Gary Numan's been my favourite singer since 1979. Some forty odd years on he is still producing amazing albums and this week his latest, "Intruder", reached No.2 in the charts. Amazing! I actually "bought" this album nearly three years ago before any tracks were even written. That pre-order qualified me to watch video updates from Gary each month, showing how he writes, rewrites and records each song in his studio. So I felt I knew the album really well before it was even released last week!
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JD and I spent a fun couple of hours building this kit of St. Paul's Cathedral the other day. JD was chief popper-outer and bender for each piece we needed, while I constructed them.
Last weekend I took JD to the reservoir which I discovered a month ago. He was very keen to swim and, since there were lots of kids in the water (and Jiajia is away on business!), we had a few hours in and out of the water. I made the mistake of swimming without a T-shirt on and got pretty sunburned despite wearing "waterproof" sun cream lotion. JD also insisted on buying a fishing net and proceeded to catch a dozen shrimp and a clam! A 20 minute e-bike drive home - fun afternoon out.
JD had a blast last weekend, spending an afternoon/evening with his best friend, "LiuLiu" (translates as "66") and his younger brother. LiuLiu is in JD's school/year but a different class. They became friends at Kindergarten and still meet up at school break times to play together. While JiaJia chatted to LiuLiu's mum, I watched the kids running around and playing in the forest. Then we had a nice meal together at a nearby restaurant. Fresh air, exercise and tasty food.
![]() I completed my 100th cycling session today. I was given the exercise bike six months ago as a Birthday present, so I reckon that's about four times a week on average since then. And how do I know it's exactly 100? Well, I time my sessions by watching a 45-minute episode of a TV show called, "West Wing", and I've just watched the 100th episode. It's that time of year again when I have to wade through hundreds of essays and try not to be too negative about the mangled English therein. Some students show small signs of improvement while others fail to understand the most basic of instructions ("400 words, not 207"! "5 paragraphs, not 7 or 2!"). Others just leave me bewildered....
![]() We don't know when exactly our two hamsters were born. but we know that we bought them a year ago today! JD stopped taking much interest in them pretty early on, but it was his idea to give them a little celebration today. So we had two tiny cakes with candles and a rendition of "Happy Bought-day". "Bitey" is still full of energy, but "Whitey" has been sick for a month now - barely able to walk or eat, but resolutely refusing to die! |
AuthorPaul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and regularly updates this blog about his life there. Past blog entries
September 2023
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