These fireworks pictures are from the summer, the second day of the Celebration of Light.
It was Spain’s turn and the theme was ‘odyssey’
I took these from a 10th floor south facing balcony – I was too lazy to walk to the beach.

Yesterday was the last night of the fireworks, a few hours before the start, the sky let out a round thunderstorms and rain.
This was our first rainfall in almost thirty days.
Same thing happened last year on the last night of the fireworks, it rained heavy and hard with lighting briefly after we’d gone weeks without rain.

Tonight’s theme was “The Butterfly Lovers Legend”, a tribute to China by Canada; it wasn’t part of the competition but it was pretty spectacular.
The crowds were huge and went on for miles and miles, we were lucky to find a nice spot at the last minute.

Here’s a video of the final thirty seconds of the show shot with the iPhone 4.
The picture quality here is way much better than the one I uploaded on to TwitVid last night.

This video is from the first night, two weeks ago, the theme was ‘In The Mood’ a tribute to the big band era by the US.

The fireworks start tonight!
It weird because just realized that it’s summer and I haven’t done any of the things I said I’d do!
This time last year, I was out and about getting into all sorts of trouble, and this year it feels like the most exciting thing I’ve done so far is plan my Parisian vacation.
I think I sat around so long waiting for summer to come that I didn’t notice when it did.

I’ve had a weird ‘in a not good way’ past couple of days, it feels like I’m having an out of body experience.
I take these instances as life’s prompt for change; a nudge to try something different or break free and try something out of character.

Outfit Details: Skirt – Gap, Shirt – Uniqlo, Sweater – H&M, Shoes – Clarks

Ok, I’m off to see the fireworks – I’m making a production out of it, I’m bringing the camera, the tripod and ‘an assistant’

Who was it that said “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” Joni Mitchell? Well, sometimes it’s just as easy as “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s threatened.”

I’ve been ambivalent about the fireworks competition for a while now. This year, there was a real chance that it’ll be cancelled, which isn’t exactly new – every year for as long as I’ve been here, they threaten to cancel it for financial reasons and then miraculously find a sponsor who saves� the festival just in the nick of time.

It didn’t look like a saviour would emerge this year, so after 18 successive years of fireworks, the Celebration of Lights was officially cancelled and we all moved on. I don’t know how it happened but I felt a little sad that it was gone.

I thought about the massive crowds, the noise, the party atmosphere and then it hit me…. the fireworks is part of what makes summer in the city great!

It’s partly the reason why I don’t mind staying in the city for summer. It’s a nice change; it brings people together and livens up the neighbourhood.

Of course, new sponsors were found and the festival was un-cancelled.

The first night when the West End started filling up with people, and residents watched on with trepidation, I looked at the makeshift fences erected to protect gardens,� guards in front of buildings then those mixed feelings started creeping up.

I headed out to English Bay with my camera; hoping to capture the some of images that makes this festival awesome.

It’s so much more than just fireworks.

It was sunny and hot, the water was warm. I’m sure these girls don’t really mean to drown their sister.

The girl with the cute pink “Parisien” parasol managed to eat her ice cream, be on the phone and kept cool under the shades.

On� firework days most folks come early and make a nice picnic out of it.

Some families come in the morning and make a whole day out of it.

Hopefully the guys working on this ship enjoyed the show too.

Sometimes waiting is the hardest.

And sometimes laughter makes waiting for the fireworks to start bearable.

Sometimes with so many people, finding your party is hard.

Everyone has a favourite viewing spot, and we’re all convinced it’s the best.

It’s a magical place where kids get their faces painted, and play with rainbows and unicorns .

Men bring flowers,

and everything funny.

Of course, the these guys were on hand to keep the peace, half a million people descended on us after all.

Visit my flickr Celebration of Lights set for more fireworks fun photos & videos.

The African Peace Festival has been going on every year for the past four years, and for some strange reason, I’d never heard of it until recently. What kind of African am I?

As luck would have it, I met one of the performers weeks earlier at the jazz festival who promised it’ll be fun.

The festival is organized by the African Peace Forum Society to raise funds ‘for a grassroots humanitarian project in Africa which is selected annually’.

This year’s festival was held at the Roundhouse Community Centre on the 18^th of July. I went there not exactly sure what to expect.

I imagined a peace festival would be a conference style sort of atmosphere with workshops and possibly breakout sessions where there’ll be lots of vague talk about how to bring peace to ‘Africa’. This isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully, it wasn’t anything like I imagined. It was a market place with a performance stage and seating area in the middle. I really liked the set up because I could browse, watch and listen to the performances too.

The market place featured an array of interesting vendors;

Pathfinder Press publishes writings and speeches from revolutionists like Thomas Sankara.

Afri-Pads is a Ugandan based organization that sews and distributes washable menstrual pads to girls in rural Uganda – it’s such an exceptional enterprise.

Performances included a poetry slam, musical acts and an acrobat dancer. Saw the Raging Grannies!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the whole event because I had to be at the Folk Festival.

It was� overall great fun; I’m glad I was there,� saw some old friendly faces and discovered new ones.