Australia Day / Chinese New Year

January 26 is Australia Day, which coincidentally also happens to be Chinese New Year this year. Every Australia Day, a few of the families on the street where I live go to a park nearby and have a get-together... a picnic and a friendly competition of boules (a form of lawn bowl). It's a nice, 'feel good' time attended by both young and old.

At events like these, I try to make use of the opportunity to take some nice photos. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't so great, the sky was cloudy and it even rained a little.

As you can see, I wasn't the only photographer on the scene... I did managed to capture some 'Kodak Moments' such as this picture of Geoff and Tim.

And these are the 2 pairs of finalists for the Boules Competition. And the winners were... Glynn and Lyn. It wasn't a windy day so the Australian flag you see 'blowing' in the wind behind the winners is actually being held up by another one of my neighbours, Nigel (standing behind the flag).

Chinese New Year in London

Thursday the 7th February was the first day of the Chinese New Year and I went down that weekend to London once again to see my friends Vinod, Annalise and Christine. It was nice to see what the Chinese New Year is like in London but Chinatown was waaaaay too crowded (no big surprise there). At one point, Christine and I literally couldn’t move as we were squashed in from all sides by the crowd.

In the evening, there was a traditional Chinese fireworks display – which basically meant it was really, REALLY loud! So loud, in fact, that a warning had to be given before the show. Chinese music was also heard playing on loudspeakers; songs that used to be played during the Chinese New Year when I was a kid. It was interesting to hear these same songs again, many years later in a country far away from where I spent my childhood.