Welcome to 2009

Oh boy, it's been forever since I journalled. I'm sure lots has happened, but in the interests of cutting down a ramble, I'd like to keep this entry short (that's so I can make more specific, detailed, and possibly ranty entries in just a moment) ... I hope everyone's (Western) New Year was enjoyable and that there are peaceful and successful times ahead for everyone. I would also hope that everyone had as good a New Year as I did - this is probably the first year in about the last four (definitely the last three) that I have had a better-than-mediocre time. In fact a couple of my more recent New Years have been downright abysmal. If Jibby is reading this, I'd like to apologise for terming last New Year better-than-mediocre ... it was fun ... but if you take "sitting around drinking with one friend" as "fun", then this New Year was four times better ;)

Yup that's right, I sat around with four people and we drank. Ahhhh there's more of a story to it than that I suppose. When I arrived in Urumqi I stayed in the Mai Tian Youth Hostel (which by the way is very nice, and affordable too!) ... having no other plans, and not wanting to go to a smokey Sino-Western bar, I wandered in about a month ago and asked if they'd be having a party, with some of the international guests who would be there. No problem. Ace. A day or two before the party, my friend (Chris) who works there, rang me to arrange the time. Thus, I arrived at 2030 (an hour late) and the place was dead. Just the receptionist. Wow, some party this will be! Chris, when we got him on the phone, said that he was out skiing with some foreigners and that he was sure he'd said the party was on the Thursday. Er, nope, you even confirmed it in Chinese to me, Chris!

No worries, we (I was there with my friend Bruce, also Chinese) will sit around and wait for you if you won't be long. A couple of hours (and a free beer) later, still no sign of them. What the hell? It's 2320 and we hear from Chris that they've stopped skiing and are trying to get a taxi back to the hostel. So we wait. 2345, they finally have a taxi, they'll be there just around midnight, yay. And so it was that at midnight (Beijing time) I found myself in the company of an Israeli, a Frenchman, an Aussie, and a Chinese ... sounds like a bad joke, doesn't it? Of course the beer being free, we started to amass a bottle-collection and talk freely among ourselves - most of the evening became an "identify the wrongs one can observe here" discussion (as you may imagine from my previous entries, there was a lot to say - hence my want for a more detailed blog to follow!) ... at 0200 we celebrated local New Year with a small clinking of glasses and a return to drinking.

0430 and it was time to hit the road ... slightly worse for wear I must admit, though not staggering or feeling nauseous. Even if I had been, the -15C night air would probably have helped sober me up somewhat. I got in around 0450, and was asleep by about 0500. Not a bad night one might say!

(I then woke up at 0740, gave Lucy a call as I'd arranged, and kept her on the phone, probably talking incoherently about nothing in particular, until just after 0800, or New Year GMT, at which point she prudently decided I should go back to sleep, and Skype agreed with her by cutting us off).

Interesting thing to learn from this - the Chinese, although they have their own New Year (coming up, Jan 25 I believe) celebrate the Western New Year on Jan 1st. So I got to go back the next day and do most of the above all over again, hurray!