Newsletter: 2006[2007]/ [2006] / [2005] / [2004]
2006 has been a steady move up for me – some focus on the career and future possibilities – whilst taking some brilliant holidays in between!
Busy season at work went by much more smoothly than the previous year. I had one week of overtime overkill, all made worse by the car getting towed away by evil Westminster Council at the end of the week. However, the other weeks went by fairly pain-free and I celebrated at the end of March with a trip to New York and The Bahamas. In New York I met up with cousin Mark and friends
Dave Kang, Elina and Andy Yang from my various study phases – Brown, Taiwan ShiDa and Oxford respectively. I also took advantage of the sterling-dollar exchange rate – at last a justification
for mass shopping! <photo: at the Empire State Building>
The
Bahamas (Nassau) was beautiful – white sandy beaches, clear blue water, fresh
seafood. The perfect romantic holiday. Unfortunately not so romantic for me - I
was somewhat the gooseberry because Lillian and her friend were joined by their other halves in the second half of the holiday! Still, I returned home very relaxed and found it hard to resist falling back into ‘Bahamian’ time.
<photo: the Sandyport Beach resort in the Bahamas>After a quick visit to Switzerland to visit Cheltenham friend Vicky, my next task was to prepare for my 25th birthday party. I managed to avoid any clashes with World Cup matches and held an afternoon pop-in party at home, with some silly fun and games, including my very own invention - the "Where's Wally" game. Thanks to all of you for coming, particularly to Ermanno for coming over from Italy! And for the team who won by claiming to have found Wally, but in actual fact had found the Wizard / Wanda / Dog / anything that looked like Wally - I hope you can live with your guilty consciences!
My next trip was back to Hong Kong in July, this time with boyfriend Hugh in tow. He had already had a screening by the parents, but this time it was the extended family – aunties, uncles, grandma and cousins. As his reward for charming them all and staving off golf for an entire week, we went to see some great sights of Hong Kong that even I rarely see, such as Tai Mo Shan and Shek O.
The second half of the year saw the return to exam mode in preparation for the final case study. It was a lot less intense than my previous year of summer hell, going in and out of college for only 3 days at a time normally. I had a sort of ‘last supper’ holiday at the end of September, before the final onslaught of revision hit home. I went to Tunisia with uni friend Suzie, and basked on a beach most of the time. We took trips to El Djem (famous roman amphitheatre) and local town Sousse, had a few massages and had a rather strange Turkish bath. Best memory will be of a gentlemen trying his best to sell me a plastic beaded bracelet as ‘Traditional Tunisian pearl and Berber silver’.
<photo: El Djem>
It wasn’t too long after
my Tunisia holiday that I took another trip, straight after the case study exam. I flew Air China to Beijing to see Hugh, who was taking a 3-month course in beginners’ Mandarin. We took an overnight train to DaTong, to see the famous hanging monastery and Yunguang caves. They were both spectacular sights, with the blistering winds and cold only adding to the effect. We also had a mini-Oxford reunion with Elhum, who was also backpacking. Eating, shopping, bargaining and watching episodes of Sex and the City were the other main events.
<photo: with Hugh at the Temple of Heaven, Beijing>