Xin Nian Kuai Le again!!! 
Chinese New Year was February 18th - I know it was almost a month ago. It has been a hell of a month! More bad than good, but that's life.
A lot has happened since Christmas when I last wrote. I came back from the New Year holiday and didn't do much but work. At the end of January, my long time friend, room mate and colleague Joel decided to move back to the US. I decided to move into the city center where there is a bit more going on, so I spent a month searching for a new place to live. I moved into my new apartment just before the Chinese New Year. That was good timing because man do the chinese celebrate the new year. I have never seen so many fireworks in my life.
I spent the Chinese New Year and most of the week long spring festival in Liuzhou. My good friend Ray invited me to celebrate the holiday with him and his family. We went shopping for new clothes, a chinese new years eve tradition. Then took motorcycle taxis to his grandmother's house. We decorated the door for the new year, had a delicious, traditional New Years dinner, and set off fireworks along with the other 1.5 million people in this city. Just before midnight we went to the temple which was truely unforgettable - Monks chanting, people praying, huge fires, burning incense and non-stop FIRE CRACKERS at the stroke of midnight!!!
After we left the temple, there were thousands of people lined up to go to the temple and pray for a the new year. The next morning we climbed Ma'an Shan (horse saddle mountain?) to see the sunrise. There is another chinese tradition which is to pick up sticks on the mountain on Chinese new year which is supposed to bring you wealth for the coming year. I chose not to after seeing people tearing the branches off the few trees next to the path to get their sticks.
On New Years day, I bought a new mobile phone, the Nokia 5500 Sports phone - very cool! It plays music, has a camera and also keeps track of how long you exercise and how far you run or walk. So, the next day, I went for my longest run ever - 2 hours, 3 minutes, 45 seconds. The phone said I ran 20 km which should be about right about 12 miles.
Ray invited me to join him on a trip to the coast to visit some of his former work mates. We explored the fishing village his friend lives in, had a barbecue on the beach, more fireworks of course, watched the local fishermen bringing in a catch of giant jelly fish. They were about 3-4 feet in diameter. Very cool! We spent the next day on her family's fish farm floating in the sea. It was built of wood and even had a floating toilet which we all eventually tried out. We got to see how they raised many kinds of fish, mussels, crabs, etc... then we got to catch and eat them! :)
At the end of the day, I provided some entertainment by falling into the water. Wasn't very funny at the time, especially since I fell in with my new phone and I had no dry warm clothes to change into :( In the end, the phone was ok though :)
That was just the beginning of my trouble with electronics though. A week later, after working all weekend to prepare for a big meeting in Shanghai the following week, and then trying to update this blog, I spilled water on my laptop keyboard. I didn't know that you shouldn't shake a wet laptop to get the water out! So, I not only had to have my mother board, CPU and keyboard replaced, but my hard drive too. They're still trying to recover the data from the old hard drive, but as of now, I've lost all my files, pictures, addresses, etc... Lesson learned, backup your files!
Well, that kind of catches you up on what's been going on in my life, what about yours? Send me an email and let me know.
Till next time...
Happy Birthday to the Wooden Shoe!!!.jpg)
Last night I went to dinner with Mike and some of his friends and tried Big Bone soup and other new Chinese foods. Big Bone soup is cooked with big beef bones. You stick a straw into the inside of the bone and suck out the soup and juices. It is really very tasty..jpg)
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