First time in York: University of York and York Minster

Before I talk about my present adventures at York, I want to backtrack a bit and go to 19 October, 2007. When I first planned an ambitious biking trip from Edinburgh to York (which ended up with me and my bike on the train from Edinburgh to York and then me biking to where my friends lived).

Traveling My WAY!

The purpose of the trip was to basically visit my sister Vivan in York and the gang included me, Boris, James, Simon and Nikki. The University of York is unfairly amazing and pleasing to the eye. With green grasses across the campus and a mini lake running through the main campus. Here's us looking across the lake and admiring the campus scenery. (Boris should have his leg off my bike while posing.)

Vanburgh College (left) and Central Building (right)

Oooo, did I forget to mention all the ducks, swans, birds all over the campus? Apparently they were gifts from the Queen and there are plaques everywhere showing you the variety of ducks. I can sit here all day looking at ducks and do some contemplation of my own.

Contemplating (Should I cook you medium rare or medium...hmm)

I woke up early the next morning to capture morning life of York and the conclusion was there were many...

...Old Man and Dog

...Mist Over Water in front of Central Hall

...Birds on Fallen Leaves

Besides taking in the spectcaular river scenary, Cliffton Tower and The Car Park Incident, there was this pianist sitting at the South front of the York Minster. He basically had his soundboard open with strings and actions exposed and was playing several witty, light hearted music. The strength in his performance is his lack of facial expression and his cigarette that he lit but didn't inhale. The ashes was just tingling at the tip of the ciagrette bud while he played in a fashion that reminds me of the Hong Kong movie star Steven Chow 周星馳 or for that matter, Iu La Yin. I rarely give money to street performers, but he did it with such style that I had to applaude him with my pounds.

I was speechless for the first few minutes after stepping into the York Minster. I tried to look through my view finder but couldn't find the right language to present the magnificent beauty of the Minster. My apologizes to the wonderous craftsman, builders and bishops who forsaw the plan of York Minster for not representing the real beauty of the building. These are some of the pictures I took of the celestory windows inside the Minster.

This is a photo of the ceiling of the chapter house. It is actually much more 3D than it should be, but I had to lie on the floor and hold the camera up in order to capture the whole vaulting, therefore it has a plane quality to the whole strcture. Its vaulting system resembles that of the 'Crazy Vault' at Lincoln Cathedral. One can see white rose motifs on the roofing as well as all over the interior. This is because during the War of the Roses (1459-71), the Henry VI, House of Lancaster (Red Rose) was challenged by Richard, the Duke of York (White Rose). After 10 years of blood bath, the lads at Lancaster won over the rule of England and this ushered to the Tudor Dynasty. This differences can still be seen today in football matches. Lancashire's Manchester United - who wear red - and Yorkshire's Leeds United, who wear all-white.

My Donations to the Minster
Bless You!!

Vivian and Jayson then meticulously prepared us with a lavish dinner with 8 dishes with soup and rice. Starting from top left to bottom right, in order they are 蜜糖雞 (Honey Chicken), 濠油娃娃菜 (Chinese Lettuce), 金茹牛肉 (Beef Rapped Fungi), 清蒸魚 (Steamed Fish), 三椒抄牛 (Coloured Pepper Beef), 蒸水蛋(Steamed Water Egg), 豉油王蝦 (Soy Sauce King Prawn), 士多啤利骨(Strawberry Beef). And I figured one thing, no matter how hard I try, it is impossible to translate names of Chinese dish into English dish which sounds tempting and delicious.

The gang from left to right : Me, James Lai, Sharon, Boris, Jayson, Vivian, Simon, Nikki and Terry.

After dinner, Terry, Boris and I ventured out to the campus to capture some University night life. Turns out to be much more tranquil than the campus at Edinburgh. The photos are blurred because of the moisture and coldness in the air and my lens were fogged up.

Bridge Walk Towards Central Hall

Lone Figure: Boris on the Bike

Wentworth College

Looking at effects of interior lighting on walls:

Brief recap of the summer (Euro Part I)

For too long, I have neglected this site.
My apologizes to those who regularly view my blog and are left disappointed, but do allow me some time to tell you the happenings over this summer.

