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Hello

Thank you for reading my blog.

I have started a new blog to focus on my photography.

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Thank you

My short shopping outing

I went to Perth to buy a new camera bag on Saturday.

The bag, which I was after (Osprey's new Ultralight Camera Case), turned out to be too small to fit my camera (the camera bag looked quite small, and it would only be good for a mirror-less or small entry model DSLR).

So, I cycled around a block and came back.

Happy New Year 2015

Perspective

We were all saddened by the loss of people's life as a result of the Sydney siege early this week. Then, there was another news of tragedy at the school in Pakistan.


Our students had their first photo exhibition at a local gallery last week.  On the wall of the gallery, we put an information sheet to describe what photography means to us. On this, I wrote,  

"through photographic images, we can experience a perspective of those behind the lens, which can help us to learn and to see the world differently. By learning how other people see, we can be more forgiving and tolerant towards those having different views and values in life. I believe this is the biggest benefit of students learning photography at school".

What I scored today

To finish off my holiday, my friend and I went to do a treasure hunting at a clearance sale of a local outdoor gear whole seller today.

I bought two pairs of trekking poles at a super bargain price for start (I think buying a piece of aluminum tubing at a local hardware store would have cost more). 

I also got a bag of tent pegs which I have been thinking to replace my old Macpac original pegs (they bend easily).  I believe that the set of pegs was for a tent that they used to sell, and I only paid for a couple of dollars for a bag of ten.

The last items that I bought were a few pairs of merino wool hiking socks and base-layer, and again they were very very cheap.

What a score!

Richard Avedon at the Art Gallery of WA

I went to see an exhibition of Richard Avedon's work at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

I thought a photo of a female model standing in front of elephants was interesting. The model looked very graceful in a beautiful dress while elephants had a chain on their legs, and they were looking rather sad. The animals had lost their wildness and freedom while the model stood with her chin up with her pride and elegance.

I don't know what the photographer's intention was, but to me, the image was showing an ugliness lying behind beauty. Something we tend to overlook in our society. 

I must say other images didn't appeal to me much partly because of a terrible lighting that the gallery had set up. Almost every image had a spot light at it from a wrong angle and wrong height I guess, which was creating a terrible reflection not only on that image but also onto the image sitting next to it.

I moved left and right like a crab facing an enemy fish to find a better angle of attack, but my effort was fruitless. How I am meant to enjoy an art work if I just can't see the image properly?

Anyway, I picked up two brochures before I left the gallery, and it was ironic that these looked far better than what I saw in the exhibition.

カレーパン

Who would have thought we would be able to eat an authentic Japanese curry bread in Perth?

Not only kare-pan, you can also buy yakisoba pan and cream pan as well, thanks to the cafe / bakery called "Mighty Manna" in Southlands Shopping Centre.

They were so yummy.

Banzai!

As boring as the Japanese soccer team

Like the those wold cup matches that the Japanese national team played, fishing was slow.

After hours of fishing in a cold river, I only scored two fish. Although, one of fish was OK fish, and it pulled heard. So I guess it was more exciting than watching how the Japanese side played at least.

Scoring two points which was as much as what our highly paid, overly confident, yet still very incompetent Japanese soccer players got in this world cup tournament.

In my opinion, they played without passion, courage, and creativity. They were deserved to get knocked out from the tournament after the group stage, I think.


久々に釣りに行きましたが、サッカー日本代表の試合運びの様に全く退屈でした。

何時間も色々と動き回り、やっと２匹。こっちへ行っては駄目。あっちへ行っては駄目。まるで、ちょこまかボールを蹴るだけでの日本の横パスサッカーと同じです。

日本代表の試合、勝ちへの執念も感じられなければ、上手くいかない攻撃のパターンを変えるクリエティビティーも無し。ノロマでパスも繋げられないお山の大将をベンチに下げる勇気も無し。グループステージで敗退は、残念ながら妥当な結果でしょう。

Car wash

We took our old car to a car wash before selling it to our friend.

