Also although for most of the time I was very critical of the government here, this time I have to say, the health authority has done quite a a good job. The response was fast, open and transparent, it gave people confidence and assurance so they got no reason to panic.

However, I was totally shocked to see the ignorance of some people here in the country (quite a lot of them in the Herald discussion forum). "This is just a media hype", "it's fuelled by pharmaceutical companies", "normal flu kills more than this". They are demonstrating the total lack of knowledge on ..everything. That's fine, no one knows everything but the important thing is, those people got no interest to learn, but choose to remain arrogant - they just don't know how lucky they really are.

Although there is no reason to panic right now, people need to be aware and closely watch the development of the situation. This is a new H1NI strain (same as the Spanish flu) and most of us got no immunity.It may appears to be mild and not that pathogenic right now but if we just sit and let the virus spread, it is almost certain that this strain will mutate and who knows how this virus may evolve.

However, even to adapt the conservative version of death number, the overall mortality rate is about 5%, which is still significantly higher than normal flu mortality rate - I don't have the number here but if my memory serves, that number should be around 0.4%. Now you start to see why this thing needs to be controlled.

The Government has backed an Auckland 'super city' council and says it should be in place in time for next year's local body elections. ... Rather than having six local councils, there will be between 20 and 30 community boards. These will not be able to raise revenue or appoint staff. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Local democracy was identified by many, including myself, as the major problem of the Royal Commission report. However, I don't see this is best the solution. I disliked community boards from start, waste of time, not many actually attends, and its power cannot change much for the community. I prefer the parliamentary electorate style, each community elects its own member to the Auckland Council, the member manage local issues and represent that at the higher level.

Anyway, the difference in government recommendation[pdf] is, community boards will gain extra power, such as :

• advocate for their local community and have input into the Auckland Council’s plans
• develop local operational policies for local issues, for example dog control, liquor licensing and graffiti control
• influence the Auckland Council by petitioning for extra services that their community wants. Services would be paid for through a targeted rate for the local area, a local rate rise or a change in priorities. The local boards will not have the power to set rates, so any rate rise would have to be agreed by the Auckland Council.

Can you imagine 30 sets of dog control and and operational policies? Anyone who still thinks the change will save their rate bill should check if the sky in their little world is still blue. Also I did not notice anything in that report mentioning the delivery of council services,  does that mean all people need to travel to Auckland CBD to get their resource consent done?

The grand council will increase overall efficiency but I don't see a way that could reduce overall costs in both Royal Commission and government report.

Also another thing worth noticing:

Privatising water services?

Nice try. So National.

• Switch off your lights at 8:30pm on the night of Earth Hour
• Turn off any unnecessary appliances
• Spend your Earth Hour creatively: plan a candlelit dinner with friends, or play cards by candlelight
• Spread the word to neighbours, friends, family and colleagues
• Avoid driving anywhere for the view as this results in unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions - what we are fighting against!
• If you live in a tall apartment building, you are even more visible. Let your neighbours in other apartments know about Earth Hour and see if your building can have the fewest lights on. Perhaps you could talk to the property manager about turning off any ornamental lighting that is not needed for security reasons.

I think I'll enjoy this day if a substantial amount of people turn off their lights. Light pollution is so common in big cities, making astronomic observations more difficult each year. People no longer watch the sky - we don't know what we've missed.

Sure nobody expects to "save the earth" by turning off their lights for an hour a year. This is sure not the point, however, this is the least people can do to show that "we care".  Save electricity is just the first step, the most important thing, in my opinion is, save the wasted energy first. I'm doing that everyday, and I hope people can also do the following simple things:

• Turn off or put  your computer into sleep if you need to leave for more than 15 minutes;switch off the monitor if you need to level for 5-15 minutes;
• Switch off all the lights if you are the last to leave the room;
• Adjust the sound of your TV to a moderate level, you can hear from it, but it's not too loud;
• When the price and the quality are the same, use services/goods provided by green businesses - in fact sometimes you can find green businesses are even cheaper;
• Don't leave cellphone battery recharger on for too long;
• Use eco-bulbs if possible;

A common misconception is that people need to change their lifestyle back to stoneage man to be green. I'm not that kind of "greenie" who refuses to use anything powered by electricty, but I believe that  by just doing what you can to reduce unnecessary waste of energy you will also make a huge difference.

