new year ramblings

So it seems, the cockroach invasion never ends; wherever I go, there they are - on six slimy legs they are navigating their movements, scurrying around stinking rubbish bins, thinking up attack plans in the shadows, wiggling their long repulsive antennas and exponential-graphically accumulating my disdain of them. A couple of times in Beijing, and once during my winter holidays in Surabaya (me and Caro were attacked together just a few days ago), I have had to encounter surprise attacks from members of the International United Gockiburry; all encounters ending somewhat badly or only with limited success…

Long time no blog, eh? The second half of last year I had been in China, busily creating and maintaining a few other blogs and abandoning this one, I guess. Beijing this time round was just as shocking as when I visited China in high school. A whole lot has changed in terms of city infrastructure, but of course some other things just take longer to change. Anyway, apart from getting fooled over and over again, my time in Beijing had been filled with lovely visitations from so many people; my friends say I could start charging people for my travel-guiding services! Catching up with Mandarin studies, getting a HSK 7, meeting up with new friends, old friends, boyfriend; the semester in Beijing passed by with the speed of a bullet train; all that remains is the blurred scenery moving along outside its windows.

Coming back to Surabaya after long winter days in Beijing was like being suddenly put into a burning hot oven. We celebrated a homely 90th birthday for Gran on the 21st, and a party for it is coming up next month in Sheraton. Today on January 23rd, Kopit and Kak Yo just had another baby, her name Grace had been decided since before Isaac was born (by ME!) I'd like to say congratulations for the happy family, and looking forward to seeing the baby soon. So now I’ve just finished downloading the semester report template to fill out; hopefully they’d give me a good number of credits for my hard work, kkk... I will have to go back to printing out more invitation labels, and then maybe continue making the slideshow video for my Gran’s party. No time to lose!