Surrey

Exercise with a humming top

As I entered Green Timbers Park in Surrey yesterday, I heard this faint hum that got louder and louder as I walked along the Willow trail. Turns out the hum was coming from this gent doing his exercises with a humming top, up on a knoll overlooking the lake. You could hear the noise all over the centre of the park.

He was nice enough to let me take some photos while he went through his routine. The actual top was red and yellow, and the widest part of the red section had some holes and cavities that caught the wind as it spun. That section narrowed down to a metal section and then widened slightly to the bottom yellow blimp. He kept it spinning by moving two short poles connected with a short line stretched between.

He was good! He twirled, danced and did squats, all while keeping his top twirling and humming. When he tired, he signalled for me to try, but lazy old me declined. It looked interesting though. He told me the name of the thing, but it was in Chinese, and try as I might, I’d forgotten it by the time I was out of the park.

Anybody know what it’s called in English, other than a humming top?

#Mustlearntotakenotes.

Magnolia II

A couple of months ago, I went on a quest at City Hall to find out the name of this flower. I’d taken the photo back in the winter of 2010 and had no idea what kind of flower it was. My niece was painting it for her art class, and the instructor wanted to know what it was called. Apparently this variety of Magnolia is not common in Australia.

Luckily the security guards and gardeners at City Hall are great folks, and I had my answer in just a few minutes. I passed the info along to my niece and forgot about it.

After finishing her painting, my niece was nice enough to send me a print for Xmas. I’ve put the photo and the painting together in a quick diptych here to illustrate her work. Not bad, eh? I hope to see more of it as time goes on.

Heh, she’s looking for some animal shots now that she’s mastering flowers. Guess I’ll have to get a longer lens in the new year…….. (evil grin).

I’ve tried drawing and painting, and decided I have no talent in those arts. Kudos to those that can master the subtleties involved. A local artist with a lot of the skills is Rain Longston, and you can see some of her realistic painting work on Flickr.

Taxing Dilemma

This is a photo of the Pattullo Bridge that connects Surrey to New Westminster BC. It was build in the 1930’s and has served the connection well. It’s narrow by today’s standards, but at least it has 4 lanes, unlike the Lions Gate from Vancouver to North Vancouver which has 3.

Wikipedia has a nice page on the Pattullo Bridge here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattullo_Bridge.

There is a plan in progress to replace this bridge in the not too distant future. It handles an incredible amount of traffic in and out of Surrey, so it will be interesting to see how they handle that during the construction/destruction when it happens.

There are rumours that they’ll decide to toll the new bridge. That’s not sitting well with folks that live south of the Fraser River in Surrey, White Rock, Delta, Langley, Aldergrove, etc. As it is we’ll have tolls on the Golden Ears and Port Mann bridges by the end of next year and if those crossings are used, it will cost close to $1200-$1500 a year more for a daily commute into Vancouver, New Westminster, Burnaby, Coquitlam, etc. That’s a lot for a struggling family that has to commute to survive.

Not sure that’s really fair either, given that we’ve all contributed to the lovely rapid transit and bridges north of the Fraser. Now the only ones getting dinged extra to get around are the folks south of the Fraser, and they don’t have adequate transit either.

Matter of fact, they managed to re-built the entire highway up to Whistler and didn’t toll that. So…from my perspective, where there is a will there is a way. I’m just glad it’s not me making the decisions 😉

Scene from White Rock (actually, south Surrey ;-)

(If you live around Surrey, you’ll get the title, heh)

A couple of weeks ago I was out on a windy day and headed down to White Rock BC. I walked the pier there, and on the way back, snapped this shot. It’s one of the few I have that actually shows the ‘white rock’ on the beach.

That was one cold, windy day, but it was sure fun getting out. It was a day where I had to force myself off the couch and into the car.

Sure glad I did.

Working River

The Fraser River is a working river. Tugs, logs, freighters, containers and even fishermen are on the river pretty much all year round. I think I’ve only seen the lower Fraser Valley portion freeze over twice in my lifetime, and even then it didn’t freeze hard enough to stop traffic. It’s pretty much an open port all year.

I tried to catch a bit of that here, with the train going over the bridge and the tug churning along with it’s log boom, just on the other side. It would have been nice to catch some containers on the train, but you deal with what you have, right?

Further west on the river there are container ships and car freighters that dock at Fraser Port and Annasis Island respectively. Pretty much every car that comes to Canada from Asia, comes through the port on Annaisis Island. Fraser Port distributes containers across Canada and into the United States. It’s a busy port on a busy river.

SBofT Sizzles for Food Bank

The Surrey Board of Trade (SBofT) gathered up over 700 lbs of food and raised $2876 for the Surrey Food Bank on Wednesday night, during their annual Seasonal Sizzle event at EagleQuest Golf Course in Surrey.

Over 450 people attended what is one of the Board’s most popular events of the year, and the place was packed all night. People networked with new and old friends, and enjoyed a trade show put on by various services and suppliers as well.

It’s amazing what a few peeps can do when they get together to have fun and help out a good cause.

Unfortunately the need never ends, so the Surrey Food Bank is open for donations all year. Fortunately, there are also lots of other community events where we can help at this time of year. Keep an eye on the Food Bank website for more info.

Surrey’s New Council Now Sworn In

That was interesting. I watched the inauguration of Surrey’s new council via live stream tonight. Not as intimate as being there, but the view was great. That’s the first live stream event I’ve watched of the city council.

What was really good was that they had a separate feed for mobile devices. I tried it on my iPad and it came up without a hitch. Just had to press the word “Play” and off it went.

If they hadn’t had that working on the iPad, I would never have tried again to get it up on my iMac. Seems there was a strange looking, unnamed button you had to push on a regular browser to get the stream to go active – and no, the button wasn’t all that intuitive like on the iPad.

Still, it was good to see the folks getting started for another term. I wish them the best of luck. It’s a job not many are willing to take on and they deserve as much support as we can give them.

Slowing Down is Good

Sometimes it’s good to just slow down and take a look around you.

The other day at Green Timbers Park, I was walking across a bridge on my way back to the car, when I decided to stop and peer into the creek below.

For most of the summer, the creeks are pretty dry, but with the winter rains, they generally have at least a bit of water. There were a couple of spots that were intriguing, but this one really caught my eye.

I just loved how the blue sky reflected with the tree trunks in this pool of seemingly quiet water.

Made my day.

The Grove

A week or so ago, we had a nice clear, windy day, so I grabbed the D700 and headed out for a short photo walk at Green Timbers Park. I ended up spending about 4 hours traipsing around the park. as well as at the beaches at Crescent Beach and White Rock. It turned out to be a great day for beach pics, and I’ll post more of the days shots soon.

One kind of photo that I’ve been trying to get is one of a nice grove of trees. I’ve seen some that are black and white that look great, as well as many that look good in colour. I haven’t been able to match those yet.

This is my best so far. I think having a bit of blue sky poking though from the back of the scene helps give it a bit of depth. I might process this again using Nik’s Silver Effects Pro, just to see what it looks like in black and white.

Gradually catching up with the processing. Just a couple more outings to go and I’ll be current. Yay.

The End of NaBloWriMo? Now what?

National Blog Writing Month (NaBloWriMo) comes to an end today. After the last 30 posts, I guess the challenge now is to ensure the old blog doesn’t gather a bunch of cobwebs.

They say all you need to develop a habit is 3 weeks and consistent practise. I’m counting on that, and I’m pretty confident things will keep moving along here. They’ll evolve, but they will keep moving along.

That’s the feeling.