Next chapter

Firstly, an admin note: I have updated my settings to receive an email whenever anyone takes the time to comment on the blog, I'll now respond straight away. All comments are appreciated and I can now demonstrate my appreciation by replying quickly.

So, to follow up on my post at the end of September concerning unemployment - it's over!

I have a great new job.

I don't want to get into the details yet because I need to take a few weeks to figure out what level of division between personal and professional I need to take. It's no major secret, but obviously the Internet is a public forum and some issues are for discussion on a more selected basis.

In generalities however it is in the same field I was working in before I left the UK, but happily a little bit further up the ladder. I really enjoyed that job. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, but it was interesting, I got to travel and my boss always gave me opportunities to take on more responsibilities and develop my career. The pay and benefits were very good as is the case in the public sector in the UK - enjoy them if you've got a job in that sector and don't harp on about the private sector - you're on to a good (although perhaps precarious) thing. I'd had that job for three years though and was certainly at a stage where I was looking to push on, gain more experience and take on more responsibility.

As things turned out, I gave it up for no fixed job. German in Zhong Guo got the job here and it wasn't a difficult decision to give it all up to come with her. She's now missus Geordie in Zhong Guo, so I feel my choice was vindicated. I've never felt a moments regret since making that decision.

In the first place, since at that time we weren't married, I needed a visa. I accepted that I would be the junior partner financially, but I also wanted to earn enough to pay a loan that I'd taken out before we got together. I'm all for integrating our finances, but that didn't seem fair.

With some heavy duty searching, I was able to find a job that fitted both these criteria. Like any job there were some frustrating times as I adjusted to the new system. Ultimately however, that university job grew into something really beneficial and gave me some invaluable management experience and exposure to the nature of bureaucracy in a large Chinese organisation. In the second year of that job I was able to take on some more responsibility and instigate some real change in the development and delivery of the teaching, which was, I think really focused on giving the students more of the practical skills they need to succeed in both British universities and the international work place.

I should also mention the fantastic experience I gained working at a new and dynamic NGO focused on the green economy and micro finance. An opportunity that came up at a party and developed into a totally different, but equally invaluable perspective on working in China.

For different reasons at different times I left both of these jobs, but with no regrets and I recognise 100% that without these two roles, I wouldn't have had either the confidence or the experience to apply for the job I'm about to start.

So, the point of the post is this: I thought I was taking a backwards step (career-wise at least) whereas in fact it has resulted in the best job I've ever had and the opportunity for real progress.

I know that not everyone has the luxury I've enjoyed over the last few months of being able to take the time to find the perfect job and in the meantime, not be too stressed about money, somewhere to live and particularly relevant in China - a visa to stay here.

If I could offer anything from this whole experience though it would be that any new opportunity can be put to positive effect. It sounds trite, but it's true to my experience over the last two years. You may not take a decision or make a move for reasons related to work, but what you learn can still help.

It's all relative...

would be the ideal title for a blog post about the recent visit of my parents.

That's not what I want to write about though.

I want to write about language.

It's something that I was thinking about on that recent trip.

Most of our friends are here in China for a specific reason.

Well obviously everyone is here for some reason or another, but what I mean is almost everyone has a China-related reason. Some are here for relationships, some for family reasons, some people are exploring family history. Quite a few are here to improve their study of Mandarin.

Caroline and I are obviously here for her job and therefore our plan is only ever short- to medium-term depending on things like my job (which I expect progress on soon).

We both started off with Chinese lessons, but it's fair to say that for better or worse excuses we're no longer studying the language. We have reached a point at which we can deal with most day-to-day issues, but we're both aware that we're a long way away from an intermediate level. From our perspective that's mostly fine, neither of us wants to stay here forever, nor do we want our professional careers to have a specific focus on China.

Obviously though there are occasions where this attitude falls down. We deliberately live in a housing compound that has experience of international residents, but it can be a drag trying to get anything done and although it is frustrating, I'm the first to accept this is down to my inability to express myself beyond the basic.

As I say, most of our friends, here for a specific reason, therefore have a stronger motivation to study Chinese. Between university, friends, lovers and their own private studies, most of our friends have an enviable level ranging from conversational to downright fluent.

So in certain situations we tend to defer to their better abilities, which of course can be very irritating for them. The silly thing is that for about 80% of these conversations we would be just fine, if slower, clumsier and more simplistic.

Normally when travelling, at least one of these linguistically-gifted friends will be with us and so Caroline and I take a relative back seat on the communication front. Recently however we have had more guests from Europe. Most of whom, reasonably don't speak a word of putonghua (common language or Mandarin). In these circumstances, Caroline and I then have to take responsibility for all interaction. Consequently our guests get the impression that we know what we're doing and can speak without too much trouble.

From the experience of the latest trip, that then gives me confidence to try and manage more and more complex conversations (within reason). All of which I am happy to report worked out without incident, although I was unable to have a discussion with a taxi driver about how many people he thought lived in Leshan in Sichuan.

Speaking of Sichuan, I seem to have a particularly difficult time making myself understood there, even the extreme basics of rice, vinegar and so on seemed to be a bridge too far. Perhaps I've picked up too strong a Beijing'r accent or something...

Another interesting point was in Hong Kong. Obviously it feels culturally more familiar than Beijing and of course many more people speak English. I don't like being totally dependent on other's grasp of my language though and so I experienced the frustrating lack of any Cantonese words at all and ended up feeling more at home when I arrived back in Beijing, able to talk with people, albeit haltingly.

Whichever language I'm speaking (other than English) I experience different levels of confidence and pride depending on who else is with me. I assume that's the same for everyone. It's clear to me though that in order to continue progress in any language you have to be prepared to speak and make mistakes no matter who is there.

As I've said before, Brussels was in that respect, an extremely difficult place to improve French speaking. Any small slips in grammar or accent would normally see the conversation change quickly into English.

German is of course my language focus these days, but despite extensive research I haven't been able to find any suitable lessons here in Beijing. The search continues...

Tourism in China....

... is an experience in itself. Whoever has seen the BBC 'Wild China' series will have admired the beautiful empty landscapes, the diverse wildlife and the minorities in far-away villages. Well, considering the fact that the Chinese tourism industry has already ran a huge surplus this year, it's probably not surprising to hear that those places are rare and difficult to reach.

The big tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City, the Panda Reserve, the Shaolin Temple and Yellow Mountain are reachable in convenient ways, which on the other hand means you're never alone. Really! Not alone. Although, as soon as you step away from the crowd and the main attraction, it gets empty and there is space for you to take some pictures without others in the background.

Mark and I went on a Chinese tour to the Tulou Houses in Fujian Provinces, a day-trip from Xiamen. Cheap and cheerful, with a stop at a coconut factory and a banana fruit stall, it was a truly Chinese experience, with passing the Tulous and carrying on to eat first (you have to get your priorities right!). But again, walk away from the crowds and suddenly there aren't many people at all, just a few locals who wonder what on earth you're doing there, when the attraction is down the road.

Travelling in China is quite easy (taking away the language issue), and so tourist sites can be reached relatively easy. But it is not South East Asia, no country with mellow obedient people and definitely not the right place to find your inner peace. You can however feel with every step the powerhouse of China, the energy that drives this huge country forward and the determination of its people. And that in itself is probably a very worthwhile experience.

Two posts in a day?

As if the last one wasn't long enough.

I just want to post a link here.

This is a podcast I subscribe to thanks to Fergus.

It's published weekly and always interesting, at least here in Beijing - I can't comment if you're not immersed in the city / country.

This specific podcast is from the end of May.

Something else I've been able to catch up on since not working...

The reason I'm linking it here is because it's a topic that is both interesting and I have spoken about to most people willing to listen.

