After the fireworks

Victoria Harbor, Looking from Kowloon side

While we love fireworks, we never looked beyond the glamours of the few seconds of the life of a firework.  What really happened is we send a huge blob of explosive into mid-air and let it explode in a pre-designed sequence to reveal the layers of colors when the different chemicals were ignited.  Other than the bright colors, they were the same as bombs - period.  What happens after a bomb exploded is huge plumes of smoke and awfully pungent smell.  But we all looked beyond that.

This was what really happened after 20 minutes of continuous fireworks.  It took over an hour for the smoke and whatever residual to dissipate.  But of course, by the look of this picture, it wasn't looking so bad either.....