matured coconut

This is a companion post to the young coconut that I wrote a while back. Growing up in Hong Kong one often saw street vendor that sell coconut meat and coconut water in the summer. For 50 cents you get a piece of freshly cut piece of coconut flesh from a mature coconut. You can also buy a glass of coconut water.
matured coconut (left) and young coconut (right)

I recently bought a mature coconut for the first time. Unlike young coconut a mature coconut is much more difficult to tackle.

manhole covers

In my trips to Japan I developed a habit of capturing images of manholes. To me they are the most overlooked and under-appreciated beauty of everyday objects. Of all I think the ones in Japan are most prolific and artistic.

wonton noodle 雲吞麵

You can find places that serve wonton noodle soup in any Chinatowns in most north American cities. Finding a good and authentic bowl is next to impossible. In my experience the best one can be found in Toronto and Richmond in Canada, only if you have knowledge or have done copious amount of web research well in advance. There may be only a handful of them that serve a good bowl.

photo diary - hong kong 香港 2010, part 1

In 2010 winter I took a trip to Asia that lasted over 3 months. Amongst the countries including China, Japan, and Thailand. I visited many cities in these countries including Honk Kong and Macau which are special administrative zones.

This is my second trip to Hong Kong since I left it in my youth emigrated to North America.

dusk at vactoria harbour

brunnhilde's power window

During the last trip home from the Columbia River Gorge Brunnhilde's driver side door power window failed. I was not going to pay the exhaubitant price of $250 of the entire window regulator assembly because Mecedes' cheesy design of the flimsy plastic slider. Automakers should know very well the stress imparted on the power window components after decades of building vehicles with power windows. It is unbelievable that Mecedes' engineer managed to screw this up, and yet have the audacity to gouge the customer with a $250 replacement assembly.

yep - this flimsy plastic slider fail leads to a $250 replacement regulator!

Most Sprinter owner who encounter the same failure opts for a home made solution which involves fashion a replacement plastic slider out of plastic closet wheel. I consider doing same but decided against it due to concern of it's reliability in extreme low ambient temperature.