If you believe Global Warming is a myth or scam, I respect your opinion :) However, I still recommend you to reduce the wasted energy, even if there's no earth to save, at least to me, I enjoyed a substantial reduction of monthly power costs.

It's quite similar to what I expected, but bit different from what I wanted (I'll talk about this later). A "supercity" looked inevitable, but I also expected that the current local councils structure will be maintained at some degree, it's common sense that one grand council will not work. There are two common misconceptions in the general public, and a right wing government actually fuelled them: first, bigger is better; second, this investigation is about cost cutting.

The objective of the commission, was cleared stated as:

to receive representations on, inquire into, investigate, and report on the local government arrangements (including institutions, mechanisms, and processes) that
are required in the Auckland region over the foreseeable future in order to maximise, in a cost effective manner,—
(a) the current and future well-being of the region and its communities; and
(b) the region’s contribution to wider national objectives and outcomes.

Most people tend to confuse the meaning of "cost cut" with "cost effective". In fact, in my opinion, one council that takes care of everything is not necessarily cost-cutting, and has the potential to actually increase the total cost.  However, with the right management, the super city council can be cost effective. This change will eventually save a bit of money in the short run, but will it be the sum that public sector killers (aka Nats) wanted? Not necessarily:

Preliminary analysis, which will need to be quantified in detail by the Establishment Board, suggests that adopting the Commission’s proposals for structural change will result in estimated efficiency savings in the indicative range of 2.5% to 3.5% of the total expenditure of the Auckland councils planned for 2008/09 (of around $3.2 billion). This represents estimated efficiency gains of between $76 million to $113 million per year.

113 million sounds like a lot, but when translated into rates, it's really not that many, at least I doubt it - the integration costs, as suggested by the commission, cost even more than that at around 200 million, and I also expect more people employed in the long term to manage such a large city. I can only see substantial cost saving from council owned organisations like water supply, that is likely to same a fair amount of money, but whether that saving will be transferred to you ... well, it's at local politicians' discretion, and that's bit scary, as a unified region is more likely to return a left leaning mayor, due to the majority of the population are  urban.

I agree with the Commission's decision to maintain the current local council structure in principle.However, I don't agree the functions though:

In addition to the elected governing body of the Auckland Council, local democracy will be maintained through six elected local councils operating within the unitary Auckland Council. Local councils will oversee the delivery of services by Auckland Council staff and will undertake local engagement in four urban and two rural districts.

My understanding of Auckland's current problem is, how should I put this, policy inconsistency and fragmentation, and kind of "too locally focused" way of thinking in each local council.  Auckland Region is more connected than ever, and policy of one district council will have direct impact on one or more other councils, and usually council act on their own rather than sitting together to find out the best solution for all.

However, one district plan, one spatial plan, and one long term council community plan will not solve this, in fact, there's a danger to make things even worse as the policy role is even more dictated. The people who understand local issues and needs are not mayors or councillors, but planners and other people who get in touch with the community every day. A single plan has the risk of more imbalanced development.

What I preferred was the super council acting as a over-guiding authority, each local council still makes its part of the district plan, but they come together under the guidance of the grand council and merge as one plan. The current proposal also does this, but it's bit over the top.

Local democratic participation is also important on local issues, so it worries me a bit that all community boards will be abolished.

For the rest of the functionalities of each level of governance, I agree with the Royal Commission.

But the arrangement and structure of the new councils is not that good. I really don't see the need for local councils to have councillors, a single (or three)  councillor from the grand council is more than enough to manage local issues and represent its local council in the region wide context - 22 local councillors for current Auckland city really sounds like a bad joke to me.

In general, I'm ok with the current plan, but there's sure a large room for improvement.

If you were interested in my opinion, here it is. Maintain community boards, but with a larger area, or use the current electorate system we have. Each community returns one grand council councillor,  this councillor is also the local council councillor, and should know the local constituency very well and know where the problems are. In that way we got  a better consistency of policies in different areas, while the local needs and identities (like Waitakere's eco-city) can be maintained.

Oh, and by the way, I don't see reason why National will not adapt the recommendations made by the commission. In fact, I have heard that the law change proposal is already finished, its just waitting for cabinet approval, which shouldn't be a problem at all.

