death warmed up

"Pray tell dear friend, what brings you to be bed-ridden on this gloriously clear and freezing Beijing day?" I hear you ask. "Moreover, why are you not at work?"

The answer my friends, is Hotpot. That's right, bloody hotpot. Now as anyone who knows me will be aware I am partial to a morsel of food on occasion, and never one to back away from something different. And so it is with hotpot.

Skye happens to love it; hotpot that is. And I have on several occasions tried to discover what she finds in it, indeed I have tried to discover what just about every living person in Beijing finds in it, and alas last night I believe i found it...

You see hotpot, as the name suggests is a cooking style whereby the restaurant sets up a huge boiling pot of (some say) flavoured water, and then supply the raw ingredients, to which, one applies to the boiling water, and 'hey presto' hotpot is in the house.

Throughout my time here I have had all kinds of food stuffs from the belly of the pot. Mutton, pork, beef, ducks blood, ducks tongue and even noodles!

I have to say I have never really understood the fuss. Its almost completely flavourless, and remind me again why I am paying tons of cash to cook my own food?

So anyway, because Skye's mates here all love hotpot, I find myself, week after week, sitting around the pot, trying to dig out some thing or another from the opaque water with chopsticks and wondering whether the stench of the boiling broth with ever wash out of my hair.

Give me stir fry any day.

"The epiphany, sir, get to the part about the epiphany!" you mutter, wondering whether i will get to the point or merely ramble on for hours as usual.

ah yes, the epiphany. So last night, after yet another hotpot meal, with Skye's mate Elissa and her cousin mark who have just spent 3 weeks touring around china (who incidentally are staying with us until Mark flies home, and Elissa moves back to Shenyang), we head home and go to bed. Come 3 am, I'm feeling a little restless and having trouble getting back to sleep. Then it hits me, the epiphany, square between the eyes, well actually closer to my thighs really! To steal a quote from a friend of ours facebook site here in Beijing, "[Alan] no longer thinks SHART is a funny word".

Sitting there on the toilet, while the 'guns of Navarro' and at least 5 million horses trot their way to freedom, I was hit by another epiphany... the dreaded 'choice'.

That's right my friends, the hotpot (or at least its secret ingredient) asked me the simple but impossibly challenging question:

"would you like to sit on the bus, or drive?"

what is one to do? I ask you?

Keep in mind, this isn't my little bachelor pad in Alexandria, I'm not the only one that using this bathroom, and indeed, we have two strangers sleeping in the spare room... what to do?

Luckily for all parties involved, I was able to drive the bus for a short distance, then become a passenger without major incident. I was certain last night that Death himself had come to Beijing to mock me, and yet refuse to take me... after all, imagine the mess I would of made of the pearly steps had there been a queue at the gates.

Alas Death did not take me last night and instead, the hotpot continues to inflict suffering upon me. Indeed as I sit and type I wonder if I'll be able to fin...

The Confidence Game -

This is a short rambling, firstly to boast about how great i am, and secondly... well actually there's only one reason.

Now, I'm not just going to crap on about how great a teacher i am. That would just be grandstanding. And as a result I am not going to talk about how last week I asked some of my advanced students to write a 300 word essay entitled "my favourite...", and two of them wrote about their favourite teacher, 'Alan' and how he is simply the bestest teacher ever (and no I didn't correct their incorrect '-est', after all, I am the bestest!) because telling such a story would just be an act of outrageous 'up-ones-selfness'.

instead I'll tell you a cute story about one of my favourite students, Martin. Martin is simply the cutest little human alive. Last week, during my 'talk time' (I call it this somewhat ironically because 5 year old English students, generally know words and short sentences, so talking is more about me asking direct questions, like 'what is that? what is this? do you like watermelon?) So anyway, I'm going around the room, asking the kiddies if their name is 'Banana', to encourage them to say, 'Noooooo, my name's Ruby, you're a banana'.

I could play this game all day, because the kids end up in fits of laughter that I just can't get enough of. So anyway, I'm going around asking, 'what do you like?' this is a difficult abstract question and often results in blank faces...except this time. I go around and one kid starts with, "I like bananas", I'm thinking cool, they'll all get it now. And they did, some liked bananas others onions (who are we to judge), then Martin says,

"I like you, Alan", then he runs towards me and gives me a huge hug!!!

I respond by saying "I like you too, Martin!" as i hug him back and recover from the goose bumps and watery eyes (my allergies playing up)

Martin then moves around to my ear, and blows into it. Now I know what you thinking, but don't go sexualising everything and making this lovely non-sexualised country as messed up as the west.

It was very cute, but the whole thing got out of hand, when Ruby, another little cutey wanted to do the same thing, but lacked the finesse and fine motor skills of Martin, and sprayed the side of face with saliva!

Ahhh, I am clucky as hell. Not good my friends, not good.

Of course, it all balances out. I did have an older kid ask me yesterday why I decided to cut a huge M in the front of my hair... little bastard!!!

After that comment I spent 25 minutes explaining why male pattern baldness is natural and not a fashion choice... little bastard!

I also had another little 5 year old who got so excited about class ending that when I said, make one line, he charged straight at me to be first in the queue and lost his footing and punched me full force in the nuts! BU HAO!

ahhh the joys of teaching!

Freezing

A lot has happened since my last ramble. Well at least it feels like a lot has happened. Skye landed a new job, turned 30, had her first professional photography gig and hung out with Jane Goodall!

I... um... well I've been doing stuff... like... ahhhh... well working 'en nat.

