Hey Hey and a Big G'Day toya,

Time, when it’s time for it to stop;
No matter what you are doing, it’s time to go.

After school today I took a ride to the tea fields to bury a beer glass next to Frans little tea cup to say good bye to Terry, my families longest and closest friend who passed away last Thursday. Both our families lived next door to each other for most of my life, in fact even prior to my arrival so I thought he definitly deserved his own page as he and his wife have actually been part of this blog for many years.

Eve is from Xian City in Shaanxi Province China and thirteen years ago when I first visited the Land of Beers N Noodles I got to stay with her sister’s family for a week.

Since then she has gone on to become my mother’s closest friend which of course has made my families worries about me living in China much less than what it normally would be. We’ve caught up on a number of occasions over the past eight years, mostly in Xian when Terry and Eve returned to visit her family. Other times totally unexpected with Terry yelling rather 'colourful Aussie Lingo’ from beneath my apartment window to wake me from my Friday night beery slumber.

This beers for you Terry, you were part of my life from birth all the way through until you left for the great Beers N Noodles eatery in the sky last Thursday. It was always awesome to share a 'Catchup Coldie' or three, maybe four...um and sometimes a few more each time you and Eve returned to China. Cheers mate, will miss you heaps and Luo Wei sends a huge hug and a wok full of strength to Eve to help her through.

Random Terry & Eve catch up in Xian 2000

Random Terry & Eve catch up in Xian 2000

Random Terry & Eve catch up in Luoyanng 2007

Random Terry & Eve catch up in Luoyang 2007

Random Terry & Eve catch up in Xian 2009

Random Terry & Eve catch up in Hanzhong 2010

Remembrance Day & The Blogs Photo’s

It is now Monday, 11^th November 2013 which of course is Remembrance Day. I participated as I do each year by sharing the minutes silence with my students in class. Thankfully this year I had my Grade 5’s so it actually worked pretty well, unlike last year when I had my Grade 1’s, but hey they did their best for about twenty seconds.

The dinner shots are from my Birthday Dinner with Super Sexy Checkout Chic and the Gang of Sisters. Due to work schedules we couldn’t all catch up as one until a few weeks later, but was definitely worth the wait because ohhhhh, they can cook! This coming weekend we are hoping to get together for Hot Pot….ohhh yeah!

We had a ‘Marching Competition’ at school last week which I thought was going to be really cool. Buuuuuut it wasn’t as each class from Grade 1 through to Grade 6 did exactly the same march. Who in their right mind would organise such a strange competition and expect the students to remain in some sort of excited and controllable state. I stayed for a ‘shortish’ time and then grabbed my bike and got as far away as I possibly could.

The girl in the third photo at the top of the page is one of our newbie 'Left Overs' and the poor girl is almost blind. If she puts the book almost against her eyes she can see it but I'm unsure how blurry it is. When she first came she would sit in silence and remain unresponsive in all teachers classes and sadly some of the other teachers would tell me that is is 'stupid'. So in all my classes I would re-draw everything I drew on the board into her book so she could see what it was she was learning. 

NOW....now she is the first to race to the front for everything and anything so I give her her own special reading time. I quietly read to her and she reads it out loud and the other students repeat what she 'reads'. She also comes up and dances, helps open the class and close it and the rest of the class are always racing over to give her a hug to let her know they are all still there.

Cute as little buttons!

In The End, It Really Is About TIME!

The following is something I wrote some time ago and it is of course, all about time.
So if you have some time and nothing better to do, Give Vetta A Whirl!

Time really does pass by with the blink of an eye but the problem is though that it passes by within a blink of our own eyes. Both our days and nights pass by under the ungrateful and greedy eyes of time and it’s these very grains that we are made to rely on to give us some sort of structure in our lives.

Forever taking from us, yet unkindly never giving in return.

Our sands begin to flow from our very first breath, yet strangely do we not also begin our pathway to death from the very same first breath that gives us life? Time and life, life and time, how confusing it really can be when you sit back and think about it. How you spend your time is up to no one but yourself and what you do with it is also personally up to you. What the best way to use your time is an age old question. Do we follow the rules, not drink and smoke and do our best to follow our chosen dogma to be then collected by the 8:15 am train on the way to work when strangely you are not at the station but in your car listening to the radio when WHAM, the 8:15 decides to collect you anyhow.

No one on the 8:15 will go to work that day as time has caught up with you all!

Prior to you unwillingly catching the 8:15 did you do your best and fulfil all your dreams? Did you relax on a mountain top sipping green tea in the destination of your dreams? Did you give birth and raise the child that will carry on your name? Did you find the love you have always dreamed of?

Did you did you did you?

Or have you simply continued doing what you have been taught to believe is the right thing to do with your time? Are you still near to and unwilling to break away from your parents protective arms, help and love. So much time....or so we are led to believe we have but Time has a way of quietly sneaking up on us and then racing away and before you know it you are losing time.

Sometimes simply relaxing and reading about how others spend their time is a good way to use your own time. But how much time reading about 'another’s' time is the right amount of time? That's a good question for all of you readers out there. I once spent a LOT of time reading about 'others' time, so much so that I allowed a decade of my own time flow by without doing much at all with my own time. I dined on so many people’s dreams that each week was like feasting on a banquet of 'other peoples 'dreams and time’.

So when is 'your' time to stop feasting upon others time?
When is it time to begin living your own dreams?
So many other possibilities are open to us.

Beers N Noodles toya…..shane
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The soundtrack to this entry was by Living Colour
The album was ‘Times Up’
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