As I’ve probably mentioned before (or if you live in China you are familiar with) getting a hair cut here can be quite and event. You go in and sit down and get a ‘dry wash’ where they pour water on to your head and sort of massage your hair. Then you go and have ‘wet’ wash where you lie back in a seat with your head in a sink and they wash your hair. Then you go back to your seat which is now reclined so they can excavate your ears with a cotton bud before giving you a head, face, shoulder and arm massage. After which you can go and get your hair cut. The whole process takes about an hour and a half and is actually very pleasant and perhaps therapeutic. I’ve taken visitors along as a fun thing to do in Hangzhou. I’m a fan, though it is nice to go in sometimes and just get a quick hair cut which they oblige me with if asked in my local hairdressers.

Right, so now we are all up to speed: It has long struck me that they seem to wait to try out a conversation with me in my poor Chinese until they have managed to completely block my ears with water. I used to think that this was because that was when they got me away from D so I had to fend for myself (wet wash taking place in a different part of the ’salon’). However when I started going on my own it persisted. Last night though was taking the proverbial biscuit in that the girl in question waited until she had one ear held closed with the shower head point directly into the other before trying to start a conversation. That’s just not sporting right? She then continued the conversation while she’s busy with cotton bud which added terrifying to unintelligible.

I appreciate the chit chat and it’s good to practice my Chinese but why does it have to be when there is something in my ear?

So, an experiment in live blogging by someone who doesn’t have a working mobile internet connection (if you know how to make a Palm T3 connected to the interweb via Motorola V3, please do write in). Being sans internet connection I scratched my thoughts down in a .txt as my journey unfolded.

12:00 GMT Arrive at Newcastle Airport It is very windy. I walk into the airport and see:

13:50 – Amsterdam – Flight Cancelled

*laughs* a good start to a 20 hour, 6,000 mile journey. There is hardly anybody here so I’m quickly organised with later flight to Amsterdam, then to Paris, then to Shanghai. It is going to be a long weekend. Check bags in and then head for home again via shop for bread and sandwich filling.

15:00 GMT Arrive at Newcastle Airport (again). Straight through security. The airport is strangely quiet. Doo-do, Doo-do.

15:45 GMT I Have a wander round the airport, there are no KLM planes waiting outside. I sit and ponder this for a moment when a plane emerges from cloud. Plane lands, taxis in, gate is announced (cutting it fine aren’t they?). It is now raining heavily.

16:30 GMT (Slightly delayed) Departure, followed by a very quick, 180 Knott tail wind assisted flight to Amsterdam.

18:20 CET Arrive Amsterdam. Discover huge section of Schiphol airport I’ve never been to before, after a gruelling security check of course, this section appears to be European (but not UK departures, hence me having not seen it before).

20:05 CET Depart Amsterdam on an Air France flight. I’m in business class due to the diversion and I’m delighted when what I suspect is nougat turns out to be nougat and not something I was supposed to put on my bread. Why am I so worried about this stuff around the French?

21:00 CET (ish) I arrive in CDG and the place is deserted making it feel much later than it is. I’ve never been here before and it is as spectacularly confusing as it is spectacular (and the roof is intact). There are as many signs as in any other airport they just don’t provide any information. I finally make it to the check in desk and am told I’m on standby. Great, you could have told me that in Newcastle when I was deciding what to do.

21:30 Negotiate with desk person and eventually get permission to go to the toilet.

22:20 CET (ish) I’m told I’m getting on the flight. I rather feebly ask if it might be too much to ask for an aisle seat, the nice man says I can if I want or I can stay in my window seat in business class, upgraded again!

22:35 CET Make it through passport control, flight is boarding not that it matters much as all the shops are shut.

23:05 CET Ready for departure, we’re on our way to China.

17:00 CST Touch down. Amazing queue for passport control – every time I come through Pu Dong airport it is worse. Mostly foreigners so in the end I go through the 中国人 channel no one seems to notice or at least no one cares. Sometimes you can play dumb foreigner to your advantage. Skip the cash machine here as there is a queue.

17:50 CST Out! There are now an amazing number of people milling around in arrivals. Can’t find cash machine. I’m going to have to do this trip on 131 RMB (in the end it takes 125 but I’m hungry and thirsty by the time I get home).

18:00 CST Arrive bus terminal thingy, I’ve just missed (well actually at 17:30) a bus. Next one is at 19:30 which means an hour and a half wait in the bus terminal. There is a digital clock on the wall that tells me it is 19 degrees celcius. Clearly it’s not. I entertain myself for a while trying to work out whether it is colder outside or in. After 4 weeks of luxurious, warm, wasteful England this bus station is the perfect introduction back into China and the fact that I will not now be truely warm until spring.

19:30 Bus, (drifting in and out of sleep now) blur.

10:10 Hangzhou, familiar roads, blur.

10:30 Home. D.

So thoughts start to turn to heading back to China and (tenuous link) and life back in the ‘zhou. Also I’ve just found this that I wrote a while back and never posted (real reason). So here in lieu of me actually writing something new…

What is it about fast food restaurants? And why does KFC seem to be the worst. C! we need to dig up that old web site idea because the KFC at the end of my street in China is no better than the drive through that we used to go to. It’s incredible really that they manage to get the service exactly the same all over the world.

