So, after much effort, and some strange delays, some parcels finally arrived from England allowing me to build my new computer. Also, after selling my car in England, and feeling a little depressed, I decided on some retail therapy and treated myself to an early birthday present: A Canon 5D Mark ii. It’s a beast of a camera…

My laptop is dead.

I’m fairly sure the motherboard is fried, some googling discovered that other people with my laptop have had the same problem. When in warranty; you send it back to HP. When out of warranty (as mine is, by a few months, of course.) you’re out of luck. Apparently the laptop is prone to heat build up, and the motherboard warps and joints become unsoldered. I could maybe try find a Chinaman to look over it and give it some soldering, but while labour is cheap here, trying to find someone who I think is upto it could be hard. I keep all my photos backed up on my external hard drive, so I haven’t lost any photos and I should be able to get any data of the laptop hard drive anyway. I doubt I’ll be able to find a replacement motherboard in China, and trying to get one from elsewhere would be economically unsound. Probably gonna have to fork out for a new laptop, and right after spending a chunk of money on a holiday too. Long story short (and to stop my whining) — Don’t expect many blog posts soon.

As a P.S: I hope you all went out and exercised your democratic right to vote yesterday. No such thing here of course. All the results aren’t in yet, but it looks like a Tory majority in a hung parliament. As if my day couldn’t get any worse. Hmph!

So, it’s starting to happen. Last weekend was apparently easter, I thought it was this weekend. Oops. I’m starting to loose track of all western dates and events, although, that’s kind of a lie; anybody who knew me in England knew I used to forget that stuff anyway, but advertisements and promotions in Woolworth’s shop window used to remind me. That’s another point. I haven’t lived in England since Woolworth’s still existed…eek. Anyway, here are some Chinese themed easter photos, click to continue…

So, for spring festival (just over a month ago now) I head to An’Kang, Beryl’s hometown, to meet the family and to see where she grew up. It was quite a personal experience, and I rarely took out my camera (I didn’t wanna be the stupid foreigner with the big camera) so I don’t think this blog post tells even half the story, but… read on for a “small” (150+ photo) sampling…

In continuation to part 1 here is the continuation of that post. It’s been pointed out to me that the trees on the mountains there look like eyelashes…

So, I decided to climb Hua Shan again. Climbed it with different people and at a different time of year, and it was totally different. This is going to be quite the update, so I will split it into multiple parts. Lot’s of pics, so, here we go…

Yup, they’re locusts. Yup, they were delicious.

“Random Snap” is a new category/feature on the blog for when I just have one thing I want to share, and doesn’t quite merit it’s own blog post. The quality of the photography may also be lacking and even from *gasp* a camera-phone!

So, Chinese Baijiu (alcohol) has a nasty habit of creating nice big blank spots in your memory. However, I seem to have developed a subliminal technique of taking lots and lots of (mostly blurry) photos and videos when I’m in this state, perhaps in a vague attempt to fill in these gaps. Anyway, the above is one of these said photos.

I apologise for the silence of late, however I’ve set in motion plans to bring back a much more frequent publishing schedule, a plan then should come into fruition in the next few days. Lot’s has changed here lately, including the arrival of two new teachers; John and Vicky. One of whom’s parents read this blog, so I’ve been told to say that she’s a very, very nice person, and that one of the above alcoholic beverages wasn’t her’s. Honest.

More soon.

“Random Snap” is a new category/feature on the blog for when I just have one thing I want to share, and doesn’t quite merit it’s own blog post. The quality of the photography may also be lacking and even from *gasp* a camera-phone!

So, I write this blog on a day where the weather was a low of 7′c and a high of 18′c… In England; that’d be a pretty good day, break out the T-shirt kinda weather. However, just over 2 weeks ago, when I took this photos, it was a very different story…