Socks. They are to me the most mysterious and enigmatic article of clothing one puts on each morning. Are they underdogs or do socks say more about a person’s personality than you would think? They protect your feet from sweat, painful blisters and dirt. There are some downsides to socks as well; uncomfortable when wet, stretched beyond recognition, and above all they are a source of embarrassment. To some.

Human beings are obsessed with symmetry. If we chop something in half and it’s identical - yet mirrored - on both sides we revel in its beauty. Look around you right now and try to find a dozen things that are not symmetrical when viewed from a certain angle. It’s not as easy as you would think.

But let’s face it. Symmetry is boring. You’ve seen one side of something and you already know it’s just going to be more of the same on the other side. Of course it’s useful for things that deal with gravity on a daily basis - which I suppose is everything. I guess if your head was four times bigger on the right than on the left that it could create some issues. Or if your wine glass were round on the left and square on the right that could create potential problems - but how cool would it look?

But tell me this. Why oh why does the sock on your right foot need to match the one on your left foot? It has absolutely no practical use, whereas two different shoes would mess with your balance and cause you to grow crooked - or in my case, even more crooked.

I grew up wearing two different socks. My mom said: ‘If you can’t be bothered to put them in the laundry together I can’t be bothered to put them back together either.‘ My sisters’ socks, my brother’s socks and my socks all just got mashed together into one big sock basket. And when you finished frantically looking for two identical socks you still had to frantically look for where you took your shoes off the other day. I still don’t keep my socks together (nor remember where I took my shoes off, and my apartment has just three rooms).

People laugh when they see my socks. They think it was an accident and that I hadn’t realised it until they pointed it out. Then I just - utterly unphased by their comment - say: ‘Yes, I know’. And then you get that look on their face that is just absolutely priceless. You can just see their brain saying to them: ‘critical error’.

Today I have on one pink sock with rainbow-coloured edges that comes up to my ankles and a black one with a big green edge of the same length. Symmetry is dead.

To everyone and anyone that would happen to stumble in here and read this: have yourself a wonderful, delicious, delightful, healthy and above all happy two thousand and ten. Welcome to the new decade! Make yourself at home. Please show your passport, empty your pockets and put your belongings in the tray, then proceed through the metal detector into the new decade.

Lately there’s a thing I’ve been doing more and more. It’s not something I particularly enjoy while being watched by others but in the privacy of my own home (or the privacy of that of others) I let loose every now and then. In that case there’s no particular plan to it, just let limbs fly left and right, throw in the odd jump and kick, twirl and spin, dive and duck and such things.

That is, of course, the “art” of dancing. I’m the one that will be doing all the dance moves upside-down and inside-out. When everyone is moving left you can bet money on me doing my dance routine to the right.

In a kindergarten you do a lot of dancing. You dance as you tell the children nice to see you and things like that. Obviously you dance when you teach them a new song. But even teaching certain words or chants needs dancing. Teaching children is all about moving arms and legs, hips and bottoms and heads and shoulders. It’s not without its dangers - note: dancing can lead to serious injury and death, consult a doctor before engaging in any dance-like activities. Dancing should not be attempted without the supervision of an adult and only in a controlled, rubber-coated, fluffy environment - the most common of which is children getting tangled into a big ball of arms and legs or one poking the other in the eye while doing the Macarena. After a good dance there’s always someone left crying.

But ah yes, the Macarena. For the past two weeks I believe I have been doing the Macarene every day about three times. Today was the absolute highlight with a total of about six times. For children it’s great fun and for adults for about the first ten times is fun as well. But somehow seeing smiling faces and finger-to-eye interaction loses its appeal after #30.

Oh and yeah. I’m back baby.

Yes, yes. Even though nobody mentions it I know what you’re all thinking - I can read minds, yes. I’m actually writing a few different things but none of it is finished yet. And then I start on a new one and so nothing is ever really done to post. I just hope you can be patient a little longer. It’ll be ready when it’s ready.

