Been in the restaurant twenty minutes and none of the staff have said a word to me. It’s been lovely.
Ordered and will pay by scanning a QR code at the table using WeChat.
In the interests of science and because I’ll try anything once* I bought one of these on the way home. Well, its lot very cheesy. More like a cold vanilla latte. I was hoping for more out there and it’s pretty bland honestly.
*Pig brain, goose intestine, cow stomach, stinky tofu, durian, duck blood, chicken hearts to name a few.
Borders are a big part of our life and will continue to be. We had to make a choice for the kids which passport to get them, the same as me or their Mum. Both wasn’t and isn’t possible. That choice will continue to affect their lives for a long time to come.
#mbnov
What does everyone want for Xmas? Do you make a list with your significant other and buy each other things?
I normally buy the things I want and don’t like getting things for the sake of it so my wife always says I’m hard to buy for.
A haiku a day
Inspired by this article little sister and I have been exchanging haikus this week. In a, let’s just see how goes, method of starting something.
Theirs are very plant orientated and ours have been very children and feeling orientated. Has it helped me? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m still no better at writing them and, as you can see in the pictures I find it easier to underline and am happy to send them not written in neat. But it has been nice to do. I like the byline from that article…
“I get a glimmer as to what she’s feeling right then, and it also gives me a way to share how I’m feeling with her.”
Here are a few…
Winter is Christmas and makes me miss Christmases ‘back home*. The build up, the food, the excitement, the presents. Living in a country where it’s not such a big thing. It’s not a national holiday here. It’s just not the same now.
#mbnov
Sometimes it feels like the thing I/you need to do to feel better is to be alone and do things alone. And today that was what I thought.
Except we had another family over and talked and had a disco and watched a film and played Monkey Bingo.
And it was just what I needed.
How to tidy your home.
- Invite people around.
- Say to yourself, I’ll just say - “sorry about the mess!”
- Ignore that and tidy manically an hour before they arrive.
- Success!
As I write that, I am grateful that we can actually do that here.
daily dad from this week
This week has been too much, so I’m just catching up with the Daily Dad emails. It says a lot that I actually read every single one of them.
You can talk all you want about what being a man is, about how much it means to you to be a father. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re acting that way. In each and everything you do.
You can toughen yourself up for war, you can coolly bet millions of dollars at work, but there’s nothing you can do about the gaping soft spot your kids have access to. Nothing can get you quite like they do… because nothing matters to you quite like they do. This is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Know it. Accept it.
Things fade,
Eventually
Hurt us, a little less.
I spilt wine on someone,
When I worked in the pub, over the road,
I was 16.
It would keep me up at night,
Years later
For reasons I was never clear of.
Now, it’s ok,
Plenty of stuff from my 20s
To keep me up.
#mbnov
'I should have loved biology.'
I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names: the Golgi apparatus and the Krebs cycle; mitosis, meiosis; DNA, RNA, mRNA, tRNA.
In the textbooks, astonishing facts were presented without astonishment.
I’m too tired to read it all but plan to go back to it.
I did love biology in secondary (high) school and it was exactly because the teacher focused so much on the amazing stuff biology was doing. He was forever showing us newspaper clippings or talking about something that had been discovered. That sometimes the lesson was spent doing that and was all the better for it.
Today’s entry in things I saw in the little convenience shop over the road… It’s not even in the fridge!
“We Are The Champions” on Netflix says -
’Explore an array of unique competitions, from the quirky to the bizarre, and meet their passionate communities’
The first episode is of my hometown where they, (we?) chase a big cheese down a really steep hill.
Finally put some money towards @kottke after running out of excuses for doing so. Consistently interesting stuff that I’ve consistently been reading for I don’t even remember how long.
It's family.
I worked late at school and Lyra thought she had an English lesson so we got to have dinner together while the grandparents watched the kids. When we came back I always ask Elise to say thank you to them and they always laugh.
I know why because of the time we flew to Beijing, so internally within China, and we couldn’t check in because the kid’s didn’t/don’t have visas in their British passports so - long-story-short* - Lyra’s parents had to go from their home to our flat, a 30minute trip, at 10pm on Friday night to get a document and then to take a photo of it and send it to us so that we could check in. Lyra said thank you for doing all that, and her dad laughed and said, it’s family, you don’t need to say thank you, of course we’d do it.
Though, it goes back to when Lyra and I were first going out and her very closest friends laughed at me for saying thank you when we went to visit them because, to their mind, I didn’t need to say it.
But I’m British and conditioned to say thank you at all times so it’s strange to deal with this. I ain’t changing though but it’ll be interesting to see where the kids fall!
*Their Mum is Chinese, so they are Chinese. Putting a visa in their British passport would be equivalent to admitting they aren’t Chinese - which they are. We have to get special documents every time we leave China.
It’s possible our youngest will go down without getting up repeatedly but it’s also possible I could win the lottery.
#mbnov
Possible is too often overshadowed by its siblings. The elder, ruder, sibling impossible and its cute younger sibling can.
#mbnov