Ok so not much has happened on the Alan front, but its been an amazing time for Skye and as a result an amazing time for me. Jane Goodall is not only a cool person, but Skye is her number 1 fan, so for Skye to have the opportunity to not only meet her, but spend two days taking photo's of her doing her charity work is out of this world!

Nothing major has happened on the Beijing front either, except that winter arrived. Not slowly and romantically like it used to in the mountains, instead, it kicked the door in and threatened to kill us all. It went from a balmy high of 10 degrees and a low of 0 degrees one day to a high of -8 and low of -13 the next. Unbelievably cold!

In spite of this sudden drop in temperature, we decided to celebrate Skye's 30th by climbing Beijing's only high ground, Fragrance Hills.

"You know" said Skye on the morning of her birthday. "because we'll be walking essentially straight up the hill, we will probably get really hot and end up carrying our heavy coats which will be a pain. So we should wear layers instead and just take our light jumpers."

"well" said I, "you've been before so i guess you know better than I"

Off we set, several layers on, heavycoatless.

After an hour on the heated bus, and us both hoovering about 3 kgs of Sweet Potato chips, we were happy as Larry and happy with our decision to wear layers. 4 steps from the bus door at the foot of the hills, and I got the same feeling I had halfway through our week long walk in Tasmania when we realised we didn't have enough food... "oh shit!"

My friends, to say that it was cold would be factually incorrect. To say that it was unbelievably mind numbingly cold to the point where my cheeks were burning and i held genuine fears for the well being of my finger tips would be more accurate and yet an injustice to the crazy Chinese people who live in Northern China and deal with winds so cold their lungs freeze. Lets just say that for an Aussie traveller, unaccustomed to true cold, it was F*CKING FREEZING. In fact, this of how cold it was:

That's right... layers, god damn layers. The layers were so ineffective i took the extra 'layer' that i had in my bag in case of emergencies (ha!) and used it to make the quality face mask you see above. This mask was the only thing that stopped the burning sensation on my cheeks (yes my friends, that's even through the ginger beard!) although it did nothing to stop the burning in my eyes.

I know what you thinking, we should have gotten back on the bus and gone home. But where would the world be today is Sir Edmund had simply turned tail and ran the first time he discovered that his water bottle, keep inside his bag had frozen solid within about 30 minutes of arrival!!! I mean seriously! (this actually happened, not to Sir Edmund, at least not as far as i am aware, but to Skye, the water bottle was frozen, frozen... think about that... did i mention frozen)

No no, we went there to climb and climb we did. The walk was actually really lovely the scenery was nice and for the first time we were able to see Beijing from a distance without the noise, pollution and general rubbish that normally pollutes the senses in this town. I have to say the place is massive.

I think its difficult to explain to anyone that hasn't experienced Beijing but for the first time in 5 months I heard birds! that's right I heard a noise that was sourced from a non-man made construction... its was amazing.

'twas also amazing that i could still hear at all, my ears, by this stage, were almost completely numb. Poor Skye's ears, on the other hand, were nearly bleeding because I had spent a good part of an hour whinging about the lack of a big jacket and exactly who was to blame for that misunderstanding! I think secretly she wished I hadn't created the face mask and my mouth had gone numb...

Despite natures attempt to kill us (and Skye's attempt to kill me for being such a whinger), we survived the climb and enjoyed the view at the top for about 3 minutes, until a prolonged gust of wind almost cut us clean in half, and we descended.

The view from the top, and the freezing gust of wind causing the 'something about mary' moment.

On the way down, Skye noticed little patches of black ice on the pathway. These little patches were dangerous but more interestingly were seemingly patches of water in a town where there isn't even any humidity, let alone the chance of sporadic rain, then it dawned on us, it wasn't black ice, it was green ice! they were little hockers that the Chinese tourists had left behind... dirty bastards!

Although any budding scientists out there may be able to calculate the actual temperature for us by establishing the freezing point of snot! gross.

Of course, like everything here in Beijing, the fun was actually just beginning. We made it back to the bus stop, freezing, eyes stingy and waiting desperately for the heat of the bus. However, the first sign that something was wrong was when I noticed that the Michelin Man had retired from advertising and taken a little job driving a Beijing bus. The driver had, and I am not making this up:

A woollen beanie -

ear warmers -

a scarf -

at least two 'heavy jackets' -

ski gloves

and the icing on the ridiculous cake - leg warmers on his forearms.

This was not good. We spent an hour in a fridge with wheels. The bus was actually colder than outside because, fearful of catching the flu, some idiots had opened the windows (no doubt the same idiots that drop hockers all over the place, because spitting couldn't possibly contribute to disease!)

We sat there in a hypothermic stupor, wondering whether we would actually survive, for a whole hour, until 1km from the subway station (and a place with guaranteed heat) the bus stopped and the conductor motioned for us all to get out!!!

Ah well we thought, the walk will warm us up. Will it hell. By this stage the sun was down, and the weather had turned nasty, it was freezing and windy, the wind chill must have been peaking (pardon the pun) at about -15 or even -20. Because of the bus trip we had no heat left in our bodies and I was really starting to get concerned. We both looked at each other and with a knowing smile (we couldn't talk by this stage, everything was broken) we ran!!!! we ran like the wind smashing into us to the safety of the subway and warmth.

I was just happy to have survived. Skye crashed out in the train and was an exhausted mess for the rest of the night. I'd like to say I was different, but that ain't the case. Who knew that the cold could sap energy like that!

All in all, it was a great day. Skye enjoyed it, and it was the adventure that we had hoped it would be on her Birthday. I think maybe next time though, we'll accept he burden on possibly having to carrying our heavy coats!!!

Here's a few picks of the place...