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I’m off to Hong Kong for a few days this weekend to meet some friends.

Not that I lead a particularly busy life at the moment, but I’m looking forward to the holiday.  Also very much looking forward to buying the socks I like that I bought there last time and haven’t seen anywhere since.

I guess I should think up something else a little more exciting to buy there too…

I was standing in the middle of the road today, and as I happily daydreamed a little while waiting for a couple of buses to hurtle past on either side, came to the realisation that I have finally settled back in to the Chinese way of crossing the road.

It always takes me a while.

I have begun psyching myself up to start driving here now, as it may come in handy to be confident enough to take a large machine out onto these roads sometime.  Unfortunately the more I try and understand the secret Hefei driving code, the more confused I become.

My most recent observation is the slight overuse of green traffic lights.

It is perfectly normal to drive into the oncoming traffic when turning left here (where we drive on the right side), and no one seems to mind at all, bicycles, cars and trucks all expect such behaviour and are content to weave their way around.

The thing that has confused me recently is the fact that despite us having a green turning arrow, we are still finding ourselves barrelling through the oncoming traffic.  The oncoming traffic, that is, that really should have a red light whilst our arrow to drive across them is green.

I had at first thought this was an amusing fault with one intersection near our home, but have since discovered that it is a trait common to most intersections here.

I pointed out the oddity to Patrick who simply replied, as if I am just a little slow, that “yes, it’s green so you can go, you just have to look.”

So now I must get used to the fact that a green light doesn’t necessarily mean you can actually go when turning left… in addition to the fact that it is legal here to turn right against a red light…

There must be some logic to this somewhere.

Possibly driving at night will be easier, as they just switch all the lights to flash orange instead.

Chandler has many odd habits.

All through summer, he refused to sleep on any sort of bed or blanket, seeming to much prefer the hard tiled floors.

We didn’t mind so much when it was warm, but have been worrying about what he will do in the winter when it gets really bloody cold here.

I caught him one wintery evening last week curling himself up into a very small ball in the corner and covering himself up with the corner of the curtain.   Although he looked very, very cute I decided it probably wasn’t doing his joints any good so went on a mission to find a blanket he approved of.

I folded up and put down an ugly old bright green rug and Chandler was mightily impressed.  He rolled about on it snorting and grunting happily for a minute then dashed off about the house to collect all his toys.  After he had collected all his belongings and placed them carefully on his new bed, he curled up around them and promptly went to sleep.

As we only have the one Chandler-approved bed, and Chandler must sleep within 3 feet of wherever I am situated, I now have to drag the great ugly rug about the house with me wherever I go.  Generally, when I move the thing about, Chandler just follows along and plonks himself down wherever we stop.  If he sees me drag it into the bedroom in an evening, however, he realises it is real bed time and rushes off to find a toy to sleep with.

Seriously, Chandler is just SO CUTE.

We went to dinner at the hotel yesterday evening and both stuffed ourselves silly.

I was a little spoilt when we stayed at the beautiful hotel in Suzhou, as they had beetroot in their salad buffet. Now the beetrootless salad at our hotel is just not quite as satisfying as it was once before.

Ahhh, beetroot, I miss such a pretty coloured addition to my meals.

The sashimi was so good I wished I hadn’t eaten anything before hand and they had all my favourites for dessert, so I quickly forgot about my initial disappointment.

The best part of all, was that after dinner I got to choose another treat from the bakery, so today has been Rye Bread Day.   Poached eggs on rye for breakfast, salad on rye for lunch and a peanut butter on rye sandwich while contemplating what to cook for dinner.

That seriously is very, very exciting.

We met Chandler’s best friend in the park again today, the biscuit-bringing grandpa.

He was rather unimpressed that I haven’t been spending enough time walking Chandler in the early afternoons, as he has been bringing biscuits and waiting in the park every day but hasn’t run into us recently.

We spent a nice few hours today sitting in the sun by the lake and chatting to the small crowd that gathers whenever we come to a stop anywhere, and Chandler got his fill of biscuits and ear scratches for the week.