Australia, hurt feelings of

An Australian couple has upset Kiwis with an online expat guide which warns that Auckland is a "horrible soulless city" and its inhabitants are "hobbits" who cannot dress properly. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Well I have spent a bit of time to read that guy's blog. I'm not a serious traveller therefore I can only comment on Auckland. What that blogger blogged is indeed bit over the top,but most of the comments, although somewhat exaggerated, are also facts.

Auckland indeed lacks a bit of culture, that's how I feel at least. By "culture" I mean not just the presence of culture diversity, but ... how do I put this, a community that respect, cherish, and upholds "serious" culture (not just the culture of get drunk in a pub every Friday evening.) as one of the important life aspects.

What I was really surprised about is not the whines from this Aussie expat, but how Kiwis reacted toward those comments. I mean, it's just a blogger, like myself (possibly you as well), everyone is entitled to have, and publicly express he or she's opinion, and it is a fact of life that no matter how beautiful the Big Sister Helen or the land of Aotearoa is, it is not possible to win a 100% approval rate - that only happens in North Korea, even the Chinese parliament got more nay votes nowadays.

It's not even a news, there are more than a million blogs out there and I believe a fair amount of them is about New Zealand. Single this blogger out only means that 1) marks the new low of NZ journalism, 2) maybe the view of that blogger is not uncommon and there's a need to discuss it on a higher public forum.

So I was really surprised that many "serious" organisations, like Destination Rotorua or New Zealand beer brewery , treated the comments that seriously, even " took exception to an open letter on the site" ... oh I just see a short cut for bloggers who want to get famous. I actually quite liked the smell of Rotorua, but if I badmouth them once maybe I can generate a bit of traffic to my site as well, but I'll only do that after I put up Google Adsense:)

BTW, wonder where's the sense of humour, or it's just like the Nationalists can make fun on everyone else, but when others make fun of Nationalists, their feelings are hurt.

• replacing regional fuel taxes with smaller increases in national fuel excise and road user charges, which feed into the National Land Transport Fund
• confirming the government's commitment to Auckland rail electrification
• committing an additional $258 million of the government's capital allocation to land transport over the next two years
• amending the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding to make more money available for state highway construction

I wonder how rural people, especially the nats would think of the first point. But it's a fair measure I have to admit, as the whole country can benefit from a well-funtioning Auckland.

Herald got a nice illustration on how the whole thing happened.

First, under certain circumstances police in this country has the right to shoot to incapacitate or  kill. In this case, the offender is armed and fired shots, dangerously speeding, threatening the safety of the general public, I would guess this is one of  the circumstances that justifies the use of firearms.

So the death of an innocent civilian, 17 year old Halatau Naitoko  is a case of whether the police should took more care, not the case of whether the police should fire shots in the first place.

As the Herald report shows, Naitoko's van is stopped just behind the gunman, and within the line of fire.  The situation looked like this:

Police/AOS |------|Gunman|------|Naitoko in his van

I think the key is, whether the AOS knew the car behind the gunman got  people in it or they were just too concentrated on the gunman. The police probably should took more care but I cannot see any wrongdoing in this case - police or even AOS are not Naval Seals so you should expect some of their shoots to miss, and unfortunately, Naitoko was caught in the line of fire. Gun battles may look exciting in the American TV series and Hollywood movies, but in real life, police need, and pressured to make  split-second and sometimes random decisions, and that could lead to tragic consequences.

I don't think  there's the need to charge  whoever fired that shoot as AOS were simply doing their job. This is rather an unfortunate case for both police and the Naitoko family - if the police and gunman swap places, then Naitoko could be killed by gunman rather than the police - will that make the this case easier to swallow? Probably not, as some would still blame the police for not doing enough to protect the public.

This is one of the things that happened in the wrong place, probably in the wrong time as well.

If we blame police for doing their job then next time if something similar pops up, officers will be more hesitate to fire, worrying that if he/she got wrong then he/she may end up in jail, and put themselves and general public in a greater danger.

The Naitoko family are more than entitled to receive compensations from the crown as the police is responsible for his death, police should also apologise to the family, but hold someone accountable for doing their job is bit of a step too far. You may argue that AOS and police officers should receive more training, but that's the problem of the Police as a whole, not the responsibility of individual police officers.

Auckland region is NZ’s economic powerhouse and has about 1/3 of total New Zealand population. Any changes on how Auckland is governed should be considered in national, even international context. As a student in this area I was fully aware of the issue, and made a submission myself.

