First Snow in London

Growing Pains

Remember the furry cygnets from Spring time? They're all grown up, and two have actually left the family.

Okay, perhaps we can go back and look at the pictures of them:
April - nesting
May - a family
July - scroll down the middle of the page.

Now that we've had a little refreshing of the past photos, maybe we should learn about what's happening now with the remaining one cygnet.

For a while this one cygnet had been tagging along with daddy & mummy swan. The Finn & the DDA seem to think that it's a female, that's why it's been pampered for all this while. But this morning, we saw the daddy & mummy, but not the cygnet.

Later during mid-day we saw the cygnet swimming alone. At first we wouldn't believe it, but it's been chased away by it's own parents.




Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.

This was a shot captured whilst the daddy was doing his chase, wings half raised and arched, charging straight ahead. The moment the cygnet took flight, the daddy took off and caught up, and in fact took a bite at its tail!

Poor baby... maybe it's time to grow up and live away from home?

London Art Fair

This Wednesday past the DDA obtained free tickets to the opening of the London Art Fair. The art fair gathered 100 art galleries from all over UK under one roof.

With an Italian friend, the DDA discovered interesting art pieces that inspires and also makes her marvel. One of the artist that's left a strong impression happens to be Italian. Alessandro Papetti. The first contact was with one of his painting of a street scape, not an ordinary street scape, but a street scape that captures motion. The second was a pool scene, which yet again captured the simple object of a person in a pool, the motion, the light, the object's movements were cleverly captured in an almost photographic manner.

Here are some of his art pieces at the De Twee Pauwen gallery. There's also a much detailed Biography on him from the Everard Read gallery.

Marjukka Vainio is the second artist that has made a strong impression in the DDA's mind. Her pieces are exhibited by the Nordic ArtWorks. Her medium is photography, and her objects of study are flowers, plants, and roots. The DDA found her work intriguing, especially pieces titled Tuomi 1, French Tulip, Viburnum Diptych. The simplistic composition and objects are cleverly captured with minimal colours or sometimes none. Yet her presentation techniques gives the final piece a dramatic effect.

The DDA is no art connoisseur, but these are her observations of the art works that's captured the artistic side of her. It was an inspiring evening filled with discovery, and catching up her Italian friend Stef.

Since that we're on about art, let's also get introduced to a colleague of the DDA's who is pursuing his photographic career whilst busy working full time with a publisher and being a father of 4. Julian Dams is preparing for an exhibition sometime this year. Look out for updates of the exhibition date on his website!

New Year Countdown

Like last year, we had a similar hook up with our HK friends for a New Year's countdown to this year. Despite the rather unstable internet connection due some unknown reason, we managed to get a group picture.

Of course the DDA & the Finn were virtually present, like last year!

2007

Happy New Year!!!

What do you do when you step into a new year? Or rather, what do you do on New Year's day? Here's what we do... a very good way to start the year - with lots of creativity and imagination!

Click on images to view detailed annotations:








As for sending off 2006, the DDA, the Finn and DDA's sister just had a peaceful night at home. The TV channel was tuned into BBC1 covering the New Year's countdown. Upon countdown all three toasted good bye to 2006 and welcomed 2007 with champagne. We also caught the fireworks at the London Eye on the horizon from our balcony. Pretty cool in fact - view of the fireworks minus the crowd and the pollution.