I found one of my old paintings...



...it made me smile

It's time to start feeding birds. I took some grease bars and rowed to the island. The weather was quite chilly, -5 degrees and windy. The lake is already half frozen. Straits, bays and shores are covered with ice. This autumn has been colder than last year. I was still rowing here on Christmas Eve 2008. Now it looks like the lake will be fully frozen much earlier.

"Ellei vuorilla ole suuria puita, leikkivät rikkaruohot kuningasta."



Valokuvatorstai

A while ago I received a postcard from Indonesia. At first, I didn't realise who sent it because the handwriting was somewhat artistic and as far as I understood, it was written in Swedish. Finally, I remembered a Swedish photographer. I met him somewhere in the middle of Siberia in a train while I was travelling to China. He was going to Australia by train (and by boat I think). Obviously, his adventure still continues...

I spent the weekend in the eastern Finland with my niece and her father. My niece started studying in the University of Joensuu this autumn. On Saturday, we decided to visit the Monastery of New Valamo. On Friday when we arrived to Joensuu, the ground was snowless but when we woke up (quite late) on Saturday, we had snow on the ground. Not much but anyway. The monastery's graveyard pictures posted on here.


( the snowy Monastery area... )

The rest of my Beijing pictures...



( too many more... )

If you had four days time to be a tourist in New York (in February), what would you do and which places would you visit?

Some Beijing Zoo photos...



( some more... )

In Finland we have only one subway line, it's in Helsinki. In Beijing there are eight lines, 148 stations and over 220 kilometres track. Eh, some diiference! I have travelled by subway in some countries but here I decided to become an experienced subway traveller.



( the subway... )

I had thought about purchasing a battery grip for my newish DSLR. Greedy dealers in Finland asked for 350€! It was too much and I tried to buy it via amazon.com but unfortunately they don't deliver hitech gears like that to a remote (communist?) country. Next thing was to ask for my friend to buy it for me and send it here. Then I figured it out to try if I could find the grip from China.

In Beijing I drove by subway to a suburb area. I knew there should be a big shopping mall full of camera dealers only. Again, taxi drivers didn't recognise the address and couldn't find the place although it was only a few hundred metres from the subway station where I had arrived. Probably they could not find the place because they don't speak a word in English or probably they just didn't know the address. The map is quite useful but when most of the addresses were missing or written in a different way, it didn't help me much. Finally, with the help of my local friend I found the place.

It is a photographer's HEAVEN! Especially, if you have Canon, Nikon, Sony or Leica(!). They had all the toys you can imagine for new and old cameras... for example huge lenses I had seen only on tv when watching sport events and lucky me - also the battery grip with lithium-ion battery for my camera. I paid a reasonable half price compared with the prices in Finland! The week in my hutong hotel cost the same money I saved buying the grip from here, heh!

I also looked for a certain binoculars for my Finnish friend. I found many binoculars but not the one I was looking for. What I noticed was that the same bins (Nikon) I have, cost about the same amount of money they cost in Finland. Camera gears were cheaper.

Last time I visited Beijing, I lived in a typical luxury hotel in the city central but this time I had decided to take a room from the hutong area. I booked the accommodation online. I didn't have a proper map to locate the place but I trusted on taxi drivers skills (mistake!). During an interesting tour around hutongs the driver stopped the car several times and went out for asking the way.... finally, he grinned and showed me a small sign "HOTEL". 



( the hutong... )

Greetings from Beijing!

Bad news first. I can not access Facebook from here :(
All I can get is a pageload full of Chinese letters??? Maybe I have to ask some help...

Good news... I can access Livejournal this time... if I can find a free wireless network or internet cafe or something. It's more difficult than I thought. I have my own laptop here but so far it's been useless without a working connection.

I've continued the adventure which started in spring 2009. I've visited several new places and the zoo has so far been the only one I visited already last time. I have some new panda photos! I've met some people I became familiar with last time...

I'm an experienced Beijing subway traveller! I know all the routes and can buy my ticket in Chinese which is - by the way - much easier than buying a bus ticket in Zurich! 

Time flies! It's Tuesday late night and I should return back home on Friday.

Got to go...

edit... "Sorry but you can't access Facebook in China"

I went to the summer cottage island and fixed the place ready for the coming winter time. Mörkö made its last cruise during this season, crawled on the dry land, went under a blanket and started hibernating. The whole place was so peaceful and quit. Cold wind blew yellow, brown and red leaves around. Small puddles were already frozen.

I may return to the island by rowboat or walk on the ice. I didn't put seeds yet into the bird feeder, I think my little friends can find food as long as it's not snowing.

I'm not an autumn person. It makes me sad. My sadness doubled when I found a dead weasel in a water bucket. A dead mole was floating there too. I assume the mole went into the bucket first and the weasel followed it. Unfortunately, they could not come out from the bucket. I'm sad for the mole too. I hope it was not the one who stored seeds under my pillow last autumn - after all, it's Ivan's cousin. I haven't told this to Ivan yet. I think I will keep the secret. :(

( By the request of certain girls from abroad, some autumn colour pictures under LJ cut... )

Varrella virran, Amatson-joki...

Valokuvatorstai

Today after work I packed my backpack and returned to the beaver's nest. I had about one hour left before darkness made shooting photos impossible. I was waiting for the beaver and after fifteen minutes I saw it! Then I lost it until I noticed it again after half an hour.
( got it... )

It was raining all day long. It didn't bother me much and I decided to make a short walk in Seitseminen National Park. I hiked about 10 kilometres. Paths were muddy, wet and slippery but I enjoyed the silence. I thought I was the only human in the whole park but no, I saw two girls carrying heavy backpacks in a rainforest. I didn't know such females exist!

I found another (not the same one I found last time) beaver's dam and a nest! I was lucky, I saw the beaver twice. It's a long time since I had seen a beaver. The nest is in the picture but I didn't catch the beaver itself. It was almost dark (used 3200ISO) and I decided to return some other time.

While driving back to the city, I saw a deer and a fox too!