Sorry for the delay getting Day 5 up. This week I was out of town and off the grid following another trip to An’kang, B’s hometown. More on that in future posts. Anyway, day 5 was our final day in Qingdao, and we just took a short trip back to the seafront to check it out. The weather had taken a turn for the worst, and me and B were both feeling a little under the weather…

Continuing from Day One, Two, and Three: Here’s day Four. Highlights include BEER STREET! Day four we planned to do some beer stuff (I’ll let you guess if Day Four was planned by me or B…) Firstly, we decided to go to the famous Qingdao Pier. If you look on a bottle of Qingdao beer (available in the UK, dontyaknow) you’ll see as part of their logo they have a blue and white picture of said pier. Being a fan of Qingdao beer before even coming to China, this meant it was kind of a graceland to me…

Day three was beach day! With pedlos, Jet-skis, and Tim — oh my!

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.”

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!

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…