Hi everyone… so I am due a large update, I am sure that you can all sympathise that I have not felt up to talking about my adventures this past week for obv reasons… but as I keep getting told (and am beginning to realise myself), Grandad would not want life to stand still and so I will start the ball rolling with this blog entry.. as Dad would say ‘be British, chin up and c’est la vie!!. I will pre warn you that it is likely to be very large indeed since it has been a wee while since my last entry… so go put the kettle on, maybe even treat yourself to a biscuit, I suggest digestives in tribute to G/dad!!

Ok so that I do not bore you to death with a day by day account of the last couple of weeks I have rather impressively (I think) split my activities into sub headings for your reading pleasure!

Crazy Food
I have now tried the following crazy Chinese dishes..
Pigeon / chicken feet – you all know about these
Duck tongue –way nicer than it sounds but a tiny bit chewy!
Sea snails in a spicy gravy sauce… delicious but a tad too spicy for my palette.
Hairy leg crab –Now THIS was an experience! The crabs are a seasonal speciality and are quite small but surprisingly filling. They are also hard work, you have to do lots of cracking, scraping, sucking, sniping to get to the meat but it is worth it so tasty! The name obviously comes from the fact that the crabs have hairy legs (bit freaky!)

Work
Ask and you shall receive!... I had a review meeting at which I asked my boss (for the fabric department I am currently working in) for more work and responsibility… I had until this point mostly been doing research to get myself familiar with the technical knowledge required for the daily activities etc but felt as if I was ready to get my teeth stuck into a juicy project. Well… I certainly am a LOT busier… to the point where I am planning my days activities for the best efficiency the evening before!

We are trying to secure some business with a new client (baby/kidswear) and are currently preparing a presentation for next month to demonstrate the companies amazing abilities! The first step of which is to select suitable fabrics, which we can then make into sample garments and apply different effects and finishes to.

My role is to visit the fabric mills and select these fabrics which is quite a daunting task as it requires a fine balance between technical knowledge, understanding the brand requirements, juggling price/quality, learning the sample selection process, and meeting tons of new contacts (visiting fbric mills all over Hk this week) and building good relationships with them all rolled into one!!
A steep learning curve and pressure… but that’s what I signed up for so loving it!

Outings
Boat trip: Went on a boat trip to Cheung Chou with Mike/Leo there were about 30 of us. The boat was lush and we visited a temple where you buy incense sticks to burn and place at the base of the different gods to worship and pray to. Then we took the boat to somewhere else (forget the name!) to eat a HUGE amount of seafood! Met lots of new friends, one of which coincidentally works for one of the fabric mills I visited today (small world!).
Discovered that I can post links to my facebook photo album so here it is for you to check out: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64153&id=565010300 (let me know if this works, if not will post on here.)

Dinner with boss… round 2: Went to Hk last week for a market research trip (had to visit kidswear shops to see competitor products, nearly got chucked out of one shop for taking sneaky pics on my camera phone!). So afterwards met my boss for Tapas and a ‘quick’ drink… yeah right, several bottles of red wine later was in quite a mess… planning ahead in future for these events by booking the next day off as annual leave!

Halloween: went to a Halloween party on Saturday night and not much to report other than I got extremely drunk as per usual and danced my little socks off!!

Language
I have started my language lessons but have so far only managed to get to one… its on a Saturday night so not really logistically very possible! I am however picking up bits here and there and practising at every opportunity. Today I had my very 1st fully fledged BASIC conversation without referring to my notes with the taxi driver… transcript as follows:
Me: Ni Hao ma? (Hello, how are you)
Him: wo hen hao xie xie ni (Im good thank u)
Me: Wo yao chu jug-a (I want to go here, pointing at my address written in Chinese)
Him: Jug a? (here?)
Me: Dui (right)

Ps.. not sure about my pinyin spelling here, making it up in places so Emily feel free to correct me!
Not the most advanced or interesting conversation but a mighty big step for me!Have also noticed that speaking a little Chinese will sometimes land you in trouble as for some reason being able to say hello and thank you automatically qualifies you as a fluent speaker and they launch into full blown conversation, cue lots of ‘wo bu dong’ (I don’t understand) from me! This happened with a crazy Chinese insano who I think was trying to invite himself to my place for dinner?!!

Family
Will sign off this blog with a message to my family who I am missing ‘liking the alpine ferret misses the winter snow snuffling’ (in the classic words of Oli!).
I was thinking of you all on Monday and Dad sent me a copy of the speech that he read out which sounded like it struck just the right chord without being too gushy or sentimental… good work PB! Im sorry that I couldn’t be there with you all but was mentally sending my love and hugsys through my newly developed psychic abilities… hope some of them got through to you in the UK!

One last thing… having trouble accessing the blog website (keeps timing out when I try to log on) not sure if that has something to do with the fact that the Chinese internet is sometimes censored? So will try to figure a way around it so that no-one misses out on my thrilling updates hehe!

Tx