It’s all Double-Dutch to me

Amanda will occasionally tease me by “cursing” me in Chinese. This I accept.
But this evening, in the kitchen, she muttered something that I didn’t understand and when I asked her what she had said her reply was “Oh, it’s ok… Not even Mandarin speakers would have understood that. It was in my local dialect.”
What ?!
My few words of Mandarin, (my name, “Nihao”, and about five items of food), don’t stand a chance of helping me to understand her when she’s blabbering in Mandarin, but now I’m expected not to understand her in some strange dialect too !
That woman expects too much of me.

While the wife’s away….

Amanda in KLM Business Class

Amanda has had to go back to Nanning for a month to see the family. Her Dad’s not well and has been asking her to go back so now is the best time as she has found a part-time job in a care home which she should start about a month from now once the disclosure paperwork has gone through.
When we were online checking her in for her flights we were picking her seats and I spotted an available seat where I wouldn’t have expected one to be offered for her.
Not giving her the chance to say that she would prefer her “normal seat” (window, just by the middle exit) I said to her “Oh, there’s a good one, grab that !”. As it was late at night and she’d had a long day she was in no mood to put up much of a struggle so the deed was done.
She was more than pleasantly surprised when she boarded the flight at Schiphol, and had to check with the cabin crew two or three times that a mistake hadn’t been made.
I just got a call from her in Chengdu and she says she slept all the way. That’s the first time ever! Given how busy she has been over the past week and how tired she was when I left her at the airport in Edinburgh I’m so glad it worked out that way for her.
It’s also the first time I’ve ever been able to get an upgrade for anybody, despite years of trying, so I’m pretty happy about that too.
Now, while the wife’s away, I’m hoping to be able to get around to a few blog posts that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. They’ll be somewhat varied so there should be something for everyone.

Frosty the Snowmam (Yep, that’s right)

Frosty the Snowmam

I think I probably made a snowman in the winter of ’63; I know I did make one once when I was a kid.

Amanda has never made a snowman before and, dear little wife that she is, she badgered the living daylights out of me this morning until I finally went out to help her and offer some well needed technical advice. (It’s what us men are for).

There was me thinking that she would just go downstairs and make a little one outside the door, maybe behind my car. But, oh no, over into the car park she went to make as big a one as she could !

“Frosty” ended up at 4ft 3inches (1.3m) and with no arms, but oh, so cute.

I don’t think my back will forgive me this side of Christmas but Amanda’s happy, and that’s what matters.

Oh, and yes, it is called “Frosty the Snowmam“, because that was how Amanda labelled the folder that she uploaded the pictures into.

 

Amanda and Mary Poppins are the same person

Do you remember Mary Poppins ?

Do you remember the plethora of weird things that she pulled out of her Salisbury travel bag ?

Having seen what Amanda managed to produce from the suitcases when she was unpacking the other day I think she must be Mary Poppins in disguise.

Yes, given that this was Amanda’s “moving” trip and I had to book an extra case on the flight I knew there would be endless amounts of clothes and quite a few more pairs of shoes, but the list of other items was quite impressive…

Webcam & Mic
Rice cooker
Spoons/scoops for attaching to outside of rice cooker
Spare bowl for rice cooker
DVDs of Nanning Folk Festival
2 Electric adaptors and 2 extension leads
1kg Chicken Powder Seasoning
Set of place mats and Coasters
Upright chrome drying rack for kitchen, designed for holding chopping boards, knives and chopsticks
Chinese New Year door decoration
Dried salty fish (very smelly, but very well wrapped)
Dried Longan berries
Pork Floss 200g
Pack of dried mini-shrimp
Preserved eggs (pack of 8 )
Duck wing (1)
Chinese bacon
Chinese sausages (4 packs)
1 vacu-packed pillow
Water melon seeds (large pack)
More sausages
2 boxes of soft-grip gel ink pens
Sauce for hot bean curd (6 packs)
Some liquid for helping with the cooking (clear alcohol of some sort)
A shoebox full of assorted (Chinese) medicines
59 moisturising face masks
2 new pairs of shoes for wearing with her Qipao’s (very smart)
1 gold handbag, one blue double wallet, same purpose as shoes
A plastic mini heat-preserving lunch box with sections for soup, rice and main dish
Moon Cakes (seemingly hundreds of)
Another pack of CDs/DVDs in a travel holder

Somehow we’ve managed to find homes for it all, but it’s really emphasised the need to move to somewhere bigger.

The long wait and the worrying is over

It’s taken many months and has been a long and stressful wait, but at last…
Amanda has got her Spousal Visa !
It finally came through, although the last two days since she knew that the answer was on its way has been horrendous.
If she had been refused I don’t know what we would have done.
So now all we have to do is find the money for the flights for me to go out to collect her and bring her “home”.
Hopefully she will be here by the middle of September.
I can’t wait.
I’m going down the list of names in my phone, calling and texting everybody.
What a relief !