But I think the parents would not agree with cannibalism very much so need to exercise some restraint there. Of course it’s just a figure of speech, and besides, they’ve got too many poly-saturated fats in them. Anyway, the other day I took my camera down during the PE class and snapped some pictures of one of my classes.

Aren’t they just adorable? And if you thought that’s all the pictures you’re getting you’re wrong. Just click on the title to see more. And don’t say I never post any pictures!

The other day I figured it might be nice to ring up my brother via Skype and ask if I was an uncle yet. So, after starting up the computer, plugging in the headphones and firing up Skype I just couldn’t figure out why the call button was greyed out. I had enough money on my Skype account and everything seemed to be in working order.

Then, as it has multiple times over the last few days, it struck me again. I have no Internet.

It hasn’t been all that long since I moved into my new apartment and if I want an Internet connection I have to pay for the full year in advance. Which is rather cheap admittedly, but I’ll wait for next months paycheck regardless. Buying dozens of pots and pans, odds and ends, gizmos and whatchamecallems doesn’t come all that cheap.

But this new disconnectedness has made me see being connected in a new - somewhat more negative - light. Because for all the fantastic benefits the Internet brings - live updates, bookings, wikipedia, Google, translation, networking, e-mail, movies, music - there is a price. And that price is time. Being online is something I would almost compare to a drug (not that I have any experience I hasten to add).

Every now and then it has you wondering: do I have new e-mail? (3 minutes) Is there something new on the BBC website? (5 minutes) Is that new movie out yet? (4 minutes) Oh, I like that song I’ll give that a download. (5 minutes) Ah, there’s someone talking to me on MSN. (10 minutes) Facebook has already been lost for quite a while so that already dropped from my routine. But still, add this up and you’re just short of 30 minutes. Do that twice a day and there goes a good chunk of your free time. Without really realising it I think it is (hopefully was) some sort of addiction for me.

But I’ll also admit it’s not easy to fill up the free time once it’s back. There’s no video stores in China (not to mention I don’t have a TV) because the whole video market here didn’t exist until Internet already existed so it’s all digital here, no thick newspapers with 60 odd pages (10 at most in English) and no English bookstores nearby.

So what do you do? Explore the neighbourhood, go shopping, cook food, picture-read magazines (Chinese National Geographic), eat sushi, go throw a frisbee in the park with Linda and buy a gun that blows bubbles and take pictures of it and in the same park with the same person buy a Chinese balloon and try to get it airborne only to have a security guard come and rip the thing to pieces without saying a single thing as to why (and the 2009 longest sentence award goes to…), write your diary, clean house, socialize, sleep early, study some Chinese, listen to music (and radio podcasts, love those things), Photoshop some pictures you want to develop and much, much more. It’s incredible the time that you’ve really got.

But I want my Internet back now.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll actually be able to upload this somewhere.

A few days ago was the Moon Cake Festival. Now, I must honestly admit that I still don’t know the details of it. To me it looked kind of like Christmas and New Year getting together and having babies. It’s got the family togetherness of Christmas and the strange concert/talking shows of New Year’s Eve.

On this so-called Moon Cake Festival day you get together with family and eat moon cakes. It’s always on a day with a full moon and all through the evening you can see the moon on TV (for those that cannot be bothered to open the window and curtain or when you have some pesky clouds in the way).

How to describe the taste of a moon cake. First of all, it looks gorgeous. All dolled up with elaborate decoration and beautiful colour. You think to yourself ‘oh, man, this thing is going to taste GOOD!’. Unfortunately, as the moon cake nears your facial orifices your opinion quickly changes. The smell is reminiscent of peanut butter mixed with a hint of rice. It’s filled with lotus seed paste which tastes like eating, hmm, butter. Also, the whole thing has the consistency of cement. And just as you think eating this moon cake you’ve been offered out of politeness cannot get any worse you hit the jackpot. A semi-hardboiled egg yolk.

