Christmas, New Years, and then the blank days...

The last few weeks have been quiet for me and Lin, and thus we've spent a great deal of our time leading homely but studious lives inside our cosy apartment.

Hence, there's no great stories to be written nor tid-bits to be shared through this blog. I've a number of photos to upload to Flickr, but both my internet and personal interest bandwidths right now are both suffering from post-New Year outages.

Lin & I spent both our Christmas and New Year's holidays in Shanghai this year. We had a great time hosting a Christmas luncheon at our place with a few of our friends that didn't follow the annual mass expat exodus for the Christmas/NY holidays. There's a number of lasting memories from this period, with the most tiresome (but ultimately satisfying) being numerous excursions taken to hunt down those special ingredients for our feast and also to find the niche & thoughtful gift in a land of cheap, easily purchased mass-produced items that would normally consist of a thoughtful (and moderately priced) gift back home.

One of the joyous was stepping a little further outside our social zone and mingling with new friends & faces during the Christmas and New Year party rush. Almost every expat we chat to agrees with the sentiment that the calendar New Year in Shanghai is a real anti-climax due to lack of interest in the holiday here in China. There is no buzz whatsoever about the holiday here (although a few of our Chinese neighbours have wished us well). I find this a little puzzling given the interest & buzz for Christmas that we've observed in Shanghai over the last 2 years. The level of Santa and tinsel representation & the force-fed consumer spending of Christmas here matches that of our home-towns.

One thing that I've regretted about spending this time of year in Shanghai is that I missed both of my parent's milestone birthday's. Although they understand our position & location on the northern side of the Pacific Ocean, I would have dearly loved to have been there to celebrate with them this year. At least we will be able to swap notes when both my parents, sister and new brother-in-law visit China later this year.

Lately, I've been wrangling with a few job possibilities, and also contributing a lot of my own time to a little project of Linda's. She's a hard task mistress. Both of these developments will be deserving an entry or two in the not so far future if all goes to plan. I'm glad to be doing this, and it is starting to add considerably to my technical skills and future employability. This new branch of learning is really taxing my concentration skills and I have found myself spending between 4 to 10 hours at a time plugging away at it. If only I could transfer that interest into a much longer and more important millstone I have to grind.

Apart from her little project, Lin has also been intently focused with her language studies prior to the massive 6 week break Chinese university students receive around the Chinese New Year period.
We're thinking of taking a few little trips in the next couple of weeks. Initially we were considering the Harbin Ice Festival, but Lin vetoed this due to her aversion to chilly climes. Then there was the attraction of Xiamen during the Chinese New Year Golden Week, but we decided against that. We're now contemplating a Nanjing excursion in the near future. Who knows where we could really end up!

More later as life comes to hand.