That's it again for another year, mind you it is always a relatively quiet time over here for me, it's not the same as the UK. Christmas Eve we went out to the local Theme Park, Happy Valley, where the locals all seem to congregate on any of their holiday periods, they love being in a crowd. We had a steak dinner at Wang's Steakhouse before we entered which was quite good food. In the theme park it became a little obvious that they have Christmas and Halloween a little mixed up here as half of the folk were in Santa suits and the other half in Halloween masks and witches hats! They had a few shows on in the park, we only got to see one of them which was a sort of kids outdoor show. which had a group, a few dancers and a couple of the inevitable (these days) rappers. the group were a little crap really, the lead guitarist was in a world of his own and didn't take any notice of the rhythms that the drummer and bass guitarist were using, so it all got a bit out of sync. We didn't get home till after midnight due to the heavy traffic on the way out.

My music on the Amazingtunes,com website has now reached a nice milestone of 1,000, and counting, listeners to my songs. This I have to say I am quite pleased with even though it's taken over a year to achieve. My catalogue to date consists of 118 recorded songs plus a few instrumentals. I am currently waiting for a piece of my recording equipment to be repaired so that I can continue again, I am doing some still with my 'old' set-up using my internal Sounblaster soundcard, but the USB card I have been using is a lot superior in its sound quality and far easier to hook up my instruments to.
After our initial cold day yesterday it is 'break out the heater' day today. Happy and I are snuggled up in the back room with our little heater blasting away at us, will consider staying here till summer comes back!

Its down to a chilly 68F here at the moment and the sign of the start of the winter season, it feels freezing to me. I know, I know, its a little cooler in other parts of the world! but to us its bloody cold OK! On top of all that its also raining so we are having a very dreary couple of days here in sunny Shenzhen.
Happy (our dog) is as usual not to enamoured with the wet conditions, although last week he was playing with the gardener who was watering the plants downstairs, Happy was running round like a loony trying to drink the water out of the hose without getting wet, but he did get quite soaked when he misjudged a couple of times. The gardener hadn't seen anything like it before and was creased up watching him.
Christmas will soon be here and gone, for everyone I know the cards have been sent, whether they will arrive in time for Christmas is an entirely different matter. We have already received a few from the UK.
Talking of Christmas I hope you all take the time to listen to my Christmas song on Amazing tunes the link for it is at the end of this post. If enough of you listen, you'll make me famous in my own lunchtime. 
I wait to see if the weather gets much colder or if global warming rushes in to save the day.
The link:- 
http://www.amazingtunes.com/users/oldroboman/tunes/42328?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d09a140ee430f4c%2C0 

The BBC and CNN and all the English news sites are back on the net and on the Television again after a 3 day absence, unless one of them mentions the Nobel Prize again!!!

I have just uploaded my latest Christmas song on the 'My Music Site' link above, I hope you will at least give it a listen. I know the UK is a little snowbound at the moment and that we here in Southern China do not even see the evil little Jack Frost. It is however starting to cool down in the evening and mornings now, so having to put the old sweatpants on to take Happy out for his business trips. We have around at the moment an old guy we met in Toronto earlier in the year, Gabe is a French Canadian from New Brunswick and likes to travel round a lot, He was mentioned in the blog when we were in Canada. I think he is here for around 6 weeks or so and he likes to travel alone mostly. We've had a couple of meals with him to send him on his way.

Must be a conspiracy, after the TV blowing up, today we had no electricity from 6 to 6, but it actually came on around 5, Fridges starting to thaw out, so hope all the food is OK. The fix I did on the hot water pipe appears to have failed miserably and we had a wet floor this morning in the kitchen, so now there is nothing to do except to buy a new tap set for the kitchen sink, at least the cold water is still OK there, but it means we have no hot water till it gets replaced. Hopefully our little TV man will appear tomorrow and do the necessary repairs.

Yesterday while sitting watching the old Television, we had a sudden bang, a nice shower of sparks, a quick rush to the remote to turn the TV off, as it had just blown up! We had the repair man round today and as the set is 4 years old, he said he will either try to repair the main panel (the nice black bit he found inside) or replace it with a later version, which will be better as they don't make that model any more. This has meant an evening without the goggle box and its been very quiet, Rose has been out at her part time work so Happy and I have had a quiet evening and not had to make any conversations with anyone, which has been quite nice. The little repair man should be back tomorrow, he recons its going to cost around 60 quid to repair which isn't bad compared to the cost of a new one. Well we made it to nearly midnight and still sane (I think).
We had a friend we met in Canada, Blog readers may remember Gabe the 'old' French Canadian we met wile we were in Canada, he is over on holiday for 6 weeks. He will be in his element as he is studying like mad to learn Chinese and he is good, makes me feel inadequate! (at Chinese anyway).
Also had a hot water pipe leak again, this time it was the hot link to the kitchen sink, another of those pesky flexible pipes, I must have replaced nearly a dozen of them since I've been here. This one I couldn't actually replace as one end is fixed to the tap and doesn't screw off so I had to think of something else to do with it. I eventually (after turning off the hot water of course) made up some Araldite type glue and spread it all around the pipe over the small hole and about 1 inch or so above and below all round the pipe, Iet that dry, It only took 2 hours, and then applied another coating over that one, the next morning when it was all dry I added some of the plastic electrical tape round it and so far it is holding well. I think the Araldite is stronger than the original pipe anyway.
We wait till tomorrow to see if our little repair man comes through with the goods and we have a Tele again.

We attended another wedding of a friend yesterday, this time it was Cookie, one of Rose's pupils (a girl) her parents own the photo shop we use a lot so we know the family. It was a normal Chinese wedding, not so different from a UK one really I'll put some photos up later, the food was the usual piglet, all skin and no meat, lobster, soup, some shrimp type balls and some other bits I didn't recognise. Rose had a guest of honour speech which she wanted me to give, which I thought was a little pointless as no one would know what I was saying and she would have to translate anyway, besides, even though I know them, I do not know them that well. I was introduced to the president of the Macau Photographic Society, who oddly enough also owns a photo business. The other person I met was a gentleman from Germany who also is in the photo business as it appears were most of the guests.