RT-Mart

RT MART has opened right across from my apartment. Maybe hard to comprehend life in a country like China unless you experience it first hand. You learn the real meaning of "developing country". in 2008 when I came here my whole life changed... Everyday items like Fresh Milk, Cheese, Butter, Bread, Steak, Sausages, Cereal, Chocolate ( that didn't taste like wax) and much more, just didn't exist in Yichang... Bigger cities, Yes, But not here. Now I can find all these things relatively easily...especially with RT MART across the road. And other things like Christmas were non existent... Well pretty much... And now there is Christmas spirit and crazy shopping lol...
A whole new road near my school and apartment has finally been finished (it's taken nearly all of four years) and its awesome. There are now proper seats in my ferry. Air con and heating in some of the buses. Cafes that sell real coffee.
The times, they are a changing :-)

A Beautiful Clear Winters Night

Life has been crazy these past few weeks, today I didn't stop until now.... Very very busy and tomorrow I have to recall on my muso skills and perform a drum solo and duet with my little Carol. We are part of the New Year Teachers Show. Last minute addition so we only rehearsed tonight but we have a lesson every week so I think it should be fine.
Braved the chilly weather to venture onto the balcony to bring in the washing ( thats been hanging for 3 or 4 days) and saw a perfectly clear (all be it cold) winters evening. Nice :-)

Neo-Paws

I actually fought the idea of shoes on my dog for a couple of years now, because being a foreigner in a comparatively small city (by chinese standards) I felt we already draw enough attention to ourselves as it is. I walk Moli a couple of times everyday which for me has been good in a few ways. We are continually stopped by people who want to talk about her, so my Chinese language has improved ten fold and she has taken a good bulk of the attention away from me...HOORAY! But walking a dog around the streets of China can be like walking through a mine field. The habitual practice the Chinese people have of spitting everywhere, vomiting, peeing and pooing their little kids and babies on the spot wherever, construction on every street, holes, metal, oil and food scraps from street side food vendors, broken glass... All this stuff littering the roads and pavements... The list goes on forever. I couldn't live with the thought of what my dog was walking through everyday any longer, we share a shoebox size apartment and .....well you can imagine. Also I obviously had to keep carrying her over hazardous areas of glass and building sites..... SO ....shoes became a necessity. I tried the cheap ones from the pet shop, looked cool but slipped around on her feet and fell apart after a month or so. So i researched on the internet and found Neo-Paws came highly recommended. Well just look at the photos, she loves them, I love them for the piece of mind they give me. And... Do we get more attention? Well yes, but its even more directed at Moli than me now. The most common thing I used to hear a hundred times a day was "look at the foreigner", which became 50/50 With "look at the cute dog" and now the most common thing by far is "look at the cute dog wearing boots".

Happy birthday to me

I dunno exactly how it came about that I'm 28 every year, but thats the deal in China :-)

Just coz my mum is Australian

Why do you all stare at me? Im Chinese tell ya!!!!

Yay China gets Christmasy

When I first came here in 2008, there were very little signs of Christmas to be found... But like everything in China, things change in the blink of an eye. My first Christmas saw me struggle to find any decorations,a tree or anything... In the early blogs there is a funny story of my bus ride home with a fully decorated tree in my hands that I found and bought at a stationary shop lol. But now there are signs of Christmas everywhere, doubled with the fact its winter, it's easy to re-find your Christmas spirit :-)

Look Blue Sky

Something going up on the crane at the building site of the new shopping centre, but the most interesting thing is the blue sky lol

Lovely, lovely sunny day!

City living

A day of new trials, Moli's groomer seems to have disappeared, so whilst i anxiously wait whilst a new groomer has her, I'll try something new myself. A new cafe near my place called "slow life coffee and book". I always think the safest bet to trying a new coffee is to go the "latte"...
This cafe is in a more interesting location than my usual cafe. If you choose to sit outside you can watch the busy walking street or go inside for a very hip cosy hangout...and yes there are also books to read, free wifi and some guitars laying about :-)...and the coffee, VERY NICE!. I'll be back here again soon.

VPN ASTRIL ROCKS

For a couple of years now I've used Astrill VPN service. If you don't already know, they've just released a shiny new iPhone app so you can simply and quickly access it in pretty much the same way as on you can on your PC ( actually more easily I think)Some other advantages seem to be combating the narcoleptic iPhone behaviour in the sense that it no longer seems to drops the connection when your iPhone constantly goes into deep slumber... Yippee

UPDATE: VPN in China is kind of crucial. Without it you can't access anything to do with google, Facebook and all the other things we are used to. Majority of the time I was there I did use Astrill, however, best search around and find which one is best at the specific time you are travelling. Sometimes one gets blocked and doesn't work and you have to find an alternative. Some are free, some are not....just find what works best for you.

Procrastination

So many things to blog about, i cant decide where to start. So i won't!