When you live in a big city with very tall buildings and millions of people, you find yourself focused on the immediate area around you, navigating the ocean of people, avoiding the cars and bike zipping by and keeping close watch on any impending danger that you forget to look up. I remember that we could always tell if someone was a tourist in New York because they looked up!
In a dense city like New York, having a rooftop or access to one is as precious as gold. It the place where you can ‘breathe’, where you can see a part of the sky that is larger than a matchbox and it is in many ways like going on vacation. So many things take place on New York rooftops, parties, hide outs, secret kisses, sunbathing, art, smoking, drinking and simply chilling. Oh, and also most films like to have their chases on at least one rooftop where the actor makes these impossible jumps from building to building. I was really caught by some colorful rooftops I saw on my last trip to New York, in this case, in Brooklyn.
This month’s images will present a stark contrast to those of last month. During the month of November I will revisit the magnificent city I called home for more than 15 years, the place where I began to independently refashion my life to who I am today. Once you have lived in New York, any New Yorker will tell you, the city tends to haunt you forever. To the city that never sleeps then…
city center, originally uploaded by ~mimo~.
Shanghai grows in front of our eyes at a staggering speed. When we moved here over 6 years ago, the SWFC (also known as the bottle opener), currently the tallest building in Shanghai was barely visible at its early stages of construction. Now, the new shanghai tower has risen to almost the height of the jin mao tower and the ifc twin towers are standing and buzzing with life. The circular walking bridge is also a new addition and it keeps on going and transforming on a daily basis.
Via Flickr:
odc~ starts with c
A view of Shanghai’s financial district from the oriental pearl tower.
(Facebook)(Blog)(Twitter)
As I got ready to post my final image of the project today, I realized that I missed posting the photo I took on December 16th! So before I end and to keep things tidy, here it is!
Children looking at a graphic skyline, children who hold the future in their little hands, and the little people who will sculpt the future through their own original visions. I wonder what they will build…
We find ourselves in a world that has more and more toxic bodies of water every year. You see a river or a sea on a hot, humid day and your first instinct is to jump in and get refreshed, but doing so in most cities might just cost you your health, life or skin! And still we go on polluting…
photo taken: a ferry between Hong Kong island and Kowloon
Do you remember the movies we saw about the future, where everything was glowing with strange lights, the sky a strange shade of fluorescent green, people walking with strange electronic devices, humans strolling almost like robots oblivious of other earthlings around them, television screens with worlds flying floating on them on installed on almost everything including buildings and cars… well this future is here and it is in reality even stranger than that.
I remember seeing a movie that made a huge impact on me when I was younger, it was called “until the end of the world” with William Hurt. I never ever forgot that movie and it keeps coming to mind every so often. It had foreseen speaking navigation systems in cars, people recording their dreams and being completely obsessed with watching themselves over and over again on little screens… a strange movie predicting strange times. When I step back and look at our lives today, we are living these strange times, only they are much much more fantastical than what was predicted. I recommend seeing that movie again if you are into such films.
Shanghai summers are home for sudden and powerful electrical storms. Today we were at the pool for the first very hot day of the summer and at some point the storm arrived. I love how scientist try to explain this incredible phenomena without being able to agree on a single explanation. I spent the last hour surfing the science pages and reading about the subject only to be convinced that they cannot reasonably explain it and they do not really understand it. And here we were standing under an outstanding electrical storm and everything in me wanted to just be in awe of the wonder of it and to be impressed by its power with no need for “sensible” explanations. Lea and I just wow’ed at it repeatedly as I took some shots and I am sure that the next time another one comes around I will be just as impressed!
Today was a beautiful sunny, crisp and freezing day in Shanghai. I impulsively decided to take the ferry across the river from Pudong to Puxi (literally east of river to west of river) and took pictures from the bund looking onto Pudong skyline. It was exhilarating to say the least to witness a rare clear sunset and mix with so many people (wish I could show you the rest of the pictures, but one a day, right?)
Today, the last day of January, and the beginning of the New Year’s hype in Shanghai, I walked around the downtown financial area in Pudong, which happens to be our neighborhood. Pudong is home to the high rises that are the pride of modern China. When we first moved here in 2006, the Jin Mao building(on the left), was standing proud and towering over everything else around it, then very rapidly the way a mushroom sprouts overnight, the SWFC(on the right) appeared as if out of nowhere and it stood in competition with Taipei 101 in Taiwan. Now, the new giant of Shanghai is rising rapidly it is mind boggling. Shanghai tower which threatens to tower over 632 meters high in a spiraling glass design. It is just incredible to witness the explosion of a metropolis like Shanghai and to see it happening outside your window…