Now I suppose I sound all negative so let’s go to a more positive note. The day itself is quite nice and the television shows in the evening kind of put you in mind of the Eurovision Song Contest. Me, Linda and Linda’s friend Sunny visited the market near Linda’s house and bought some ingredients to make some food for that evening (note: cannot make apple crumble without oven). They have all kinds of things here. From watermelon to chicken heads/legs/guts/livers/hearts/necks to shoes. And that’s just in one shop!

Between meat, vegetables, fruits and USO’s (Unidentified Smelly Objects) I found something else too. I read about it in the Lonely Planet but hadn’t actually seen it yet. Ghost money. It’s cheaply printed paper which is currency for your ancestors. Instead of going to Western Union you just set it on fire, how convenient is that? It’s issued by what is called the Hell Bank in notes of 50.000.000. Looks to me like this currency is pegged to the Zimbabwean dollar because for only 35 cents I bought two stacks of it. I thought of burning some of it for my own ancestors but realized that the exchange rate is probably awful. I’d have my ancestors coming to complain if I couldn’t have burned a blank cheque or a credit card instead. I wonder if they accept Mastercard where they’re at.

I‘ve just been having a heck of a time figuring out how to put something on the Chinese version of Youtube; Youku. I’d never tried it before and it actually turned out to be much harder than I thought. I certainly hope the result is going to be worth it.

While it’s finishing the upload process (or at least that’s what I think it’s doing) I’ll give you the history.

Last week was an 8 day holiday for Moon Cake festival and Mid-Autumn Day (though with 30 degrees it doesn’t feel like autumn is here just yet) and me and Linda went house hunting. On the first day we looked at about six apartments close to my work in a nice area. The first one we saw was quite nice but you can’t go and take the first one without looking at some more for comparison. However, I never really found the win-win situation. Either it had a really nice view and balcony but a crappy inside (one was so bad it didn’t even have a kitchen, the house I lived in as a student looked better than that one) or inside was quite nice but outside was so-so. In the end though I realized I wasn’t gonna have it all anyway so we went back to number one and got all the details worked out.

The nice thing was that it wasn’t furnished yet and the landlord said he needed to buy everything new. So we negotiated going to IKEA (yes, it’s even here and thank god for it, Chinese furniture is either tacky, expensive, ugly or crappy) together. I got pretty much all the things I wanted and liked so I am definitely not complaining.

Anyway, I’m afraid I can’t stick around any longer because during this almost two-hour adventure I’ve run out of battery.

Oh, and I forgot to mention my house doesn’t have internet yet so I can’t check back here. At least not soon. Maybe at school tomorrow. I hope it works, enjoy!

After receiving several complaints about not updating regularly enough I will now take some time out of my busy, busy, busy schedual to do so. On one condition: I want some more comments! I don’t want to feel like this is all for nothing.

However, nothing terribly interesting has been going on since I’m now working a lot more. Though that does make you discover new things. Like for example that you cannot teach children English during a lightning storm, since they will all be screaming, crying for their mommies and wanting to go home. Though I must say I was thinking much the same as lightning still is not my favourite of weather types.

Just a few minutes ago I accomplished a new personal achievement. Which is ordering food by telephone from the local Chinese fast food restaurant. I did it once before but I had an ‘interpreter’ for back-up. This time however it was a solo flight, but I have a strategy. Write down your whole dialogue and repeat until they understand. But I heard the dreaded words…

Mei you (don’t have).

So I repeated my dialogue a few more times and got a few more ‘don’t haves’. Then they started asking me some questions and I repeated a few more times until they gave up and asked for my address. I’m still waiting for my food though, let’s hope it arrives at some point.

Still I wish they had mayonnaise in China. They do, but not in places like the MacDonalds. For you see, I would love to ask them in Chinese if they have any mayo (the pronunciation for ‘mayo’ and ‘mei you’ are the same). You could have a hilarious conversation around this whole thing. Or at least in my imagination you could.

You mei you mayo? Mei you? Mayo? You mei you?