In my opinion, a super, single council is simply not viable, and I believe the Royal Commission should understand this fact too. The coverage of the authority is just too wide, if it controls 1.4 million people from Wellsford to Bombay, this council will grow enormously big, effectively become another central government of New Zealand, creating even more confusion and more red tapes to make this monstrous authority work.

Another risk of creating a big, super council is that, no matter who runs it, that Lord Mayor is likely to run the whole region the way he managed his smaller council before. Now there’s problem, most of us think all district councils in Auckland region as part of the same “Auckland”, but in real life each district has its own local identity and, sometimes culture as well. An obvious example jumped out of my mind is Waitakere City’s “EcoCity”.

Auckland will become one, super city eventually, but not now. The problem facing Auckland is not much of the red tape, it’s local councils' very short sighted, self centred vision and lack of policy consistency across the region. The region, especially metropolitan areas are becoming more connected and a lot of decisions, like the Rugby World Cup, will likely to affect several councils.

I think there’s two ways to go. First is to create a new super council but with smaller jurisdiction area. What I prefer is to include Auckland Metropolitan Area and some parts of rural land for future development and buffer. Regional Council stays but all city councils must go.

I also liked the idea of elect councillors based on electorate-like wards. If this is the case, however, I don’t think there’s a need for a Lord Mayor, or even councillors. Each City elects one Mayor as a person should be enough, and those mayors become councillors of the bigger council.

The only viable route for a region wide super council, is to maintain current local councils to be at least some kind of services branches of a super council.

No matter which way it goes,  our adolescent-like urge to change is likely to stay for a while longer.

It's about this.

Botany voters can't go wrong - Vote Kenneth Wang, get Wang + Wong!

If you don't know what this is about, it's in Botany Electorate.

This ad has caused a bit of trouble because, according to  National's Pansy Wong office, it sort of endorse votes to go for Pansy, effectively making it an election campaign for Pansy Wong, without her financial agent's authorisation.

Kenneth completely rubbished the claim that he might breached the Elecoral Finance Act. I kind of agree. Kenneth is an electorate only candidate, a vote for him sure means no vote for Pansy. "get  ... and Wong" means get Wong through the National's party vote. The ad is more like a statement of fact, rather than a promotion for National.

But I was somewhat amused by Kenneth Wang's claim that this ad is offering voters 'two for the price of one' deal for the Botany electorate. Well I knew politicians are usually cheap, but I didn't know they are THAT cheap:)

Despite of that, politician is not something that you want more when IT IS at the half price.

Nah just joking. Botany electorate would be a very interesting spot to watch in the election. It's not just about who wins, it's more about how Asian, especially how Chinese vote.

Lots of interesting stuffs happened while I’m away, including the latest transport policy from National – a user pay system that charges around $5 for some sections of Motorway in Auckland. It is likely to increase the cost of an average Auckland commuter by $50 a week.

I usually refer people to this clip every time when National announces something. The user-pay system should nicely fit into that category too.

The system sounds fair, but it’s not, it only seeks fairness in the economic sense.

From a planning point of view, I’m more concerned about the accessibility issues, how to ensure that the low income people have the maximum accessibility to the opportunities provided by the CBD? Motorway is tolled; Dominion Road and Great North/South road are all in a miserable state and you cannot see a bus for half an hour in some area - well people need a way to move around a city?

Sure there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but you cannot force people to take one type of lunch or get them unfairly disadvantaged. The toll just shouldn’t go ahead without viable alternatives to people.

Aaron Deng

As the name suppression is no longer in place, I can now name the kidnapper in the Cina Ma case.

The kidnapper's name is Aaron Deng, a 25 year old real estate agent from Ray White's Pinehill branch.

What I heard is that his family is also quite wealthy and fiancially supported his study here. I understand that he's working in Ray White not because of money to support his life, but to enable him to stay here.

So I don't think he kidnapped Cina Ma for ransom. In fact, what I heard is he didn't plan to hold Cina for that long, Mr Deng just want to "give the family a warning" by hold Cina for few hours, and then release her (that's why Cina was found only a street away).

You know the rest, the police was there most of the day, and his "plan" seems to be backfired.

It is still not yet clear on what kind of dispute between those "adults" triggered the kidnap.

