j a m e s f o r s y t h ✡ n e t

Unlike the usual me I’ve been working 5 days a week for the last few weeks. It’s a tough life.

Ying had a big lunch with some colleagues that made her feel ill for the rest of the day. Right now we’re home watching Iron Chef (铁人 - tetsu jin). The secret ingredient is curry powder!!! These are all repeats from Japan about 10 years ago, but it’s still a great show.

I’ve been asked to lead at Church again tomorrow. That means I don’t preach, I just lead the service. One thing I really enjoy when leading is that I get to choose the hymns.

All the vegetablefood and fruitfood I want to eat now is durianfood. I’m not going to bother eating healthifood until I return back to Melbournefood where the whole idea is feasiblefood, viablefood and possiblefood.

The picture above is a piece of durianfood that I got the supermarketfood staff to cut straight out of its shell so that I could be assured of its freshnessfood. I brought it straight home and ate the whole piece immediatelifood.

Durianfood is so totally delicious. I want some every dayfood.

I got some photos taken the other day. So, when you look at me, who am I thinking about? Who do I miss from my home town?

Mum (妈妈)

Dad (爸爸)

MeiYing (美莹)

Asher (明达)

Janne (妹妹)

Tyrone (妹妹的未婚夫)

In line with my readers’ high expectations I’ve managed to get photo - computer - internet friendliness happening. Hopefully more photos to come soon (and more handsome).

This is one of me luxuriating in business class between Melbourne and Singapore.

Well, this morning I had my first class in Jinan. The students were all very friendly but the building is a bit cold.

I have a long lunch between morning classes and morning classes. It will give me a chance to write posts here and prepare my lessons.

The commute this morning was not as long as we thought, as the traffic isn’t so bad at around 7am when our bus takes off. At that time the commuters appear to be mostly teachers, going from one campus to the other.

I’ll probably be having 粽子 for breakfast most days. It’s sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaf (?).

I just had lunch too. That was quite nice. 土豆丝 with some tofu, chicken and a deepfried unidentified food object. All tasty. But there’s no guarantee it’s going to be the same every day. If I find a food I like I’m quite happy to have it every day because I prefer to stick with familiarity. In Melbourne I hardly eat anything other than Flora Indian, Sichuan food and Sweet & Sour at this particular Swanston Street place (the latter admittedly I have tired of a bit).

There’s a Carrefour (家乐福) near us. I was there just yesterday. But I might drop in there again tonight for some bits and pieces.

Hi all,

Well, I leave for Jinan this evening. I’m mostly packed and am trying to think of things I shouldn’t forget.

On the way home, God willing, I’ll be meeting up with my friend Peter and going to a few cities in China, as well as Singapore.

Don’t forget you can still contact me on Skype while I’m away. My login is jamesrlforsyth. If you’re a friend from Australia or around the world, you’re welcome to contact me for a chat. If you are from China and are reading this, remember that my default Skype language is actually Chinese. So if you’re from China, and I don’t know you and you contact me in English then it will be a very short conversation (or language lesson!)

Yes. I’m already homesick, and I haven’t even left yet.

As you may be aware I’m heading off to Jinan (济南) in about 5 days. I’ll be there about 12 weeks. Afterwards I’ll be having a short holiday in Wuhan, Beijing and Singapore, visiting friends and buying a few books.

For a pessimistic look at what’s in store for me, see here.

For a map of where it is, which is really to show the Grand Canal of China route, see here.

I had no idea that baidu.com, China’s biggest search-engine (and most popular website) is listed on the U.S. stockmarket. It’s listed right now as $246.15 a share.

Last night Ying and I celebrated our 10th anniversary with a special dinner at spiga. It was great to catch up with everyone again. Thanks to all the Haslem crowd (& partners) for coming down.

The most regular instant messaging program I’m using these days is Skype. My login is jamesrlforsyth. Feel free to look me up, and if you want to add me to your contact list, please include a reason. I’m happy to chat in English or Chinese.

I used to have a QQ number, but I forgot it long ago. Another few million people have probably signed up after me, which means if I sign up again my number will be that much longer. I also don’t like using QQ much because it puts too much junk on the computer. I may install QQ on an internet cafe’s computer one of these days and try using Pidgin, which can send and receive messages to/from multiple instant messaging programs. See how things go.

I also used to be an ICQ user. My number is 10747220. If you want to stay in touch with me it could be handy to add that number to your addressbook just in case I decide to use ICQ again.

Our place - we love it.