Following on from Part 1 and Part 2, here’s Part 3 of my holiday to Harbin. This final installment covers a visit to the Sofia Cathedral as well as the snow sculpture park. Enjoy!
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Harbin Holiday (哈尔滨) – Part 3’

Continuing on from Part 1, this post covers the trip to the Harbin Ice and Snow world. This is the place where the main bulk of the ice sculptures and activities were to be found. We even got to do some skiing, which I hadn’t done in about 10 years! There were some great buildings and sculptures made from ice. Let’s dive right in…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Harbin Holiday (哈尔滨) – Part 2’

  
For a long time I’ve wanted to head to Harbin, especially in January for their annual winter festival. But, China is big. I live in pretty much the middle of China. Which, like when I lived in the middle of England is great – you’re equidistant from anywhere. Very convenient. But; I’ll say again; China is BIG. From Weinan to Harbin is 1190 miles as the crow (or Airbus) flies. In perspective, that’s from Stafford to Glasgow FIVE times. So, I had a few spare days and decided this year I’d go check it out. B was busy with work and couldn’t get out of it, so I asked Julian if he wanted to go. Plane tickets were a little pricey (around £220 return) but we thought “what the hell?” and went for it. Here are pics from the first few days…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Harbin Holiday (哈尔滨) – Part 1’

Those who’ve been following this blog for a while know that me covering weddings is a fairly regular thing. When you have a friends group whose age is around 21-25; it’s just what happens. Anyway, These photos are actually from back in September; I almost forgot I had them. One of the Aston CTs who I’ve known for a long time; Maggie – married her high-school sweetheart. Enjoy the pics!
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So, Beryl only has one photo from her childhood. In fact, I think her next photo after this one was when she was about 8 years old. So, needless to say, this photo is highly cherished by her. Anyway, it may be cherished; but it’s seen better days (despite being kept in cellophane.) Anyway, for her Chinese birthday (her ‘Western’ birthday was last week…why two birthdays…? It’s confusing…don’t ask. Maybe I’ll explain another day!) But yes; for her birthday, I decided to restore and re-colour the photo for her…
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Every year Aston holds an Annual Managers’ Conference (AMC) and, after taking the reigns of manager at Weinan, this year it was my turn to head to the meeting. This year it was hosted in the city of Dalian (大连) in China’s Liaoning province (in the North-East, see this map: click.) There’s not much time to explore the city, as most of the time is spent in meetings, but I managed to grab some snaps of the city…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Trip to Dalian – Aston AMC 2010’

So, should I just write this post as if nothing happened? Or should I acknowledge that it’s been over a month since my last post. Oops! Ahem! Well, Sorry! I was busy with this that and the other. A few trips to various parts of China; all of which will make for good blog posts, but – first I need to catch up. So, long story short I placed 3rd in an Aston photo competition (woo hoo) and they wanted a photo of me “looking excited” to go on the website, so…I grabbed my equipment and my assistant in training (Beryl) and we headed to the garages outside my apartment for a little shoot…
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It’s (or, it was) that time of year again. When we introduce our students to the strange and weird customs of Halloween. As always, the kids really embraced it. I guess it’s a pretty cool holiday – you get to dress up as whatever you want, and then people give you candy. What more could you want? As usual this proved a goldmine for photos, so… enjoy!
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Here’s the video of my trip to Chongqing. It’s 18minutes so grab yourself a cuppa. Maybe rated PG-13. A little colourful language, but nothing too bad. Also, the video got a little ‘squashed’ at some point during the upload, so the aspect ratio is slightly off. Weird.

    

Following on from Part One, here’s Part Two! Day two included trips to “Fairy mountain” and “Wulong Karst” – The latter being a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The day started with a four-five hour minibus ride out to fairy mountain, on the way we stopped off at a rest stop and I saw this…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘ChongQing Holiday (重庆) – Day 2’