Accidental tourist

guangzhou TV tower in the background

vincent yu happy

Yesterday, me and Vincent were tasked to go out and look for features around the venue of the 16th Guangzhou Asian Games opening ceremony. Everything here from the main media center which is where we are, is millions of miles away. We took a train over thinking we could drop off as close as possible and walk the rest of the way but found out that all the stations around the venue were shut for security reasons. (read: we have to walk for hours to get where we want to go). So we got out of a station TiYu XiLu and found that there was a bicycle renting station! We decided to go for it! Man it was so good cycling around Guangzhou city, there are bicycle lanes on the street and everyone rides a bicycle so there's no drama involved. I go around town back in Singapore on a foldable bicycle sometimes and it's so convenient. You move around fast and you still get to see what is going on around you. You sweat less, and you feel less tired. We felt like tourists except that we were on assignment. I also had a perfect opportunity to test out my BlackRapid RS DR-1 strap which allowed me to ride the bike and not have stuff falling off me. My Canon Mark IV on one shoulder and the Canon 5D Mark II on the other. Needless to say the bike was nothing like what I have in Singapore with all the fancy parts and in fact this one had a luminous green BASKET on the front! (don't cringe) but it worked well carrying my net-book on it. Because of this simple little thing like renting a bike, my whole work flow was smooth and almost painless. I love it when we get to start out on our assignments on a good note. Tonight's the opening ceremony let's see what happens.