'the life' goes on...

Somebody once told me that a photo is worth 1000 words...

Breakfast on another lazy monday...


Worthy of special mention:
- The tortilla was cooked on the BBQ and contains ham and melty cheese

A few obvious omissions (unavailable at time of preparation):
- Spanish chorizo sausage
- Bacon, lots of bacon
- A porterhouse steak
- Pint of stout
- A token leaf of lettuce (my girlfriend made me put this in)

Ok, I admit that I am no expert when it comes to how thing work in the World Wide Web. But, I have noticed that some web sites (search engines, email accounts etc) list some sites you ‘might’ be interested in based on in the information displayed on the page being viewed. The screen shot below is a shining example of how accurate this technology can be!

A day in 'the life'!!

Ok everybody... deepest apologies for neglecting my blog in so long, but until now nothing has been all that blog worthy - ie no travels to brag about, no desire to 'get hits'!

Despite popular belief the life of an unemployed person can actually be quite meaningful. My day so far does nothing but reinforce this to the highest level.

7:00am: get woken up by girlfriend switching on the light to look at herself in the mirror. A quick moan prompts her to take her vanity to the bathroom.

10:00am: wake up naturally, think for a moment about getting up

10:30am: wake up again, get up, jump in shower

10:45am: look in fridge to see what will ease the pain from not eating for 11 hours (yes I slept about 11 hours). Find:
2 x eggs
1 x loaf ciabatta bread
1 x slice ham
1 x bowl of fresh home made tomato relish
1 x tin tomato pure
1 x Spanish chorizo sausage
1 x block fresh premium parmesan

For those of you who have never eaten ranch eggs/huevos rancheros, brace yourself!! Ranch eggs are in my opinion the best possible way of cooking (and eating) eggs (probably up there with a huge greasy breakfast from Tomorrow).

I put the ciabatta bread under the grill so it becomes nice and crispy on outside and nice and soft on inside, mix the home made tomato relish with some tomato pure in a small saucepan, once brought to boil break the two eggs in so they poach in the tomato sauce (throw in a chopped chilli for fun too). Pull out frying pan and fry up that Spanish chorizo.

Pull bread out of grill, put ham and grated parmesan on top. Scoop out eggs put on top so cheese gets all melty. Put left over sauce from pan on top of eggs.

11:15 sat down with breakfast

11:18 breakfast gone

11:20 start bragging to the world via blog

So if you guys are still not sure what I’m saying, I’ll spell it out to you. Although I don’t have a job, I am still able to achieve something meaningful before midday. Now I don’t feel bad about going back to sleep!

As much as I wanted to take a photo, the fact that my breakfast was gone within three minutes highlights the fact that there was no time to get a camera! However, I can assure you that it was probably the best breakfast I have ever had! I will b doing it again, so sit tight!

Enjoy your day everybody!

Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore

ok folks

I realise that i promised to blog about the whole Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore thing like two months ago. I actually got as far as uploading pictures before i gave up until now.

If you actually want to read about what I did check out this link - Michelles blog says it all. If you are happy just looking at pictures, need not go anywhere!

Malaysia... Food, food and fireworks! What cooler than Michelle teaching Pei San to drink beer? Michelle's sister teaching a 5 year old how to play with fireworks! Good work the Tan family!

Thailand... Beach, beach, sun, booze!!! caught up with Devrim, Alfy, Ken, Peter, Sheila!


Singapore - Party at Alfy's! German feast the next day - pictures say all!

Harbin

On my last weekend in China Devrim, Nick, Sheila, Dom, Habib, Aude, Rebecca and I all headed north toward the Russian border to a little town called Harbin. The trip to Harbin was probably my most enjoyable weekend away. I think it was a combination of good people, partying Russian style, extremely cold weather, amazing ice sculpture park and tiger feeding which made it such a memorable trip.