The podcasters are discussing bias in the media towards China, both positive and negative, domestic and international. I think it's a fascinating subject and the discussion is a great introduction to it. I'll be happy to discuss it further with anyone whose a)interested and b)picking up the tab.

Unemployment or the travails of a trailing husband

I think most, if not all of you know that I am currently "between jobs".

Obviously, we originally came to Beijing for Caroline's job. And since we weren't married at the time, I also needed a job to get a visa. Now of course that's no longer the case.

When we left Newcastle I was very happy at the job I gave up, however after three years I was ready for another challenge. So it wasn't easy to give up a good job with good benefits, but equally it was an easy choice to make when presented with the alternative of coming here with Caroline.

I was nervous. I spent a lot of time telling everyone that I would take any job I could find to stay here - and I certainly would have done. However, I care about my career too and didn't want to put that on hold for too long. Perhaps even more substantially I was a little nervous about Caroline being the breadwinner.

It might sound a little bit pathetic to say this, especially as I would like to present myself as a modern man. I don't expect to tell the wife what to do, I always expected our decisions to be a compromise and that is how we work. However, one of the things I've learned being away from home is that Newcastle is still quite a traditional place. Well, actually I never doubted that, what I've actually discovered is that this has had more of an impact on me than I realised. This is something I have written about a little recently, you leave and realise that you have been shaped by your own origins more than you thought.

In a couple, it's inevitable that one person earns more and has the more prestigious job than the other. Normally it's the man, but that is and should be changing. I'm quite proud of my academic and professional career to date, so it wasn't easy to be the minor partner.

Fortunately I managed to find a job which presented a real challenge. Through a process of in-depth research, lots of applications and of course some good luck, I discovered International College Beijing (ICB) and applied for a job as a business studies lecturer. There were some clear ties to the work I had done at Newcastle Council and while there was no comparison to Caroline's job, the benefits were very competitive in Beijing and most importantly there was a real intellectual challenge.

After the first three months at ICB I felt comfortable with my role and confident enough to look up and try and identify some other opportunities. Not necessarily as a replacement job, but given the hours of a university lecturer, it was possible to take on a second and even a third job. Thanks to an academic I knew whilst working on Chinese student issues in the UK I started teaching English at another university and to volunteer at a micro-finance NGO.

The English teaching presented a different challenge, but it was not my particular area of interest, so after a couple of semesters I decided not to carry that on. It's also worth mentioning that whenever I told someone my job, I was very quick to explain that I was a business teacher and absolutely not an English teacher. This is an issue which is very specific to China. I have a number of friends who work as English teachers and I intend no insult to them. However, for a lot of 'Westerners' being an English teacher is shorthand for those people (read men) who are in China for a few different reasons (girls, learning Chinese and a better quality of life than at home, in no particular order). There is so much demand for English teachers here that some of the supply is not of the highest quality and can sometimes lack even the most basic teaching credentials. I contrast this completely from those people with genuine qualifications and experience in education. But it was simply easier for me to explain that I was a business lecturer and then most people seemed to assume that it was a 'real' job.

I was particularly self-concious when speaking to Caroline's colleagues. These are people who's jobs I coveted and am confident that I could do, so I never wanted them to see me as an 'English' teacher. After introductions it never took very long before I told them I had also passed the test to work for the EU, but for jobs back in Brussels. Stupid really, but these are the small ways that we try to retain a little pride.

Working at a small-scale NGO which had only been established for a short time was a fantastic experience. It gave me a real insight into how hard it is to start up a business and how challenging the Chinese business environment can be. I learned about the value of networks and also how much impact you can make with a small organisation. I was also able to apply a lot of the procedural experience I gained working at public sector organisations and gained a new perspective on why bureaucratic organisation develop the way that they do and have. It was hard work, sometimes morale-sapping and a demanding place to work, however there were a number of occasions when I came very close to taking this job on full time and leaving ICB. Ultimately another opportunity arose that I chose to pursue.

After the first year at the university, things changed. Again a combination of hard work and good luck meant I was in a position to take a lead in the development of a new programme there. Over the course of the academic year and especially in the second semester leading a great team I learned a huge amount; about management, about working with a Chinese organisation, about organisational change, about cross-cultural communication and about the in-depth planning that is necessary whenever something new is being introduced. As a team we had some great successes, but also some failures and the greatest challenge was to learn from these as you go and make the necessary changes to improve the programme, rather than simply to stick inflexibly with the original plans.

For a variety of reasons, some professional, some personal; the latest contract offer from ICB wasn't acceptable for me. So at the beginning of July my last contract ended and so began my first period of unemployment in China, my first anywhere if you ignore two weeks between undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

We then spent a month, from mid-July to mid-August back in Berlin and Newcastle, so that was no different than a usual holiday. I think some of my negative feelings around that time were due to nervousness about job opportunities there might be, even though I acted supremely confident and blamed all frustrations on the little irritations of life in Beijing.

I've now been back in Beijing for a month and as of today, I'm still out of work. However it has actually been a really positive month. Since we first got here I've always tried to take on more of the burden of jobs around the house and any of the small, but time-consuming tasks that are necessary outside of work were my responsibility. It's a small effort to rebalance the scales with Caroline's long hours and big pay packets. So obviously this month I have tried to do that even more. It's also been a personal rule that, even if I was working in the afternoon, I would get up with Caroline and have breakfast with her - I couldn't handle lounging around in bed while she goes off to work. And I have most certainly kept that going, even more important while I've been unemployed.

So what have I been doing? Well, applying for lots of jobs obviously. And that's probably the main thing that has kept me relaxed throughout the process. My experience of coming to Beijing and taking on some completely new roles has given me a lot of confidence that I can take on a new job and quickly identify how I can add value to the organisation whether it is big or small and in whatever sector. I can do this wherever we move next and I can do it in my next job here in Beijing. So there have been some interesting opportunities and in fact I'm very hopeful that my status will change in the coming weeks - but I don't want to say any more about that since it would be unprofessional and potentially jinx it.

I've used the free time to get back into a good routine at the gym, four or five visits a week. It was sorely necessary after the good life that we have here, but it has been a real pleasure to have the time to commit to it and I'm feeling much better for it. Going to sleep physically rather than mentally tired is not to be underestimated. I'm actually off there in an hour or so when I complete this post and another application.

The rest of the time I have spent updating my on-line profile, I think this is certainly a part-time job and much harder to maintain when you are working full-time, unless of course some element of your job requires it. I've also been reading lots of interesting articles. The challenge will be to keep up these good things when I do start my new job.

As with most things, I think the lesson I have learned is to be more confident. It doesn't really matter what people think of your job. We can probably all think of examples of idiots with great jobs or indeed, great people with crappy ones. I've got more pride in what I have actually done in the two years since we moved here than if I had taken on a great sounding job and spent the time surfing the Internet and waiting for the weekend.

As soon as I've got a new job, you can be sure I'll post.

A birthday and a trip

The weekend before the one just gone was of course Caroline's birthday and we had a picnic in our compound with lots of friends. There was lots of nice food, lots of pimms and some games. It was generally a great day.

This weekend we went to Qingdao (also written as Tsingtao, which some might recognise). Just a couple of days with Ann and Sunnia, but as always it's great to see new places in this diverse country. It used to be the major German concession in China (hence the beer) and we visited some interesting buildings and sites from that time.

Using Caroline's birthday present, we took some photographs of these two events and I have uploaded them to flickr. If you want to see them, follow this link and then befriend me. That way you'll be able to see all of our photographs.

Here's a photograph from each to whet your appetite:

Blogger's Block

Obviously we haven't been very prolific on here recently.
I did post last month, but it was only a musical effort and therefore perhaps doesn't really count. In Caroline's defence, she obviously has a lot of work going on and therefore only has time to write about specific things like her trip to Laos for example.
Since I am currently between jobs I don't have that excuse.

