Continuing on from part one. Here are the photos from Day 2, which include a trip to the aquarium, a dinosaur park and a small “snack street.”
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Qingdao Holiday (青岛) – Day 2’

First off, Happy Birthday to my old man who turned 48 on Thursday, and Happy Birthday to me, I turned 24 yesterday! I’m half his age now — but not half as handsome. 🙂
Last week we went to watch the crucial England game against Slovenia. I invited some of my Chinese friends to drum up support. We went to watch it on west 2nd street, which we dub “barbecue street” because there’s a bunch of outdoor barbecue restaurants — win! Here are the photos…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Watching the Football (and other celebrations!)’

So, back in May holiday, myself and B headed to Qingdao (青岛) for a 5 day break. It was an awesome time, and I’ll present it to you in a day-by-day manner. Here’s the action from day one!
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Qingdao Holiday (青岛) – Day 1’

So, way back in April, I went on a photoshoot with my Weinan Oak Tree photo club friends. I never did post the photos, so here they are!
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Spring in Weinan’

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…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘New Toys / Back to business’

Last week Weinan Teachers University (B’s university also known as 渭南师范学院 ) celebrated it’s 50th anniversary, and celebrate they did. B and I went along with our cameras, but we were met with a huuuuge crowd. Luckily I’m acquainted with the head of the school’s dance society, who would be heading up lots of the performances of the night. With backstage access secured, we enjoyed the show and took plenty of pictures…

Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Weinan Teacher’s University 50th Anniversary’

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*

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. At the end of the day, it’s only a collection of plastic and metal… just a rather expensive collection of plastic and metal. 🙁 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, 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!
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Green Dragon Temple 青龙寺’

and I’m back! Back from what? Well, that’s a long story. Sorry about the silence; a lot has been going on. This April has been a bit crazy. The weather was awesome, and everybody was like “Woo hoo! Spring is here!” then it SNOWED and everyone was like “Booo, no it’s not.” and then it stopped snowing and everyone was all, “Wooop! It’s here, it’s here!” Then I got a cold and was all like “Nope. Definitely not.”

Anyway, back when black was black and white was white, B decided to go get a haircut…
Continue reading / 继续阅读: ‘Operation: Haircut’