Cars, bikes, and what the hell?

We have, on the roads of Huizhou, a fascinating mode of transport - the electric scooter - in rich supply.

They are completely silent, and at night will kill really bloody hurt you if they hit you. So, watch out for them, I hear you say. HAHAHA.

Don't be daft - the light uses electricity, and then they won't run for as long.

Thus exist the silent killing bruising machines of Huizhou.

Fear Factor

Let's talk a little bit about fear. I like to think that I am not generally a man filled with fear, certainly not in a superficial and easy to observe way (bring on the future filled with psychology).

So when I have a moment where the fear hits me good and solid, it's a refreshing and enlightening experience.

I am talking, here, about a mode of transport often used here, on these troubled streets - bike taxies. Basically, you sit on the back of a bike, behind a guy who then drives like any taxi driver in Jozi. They're cheap, they're quick, and they are in good supply.

I've taken quite a few, and the first few times, it was really exciting. Then, one day, the rider gave me a helmet to wear (the thought never even crossed my mind prior to that). It was basically a miner's hat, and it didn't come close to fitting. So I held it on my head, as he weaved (wove?) in and out of traffic, often oncoming .

It was the first time that I really thought about what would happen if we went pear shaped. In truth, it's probably not that bad - we're not going very quickly, and I reckon at worst, a couple of breakages and a lot of soreness.

Still, getting on one since then has made me very aware of fear and mortality.

It makes me understand why people do extreme sports - It's a good feeling to get out now and then.

Merry sheme sheme Christmas

After my promises of a deluge of blogarific posts... what happened? Well, I have a great excuse, which starts with Merry, ends with Christmas, and has an "I can't remember when last I was sober" thrown into the middle for good effect.

In summary, Christmas in China is pretty much just another day. A couple of shops aren't open, and a lot of others have big misspelt Merry Christmas signs up, but that's about it. For an intrepid band of westeners however, this was not sufficient.

Our group of 20 split for the weekend (Monday and Tuesday being our weekends), with about half heading off to Hong Kong and the rest staying here. I was in the latter group, and so will only tell you what we did (although the most interesting stories for that evening come from Hong Kong...)

Everybody spent the 24th pretty much bimbling about, doing some last minute Christmas shopping, and not really getting up to very much. Christmas eve, we went for a really good dinner at a little place we've discovered. This was followed by a night of not very heavy drinking, and a reasonably early night. (I was in bed by 1).

Christmas day started late, with most people only really surfacing around 11, but it started with a real fire that was going to keep raging yea unto the wee small hours.

The kindergarten staff all came around for lunch around 12, and made what looked like an amazing meal. Myself and a few of the other Westerners wandered off for a more traditional Christmas meal, which after a great deal of walking and arguing (apparently in most families this is traditional for Christmas), we found at a newish restaurant. I got a Christmas hat! Hehehehe - YAY!

Around 5, the rest of the Chinese staff came through for a "few" drinks and snacks. We did our gift exchange, and a merry time was had by all.

From there, rejoined now by most of the guys from Hong Kong, a group of us drifted off to a club we've found, called Happy Hour, which has a bloody great big car in it. It makes my happy just thinking about how happy that hour was. Wait, we left there at 5am - does that make it a happy hour, or a happy happy hour?

I'm afraid that the stories I remember can't be shared, and the stuff that can be shared, I don't remember.

Now, I shouldn't say this, but Wednesday was not a day filled with the useful moulding of young minds. It was in fact a day filled with the useless speaking of old crap.

To the point where my supervisor's approach to checking a lesson plan of mine was to say "are you happy with it?", and my lesson with the 6 year-olds quickly degenerated into a "Here kids, draw a nice picture for Mr. Wood" , the day was a write off for all concerned.

Ok, back to topical blog posts - this one is boring the hell out of me.

Re-energising through change

First, thank you to everybody who mailed me/posted on Facebook/sent me messages about my blog.

The key driver behind abandoning it was simply that I lost... something. I found each post becoming more and more long-winded, but saying less and less. It finally came to a head a couple of weeks ago, after a long walk. I had about five topics I wanted to talk about, the first of which was the building industry here.

Unfortunately, that very quickly turned into a (b)ramble from which I, being no Brer Rabbit, could not extract myself.