Auckland University Students Association(AUSA) has offered a bounty of $5,000 for any student who can make a successful citizen's arrest of Rice.

I like this idea but this $5,000 bounty is unlikely to be claimed by anyone as it is very unlikely to make a "successful" citizen's arrest of a high level diplomat.

And for $5,000 it is really not worth to risk your own life, but I reckon there will be at least one attempt if there are students who actually work in the hotel where Rice stays.

Just hope no one gets hurt ...

BTW, when I was searching this news in AUSA's site, I accidentally found out that there is a large number of spam links hidden at the bottom of each page. Anyone know how to do this? I need a bit of PageRank boost as well, haha.

However, I was expecting the name of the kidnapper being released today, but instead, the name suppression of the accused was extended to 4th August. It's a subject of huge public interest, well, at least most Chinese people I know are eager to find out the name of that guy.

Compare with other countries like America or Canada, Chinese in New Zealand is a small community, so if that real estate agent did his job well, it is likely that quite a lot of us may meet him before or knew him pretty well.

I hope the court got a good reason for the name suppression. At least now it seems that the rumours will keep flying around for another week or two. before we know the kidnapper's name.

----------------

IUPDATE: I just obtained the personal details of the accused, including the name. However, as the suppression is still in place, I'm unable to publish all details here.

All I can say is, this case is not as simple as it may looks like.

However, the court also granted him name supression so we still don't know much about him.

But as New Zealand Herald reported today, this man was a real estate agent. If that's true then it's not that difficult to figure out his motive to kidnap Xin Xin. Keep in mind that Cina's both parents work in the property development business.

Quite a lot of us regard real estate agents as "some kind of evil". I think this case may just another splendid example which could be used to illustrates this point.

I heard this news around 4.25pm. A friend who works in the Chinese media told me to "listen the radio at 5".

He was informed by the liaison officer that an "important news conference" on this case will be held at 5 pm. He asked what that is about, the officer refused to go into details, but simply two words: "good news".

Although the police still did not reveal too much details of the case, I understand that Cina was not physically harmed, reasonably well, just confused on what's going on around her.

Police officially announced this news at the 5pm press conference, but still refuse to disclose details such as the motive or whether a ransom demand has been made.

Cina was reunited with her family not long after the rescue.

A 25 years old Chinese national was arrested as the result of this. This man is due to appear in North Shore District Court tomorrow, where I expect more details of this kidnap should be revealed.

Anyway, I'm glad that the kid is safe, an innocent life saved.

However, there are lots of rumours in the Chinese Community though.

Most people suspect that the kidnap was as the result of a "bad business deal".  This was also reported by most major media in the country.

The rumours I gathered seem to be confirming this. The parents of Cina Ma were described by many as "penny-pinching to the extreme", "cunning" or "out of all reasons" in business deals.

I don't want to go into specific examples here, as they are currently unverifiable. However,  it was said that only the new immigrants want to do business the them because they haven't experience "how bad they are".

Rumours are rumours. Even if they are all true, it would still never be accepted to me, and all good members of Asian community, that any business dispute should ever been dealt in this way.

People who commit crime on innocent children are despicable. They should not be tolerated and should receive the maximum punishment available. They are the thugs of our society we want to remove before any others.

The recent protest shows that we will not stand any crime, regardless of the ethnicity of the criminals.  We will not stand for crimes against our community.

My heart goes with the Cina and her family.  Hope we will see Cina back home soon.

Asians were targeted in South Auckland, but now this really starts to worry me.

The abductor was masked and there was no other known witness apart from the girl's 8 years old cousin.

However, it doesn't look like the usual "gangsters" who just want some quick cash - no ransom demand, or any other kind of news regarding the girl have been made by the abductor  at all.

Ma's home is located off the main street in a new subdivision, where there is very little traffic normally; so it is quite unlikely that the abduction/kidnap is a random action. The family must been targeted for a long time.

I'll be closely monitoring the media (and the Chinese ones) in the following days.

I did not go to protest. I do not like any protest, political group and other stuffs that is racially divided, especially on crime, which is an issue that concerns every single person of the community regardless of their ethnicity, so limit the range to just "Asians" will likely to make other people feel "it's non of our business."

Also I'm quite interested about the organiser Peter Low - my gut feeling tells me he's more than just a boat building businessman from Singapore. I'll run my own sort of background check and see if there is anything interesting pop up.

