January 2006 Archives

Meat Pie & Coopers Beer
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Unlike back in Australia, I had to put in the hard ones this past Thursday and go to work. Very un-Australian I must stress. I reclaimed a small bite of my Antipodean pride by skiving off from work before 6pm (after 5pm if you happen to read this boss) to join up with Linda and make our way to Senses' Wine Bar & Lounge for our Australian Day celebrations. Senses is run by an Australian, and luckily for us, was fully stocked with beer and food from home. Something as rare as hens teeth in Shanghai is a meat pie - so I enjoyed two of these with great satisfaction. This was washed down with Cooper's Beer - well, there wasn't anything finer for the occasion - perhaps a little less Farnsey and a little more Barnsey blaring through the speakers would have been a touch more to my liking. We were joined later by DaDan, Lozza, our Australian friends Aaron & Suzanna, and an oddly named fellow called Marlow (who swears he's German but sounds unmistakenly from mid-west U.S.A.). Fun was had, and I was in bed before midnight - I swear.

I did miss Australia on this day. Usually I would join up with friends for our Australia/Invasion Day celebration which usually consisted of a BBQ, beer, listening to TripleJ's Hottest 100 for the year in question, and traditionally a game of backyard cricket. While I wouldn't trade my Shanghai lifestyle cheaply, I would have liked to have spent the last few months back in Brisneyland as homesickness has bitten of late.

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Linda rocks. She's a fabulous writer when she gets cracking. I think I may outsource her to write for my site. I've had all the same ideas floating around in the my head for my next entry, and low & behold, she tapped it out in half an hour or so while I was just trying to piece together the events like a three year old encountering Lego Space for the first time. She's a smart cookie my Lin.

By her own admission, she's a touch cranky at the moment, but I still love her to bits. Especially when she kicks the man in the proverbials for me. I'm a lucky guy.

Gee, I should go to bed. Today I got home at 8pm, ate left-over spag bol for dinner with Lin, fell asleep on the couch a third the way through Batman Begins. I didn't miss much - it is the fourth time I've watched it (yes, I like it). So the usual conclusion is to head off to bed right? Nah! Not my company's way. My boss will be happy to see that I started doing work stuff since 10:45pm until 12:15am. And then there's those 8:30am meetings tomorrow. Ugh. Better sign off.

Tough way to spend your Christmas holiday break.
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It is not often that an Australian will outrightly state that a beach is deemed worthy of being Australian. That could be seen as un-Australian, but with all the ongoings back home over the past 10 months, I'm sure that the Australia I came from doesn't appear to the be the Australia that I know.

Political & social feelings aside, the Yalong Bay area has a great beach. It is sheltered bay blessed with oodles of golden sand. The beach itself is wide and flat, and has a gentle sloping bank down into the clear 22ºC water. The beach itself is carved up off-shore into use areas - netted swimming areas (maintained by the resorts with a stake in particular beach areas) and water sport areas where everything goes.

Yalong Bay is a four and five star resort area. Sheraton, Holiday Inn are nestled in among many others, with the cheapest rooms advertised for RMB1000 per night. This being China, the real price upon negotiation is about half, depending on the time of year. We went during the peak season, and without bookings, we trudged around the area trying to find an available place. We got sick of this, and fell back to our B plan which was a 3 star hotel about 15 minutes walk away from the beach. We then settled in for a few days of laziness, beach trips, sampling the restaurants and bars at most of Yalong Wan's resorts.

We found this was just what we needed. If you were looking for more activities, being a guest in one of the resorts or being part of a tour package is the way to go. We found the tourism around Sanya really focused on these two areas. The catering for the self-organised tourist was really poor. It was difficult to get around the area of Sanya (it is really spread out), so that RMB50-100 taxi rides aren't uncommon. There were few buses servicing the Sanya area, and even less going to the surrounding towns. Linda tried valiantly to get to see some of the outer areas where minority villages were found after I returned to Shanghai for work with no success.

Overall, I was happy with my holiday in Yalong Bay. The location is great and it caters well for the well-to-do tourist interested in aquatic sports.

I have posted some pictures on my Flickr page if you're curious about the location.

I will write a little more about our Christmas Holiday in Hainan in another entry - there's more to tell.

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Putting My Feet Up At Foot Massage...
See more images by timbeckenham at flickr.

I've just put them up and have taken a good break from blogging, and checking & responding to email. Thanks to all those people who contacted me & Linda over the holiday break. It was good to hear from you and to get an idea of what's going on in your lives. I'll get back to your emails & letters - I promise.

As I haven't blogged for over a month, there's an information gap regarding my life over the past 30+ days. So, I'll work backwards from this weekend.

First, I finished cleaning up Linda's blog. It has only taken me 12 months to 'tidy it up'. Delaying 'items to do' like this has been one of my bad habits of 2005. If I'm a little harsher on myself, I could say it has been the last 20 or so years. This is something I want to rectify for 2006. The sprucing of Linda's website was the last item in the transferral of both of our sites to a new webhost. Linda's talked about this before, and I must say we are both very happy with our new online digs. And no, the lack of internet activity wasn't due to any site problems, but is explained further below.

The last week has really been one of reunion. most of our friends have returned from their holiday trips home. Our good friends DaDan & Lozza returned from their Christmas trip back home to the US, so we spent a little time catching up with them. We also spent a bit of time with JM & Desiree at JM's gay apartment (sequin covered bed quilt no les). I am envious of his the wooden Indonesian day bed. I've fallen asleep in that one twice now. Matt-man also returned from Newfoundland earlier this week too.

I've been ultra-busy at work. There's so much to do there that it has consumed the better part of my time before, during and after the holiday breaks. I have really thrown myself at this work, and I've had some good returns for my efforts (if I do say so myself).

It hasn't all been work though. Linda & I spent our Christmas break on the Chinese island province of Hainan. Four days spent at Yalong Wan (Bay) near the city of Sanya. Half of the days we spent there were brilliant, with the other half was good for staying inside, lazing about and eating. A good thing to do at that time of year.

Prior to this, it was manic working. Really manic. I don't think I've ever been so busy. And it did show. I truly needed the holiday I had at Christmas, and still I don't think I've gotten back to a sane work-life balance. Hence I threw out a lot of things from my life to make it a little more managable - like blogging, writing, talking to people etc. Usual healthy everyday person behaviour.

That's it for now. I've got photos, other ideas for entries, and those things, but you'll have to wait for the next entry. There won't be a repeat of my last spacing between posts.

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