Thursday, August 31, 2006

Identity dream

I had a dream recently. To be honest most of my dreams fall into two main categories: absolutely mundane (like peeling carrots while my friends chat with me in the kitchen) or totally freaky (like being in a stadium and running away from people who think I've committed a heinous crime) . This one however I thought was quite poignant.

I can't really remember how it started off, but there seemed to be a reunion of some sort as I saw some ex-students gathered together. Later on I went out of the building and I was in charge of a market stall in quite a nice quadrangle. Displayed for all to see were miscellaneous objects on a trestle table. I was stood at one corner on one side and on the same side I could see my wallet at the other corner. People came to browse at the objects on the table. I started to become quite concerned whenever a person would be standing by the table blocking my view of the wallet. After a short period of time, I looked again and the wallet was gone. I started searching and asking people if they knew where my wallet was or if they had seen who had taken it, to no avail. I went back to the table and started thinking to myself. I thought," I know that my ID card is in my little red wallet that I have in my hand." I realized that the objects of any value were right there in my hand whereas the other wallet really had nothing of value (like old receipts and namecards) in it and I really wouldn't miss what it contained.

I talked about this with my friend, Nancy as she had had an interesting dream too. Well, we reckoned that maybe I should think and pray about my identity in Christ and realize that all that other stuff I really am not going to miss.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Holiday :Madrid

This has been really annoying. I've tried twice to create a new post and attach photos, only for Safari to shut down. Yes, I also insist that I don't add any other blogs until I've posted something about Madrid.

I went to Madrid in the summer for about 4 days with my mum, dad and aunty. Communicating with the taxi driver was quite funny as I'd forgotten any Spanish that I had learnt over 10 years ago, and I don't think my mum's 'Learn Spanish in a week' CDs quite did the trick! Well, we managed to keep fed and watered in the heat. Thankfully our hotel was in the centre of the city, so we just walked everywhere and it was easy to return and have a kip in teh afternoon.

The very glamorous post office with loads of counters inside for a multitude of purposes.


















The cathedral


















The royal palace



Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Holiday:Wales

One day, mum and dad decided we'd take my aunt to Wales. Actually, we only have to drive a mile down the road and we're there. We hadn't been to the Horseshoe Pass or Llangollen for a while, so off we went.We went to the Horshoe Pass first. My last memory from when I was a kid of it was being surrounded and trampled on by goats as I had some bread in my hand. Thankfully my brother and his friend managed to scare them away.

We didn't see any goats this time but there were a few sheep around and plenty of bikers who stopped at the cafe for a bite to eat. We stopped there too for a coffee and a scone with jam and cream and chatted to the nice lady on the till who had been to Hong Kong.
Beautiful hills in Wales at the Horshoe Pass











What's Wales without sheep?











Surely Dad didn't forget where he parked the car?!











Llangollen station

Monday, August 07, 2006

Holiday:Edinburgh




I thought I'd try to put a few quick notes about my summer holidays. Dad did all the driving and we managed to get to our travelodge with me navigating. We went to see my parent's friend's daughter who I had known when I was younger. We went to the Chinese restaurant that she and her husband run to have dinner with her and her three kids. She drove us around to have a quick tour of Edinburgh sites, while her cute but inquisitive son asked me all manner of questions! We walked around Edinburgh, took photos and went to the art museum - with a collection of Rembrandt sketches.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Diversion

I took a flight from Manchester to London after bidding farewell to my father at the airport. My aunt and I caught the 1830 flight from heathrow. On the plane we heard from the captain that we would be following a new route that would actually get us to HK about 30 minutes faster. Great. The flight continued as smoothly as can be expected with not much sleep achieved and a couple of movies watched. V for Vendetta pretty poor British movie, but when you start watching some films you just want to see how it ends as predictable as it may be. There was some rom com film – Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Bates but because Matthew McConaghey is so ‘watchable’, I watched it.

We began our descent into Hong Kong after turning a mighty big loop over the South China Sea and were experiencing turbulence. I prayed for the pilot and that he would land us safely on the ground. He did … in Taipei. The winds were too strong in Hong Kong to land safely considering it is August and typhoon season. Hence I am currently sitting here typing this out when I should really be asleep in bed in Happy Valley. I’m also typing into word and will transfer this later as yet again I would have to pay for the internet. Why am I not doing that? Simply by the time I sort out payment and get the internet up and running on my computer, my battery will inevitably run out considering I didn’t have it fully charged.

I really hope this does not become an annual event. In the summer of last year after visiting Vancouver for a week in order to go to a friend’s wedding I was similarly delayed. The plane was taxing to the runway when the wing tip of our left wing knocked the tail of another plane parked at the side. This meant taxiing back, passengers were trooped off and the waiting began. It took a couple of hours to osrt out the wing rip, only to then test the equipment and find that a computer wasn’t working. Comp[lications. We also ran into the problem that we would be able to fly to Calgary but then the cabin crew and pilot would not have had the sufficient rest required between flights so we wouldn’t be able to fly back to Manchester. There was also mention of a hotel on arrival at Calgary. Unfortunatley by the time we got there, the people in charge announced that the hotel airport was full and the other hotel which was booked was too far away to make it worthwhile. So they prepared a room with drinks and snacks and people tried to get what little sleep they could. Oh…that is after having a large group of people have a major rant at the poor man making the announcements on behalf of the company.

We arrived at HK airport and waited at the carousel for our luggage. We were so happy that the luggage appeared - except that it wasn't ours at all. We were then told the luggage would arrive at 2:30pm - another hour to wait. The hour passed and our luggage didn't arrive. We were then told that the plane with our luggage would arrive at 4:10pm. After two nights where we had little sleep this was all we needed to hear. My aunt and I finally went out for something to eat, were escorted back in to wait at the carousel and were finally reunited with our luggage at about 6pm at which point I got on the train and fell asleep.