My laptop. I took it apart, gave it a good clean and looking over… put it back together and it worked exactly as it did before I took it apart — which is to say, it didn’t work at all. Yes, all those tiny dots are screws.

*sigh*

So, a few weeks back took a trip to the Green Dragon Temple (青龙寺 – Qin Long Si), in Xi’an. It’s most famous for it’s flowers; a whole load of Japanese cherry blossoms that come into bloom every April. Info on the temple is hard to find in English, but essentially, way back in the day (think ~500A.D.) China and Japan had a bunch of cultural exchange happening. China sent monks and scholars to Japan, and vice versa. This temple is where the Japanese monks were chillin’. Anyway, The original temple got demolished at some point (as happens with everything in Chinese history), then the bad things happened between China and Japan in the 20th century. Well, to come over all of that (or try to) I think the Japanese planted a whole bunch of these trees to say sorry. Enough of the history, let’s look at pretty pictures! Click below to read on…

At the end of February I was once again back in Winfred’s studio; 121. This time with two models I dubbed Lorraine and Jessie. I like to give all the models English names so that they’re easier to remember. Most the time I don’t even tell the girls their names. That’ll just bring a bunch of drama of them wanting the meaning of the name, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, Lorraine and Jessie were both fab to work with, and second time in the studio was definately more at home than the first. Click through for plenty of photos…

“121″ is the name of my friend’s new photo studio he’s opened up in Weinan. It’s a venture between Winfred and some of his friends (you may remember him from previous posts.) Anyway, I’ve been helping him out with his company portfolio and in return I get to play around in a full size studio with over 2000 watts of light. It’s quite good fun. These are my photos from the first time in the studio…

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…