The specific problem is that after two years here, things don't stand out as much as they did when we first arrived. In addition to the fact that we have written about most of the things of immediate interest. The whole purpose of the blog was to keep people up-to-date with our life here in Beijing. Once things start to seem 'normal', it's inevitable that stream would run dry somewhat.

This idea of normality is one of the reasons I was feeling a little frustrated here earlier in the summer. I was beginning to take all of the good things for granted; as though they were normal. All of the frustrating things however, remained frustrating and if anything, the leeway that I afforded things when we first arrived was gone. I had little patience for the drivers and the general displays of bad manners which are fairly commonplace.

Happily, as I had hoped, the trip back to Europe served to remind me that a lot of the things I was taking for granted aren't 'normal' and aren't available to everyone in every city or country. Maybe I was just getting a little spoilt. Anyway, We've been back in Beijing for just over a fortnight (three weeks for Caroline) and I am again loving life here. I'm remembering to appreciate the culture amongst our friends of socialising frequently and not just at weekends, the food and restaurants remain fantastic, the weather has been regularly beautiful, someone comes to clean our apartment and generally our money goes a lot further here than it would in Europe. It also certainly helps to think about my parents coming and how enthusiastic we are to show them our life here and to take a trip to some great places in China; Xiamen (formerly Amoy), Chengdu (pandas), Yangshuo and Hong Kong.

The flip side of the coin is that I am trying to ignore the things that irritate me, although it is challenging, it is worth remembering that there are irritating things wherever you live.

So, this certainly helps to make me a more amenable person to be around, but it doesn't necessarily help me with subjects for blog posts. One thing I have learned about myself since moving is how relative characteristics are. What do I mean by that opaque phrase? Well, when you are in your home town, it's common to define yourself by your differences from the people around you. At least, this was common for me. However, as soon as you move away, and become surrounded by very different people, you begin to define yourself by your similarities to the people back at home. Again I'm writing in the second person, but perhaps this is just me?

Anyway, a concrete example of this would be about self-exposure. I always saw myself as being quite open about my thoughts and feelings. And by comparison to a lot of people I know I think that holds true. However, as my circle of friends and acquaintances widens and indeed as I read more blogs about other peoples' lives, I realise that on the spectrum of openness, I am probably closer to the tight-lipped end than the reveal-all point. So it really is all relative and what I am saying in a roundabout kind of way is that I don't intend to change this from a "our new life in Beijing" kind of blog, to a "this is what I am thinking at any given moment" effort. On reflection, I suspect Twitter might have been the real revelation on this score. Some people seem quite happy to reveal a remarkable degree about themselves in comparison to me.

So, in a slightly dissatisfying manner, I finish this post with the news that I haven't really figured out what else to write about, other than to try and remember to see things through the eyes of a newcomer. Plus it is a little ridiculous to suggest I have told the story of Beijing, a city of nigh on 20 million people in just these few posts. I'll have a new job soon, so perhaps that will provide me with new insights to share. To finish on an up-note, we're off to Qingdao (also transliterated as Tsingtao) at the weekend, so there'll definitely be some photographs and something to report from that trip.

Not feeling very literary at the moment, so you'll just have to listen instead

Dubai, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Newcastle, London and Henley, but not Rothbury...

Like a terrorist leader trying to prove my kidneys haven't failed I'd like to make a couple of topical comments.
1. Why don't they dig a ditch around Rothbury and fill it with water, they could call it the Moatmoat? Removed for reasons of poor taste.
2. Cephalopods cannot predict the future. If they could they would deliberately fling themselves out of their tanks before arriving in Oberhausen. Seriously, Darlington is unlucky to be twinned with such a concrete place... this should tell you all you need to know.

Well our household's specific interest in the World Cup is now over. It has actually been brilliant. I forgot about England's ignominy quickly and have since enjoyed supporting Germany's dynamic team. It's been an excellent tournament here since there are nearly always people from each competing nation, bars are open 24 hours and the weather is hot enough all the time to sit outside and enjoy the games en masse. Some locals and Americans get a bit confused and cheer at the wrong times, but in general it has been brilliant. Since I've been transferring my support based on loyalties, I will now shift to the Oranje army in honour of the van Wagtendonks.

It's been nigh on 40 degrees for a fortnight now and I'mm loving it. A chilled apartment, outdoor pools, rooftop bars and ice cold beers make it easier to bear.

Anyway, the purpose and title of the post; we'll be back in Europe for between 3 and 4 weeks. Caroline unfortunately has to return before me for work, but it's happened the other way around too, so it's not so bad.

These are our travel plans, let us know if, where and when you'd like to catch up:

Thu, Jul 22 23:55 Flight from Beijing (PEK) to Dubai (DXB)
Fri, Jul 23 08:40 Flight from Dubai (DXB) to Dusseldorf (DUS)
15:05 Flight from Dusseldorf (DUS) to Berlin (TXL)
Mon, Aug 2 16:40 Flight from Berlin (TXL) to London (LHR)
Sometime that week we'll be heading south to London and Henley
Caroline back to Beijing
Sun, Aug 8 Flight from London (LHR) to Dubai (DXB)
Mon, Aug 9 Flight from Dubai (DXB) to Beijing (PEK)
Then sometime that week I'll be heading back north to Newcastle
Sat, Aug 14 13:35 Flight from Newcastle (NCL) to Dubai (DXB)
Sun, Aug 15 11:00 Flight from Dubai (DXB) to Beijing (PEK)

Just a link to Flickr

Just uploaded a few shots of Neil and Jo's visit.
They can be found here.

Travelling in & outside of China

One of our favourite hobbies is leaving our little Beijing to go out into the vast lands called Asia, to see what the crack is. Last year we managed to do quite a few weekend trips, which was great, this year, we have been struggling, but luckily our European visitors inspired us, so we've recently seen Chengdu, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Very different from each other, but each one interesting and a nice excuse to leave Beijing and see something new. There are still quite a few places in China we want to see, so hopefully we can plan some more weekend trips for the next semester.

And then there is of course travelling in other Asian countries, that are on China's doorstep: Mongolia, the Koreas, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, ... you name it. There all a flight away, equal to flying from the UK to Greece, and it's super-exciting.

I was lucky that I could tag along to a trip to Laos recently, and made the strange experience to meet backpackers and having to answer the question: "So where have you come from, how long are you staying in Laos and where are you going next?" with "China, 1 week, China" It's hard to comprehend that from here we have access to so many dream destinations that usually form an integral part of travelling the world, I guess in some sense we do the same, just totally differently! I think that's one of the privileges that ex-pats over here sometimes forget when complaining about this or that, we can just jet off for a week to Thailand and not spend 2000 Euro on a return flight, and we can go back any time for more.

The must-see destinations on our list before eventually leaving China are definitely Mongolia, North Korea, Japan and Taiwan, so if anyone is interested in joining, just let us know!!!!

What has happened since my last post

Sorry for the uninspiring title but that's pretty much the purpose of the blog innit?

I'm sitting on the sofa using my phone to write this update. I'm listening to Chrissy Waddle on Five Live using my headphones, Caroline is having a couple of hours sleep before getting up to watch Germany. I can't sleep like that otherwise I'd be semi-conscious for the Germany game.

Just a quick mention of the England game. Obviously I'm happy we qualified, but there were too many antagonistic idiots booing the star-spangled banner when both matches were playing in the pub we were in. It's not a big deal but it's a bit embarrassing when you go to the match with an American, a Chinese and a German. A bit of dignity would have been nice. Anyway…

I've uploaded some photographs and videos recently, so you've seen what we've been up to.

The word recently has been visitors. First the in-laws and next the Cloughs. It's been brilliant.

Since we've been in Beijing we've been lucky enough to have accommodation big enough to welcome just about any guests who are able to come.

