Obama fever until the very last moment

The inauguration of Obama here in Washington DC has sparked off a frenzy of souvenirs, decorations and other initiatives. Read all about it at http://select.daylife.com/topic/Obama_Inauguration. The strangest of all surely must be the idea of Kim Nesbitt-Good, owner of the Nesbitt Funeral Home in Elizabeth, N.J., who has put a life-size cardboard cutout of President-elect Barack Obama at her funeral home. Now you can have Obama seeing you off to the afterlife!

How are you folks doing?

Going for dinner in the USA, where I am at the moment is a cultural experience for a Dutchman, even one who has lived abroad for many years like me. First, you need to wait to be seated, this can take quite a few minutes. The seating is being done by someone that you will not see again for the rest of the evening. After that someone will come to the table introducing himself: " I am your server tonight". The restaurant where we ate tonight did not serve individual portions but only small - as in for 2-3 persons- and large -as in for 5-6 persons. Since we were only 2 we went for the small persons, which turned out to be as in for 4-5 persons. During the dinner our server came by a number of times, interrupting our conversation to find our whether we were really fine and whether everything was really OK. Paying for dinner takes a good mind for numbers as you are supposed to leave a 15% tip for the server. It is not considered a good idea to include this in the bill. Since we had enough food for 4 or 5 persons we had asked for a doggy bag, another American invention. Unfortunately after 5 minutes of waiting it became clear that they had thrown the extras and away and our server informed us that they were cooking a new portion so that we could take that with us. That was not really the intention and then we left.

Chinese lessons

Today I made a momentous step! I had my first Chinese lesson. A few days ago I decided that it was too weird that after living in China for over one and a half year that I still was not able to say anything in Chinese. Now Zhang Siqi has the privilege to try to explain the difference between Tang (1), Tang (2) Tang (3) and Tang (4). The numbers refer to the tone. It can mean either soup, sugar, lie on, or hot depending on the intonation. Zhang was all praise for my pronunciation. In addition to the book i also have a CD and lastly there is of course L. He is observing my efforts to get to terms with his language with interest and amusement. But then when he was taking Dutch lessons last year I responded in a similar manner.

Xiamen visit

For our annual Christmas outing we went these holidays to Xiamen. This is a city in the southern part of China. It is also the city where L. studied a number of years ago. He had not been back in almost 5 years. Xiamen was quite (a positive) surprise to me. Lots of things to do and lots of things to see. Xiamen is an island and has therefore lots of beaches. There was a very nice boardwalk along the east coast of island over a distance of more than 10 kilometer. A very nice 3 hour walk, for which I had more enthousiasm than L.

There is another small island, Gulang Yu, a short boat ride from Xiamen itself. This is the "Schiermonnikoog" of China. No cars and as many tourists as on a busy summer day on Schiermonnikoog. In the 1920's rich traders and industrialists build very nice and large villa's on the island. These are now slowly being renovated and sold for very large amounts of money.

The picture looks very idyllic but the truth was quite different. As almost everywhere else in China which has some touristic potential you will find large groups of organized tourists who follow their guide. The guide usually carries a flag on a stick and if you are unlucky a megaphone. The standard rule is that the group should keep moving so they do not bother you for a long time. Unfortunately there are a lot of groups.

If you would stay on the small island till after 6 pm. you would probably find it very quiet. But, we did not have the patience for that.

First posting: 2009 a beginning

Will 2009 be a (new) beginning? I decided that in stead of reading other peoples blogs I should start my own. It will start of chaotic and not very well organized. My ambition is that friends and family will be able to follow what is happening in my life and of course also in that of L. Let's see whether we can make this work!