Episode 80 - Bridge in Foggy City

This is the Nusamai Bridge at Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan.

I travelled by car in Hokkaido in the 2003 summer and arrived at Kushiro on the fourth day of my journey. Kushiro is a city in the north eastern part of Hokkaido. After parking the car at the hotel, I decided to take a walk around instead of by car, as the GPS system was not functioning smoothly inside a city with high rise buildings.

My hotel was situated near to the Nusamai Bridge and I took this picture on my way out.

It looks as if I took the photo at the evening time. In fact it was only around 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon. It was then very foggy and all the street lights were turned on. Hence, this evening feel photo.

The Nusamai Bridge is one of the 3 landmark bridges in Hokkaido. It was first built in 1889 and has been rebuilt for many times since then. The present one is the fifth generation and was completed in 1976.

On the other side of the river is a sea-food restaurant, in which I and my family enjoyed a yummy Hokkaido "long-legged" crab dinner that evening.

Episode 79 - White Cattleya : Huge Flower Buds

The flower buds of the White Cattleya are still developing.

The length of a bud is over 5 cm now!

The buds are heavy and one of them has dropped down a bit. Usually I will set up a stick next to the flower stem to support it. I need not do so this time as the bud rests safely on a leaf.

It is not difficult to keep a cattleya and make it blossom. What is required is to stick to some basic rules. However, the information as provided by local flower sellers on keeping orchids is usually insufficient and misleading. Some orchids die within a month after the purchase due to incorrect treatments.

I will share my experience on keeping cattleya in future posts.

Episode 78 - Red Bridge, Green Tea

This photo was taken at Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan.

Uji is located in the south of the Kyoto City. It is one of the cities along the Nara Line which runs to and fro Kyoto and Nara. I like to travel on this railway line as there are a number of points of interests along it. Usually, I will board the train at Kyoto Station in the morning and stop at Inari for one hour or so. I then board the train again and stop at Uji for a lunch break. I then board the train again to Nara and spend the whole afternoon there before returning to Kyoto.

The red bridge in the photo is situated near to the city centre and the various historic sites where the last episode of the great Japanese fictional work Tale of Genji was staged. The bridge flies over the Uji River and merges harmoniously with the surrounding mountains. If you visit Uji during Easter holidays, you will be able to see blooming sakuras along the river banks.

Next to the red bridge is a temple called Byodoin. It is said that archaeologists dug up some important national treasures in the vicinity of the temple.

Uji is famous for tea. There are many tea shops along the street leading to the red bridge and Byodoin. I like to buy some tea here as souvenir for my relatives and friends. The shopkeepers are kind and hospitable to visitors. They will invite you to take a seat inside the shops and serve you with their famous green tea.

Apart from buying Japanese tea, my family used to stop at one of the cafes in the same street to have some delicious green tea ice-cream.

Episode 77 - White Orchid in bud

The White Cattleya will be flowering in the next few days.

Regrettably, the flower bud in the first flower shoot eventually dried up as the 2nd flower shoot (see photo above) took away all the food.

To my surprise, the orchid will be blooming with 2 flowers in one shoot this time!

Episode 76 - Goldfish Tank: How I keep it clean

Cleaning a goldfish tank appears to be an annoying task to most goldfish lovers.

Goldfish produces a lot of waste everyday and the water is clouded easily.

Belows are some knowhow on how to keep a goldfish tank clean:

1. Keep reasonable number of goldfish: Less fish = less waste

Don't keep as much fish in a tank as most of the pet shops do - they can do it because they clean their fish tanks a few times everyday.

I keep 8 goldfish in a 68 L aquarium - it is already over-crowded. If you keep less fish, you should make suitable adjustments to what I said below.

2. Feed the goldfish once a day: Less food = less waste

I feed my goldfish with pellet food once a day. I find that it is worth to buy some high quality pellets as a small amount of them already contains sufficient nutrition to keep the fish in good health. I feed only one teaspoon of pellets everyday (the amount will be increased as the weather gets warmer) to my goldfish and they are in perfect health condition - the owners of the pet shops will of course be very happy if you feed your fish three times a day.

The pellets to be fed should not exceed the amount that the fish can consume within 3 to 5 minutes.

I feed the fish with live food, in addition, once a week. Occasionally, I treat the goldfish with slices of vegetable leaf.

3. Filtering System: Effective Filter = clean water

I use one small overhead filter: The filter includes the following filtering materials (in order of position): 1 pack of bio rings, 2 layers of cotton, 2 packs of active carbon, 2 layers of cotton. The filter system has 2 filtering tasks:

a. The materials themselves can physically filter out the waste of the fish; and
b. The bacteria develops in the system can turn the toxic chemicals (which also clouds the water) into harmless chemicals.

Many people focus their attention on the first task only and keep on changing / replacing / cleaning the filtering materials. They end up facing a clouded aquarium helplessly.

It takes time to develop the good bacteria: Hence it is important that you don't (or not often and not thoroughly) wash the bio rings and you only clean half of the filtering materials each time: I clean the first 2 layers and the last layer of cotton and one pack of active carbon in the first week and clean the other pack of active carbon and the last 2 layers of cotton the other week. You should never replace or clean all the cotton in one go. Wash the cotton only with the water you pump out from the tank for replacement.