I had such a fantastic time in China for Mike and Shelley's wedding in 2006 and staying with them for the first week in Suzhou made life so much easier. It gave us the confidence that the next two weeks were gong to be fairly easy, although of course communication was always a challenge.

As I felt in 2006 and I still feel four years (and two years living here) later, China is such a foreign place that it makes for a brilliant visit. The food, the language, the culture, the architecture, everything is so different that it's a real experience - just what you want from long distance travel.

Anyway this is not an advert, I'll leave other people to decide whether they've enjoyed their visit or not. And still others to decide if they can come to see us or not.

Both Caroline and I are lucky, in that our jobs are sufficiently flexible that we can host guests without needing to take weeks and weeks off work, which is obviously not possible.

It does mean however that we are either at work, or we are doing touristy activities. Obviously I'm always quite enthusiastic, Caroline gently mocks me because things are either the best ever or the worst ever. Anyway, it's actually great to do the touristy things again because it 'forces' you to do things that in normal life you tend not to bother with. I've probably mentioned this before, but when I lived in Brussels, I always tried to walk through the Grand Place whenever possible. In Beijing, it's great to have the excuse / inspiration to go to the hutongs (old alleys), the Summer Palace, the Lama Temple, Tian'anmen Square, Forbidden City, the Great Wall and all the rest.

It does mean we're super busy though and that's why we've been rather quiet on here and via email.

Caroline did get back from a week in Laos recently though, so she's going to blog soon with some exclusive elephant photographs.

Signing out now, I'll finish up with the hope that Germany do the business in just under an hour.

Some uploads

Subtle changes will be noticed by anyone who has visited before.
The photograph above for example is of the same building (the Bell Tower in Xi'an) and was still taken by one of us, but is the 2010 redux by Caroline, rather than the 2006 original by me. A fresh new take on an old classic I'm sure you'll agree.
Give me some feedback, if this new design causes irritation I can easily switch it back.

Anyway, I am in the process of catching up with things as promised.

So I have uploaded three new videos to my youtube page and a new set of photographs from Caroline's parents visit to my flickr page.

I'll actually get some blogging done this weekend too, so check back.

Still here

It's safe to say we've been complacent with updates on here recently, however it is complacency with a reason.

For about the last month, since my rather difficult attempt to sit the EU concours we have had guests. First Caroline's parents and then Jo and Neil Clough have been to see us.

It's brilliant when people come to visit and both Caroline and I are lucky that we can take time off, or at least work quite flexibly in order to do lots of visits and trips. For both sets of visitors we have spent just under a week in Beijing visiting the Forbidden City, Tian'anmen Square, the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, Yonghegong Lama Temple and other sites including just generally trying to give an impression of how we live on a day-to-day basis.

As an aside from Greg's recent email I realise that I didn't finish the tale of the concours sufficiently. As I've likely explained to you in the past (assuming we know each other) the concours is the test by which the EU Institutions hire their workers. Both Caroline and I passed a concours for contract workers (CAST 27) in 2006 and it was this success that got Caroline her current job and our life in China. The most recent test is for permanent officials and is therefore both popular and quite rare. In fact I've read at the EPSO Website, which administers the process that more than 30000 people sat the recent exam. So I was never exactly confident of passing, but did want to at least sit the test. So anyway after a number of complicated efforts I was able to get a rearranged test date. It did seem to go reasonably well, although I would say that wouldn't I…
Anyway, according to that aforementioned Website, the results of the test will be posted in mid-June. I've checked today and there's nothing there yet, but you can be sure I'll post the results as soon as I get them.

So as we've been enjoying our guests and visiting Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xi'an, Suzhou and others there hasn't been much time for anything else other than work. Emails and blogs have fallen by the wayside. And even sleep has become a relatively rare commodity.

I'm now at hongqiao airport in Shanghai, waiting for a flight back to Beijing and Caroline is in Laos for a few days with Sunnia. So apart from the football, which I am enjoying despite the paucity of most games, the next few dad will be relatively quiet and back in the normal routine. So I'm going to take the opportunity to upload photographs and write a couple of posts on here about our travels - there's always stories to relate.

Stick with it and you'll get some impressions of a few more cities we have visited.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Insignificant places that play a disproportionate role

I am now off to suzhoujie for the fifth and final time.
I am sitting (and passing) my test at 12:00 and then I am never going back to that street or indeed likely that entire neighbourhood for as long as I live.
It has happened before that these strange locations end up being places I inexplicably have to return to again and again.
I don't even have to get a job out of this for it to have been worthwhile, but I am good at these reasoning tests and I want the chance to at least take the test.
When I passed the contract agent test in 2007 it also gave me renewed confidence that I hadn't completely forgotten the French i'd studied and perhaps today will do the same.
Aside from all of that it is good to be taking an important test, they keep you sharp and I'd hate to feel that my career was at a stage where it was no longer necessary to test myself.

I'll report back when I get the results and at some point over the weekend withthoughts and pictures from the visit of the in-laws and particularly our visit to see the pandas in Chengdu, Sichuan.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy ending

I received an email today to let me know that they would be giving me the opportunity to reschedule my test.
My luck has clearly returned.


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This post speaks for itself.

The luck had to run out sometime.

So, just over two years ago, Caroline and I set off for a journey to Brussels that brought us here to China. We both sat the CAST 27 exam for fixed term contracts with the EU. As you've probably heard me complaining by now we did different exams. For some reason, at the time it seemed sensible for me to take the exam for jobs based in Brussels (politics-focused) and Caroline to take the exam for jobs based around the world in the delegations (Development-focused). It did make sense from the point of view of our specialisms...

We agreed that whoever got offered the job first, we would take and then review after one contract of 3 years. We both passed the exam and were added to the database from which you can be recruited. As is obvious to everyone, Caroline got the job in Beijing and here we are.

Since then I've had a video interview for a job back in Brussels and have been offered that one and one other. Obviously I'm not going to go back and live in Europe while Caroline is out here in Beijing - we're having too much fun and there's plenty of time for Europe when we want to settle down. So it's a bit of a shame, but it's good to be offered the jobs and I don't expect any pity, life's not exactly tough and the job I got here in order to get a visa has developed into something more interesting and challenging.

The recruitment database that we are both on is for fixed-term contracts. There are routes from this situation into a permanent contract, but it's not great - there's no chance for promotion for one thing!

So in terms of long term career plans, we're both quite keen to become permanent officials working for the European Commission. To do that we have to sit another exam. A couple of months ago, just such an exam was announced and it's big news as there hasn't been a general competition to recruit officials for some years now. Basically recruitment has been trying to catch up with the geographical enlargement in 2004/5 and Contract Agents have also been the main focus. As soon as the registration was opened, Caroline and I and a few friends all signed up. And by a surprising and convenient stroke of luck, the initial computer-based tests are even being held here in Beijing.

The testing process has been updated. When Caroline and I successfully passed there was a lot of focus on knowing facts, figures, dates and names related to the EU and its development. Since we've both studied this in some depth we probably were at something of an advantage. Now however they've decided that knowing who the second President of the European Central Bank isn't so useful on a day-to-day basis.

So now, for the computer-based tests there are three elements; verbal reasoning, abstract reasoning and numerical reasoning. Beyond being familiar with these kinds of tests and practising them in the second language there's not so much practice you can do.

I scheduled my test for the first available opportunity, this morning at 08:30.

Take a look at the map below for a visual representation of what happened. You might need to scroll around a bit until you can see the annotations I've added to the map. Have a read of them, it's probably worth it. The order goes like this:
Taxi
Red Line
Red Phone
Coffee Cup
Dark blue Line
Orange Line
Black Line
Red Exclamation
(Video - below)
Turquoise Line
Subway


View A fruitless journey on Suzhoujie in a larger map



I'll let you know how I get on with scheduling another test.