After my exams ended on the 14th May, I had my first ever Marathon experience on the 27th May.

I then went to London, stayed for 3 days and headed to Greece.

First stop in Athens is of course The Parthenon, and guess what, I met my relatives that I've never ever seen in my life on the doorsteps. The conversation went something like this.
Them: So what's your last name?
J: Lam
Them: Oh, us too!
J: ! Do you know Prof. Lam?
Them: Hmmm.. maybe..
J: My dad, and 2 of his brothers are math Professors
Them: Yes, the 3 Professors in the family, of course we know them.
So the lesson learned is that besides having a "boring family" (famous reply from my grandma when my mum tried to impress grandma that she was going to marry my dad.), having 3 Professors can help identify all the lost relatives out there.

Before I carry on with this summers discoveries, I just want to reverse time to 2005.
Something funny or embarrassing or stupid (the word put forward by my brother) happened the first time I went to Greece. I was 19, fresh and innocent (I still am) and it was my senior high school trip to discover the origins of Western civilization (no, it is not America nor have anything to do with the English language).
One of my Taiwanese friend's birthday occurred on the 3rd day of the one week Greece trip. And we decided to celebrate by not clubbing, but just chilling inside the rooms. We ended up playing heart attack (a great Cantonese game called Kum Min Toy) + punishment of vodka drinking.
We played the game in the balcony and woke up the trip supervisor Mr. Chong. Thanks Mr. Chong for buying us airplane tickets that night and sending me back to London the next morning, while my mum flew over from Hong Kong that day.
So I vowed to take revenge on Greece, and so I went back and tried to tear down the columns.

Next stop was Santorini and it can be summed up with 3 words.

Quarter bikes

Gyros....and Chill

The rest are just some more photos from Greece:

Who shall fall first, the tree or me?

You will not believe how many cats and dogs there are on the island, and I still haven't figured out who left them there.
(I'm thinking of the song Beyond the Sea but sung/barked by a dog when I see this photo)

I don't know how to put it (yet), but I just love the color and combination (for now).

Quarter biking in the dark

Goodbye Greece, till next time.

Oooo.. I love receiving postcards and sending them in return when I travel, I hope they all reached their final destination.


Finally, a BIG THANK YOU to Vincent & Yuki for organizing this amazing Greece trip, and also Adrian, Cherry, Lisa, Mercedes, Winston, Tony and Ziqi who were my best travel companions ever. We will miss you Adrian (only during poker games : P).

Last Friday Part II

This entry will be all about architecture, museums and artworks, so Come On In!!
The first stop is The Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion. My friends whom I spent a summer with in Echigo Tsumari people, be prepared.This is the entrance to the museum. I had a weird deja vu feeling when I got near the building. White ceilings, huge panel glass windows that covers the exterior of the museum.

The feeling of familiarity grew even more as I set my foot inside the building. Imagine yourself standing in a lift, and there are two mirrors against each other. If you look at the mirror, you will get infinite reflections. Well, this works in a similar way, only the mirror is replaced with atransparent glasses having gentle and slightly distorted reflections of visitors in the museum. Hence, you have a feeling that there is a lot of people inside the museum, but it is never crowded because they are simply silhouettes, almost like a person behind a curtain. So the place remains spacious but filled with the warmth of people.

Designed by the same architects who created the 21 Century Museum of Contemporary Art Kanazawa, both building has a heavy emphasis not only on the use of light and space but also the the transparency of the building. Barely able to tell whether this door is opened or closed, the transparency desolves the boundaries between what is the inside and what is outside of the building allowing interior space to combine with the exterior.

After visiting the Glass Pavilion I walked across the street and attended the "Power of Art" talk on Turner in the The Toledo Museum of Art.

J.M.W. (Joseph Mallord William) Turner (British, 1775-1851)
The Campo Santo, Venice
Oil on canvas, 1842

A painting about the beauty of Venice and it's eventual decline. The elegance of the Folucha (the double winged boat) slowing gliding through the water in the still water contrasts with the white washed structure in the left which is actually a prison, the floating trash (no, they are not ducks) in the front to the left of the condolas and the dark gloomy condolas themselves. After becoming a success in the public, Turner would sometimes paint in the museum. He would have canvas hanging on he wall early in the morning, paint non-stop and not talk to anyone or walk away from the painting to gain a wider perspective. He knew exactly what he was going to paint and how he was going to paint it, so he just stood in the same position and awe the crowds surrounding him by his powerful paint brushes.