It would be the ideal revenge. And excuse me, in my head this sounds a whole lot funnier than it looks.

But hurrah! My food just arrived.

‘I want my mommy! I want to go hoooooome!’ Tears are streaming down the poor boy’s face and his expression is one that could break your heart. His fat little face and rather comical haircut give it an element of comedy though. It actually takes quite a bit of effort to not just laugh at it. He’s only just three years old but already speaks two languages because of his nanny speaking only English to him.

All around the classroom this scene is showing, but somehow it doesn’t quite have the same effect in Chinese as it does in English. There are about 25 children in each class of which on average six cry every now and then and there is one that is permanently crying. The ones that cry every now and then tend to start crying the second I come close or look them in the eye. I guess I’m still a bit scary to them.

It certainly brings back memories though. Etched in my memory is my first day of going to school. I can vividly see now how my mother is struggling to pry my fingers off her hands. Or at least that’s what the memory looks like. Whether I was screaming and crying like some of these kids I can’t remember. But I probably did.

But on the other hand it’s also quite amazing what young minds are capable of. Repeat a word a few times and they will copy you like no adult can. Make it funny and turn it into a game and in one lesson of only 20 minutes you can teach them a good number of new things. Over a whole week they’ll learn to sing a song, some new words, a letter of the alphabet and usually a sentence like: ‘How are you?’ or ‘What’s your name?’.

And that’s the other funny thing. None or close to none of these children have an English name yet. Most Chinese will have two names. Their official Chinese name and a non-official English name which sometimes their parents choose for them. However, only maybe 4 or 5 of the children had one, so suddenly I had to come up with 50 names. So alot of them are named after TV shows, friends, actors, singers or just plucked it out of thin air. From Doctor Who and Torchwood we have Jack, Donna and Rose. We have a Will and Grace. A Bill (Bill Bryson) a Terry (Terry Pratchett/Wogan). And there’s a Charlotte, of course. Unfortunately my own family doesn’t have particularly good names for Chinese. Jakko, Irene, Brina and Rienus don’t really work. You’d think Irene is okay but that would turn into Ilene. And Caroline is just too long, sorry. Suzanne worked but I turned it into Susan. And Bas, hmm, in English that’s a kind of fish.

Unfortunately, sometimes parents disagree with names or come up with their own name. So now there’s a Koobie, a girl named Princess, one named Ariel (because, her mother said, she looks like a beautiful fish) and another named Shirley (a name only fit for people living in trailers addicted to crystal meth somewhere in Arkansas in my opinion, sorry Shirleys of the world).

But this first week was a week of firsts. Let me tell you what an average day looks like. First off you stand at the gate with the other teachers and take the kids to the playground or to the classroom. After this you will be very sweaty as it’s still quite hot here. At around a quarter past you go up to the classroom and help the kids eat their breakfast (sometimes by just scooping it in their mouths). After that it’s time for a toilet break and a cup of water and then I do my 20 minutes of English class. After that it’s another toilet break and then the kids play outside for about 20 minutes during which I again get very sweaty. Then you go back inside and help change the dripping-with-sweat kids into some dry clothes. And that’s the morning pretty much over! Just rinse and repeat for the afternoon.

Outside the tall, glass building the colourful neon sign is brightly shining: ‘KTV’. I’d often pondered what was inside but had never actually ventured inside until a little while ago. I assume that KTV stands for kalaoke - no joke, they really do the L/R switch, like eating Indian cully and going to see the new Hally Pottel movie - television or something.

When I think about karaoke I think about a half-drunk man or woman blearing the theme song to Gilmore Girls in front of a room of people in a dusty hotel. But I guess that since then karaoke has come a long way, especially in Asia.

In fact, it’s the most surreal thing I’ve seen so far in China. You enter this building and it’s divided into lots of little rooms of various sizes. The whole place looks incredibly high-tech and like something from the future. It rather looks like an alien spaceship out of a seventies TV show. Inside the little soundproofed - or more or less soundproofed - rooms are groups of friends singing and enjoying the free drinks and buffet (yummy, chicken feet, hearts and tongues, just what I’ve always wanted…) that come with the entry price of around 30/40 yuan per person.