I remember that the last time I went to a car wash was with my father when I was little. Since then, I have owned a few cars, but I never washed my car at a car wash. Come to think of, I have never washed my last car at all while it was in my possession for four years.

Anyway, it was quite interesting to be in one of those, so I took a few snaps.


我が家の古い車を売る前に洗車に行ってきました。

子供の頃に父の車で行ったきり、洗車マシーンというやつの中に入った記憶がありません。という事で、遊園地のアトラクションに乗る感じで結構テンションがあがりました。

あっという間に車が綺麗になって、しかも、たったの２０ドル。今まで蛇口からホースで洗っていた自分がバカでした。

EOS-M2のCMを真似して洗車マシーンの中から数枚スナップした写真です。

And, here is my new car which arrived a few days ago.

数日後、新しい車がやって来ました。ハイブリッドのカッコいいやつです。

Happy New Year

May it be a great year to us all.

明けましておめでとうございます。

Please bring back our clean ocean instead

The last week, the IOC announced that Tokyo is going to host 2020 Olympic.

During the IOC's meeting in Buenos Aires, the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe made his final presentation to win the bit.

During his presentation, he made his claim that the situation at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station is now under control.  He promised to the world that the radio active water has been contained within the plant, and the contaminated water is not leaking out to the ocean.

Anyone, who has been following news of the power plant since the accident in 2011 and having a bit of common sense, knows what the Japanese Prime Minister was saying is untrue. 

Even Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), who is responsible for all human errors which caused the 2011 accident and all other stuff up to follow after that, now admits that the radio active water had made its way to the ocean. They say that the contaminated water is still flowing out to the sea as we speak. It is just so timely that they announced this a week straight after Tokyo winning the bit to hos the game though.

Fishing on the Tokyo Bay 2010

It is pretty clear that TEPCO not only can't stop the radio active water leaking from storage tanks on the ground, but they now have to deal with the underground water being contaminated. The radio active water is silently traveling underground and is gradually seeping straight out to the sea, and the company got no effective way to solve the problem at this moment.

Scientists and researchers continue to catch highly radio active fish in the area. If the Prime Minster really believes that the crisis is over, then he should be getting those fish on his dinner plate to back up his claim.

I don't know about how other Japanese people feel about this, but I am not in the mood of jumping up and down to celebrate the news of the 2020 Olympic game. Tokyo won that because of Mr Abe's lie anyway (at least it feels like that to me), and above all, I believe that there are other far more important things that Japanese people and government have to deal with first.

In stead of spending money on things like media advertising, creating an Olympic mascot, and making those crap merchandise with its face on it,  money can be spent on the development of more efficient and safer renewable energy source.  In stead of spending money on building new stadiums, money can be used to build new hospitals and research centres for those who have been exposed radiation from Fukushima power plant. There are still countless number of people living in temporary housing.

I don't care much about the Olympic.   I would rather get our clean ocean back instead.


２０２０年に東京にてオリンピックが開催される事に決まりました。日本にとっては東京にオリンピックが来る事は喜ばしいことの筈ですが、僕は、両手を広げて万歳三唱という気分にはどうもなれません。

阿部首相は、プレゼンの中で「福島の問題は、コントロール下にある。汚染水の海への流出は完全に食い止められている」と笑顔で言っていましたが、とんだ嘘っぱちです。汚染水は今も海に流れ出ているし、東電には、それをなんとかする技術もない。

オリンピックに使うお金があるなら、原発を先になんとかしてほしい。しょうもない五輪キャラを作って、そのキャラのグッズを沢山作って、オリンピックが終われば、全てゴミの山。そんなものにお金を使うなら、風力発電の風車をもっと建ててほしい。被爆した子供たちの将来のために、最新の医療機器がそろった病院を建ててほしい。

嘘をついて勝ち取ったオリンピックなんていらない。それよりも、みんなが安心して泳げて釣りが出来る綺麗な海を返して欲しい。

A small rock fish that I caught on the Tokyo Bay in 2010

Is it already spring?

