A couple of notes about my recent trip:

I packed pretty light this time, just clothes mainly. I left the Invincible Rabbit and its accompanying lenses at home, only bringing a compact Olympus E-M5 and a trio of lenses that Chenbl and I could share as he was using the Panasonic GF1, and one spare battery, which unfortunately came with its own charger, necessitating two chargers. It was quite liberating to have such a small, light camera on a trip; I really felt better walking around London minus all the weight and heft of the Rabbit on my shoulders or banging into things. The image quality is pretty good as far as I’ve seen just glancing through the shots. Though I usually shoot in raw, I had to shoot jpeg+raw in order for the camera to show me the proper 2:3 aspect ration on the review screen. I’ve never understood why Olympus feels that that is necessary. The framing is done in 2:3, the photos show up in Lightroom and Photoshop in 2:3, but for some reason I have to see it in 4:3 on the review screen? That was never the case with the Panasonics, nor should it be. You might be asking: Why not buy a GX1? I almost did, in fact, but the Panasonic’s lack of an integrated EVF and image stabilization turned me off somewhat, and the constant presence of the touchscreen tab on the back screen turned me against it as well. I’m sure it’s a great camera, and if the E-M5 hadn’t come out I would have most likely ended up with one.

The main downside to the EM-5, however, was battery life. Whereas the Rabbit could go for days on a single battery, and the GF1 nearly as long, the E-M5 gobbled up batteries in a matter of hours. This was the price of responsiveness, as in order to keep the camera ready to shoot, the electronic viewfinder was on all the time, unless I let it go to sleep, and even the eye detection activating the EVF wouldn’t work as I had the camera hanging from my neck, which of course triggers the EVF. The moment I would lift it to my eye the detection would turn it off, and then on again when it reached my eye, resulting in a frustrating lag and a blank finder as I missed the shot. So I just kept it on all the time unless it went to sleep.

And I could let it sleep with the 12mm and 45mm, but not with the Panasonic 20mm lens, as it would require taking the battery out before it would restart after sleeping. And since I used the 20mm for at least 80% of the time, I had to turn it off a lot and missed a few unexpected shots because of the delay in the startup time with the 20mm. The batteries’ life improved with subsequent charging, but I still feel I need at least three batteries for it before I’m confident it will last through the day. It would be great if Olympus could fix these problems with a firmware update, but I’m not terribly hopeful they will.

I did not bring my old IBM Thinkpad notebook with me this time either. When I bought it around six years ago or so, back before IBM was Lenovo, it was one of the smallest and lightest notebook computers on the market (it didn’t even have an internal DVD drive!), and it served me faithfully on many trips to China, Spain, France, Japan, Malaysia and Laos, but these days it’s bigger, heavier and slower than other options, and the screen is hard to look at in comparison with, say, an 11″ Macbook Air. I have held off on buying another notebook, however, so this time I simply went down to the Guanghua Computer Market and picked up a foldout bluetooth keyboard on which I could type on my iPhone. It worked well for the most part, though the letters were a bit small on the screen; I’d rather use an iPad for that kind of thing to be honest. Still, it was the lightest, smallest setup available, and it didn’t suck. In fact, I far prefer using this route over trying to use the Asus Eeepad Transformer. That thing was a nightmare.

The one thing I did bring was clothes, but I probably could have gotten by with fewer of those as well. I didn’t know what the weather would be like, however, and decided to err on the side of caution. I would have needed even more than I brought had the weather turned really nasty, as it did on the day after we left.

I didn’t have much jetlag; the first thing I do when I get on a plane for a long flight is reset my watch and completely forget the time at the place I’ve just left. That, plenty of water and walking around the plane a lot, along with the occasional nap, usually see me through just fine.

All in all it was a fine trip. And probably the last one for a good while as I’ve used up all my vacation time and travel funds, but it was great to see London and meet up with photographer friends that I’ve only known as names on screens for so long.

Getting up on Saturday morning was a leisurely affair. The day outside was coolish but pleasant, and we headed out to the Portobello market, a long street full of shops and stands knickknacks, food, clothes, old cameras, old handbags, and even tiny pocket trumpets even smaller than mine. Unfortunately, they were barely playable. Or fortunately, I should say, as if they were playable I very likely would have bought one. I did buy a cupcake with the British flag on it, though. The entire city, I’ve realized now, was in a terribly good mood due to the week of pleasant weather as well as the upcoming Diamond Jubilee.

We walked all the way up and down the market, encountering several blues performers on instruments such as slide guitars and banjos, and had a delicious lunch at a cafe where Chenbl had been caught at earlier trying to use the bathroom. This happened to me the other day as well; you walk in, thinking you’ll just slip by the counter and borrow the “customers only” restroom, and some damn employee rushes up and says in the most pleasant, bright and cheerful tone you can imagine, “Can I help you?” If you admit the truth of your urinary quest, you’ll be told the restrooms are for paying customers only and asked if you’d like to buy something. If you’re not willing to own up to such a thing, you’ll have to come up with a bullshit excuse that you were “looking at the view” or “waiting for a friend,” etc.

After lunch we realized that we’d missed the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, which we’d entertained vague ideas of seeing, and instead took the underground back to Waterloo Station, where we passed over two Thames River cruise boats that were not to our liking before settling on the third, a large red affair with seats on the roof. It was grand sliding down the river, the crew making snarky comments about the buildings. The sun came out, the skies turned blue by the time we disembarked at the Tower Bridge. Crowds of tourists thronged about London Tower, and we walked across the bridge to the south side of the river. Camera crews were setting up on the sides of the bridge for the jubilee coverage the following day. We walked to London Bridge Station, stopping for some sweets at a Tesco, and returned to Kings Cross to check out of our hotel. Aside from the water pressure issues, the Fairway & Central Hotel has been great, with a great location, quiet rooms, reasonable prices, comfy mattresses and a filling English breakfast each morning. I highly recommend it.

