空气龙 - Or Silly Westerner Stares At Clouds

I saw three dragons on the way home today.

The first was from the bus, to the east over the harbour. It was large, probably a few kilometres long.

The second two were from Crows Nest, to the south-west and smaller and higher.

They were not the unwieldy Western dragons that religious figures kill to prove Mankind's mastery over nature and heathens; they were the graceful dancing dragons of the East. The first one was all by itself, without even the sparky-flaming ball thingy. The second two were flying together, having fun. I guess all three were having fun.

Not being an expert on such things, I think they were 空气龙 (or kongqi-long for those without Eastern fonts), which is my own translation and probably very wide of the mark.

Of course, they were clouds that looked a lot like dragons. It got me thinking though that I was most likely the only one to see them, due to the angles of late afternoon sunlight - they would have looked different from other directions - and the odds of other people staring aimlessly into the sky and trying to see shapes in clouds. I think these days, in Sydney, the odds of that are about 1 in 10^6 given a population of about 3x10^6 - I know of only two other people likely to do such frivolous things.

I would expect these days there are not lessons in lying on your back staring at clouds, unless it was to spot useful things like Share Transaction Statements, All-Wheel-Drive-Soft-Roaders, or the latest info on the property market. It's probably the kind of passtime that will get you labled as 'terrorist' or 'illegal foreigner', and likely to get you locked up and ignored or tortured for six months.

So from spotting dragons we get to the state of contemporary Sydney lifestyles.

Sydney - 2 : Corinoco - 1 (one point for seeing dragons)