Fire...Fire...Fire-drill! Whew...

As I returned home from a class the other day I noticed a high concentration of foreigners in the yard of our accommodation compound (compound or Stalag...depends on your mood). It all looked a little hectic so I ignored them and headed upstairs. When I got upstairs I had a perfect view of the following madness which they (the Chinese office staff) called a fire drill. Basically they doused some wood in kerosene or petrol or something frighteningly flammable and then lit it with some burning newspaper. 

I bet he wishes he hadn't used so much hairspray this morning...

Now where did I leave the snags?

Then everyone took turns at using the powder extinguishers to blast the fire. Each time someone was unexpectedly successful they would give it another slug of boom juice and go at it again. Mark take note...I think that you Australian fire fighters could learn from some of this!

Ummm I think you missed it...

Now you see him...

Now you don't....got a little too close methinks!

I love the smell of napalm in the morning...it really hides the stink of burnt eyebrow hair!

Winter? Perhaps...

Well the temperature has finally dropped...I hope. It fell about 15 degrees in about three days. On Wednesday last week it was around 32 and by the weekend it was about 15-16 degree. Of course it went back up to about 27 but now it seems to be sitting at around 17 degrees. 

The rain sets in.

It is raining at the moment as well which compounds the issue. The Chinese seem obsessed with high polish on their footpaths so the rain results in some precarious sidewalk slips. 

The road crossing in the rain...double the danger! Watch your footing whilst dodging the traffic!!

They actually fool you into a false sense of security by alternating rows of tiles with a nice non-slip surface with highly polished marble type nasty death tiles. So you take your life in your hands when you attempt to walk along certain footpaths after rain. I shudder to think of the situation once the freeze sets in!!

Penny and Darren. Note Darren's hair cut. A wash and style cut for 10 yuan...about $2.50 AUD!!

Anyway we have been coasting along for a while now. We have found a babysitter for Penny after interviewing about 7 postgrad students. Her name is Wu Juan Juan (we could never remember it until we thought of Whoo Duran-Duran! Ah gotta love mnemonic memory triggers!) and her English name is Anna. She has been along twice now and is getting along fairly well with Penny. Although the Chinese seem to play in a very different way than we do. Not a lot of imaginative play, and a lot of...no that is a cow it does not drive a car or that is a volleyball you do not kick it. Oh well its only for a couple of hours and I (Darren) will be home while she is here.

The lovely Penny.

We have finally got the whole Internet shopping organised and have successfully ordered, paid for and received a couple of things. Which is good. I have included some photos of the house to show some of the changes and additions. It is slowly turning into a home for us. We have ordered a painting (hand painted oil triptych of course) and a rug to help make it a little more cozy before winter sets in properly. 

The kitchen...note the corona. Cheaper than in Australia! The fake wood tiles are interlocking foam which act as insulation from the cold coming up through the concrete and real tile floor.

The living room, needs a rug and some pictures...

The "rack" is a little more comfortable now...but not much.

Congratulations to Mel and Mark and welcome to Tom! We are thinking of you guys and hope that all is going well. Good work and best wishes!!

Second summer

Well its hot again. About 30ish for the last few days and a nice high humidity around the 80's I would imagine. So much for winter. I asked one of my classes when winter starts and they answered...'tomorrow.' According to the weather forecast they are right, apparently its rain and a drop in maximum temperature of about 6 or 7 degrees. In fact today's forecast is a max of 31 however by Friday the top is forecast for a balmy 17. So it should be an interesting few days...


Penny keepin' it real fairy style.

We have been struggling with the Chinese version of e-bay. Its called tao bao (dig treasure/find treasure) and is huge. Its main difference from e-bay is that instead of buying from Cheryl in Eagleby you are buying direct from a factory in Shenzhen. So as you can imagine the prices are low and the range is staggering. So anyway it should be easy right, just choose what you want and buy it...well no this is China. So we had to set-up another bank account as our account (with the Bank of China, the biggest in the country) is no good. So we head off to the Industrial and Construction Bank of China ICBC and get a new account. It even comes with a USB stick security check (you can only buy online after inserting the stick to verify that you are the account holder...weird huh?) and about 4 different passwords. So anyway we have struggling with browser problems, bank accounts and the whole language barrier for about a month now and are still yet to purchase anything.

Penny and I were a bit sick last week, some kind of stomach bug which had Penny vomiting a few times and me with gut clenches. We both came down with it after a morning out with Emily, her friend Roy, his wife and their son Tian Le (happy everyday a popular kids name it seems) who is a little older than Penny. We went to Emily's home and then onto a restaurant just off the campus. The restaurant was in a big tent with bamboo walls that were planted with creepers. At the time we were there they had just planted the creepers so the bamboo walls were bare. I'm sure it would be a lovely place in summer and spring. Penny and Le le (his nickname "happy happy" basically) had fun tearing around and looking at all of the animals (ducks and geese in cages and wandering dogs) around the farm that the restaurant was part of. It was nice actually, there were fruit trees planted around the tent and a pond stocked with fish to catch and cook in the restaurant. The food was good too. We had some enoki mushrooms and pork, a kind of lichen/moss/fungus and garlic, some lotus root stewed with pork ribs and lots of other yummy stuff.