I never really saw the point to karaoke to be honest. But it is actually quite an appealing thing to just go there with two friends and sing along to corny songs - ‘Where You Lead’ - at the top of your lungs. I don’t know why, but you can just unwind a little bit when doing that. It’s an outlet for emotions and I suppose this is also why it’s appealing for a lot of people in this part of the world. And they got computer technology that slightly modifies your voice to make it sound like your singing quite well.

I’ve been watching too much of a TV-show called ‘Doctor Who’ lately (because it’s incredibly good). It’s a science fiction show with aliens and things like that who try to take over/destroy/enslave the world through different kinds of crazy and creative plans and schemes. And I think there may just be a group of aliens harvesting the power of 1.3 billion karaoke singers to jumpstart their spaceship.

Or maybe I just need to stop watching Doctor Who for a while.

I‘m terribly embarrased about something. For you see, there is something about which I have not been very truthful. Some people might outrightly call it lying but I think lying is such an ugly word. I’ll just call it twisting the truth, though even that has a negative ring to it. How about an ‘imaginated version of the truth’? Yes, that will work. And besides, when you hear my reasoning for it you’ll totally understand anyway.

I’ve been telling some people about a Belgian girl I met named Linda who I have traveled a bit with. Now first of all I did indeed meet a Belgian girl and technically we traveled together a little bit. But her name was not Linda. And in fact, there were two Belgian girls but I cannot with full certainty now recall their names.

No, the true identity of Linda has remained hidden until now. It all started three months ago in a club near the Hong Kong border. Me and two friends went to a hotel there for a supposed party. The party was a bit of a bore as there was only a handful of people. However, among these people there was someone that caught my attention. His name? Eros. Yes, I know, a rather peculiar name but you can also applaud it for its uniqueness. Actually, his Chinese name is Zhang Jia Yi or 张佳毅.

Well, there we got to talking after a few drinks. And well, now, three months later we’re still talking. In fact, one could say we’re now a couple. I’m not sure why I’ve created the persona of Linda until now to keep it hidden and not just come clean with the truth of it right away but I suppose it’s because of the reactions. And because I’ve also been waiting to see where it was all going and if it was going to turn into something serious. Well, most of the traveling I did in the last few weeks was with ‘Linda’ so I thought it was time now to lift the veil. Sorry for the whole thing.

Anyway, now you’ll probably want to know some more. Linda (I’m sticking with the name and female gender here because of people from my work coming across this blog and I don’t want them to know) works in Guangzhou. She studied to be a director in Beijing and directs a Chinese TV show which I really don’t understand. Besides that she also teaches. However, every now and then we hit a little bit of a communication barrier because her English is actually quite poor. So it’s really speeding up my learning of Chinese. But despite she knowing that I don’t really intend to spend more than a year China she still stays with me despite my warnings.

So to just clarify again. I’m not suddenly straight. Linda is just a codename. This is the second of a series of stories about my travels in China.

Across from me sits a woman in the chair that is just too small for her. Her bottom spills over into the next seat to the great annoyance of the person next to her. The expression on her face is one of study as the looks at me. Not unlike the look your face would produce when trying to read a sign on the highway which is too far away and when you need new glasses. Besides her sits a man, who I presume to be her son, who is also looking at me, in his eyes the same expression as the woman.

Next to this man sits another man on a bucket. The train we are in is so full that all the chairs are already taken. Why this man took a bucketload of buckets into the train is something I don’t know but they turn out to be a convenient chair. The bucket man glances over at me every now and then. The family on the other side of the train compartment makes no secret of their curiosity. The younger children point at me and then at their nose or ears or eyes.