It's just a gut feeling, though.

I personally support tougher sentencing(except capital punishment), but the trend of setting up vigilante groups really worries me that the movement against crime has just gone out of course.

The suggestion of using triads to combat crime gathered considerable amount of support from Chinese community, although it's very likely a misinterpretation of what Mr Low said.

I hope this will never happen in New Zealand.

However, it is in my opinion that any vigilante groups not controlled by the government will eventually become another style of mobs and gangs.

I believe citizens has the right to take the law into their own hands - when they are personally in danger, which we call this "self defence".

But not anything beyond that.

A vigilante group without proper control is to undermining the authority of the police. This will encourage use of  excessive violence to criminals, but most importantly, to residents of the area - well unless the group runs their own jail, which is quite unlikely.

Police and Law  may not be right all the time and lock up a wrong guy, so does the vigilante group. What if the group has beaten up a wrong guy?

Vigilante action itself is not a bad thing, especially when the crime is out of control it might be the last resort to combat the crime. However, it has to be properly controlled and regulated by law, otherwise it's a huge risk to allow citizens take the law into their own hands.

If residents feel the urgent need to have such a group, it's better to found the group in the form of a security company.

I think it is still better to put a stop on this. However, the government just cannot say "stop" to stop vigilante actions - the best way to prevent citizens take the law into their own hands, is to reduce the crime level in South Auckland - there's no point to have a vigilante group if South Auckland is a  peaceful, crime free area.

However, I have no reason to panic.

If my memory serves me right, the crime rate have been gradually decreasing since the abolishment of capital punishment.

A report by New Zealand Police [PDF]showed that the homicide case number decreased in last few years, despite the population increasing.

So, please don't panic when bad things happened together. South Auckland is more like a localised problem, it should not be a nationwide panic.

Tough laws can solve crime problems in short term, but has little effect for reducing the crime in long term.

I'm very glad that people yelling on the Internet won't have a chance to actually run the country - New Zealand already has one of the world's highest incarceration rate, keep throwing people in the jail is not expected to be effective.

Jail is used to keep bad eggs away so make the rest of us safe, not the place to dump and punish the so-so ones.

Most serious offenders started his life with very little thing: wag schools, tag, car theft, burglar ... then leads on to the "bigger" job.

The problem about our system is that, the punishment for those small things can hardly be called a punishment. People won't learn if they can get away with their small offences, and then leads to the bigger ones.

What I suggest is to make those people really hurt, not just physically. Charged with a small offence like stealing is a very shameful thing back in China, those people usually hide his "shameful" past.

But here, people can tell me that he "had problems" with the police with very little hesitation.Our attitude, especially those related or close to the offenders, are too soft to make them realise that they have done anything wrong.

Huge amount of effort and time is required to change educate those with below average income and poorly educated and change their mind, but things don't just happen overnight.

For the shorter term result, tough law is still the best way to go. However, this is quite unlikely to happen as long as the Jail still looks more like the Hilton Hotel.

Taxpayers pay at least $40,000(should be much higher than this, I cannot remember) to keep an criminal stay in jail.

I have heard a very creative idea from someone, suggests that we can export those people to serve jail sentences elsewhere like Indonesia, Thailand, or China. It will cost much less and the jails there are more closer to the hell rather than the Hilton Hotel.

However, this is unlikely to happen because of the human rights issues.

What people should really realise is that, when a criminal committed an offence to someone else, he/she automatically gives up some of his/her own human rights.

Sure the jailed still have the right to food and warmth, but using floor heating system rather than an extra layer of quilt is just sending the wrong message to those people.

I do not held a point of view on this kind of events. We are living in a free country so everyone has the right to get on the street and make his/her voice heard.

However, I do have an opinion on people who put themselves into this Tibet debate and protest thing. Whether they are pro-china or pro-Tibet; it is in my opinion that people from both sides are fundamentally the same - extremist, ignorant, and both sides believe they are representing the holy truth - the only difference is that they have different religious belief.

If you thought Chinese are non-religious people, you sure need to know a lot more about this country.

Anyway, I still just enjoy to use my camera to record everything down.

Photos below are thumbnails... If you click on them in this webpage, you will see a larger size photo in lightbox; if you are reading this from a rss reader, you will see a new window with larger size photo.