So in just a week or two, Hannah will take her first long-distance flight to Germany and then hop on her first low-cost flight to Luton. I wonder which will be more enjoyable. In fact, the cost for the infant ticket on the "low-cost" flight is almost the same as the cost for the infant ticket on the long haul flight since the "low-cost" airlines have fixed fares for infants of around 20-30 euros (and the long-haul flights charge around 10% of the adult fare).
I'm sure she will enjoy all the attention and seeing so many new things; she will hopefully enjoy the two dogs (one in germany and one, about one tenth the size, in england); and she'll probably enjoy the cooler weather. It's a solid 30+ degrees here which is nice when there is blue sky and fresh air and a breeze, but otherwise it's not nice, especially at night when it's around 26 degrees and sticky, and often we can't even open the window since the pollution is so bad we need to run our air purifier machine inside (and then revert to using a fan or a/c).
We've all but given up on her crawling - even though the "average" age for crawling is not till 8-9 months and Hannah is still only 6 months. She really is not interested in even trying any more (she was a couple of months ago!). Instead she just loves standing and "walking". She can support her own body weight, but she falls over immediately unless we're holding her, or she is holding onto the side of her cot for support. But if we do hold her, she does try to walk. It's still a way away yet though, she really has no balance at all, and cannot pull herself up to a standing position. It's still lots of fun playing with her in the mornings before work.
The last month has gone fairly quickly. There was another trip to the Great Wall with a colleague; an event on sustainable agriculture that I organized; quite a lot of football in the evenings and outdoor eatings with friends as well as trips to parks at weekends. Andrea took her a business trip leaving the baby behind for a couple of days and everything was fine (well, the nanny takes care of her during the daytime as usual and in the evenings i just need to feed the baby occasionally).
China is all funny because of this upcoming leadership transition. Still no date set for the marathon (it's normally around the time of the annual political congress and starts right outside parliament) as i imagine there are heated discussions about moving the date or the starting point. But it would be nice if they could decide earlier rather than later! As politicians play safe and try to keep everything low-key so the transition is smooth, the public don't seem to be listening. Using social media more and more. Deciding to speak up for their rights, protest (small scale), and so on. So it's a funny situation - amplified compared to usual.
Ultimately, as I may have explained before China has to choose: The British way or the Other way. And by that I mean giving away political power voluntarily and smoothly and in a controlled way as Britain did over a period of 100 years or so (from around 1812 onwards) or suffering some form of revolution (or more than one) as most other countries experienced. I hope it is the former, but working out the speed of change is tricky (they don't have 100 years that's for sure with today's information flows and the high expectations of its citizens). Hopefully the new leadership will recognize this - if they want to stay in power they need to give away some power. If they don't trust their citizens, their citizens won't trust them. And that is a recipe for... well, something that much of Europe seems to be facing at the moment!
What a mess Europe seems to be. Let's just hang around and do nothing meaningful for 5 years shall we? Talk about putting a patch on a punctured tyre. This is one tyre that needs to be replaced. As any good cyclist will tell you - a few patches in different places on a tyre may be ok, but once you need to start putting patches on top of other patches, and once you have a tyre that resembles a patchwork quilt it is really time to sort out that tyre properly. And until you do, that bike is not going to be going anywhere very fast (and trust me, I had to cycle 5 miles on a flat tyre 2 weeks ago and it took 3 times longer than normal!) - and the front tyre (to keep the analogy going, we could call that Germany) was fine, but it didn't really make any difference to my speed.
Anyway, hope to see some Europe based readers of this blog soon!
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