It’s been a while since I managed to update this. Life here in China has been very busy over the past year, particularly with business travel. Over the past 12 months, I’ve travelled to the UK, France, Japan (several times), Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, USA (several times and 6 states) and three different Chinese provinces, one of them four times. Including the homeleave, I must have been away from the family for about 3 months this year. And one of the reasons I took this job was to reduce the amount of travel !

 My knowledge of Chinese is coming along and I’m now at the stage where I can ask for most things that I want. The difficulty is usually understanding the reply I get..... got to work on increasing the vocabulary. I can also read a small amount and recognise probably about 150 characters. Comes in useful sometimes. I can now write my name in English, Japanese and Chinese !!! My main learning tool is the street nameplates that are written in both Chinese and English characters.

We went back to the UK for homeleave in June. I flew with the family and stayed in the UK for a weekend. I then returned to Shanghai to work for another month before returning for my vacation. All told, Pip & the kids had about 8 weeks at home. It was good to get them out of the heat of Shanghai for the summer although this year was not as hot as last. When it gets hot like that, no one goes out if they can manage it. It’s far too hot and humid.

Whilst they were away I decided to strip the bike engine & fix the oil leak (think Exxon Valdise). That’s been a mammoth task and I’m beginning to wish I’d simply paid someone to do it. The main problem has been lack of tools. All of my really useful ones are in the UK so I have to improvise. Still, I got it apart eventually and fixed the problem. I’ve now almost finished reassembling it and hope to get it running again in a week or two. Whilst it was apart, I’ve fixed a few other things that I found, repainted the castings and cleaned the exhausts so it should look really good when it finally gets on the road again. The next task after that is to fit a windscreen for the kids & put a dickie seat in the boot.

Alex and I have been going to shoot archery quite regularly this year. I refurbished my 30 year old equipment and am now shooting better than I ever have. Alex got a proper bow & arrow for Christmas and has also been making full use of them. She can’t quite get used to using a target sight so she’s shooting barebow at the moment. I must say that she’s coming along really well and, despite the total lack of aiming technology, managed to get three in the gold last week ! I’m torn between helping here with aiming and letting her become a good intuitive bowman. There are not many who shoot barebow well so if she works on it she could be one of the best in that class.