The fun started with drinking games on the train up, this was a sure recipe for feeling rough the morning the train arrived, but a quick nap followed by a hot pot lunch was perfect for setting us up for a big day. After lunch Sheila, Nick, Devrim and I went for a walk around town and then visited Harbin’s famous Russian restaurant. After a true Russian feast we ventured out to the ice sculpture festival. By the time we made it out to the festival it was night and the temperature had dropped to -32 degrees, it is difficult to imagine how cold -32 degrees feels until you experience it, after the vodka ran out our toes started to freeze up and we decided to head home (with a stopover at the Russian restaurant for a top-up... or for some of us a nap!)

The following day, we decided to take the advice from the Lonely Planet guide and head to the Harbin tiger park. From what I understand, the park was originally created to breed tigers for the purpose of boosting the wild tiger population. Recently, since there has been such a strong interest amongst tourists it has become more of an attraction. Ok, there is nothing really exciting about tigers but this place had edge! As well as taking a safari style bus ride through the park, you can also opt to purchase live animals to throw to them for a laugh. We all agreed that we didn’t make it all this way not to have a laugh, so we chipped in for a live sheep to be hunted! I like the discovery channel, but believe me when I say nothing compares to seeing the chase with your own eyes.

Does my arse look big in this?

Snow Day

A group of us (Michelle, Dom, Troy, Habib, Sheila, Nick, Eduardo , Soraya, Aude and Rebecca) went on a ‘That’s Beijing’ organised ski day. It was no surprise that like everything else in China the snow was also fake and the slopes were overcrowded. The best part of the day was watching the multiples of overconfident Chinese people tumbling down the steep slopes. Laughing at each other’s rented ski gear also proved to be quite comical. It’s amazing how all of the tragically unfashionable ski gear from the 80’s made it’s way to this one mountain.

NYE in Tonga

After a NYE dinner with classmates and friends at Souk, it was off to celebrate NYE Tongan style!

Tonga… I would never have imagines that a NYE celebration in China would be spent on Tongan land (well Tongan Embassy apartments). There are a couple of Tongans at school who’s parents work at the Embassy, they decided to host a party and all were welcome. See in particular Dom and also Michelle and Troy for their accounts.

Have a “Budweiser” Christmas

Exactly what happens when Christmas is sponsored by a beer company, a passed out snowman and a drunk-looking Santa having to keep his balance on an oversized beer bottle!

Smile for the camera... no! not you... get out of it!

Christmas in Qingdao

Those of us away from our family and wanting to escape the Chistmaslessness of Beijing/Shanghai ventured down to Qingdao to spend the weekend with Devrim’s friend Paulie. Qingdao, on the east cost of China somewhere between Beijing and Shanghai boasts clean air, beautiful beaches, German architecture and of course the TingTao brewery. Michelle and I arrived on the Saturday morning to meet with Devrim, Pei, and Paulie (Devrim and Pei arrived on the Friday night), after a short nap it Paulie took us to a Jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant where between of us (including two girls who really count for ½ person each) we ate roughly 100 dumplings. After a brief look around town and a stroll along the beach we met with a handful of others for a hotpot dinner.

Sunday (Christmas day), after Paulie recommended Devrim and I go for a ‘naked man rub down’ (see Devrim’s posting for more info), the 5 of us all went to a German restaurant for a very German Christmas (Sausages and German beer), this was probably as western as the Christmas was going to get. Not quite the same as the barby feast I am used to at home, but it was still as Christmassy as possible.

Shortly after Christmas lunch, Michelle and I had to make our way to the bus station and catch the overnight bus back to Beijing so that we could make it to work/school the next day. See also: Michelle, and Devrim for their take on Christmas.

Shanghai visit #2 & Hong Kong

Shortly after coming back from the school trip I came to the realization that there is not a great deal of time left before I return home, and I had seen very little of the country. Michelle and I decided that we would make a visit to Shanghai to meet Michelle’s friend from Melbourne (Joyce) and Devrim and then visit Hong Kong to catch up with Ken (friend from Melbourne who has since moved back there).

