sore

Chinese dragon’s are vegetarian

Hot, sore and a bit hungover this morning. The hangover didn’t last too long but the heat and wakeboarding muscle pains got worse as the day progressed.

Simon stayed over and gave me a lift down the road to Nat’s folks house as I was meeting them for a wee tour into the city (Chinatown New Year celebrations were on). I got a wee ride in Nat’s dad’s MG before we headed off. 🙂 We drove into town and checked out Melbourne Central shopping centre with it’s Shot Tower in the middle, I didn’t realise it was a munitions building or the process in making them. We then went into the packed (and now fecking hot) Chinatown where there were dragon’s, drums, cabbage (dragon’s eat this obviously) and super blood loud firecrackers. Each dragon visits a shop in the town, dances about, eats the cabbage and then sets off the firecrackers. It’s a cool but fairly chaotic display and in this heat I would not want to be any of the performers. I got fed fried crab, lamb kebabs and twirly tatties on a stick, nom.

Having had enough of the heat and potential fire hazard crackers we left Chinatown and jumped on an old tram to the Docklands. These trams are free as they are original and run the City Circle so taking in most of the sites for the tourists. Was bloody roasting inside it though with it’s lack of AC. Back in the day these docks would be used to land fish and goods that were then sent via the railway all over Victoria, now they house funcy boats, apartments, eateries and the Essendon Bombers home stadium. I need to educate myself on AFC as I’ll be needing to pick a team soon (Nat and some friends have each given me a run down of their teams).

We ate at a restaurant next to the water, I ordered a super nom (but filling as I didn’t really have room for this!) Moroccan lamb salad with a tasty craft beer. Nat’s folks are bloody ace I have to say as they showed me lots of stuff and paid for everything whilst I was with them. After food we headed home, this bloody sun drains the life out of you. The rest of the day was spent hiding from the sun and watching crap on TV, good bit of adventuring was done though. 🙂

Ill again. You cannot be serious?!?!

Well last nights “sleep” was pretty rubbish, my throat doing it’s best to keep me awake. I woke up this morning feeling a tad shite. Seems to be a different breed of ‘cold’ than the other two and came on quick. So it’s been nearly 6 months I’ve been here and this is the 3rd time I’ve felt ill, totally crap as back home I could go a year with maybe one spell of illness. For this China I dislike you.

Because I felt crap I stayed in today, try and rest up this time (drink plenty of fluids, etc) rather than power through it like the other times. It was by no means an uneventful day though as Kathy (Benjamin’s mate) came over and I was soon mucking about with them. The main game we played was ‘Detective vs Thief’ where the thief hides an item in the room, leaves a written clue and the detectives hunt for it. Quite fun actually, was good to spend almost a full day with the little ninja. A Christmas card from my Dad and co arrived, that was nice and Benjamin got the stamps. 🙂

Lunch was Papa John’s pizza’s and for tea we went to a restaurant in the mall. Stuffed as usual, favourites were the stuffed bing and sweet sticky rice ball things, nom. Afterwards Benjamin bought (note: his mum bought) some playdoh. Most of the kits there, and the advert that was running, all amount to making food! Pizza, ice cream, cakes, fruit, spaghetti, etc. Jebus H, it’s bad enough telling kids not to eat it without this.

Leaving the family I popped past Costa and paid the extortionate price of 31RMB/3.10GBP for a mocha. The plan was to leech their wifi and have a Skype chat with my mum but it turns out no one was awake, it was after 12 noon there! Michty me. Anyway I got home and (when they got up) chatted to my mum and younger brother, was good to catch up with them. I haven’t spoke to my mum since I’ve been here, oops sorry mum.

The rest of the night I chilled and watched ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, such a good film. 🙂

Does exactly what it says on the tin

Noodles for lunch (Nothing but noodles these past few days! Thankfully I love noodles.) then off to class. The basic structure of our lessons is definitely 90% chat with 10% learning new words. I think she has picked up on this though as I’ve been given homework, write about Christmas Day back home compared to what I did here. I also learned (The 90% chat includes a lot of cultural lessons) that in the North of China they like to eat salty food but in the South they prefer their food sweet. I explained “Smoked Corn Chicken” (If you’ve not eaten that why not?!) back home and thought it was made up for us Westerners turns out it could be a Taiwanese dish called “Sanbeiji” or “3 Cup Chicken”. Turns out it’s not the same dish but looks good.

Nom’d some baozi on the way home and when I got in, all relaxed, Goa A Yi had realised she’d run out of oil so asked me to nip to the shops and get some. Nothing gets in the way of food! I was the Hero of the hour. Tea wasn’t noodles either it was pork (Surprise!) but I do love this though, the meat clings on to fairly large chunks of fat but they almost melt in the mouth. Nom. Talked to Yu more about Australia and found out everyone will be leaving on the same day, so the parents are off to Japan, Benjamin is off to Taiwan and Goa A Yi will be heading back to her home town. Everyone is apparently leaving in the morning (I was hoping to go with them to the airport but I have a late flight) but Yu said she would try and get her driver to take me there. Yas! One less thing to worry about.

When Benjamin got home we played a tad of Lego and a bet was made (as usual!) but if I lost it would mean I couldn’t leave and had to stay here forever. Awww! Cute little sod. He’s been mentioning this more as it gets closer to OZ-DAY, it’s nice to know he will miss me. 🙂

Oh and all of a sudden today I’ve been hit by, possibly, another cold. Yup! WTF. I was sneezing a lot today, then a running nose in the evening and at night my throat went. This better just be a passing thing… 😦