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I’m back in Hefei now after an absolutely fantastic weekend in Hong Kong.

I should have written while I was there, as now I have a complete overload of bloggable material and don’t know what to write.

After I came up with the clever little idea of flying down to Hong Kong for the weekend, I managed to rope another three friends into the trip, which in addition to the lovely Wincy already being there from Melbourne, made it the perfect weekend.

When I was still in Tokyo, Michael and I spent far too much money we didn’t have on coffee and cake on the weekends, and made it quite the tradition. The opportunity to spend far too much money on cake and coffee in Hong Kong for the weekend was just too good an opportunity for Michael to pass up, and his ticket was booked.

I would have expected Jana to prove a little more difficult to convince, being that she is in London and all,… but a 12 hour flight each way is no obstacle for Jana when there is some Hong Kong food and shopping to be had and the opportunity to surprise Wincy off her chair. I think it took her about 30 minutes to have convinced yet another friend into the trip and booked their tickets. Jana and Filomena absolutely filled their weekend with shopping, eating, and drinking, then left on Sunday night to go straight back to work Monday morning.

I am impressed.

The look on Wincy’s face when they walked into the restaurant on Friday made it all worthwhile I suspect.

We ate well all weekend, we shopped well all weekend, and even fitted in some decent sightseeing. All went so smoothly I fear I have developed a taste for flitting of to another country for a weekend… I might well need to get a job soon.

Patrick has decided to send Chandler off on a dog-show tour of China this month. He has some handlers here are the moment prettying Chandler up ready for a show tomorrow.

Apparently I am not the best of influences, and show dogs aren’t supposed to stand up on their hind legs to give hugs or to chew on people’s ears.

Between shows, Chandler is going to stay at a doggy retreat in Beijing, where he is going to meet some girl Chandlers and relearn how show dogs are supposed to behave.

What am I going to do without Chandler for a whole month?? NOOoooo….

I was devastated to find they had trimmed Chandler’s lovely socks today. He has the hairiest feet, and when he runs, the hair flaps about in front of his feet as if he is wearing socks that are starting to fall off just a little. Makes me laugh every time.

I managed to rush in with a camera and take a pre and post trim picture…. socks or no socks… what do you think?

The handler just thinks I am odd.

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.