After two years of language study and some hefty exams out of the way, DD finally started his job last week. Now, every morning he gets up early and packs a lunch. His first words to me are still ‘Do you want your tea? Shall I warm it up?’ as they’ll probably be ’til the … More i dash phone
Before DD became a dippy he was a dr, namely a doctor of philosophy, and specifically one of those hard-earned doctorate degrees that take nearly half a decade to finish and leave behind a sense of weariness that’s almost as strong as the sense of accomplishment. He spent the final year of his PhD abroad, … More When fantasy is worse than reality
“He’s staring at me.” It was happening again. DD sat on the sofa, beer glass held mid-air, and pulled a nervous grin. “Why do babies always stare at me?” he repeated. “I don’t know,” I said, and shuffled across the floor closer to baby E, who had stopped playing ever since we turned up in … More On acid
David Cameron is in town, hard on the heels of his friends George and Boris, and the Embassy staff seem busy. On this visit DC literally means business, sharing his plane with more than 100 suits from the world of British enterprise, and even opening an account on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. His optimism prompted … More DD and DC
I’ve never mistaken my mum for a horse. And I hope I’ve never been so drunk in a field that I’ve mistaken a horse for my mum. But in Mandarin Chinese these scenarios can come up more frequently than I’d like, as I learned when I took a basic course a couple of years ago. … More You say tomato, I say xīhóngshì
“I had a dream,” DD said when he woke up on Sunday morning. “What was it about?” I asked. With three days to go before Beijing, my eyes had unusually sprung open. “I had a dream,” DD said, “that you didn’t want to take the green suitcase.” I thought about it. “That’s really quite boring,” … More Two, one
Recently we got some stern advice that we should stock up on tea bags before we go to Beijing. Apparently it’s hard to find English tea there, and what you do find is not nice. It’s ironic since the Chinese are hardly strangers to tea, but it seems there are at least 1.3 billion people … More First words
I’m sitting up in bed at one in the morning, trying to type this as quietly as possible as DD sleeps next to me, his snores a little too shallow to be convincing. Two months from today DD and I will fly to Beijing to start his first diplomatic post – on September 11th, just … More Two months until the beginning
