I first heard about the Capture the Colours contest through Mad, who nominated me to join. (Check out her awesome entry here!) The idea is to post 5 photos from your travels, each representing a different colour and I thought it was an interesting concept for a blog post, even if I'm not out to win anything.

Initially I was highly doubtful that I can even find 5 representative photos, since I usually take human beings and food more than gorgeous scenery. Anyway, I quickly scanned through all my photos and woah I'm quite glad all these photos exist because although I won't say that I'm quite the globe-trotter (there are still so many parts of the world I haven't been to!), I realized I have seen and experienced quite a number of things through my travels. And without these photos to remind me of what I have seen, I think I would have forgotten most of them. For example, I can't even remember all the places I visited in Beijing.

Also I realized that the quality of my photos were all pretty lousy circa 2006, not that it's fantastic now but I guess the quality of the camera also helps LOL.

There might be more hidden gems in my folders but sifting through everything is gonna be super time consuming. I tried to find one photo from each of my more memorable trips so here goes:

Red

 

The Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, Japan. Taken in June 2009. It looks orangey here but the pillars are red in real life, perhaps my camera wasn't good enough to capture the colours properly. There's a picture of me mimicking a scene out of Memoirs of a Geisha floating around somewhere hahaha.
Read more about my Japan trip here.

White

I visited Cambodia the same year, in December 2009. This was taken in the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I thought this really suited the white theme well and sent a really strong message about the sombre sentiment of our visit to the Killing Fields. It reminds you of the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime, and perhaps even of mankind in general.

Yellow

  

I had a few photos for the Yellow category but ultimately chose this even though it only has slight accents of yellow because 1) It's THE Great Wall of China! 2) It was during the World Cup in 2010 and we saw a group of Brazilians who were very enthusiastic about their support for their country, as you can see from above. 3) We didn't know them but just went ahead to take a photo with them anyway. :D

Taken in Beijing, China, June 2010.

Blue

  

I had such a hard time trying to find a photo that suited the blue theme because I felt that they all weren't representative enough. In the end I settled for this shot, taken at the Death Valley, California, USA, June 2011. We stayed over a night here en route to Las Vegas and this place really lives up to its name. There were very few people around, it was super dry and scorching hot, so much so that I could feel the heat radiating up from the ground.

Green

 

Last but not least, this is my shortlisted photo for Green. The most recent of the lot, taken in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia in July 2012. This trip was a purposeful one, as the aim was to summit Mount Kinabalu, and I feel that this shot was very representative of the seemingly never-ending hike up to the top. Surrounded by lush greenery, all we could do was to focus on taking one step at a time, slowly, ploddingly, surely.

Read more about my Kota Kinabalu experience here!

Check out more awesome photos on their Facebook page, I just did and it sure puts my lousy humble photos to shame!!!

OK I'm supposed to nominate 5 people to join too and I hereby "arrow" the following (no obligations though! The deadline's nearing anyway...)

1) Gillian

2) Adelene

3) Mabel 

Shucks running out of friends to arrow...

4) Su Yi

5) Can I re-nominate Mad? Haha

I will save the other photos that I selected but didn't make the cut for another entry next time! Laters!

I'm proud to say that I've more or less completed my packing! Compared to the last time when I went to Cambodia and started packing only at like 6am...

Still, I have to go to work tomorrow morning. How I wish I had taken a full day's leave instead. Can't believe it was almost a year ago that I was embarking on my Japan adventure! And now 1 year later it's China. We are still undecided if we should spend 2 whole days at the Shanghai World Expo and forgo all sight seeing in Shanghai. This would probably mean a lot of squeezing, jostling with loud and aggressive people and queuing. One of my travel companions has been to Shanghai before and would prefer to visit the Expo. The other may not be so keen. I am on the fence. Anyone can offer thoughts/suggestions?

Anyway it seems like my exercising efforts have paid off! Quite a random number of people have commented that I now look run down or have lost weight. Maybe my face is now smaller? Hahaha!

And it's been 32 days.