Holiday is almost over.

Well, at least I think it's almost over. This being the Wuhan University International Software School nobody's actually bothered to tell me when my classes begin again. I'm guessing they'll begin on Monday, but undoubtedly I won't be told for sure until Sunday night or something. I think in the three years I've been here the longest lead time for information like this that I've ever received (without digging for it on my own) was three days (and that was for a 2-week intensive course with the same class every day for eight hours! – four semesters of English in two weeks).

I also decided to take a break from the blog over the official holiday, so I have a bit of catching up to do.

One of the first things of interest that happened during the holiday was a student of mine (Li Zefeng) who is one of two people at the Sweathogs Campus that has any worth as a student (and maybe one of six who have worth as human beings)—I am not exaggerating here!—dropped by for a visit. We talked a little about his future plans and goals (something I'll likely bring up in a future blog entry if I run out of family material) and he, naturally, brought gifts: a package with two tins of nice 西湖龙井茶 (West Lake Dragon Well tea—an internationally famed tea), a bag of coconut candies which Joan promptly hid from me and now doles out in small doses and a box of dried black wood ears (a kind of edible fungus, and a tasty kind to boot, but I think they're also considered medicinal). In return for this I gave him some software that will assist him in building the skills that he's not getting at his phony school.

The family did a few visits during this time, but as it's always awkward when I go visit because of the intrinsic clash of the communication barrier vs. the natural Chinese desire to be a good host, I stayed behind most days. Sadly this included a day when Joan and her mother were supposed to be buying a house-warming present for her uncle but she instead went to visit a park with Lucas for most of the day. I have pictures from this that I will be sorting through and uploading for Sunday's returned regular update so hold on for a bit. (Hint: Lucas does his incredibly cute routine again.)

Ah, what the Hell! I'll do that right now!

OK, I'm back. Here are some selected photos of Lucas at the park:

From Lucas

The last interesting thing to happen to me over this holiday was hearing from my half-sister Anne again. "Half-sister?" the two of you who don't already know the story are asking. "What are you talking about?" Let's get into the wayback machine to give some context.

Back when I was 30 years old and living in Ottawa writing software for Pronexus, I got the most surreal telephone call of my life. My mother called up and started saying things that I thought, at first, were a joke. There were only two problems with this theory: this kind of joke is something more that my father would have done (my mother has no discernible sense of humour!), and there was no punchline. The basic story was that six years before I was born my mother had a baby daughter out of wedlock and had immediately put her up for adoption. I won't get into the gory details of all this, but the practical upshot of it all was that I was told at 30 that I had a half-sister six years older than me.

As it so happens, I was the closest person to my newly-(re)surfaced half-sister. I got in touch with her by telephone and then drove my way from Ottawa to Barrie (which reminds me that there's an awful lot of odd synchronicity between me and Barrie) to meet her as the first representative of the family. The meeting went OK, she then went on to visit my mother, the two corresponded for a while.

Then she dropped off the planet.

Now, many years later, my mother asks me if it's OK for "Anne" to get in touch with me. I had by this time almost completely forgotten about this Anne and thought it was weird for her to ask me if my cousin Anne could get in touch with me. (Thought running through my head was "well, duh!") So I told her that there are only two people in the family I didn't want to ever hear from and one of them wasn't even in the family anymore. The rest were more than welcome. Then I found out it was half-sister Anne my mother was speaking about. (Not that this changes anything. There is still only one current family member I don't want to hear from.)

It was interesting to hear that Anne had contacted the rest of the family once again, so I of course looked forward to her email. I almost missed it, however, because changes in Anne's life involved a change in her name. I was looking for an email from Anne Crannie and instead got an email with a subject that looked like it came straight out of a spam artist's from an Anne Howat. For days it sat in my inbox because I was taking it easy for the holidays and didn't really want to wrestle with spam settings and the like, so it took me a while to find out that this was half-sister Anne. Once I did read it, however, of course I rattled off a reply (largely incoherent) and a pointer to this blog.

Thus stands the state of the family. And now that I've had my Spring Festival hiatus, I'll be posting every Sunday(ish) again.