I spent the whole of December in Europe. Two weeks of this was in Bratislava, Slovakia, and the rest with family for Christmas in England. After a year in Asia it was great to go back home and be able to go about my business without being a cause for curiosity. It would be very trite of me to say that nothing had changed. It would also be quite untrue. A lot of things have changed, and none more so than UK airports, which can now be summed up very succinctly: a royal nuisance. Long queues and over-zealous security made every journey an extreme test of patience. Even leaving the train at the airport's train station was not simple, and security were unhappy that I'd thrown my ticket away between leaving the train and exiting the station.
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So far I can describe my summer in Guangzhou with one word: wet.
It may just be the tail-end of typhoon Chanchu which, after having devastated the Phillipines, messed up much of South-East China and came very close to Hong Kong. Or this may be perfectly normal.
Friends tell me that I should expect the summer to get hotter and stickier. All very therapeutic I'm sure, but now I understand exactly why there is always so much washing hung out from Chinese windows.
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Although a little delayed, I did recently have a wonderful trip to Thailand. Being the over-active kind of person, I wrote about this at length here. Maybe someone can learn from my mistakes.
At the same time I was sent this photo, allegedly from a public toilet in Bangkok. I'm not sure what it's advertising, but it's a great idea.
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There's a revamp of an old plugin over at HeadSpace 2, and a new (not foolproof) Anti-Email Spam plugin.
HeadSpace 2 cleans up my oldest plugin, and gives it a nice administrative interface along with several nice new features. The Anti-Email spam plugin was some code that I developed for client that I thought might make a handy plugin for some people. It replaces any email addresses in a post with an encoded version that should fool spam harvesting software.
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Guangzhou is all a-buzz at the moment with the semi-annual Canton Fair. This is South-East Asia's biggest trade exhibition. We're talking serious big here, and the numbers speak for themselves: last years show had a turnover of US$29,430 million, with 150,000 different products, and 210 trading countries. Not something to be ignored.
As you'd expect, the effect on the local economy is very pronounced. Hotels are all booked-up, and charge wildly exaggerated rates. Restaurants are trying their hardest to catch potential customers, with lots of bright English advertisements and special offers. The whole place feels alive.
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Inconsistency may be the key word when it comes to the frequency of posts here, but things have been very busy behind the scenes. Unfortunatley my computer, in another attempt to continue it's evil plan for domination, has decided that it no longer needs a graphics chip. At least, that's what I think it's decided. You can see for yourself here:
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The Christmas and New Year season is finally over, and I've made it out alive. Time for an update.
Christmas itself was very peaceful. Christmas eve was spent walking around a park in 25 degree sunshine, and eating water chestnut ice-cream. Definatley a big change from the artic conditions that occurred back in Europe. Christmas day was spent watching movies, and eating as much food as could be managed at La Seine - a very fine French restaurant that had a lunch-time 'all-you-can-eat' buffet. As is usual at this time of the year, I ate too much, and had a very bloated night and little to eat the next day. Still, well worth the money, and the mini quiche tartlets really were to die for (so much so that the chef-on-prowl commented he couldn't look for fear of eating them all).
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After a long hiatus I am back in Prague, and it's feeling good. Norway was a fantastic country to stay in. The countryside was, to use a ropey-old expression, drop-dead gorgeous. The people were very friendly, and I enjoyed myself a lot. Living in a hotel for so long did have its downsides, and I don't miss that at all, but I succumbed to a reward scheme and have earned myself enough points to stay somewhere lovely.
My previous impressions of Oslo were more or less accurate, but I will update them here. The most important thing is that yes, Norway is indeed an expensive place. Even compared to London. When you look at simple items such as a stick of chewing gum or a can of coke, and find that they are up to five times more expensive, you start to take notice.
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So I've had a few days experience of Oslo and my thoughts so far are:
- It's full of shiny new people and things
- It's very clean
- Oslo has big traffic congestion problems
- Norway has a lot of laws
- The hotel has free wi-fi access in all rooms - nice!
- It is expensive, but no more so than London
- I've not seen a fish anywhere (although I think they are just hiding out of sight)
- People get called Odd and Even
- I met an old Odd guy who says his father tried to assassinate Trotsky when he was living here in Norway
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It's been a busy month and I've barely had time to sit down, let alone write anything here. To top it all, both my parents have been hospitalized in some manner: my Dad suffered a ruptured bowel and underwent an emergency operation, and my Mum broke her shoulder.
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