One of the ways to appreciate your hometown, I think, is to leave the place for a long while and back later. You will discover there are at least some little changes, very tiny perhaps, but worthwhile to be noticed. At the same time you realise life goes on, with or without you actually, and these changes may eventually become dots of a line, lines of a sketch that one day the whole picture has been changed. Little by little, second after second.

I have been having this concept in mind ever since I have stepped foot on my hometown, Hong Kong. I haven’t been living in this fascinating island for over 3 years, and therefore I won’t blame myself for being curious (overly in many ways) at the faces of people, the smell of the streets, the ever-rotating shops and the growing population of my city. I try not to add any seasoning of judgement to it. Just open my mind and feel the moment. (but still careful enough not to inhale the combustion on the road too much…)

I live in an aged town where the old airport is located. Before 1998, I used to see airplanes flew above my head just like gigantic black birds. I was used to those inevitable roaming sounds, and since small we learned not to speak whenever they flew by, as we wouldn’t be able to hear anything anyway. It was a unbelievably dangerous scene to the eyes of many tourists, but Hong Kong people didn’t feel a thing. It was once a part of our lives.

And we did not notice by then.

Till years after the noise has gone, and became a corner of our memories. I have been collecting bits of memories, here and there, and those fragments are so full sometimes that I believe they can become a picture or two.

This big eraser stamp design was a result of my observation to an old residential building covered with scaffold. I never saw scaffolding project in Japan or the States, but there are plenty in Hong Kong. So much skill involved, yet so unnoticed. Before this scene is gone, I want to keep it in my stamp design.