Me and my fellow travelers are in the train on the way to the Chinese city of Guilin. The 12 hour train ride which was supposed to be 10 hours is proving to be an interesting glance into Chinese life. There are people standing in the pathways, in the smoking area. Some are sitting on the floor and someone has perched herself on the little wash basin next to the toilets. All around people are munching on the snacks they brought or get boiled water for their instant noodles from the dining car. And all the while the air conditioner strains to keep up with all the radiating body heat.

I’m tempted to ask where they are going and what they’ll do there. Are all these people in this train to go on holiday? Or are they going back home? Why are they willing to endure this sneak preview of hell to get to their destination? I’m too shy to ask since previous incidents with people laughing at my Chinese. So I suppose I’ll never find out. Also, if they find out I can speak a few words of Chinese I will not get a second rest on this train.

And just when you think now it’s really full the train pulls into a station. You look out the window at the dozen or so people standing at each door pushing to get in and you think how on earth are you all going to come in here? But they do, somehow. And everyone stands a little closer together. Some of these people need to stand up in this train for all of the 12 hours of this journey.

For the first two hours in this train most of my thoughts consisted of ‘oh my God this is madness’. When those two hours were over I thought I’d quite like to read a book so I get up, climb over some people, crawl underneath some other ones, navigate through a jungle of bags, buckets and let’s not forget garbage. Finally, I reach my bag. I look around me to see if I’ve hurt anyone and notice that every single person in this train is staring at me. So I do what anyone would do. Wave and say: ‘good evening!’. Which had the absolutely wonderful result of suddenly making everyone realise they were rudely staring and in the blink of an eye everyone looked away.

And at last, dawn comes. And with dawn comes the arrival of the train into the otherworldly landscape of Guilin.

This is the first of a series of stories about my travels in China.

Or at any rate, that is what Hong Kong calls itself. I haven’t much time so I need to be rather short today. What I will give you however is pictures! So open those sleepy eyelids and gaze upon what is arguably one of the world’s most interesting cities.

The highlight of my two-day trip was without question my trip to the island of Lantau, an undeveloped island only 30 minutes away by ferry from Hong Kong’s main harbour. It’s the home of the 24 meters tall Buddha and the Po Lin monastery. But also of an incredible natural beauty and a lot of open space. And I regret only having a few days there, but I will certainly go back and go on a hiking trip in October as the weather will be cooler. Anyway, I’ll leave the rest of the pictures to tell their own story.

Look inside the post to see the pictures.

In the morning I will be leaving to Hong Kong and then through the rest of China for a couple of weeks. I don’t know how my internet availability is going to be so it could occur I can’t update for quite a while. So don’t worry about that and just keep coming back and keep the comments coming.

One takes two kilos of flour, 10 eggs, 3,75 liters of milk and 4,5 tsp. of baking powder and then proceeds to vigorously mix the ingredients until pain in the arm forces the stirrer to rest. After recovering continue stirring - if needed use the other arm - until the mixture is smooth of texture. Leave the concoction to rest for several minutes and use this opportunity to rest your tired arms also. If company permitting it is best to do this scarcely dressed as mixture sent flying around the room and the heavy stirring can cause mess and sweating.

When the preparer of the pancakes has sufficiently rested and dried up in close proximity to the airconditioning proceed to turn on the fire to a high level. The heat produced by the fire will instantly cause anyone nearby to turn into a trickling sweat-fountain. Add butter to the pan and bake pancakes. Flip pancakes carefully and avoid pan slippage due to sweaty hands. All the while, make sure not to emit sweat into the pan as salty pancakes don’t please the palet of any man. Also I would like to interject that any man that enjoys a piece of bacon or other such products on a pancake should be sent to the insane asylum.

Proceed to bake 40 pancakes of a medium size. Have a mop nearby to dry and sweep floor of sweat and mixture-spills. Nobody ever said pancakes were a clean affair.

Eat 10 pancakes for dinner and save the other 30 for the next day when they will be taken to 20 hungry children aged between four and seven. Explain to children how pancakes are created. Hand the children various sweet substances and demonstrate how to give the pancakes facial features such as eyes, ears, mouth and nose using a combination of the following: sugar syrup, strawberry jam, chocolate cream, blueberry cream and chunks of mandarin.

