14 Sep 2008: The rainy morning

I woke up on 14 Sep 2008 morning to realise that it was raining. It was quite a heavy rain. I asked for good weather later the day. On my way to the hotel's cafe for breakfast, the view from the glass ceiling of the hotel's lobby intrigued me such that I took the photo found above. Admittedly, I have a liking for air-wells as mentioned in one of my earlier posts.

During breakfast, I spent some time looking through the photos I had taken in Sydney, including those taken during the lovely Korean dinner the evening before. In comparison, the Aussie-style breakfast that I had at the hotel was simply too plain. Anyway, I was thankful that I had food to eat for breakfast. Afterall, I'm probably one of the lucky folks who could have privilege to have three meals a day.

The adventurous streak in me decided to set off from the hotel to explore Sydney's Chinatown and Darling Harbour. I made sure that I carried an umbrella with me, and armed with a wind-breaker, I was ready to set off.

It was quite early in the morning, barely just around 9 a.m. When I was somewhere near Goulburn Street, I could hear from a distance, someone playing an erhu. I was basically walking about without any aim in mind. I ended up at one of the entrances of Sydney's Chinatown area. Chinatown was very quiet at that time of the day. Furthermore, it was raining.




Once I was in Chinatown, the sound of the erhu became closer. I realised there was an erhu player basking somewhere near Dixon Street. The erhu player tried to play ''double stops'' on the erhu, and he played pretty well. I felt a sense of nostalgia and being at home when I heard the sounds of erhu playing Chinese music in a foreign land. As most baskers would probably appreciate, I gave him some tokens of appreciation for his good playing.

Notice the erhu player on the left of the photo.

Nearby Chinatown was the Paddy's Market at Haymarket. It is somewhat like the Bugis Village of Singapore, in my humble opinion. Other than products such as fruit vegetables, clothing, CDs, flowers, homewares, sunglasses, jewellery, one could find souvenirs for the tourists here at Paddy's Market. The items that are sold there are pretty value-for-money. The Paddy's Market at Haymarket opens from Thursdays to Mondays, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. While trying to read more about Paddy's Market, I was lucky to chance upon a site that would give us a glimpse of the history behind Paddy's Market. Here's the URL: http://www.paddysmarkets.com.au/history.html




The rainy became lighter gradually, and I headed for Darling Harbour. The pleasant surprise of the morning was that I saw a lot of seagulls, near the Haymarket Paddy's Market. It was quite a challenge to take photos of them while they were flying, so I have taken a photo of them at rest.




For now, please stay tuned for my walk to Darling Harbour on a rainy day.