When I first came here I was able to relax, to an extent, around insects of all types. Since I’ve been here I find myself becoming increasingly scared of almost all types of wildlife. To the point that I now hate having to go to the toilet at night.
I do have good reason though:

That’s no trick pencil eaither!

It’s generally agreed that I’m a nice guy. I don’t go out of my way to get this accolade, it just seems to come naturally which is… nice. There is of course always the fear that there may be some truth in the saying that ‘nice guys finish last’. In careers it seems that this is not true, nice guys finish first and being a jerk to get ahead is no longer an excuse.
So here I am in China, being nice, and here are some of the things that have come from it. I’ve hopefully got two people to meet up with in future travels, one in New Zealand and one in Australia. So far so good. My master likes me a lot, which has led to an interesting if slightly strange situation.
About a month ago he turns to me and asks if I’m single, go I like Chinese girls etc. Then he lays down the big one – he wants to set me up with one of his ex-students that lives in Beijing and is currently a nurse. At first I was sceptical – but then the next day he asked me again, stressing his seriousness. I’d had a night to sleep on it and had come to the conclusion that I was travelling to experience new things so I would go for it. So I said yes.
Things happened a lot quicker than I was expecting. Immediately he was dialling her number, I was to talk to her. This speed of action was something I wasn’t quite ready for and I was relieved when she wasn’t there. Master Dung did not give up though and that afternoon I was talking nervously and far too quickly to a Chinese girl with English as a second language. I’m pretty sure that she didn’t understand most of what I was saying so I sheepishly handed the phone back. Our translator then talked to her and I got back to the warmup for the class. All was not lost, ten minutes later I was presented with a piece of paper, on it was her name and email address.
Here’s where being nice paid off once again. Our translator is also from Beijing and has since gone back there to start a new job. She was open in her invitation for any of us to contact her if we were going to be in Beijing. A safety net! So, if I get my passport back in time (there’s still some visa stuff to sort out) then I’ll be going to Beijing on Thursday for a long weekend. And with luck I’ll be shown round by two locals so I’ll get to see some of the proper Beijing rather than just the tourist hot-spots.
Yay for niceness!

I was meditating in one of our classses a few weeks ago and it was commented that butterflys were flying around my head like some kind of cartoon Buddah – I was happpy to dismiss this a being a playful exaduration. However a few days later I was sitting on the bench outside our accomodation reading a book, and a butterfly landed on my hand. It was a big one too, it had a black and yellow striped body, like a wasp and black and bright blue wings. I looked at it for a bit and then decided to shake it off, I’d heard that the blue in the wings was a mild poison and would cause a whole lot of itching.
Then in the same afternoon another butterfly landed on me and chilled out for a while (this one didn’t look poisonous so I left it to leave of it’s own accord). In the same week (I think) I got this picture of one of the local eagles. (Don’t get too excited it only looks this good from some major cropping action).

OK I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been lazy and slow in getting this up… Sorry.
So As I’ve already metioned, I got a DVD from my master, and he gave me a secret meditation mantra to improve the flow of chi. The rest of the day was fairly standard. Usually on a friday we go into the local town of Taining, book into a hotel, eat fast food and generally be merry. I thought that this Friday was going to be no different.
We were on our way to the usual fast food place, everyone in a group rather than splitting into a few smaller groups. No biggie it’s my birthday. We were going to stop in at a shop that sold ‘proper’ kung fu slippers as a few of the people were interested in getting a pair and wanted to know where the shop was. I was slightly annoyed by this but it was on the way and it was my birthday, so I didn’t want it to get in the way of having a good time.
Arlan led us into a restraunt, ‘that’s weird’ I thought ‘you’re not going to get kung fu slippers in a restraunt’. He led us directly to one of the private rooms, and there was the owner of the school and his wife.
I was smiling massively for about five minutes, I’ve never had a suprise party!
The rest of the evening just went from strength to strength. We had a really great meal, where I ate loads – this is important. Then we went to our usual bar (which happens to be owned by Scott, the owner of the school). Then Scott took us to a club, which we’ve never been to. It was a very cool night with all kinds of crazy things, drinking games, a bouncy dancefloor, pole dancing (by us not professionals). Then we went back to Scotts bar, more dancing chatting and drinking. I went to the internet cafe and made a few drunken skype calls and then fell into bed at about five in the morning.
I had been maintaining that I didn’t want to get drunk and I wanted to eat more than I drank. Thankfully because of the massive meal to start with, I didn’t get too drunk, despite being plied with drinks all night. I didn’t realise just how well the evening came together until we went out this Friday, we tried roughly the same formula, but things just didn’t come together in the same way, people weren’t feeling it and I ended up leaving and going to be quite early. Just makes the memory of my birthday evening that much more special 🙂

The visa situation has improved!
I’ll fill you in with the back story. Because of the Olympic games getting and extending visas for China was made a lot harder. This meant that I couldn’t get a 90 day visa to cover my entire trip, I could only get a 60 day visa which is due to expire at the end of September. Extending a visa when the Olympic games were on was a major hastle, you had to open a Chinese bank account and have a minimum balance of 21000 Yuan – which is about 1500 pounds. Not only does this mean that you have to have 21000 Yuan but you also have to navigate the rather confusing waters of international money transfers.
Fortuantely now that the games are over extending a visa has gone back to ‘normal’, just in time for me! Now all I have to do is give the owner of the academy my passport, two passport photos and 900 Yuan (roughly eighty pounds) and he can post it off to some official somewhere and it’ll all be sorted with the minimum of effort on my part.

This is a bit out of date as it was last Sunday that I went cycling but never mind. Having been admiring the views on our weekly trip to Taining, the local town, I decided to finally get out there with my camera and try and get a few pics.
I got about half-way to Taining before turning back – that was my plan all along so not biggie. The trip there was pretty easy as it’s mostly down hill…..
Here are a couple of the pics I got:


My plan is to do some cycling exporation every Sunday and hopfully I’ll get to know the local area a bit better and what kind of times in the evenings are the bast to capture the more scenic views 🙂

I also got a signed DVD from my master along with a ‘secret’ mantra to cultivate chi. And it’s only 8 in the morning, things can only get better 🙂

If this works there’ll be a cool slideshow below.

If it doesn’t click this link. I advise that you change the options and disable ‘Embiggen small thing for this screen’ It blurs the pictures. You may want to click on the link regardless, it brings up the pictures bigger than they appear in the slideshow above.

I had a sudden and surreal realisation when I was eating dinner a few days ago. I haven’t used, or even seen a knife and fork for over a month now. It’ll be a bit of a novelty when that comes round again!
The internet at the academy has been on the blink but is hopefully sorted out for at least a little while. There is however only one computer at the moment so the demand is quite high.
Luckily at the moment there are only four students (including myself) which makes the tuition very intensive but also very good! I’ve started learning bagua sword, which to be honest is vicious. The first move, other than picking up the sword is a stab to the unmentionables… I’m loving it. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more pictures up over the course of the week.