Bye bye Moratti!!!!

For once a good morning after some elections in Italy.. for once..

click the image, for Italians 🙂

Too much hoping that this is a the dawn for a new political season in Italy.. but still, a good way to start a morning.. in China!!!

Go Barça!!

Even if I had been blown off from my plans for the Champion’s league final night, I had decided it would have been stupid to cancel all the plans for watching a probably good football match..

So after a reasonably good and very filling dinner with 潘蕾 at a 39rmb Brasilian bbq place (free flow German beer included) I went to Madison, probably my favorite bar in town, where I watched several world cup matches last year..

Knowing one friend was going to be there at least for a beer (but not for the night) was a good motivations for heading to the center in the night of Saturday. And it was a good choice! As usual, I like the time I spend at Madison. Easy to relax, easy to chat with people (broken English better than no English.. or talking to myself!), very nice atmosphere and very enjoyable music. Also they got now (since Melody is in Australia) two live singers. One is an extremely pretty young girl with a wonderful voice and the other one is a guy who plays the guitar and sing. A pity he only plays Chinese songs, but he is very good as well!

Always a pleasure to meet Hubert too, a friend met during the World League nights. Funny story: it was a Friday to Saturday night and  I had a 4am train to Hangzhou for an Aikido weekend. So what best place than Madison for killing the time waiting for going to the train station? Around 2am there were not many people left there waiting for the last evening match (9pm in South Africa/Europe) so I was sitting alone at a table with my beer, when Hubert told to one of the guys working at Madison, who also speaks English, to tell me to join him at his table.. And then we met several other times, in Madison, often playing dice-games.. 🙂

The only difficult part of the evening has been the time between 00:30 and 2am. Drinking and talking with Hubert, relaxing with the music, watching some of the people always there playing pool has been a good entertainment until midnight.. Even after meeting a new guy with a strong interest of Italian football, and in particular for my same favorite team, Juventus, the last minutes before CCTV5 started sending the path of the 2 teams toward Wembley had been hard. Not falling asleep was the first priority! And the sleep disappeared completely once the TV started showing Barça and ManU matches of this year Champion’s League. Too long time since last that I watched football!

Then the match was as many saw it, everywhere in the world.. just great!

Final note: Italian super-cup between Milan AC and Inter Milan will be played in.. Beijing!!! Several Chinese are waiting for the event, and this time I am quite happy that I will be able to watch it at a normal.. time of the day!! 😉

Sunrise..

sunrise,
by ..AikiDude in China...

..on my way back home after watching Champion’s league 2011 great final match between Barça and ManU..

Thanks to Madison people and bar and both teams too for a very nice night..

I might be boring, but I do not see any reason for not living my life as I want and doing my things as I planned.. alone if I have to.. but I know I’ll meet eventually people..

And the choice was right!

Blown off

I have been wondering before and I am getting further confirm that I must be a quite boring person.

I first thought it was something related to China, but then I let my memories run in the past years of my Norwegian life and got no strong argument against that!

Most of the time people was (and actually is) looking for me mostly for Aikido related things, events, evenings, and so on..

I have never been a party animal, and I will certainly not become one with the age, but realizing that I am basically only asked for Aikido stuff by Aikido people was a little hurting.. Not too surprising, but a little sad!

So once more tonight I have been blown off by a colleague. A couple of weeks ago we planned to go together to watch the Champion’s League final to some bar in the center. Given the time difference, the final will start around 3am here. Therefore this is not usually a thing to do alone, especially for the difficulty to kill the time until 3am!! But yesterday he told me he cannot watch the match with me, because his mother his visiting him this weekend.

Some weeks ago I had a few alternatives about this very weekend: I was unsure if staying in Hefei for watching the match with this colleague or plan an Aikido trip to Hangzhou. Given that the next 2 weekends I will be (finally) traveling again for Aikido (Beijing and Kyoto), I thought it could have been funny to spend a different Saturday in Hefei with this colleague of mine that also likes football, and that also speaks good English!

So one could say I decided to stay mostly because of what I had organized with him.

Blackouts

Almost once per week we experienced a full blackout at work: a complete cut of the electricity supply concerning not only the office building but all the other lab as well, clean rooms and mechanical facilities.

The previous weeks usually it was happening around the closing of the working day, unexpected and unannounced, until it came an explanation from the city government: in the area where my company is located there is too much power usage, therefore the electricity was cut off. Yes, just like that!

Now, take a look at google maps, it seems we are in the middle of the countryside and nothing else is around, even the road is a dead end one. The first part of the sentence is true, we are quite far off the center. Then the second part of the sentence is partly true: almost everything around us in under construction, with one huge factory in front of us (for computers!) and several apartment buildings in the area, together with a couple of established other factories. And the road is far from being a dead end one: it is a triple lane per direction!

It is also true the google map is not so good for this part of China: Baidu map is a little better, more updated..

This week though the power cut was for once planned in advance and Tuesday ended up being a day off. That is why today it is a working day. Hoping that the city will not decide to cut again suddenly the power..

I wonder what will happen soon that the AC system will restart because of the summer temperatures!

Difficult to work in an electronic industry company without.. electricity!!

Fuel me up..

Fuel me up..,
by ..AikiDude in China...

Very funny drawing, not so uncommon on car in China.. especially Japanese or Korean cars! Unfortunately I am not sure what it is written 🙂

Sunset over Nan Yan lake

sunset over Nan Yan lake,
by ..AikiDude in China...

The past days the weather was quite winter like: cloudy, rainy, cold: when you get used to 30++ then the common spring/summer Norwegian weather becomes suddenly too cold!!

But then yesterday evening the sun finally found its way through the clouds, and I was lucky to capture a nice reflection in Nan Yan lake, straight in front of my living place..

Today the temperature is again getting up..