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So this is my fifth trip to Suzhou in the last 12 months and I thought I’d be scraping the barrel of sightseeing activities, but I spotted something new on my tourist map! The “Net Master Garden” that I visited in March has something called 夜花园 or “Night Flower Garden”. I thought maybe they would have some kind of special flower that only blossoms at night, but actually it was more of a cultural thing with dancing and music.

There was a tour guided bit around various performances and then we were free to wander around. The lighting was very well done and atmospheric. It was also a really clear evening, and you can see the full moon below (it was mid-Autumn festival).

Some of the traditional music was quite pleasant, like the group below, however I think the “opera” in the local dialect is something of an acquired taste. The older Chinese tourists seemed suitably impressed though.

I stayed in Shenzhen for a week last month on another work trip. It’s my first time in that city, and actually I didn’t see a whole lot of it because the time was spent working and going to restaurants. But what I did see was very shiny and new. Probably because the whole city of 10 million people was just a tiny fishing village 30 years ago.

This is the massive exhibition centre outside my hotel. The air quality here seems much better than the other big cities I’ve visited in China. I think this is because most of the industry is very high-tech and the cars you see on the street are all very modern.

Shenzhen is also famous for its electronics malls selling components of dubious quality. But sadly I didn’t get a chance to visit one this time.

I was in Hong Kong for a weekend last month before a work trip to Shenzhen. Besides playing a lot of Pokemon Go (I caught a wild Snorlax) I thought I should try going somewhere a little bit off the beaten track so I hopped on a boat to Lamma Island which is just south west of the main island.

I walked for about four miles between the two main villages, which admittedly isn’t very far but it was really hot and humid. The scenery on the island is dominated by a huge coal power station which takes a bit of getting used to but I suppose fits with the urban/rural mishmash of the rest of Hong Kong.

Here’s a pro tip: in the village Sok Kwu Wan at the end of my route there’s a seafood restaurant called Lamma Rainbow where if you buy anything, even just a soup, they give you a voucher for a free ride back to the main island on their private boat. Not sure how the economics of that work, but the view from the boat was pretty good!

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Here’s a variant on a couple of walks I’ve done previously: a 24 mile jaunt from Cholsey near Didcot to Newbury along a bit of the Ridgeway and through the North Wessex Downs.

I’d really recommend it actually: scenery on the downs is lovely and the detour at the end avoided a boring trudge down the side of the road that blighted a previous adventure in these parts.

Here’s some happy looking pigs going out for a morning forage.

And this is Donnington castle near Newbury. I didn’t get to spend long there as I was in a massive hurry to catch a train.

Once upon a time I used this this blog to publish softwares of questionable utility, and if my analytics stats are anything to go by, I should have stuck to that. So today I’m proud to announce the release of… xcowsay 1.4!

This is just a rolling up of various minor tweaks over the past few years:

• Fixed various usages of deprecated Gtk features
• Allow values with quotes to be set in the config file
• Fixed a crash when the -r option was used without a value
• Added a --release option to close the window on mouse button release

Download it here or wait for it to appear in your distribution. Report any problems via the GitHub issue tracker.

I was over in Oslo for two days the week before last. Because everyone in the office there slacks off about 4pm I had some time in the evening to explore. That, and the sun never sets. :shock:

So I wandered around the area by the harbour and castle. I go to Oslo quite often but it’s been nearly seven years since I last went to this part of the city. The light was really lovely: I don’t know if this has to do with being so far north.

I went to the Eastbourne Airshow a few weekends ago with my mum. It’s a bit of a tradition: we’ve been to almost every one for the last 15 years or so. Here are some planes we saw!

Biplane

Typhoon

Weird plane

Stunt plane

A few weeks ago I went to stay with a friend who lives in St Neots. Now, St Neots itself does not have a whole lot of attractions except a nature reserve and a pleasant market town centre, but it is close to Cambridge so I went there for the day on Sunday.

I can’t remember the last time I went to Cambridge. Certainly not since I started this blog and perhaps not since I was a small child. Had some fun wandering around taking photos of the old buildings.

I met up with another semi-local friend and went punting. Whilst fun and excellent upper body exercise, I don’t think it’s the career for me. At least I didn’t fall in or lose the pole.

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Due to an unexpected hiccup at the factory I had to extend my trip by a week and so had a weekend to do some sightseeing. Now, this being my fourth visit to Suzhou I’ve done most of the attractions of the city and surrounding area, and plus there was a typhoon threatening to ruin my fun. So I decided to go for a more outlandish adventure and after work on Friday I hopped on the high speed train to Beijing.

I’ve written before about China’s awesome high speed train network but where else could I pay just £50 to travel 1100km in a mere five hours. It probably beats flying: with all the faff of getting to/from the airport, delays, etc. Plus the views are a lot better from the train.

I got to Beijing really late but I was staying near the station so that wasn’t a problem. Even that late it was over 30 degrees outside. Summer, it turns out, is not the high season for tourism.

Saturday I went for the obvious top tourist attractions: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. At first I thought it would be fun to go see Chairman Mao – is mausoleum is in the centre of the photo above – but I didn’t want to queue for hours in the 35 degree heat with no shade.

Before I went I was worried about by the air pollution horror stories I’d heard and considered buying one of those fancy 3M face masks. But even though it looks quite hazy in the photos the air quality seemed better than Shanghai. Apparently it’s worse in the winter.

The Forbidden Palace is soo big. By the time I’d done the central palaces, the six western palaces, and the six eastern palaces, I’d seen enough palaces. There was probably more to see but I was exhausted from the heat and it all got a bit samey after a while. Had dinner with a former colleague who lives there now.

On Sunday I was really tempted to try going to the Great Wall. But it apparently takes over an hour and a half from the city and it was going to be crazy busy on a sunny Sunday. So instead I went to the Temple of Heaven which was quite interesting to wander around with an educational audio guide. Like the Forbidden Palace though, it was uncomfortably hot and almost totally lacking in shade. :???:

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I seem to be visiting China every few months at the moment. Which good for accumulating air miles but since I always go to the same area finding new things to do at the weekend is becoming harder. So on the Sunday after my arrival in Shanghai, slightly jet-lagged, I went to a museum seldom visited by foreigners: the Memorial of the Site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

In the exhibit you learn all about the evils of the colonial powers and the heroic deeds of the revolutionaries throwing off the shackles of bourgeois oppression. There’s also lots of spots where you can have your photo taken with revolutionary leaders. Actually, the exhibit is surprisingly educational, and has information boards in English.

This is a diorama of the aforementioned First National Congress, which took place in the building which now houses the museum.

Afterwards I went to the Shanghai Propaganda Art Museum. Now I’m a bit of a fan of the communist propaganda poster, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. The museum is quite small and hidden in the basement of residential tower block which is difficult to find, but still definitely worth a visit. Not allowed to take photos though.