We had a lovely weather on Friday and Saturday. It was warm and almost felt like winter was over. Even our plum tree at school has started blooming some flowers.

Fishing was good again on Saturday as it was a week ago.  We caught a good number of fish including a couple of nice size ones.

Then, rain clouds came back on Sunday, and it became winter all over again. I was looking at the plum tree standing alone in the rain on the school yard today, and I felt that we need to wait bit longer before we can have a tea ceremony under the tree and do flower watching in spring.

 

My Saturday rubbish collection

While I was waiting for my friend to show up, I spent a bit of time to retrieve some rubbish from the river, and there were all kinds of rubbish that I found. 

My friends and I fish different places around Perth, and everywhere we go around the Perth metro area, we see a fair amount of rubbish on the river these days. I now use my landing net not only to land fish but also to put those pieces of rubbish in. Some of them are found in the water and others are left on the river bank or got trapped among tussocks after a high tide.

Apart form being an eyesore and epitome of stupidity and selfishness that some people seem to posses, I don't know how much of these rubbish will end up in a stomach of dolphins and fish.  Breams are scavengers, so I am sure that they will chew up a piece of plastic while they are crushing some crabs and mussels.

Anyway, the river goddess must have been watching me showing a good karma, because she let me catch one fish in the end.  It was the only fish we got on Saturday.

ここ数年、川で目に付くゴミの量が増えています。空き缶やプラスチックのゴミなど、子供の頃の東京の川の様になって来ています（まあ冷蔵庫や自転車などの大型のゴミはまだ見かけませんが）。

この１０年間でパースは経済的な発展をしましたが、その結果がこれです。川に住む魚やイルカに申し訳がありません。とても残念です。

背中にぶら下げているランディングネットは、魚を取り込むだけでなく、拾ったゴミを入れるゴミ袋としても機能しています。酷い場所だと、５分もあれば、ネットはすぐに一杯です。

Olivetti Valentine

I saw a beautiful typewriter at an antique furniture store in Mosman Park yesterday.

They also had a few nice pieces of furniture as well, although their prices were not something easily affordable with an ordinary teacher's salary. 

But then, beautiful things always cost more whether it is a type writer, car, chair, or fly fishing rod.

ちょっと覗いたアンティーク家具屋に赤いオリベッティーのタイプライターが置いてありました。

エットレ・ソットサスとペリー・キングというインダストリアルデザイナーが１９６９年にデザインしたヴァレンタインというモデルで、あのMoMAのコレクションにも含まれているそうです。

他にもカッコいい家具が数点ありましたが、どれも良いお値段。

家具にしても、カメラにしても、釣り竿にしても、やっぱりカッコいい物は高いです。

MoMA at the Art Gallery of WA

We went down to the Art Gallery of Western Australia to see the exhibition called, "Van Gogh, Dali, and Beyond" from MoMa of New York.　Here are some photos.

 
西オーストラリア美術館にて、MoMA所蔵の絵画や彫刻が見れる美術展が開催されています。先週行って来ましたが、その時の写真を数点。

Sea to Summit garage sale

A local outdoor gear company, Sea to Summit held their garage sale on last Sunday.

I picked up 8 pairs of Smart Wool socks at $5 pair at start. I got a few of these socks at the last year's garage sale, and I fell in love with them.  Feel soft and comfortable, so I got more this year.

I also bought a Smart Wool merino wool T-shirt for $20, but this was disappointing. Compared to my unbelievably soft, yet outrageously expensive "Seventeen.5 T" from iBex, it feels like wearing a piece of sandpaper. It is just too itchy for me to wear, so I might pass it to our dog who loves a piece of clothes to sleep on.

The T-shirt wasn't a good pick, but I am happy with a pair of merino bottom which I got for $30.  They are 3/4 length for some reason, and although I would preferred a full length one, a shorter length might be handy, if I am going to wear it on top of a full length merino bottom as an extra layer.

A few other goodies have been scored too, including a pocket trowel ($3) for going to toilet in the bush and a small folding kitchen sink ($2) to wash the dishes, vegetables and fruits, and of course a fly reel at a camp site.