We took the subway out to Heathrow, an hour-long journey that would have been quick and expensive on the dedicated airport train, and were told at Terminal 1 that our tickets were wrong that that we’d have to go to Terminal 4. Terminal 1 was full of white people; Terminal 4 was not, serving destinations in Africa and Asia. A mainland Chinese man in the line in front of us was in hysterics at the news that his newspaper-wrapped monstrosity of a carry-on was refused, and he shouted and threatened and nearly roughed up his tour guide while the airport staff stood by grinning nervously and rolling their eyes. I was thinking, try those antics at a US airport and see what happens.

Our departure gate was full of children for some reason. The weather outside was turning nasty, but we got on the plane soon enough and flew in a rush down the rain-soaked runway and away over the city into the skies of northern Europe and Asia.

Shanghai was grey as well. We decided to forgo the maglev and take the subway into town this time, but regretted it when this took over an hour and an inexplicable change of trains. Downtown, we walked around the alleys near Yu Garden station and then up the street behind the Bund, having a dinner of very good noodles at a nearly empty restaurant along the way, before taking the subway back. Only the subway to the airport had closed, so we ended up taking a “black car” back while the driver told us how poor he and his wife were. I dozed off a dozen times along the way, and sleep came quickly as we watched on TV as the hundreds of boats struggled through gale winds and torrential rains up the river we’d cruised in the sunshine under blue skies just the previous day.

This morning was spent mostly in the Pudong Airport terminal, as we were staying once again at the airport hotel. Fortunately there was a book of nice photography in one of the bookstores, so the time went quickly, and before we knew it, we were winging back to Taipei, where the weather was, again, grey. Back again, reconnecting things, washing things, transferring files. Work tomorrow.

The weather was greyer and cooler yet again this morning. Apparently we hit a really nice bit of luck with the weather this time, as it had been raining constantly before we arrived, but like our visit, the nice weather is supposed to be coming to an end soon.

The morning hours were spent at the British Museum, breezing through centuries of art and artifacts from across the ages, noting with some degree of satisfaction that even such a world-renowned institution can misspell the names of Chinese dynasties on their labels. Outside, we cooled our overheated brains with ice cream from a truck as a well-dressed businessman in a red tie stared off into space from the museum’s porch.

I was meeting the other BME members at the gallery at noon for a frank roundtable discussion of various issues, followed by a Thai lunch around the corner. It was great to finally match faces with the photography and writing of the other members, and I hope that we created a basis for better communication in the future.

We walked back to Kings Cross and loitered a bit in front of the big station hotel before going back to our rather more modest accommodations for a nap, waking up just in time to get back to the gallery at 6ish.

Lots of people showed up, many of them individuals I’d known on Flickr but never met in real life, which was odd but fun. Charlie had a flash make out session going in the back yard in no time flat. We drank and talked and even shot a bit, and a wonderful time was had by all. Afterwards there was talk of going to a nearby pub, but I didn’t catch the place’s name and ended up walking with Jack and Fabrizio  back to King’s Cross, where Chenbl and I said goodbye to them and had dinner at a kebab place.

Tomorrow we’re going to walk around as much as the weather and the crowds permit, before hopping on a flight back to Shanghai in the evening. It’s been a great time here and I’m a bit sorry to go, but I should also make time for another trip in the future.

The Polish women were playing midget rap at breakfast this morning as I chowed down on Chenbl’s special rendition of toast, jam, ham, tomato and butter. We stepped outside to a gray sky and a cool wind, and walked to some more markets where Chenbl was yelled at by a workman, not for taking his picture, but for not getting all his co-workers in the shot and waving at the camera. It’s as if they’ve been instructed on how to ruin a shot without being violent about it.

We passed an olde Shakespeare-era building that reminded me of those 70’s renditions that were popular in Seabrook when I was growing up, and then through a legal campus with a members-only church, and on to Piccadilly where we bought tickets to The Phanton of the Opera. I’d never seen  a show before and thought it would most likely be a fair representative of the medium.

We then walked towards the Thames, passing through the banking district and the Royal Court, which looks more like Hogwarts than an official law centre. Churches along the way were for the most part constructed in the middle of the road, for visibility I suppose, and one elderly priest told us he had visited Taiwan in the early 1960s. We were then told by a large black man guarding the Royal Exchange that I couldn’t take photos of the interior. I nodded and said confidentially, “Your secret is safe with me.”

We had various bites to eat along the way, but nothing really approaching a meal. But it was time to head back to Kings Cross to meet up with some fellow photographers from the show, so we took the underground and walked a few blocks to a gallery of photos from 1970’s South Africa. There I met Charlie, JB, Jack, Andy and some other people. I hung back a bit as we walked to some of the other parts of the exhibition. I don’t usually like shooting with other people, and especially not in their wake, but it was interesting to see how each photographer reacted when seeing something to shoot, as well as what drew their attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone wasn’t a bit self-conscious about shooting in sight of the others.

We  took the metro back to Piccadilly for the show, and, with insufficient time for dinner, we had to resort to some dodgy kebabs and cold fried urgh. I don’t know what it was, so I’ll just say it was urgh, because that was the sound I made when contemplating it afterwards.

Her Majesty’s Theater was nice, though Her Majesty’s Seats were rather small, and I was again told that the entire place was copyrighted when I tried to take a photo of the seats. The show itself was nicely done, nice singing and impressive props.

Tomorrow is the show’s official opening. We’re leaving the next day. Just when I was getting used to the place.