Latest update: my email requesting a rescheduled test has been passed on to the person in charge. Here's hoping.

Australia

It's a week since we got back from our trip to Australia for Nick and Shona's wedding.
We've both been working really hard to catch up from a break from work that neither of us could really afford. However, as I have recently decided, you never regret doing things like this, you only ever regret not doing them.

Which explains why, at the beginning of May, we're actually going back to the UK for a weekend! Time-wise it's all we can afford, but we don't want to miss things just because we live so far away. We're also very lucky in the respect that so far we really haven't had to compromise too much. We both feel like it won't always be this way, so we might as well enjoy it while we can.

So, anyway what was the trip to Australia like?
Well, unlike our usual holidays, we didn't actually do as much sightseeing as when we normally visit somewhere - especially for the first time.
Instead, because there were so many old and new friends there we spent the majority of the time socialising - with some necessary sightseeing thrown in.
I'm uploading the photographs to flickr now, but I've got work to do, so no time to pepper this post with shots, so if you're interested you'll just have to check out them all here.

So, we flew to Hong Kong, Adelaide and finally Melbourne, but because China and Australia's time zones only differ by 2-3 hours (depending on DST) there was no real jet lag. We then took public transport (which in Melbourne is pretty damn good) to meet Wei Ni and Sam, our friends who live in Elsternwick, a suburb in the south of Melbourne. It's a great little place, about twenty minutes (bit longer by tram) from the centre of Melbourne and the Yarra river. Traditionally it is a Jewish neighbourhood but clearly not exclusively as the main street, Glen Huntly Rd had cafes and restaurants from all over the world - from Afghanistan to Turkey. We stayed with Ni and Sam on the Saturday evening and had a good meal in a place down next to the river and had a walk along next to the casinos and hotels.

Then on the Sunday morning we headed into the city and then to the northern suburbs to meet Shona and the Newcastle contingent on Brunswick Street for Brunch. From there we had a brief visit to Little Creatures - a great bar in a remodelled warehouse run by a local brewery. We then had a race to the shared house to select the best bedrooms. It was a great place to stay with three stories, plenty of communal space and a couple of terraces and a garden with prerequisite gas grill.

We spent a great four days in that house with little shopping trips to Brunswick and Lygon Streets, both have great independent shops, cafes, bars and restaurants. We hosted a great BBQ party with more friends and family of Nick and Shona coming over. And went out for a female / male pub-crawl culminating in a few games of lawn bowls and a barbecue (again, of course). But mostly we just spent time reacquainting ourselves with old friends and making new ones. So, in that house were Me and Caroline (obviously), Marty and Hazel, Mark and Frances, Rachelle, Maeve and Jimmy and Robin and Anna. I knew all of the girls, either from school or when visiting Shona at uni in Leeds and had met a couple of the boys before in Leeds too. But for everyone there were people that they didn't know and so we had a lot of fun. The communal shopping trips and cooking (I made the cocktails) were a highlight.

After five days and four nights of partying and holiday fun, we left what was beginning to feel like the Big Brother house and in a convoy of hire cars, made our way to Daylesford, a spa town in Victorian wine country for the wedding itself and another shared house. Daylesford is a very attractive holiday town with old (in Australian terms :-) buildings and lots of shops that only a wealthy and part-time population can support. Ideal for a short break for us and the wedding for the Easts. We arrived on the morning of Thursday 1st April, which was the day of the wedding itself. After settling into the house with an immediate and delicious lambs leg barbecue thanks to the culinary skills of Marty, we set off for Lavandula where the wedding would take place.

It was a fantastic day, spent outside in the warm autumn weather with the smell of lavender and some emus and a donkey wandering around. From the photographs you can see how good and more importantly how happy everyone looked. The ceremony was relaxed and enjoyable and Jimmy and Maeve did a great job with a song they had arranged at the end. Nick and Shona spent the whole time smiling, which apart from laughing, teasing and bickering with each other is all we saw them do all trip. I think that's probably quite a good start to being married, but I'm no expert on that. The day ended in a great little bar with a lock-in doing shooters and speaking Austrian (no 'L') to the barman - obviously Caroline was doing the speaking, I was just nodding sagely to show I understood. Sadly the lifts back to Daylesford ran out at exactly the wrong time, so Caroline and I, Keith and Elena ended up walking the 5k home at about 03:00. It was less unpleasant than it sounds especially since I wasn't sporting a pair of heels (girls, I salute your endurance) and put paid to any hangover we might have had. There were some funny characters in that bar including a passive aggressive drunk who assured anyone listening (i.e. no-one) that he could buy the entire bar anytime he chose. And an unhelpful artist who claimed that Derby was the artistic centre of the UK!

Over the next few days we remained in Daylesford and enjoyed various antics including Belgian beer and gourmet snacks in the aptly-named Breakfast and Beer. We had a picnic at Hanging Rock. Visited a winery. Wandered round a craft fair and a farmer's market. Got amusingly lost in the country lanes whilst discussing the German language's propensity for using very literal nouns and generally had a great time.

By Easter Sunday it was time for us to move on to Sydney, which for some reason my fingers think is spelled Sydeny. We got a much appreciated lift to Tullamarine airport with Shona's mother and uncle and then made it to Sydney in a very unstressful journey. Well, I wrote unstressful, and then have returned to this point after remembering a particularly stressful moment involving a worried looking Australian seat neighbour pointing out a black and red spider on my leg which I ineffectually swiped at with my book and then had to sit belted in for a descent concerned I was about to receive a life threatening spider-bite somewhere around my lower extremities. Other than that it was totally relaxing... At Melbourne airport we'd had a quick flick through the Reiseführer (thanks Stephan) and selected a hotel for one night in Sydney before meeting with Natalie and Duncan (friends from Caroline's time at uni in Manchester) on the Monday.

We got to the hotel which was just at the base of the South side of the Harbour bridge. Fantastic location, just slightly unfortunate to have selected rooms in Sydney's premier Oirish pub (The Mercantile Hotel if you're interested). Actually, since it was a Sunday they closed fairly early and we were so beat after an early start that it didn't make so much difference. We spent the rest of the afternoon scouting the Rocks (old part of Sydney) and taking pictures of the bridge and the opera house. Then in the evening we headed to the pleasingly dingier part of the city called New Town (how come New Towns are always in worse repair than Old Towns?) We met up with Beijing socialite and Sydney-sider Fergus Ryan and some friends and had some great Thai food and enjoyable chatter.

Monday was our first chance to explore, so we used the expensive but ultimately good value travel tickets we had bought at the airport and took the ferry to Manly. The ferries were probably my favourite thing about Sydney. Living in Brussels and Beijing, two great cities without much water, have taught me how much I appreciate a great big river / coast and so at my insistence and without much complaint from Caroline, we took ferries just about every time we could. From Nat and Duncan's fantastic waterfront apartment in McMahon's Point (Northside of the bridge) that was easy. Manly was a cracking little beach community and felt like a living, warm, sporty, vibrant Whitley Bay (so not much at all then :). We slept on the beach, made salmon bagels and watched some beach volleyball - the ingredients of a great day. When we got back to the city we found a rooftop terrace where we ate (good steak) and had probably the cheapest meal of the holiday with views of the opera house and a good bottle of red wine, so that was a good find, before meeting up with Natalie and Duncan, who despite just arriving home from an Easter trip to Bris Vegas, had generously agreed to host us for three nights.