If the water condition does not have much improvement (you have too much fish and not enough bacteria), you should adjust the cleaning method:

Remove the second last layer of cotton once every three days. Move the last layer of cotton up as the second last layer. Add a the cleaned layer of cotton as the last layer. Do not touch the bio ring, the active carbon and the other layers of cotton. Let the fish wastes pile up in the filter. It's the only way to develop a large number of good bacteria in the filtering materials.

Replace one pack of active carbon after 45 days (or within a shorter period if you are rich) and the other pack another 45 days (or less) later.

If this is your first time to use a filtering system, you have to clean the filtering materials (but not the bio ring if it comes with bacteria enhancer. Some active carbon can be used direct.) thoroughly before you put them into the filter. Before it develops enough bacteria, the aquarium will still be clouded for a few days (or one week or more). Do not be tempted to replace the filtering materials - the owners of the pet shops will be very happy if you do so.

4. Air Pump: Air bubbles = dissolution of waste

It is very important that you have an air pump for the aquarium. It is wrong to assume that the filtering system can bring in fresh water with enough oxygen. Apart from providing enough oxygen, the air bubbles created by the air pump can assist to dissolve the goldfish waste such that they can be filtered easily by the filtering system. It also assists to develop the good bacteria.

5. Change Water: More clean water = less dirty water

I change one-tenth of the water once every 3 days.

Episode 75 - Fox Attraction (V)

I purchased this earth bell at the Inari Shrine at Kyoto, Japan.

The earth bell is in the form of the head of a white fox, the Messenger of Inari. The earth bell has a red string at the top so that you can hang it up or attach it to your belongings. There is a small piece of solid material inside the earth bell. Hence, the earth bell rings when it is swinging.

It is said that earth bells are used in Shinto ceremonies, for the purposes of obtaining blessings of the spirits. I do not know how to, and do not intend to, use the earth bell for this. It is now sitting quietly among other earth bells in my collection cabinet.

The white fox earth bells are probably only available for sale at Inari in the Japanese New Year's time as I did not see them during my other visits to the Shrine.


[For more fox attractions, please see Episode 1, Episode 6, Episode 8 and Episode 11]

Episode 74 - Season's Greeting

花開富貴, 萬事如意, 大吉大利, 豬年旺相!

Episode 73 - As time goes by

Photos of Nanjing Road in Shanghai, taken in 2002 and 2005 respectively.

The first photo was taken in early September, just after the summer holidays, whilst the 2nd photo was taken in August. This may explain why there were less people in the street in the 2002 photo. Apart from this, can you spot the changes in these 3 years?

This portion of the Nanjing Road is a pedestrian only street with artistic old buildings erected on both sides of the road. You can also see the big Fei Jia Shui here.

If you walk straight forward, you will reach the Shanghai Bund area, from where you can see the Yangtze River and the high rise buildings in Pudong.

Episode 72 - On Sticking

In a typical situation, applying the Yin Yang technique to unbalance an opponent comprises of 3 steps:

1. Take over the centre of the opponent;
2. Merge the flow of energy between the two bodies; and
3. Direct the flow of energy such that the opponent's energy moves outside his body.

The technique used in the 3rd element is called "Sticking".

The classics have a lot of discussions on how to achieve a good positioning and on what we should avoid in positioning our own self. Unbalancing an opponent involves the worsening of his defective position (those things that we are warned to avoid in the classics - it's good that your opponent has them all.) Once the opponent takes a bad position, it is easy to release the "air" out of the "ball". The uprooted opponent feels like adhering to the hands of the other party and cannot escape.

Sticking is the converse of Spherical Power. The latter is like the injection of air from within a ball. In Sticking, it is the contraction of air from within the ball, absorbing what is coming in from outside.

Episode 71 - Ryukin

This is one of the 4 Ryukins in my aquarium.

It is a goldfish of Japan origin. A typical Ryukin has a mouse-shaped head, a round body and short tail fins.

This Ryukin is in silver white with red patches. According to a specialist book, this colour combination is not natural. The red patches were created by adding some sort of chemical to the skin of the fish when it was young.

I purchased all 4 Ryukins in one go from a pet shop in Prince Edward. This fish was the last one I bought. As there were nearly 100 goldfish in the water tank of the pet shop, I was confused after choosing 3 of them. I therefore asked the shop keeper to assist and he picked out this one for me. It turned out to be the best (in terms of colour, shape, balance of the body and fins) of the 4 Ryukins I have.

Episode 70 - Second Flower

Episode 69 - First Flower

My blooming cattleya!

The first flower is 3 petalled and colourful. The petals of the flower are still extending so the flower will become bigger in the next few days. The other flower bud is already matured and will probably open in the weekend. I will post another photo when it does so.

The flower size is much bigger than those in the past years. When I first purchased this orchid, it was a two petalled plant. The position remained unchanged up to January last year.

As you may recall, I separated the old plant into 2 pots in mid last year. It took me quite some efforts to maintain the well being of the plants. This flowering orchid definitely repays my time in full!