Highlights of Shanghai: pajama pub crawl followed by hearty breakfast (see also Devrim’s posting), lining up for almost an hour to try famous shanghai style dumplings, keeping a constant supply of vodka coursing though mine and Devrim’s blood stream until 5:30am the night before an early morning flight, packing and then waking Devrim up for work an hour after he went to bed. Aside from drinking we also did a little token sight seeing.

Highlights of Hong Kong: Eating, eating and more eating, shisha smoking, late night mahjong sessions, WTO protests, the worlds longest escalator, day trip to Macau and tax free shopping. It was also great to catch u with Eva (Ken’s girlfriend, also good friend from Melbourne – now back in Hungary). Neither Ken or Eva told us she was going to be there, so it was a bit of a surprise. After she left Melbourne we did not suspect that we would be seeing her so soon, so it was a nice surprise when she met us at the train station when we arrived. See also Michelle's take on the trip.

The Great Wall

Aside from a handful of tourist areas the majority of the wall has been untouched since it was first constructed. During the four months I spent in China I was fortunate enough to see a couple of parts of the wall. The first was a couple of weeks into my course and was a trip organised by the school, and the second was a trip with a couple of friends. I was a little disappointed at the first visit, the hoards of tourists combined with the multiple peddlers yelling at me in attempt to encourage me to buy cheap/imitation souvenirs distracted from the 'greatness' of the wall. Also as this part of the wall had been rebuilt, it seemed a little artificially ‘recreated’.A couple of months later, I went along with Michelle, Libby and Owen to a more ‘off the beaten track’ area. When we arrived, we got out of the car and there was nothing to be seen aside from a tiny agricultural village and an old man walking up the road carrying some kind of harvesting tool. As we were all quite hungry our driver asked the old man where we could go to eat. As the nearest restaurant was miles away, the old man invited us into his place. You know you’re in China when you’re sitting in the living room of an old Chinese couple’s cottage playing mahjong while the wife is cooking us food!

When we finally made it to the wall the view was breathtaking. As this part is an ‘off limits’ area we had to climb through barbed wire and do a little rock climbing to get there, but when we made it we were all blown away. The other surprising thing is that although it is forbidden to enter that part of the wall, we still had to buy tickets!

Shanghai visit #1

As part of the course at BLCU, the university organised a tour for all students. You can imagine what it would be like to travel with about 100 classmates, as all details of the trip (accommodation, food etc) had been pre arranged, the only real decision we had to make was where we were going to drink. All in all, the trip was good, it was a very typical Chinese organized tour which means that a chocker block agenda which does not allow for more than a couple of hours free time in each day.

From my recollection the trip went a little something like this, it’s pretty easy to forget which places you visit when (1) you're hung over and (2) it was never your decision to go there in the first place:

Beijing -> HuangZhou, overnight sleeper. Arrived in HuangZhou saw a park and a lake. Got drunk, went back to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning

HuangZhou – SuZhou, bus ride which was spent sleeping, got out, saw a temple. Went out until the wee hours, ate dumplings and noodles before going back to hotel.

SuZhou – XiTang –> They call this area (XiTang) the Venice of China, beautiful river alleys running through the city. Shame we could only spend about an hour or so to look around.

Xi-Tang – Shanghai -> Saw a museum, unfortunately three nights of solid drinking had withered away even the minimal interest I had in the museum… a couple of us rushed through and went to Pizza Hut. At that stage of the day it was probably the safest option.

That night in Shanghai, I decided to break away form the school group and catch up with a couple of Alfy’s buddies, Devrim and Tee. Details of the night are a little hazy as I was coerced into drinking games with school friends before leaving the hotel. However, I can confirm I lost my mobile phone, fell off the bar while dancing with Tee and spent waaayyyy too much cash.