The next day we met up with Robin and Anna, the Tozers (had to mention their surname as Caroline is a big fan). We spent the afternoon with them at Darling Harbour and it pleasantly evolved into a brief but focused pub crawl. It was a great day, although on reflection we were a little bit sheepish to then return home to a great meal cooked by Duncan for us, especially after our hosts had both been back at work. By Wednesday we met up with my Uncle (Mother's cousin technically, but you know how families work) Ken. He's lived in Australia for a good few years now. Whenever I see him at home, I'm always struck by how Australian he sounds and yet meeting there surrounded by Aussies, I could clearly hear the geordie inflections - it's all relative (pun unintended) innit. We checked out the Archibald Prize for portraiture which was a good hour of culture (the only one on the trip?) and then had some lunch. It's always good to catch up with people so far away from home and as you can see, we did a lot of that on this trip. Ken had to go and do some shopping as he lives in a small place further down the coast and only comes to Sydney under sufferance to get necessary supplies. Caroline and I walked back to the NSW Gallery and had a brief sleep on the grass in the sun outside. Only afterwards did I remember the spiders potential, but Caroline made me feel like a wiener (we don't know anyone from there I don't think) for worrying so I quickly forgot about that.

We then walked back to Circular Quays through the Botanical Gardens and had a great hour checking out the flying foxes, cockateils and other exotic flora and fauna. I'm never excited by the prospect of botanical gardens whenever Caroline suggests it, but I don't mind recording here (negating any potential for winning arguments) that I always enjoy it. Especially these ones that pretty much border the city centre on one side and the harbour side on the other. We had an iced-chocolate (if you don't know - find out) at the Opera Bar and then went back to McMahon's Point to get changed. After an intrepid journey of train and bus we arrived in Botany Bay at the great town house of Liam and Alyssa, two friends we had made earlier at the week at the East's wedding. We had a good meal at their place and fussed over their new cavoodle.

The next days after a goodbye and thank you brunch with Natalie and Duncan, we flew back to Melbourne for our final three days. We again relied on the kindness of our friends and stayed with Ni and Sam in Elsternwick. There was an enjoyable trip to the museum when we mused on the lack of Aboriginal exhibits and I again experienced the depressive qualities of too much coffee when I'm out of practice. We had dumplings in Chinatown (?) and a night out in Melbourne's bars which ended much sooner than I appreciated. We visited Chapel Street which was fantastic for general pootling in vintage shops and cafes (so much like the rest of Melbourne) and ate the best Italian food I have had outside of Italy - the trattoria L'Aperitivo on Glen Huntly Rd in Elsternwick. Seriously, if you get the chance just go, the pasta was home made and sensational, it's 10:30 but my mouth is watering now just think about it. We also managed to squeeze in a brunch and park visit with the newlyweds and assorted friends and family.

Finally, at 23:55 on Saturday 10 April we caught a flight back to Hong Kong, collected an iPhone for a friend and thence to Beijing. Where we jumped straight into a taxi and headed for champagne brunch. This does on reflection sound hardcore, but by coincidence a good friend was in Beijing from Canberra of all places and we had a limited time to see her and wanted to make the most of it. We were rewarded with a great event in the form of a wedding proposal and so our first trip to Australia ended with a plan to return there in exactly a year's time.

It was a great trip, the highlight was definitely catching up with old friends and making new ones and the wedding was a fantastic day worth all the travel on its own.

To make brief mention of a contentious point, I enjoyed both Melbourne and Sydney. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that Melbourne didn't edge it on liveability and for being more redolent of a European city (as opposed to the UK or US which Sydney reminded me of). It wasn't a scientific study and is only my opinion based on one brief trip - lovers of Sydney, don't think less of me, I know how important this is to you all!

Spare a thought for many of the UK-based guests who are scattered over Australasia and Malaysia, truly Asia. Unable to return home yet because of a volcano!

A word about the weather....

It's a very English topic, but 5 years in the UK did indeed take their toll and weather in Beijing is just worth talking about.

Being being on the same latitude as Rome should suggest a certain kind of climate, but how wrong we were! We just experienced the second freezing winter with temperatures of approx. -10 degrees (apparently this was the coldest winter in 60 years, but Beijingers say that every year). Now arriving at the end of March, we're still wearing the winter coat that is totally sufficient in the UK, for the real winter in Beijing we have an extra-thick one (purchased locally).

Winters and summers are almost equally long in Beijing, spring and autumn last approx. 3 days each. Summers around 30 Degrees, with almost no temperature drop at night (maybe 1-2 degrees).

And this year we actually had quite a few snowfalls over the winter, the latest one last Sunday! Going from last year's experience we should have summer by 5th April, when we immediately changed from winter coats into mini skirts. I'm hoping for the same effect this year!

To top things off, this morning at 9.00 I looked out of the window and everything was yellow. The sandstorm season has started. So, hopefully the hot weather will soon follow.

When in Rome...

Intellectual property rights are not well respected here in China.
With this in mind I wanted to copy the following for your amusement, I do not however intend to pass it off as my own work.
Like most amusing emails it came on a rather circuitous route, so I can't even give credit to whoever wrote it - through correct use of the term 'bumper' we reckon we have narrowed it down to a Brit, although it also uses 'jaywalking' so who knows - anyway salutes to whoever it was, because this is funny and accurate.

The basics of Driving in China…
Here is the explanation of a simple concept: the left turn.
For the ones who live in China: an overview of what we live everyday
For the ones who are out of China: happy memories of the traffic here!
STEP 1:


We see here a typical intersection. The light has just turned green for the east-west
streets, and car [A], an enormous black Audi with pitch black windows, wants to make
a left turn into the southbound lanes. Pedestrians wait on each corner. (For purposes of this demonstration, we’ll assume no one is running the north-south red light, and no one is jaywalking - a rather large assumption.)
Step 2:


To make a left turn, it is VITAL that [A] cut off all eastbound traffic as soon as
possible. The first few brave or foolish legitimate pedestrians step off the curb; this is of no concern. [A] makes his move.
Step3:


NO! Too slow! [A] has managed to partially block [B], a brand new purple and yellow
Hyundai taxi, but [A] has only achieved whatBeijing drivers would consider a ‘weak’
blocking position.
Step 4:


In this detail, we can see why: [A] has only inserted his left bumper and cannot move
forward without contact. [B], on the other hand, is in the dominant position - by
putting his wheel hard to the right and flooring it, he can fully block [A].
Step 5:


[B] proceeds to swerve right, cutting off [C], a tiny red Peugeot with a gold plastic
dragon hood ornament, spoiler and assorted knobs glued on. Since [B] is just
accelerating, and [C] is now decelerating, this has created a low-density ‘dead space’ in the intersection. [D], a strange blue tricycle dumptruck carrying what appear to be 40 of the world’s oldest propane tanks, sees this and makes a move.
Step 6:


DENIED! [E], an old red taxi with its name sloppily stenciled in white on its doors,
has boldly cut across two lanes of traffic, behind [D], and then swerved right, driving [D] into an extremely weak position behind [A]. Meanwhile, [B] and [C] are still fighting for position, with [C] muscling his way into the crosswalk. The only thing between [E] and a successful left turn is a few lawful pedestrians. [E] steps on the gas…
Step 7:


…and is cut off by [F], an elderly man pedaling his tricycle verrrryyy slooooowwwly
with a 15-foot-diameter sphere of empty plastic cooking oil bottles bungee-corded
haphazardly to the cargo area. He was part of the lawful pedestrians, but seeing the
stalled traffic, decided to cut diagonally across the intersection. Not only has [F]
blocked [E], he is headed straight at [B], giving [C] the edge he needs.
Step 8:


[B] concedes to [C], who drives in the crosswalk behind [F] and blocks [E].
Meanwhile, [G], a herd of about 20 bicycles, mopeds, pedestrians and wheelbarrows,
sensing weakness in the eastbound lane and seeing that much of the westbound traffic
is blocked behind [D], breaks north against the light. [F] pedals doggedly onward at
about 2 miles per hour, his face like chiseled marble.
Step 9:


