋果(Pink Lady)。這種蘋果給我的印象是明艷照人，果味特別甜美幽香，我個人特別鍾意。

The bread digger

Elly is certainly a bread digger. What does she dig out of bread? The answer is grapes or sausages, her favourite fruit or food.

From my point of view, she like the tastes of grapes and sausages whenever she sees them embedded in buns or bread rather than they are something which makes her not hungry again.

For the case of grapes, Elly makes holes on or in the bread leaving a surface of bread like that of our Moon. For a sausage bun, her skill is to drill a hole into it. She simply eats the sausage as she bites her way in. The last few bites involve her pulling hard at the remaining sausage. The last sight of the bun is like one with a tunnel drilled in.

See her winning sign of fingers this time. She has dug the bun similar to the holes of the Moon.

When these tomatoes ripen,…..

When these tomatoes ripened a few days ago, I took out my slim camera from my pocket to record their beauty. Hopefully, I shall bring them before my readers’ eyes.

Coldness and drizzle these days cannot harm the delicate small tomatoes. They stand firmly as they are and may survive for a few days more. See the bottom collage photo.

兩歲半玩的魔術

艾莉最近在電視看Tricky TV裏面的小型魔術，受感染，創作魔術自娛。

艾莉將一張A4紙慢慢用手撕開。她把手中已撕開的紙碎放在嘴巴前鼓起一口氣大力唱一唱，然後隨手把紙碎拋開，那麼樣她感覺上紙碎巳經被變走了，心裏自然開心，也很陶醉，連旁觀的我也很欣賞她的魔術演繹。

Abby’s Art Gallery (2)

原來在阿比眼中的美女是這樣子的─高低眼，特厚唇，面腫脹。美女的衣著特別艷麗，有幾許似韓國服飾。左前方的桌子上放著的是幾杯果汁似的飲品。背景的布幕正好表示這位姑娘是一位粉墨登場的演員。

另一幅畫中的丫環ｏ著嘴，有點驚慌模樣。她旁邊的植物，只見葉，不見花。畫的兩旁有黃色的「大吉大利」揮春和高掛的紅色炮竹對當時農曆新年十分應景。紅、綠、黃和橙色的雀鳥在屋簷上和地上盤據著。

阿比右上角那幅畫是廚房的景象，有大鑊火爐配備鑊鏟煎魚。最重要的當然是那些不可缺少裝著大批食材的巨型籃子呢！

Abby’s Art Gallery (1)

Abby has very great improvement in drawings after she has attended art lessons from a learning centre near by her home.

Here you can see her draw sharks, one of which looks like “Jaws” and the other, a hammerhead shark. Abby must have copied the sharks from pictures in a magazine and painted them in the right colour. She has made the sharks look vivid, but scary.

In another picture, her hens are colourful and beautiful indeed. The distant huts make the picture in good perspectives.

In the third picture, she draws interesting big-beaked birds. The birds are very nicely posed on branches.

A dog with walking shoes

What a strange sight to me that a dog wore shoes at San Po Kong! Today this lady was walking with her dog along the pavement opposite to the bus I was riding.

The dog walked alongside the lady in tiny white shoes. It seemed to me that the dog was walking with ease. It might be that it had long got used to the “idea” of wearing “fashionable" shoes. It was really amazing to see a fashion show for dogs in the 21st century!

Reflections from children’s pictures

Let children draw and tell you their stories through pictures.
Here you can see a four-year-old girl called, Jenitha, from India drawing what she sees every day in her neighbourhood.

What we can learn from her picture are the following:
(1) The great number of figures in Jenitha’s picture reflects that she lives in a crowded region in India.
(2) Every figure she draws carries a smile. Jenitha feels that her friends are as happy as she is.
(3) We can see the big earrings hanging from the ear-lobes of the children.
(4) Jenitha shows the third eye, “tilaka” or “tika”, the red dot on the forehead of a figure.
(5) Jenitha is bold and filled with confidence in drawing free-hand figures. Her drawings are very lovely. Just look at the black-and-white pictures.

Light source from the front

This is my first experiment of taking the portrait of Elly using the light that comes towards the camera. To take a better photo, I intend to place my camera nearer to Elly so that Elly’s face will not become dark when compared with the strong light source.

I like this photo because the profile of Elly’s face is lined with light and the light that floods on her left hand, the piece of bread and clothes creates good contrasts. Elly stops eating because she is watching a cartoon on television. Her cup of milk on the table reflects that Elly’s demand for milk is not strong nowadays.

Small pieces of Art

Beautiful cakes can become pieces of art. Here, you can see a decoration of different fruits such as a raspberry, a strawberry, a blueberry and a thin sheet of white chocolate on top of a small heart-shaped prismatic cake. It is a wonderful dessert after lunch or dinner.

Pao de Acucar

Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf Mountain 糖麵包山) is a peak situated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay (瓜納巴拉灣) on a peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. Rising 396 metres (1,299 ft) above the harbor, it shapes like concentrated refined loaf sugar.

The mountain is only one of several hills of granite and quartz that rise straight from the water's edge around Rio de Janeiro. A glass-walled cable car (teleférico), capable of holding 65 passengers, runs along a 1400-metre route between the peaks of Pão de Açúcar and Morro da Urca every 20 minutes. The original cable car line was built in 1912 and rebuilt around 1972/1973 and in 2008. The cable car leaves a ground station located at the base of the Babilônia hill, to the Urca hill and then to the Pão de Açúcar.

Passengers must take two cable cars to reach the summit. The first ascends to the shorter Morro da Urca, 220 meters high while the second ascends to Pão de Açúcar. The Italian-made bubble-shaped cars offer passengers 360-degree views of the surrounding city. The climb takes three minutes from start to finish. Departures are available every 20 minutes between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm and the adult fare is 44 Reals ( for the whole way to Pão de Açúcar.

Inside a plastic tube

Only Abby and Elly in their small sizes can climb into such a plastic tube at a playground and sit comfortably inside. For us, we can squeeze in it, but cannot sit up straight. For some time at play, this tube-like structure becomes the temporary home of our grand-daughters. It is waterproof and colourfully red. It opens at two ends, so it is well- ventilated.

What were they doing?

In the top left photo, Abby and Elly seemed worshipping.
Below it, Abby was sitting with legs crossed.
In the centre photo, Elly was happy to see me taking photographs.
In the right-hand-most photo, Abby closed her eyes to show her short nap of “a few seconds”.