The Chinese authorities...

seem to be smiling on blogland for once. I can now (at least for the moment) access my blog properly, comments and all. Maybe they just really really liked my last post.

Sorry to all for not posting sooner. I was struck down with a very nasty bout of gastroenteritis (some form of food poisoning I assume) that made me rather pathetic for a while. I basically lost my appetite for two weeks as well, which as all of those who know me well will see as a sign that I was really ill. Better now though (with crossed fingers) although quite a lot poorer than I will be until I get the insurance company to pay me back. I went a couple of times to an international clinic at a hospital, and the second time they put me on a drip which was quite dramatic, especially since the needle wasn't placed correctly the first time so it made my arm swell up. I've been walking around for a week and a half with a huge bruise shaped like a butterfly on the inside of my elbow. It was very cool, but even that's faded now.

Aside from that work has been good. The first issue of the magazine that I'd worked on/wrote stuff for came out on June 1 and it was really nice to see it all in print. Yesterday was the editorial deadline for next month's issue and I have even more articles in that one (wahey). In fact, yesterday was a bit stressful: I'd written everything except a profile of a business person for our business page, but neither of the people I'd sent questions to for that had got back to me. And then yesterday morning one of them wrote saying that he really liked the questions and he'd answer them in a few days but he'd had to go back to America because his mum had died.

Of course writing back and saying, actually today is the deadline was not really an option so my boss said we should put his profile next month instead. Of course this meant that we had to find someone else available straight away for an interview and my boss gave me the contact details of this guy who they've been getting potential people from. He runs a sort of business networking group in Shanghai and he was really helpful and found someone straight away who was really interesting to talk to. Writing back to the man whose mum had died was difficult - what do you say to a bereaved stranger?

So now I had a new person to interview and this is where it got stressful, because previously I'd only interviewed people by email and I'd had a couple of days at least to research them and think of some questions whereas now I had 10 minutes and then I had to do a phone interview because he was in Beijing and quite busy. It worked out alright with me asking questions and listening and typing down everything he said as quickly as I could and I'm pretty pleased with the results, but it was certainly a little nervewracking. I think to be honest, I've kind of been spoilt so far by the relaxed atmosphere at my workplace - where I've now taken to rolling in at 11 o clock in the morning. It's probably good for me to have a few moments of pressure/stress.

Other nice things include: the woman from Heart to Heart emailing me to say that the article I wrote about her group (which funds children's heart operations) had already resulted in one person signing up to volunteer with them;

a trip which we took to Hangzhou last weekend which is very pretty and has a huge lake and Buddhist temples and so on, and was lovely even though it rained incessantly and not one taxi driver in the whole town new where our hotel was;

too many visits to restaurants and bars and clubs to mention all of them (this is just that kind of town), but one interesting place thatmmaybe I will mention is a restaurant where you eat in the dark and are served by blind waitresses, you know like in that CSI Miami episode where the guy was killed with a pen? Anyway, it was an interesting experience, unfortunately the food was terrible and incredibly overpriced so I don't think we'll be going back;

my Mandarin lessons which are very cool even though they make my brain hurt - yesterday my tutor even started teaching me how to write a few characters.