Now things get interesting. [C] has broken free and, as the first vehicle to get where he was going, wins. [E] makes a move to block [B] but, like [A] at the start of the left turn, only gains a ‘weak’ block. [A] has cleverly let [F] pass and guns into a crowd of [G], which both moves [A] forward and drives some [G] stragglers into the path of [D], clearing [A]’s flanks. Little now stands between [A] and a strong second-place finish.
Step 10:


Except for public bus [H], one of those double buses with the accordion-thing
connector. [H] has been screaming unnoticed along the eastbound sidewalk and now
careens dangerously into a U-turn. This doesn’t appear to concern the 112 people
packed inside and pressed against the windows (although that could be due to a lack of oxygen.) [H] completely blocks both [A] and [D]. On the other side of the
intersection, [B] has swerved into the lawful pedestrians (who aren’t important enough to warrant a letter) and has gained position on [E]. [E] has forgotten the face of his father: He was so focused on his battle with [B] that he lost sight of the ultimate goal and is now hopelessly out of position. This clears the path for dark horse [I], a blue Buick Lacrosse, to cut all the way across behind [H] and become the second vehicle to get where he was going (and the first to complete a left turn), since [F] has changed his mind again and is now gradually drifting north into the southbound lanes. But everyone better hurry, because the light is about to change…
Step 11:


Step 12:

And we're ready to start over...

Just in case you think this is a figment of someone's over-worked imagination, I'll finish with an actual photograph taken by a friend, Richard who has recently moved south from Beijing to Sichuan (where the pandas and spicy food are). This requires no caption:

Fruit in season - but when are the seasons?

Sorry about the long absence, I was thinking about a cracking subject to re-install my presence on the blog, but you can guess from the title that it only goes so far....

Fruit. All of us eat it, all of us love it and all of us are keen to get a bargain price. In the early days, only the fruit in season was available, then globalisation took off and now you can get pineapples, oranges and dragon fruit any day of the year in your local Marks & Spencer. The campaign of only buying fruit in season in Europe is only successful to a certain extent and that is manly price-related (unfortunately). Having farmer's roots, I pride myself with roughly knowing when apples, cherries, strawberries and blackberries are in season. But since our arrival in China I had to re-evaluate my knowledge: Fruit is very much seasonal here, and even in the expensive Western supermarket with the glorious names of Jenny Lou and April Gourmet you won't find a watermelon in January. Fruit is sold according to seasons and comes from all over China. But what are the seasons here? That's exactly the point: China is so huge that we get "winter strawberries" which ripe in Yunnan (south of China) between December and March, watermelons from May to November, pineapples from November to March, Lychees from June to September......

Outside of work a little fruit stall has established itself which makes a killing selling fruit to diplomats. I paid about 2 Euros for a bag of Mangos (from Sichuan), an apple (no idea where it came from), two bananas from Hainan, lots of oranges from Yunnan and a bag of strawberries from Guilin. The sales girl happily explains to me on a daily basis where the fruit comes from and ends up giving me free fruit on top of my purchases (a clear sign that I'm paying too much). But the availability of fruit changes with the seasons. Great, isn't it?! You can look forward to the first strawberry of the year, when you see the pineapple sellers in the street it's nearly Christmas and the lychees announce the hot summer months.

Watermelon being my favourite favourite fruit of all times I'm pleased to announce that Mark already spotted the small kind yesterday. Ssummer is only around the corner.....

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

It's surprising I can get that post title the right way around given my father's malign influence. Ask him if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've said anything and I haven't got much to say today.
In the hope that this will keep you distracted, listen to this music, but only in preparation for a night out and not if you're over 40, you just won't like it.



So I still care enough to make you things, y'see.

China and Beijing are becoming infected with normality now, so less things strike me to talk about. That and the workload at the start of this semester have made blogging less of a priority recently. But I intend to redouble my efforts, even if you simply have to share some of my reflexive musings, rather than the interesting stuff about China. It's not like I've a huge readership to lose is it?

Paradise island / ilê de paradis

I'm starting to write this post on the plane between Mauritius and Dubai. If I finish it here, I'll post it on the blog using the free wifi in Dubai airport. Then when we get back to Beijing I'll edit it and insert some photographs. Otherwise I'll just do the whole thing when we're back in China.

Before I start recounting our time on Mauritius, a question. Do most flights have mobile access now? I knew it was coming, but this is the first i've been on that actually advertises it. On the way here we were able to send and receive inflight text messages using the in-seat handset. That was impressive enough, but now mobile coverage onboard and at normal roaming rates! While I'm impressed by the technology I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Obnoxious mobile users are bad enough on the ground, imagine a 12 hour flight back to the UK stuck next to one! Hopefully the frequent users will be stuck in business class, poor fools...

Anyway, the holiday.
We spent the first four nights staying at a German-owned gästhaus in a resort in the south-west of the island called Tamarin. It is a small place with only a couple of small shops, restaurants and a supermarket. Like the rest of the island it did have a wonderful beach and beautiful blue sea to swim in. The accommodation was great, perhaps a little further from the beach than we would have chosen, but since we had a hire car for the whole holiday, it really was no hardship.

While in Tamarin we got a little pink underestimating the strength of the sun on our first day, factor 15 was insufficient! We didn't forget to apply plenty, just haven't been so close to the equator and therefore the sun before I guess. Anyway it was a quick lesson learned and taught us well for the rest of the holiday, we didn't make the same mistake twice. We walked up a steep hill in the national park and had a wonderful view of the coast. We swam with dolphins, which was a definite highlight for me. We visited Flic en Flac, a growing resort named either for the Dutch for free and flat land or the sound that the French soldiers' boots made in the marshland. We saw the somewhat unprepossessing hamlet of Wolmar where many of the five star hotels are based. We visited a beautiful rum plantation and tasted and bought some agricultural rum, made with the first pressing of the sugar cane, rather than the byproducts of sugar production as industrial rum is made. We also visited Chamarel where there is a waterfall and seven-coloured earth, caused by the different ores present in the soil and their oxidisation.
We also had time to read, relax, catch up on sleep, swim, snorkel, eat, drink and tan.
After four days, we rather reluctantly packed up our things and headed up the east coast, making it through the capital, Port Louis, mapless and with relative ease.

Finding our destination for the next week wasn't too difficult. Pointe aux cannoniers is the most north-easterly on the island. This time our accommodation was a little more basic, but the payoff was a seaview and beach 30 seconds walk away. From here we spent a morning horse-riding on a sugar plantation. We drove around the north coast, through the intriguingly-named, but in practice somewhat dull, poudre d'or and goodlands. We spent an afternoon exploring the markets of Port Louis and saw the world's most expensive stamp. We visited a sugar plantation and tasted rum and sugar, a tea factory and tasted tea and a vanilla farm, where just to be sure, we tasted some rum again. We met one of Caroline's former colleagues and saw the fantastic work they're doing establishing a diverse range of fairtrade manufacturing in Mauritius. We also visited the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (father of the nation) botantical gardens and saw some huge tropical plants, palm trees and tortoises. Again, we also swam, snorkelled, slept, read, ate and drank.

I've inevitably missed somethings, but I'll add them in later with help from Caroline when I add the photographs too.

It was a wonderful holiday and a beatiful island, I only hope our photographs do it some justice. It's an interesting place too, with lots to see and do. And we tried to sample as much as we could. There's an interesting mix of cultures and communities on the island too, which I'll probably try and write some thoughts about in the next week or so.

But for now I'll call a halt in order to grab a couple of hours sleep so that we can enjoy our shorter, second visit to Dubai.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Comparative analysis

I'm lying on the beach next to the Indian ocean. There are drums in the background and people fishing in the water which is about 25• they break every now and then to drain some local rum. I can see some mountains in the distance.