Darren, Penny, Emily, Le le and his mum at Emily's pad.


The tent restaurant with bare bamboo walls.

We also had a dinner to welcome all of the teachers and celebrate the beginning of the new semester (only took 7 weeks to do it). We had a dinner banquet in the guest house (hotel) which has been renovated since we were last here, thankfully. I attended as Michelle got to go to the national day banquet a couple of weeks ago. It was a quickfire event, we arrived the food was served toasts were made beer was sculled and we all left. So althogether it lasted about an hour and a half, or two hours tops.


My table at the celebration dinner. From the left of the picture -Steve, Victoria (both Canadian), Mr Gao and his daughter (from the Uni's International office), Crystal (US) and Wang Zi (her Chinese husband), Adam (UK), and Ryan (US) and his Chinese wife Maggie.

The group portrait, and yes I am in the photo...at least my eyes are.

Work has been ticking along since then so not much else is happening really. I guess that we are starting to get into the rhythm of the place.

The first week of 'real' work

So here we are Friday of the first week of full timetabled work. It has gone pretty well. We managed to get timetables that didn't crossover which means that we don't need a babysitter for Penny. I have all of my classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Michelle has most of hers on Thursday and Friday. 

Michelle and Penny and the Doreamon bike outside a little shop near the campus.

Penny and Darren taking a constitutional on the Northern half of the Campus.

Most of my classes are on another campus called Mai Lu which is about 10-15 minutes away by bus. The trip there is fine as a bus leaves from our campus a half an hour before each scheduled class. The trip back however is a little more complicated (of course). There are some school buses however most of the time you have to catch a public bus or a 'mian bao che' (bread van- so called because they resemble a little loaf of bread). The public bus and the school bus are great just like a buses back in Brissie really. However the bread vans leave a little to be desired. Basically they are small and dodgy with little or no suspension and try to fit about ten people in them before they leave. They have the front two seats and two rows of bench seats in the back and most also have a little wooden bench so that a few more people can be squeezed in to get maximum returns on the trip. I have three night classes and have no choice but to take a bread van as no buses run after my 8.10 class finishes. Its OK but I am not looking forward to the late finishes in winter as its a 10 minute walk to the back gate and then another 10-15 wait while the bus fills up. Its alright in the current weather but in snow, ice and sleet it will be another story altogether.

View from the back (middle) seat of a "bread van."

Apart from the extra teaching hours Michelle and I both have assignments due in a couple of weeks so we are trying to balance everything at the moment. Lots of fun! Basically it means that there is not much in the way of downtime. Still once we have finished the assignments we should have a little break until the next semester begins (well from Uni work at least...). 

The smallest celebrity in Nanchang...Penny!

We bought some pets. A couple of fish called Heathcliffe and Morton. Well we had a couple of fish. We now have one fish, unfortunately Heathcliffe has gone up to the great goldfish bowl in the sky...which was why Michelle wanted two fish. We kinda thought that at least one, if not both would be short lived.We have them in a little bowl on the kitchen table. Penny loves looking at Morton and is always trying to feed him and touch him (as you would expect of a two year old). 

We have been a bit quiet on food this time around so here are a few pictures of some delectable delights...guo bao rou (lightly battered pork), di san xian (stir fried potato, green capsicum and eggplant the top two rows of take away container, both DongBei cuisine), guo tie (pan fried spring onion dumplings) and spicy Chinese chicken kebab thingies (chicken breast on flat bread, in flat bread (yes two layers of bread) with spicy chili sauce and some pickled vegetables from some street vendors)....mmmmm thingies! 

Some spicy treats from Sichuan (well from a small Sichuanese Restaurant). Beer duck (bottom left) Mapo doufu (bottom right), braised eggplant (top left) and some stir fried greens (the green one).  Full of fire with chili and Sichuan pepper throughout. We are spoiled for choice for food here. There are three Lanzhou noodle hand made noodle shops, about four Sichuan restaurants,two Dong Bei restaurants (North Eastern Chinese food) and about twenty little food shops, stalls and hole in the walls all making delicious food at ridiculously cheap prices and all about a two minute walk from the flat...Shazam!

A scenic garbage wagon thingamajigee near the equally scenic lake on the northern end of the campus.

We have had a couple of blackouts the last two nights. Thankfully they have been after Penny has gone to bed and are sorted by the time we get up in the morning. So Michelle and I have had a couple of romantic candlelit nights. We also had a rather rude and unromantic awakening at about 4am yesterday when the power came back on and somehow tripped the burglar alarm in our flat. So we were awoken by a screaming siren and both leaped out of bed and ran to the console by the front door where we punched and mashed the buttons until the wailing ceased...thankfully Penny didn't wake up because 4am is a little too early a start. That was the extent of our excitement for this week so its back to some news from home.

Congratulations to Angie and Rich on the birth of little Molly. Good work all round I'd say! I guess that means you are next Mel and Mark! Also happy birthday to Dad and Garry for the 7th, and Andrew and Suzie for the upcoming 14th. I hope you all had (or will have) a nice relaxing day.