Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

2009 hey, how was it for you?
I guess everyone has a different opinion as to what is good and bad.
From reading peoples Facebooks it really seems most had a real crappy year.
I don’t seem to remember anyone’s arms or legs falling off nor any loss of eye sight or hearing.

Thankfully though the old year past gently into the new year and no one close to me was injured in a drunken brawl, locked up or died in a festive season car accident. My mate Crusty did admit to projectile vomiting out of his buddies car window that just missed several Lygon Street pedestrians but other than that it seems this New Year was one of the lamest new years passing’s in recorded history.

Give it up for Crusty for adding a bit of spice and excitement to it all!
Maybe nearly a little too spicy for some innocent bystanders!

Seriously though, it actually was a very quiet time in Xian city and even though I was expecting to 'party hardy’ and didn’t due to lack of people, fireworks and sexy Chinese girls in masquerade masks I actually did have a rather nice time. I spent the weekend with my buddy Angel, Aussie Brad (whom I finally got to meet for the first time) and his better half Mickey. Ok buddy, I owe you a beer or two for that one next time we catch up…I told you I will find any excuse for a few coldies! We started chatting over a year ago after he found me through my blog whilst researching teaching in China. All went well and for the past term he has been teaching in the northern mountain town of Angkang which is a few hours south from me.

I arrived in Xian with my party shoes on and was welcomed by a city going about its normal daily grind. It seems this year the party was changed to Christmas Eve and everybody forgot to tell me! Sheeeeeeze, know who your friends are don’t ya!

Angel, Mickey, Brad and I pretty much ate, snacked and shopped our way around Xian city the entire weekend. From Baskin Robbins at the Big Goose Pagoda to Larry’s Kitchen, from the Little India Arcade to the Shu Yuan Hostel, from the second floor Bar/Eatery where Angel and I like to relax over a beer or two to a million sizzling street stalls. No worthy food place was left untouched and even after a colourful dinner at The Taste of Singapore the early morning found Angel and I gorging ourselves on McDonalds burgers and fries and giggling like crazy school children at the fact that we were still hungry and eating McDonalds at such an hour.   

As for the weather and other stuff;

The festive weekend was sunny and almost warmish but now that horrid icy bone chilling wind is back which was so cold last night when I was out walking that I had to ask my buddy Aussie Judy to ring me back when I got home as my hands felt like someone was sticking hot pins into them and I couldn’t’ feel the phone in my hand anymore. During the day it’s usually around 0 to -3 and at nights its sits anywhere between -3 to -8 and as of today, from what understand, the schools heating was stopped which also means my heating is no longer.

Yep, because that’s what you do in the middle of winter isn’t it!
What other reason would you need to stop the heating.
I would think no coal would be a better reason.

So right now I am freezing in my poor little doggie slippers and during dinner tonight with Dutch Andrew I came to the conclusion that the cold weather really is all that I have to whinge about in life so I’m going to be real Aussie about it and whinge, whinge, whinge (Hahahahaha!). The last few nights (when I was warm….oh yes those were the days I tellya) I’ve been cleaning up my MP3 collection which believe it or not has now decreased by nearly 15GB yet I have actually lost no music at all. Confused? To make it simple, over the past many years I have shared music with many teachers and travellers and due to different file names ie: band names with or without ‘The’, spaces or no spaces between words, band name or no band name before the album name etc all allows for music to be duplicated without you knowing.

That is of course unless you check it which I obviously have never bothered to so.
During my big clean I actually found fifteen Beatles albums I never knew I had.
I actually thought I had only three Beatles albums…unbelievable!

So if you are like me and do a lot of music sharing it probably would be a good idea to spend a bit of time checking them out and then maybe sorting and cleaning them. Fifteen gig of music is a huge amount of music to have duplicated on your computer and to be precise it is a little over three thousand five hundred songs and that in itself would be a wonderful Christmas present for any music lover.

So to the new year…..

I won’t go on and on about how I want this year to be better than the last as I have no reason to ask for anything better. I get paid to have and create the most fun I possibly can every single day of my life and on my spare billion days off I pack my pack and go on walkabout during which I meet up with some friends and eat Western Chinese food in China.

Happy New Beers N Noodles to you all and I hope this year is everything you want it to be.
And if it’s not, how about going about making it be so, it just takes that one step to start it.
Beers N Noodles toya…..shane
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The soundtrack to this entry was by Siouxsie & The Banshees
The album was the wonderful ‘Twice Upon A Time’
I also threw in some of Shpongle’s ‘Nothing Lasts’
Amazing what can come out of a solar eclipse!
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