Photo update

My photos can now be found at this address

http://cid-076e901de13f9dca.photos.live.com/albums.aspx

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Photographs

You will now immediately notice that the Live spaces has ceased to exist and has been taken over by WordPress. What this has meant unfortunately as it that ALL of my photo’s on here are no longer available to you until I figure out how to put some back on again! The blogs are still there, but it so far is a pain.

Hello world!

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Real food again!

Well, after about 2 years of trying to get someone to fix our gas oven, it has now been sorted out and works well again. It all started when they changed the gas supply over to Natural gas, the oven then was the only thing the gas folk didn’t seem to know how to convert and it stayed that way until now. We had people in from the gas company over the time but to no avail. We tried to contact the company we bought the oven off, but they moved along with the folk that installed it from the kitchen company when we had that redone.

At long last we managed to find the kitchen folk at the start of this month, and they, luckily, were able to put is touch with the oven suppliers. We contacted them and one guy arrived last week, he poked and looked around, then said its too old (3yrs) and dangerous (in same condition we bought it in really, only got to use it for about 3 months before the gas change!), so he left saying someone else would come to sort it out.

True to his word (for a change) two guys from the oven company arrived, took it apart, checked all the connections, put it back together and low and behold the damn thing works at last. Test with roast chicken yesterday and apple crumble today confirm that it stays alight when I shut the door (at last)  so it looks like roast beef dinners on the way very soon…

A little gas and a little storm

The long running saga of my gas oven still lingers on, we at last managed to find the shop we bought it from (it had moved) and they sent one of their ‘little men’ out to do the gas conversion for us, he has now gone stating that its an old oven (3yrs!), dangerous (its still in the state I bought it in!) and he will send someone else to fix it!!! so still no roast dinners in the near future!.

We are also on the edge of a typhoon at the moment, its been pissing down all day and up and down winds which will probably get a bit harder as it gets nearer, luckily  (for us anyway) Hong Kong will take the brunt of whatever comes and the mountains in between us will dampen it down for us as well. Happy is not happy, he hates the wet, well any water really. He moaned at me to take him out so I did, we got out the lift he looked out and saw it all and stood there for a while, but was bursting for the toilet so he had to at least venture out a few feet, we had a quick walk round (he was feeling a little brave) and went straight back to the lift to come home again.

Shanhai Expo 2010

We are now back home in Shenzhen again, after a tiring 4 days away, we did not get to see what are known as the popular pavilions due to the length of the queues, between 1hr and 4 or 5 for the most popular, and there was no way I was going to queue for that long. As I have mentioned earlier, most of them were just propaganda for the countries telling everyone how eco friendly they are, green as green, and the impression you get from the whole event is that the war with global warming is over really, its all been solved. I got the nearest I am likely to get to North Korea and Iran, they both had sites there, along with Palestine, Israel, Afghanistan and every other "stan" country you could mention or never even heard of. All old enemies side by side… sort of.
I had one slightly embarrassing moment with the ice cream there, they had it in these nice looking fluted cones, only I didn’t realise that as the ice cream started to melt it dripped profusely out of the flutes all over the place, first I noticed was my foot getting cold, I was sitting down at the time and guess where the majority of it went, yep, in my crotch, I had nice white shorts on, and now nice yellow ice cream marks!! great eh. luckily it dried quickly and wasn’t very noticeable, oh the shame!
After our second day we went for a day in Shanghai itself, just for a change of scenery, Shanghai is just a bigger version of Shenzhen, in the walking street they have Noddy trains to take you from one end to the other and every big shop that you already know in between.
The last day at the Expo was also yesterday our day home day, but our flight wasn’t till 10, well ended up nearly 11 and home by 3am, the weather up till then had been hot and sunny and then it poured with rain for a while which had everyone scurrying for an umbrella shelter, and there were a lot of people to scurry!
At the expo they give you these ‘passports’ that you go round the pavilions and collect stamps for each country from, which the locals loved, even Rose would you believe. All the stamping counters were crammed and the folk stamping must have had sore arms by the end of the day.
I’ll post the pictures later, once I have sorted through them.

Shanghai

Our first day was spent travelling from Shenzhen airport to Shanghai, about a 3hr flight most of which I slept because of the lack of sleep the night before. For some reason dear Rose was unable to sleep and was up and down all night. We left home at 7am and arrived at our hotel here in Shanghai around 3pm. The hotel is only 5 mins walk from the Expo entrance.

By the end of of our first day we were quite knackered as we stayed in the Expo from 4pm to around 11pm that night, we didn’t get into many pavilions due the amount of crowds waiting to get in, much like Disneyland and with the same queue lines as well. After this second day I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as global warming. every single nation here (around 140 of them) all proclaim they are doing their best to reduce their carbon footprints, they are all ecologically friendly, none are polluters any more, so as far as I can see there is no longer a problem…. unless…. some one is telling a few porkies here!! and I suspect more than one is doing that! Getting into the Expo on the first day, we went through the usual security you get everywhere these days, and I had a bottle of orange on me. the lady checking me said, “You should drink some water”, I said, “I prefer orange thank you”, She said, “No, you should drink some water”, I again replied, “Sorry but I prefer this and its about 90% water anyway”, She then gave up, but a man got hold of Rose and he told her to call me back and she explained that they wanted me to drink some of my drink there so they could see it was safe!  Ah the light shines at last!!!

The second day was a lot better than the first as we managed a reasonable nights sleep on the usual hard as nails beds in the hotels here. Most of the exhibits were all on the same theme, mostly telling everyone how well they are doing with the environment and preaching to everyone else how to as well. See, I told you there wasn’t a problem. We went into the Canadian exhibit and Rose by this time had a paper Canadian flag in her hair, the bloke said to her, “Are you Canadian?” she said “Yes, Half!” not questioning her any more the bloke promptly gave us 2 VIP tickets to the Canada show that was on later that evening, which was quite good by the way. A couple of groups playing other bits of music, a quite good idiot performer and the circus solei, (I don’t actually know how to spell that!)

Unlike the first day today I actually got food to eat, yesterday every restaurant we went in, whatever I ordered they had runout!