I Heart China

I have a few blogs on WordPress already, all of them attached to this same user profile, Honorarynewfie. Some of them you may be aware of, some of them maybe not.

But now I’ve started another one !

For reasons that would only be clear to me it’s not part of the same group; I now have another profile, B2212.

The blog’s called I Heart China, and it’s a retrospective travelogue/diary of “our story”, Amanda and I, beginning with my first trip out to China to meet my beautiful little Chinese wife.

A lot of the pictures, especially the early ones, are not of a particularly high standard. There will be ones taken using mobile phones, video cameras, basically whatever was at hand at the time; but it’s not about quality it’s about the experiences, memories, and helping me to organise the thousands of photos we have taken over the past two years.

The blog will be a small selection of those pictures with a brief description of the events of each day.

The “About” page explains a little more.

The layout is still work in progress so it may chop and change about a bit until I get it settled.

I’ll still be “doing my thing” on here; I’m not going anywhere; there will just be more of me !

Enjoy !

So much to learn…

Last night was “Queen Night” on the “X” Factor and it got me thinking again about how much in life that seems just perfectly natural to me means absolutely nothing to Amanda because she “wasn’t there”.

So here is a list of some things, people, events etc that are just a normal part of life to me but will need explaining to Amanda…..

Queen Freddy Mercury (God rest you Freddie) ABBA The Beatles the lunar landings Falklands War World War II (the European part) the Normandy beaches The Battle of Britain Remembrance Sunday New Year (Western as opposed to Chinese) Top Gear Top Gun Top of the Pops “Ghost” (I’m looking forward to explaining some of that…) Heaven Can Wait (…. have I got a morbid streak ?) Blondie J J Cale Love Actually Last of the Summer Wine Porridge The Two Ronnies Monty Python (God help me !……) the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (… and again !) Slartibartfast (well, one has to start somewhere ) wedding receptions summer holidays I’m ****ing Matt Damon Trevor Senior, Jimmy Quinn, Martin Hicks, et al… Elm Park Reading 2 – Brighton 0 Ally McBeal (spot the link between the last two ! ) Maggie Thatcher (where am I going with this ? …..) Radio Luxembourg The Ashes the Barmy Army Lord’s (Mecca) bunking off work to go to Chesterfield to see Middlesex play, only to find you get caught in a close-up on tv with a tinny in your hand ….. ! I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue Humph Samantha Mornington Crescent (there’s an easy one, won’t take long…) The Commonwealth “Dr. Livingstone, I presume ?” India The whole of the Roman Empire, and everything it has meant to everyone in the Western world ever since……. Henry VIII Blackadder Manuel from Fawlty Towers the Eurovision Song Contest (I don’t even understand that myself !) Wogan Galway Bay the old Wembley Stadium American Football Snow (although actually, Amanda spent 8 months studying in Minnesota, so she already knows what snow is !) French Knickers Amaretto Elvis Morecambe & Wise Benny Hill Croatia Florida The summer of Love If you’re Going To San Francisco 99 Red Balloons Richard Branson VW Beetle (my Dad and I both had one at the same time) The Masters the 7th at Pebble Beach Minestrone Soup Double Cream Wizzard Rag, Tag and Bobtail (I used to get so scared that one of them would get lost :-S) Postman Pat the Old Man of Hoy the National Trust Badminton Horse Trials Hickstead Billy Connolly Parkinson James Bond Sean Connery the Isle of Skye Norse Mythology The Blue Danube snooker Torville & Dean Bolero package holidays Woolworth’s Motown IBM AS/400

 

How many is that ?

I hope she’s a good listener…. this may take some time…

Does anybody have any more suggestions ?

“Auld Lang Syne” is not Chinese !

Nor, for that matter, is “Herge’s Adventures of Tin-Tin”.

These little nuggets of information may not appear earth-shattering to you, but they did come as quite a surprise to Amanda.

“How ?”, you might ask…

“Look at your wife” (2) … The official wedding pictures

Well Amanda had a good day on Thursday… not only did the Official Wedding Photos arrive, but she got her new visa too. Yes, A full 2 year, multiple entry visa which gives her the freedom to come and go as she pleases.

Anyway, now you can see why I was so starry-eyed that day ….

My beautiful Amanda with her new husband

My beautiful little wife

Hello you ! .... Kiss ?

This is Amanda's favourite picture

Words fail me

Beautiful and happy

All pictures copyright A&TH

More wedding pics

Okay, so here are some more pictures of us on, or around, our wedding day.

The two of us at an office dinner	Getting ready to go in	Getting the paperwork done
Saluting the flag	Yes, Mr & Mrs !	Double Happy - Job done

The official photographers have said that they will need around 50 days to get the proper pictures ready.

I dread to think how much “air-brushing” they need to do of me …