The problem, I've realised, is that as the posts get longer, I spend ages fiddling over how to move from one topic to the next, while still maintaining some sense of storyline or chronology.

So enough fiddling - I am going to start posting again, on a topic by topic basis.

I know this takes a bit away from the idea of this being an account of my travels, but I think it's the way to do it.

Once again, thank you to those that sent messages - it's nice to know not everybody thinks it's as bland as I often do. Except for this post, which has broken records.

I am quickly going to post a couple of the drafts I've put together, without editing, just so that there's something fresh up there (although they refer to the last couple of weeks).

What, you were expecting an ending? No.

Blog posts and insomnia

It's 03h45 here now, and the first time since I arrived that I have been unable to sleep right through. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm going to blame it on Jacob Zuma.

For those who have been wondering where my latest post is, and why I'm becoming such an irregular contributor to the world of the internet, I must apologise. I have a post which I started, but that ended up losing its way, and quite frankly I spent too long on trying to save. Still, lesson learnt.

So this one is a short post, just about general rubbish, before I try to re-enter my newly re-discovered world of really wonderful dreams.

Life continues well.

Mike and I had a chat about this the other day - one of the difficulties with writing witty and interesting posts all the time (or in my case just long ones), is that of course life here is simply life. Although I probably see things every couple of days which would make great stories if retold, they have become so much The Norm, that I don't even notice them any more.

Hence, herewith follows a summary of life, with no anecdotes.

At the moment, we are preparing frantically for Christmas.

It's bloody cold... and more walking

Last week flew by like a dove on speed, with a hawk chasing it. And they're both inside a plane. I'm all about great analogies.

So I think I've spoken before about the amount of building going on in Huizhou, if not directly then at least through my pictures from last week. I'm not sure that I fully conveyed the sheer scale of it, largely because there's no way I fully appreciated the sheer scale of it. I went for two more walks this weekend, which by my calculations (5Km/h avg walking speed, 8 hours total walking time) should have covered a little more than 40Km between them. Ooh, this brings me to something, a quick digression from the building...

Cartography. Now as far as I know, the Greeks invented cartography, but the Chinese were not far behind. Somewhere along the line though, these guys lost the plot. See, I've got a map of Huizhou, which shows that the place I stay is more or less in the centre of the city. Last week, I walked north for about 2 hours, and was nowhere near the edge. This weekend, on both of my walks (south east on Monday, and westish on Tuesday), I was in "countryside" within 90 minutes. Phft.

Back to building. You truly cannot believe the sheer volume of building that is going on. Around every corner, there are buildings going up that would dwarf pretty much anything in Jozi. And I'm not exaggerating. The building I live in is 31 stories high, and is probably just about in the ten tallest buildings that I can see from here. The real size though comes in in the wealthy areas, where there is also more new building going on. I did a little test - Every now and then, on my walk, I would try and find a place I could stand where I couldn't see any construction going on. It's just not possible. Words fail me.

Then there is West Lake. A large part of Huizhou is built around West Lake and South Lake, which are actually two parts of one lake, separated by a walking bridge.

I'm not sure what they are doing at West Lake, but about three weeks ago, they blocked off the ends, and drained the lake. They now have a bunch of diggers and bulldozers in there, and doing stuff.

But now, there's a problem. I see these massive constructions going on, and they are mindblowing in their complexity and size (for my non engineering mind). Then, right next door to the school, they have just built a wall to front a new bar, which is mindblowing in the lack of any sort of thought that's gone into it.

I need to explain this properly, so please bear with me. I'm not an engineer, nor a builder, so I may speaking out of turn here, but my understanding of a wall is that it has to have something to hold it up. Such as pillars that are thicker, or being attached to another wall at an angle, or something. If you just pile bricks, one on top of the other, they are really a pile, and will eventually fall over, no? But that's what they've done - there was a shop next to us with a glass front. In front of this glass front (so right at the edge of the... granite... step, they began a wall, which is one brick deep at any point, and is attached to... nothing. There aren't even poles going into the old wall to hold the new one up. And no, it doesn't reach a roof of any sort to attach to either.

We've all taken to walking into the road to pass it, but there's a tacit understanding that when they open the bar they're building there, we're going to get a guy to lean against it from the inside, just for a lark.