But before I start getting any more enthusiastic about Mauritius I'd planned to write a few words about Dubai and what it is like in 2010 compared to 2001.

When we went to Dubai last time, I lived in Brussels and had only really travelled in Europe. Now obviously we live in Beijing and I am relatively more widely travelled.

That said I still found Dubai an exciting destination. Even though we were there for less than 24 hours we saw a lot.

It is still a city under siege from cranes. And now like then there is some degree of uncertainty around the future. Then the burj al Arab had just opened and was attracting much attention. But if the anecdotes are to be believed the palm island hadn't even been conceived. It certainly wasn't the mass tourist destination that it became in the last decade although the beginning and the desire was clearly there.

We visited just over six months before September 11 2001. You'd have thought that this might have proved a challenge to the popularity of an Islamic country as a tourist destination, but it didn't seem to affect Dubai. However I have no way of knowing whatever happened to our Afghan driver, Mohammed who no doubt had to shelve his dreams of moving to London.

Now of course Dubai World (the company behind much of the highest visibility development) had to request a delay to payments leading. After much uncertainty Abu Dhabi, the oil rich neighbour with less vertiginous but seemingly more stable growth backed by natural resources, stepped in with support. Consequently the world's tallest building, constructed with the name Burj Dubai, was renamed Burj Khalifa on opening, seemingly in tribute to Abu Dhabi's ruler Sheikh Khalifa.

So with much schadenfreude from some financial analysts, it is no longer clear if Dubai will build the second and third planned artificial palm islands. The third and biggest of which is planned to be bigger than the ilê de France, on which stands Paris. Here is an interesting fact, the existing palm island required so much hardcore for its foundations that, collected together it could build a 2m x 2m wall three times round the earth! I don't know whether to be awed or terrified by this fact.

So that feeling of schadenfreude is understandable on many levels. Dubai is painfully shallow and nouveau riche. I thought Beijing was money-obsessed till I went back to Dubai. But at the same time I do have respect for their efforts to build an economy based on trade and property markets without the resource wealth of abu dhabi or the support-tinged with religious overtures given by Saudi Arabia to neighbouring emirate Sharjah.

One element of Dubai I have no problem admiring is it's openess and international atmosphere. You only need to take a walk along the working creek on the Deira side and note where goods are in transit to and from to feel a part of international trade and exchange. You'd think that rather than taking some delight in its financial stutters, western countries would be as supportive as possible of dubai's interpretation of Islam with freedom of different worship and acceptance of Egyptian legal codes rather than the sometimes scary-seeming Sharia law.

But of course, despite this openess, massive disparities exist in this 'society'. I use inverted commas because in truth there are none of the cohesive elements of a shared society in evidence. Little or no tax, no universal healthcare or education for resident migrants, hell there isn't even a postal service. As early as the queue for passport control, we experienced Emiratees treating workers from Asia with ill disguised contempt, whilst not even questioning our visas.

So in conclusion, despite building many of the world's biggest buildings and creating a man made island, Dubai for me remains a compelling and interesting place to visit, but way too disjointed a place to ever consider living there. Which is lucky really, since we've no pending offers.

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Ten years later

In early 2001 while living in Brussels I went on a ten day holiday to Dubai with three friends. Chris's parents lived there, which made it a surprisingly affordable option for what was effectively a student budget for me at the time.

When we came back I wrote a piece for a newly established website, hostelworld.
http://www.hostelworld.com/community/travelstory.php/StoryNO.11
That website is now celebrating it's ten year anniversary and I am back in Dubai for just under a day in transit to Mauritius on holiday.

I thought it might be interesting to compare my thoughts of the place and see what changes have been made in the interim.

Apart from being overly worthy and a little clunky I still think that piece isn't bad. Take a look and at some point over the next few days I'll post some thoughts and photographs on today's visit for comparison. Unfortunately the last visit was recorded on old fashioned camera film, so without a scanner I can't easily post then and now shots.


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Constant contact

I'm writing this on a plane. I can't actually post it from up here, yet. But I was able to send and receive a text message to and from my parents, who are on a canary island off the north west coast of Africa using their uk phone. It cost $1. At that price it's not inhibitive. I know that some domestic USA carriers have wifi and I believe lufthansa do too. So as I say, it's a case of 'yet' until this can actually be posted mid-air.

So we're clearly reaching a point at which available and affordable technology exists to keep in constant contact with people, even with photographs taken seconds earlier and gps geotagging of your location.

It's easy to feel sceptical about this. A friend of ours recently advised that the new biometric passports can be disabled with a quick zap in the microwave. And it's not necessarily as paranoid as it sounds. Certainly living in china you're aware that freedoms taken for granted at home do not apply there. Mostly feedoms to go about your business anonamously. Not something you can do when you have to register your location with the police everytime you move apartment or even, in theory, visit a hotel. But then in most European countries it's necessary for foreigners to register at the local police station and that's rarely presented as a civil liberties infringement, simply a means to know who is living where and how many people there are. Something which is particularly useful when developing public policy as we learned at Newcastle council when the EU enlarged and a very welcome but unknown number of Poles arrived.

The reason it feels vaguely unsettling and more tempting to subvert in china is because you don't have the same confidence that the information won't be used for more potentially sinister purposes should situations change.

And not just in china. For example it only took one, admittedly major event for the US (and I assume UK) intelligence agencies to start monitoring phone and email records. Try talking about jihad via email and see how long much vaunted free speech lasts.

So, plenty of reasons to feel a bit nervous about being plugged into a never-ceasing network. But there's also a huge amount of creative potential. Personally speaking I am at my most interesting and dare I say amusing when I remember, sometimes abstract, sometimes pertinent things that I have read or seen. Obviously it has always been possible to have an aide-memoire for such anecdotes using the high-tech solution of a notebook and pen. But I seem much more able to record the useful and interesting things if I can act on them immediately with a camera and a blog post.

So thanks to this new technology you're able to enjoy such delights as the man hanging upside down in a tree, the video bike ride and the knowledge that some Arabs like to take the opportunity of the flight home for a last cheeky beer for a while.

Not exactly earth-shattering admittedly. But it does make it a bit easier to share your life on a drip-feed basis, rather than on the slightly more pressured and therefore less revealing responses to the annual question of "so what's china like then?"

And on a more useful level, you only need to check out the news website demotix to see the way these technologies can bypass the traditional media, providing a different often directive perspective on news. This couldn't be more significant in a week when research revealed Fox News to be the most trusted network in America...

So I'll post this when we land, most likely via some free wifi in the airport, since somehow we ( read I) seem to expect most of this advanced technology to be somehow self-funding and therefore free at the point of consumption.

And you can expect more vaguely philosophical ramblings the next time we're on a late night / early morning flight and Caroline is asleep on my shoulder.


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Intermittent service

Whereas normally we update this with such regularity!
We're just about to board the flight from shanghai to Dubai. It's 05:30, but since we're cracking on a bit we did actually have a hotel room last night rather than a wheelchair in the airport.

Very excited about the impending holiday and will try and post a few words every couple of days, or at least when something notable happens. Wifi depending of course.

Not many Chinese people off to Dubai and beyond for Chinese new year. Announcements aren't even given in Chinese, just English and then Arabic.

Next words from the Arabian penninsula.


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Someone else's work

This link to the Guardian is aimed at families travelling by train across China.
But I think it captures the feeling pretty well.
I'm hoping this proves to be a teaser for any of you planning to come and visit us.

Vlog

A brief hiatus due to Christmas, travel, work, vpn issues, blah de blah.
But here we are back again and now that I have the technology and since I received positive feedback from Greg at least, you may see more of these video blogs, or vlogs to us tech-savvy characters in the future.

Count the clauses in that sentence, win a prize...



The link, if embeddication doesn't work.