Zǒu Mǎ Kàn Huā @ Sydney & Brisbane - day 4

Day 4, last day in Sydney; so we will try to see and do what we wanted! We will be flying off to Brisbane the next day:)

I know there is one shopping complex I do not want to miss, not for shopping but to eat the famous Japanese ramen I heard so much about! the complex we wanted to go is Westfield Sydney Shopping Centre.

Again, from where we stay; we are able to walk there!

Westfield claimed they have 3,000+ brands and 1 million + products!  So who is counting??

Zǒu Mǎ Kàn Huā @ Sydney & Brisbane - day 3

Day 3, we found out that from where we stayed; we can walk our way to Sydney's Chinatown in 20 minutes!

I have read that Sydney's Chinatown is the largest in Australia. It is located in Haymarket, between Central Station and Darling Harbour. Unlike the Chinatowns in some other countries, Sydney's Chinatown has been relatively free of crime and hygiene issues.

I reckoned you have not visit Chinatown if you do not enjoy a "Yum Char" in this Chinese business district!

Market City, the outer walls of the original vegetable market, built in 1909, were preserved and restored as an example of Edwardian architecture. They were part of the original city markets—designed by city architect C.Broderick—which were bounded by Hay Street, Quay Street and Thomas Street. They were built to replace the old Belmore Market, which had failed because it was too far from Darling Harbour.

Zǒu Mǎ Kàn Huā @ Sydney & Brisbane - day 2

Day 2 at Sydney... we took the train to Circular Quay which is the hub of Sydney Harbour, the quay is a vibrant, bustling place with ferries leaving every few minutes to different parts of the harbour, including Manly.

On the southern side of Circular Quay is a walkway that leads to the Sydney Opera House and Royal Botanical Gardens; while on the northern side, a short walk along lovely landscaped walkways takes you to the Harbour Bridge and The Rocks.

Zǒu Mǎ Kàn Huā @ Sydney & Brisbane - day 1

Zǒu Mǎ Kàn Huā  走马看花 [to gain a superficial understanding through cursory observation; given only a passing glance at things; giving a hurried and cursory glance]

I finally made up my mind to use up my accumulated Qantas Frequent Flyer points, after days of deliberations we decided to spend four nights in Sydney then hop over to Brisbane catching up with Boon and Jackie; the last time we stay with them in Brisbane was 8 years ago!

Somehow it seems a bit silly that even by using up my 72,000 points, each of us still have to fork out NZ$ 600.00 for the trip! "Severing" relationship with the flying kangaroos is not cheap ;)

So on the 22nd of March we were at the Wellington airport staring at Gollum chasing rainbow trouts :)

Shooting SQUARE!

I miss shooting square format! In the 70s, most of the colour assignments for the paper I worked for were shot with a Hasselblad 6X6 medium format camera.

Before mega pixel didital, quality of a 6x6negative or transparency is unbeatable, especially if you need to crop your image!

Of course you can crop a 35mm negative in the darkroom, but you will not be able to match the image quality of a medium format negative!

In this respect, the square format of cameras like Hasselblad; Zenza Bronica C and the Mamiya C220 are perfect.  They all used 120 roll films and produced a 6x6 image. In the 70s and 80s, I have use all of them ;)

Nikon COOLPIX A, the New KING of P&S!

 Exactly one year to the day after Canon show off the G1-X, their "King Of P&S", a compact with large 1.5" CMOS sensor; Nikon decided to join the fray and launched their NEW COOLPIX A.

Nikon went one step further by shoving a larger (than Canon) 16.2 MP DX-format CMOS sensor into the compact body.

This sensor is designed without an optical low-pass filter, it should achieves consistently high levels of sharpness and image quality than conventional compact cameras! A mini Nikon D7100? The "A" come in black and silver guises.

NZ Roads Hard On Performance Tyres!

I need two new tyres for my Lancer VRX Sportback AGAIN!!

My work colleague Nigel Roper took this picture of me and my "new" VRX the day I got it.  It was 21/12/2010 – 11:41 AM :)  The Lancer already clocked 10,050 Km when I bought it, because of that I got a whooping big discount for it ;)