Convert the pancake into a roll and proceed to put it into the mouth. Now, instruct children to follow the above procedures and enjoy the spectacle.

One girl whose name shall remain unknown for privacy reasons put the tube of chocolate cream to her mouth and emptied its contents into it. Then as I told her not to do that she opened her mouth to protest and the chocolate - or what was called chocolate but had no semblance to the taste of it - dribbled all down her dress, chin, neck and hands. Another put the pancake to her mouth and had the chunks of chocolately mandarin fall into her lap.

In the end it was a battlefield of half-to-fully devoured corpses of pancakes. Sticky tables, hands and faces all around. Somehow I got jam or syrup into my shoe and for the rest of the day my feet and shoes sounded like unrolling a piece of tape.

But regardless, the pancakes were a huge success. Let’s hope they forget about them quickly and never want them again. Today, we’re taking twenty kids to the pizza restaurant Papa Johns and making pizza. Thankfully, we won’t need to clean that up.

I‘m afraid I don’t really have a story to tell at the moment. No bland, uninteresting social critique or observations of Chinese culture but just a plain old summation of plans, recent things and the whole recent situation. So someone expecting any of the afore mentioned can just close this window right now.

I’ll skip the apologies about my lack of posting if you don’t mind because we’ve all seen that before. Been a little busy so in a situation like that I’d rather have a nice Tsingtao - Chinese beer brand - and nod off watching TV. I’m sure we can all understand that, right? Which is kind of what my plan was for tonight also but due to a nagging sense of responsibility here I am giving you the down low (do people still say that?).

The main point was of course my birthday and many thanks for the birthday wishes. I really appreciate that small gesture. My birthday was spent in a rather unusual way for me actually. And this is going to sound really bad. Because you see, for the first time this was also really a full workday for me (seven and a half hours of teaching/assisting). But regardless of that it was a good day and I got a truckload of presents which is always appreciated. I haven’t invertarised everything quite yet but when I do I’ll be sure to present you with a full list.

Right now the Magic English summer camp is going on so that’s quite a lot of work at the moment. But it’s a lot of fun and I’m actually doing things of which I think: “Wow, guess this is not just for kids”. We took them to the crappiest dinosaur museum I ever saw. The paint was peeling off the wall, the dinosaurs were falling apart and the moving dinosaurs all kind of sounded like cows that were being milked. But kids have enough of an imagination to enjoy it regardless of that. And for the adults there it was actually just kind of funny to see such a crapshack. Tomorrow a trip to the beach is planned and two days after that we’re going to Papa Johns to make pizza with the whole group. And a few days later…

It’s all done! Then it’s time to go traveling. The Tibet plan already went down the drain and a lot of other plans I don’t have yet. First it’s to Hong Kong for two days, then to Guangzhou, then to Guilin (which always looks absolutely stunning) and after that try to kind of go off the beaten track and find some more of the pure China that I know still has to exist somewhere in this landmass with 1.3 billion people.

Right now that’s all I have time and inspiration for. I will try to get some nice pictures up of the summer camp and of course you’ll be kept up to date of any travel plans.

So last night I had my first enounter with a tropical storm, or a typhoon as they’re called in this part of the world. You may also know them as cyclones, hurricanes, tropical storms or as the Australians call them: Wet Willies or something similar. This one hit Hong Kong and Shenzhen head-on last night at around 1:00 in the morning. It wasn’t a full force storm and it was a little bit on the weak side they tell me.

At about 12:30 I go to bed and wake up a few hours later to the sound of howling wind and torrential rain. Nothing to worry about, right? On the 23rd floor you generally don’t experience floods anyway. This morning I am woken up by Sean who tells me to get out of bed. It was 8:30 so I unwillingly complied. So I throw my legs over the bed and onto the floor and what do I hear?

