Eclipse – Photo Gallery
Of the total about 25 people on the roof terrace, at 7.30am I was the third up there. Extending the legs on my tripod to their full length, I look out at the smoggy horizon. You need to count visibility like you are underwater – ie. in meters. But I have resigned myself to this by now. As I sit in the hot morning air with our free Chongqing beer, I wonder what it is exactly that I am excited about. Am I excited about it? What is it that has driven me to travel hundreds and hundreds of kilometers just for this? As I look to the sun it’s about 8.14am and the doubt is setting in. Then I press the black shining Perspex commonly used for welding up to my eyes and see it. A black sliver changes the perfect circle into something still perfect but not circular. It has begun. Over the course of the next 55 minutes I don’t need to build up the excitement for Anna’s sake, its naturally contagious. The feeling of immense anticipation suddenly turns to full blown astonishment as darkness and a ‘silent roar’ (there’s that term again from 5 years ago when I saw my first one) falls upon us. We are a tiny, minuscule, irrelevant, powerless speck in an immeasurably huge, dramatic, amazing, beautiful universe that we know very little about. In a 3 minute blurred frenzy of lens changing, cheering, kissing, and I don’t know what else, someone yells “Diamond Ring!” and the sparkle behind the great black side of the moon reminds us in a knowing wink of beauty that all great things come to an end. As Anna and I sit there with our warm beer, Perspex and camera, we are both quite bewildered and taken aback by the even that over the next hour rolls back to reality: That perfect circle of light we see by don’t think about every single day. As the blistering heat ensues we continue to observe in quiet acceptance until again about 50 minutes later at 10:15am we are the second and third last people up there. Only the Chinese guy who told us briefly about his telescope as a child remains. Not everyone is as excited about a solar eclipse as we are.
Posted 1 year ago at 6:20 am. Add a comment
Chongqing China – Photo Gallery
Well I tell you what. It would take the sun, the moon, and the earth to line up to get me to do the journey I just did ever again. Right now its t-39 hours, and v+42 hours. You know what the t – bit is don’t you? Well the v stands for since leaving Vietnam. I feel like I have slowly but steadily been dunked into the very heart and soul, the cultural epicenter, the ‘midwest’, the ‘outback’, or right into the thick of. What? This amazing country China – for which in the next 3 days I’ll see an event that won’t happen on this earth for another 200 years, and about 0.00000000001% of the country that it has on show for anyone with less than the 500 years it would take to see it all. I get the perspective of all those zero’s from a 12 hour bus trip from Lao Cai on the Vietnamese / Chinese border to Kunming, a super fast techno city, surrounded in mountains. We travelled through the night on a night sleeper bus
The heat of the day infiltrates every corner of this carriage. Whilst not yet full, we have a good sense of the journey to come. 76 Yuan is a far cry from the 200 plus it costs for a sleeper. The hard upright blue vinyl seats are a shocking reminder of the 27 hours we have to go. Kids are yelling, young guys are playing cards smashing the cards down in enthusiasm as they gamble over the tables. An old man sits opposite with cigarette in hand, and no smoking sign just behind him. He stares blankly at us, without any regard for what we consider normal manners. I stare back in protest to what I consider to be just plain rude. The phrase ‘when in rome’ comes to mind, as he turns away from me in embarrassment. I win, accept when I look back again, he is staring once again. We get used to this by the second day in the country. People of all ages walk up and down the carriages carrying brightly coloured pot noodles with loud Chinese scripture marking chilli flavours of all kinds. They bring them back minutes later with steam pouring out the top, before behind me I hear the slurping of noodles over chopsticks. Suddenly two uniformed police officers stop in front of us ominously. Their badges look official with the one exception being that their shoulder badge is stuck on with a safety pin. None the less, the fact that the whole carriage has stopped to look at what is happening is evidence enough to suggest their official status. Quietly, one of them brings a notepad out of his pocket, and carefully flicks page by page over. He stops and looks at his notepad for a minute before turning it over to face us. In clean English, a blue ballpoint message captures our full attention. ‘Please take care of your personal belongings’. Relief, as we nod in unison. The police officer smirks as he walks off, but although I get the sense he loves the power, I think he enjoys the joke as just that – a joke, every time. 8 hours pass.
I cant sleep in this position. I drift out of consciousness before my head lowers, when I wake up again straight away. Frustration. Its 2am. I grab for the towel totally unconcerned with waking anyone up. Pushing apart legs and bags, I make a dive for under the chairs. Its dirty, and smelly, and hot. But it’s a flat surface. 5 hours pass.
Again I push my way through legs and bags to a sea of laughing faces looking down at me. 8 hours to go. Chess, reading, diary, English student, food, reading, sleep on table, water, fruit, Chongqing. This solar eclipse better be good.
Posted 1 year ago at 6:13 am. 1 comment
