a glimpse of sharon world...

chinese lantern festival

yesterday adrienne, gloria and i went to the chinese lantern festival at ontario place. we were able to get cheaper tickets thanks to my mom, so we went down with my parents, wandered around with them for a bit, split up, and then met up with them again at the end of the night.

i didn't really know what to expect from the whole thing to see on our way down. i was a little nervous that it would be super cheesy (i.e. a whole bunch of lights on strings in a parking lot or something ), but fortunately i was wrong. haha. it was actually pretty good, although it looked a lot more impressive when it was dark.

we watched two films at the cinesphere (one of the first emperor, and the other on panda bears), walked around taking pictures of all the exhibits, and learned more about chinese history and myths/symbols thank to the info cards that went with the exhibits and the films. the night ended with us watching the symphony of fire fireworks (yay!) from the lantern festival while standing on a bench under a tree which, minus the rain and the blaring traditional chinese music that at times sounded like a haunted polka house (haha), was the perfect way to end a great night. thanks girls. :)

story of the night:
so somewhere in the middle of the festival there was a cool chinese archway that was lit up that we wanted a picture of with the three of us. in order to make this possible, gloria asked a friendly-looking woman to take the picture for us. she said okay and took it, but it was obvious from her shaking and ("aghhh"s and "ohhhh"s) that she didn't feel comfortable doing it. as she turned to go she said, "usually people ask him not me" while pointing at her husband. turns out her husband was the guy standing there smiling at the whole situation while carrying around an SLR camera. darn, he was probably a good photographer.

anyway, since gloria's camera was a film camera there was no way to tell how good (or bad) the woman's pictures were (she took two "just in case".) we still wanted a picture of us and the archway, and a good one at that, so i scanned the crowd and saw a guy carrying an SLR camera AND a tripod. needless to say, i made my way over and asked the guy if he would take our picture for us. (i figured anyone carrying a tripod had to be good, because normal people taking photos just wouldn't.) so the guy took our picture, looked at the picture in my camera screen, and smiled at me as i thanked him and he gave my camera back.

as i was walking away i looked at the picture he had taken and let out a loud "WHAT". the picture that the guy, the "professional photographer", took totally SUCKED CRAP. i had set my camera to automatic flash, but i guess because the archway was so bright it didn't go off, and you couldn't see us at all because we were too dark. the guy wasn't a professional at all (or else he would have known what to do, yeh?) what a fraud.

so moral of this story (which has somehow become way long) is: just because someone carries around an SLR and a tripod doesn't mean they know how to take a picture. posers suck.

oh well, it was still a fun night. pictures can be found here. :)