We’ve just bought a new Digital SLR camera so that Miao can have some use of it before she starts studying for her job in september. She has now finished her thesis and her supervisor is very happy with it, so all she needs to do now is a Q and A session infront of a panel at the end of the month. After that she will be studying to pass an accounting qualification before the start of work in September, and she will have a series of exams to do before then.

I’ve developed echema on my face, so I’ve been to a skin center and they’ve given me antihistamenes to take, and some creams to use on my face, little frustraiting because they’ve told me not to let my face get hot, and not to shower with hot water, so going to the gym is not advisable.

In the interests of me trying to do something related to computing, I’ve bought 2 domains, clarkalastair.com and alastairclark.com. I had a webserver running here, but my novatech laptop has stopped running windows, and I haven’t had time to re-install yet. So if you goto those two sites, you’ll get nothing so far, but i think email will work. admin@alastairclark.com should work because gmail have a free webbased email pickup. Along the same lines we’ve decided that I’m going to buy a mac mini, which isn’t so great for performance given the cost, but its small, so it should
be easy enough to bring home. Better than buying something here and having to abandon it.

I’m planning on playing around with some windows server software, so I need something better to run it than the novatech laptop. With this designed by apple, and the operating system OSX providing reliability, I’m happy with putting up with the price, and I’ll be able to plug it into the TV so dont actually need a monitor for it.

The weekend before last we went to the largest Municiple Square in Dalian again, and walked along the coast line, which goes around the side of hills. It was very pretty, and my camera has been taken into a shop to fix the screen, so I should be able to send some pictures of where we go soon.

Miao’s mother has started learning paper cutting at a government funded center near us, and will go there twice a week. It involves a lot of folding and neat cutting, to get the patterns that you want, like some repeated pigs heads and various scenes. I’ve also started teaching 2 young teenage girls as a private tutor, the mother of one of them works in the local government, so is in a good position to give references if I want more private students. I’ve been drinking the tea I brought to china with me, i’ve been enjoying it.

Regarding the Earthquake, it’s been getting alot of press coverage here, unsurprisingly. It seems the government is doing all it should, and only one of Miao’s friends has been effected so far. Her friend’s father was a teacher in one of the area’s affected and died using his body to shield and save 3 students from harm. Apart from that she doesn’t know anyone else effected, there’s been alot of fundraising happening in the streets.