William van de Velde the Younger (Dutch, 1633-1707)
Ships in a Stormy Sea
Oil on canvas, 1671-72

A painting that captures the excitement and danger at sea in the 17th Century. The spotlight ship on the right is a light Dutch fishing vessel called a kaag. It shows one of the most difficult sailing maneuvers in which vessel sails into the wind directly as it can without causing sails to flap uselessly. An image showing and boosting Dutch prosperity and the endurance of her people, this would have stirred up the pride of the Dutch viewers. I find it very interesting to see people on the larger ships on the left having a tough time barging through the sea, it almost seems that they are giving up their mother boats while the Dutch sailors battle the raging sea.
Having painted a total of 19,000 pieces, J.M.W. Turner was a master of watercolors. However, in his early days, he did made studies of a lot of the masters works. Yet, he would not settle on merely copying the masters. He would use his own painting techniques and improve the composition and lighting of his paintings to outrun the masters because he could. This was one of the painting he studied and you can compare it with Turner's
Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen endeavoring ti put their Fish on Board, 1801.

John Martin (British, 1789-1854)
The Destruction of Tyre
Oil on canvas, 1840

This painting reminded me of The Day After Tomorrow where a surge of water destroys the buildings of a great civilization and men are rendered helpless against the forces of nature. The wave on the right has an almost skull-like feature, intensifying the unforgiving devastation brought upon mankind. Helpless and half in the water, the soaked woman can only raise her hands in despair which is only answered by the blazing lightning that pierces through the blood red sky.
Gustave Doré (French, 1832-1883)
The Scottish Highlands
Oil on canvas, 1875

So I was walking around with my camera sticking out and snapping pictures, then this security guard yelled "Sir, you are standing to close to the painting" while I was like a meter away from the painting. So I walked up to him and tried to engage in a friendly conversation. Turned out he wasn't any grumpy old man. He gave me a brief tour around the museum and showed me his favorite painting. Yes, the Scottish Highlands! So my plan is to go to the highlands and find a spot that looks like this painting and snap a few shot for him : )

Dale Chihuly (American, 1941-)
Chandeler: Campiello Remor #2
Glass, blown, cut, assembled, 1996

What can I say, this is just pure beauty by rearranging 243 individual pieces of blown glass and forming this magnificent shape. If you are having a deja vu feeling, well, you probably have seen it at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Frank Gehry & (American, 1929-)
Center for the Visual Arts, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio, USA
1992

I ended the my Toledo museums experience by admiring the facade of the Frank Gehry building and wondering why this is so different from the rest of his works.

Last Friday Part I

So there I was, scratching my head off trying to think of a t-shirt design for a pizza company, yeah, it hurts your head more than when you are studying economics. Take a moment and draw a sketch of a t-shirt design for Pizza Hut that has to be fun, hype, fresh, young; convey the tastiness of a pizza. It's hard eh? For a non-shopper like me who rarely goes shopping for anything and not to mention window shopping, it was tough. But working in Tailford Mitchell helps open up your mind and makes you pay more attention to your surroundings. In a way, it feels like living through the best trip in my life to Echigo Tsumari in Japan last summer again. So I decided to pay a visit to the museum after work.

But before we go to the Toledo Museum of Art, here's what me and B.O.B saw before lunch last Friday.
We saw an excavator (yes, they are called excavators) tearing down the building with an artificial arm before lunch. We stayed at the site for 45 minutes hoping they would tear down the façade in front of us.

But I took my chances at Tony Packo's and tried the M.O.A.D. (pronounced Mo-Add), Give it a guess and I will give you the answers to what exactly is M.O.A.D. at the end of this entry.
Here's a clue, it was huge and hard to digest, but not all mothers are huge.

