Yes, another Saturday afternoon with the dogs by the sea in Sai Kung.

Boring geeky stuff: This time using the Nikon D300. The majority of the shots were done in aperture shutter-priority mode because I wanted to capture the dogs running around. I probably should have dialed the ISO up to 400 or so because some of the shots are dark. Shooting RAW, I could then lighten them up a bit in Lightroom, but I’m still learning that as well, so a little bit of fiddling here and there. Actually I found a D300 template for Lightroom (sorry lost the link) so used that and then played around a bit just with brightness, contrast, clarity settings. But …. I then created jpegs and used Picasa to shrink the jpegs down into a more web-friendly size. But take my word for it – looking at the RAW shots in Lightroom, I am now getting what I want. Those shots are richly detailed and wonderful. For awhile I was thinking that I would only shoot in RAW occasionally but shooting RAW+JPEG and comparing the results of the original shots, even my old eyes can see the difference.

Here are some dragon boaters taking a break on an island beach.

I presume this is a practice race.

Bogey looking happy.

This kid wasn’t looking too happy about having his picture taken. Enough already, dad!



Spikey enjoying his day.


Easy rider.

Why so serious?

This one looks great full size.

Bat kite!

This guy looked seriously unhappy.

It was about 23, 24 degrees. This girl is wearing jeans, a dress, a big coat with a furry collar and TWO scarves. With flipflops.

The pier was packed.

And that’s it!

This car has been sitting in the village parking lot under a tarp for awhile. This afternoon the tarp was off, they were working on it, and I couldn’t resist going over and taking some pictures.

As the plate says, this is a Simplex/American La France Model Type 45. It was made in Elmira, New York in 1918 and first hit the road in Pennsylvania in 1919. Check out the weight – 3,500kg!

So these guys bought the car in the UK in 2001 and had it shipped to Hong Kong. In 2007, they drove it from HK to Beijing and then from Beijing to Paris, which took 35 days. In 2010 they’ll be doing another Beijing to Paris drive, this time along the Silk Road. I can only begin to imagine the reactions they get driving this in China (or anywhere else for that matter)!

It took the editors a little time to get the March 19th issue of BC Magazine online but it’s there now. And it has my first feature article for the magazine. I interviewed French musician Xavier Jamaux, who co-wrote the score for Johnnie To’s films Sparrow and Mad Detective and is currently working on scores for two more HK films. I greatly admired the score for Sparrow and Jamaux gave very eloquent answers to my very basic questions.

My column in the same issue is a very good example of an editor taking a look at my submission and coming back to me and getting me to tone things down for my own protection. And no, I’m not going to be posting the original piece online.

For personal reasons, I was not able to write a column for the current issue, the second time I’ve missed an issue in more than two years. So thanks to Hong Kong Phooey for filling in for me as Faux Spike.

I’ll be back with my usual nonsense in the next issue.

First off, let me state categorically that I don’t believe in ghosts, the afterlife, reincarnation or anything else along those lines.

But sometimes, when it’s quiet in the house, my dogs stand there and stare at nothing. Sometimes it’s at the top of the stairs, sometimes in the bedroom, they stand there and stare at something I cannot see. “Maybe dogs can see ghosts,” I joke to myself.

Fast forward to today. Get home from work around 7:30. My gf is waiting to tell me a story. She says she was in the bathroom, taking a bath. The bedroom door was closed as was the bathroom door. All the windows were closed. She heard footsteps in the hallway that she says were my footsteps; she says she knows what my steps sound like. And then she saw the bathroom door open a little bit. And then she heard footsteps again. She got out of the tub, started drying herself off. Her mobile phone rang. It was my helper, calling from downstairs to ask her what she should cook for dinner. “Why don’t you ask Spike, he’s home now, right?” “No, he’s not home yet.”

Since my helper was downstairs, the only way someone could have gotten into the house would have been if my next door neighbor decided to jump from his balcony to mine and then somehow get through the locked sliding glass door (which makes a lot of noise when you slide it). My dogs can’t open the doors if they’re fully closed, of course.

So now she’s convinced that a ghost came into the bedroom and bathroom and walked around for a bit. And she says this is the second time that’s happened.

==================================

The following is a true story.

I was roughly 20 years old. It was Passover and my parents were going to hold a Passover Seder at our apartment in The Bronx. Usually for Passover we went to my mother’s relatives, but there are generally two Seders, at least for conservative Jews in the US, and this year my mother was doing a Seder at home for my father’s side of the family on the second night. Among those coming was an elderly aunt and my father told me that if we asked her nicely, she would raise the table after dinner. I had no idea what he was talking about. “You’ll see.”

After Passover service and dinner, my dad set up a folding wooden table in the living room, with four chairs around it. My aunt sat at one side, my father and I sat down, one more relative on the fourth side. Someone dimmed the lights. We placed our hands on the table, palms down, and sat there in silence.

After a few minutes, the table started sliding around on the bare wood floor. My aunt started talking to the table. It was just like a seance. It was a seance. There was no way that my aunt had the strength to move the table like that and I couldn’t see anyone else doing it either. The table rose up in the air, all four legs off the floor. It settled down. My aunt kept talking and the table started tapping out answers like a Ouija board – one tap yes, two taps no, or tapping out letters of the alphabet.

Via these taps, my aunt announced that it was Molly, my father’s mother, who had been dead for 30 years. I got to ask the first question so I asked if I would ever get to be a director. “Yes” was the answer. “Will I get to be one before I’m 30?” I asked. The table spun on one leg and sort of jumped onto my lap. Don’t ask ghosts stupid questions.

Then my aunt asked if Molly had a message for anyone in the room. Yes. For my father. Via tapping, the message was, “Call your brother.” My father and his brother hadn’t spoken in ten years.

The table settled back down, the lights came back on and I thought I saw a tear in my father’s eye. Later that night he made jokes about the whole thing. But if it was a trick, he wasn’t revealing to me how it was done, no matter how many times I asked. For the rest of his life, he swore it was the real thing.

The next day, he called his brother and they spoke for the first time in 10 years. His brother died soon after that – if he hadn’t made that call they would not have reconciled before his death.

25 years later, I did go to work for a Hollywood studio. And while I never directed films, the title on my business card reads “Director.”

I don’t believe in the supernatural. But to this day I cannot explain what happened that night. So if my gf says a ghost came into the bathroom while she was taking a bath, I’m not going to make fun of her.