As for the last year's sale, I am happy to picked up some treasures at such low prices.

Weekend city outing

I went down to the city this weekend to do some shopping. I took my bicycle with me as I was planning to get off a train at half way point, and ride home along a river. 

Brompton is a great bike for this kind of walk about (or ride about, I should say).  It doesn't take up space on the train, and I don't get told off when I walk into shops with the bike fully folded.

My Brompton waiting for a train

The reason I went to Perth was to get a cable to connect a digital camera and iPod and iPhone. 

We have been using a class set of iPad as workstations for our digital photography classes for the past few weeks. Students take photos during the class, drop images onto iPad, do some post shooting adjustments, and print out images.  

We have adopted this work flow initially as a way to deal with an issue of not having enough computers in the classroom, but it has turned out to be a good simple process for students to follow than stuffing around with computers.

Anyway, as some kids already got their own iPod or iPhone, I thought that it will be handy, if we can do the same thing with other Mac devices.

So here I was at the Mac store explaining what I want to do to those friendly Mac people wearing blue Mac T-shirts, reminding me of people working at the Disney Land. 

I was soon disappointed when those blue elves working for the magic kingdom were telling me that it is not possible to connect a digital camera with iPod or iPhone. 

Apparently, the process only works with iPad not with anything else.  With iPod and iPhone, photo images have to go to a computer first, then transfer the images to each device by synching through iTune, the process is so slow and inflexible to me.

I asked them why it works with iPad but not with other Mac gadgets. They said, they don't know.  It seems to me that Apple's hardware compatibility is just so elementary. 

Perhaps Apple has become too greedy, and wants us to buy all of their products including  those overly priced Apple specific accessories which only work on certain devices.

Didn't Microsoft got sued for something similar? 

Let's keep our rivers clean

I went to the upper reach of a local river today, and I was disappointed with the amount of rubbish I saw. 

Well, it will be OK for monkeys to eat banana and throw way banana peels on the ground. That is what monkeys do. We are human and we are supposed to be smarter than monkeys, so we should do better than that.

I found some discarded fishing line and empty packets of bait along with other kinds of trash like bear bottles, cans of energy drinks, so I sadly guess that some fishermen were responsible for the littering.

May be those guys should visit other places in the world where rivers are dead because of rubbish and pollution. Only then they can perhaps appreciate that we have lovely rivers where we can swim, paddle, fish, and eat what we catch.

 普段あまり行かない川の上流の場所へ釣りに行ったのですが、ゴミの多さにあきれてしまいました。人があまり歩かない場所の様で、誰も見ていないのをいい事に、ゴミを投げ捨てていくようです。

残念な事に、捨てられていたゴミに中には、釣り糸やエサの入っていたプラスチックの袋などがあったので、どうやら釣り人の仕業の様です。

サルは、食べたバナナの皮をその辺に投げ捨てます。同じ事をする人間は、多分サル以下です。

My catch of the day

My bycatch of the day saying, "Please keep our rivers clean"

"When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money" - Native American Wisdom

Hobbit on IMAX

My wife and I went to see Hobbit at a local IMAX cinema today.

We haven't been to the IMAX before, so we weren't sure if it would be worth paying extra money to see the movie on the IMAX screen.

Well, we loved the film which made me feel like packing my gear and go on a fishing adventure in NZ. We felt 3D and all special effects looked far better on the IMAX screen.  May be it got to do with shooting the film at 48fps, but everything looked smooth and realistic.

Anyway at the end, I told my wife that I won't like to see any 3D film anywhere else from now on.

話題のホビットをIMAXの映画館で見て来ました。IMAXのスクリーンで見るのは、今回が初めてでしたが、 ３Dの映像は、普通の映画館よりも大迫力。

IMAXは、通常の映画より４ドル高いけど、これからは、３Dの映画は他の映画館で見る事は無いかもしれない。

Pink, blue, and oragne

Fishing was slow but the sky was colourful this evening.

Canon EF50mm f2.5 macro