Splash. ‘Hmm, normally the floor doesn’t go splash’, I think to myself.

So I get out of bed and the whole apartment is just absolutely flooded. About 5-6 centimeters of water just lying there across everything. My room and the other bedroom were a little better off. But you know, in a situation like this it really just takes a few minutes to sink (haha, little play on words there) in.

The odd thing was that I got up at around 3:30 to go to the toilet and nothing was going on. So in the space of about 4 to 5 hours about 150-300 litres of water managed to seep in through the balcony window doors. How on earth is that possible?

Thankfully, damage was limited (though the floor is starting to get a bit lumpy) and the electricity switched off in the night which is really fortunate. Or it could have ended a lot more dramatically (it’s China, you don’t know about such things). And after about 2 hours of squeezing towels and mops into buckets we had it all dried up. But for the next few hours I will be blowdrying all the wet books.

More pictures inside the post.

Once again the most dreaded moment is nearly upon me. Only eleven days until that fateful day. The birthday. It makes one wish one was born on the 29th of February so it would only happen once every four years. Unfortunately such luck is not bestowed on me. Although I did win 10 RMB scratching fa piao (a sort of receit with a scratch card game built in which you get wherever you can eat) the other day. That probably cost me my supply of luck for the next year.

The one thing that is so ironic about birthdays is that people actually expect you to celebrate becoming a year older. All you are is one year closer to death! Should a birthday not be a day of mourning instead? Instead of congratulations people would offer you their condolances. Imagine all the designers suddenly required to design all these new birthday cards saying: ‘Many condolances on another gloomy birthday!’

You may already have the feeling by now that I don’t have any particular desire to celebrate much. ‘Why this depressing post?’, you wonder. Well, I’ll let you in on it.

Shopping. I went shopping. Now usually I find that quite an enjoyable experience but it was shopping of the wrong kind. Shopping for a birthday present. You see, I’m part of a twin and that means on my birthday it’s also my sister’s birthday. I wanted to get something Chinese which would also be kind of funny yet something useful so not like a crappy statue. So I went to Dong Men shopping center, which is a shopping mall the Chinese way.

Wander through one street and you find a whole street of butchers, turn left and you’re suddenly smack in the middle of a maze-like womens’ shoe temple (which it took me 15 minutes to find the way out of) and take a right and you’re suddenly in the Starbucks (I have developed a sixth sense to finding these unconsciously). And all the while all the sales people see you as a dollar sign with legs or a walking, talking wallet. I seriously don’t need womens shoes (though I did see one lovely pair) or ’sexy DVDs for sexy boy’ (that one was good for my ego, actually).

All of this was a rather roundabout way of coming to a rather solemn point. Why do people need all of this? China is experiencing the biggest economic growth in the world at the moment but is the nation as a whole becoming happier? I doubt it. I would almost wager on the opposite. You may think that you own a house, have a nice job and lots of wonderful possessions but the fact of the matter is that those things own you. They limit your freedom and cloud your vision. Now I realize that this makes me a little bit of a hypocrite as I also indulge in non vital luxuries but never for the sake of the indulging itself. I suppose being confronted with the gap between rich and poor here that has me thinking seriously about these issues.

I was pondering something while looking at the hordes of people passing by the Starbucks branch. If you gave these people the choice between buying happiness and a new flat screen television which one would they choose?

Iam always making tiny improvements to this website as an ongoing project. Until now I’ve resisted the urge to give photography a strong presence on this website. For me it’s always been about telling the story and the photos were just something to add some colour. And of course to tell their own story.

On the other hand I’m seeing some interesting and beautiful things which I wanted to share. Usually I kept my pictures strictly on Facebook but with the downfall of Facebook, Flickr and other similar services also slightly wobbly (and not to mention slow) I decided to succumb to the photos. While I will still keep them off the front page those looking for it can now go to Photos in the menu at the top. Also, clicking the title of the post on the front page will show images in newer posts in full size. Enjoy!