bird’s eye view

There has been a bit of a purge going on in the Snow-Myyear household recently. Some parties seem to believe where we live is too small, but others believe we have too many physical belongings.

Either way, this series of photos documenting how some of the 100,000 Hong Kong-ites who live in less than 4 square metres do it, and calls for improved living conditions for them. I hope this family keeps the newspaper tablecloth even so.

obamania

A whole lot has happened since the ‘Yes we can’ moments, but I still love this photo: Barack Obama as a college freshman in 1980, posing for student photographer Lisa Jack at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. Barack, when it all gets too much – this one should still make you smile. It does me.

More in the series.

five years ago

Poh Poh’s hand-embroidered kebaya blouse, 30 years old but as beautiful as ever.

Georg Jensen meets some Malaysian leaves.

Mr. Snow, I can’t wait for the next five years!

guille and bel

After a foiled attempt last year, the Midgets and Associated Persons Society (MAPS) successfully convened in Stockholm for a thoroughly enjoyable weekend together. In between airport antics and chocolate tastings, we managed to squeeze in a bit of culture at the excellent Kulturhuset downtown. It houses everything from an art filmhouse,  a (comic book) library, dance and theater stages to kids’ space on the fifth floor for reading, drawing and playing, complete with a traffic light visible from street level so parents can see how busy it is before making the trek upstairs.

Appearances can be deceiving, as we found out when trying to decide what to do. The best poster was for Hyun-Jin Kwak’s frankly baffling Girls in Uniform photo exhibition, while Alessandra Sanguinetti ‘s photo biography of two Argentinian cousins turned out to consist of arresting images of a pampas coming-of-age friendship. The photo above was the first one she ever took of Guille and Belinda in 1999, and the forty photos on show follow them through to today. The contrast between the ultra-realism of rural life and the surrealist scenes the cousins created through their games is striking, as is the abandonment the girls quickly showed as they became more comfortable with the camera.

great white bear

Only polar bears can make curling for a snooze up on an ice sheet look so inviting.  I’ve had a thing for polar bears ever since Little Jacket and I went to this exhibition in London, which traced and tracked down every single polar bear that ever made it to the UK… stuffed. The photos of some of their final resting places (pub entrance, cobwebby attic corner) were a little sad, but some of the (very large) individuals who made it in bear-son were imposingly impressive.

Now Steve Kaslowski (who possibly has even more of a polar bear thing than me) has photographed several of them in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, in quite different, distinctly un-stuffed states. Visit here for a view that will transport you thousands of kilometers up North in an instant. Happy travelling!

awkward family photos

Awkward Family Photos is the latest addition to my RSS feed. This photo is entitled The Cling-ons.

It’s mean, really, but I feel justified in my giggling, if only because I know my own family album is full of similar gems with big glasses, big hair, and yes, day-glo clothes (so cool). I just hope I won’t find myself featured as an entry one day…

little house

As the site for many Myyear and Snow family (and friends) adventures, this little house has gotten quite a few mentions throughout My Year Online, but never the honour of its own photo.

This entry corrects that, and also serves to say that Mr. Snow and I will be going to visit again this weekend with Ma and Pa Snow. Mr Snow’s signed up for a 42 km cross country race… I think I’ll enter the waffle-sprint category.

hurtigruten

This shot was taken in between Christmas and New Year from Ma and Pa Snow’s Trondheim fjordside flat, which I always love visiting. As you can see, precious little snow then, though in the meantime it has arrived with a vengeance. I also really love watching the Coastal Express, or Hurtigruten, sailing past, though yesterday morning in high winds it actually ran aground in Trondheim harbour. No one was hurt, but all very dramatic!

icy new year!

This week it seems like other cities in Northern Europe are colder than Oslo. In the cool picture above by John Giles, a swan lands on a frozen lake in Yorkshire. So, a very happy – if icy – new year to you all! It seems like 2009 stole up on me while I wasn’t looking in December, and I didn’t get my 365 entries in as I had hoped (though I wasn’t too far off with 330). My Year Online got more than 15,000 hits in 2008, and is already over 16,000 today. Everyone keeps asking, will I continue? And if not, what will I do instead?

The good news for Myyear readers is that I’ve decided to keep going until I reach 365 posts, and then blog only about really cool stuff after. So don’t tune out just yet, and if anyone has any ideas of what I should challenge myself to in 2009 then let me know!

mama and baby hippo swim

I swear that despite this photo and this post, I don’t have a hippo thing going. But this series of photos of Berlin Zoo’s latest addition taught me more than I ever knew about how these creatures make their appearance on earth. This three-week old baby is not as stuffed-toy cute as Knut was, but then again that did all end very sadly.

What I learnt:

Weighing in at 40kg, the baby hippopotamus swims alongside her mother, Kathi. The calf is Kathi’s second baby and the first hippo to be born at Berlin Zoo in three years. Female hippos reach sexual maturity at five to six years old and have a gestation period of eight months. Baby hippos are born underwater and must swim to the surface to take their first breath. Calfs rest on their mother’s back when in deep water and swim underwater to suckle.