Average experience in KFC…

• Go in and join queue, man next to me has clearly never seen a white person before, shuffle forward in queue being examined like zoo animal.
• Person in front has clearly never been in KFC before so ordering process takes weeks, she has clearly brought the whole village into town for a ‘treat’.
• Finally get to front of queue, staff change, till checking, etc, wait another 5 mins.
• Open mouth to order and girl appears out of nowhere, uses shoulder to leaver me away from counter and gives order in loud voice over the top of me, I do my best English look exasperated and huff under breath thing. No one notices.
• She’s clearly an expert and is ordered, served and gone in no time.
• I start to give order, random guys walks up and tries same as girl. Doesn’t get very far, I’ve had enough.
• I start to give my order in Chinese, the ‘crew member’ stares back open mouthed.
• Eventually he realises i’m speaking Chinese, we start again.
• Another random person walks up and asks for something obscure like a toothpick and my dude goes off on a ten minute mission to find it. Listen to the conversation behind about how come all foreigners are fat to pass the time.
• My dude comes back and quickly sorts me out with a wrap and a drink and then goes off to find a bag of frozen chips and the manual for the fryer. (the opposite happens ins McDs where they always fries ready but nothing else – this is better because you can eat fries while waiting at the counter).
• Fries mercifully turn up before the wrap has actually gone off, I pay the man.
• Next step is to pick up the tray and turn round to face the wall of people and look at them with ‘how can you not have seen this coming indignant look’ they dutifully look back with ‘get out of my way so we can get food indignant look’.

Ok so there are a few China specifics in there but mostly it’s the same as my experience in the UK. The UK has it’s own problems e.g. at least the staff in KFC in China can count. The process appears to be a sensible one and KFC can’t have more than it’s fair share of dumb people so what gives?

So in a cheap move to appease my conscience without having to find time (at quite a premium right now) to write something, here are some phone pics from the last couple of weeks.

Snapped this on my last day in China, this fridge/freezer contains raw (as in uncooked, not red like in the advert) crabs with their little claws bound up. Nothing startling there of course except that it was in a shop next to the gates in the international departures hall of Shanghai Pudoing airport (as in after security and all that). What on earth is someone going to do with a fresh crab, in an airport or on an aeroplane?

Back in the UK I returned to our old local in Newcastle and noticed that things appear to have changed as they are touting ‘ladies upstairs’. How things have changed, you used to have to walk down to Dean St for that sort of thing. Foreground detail provided by DM.

First of all thanks to Hangzhou’s chief sheep worrier for tagging me, though I should point out that this blog doesn’t consider itself to be a China blog.

So it’s going to be ‘5 things most people don’t know about you’ it has to be as I can only think of one (two if you count both of them) successes in 2006 and I’m sure you don’t want to hear about running half marathons again.

5 things you never needed to know about me

1. I was on the telly with David Bellamy as a child, I think the program was called SWALLOW this is where I made my now legendary ‘hammering up a sign’ quip and later talked about coals in Newcastle (not a joke). This probably was the hight of my fame. I can’t be certain without checking their viewing figures and making an unfair comparison with the 151 comments this blog has received in it’s now almost 4.5 years of existence.
2. I failed my driving test 3 times before finally passing at the fourth attempt. In my own defence I feel compelled to point out that one of the tests was as part of an intensive course years earlier. I’ve never really achieved closure on this. What I consider to be the three normal reasons don’t apply. People generally fail driving tests for one of the following reasons: 1) too smart to be good at practical things – this is not me; 2) fall apart under pressure – might do in other situations but I wasn’t really that nervous on my driving tests; (3) Naturally rubbish at driving – I’m not an instinctively great driver but I’m not bad either.
3. I am unnecessarily proud of the list of countries that I have been to. We didn’t do wild holidays when I was a kid and I didn’t do a gap year or anything but my list of countries, SARs and Spanish islands visited is: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (born); France; Spain; The Netherlands; Belgium (passing through); Germany; Poland; Chezk Republic; Lanzarote; U.S.A.; China; Hong Kong; Singapore; Malaysia (for dinner); Thailand; Japan. I should add that I find the concept of a nation ridiculous.
4. I genuinely find television completely tedious, I know that it looks like a cleverly constructed intellectual persona but I do genuinely find virtually all TV produced to be banal, superficial drivel. So there.
5. I’m not as patient and good natured as you, dear reader, might have thought. In fact I considered writing the 7 successes version of this post and including ‘I lived in China for 310 days in 2006 and didn’t punch anyone’.

And so to spread the joy, I’m not sure how many people I’m suppose to tag but I have four that I’d like to. The following people should consider themselves tagged and as such nigh-on obliged to provide us all either with either ‘7 successes in 2006’ or ‘5 things most people don’t know about you’:

• Yellow Wings (cringing as I say it) because someone has to.
• Grand Adventures because she will do such a good job.
• DT who doesn’t have a blog but should do.
• Memoirs of a petrol head because I want to.

Right, now I’ve got the big post-Christmas-and-New-Year-update post and the oh-my-goodness-ive-been-tagged post out of the way, normal service should resume.

… and so it was, a Happy Christmas and a Very Merry New Year. I hope you all had one too.

Christmas Eve’s Eve’s Eve flight home for Christmas, delays on the runway at Schiphol, then back to the UK. Quick dash up to Scotland to see G+I and then an exhausting Christmas Eve drive back to Newcastle in freezing fog (why is the weather always horrendous when I NEED to get out of Scotland). Made it to the pub on Christmas Eve so another tradition was observed albeit somewhat mutedly (no escaping now the fact that we are getting older).

Christmas day and boxing day was all that a family Christmas should be, except that G+I and D weren’t there, guess you can’t have everything. The day after boxing day Mum and I went sale shopping early enough to beat the crowds and then retreated to the cinema when it got too crazy. The rest of the week was more catching up with friends and family but a little more relaxed. Invited up to some friends place at New Year which was great.

Back to work yesterday, que sera. Between the toon and the smog for the next couple of weeks, give me a shout if you’re about.

Hope you all had a good ‘un.

Yes, I know I’ve been tagged but you’ll have to bear with me a few days.