After lunch, it was torn down so all I have is a before and after picture of the site. It is rare for Hong Kongers to see the process of a building being torn down like that, what happens is it will be surrounded by bamboo scaffoldings. Yes, bamboo scaffolding, and yes they are so sturdy that nothing happens when typhoon number 8 at the speed of 63-177km/h hits Hong Kong. Anyways, a green net is wrapped around the scaffoldings so you can't make out what's happening inside the construction. This also keeps the dust within the confines of the building.
Farewell, Theo's Taverna.


Then at 4pm, U.S. Brig Niagara passed through the Martin Luther King, Jr., Bridge. I won't give you a history lecture, but here are some interesting facts.
- It was sunk deliberately in 1820 so that she would be preserved.
- In 1913, it was raised for restoration
- Won the Battle of Lake Erie in 1812
- flew a flag that reads "Don't give up the ship"

Entertainments : )

7/18
Travis Concert at Clutch Cargo, Pontiac, Michigan.




First thing I heard at the entrance was "... but the grass is always greener on the other side, neighbors got a new car that you wanna drive..." and I was naturally high, or maybe it was that booze driving on the way. (Is my blog being monitored by state troopers? Me no speak English, me type only, me love Bushy.)

7/19
Concert at Nick & Jimmy's.


Friend/Colleague/one of the bosses of mine took me there to listen to his friend play. "He shoot the sheriff" was the only song I've heard of, but it was a great night because 1) it was live music, 2) they had great pizza, 3) there were drunken college girls at the bar and I had my stealth camera. [Photos in private collection album]

7/20
VIP tickets to Gin Blossoms Concert by the Promenade Park, followed by Voodoo Libido's performing at Tony Packo's Cafe.


Those two were only imaginary concerts because someone dropped the ball at the last minute and we were too late to make it on time. How can you miss out on your dad's concert, senor JR? So instead of trying the M.O.A.D. (Mother of All Dogs) at Packo's cafe, we headed to Mickey Finns Pub and listened to some Indie rock by The Hat Company and Homeville Circle. Apparently, Tony Packo is a son of a Hungarian immigrant and he came up with the idea of a Hungarian hot dog. There was no such thing as a Hungarian hot dog back in Hungary, but it drove the Americans crazy with the chili sauce which I have yet to try. I wonder when Chinese will come up with a cheap, convenient food product that could have a name of its own and be loved by everyone in the city (No, not Magic Wok. No, not fortune cookies, they both don't exist in China.)

7/21 1.30am
Steak 'n Shake


Had a disappointing Triple Steakburger Sandwich at Steak n' Shake, even a junior bacon cheeseburger at Wendy's is a lot bigger. Excluding my mum and "chicago", I saw the first Chinese lady. She was having some action under the table with the white American dressed like those wanna-be Hog (Harley Davidson Owners Group) sitting opposite her. Not a good sight, I hid my camera in case JR wanted to take a picture of them.

7/21
I want my sushi back!

One of those typical Saturday mornings. Slept late, wake up in the morning in another person's house, head back home, sleep again. Then spent the day fishing with B.o.B's family. Didn't catch any, but hey, I wasn't really into catching a fish and not cooking it or eating it raw. Had dinner at the St. George's Festival, where they have a poor camel who clearly preferred the desert more than kids jumping on and off of him for 3 consecutive days.


7/22: Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio.

I'll hit you with a list of what we did.
Wicked Twister - Mo lost his voice after the first ride.
Power Tower - 2 chickened out, you know who you are.
Gemini - One of those very few times that it is normal for 2 guys to hold their hands.
Mean Streek - Imagine a vibrator, but it's in a shape of a cart and you sit inside it. My neck still hurts.
Thunder Canyon - I tried my best to not get soaked...
Snake River Falls - ...and gave up.
Magnum XL-200 - Wow
Maverick - WOOW
Millennium Force - WOOOOOOOOOW
Dragster - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (...lost my voice and the ride only lasted for 17 seconds)
Oh, I also tried what JR claimed to be one of the best fries in America. I agree......... NOT.

Thanks CH, B.o.B, Rennie and her family, JR, Mo, Chad, Ron for an amazing week!

Did I mention I just went to watch a baseball game last night? And there's going to be the Great Lake's Crew Concert tomorrow? Oh, there's also a basketball rim in the office where I work, and of course the crazy people at work are...well, crazy.