Where the hell have I been?

Weather: mild
Temp: -6 - 6
Exchange rate: RMB1 = R1.46
Skating on thin ice: Rachael and I skating on Houhai Lake.

Sorry I haven't blogged in ages. First I was busy cause Rach and Peter were in Beijing for 5 days and then I discovered a site with seasons 4 and 5 of Grey's Anatomy on so I watched that non-stop for 2 days. Then I hated being in China and then Frikkie had his first weekend in 5 weeks so we hung out and now it's Monday and I thought I'd better blog otherwise I'm never going to do it.

I dig hanging out with Rachael. She's cool. We went ice skating on Houhai Lake near the Forbidden City. We had a good laugh about the fact that there we were, two trailing spouses, skating on a frozen lake in the capital of China on a Monday morning. Rachael is a lawyer by profession and like me, she's struggling with the "now what do I do" question. She is also a much better skater than me. She lived in Canada for a while and she's pretty good. I on the other hand totally sucked and landed on my bum a couple of times, but because it's so cold there's no water on the ice, so at least you don't get wet when you fall. You just get up, brush yourself off and get going again. In my case you try to get going again. Until you fall again. But it was fun and Frikkie and I will go once we get back from holiday.

On Thursday night I went to my school's 6th birthday celebrations. It was an eye opener. A couple of weeks ago, I got a mail from my school asking if I have any special talents and if I'd like to take part in the performance during the party. Since I have no special performance skills I politely declined. That was a good call on my part. My Chinese colleagues and some of the younger students performed in the programme. There was full on latin dancing. Then some traditional dancing, some games, and wait for it - singing karaoke and speaking karaoke. It was all very bizarre. Especially the speaking karaoke - imagine a scene from Shrek 3, with the volume turned down and people doing voice-overs... I'm told that this is absolutely normal and that it's the done thing at office parties. Apparently it's a left over from the cultural revolution when people had to entertain themselves. Yes, those heady revolutionary days before television.