Our apartment

Wow six weeks have passed since last writing. I am writing this whilst sitting by Hannah's second home: the playground.  It's just outside our front door in the middle of our wonderful apartment complex.
Some background first....It's common in China, no matter your wealth, that your apartment is part of a community: several buildings that are enclosed and have entrance gates. The older communities tend to allow cars to drive in and park, but newer complexes tend to have underground parking. Most have small shops dotted around providing local services like printing, laundry or vegetables.

The newest and most expensive will have luxury landscaped gardens, hedges and fountains. They tend to have less shops though which might lower the tone. It's the older ones that are most lively with the elderly and kids playing in the shade, lots of intermingling etc. However it's rare to find a combination of the new with no cars, nice gardens, fountains etc and the old with shops, atmosphere etc. Our place has that and is fairly cheap too.

What really makes it special is the playground and the lake providing a hub for kids to play. The summer which is five months of warm or hot weather feels, like a holiday. It's very green and lively and we love it. We spend quite a bit of time here and in the many local parks (for some diversity and large grass areas to sit on). Unfortunately our landlord has put the place on the market and possible buyers seem to want to live in it rather than rent it out. If we have to move we'll try to stay in the complex.

Kids have insane amounts of energy but what is amazing is how kids can spend it doing the same things all the time. Most of Hannah's time is spent in our small apartment climbing onto and off the bed or couch, playing with some toys, and just running from the one room to the other;and outside in the swing, up and down the slide, playing with puddles of water or kicking her football around. Everyone downstairs knows hannah though we don't know them! Our nanny has a wonderful job full of smiles! We get to enjoy it too on the precious weekends and evenings.

Meanwhile Hannah's slowly speaking a few more words though she understands hundreds. She's occasionally showing an attitude when she can't get what she wants (though she's easily distracted out of any mini tantrum). she's also now close to 100% using a spoon to feed herself and more confident going up stairs (though some stairs really are just too big for her without using her hands). She had a 30 second (first) dentist checkup, and has had her first proper bruises and cuts, though they all heal very quickly.

Next week is children's day though every day must seem like children's day for a 16 month old.

I voted in a Chinese election

There was a knock-on the door this morning from a volunteer. He was asking me about voting for the local residents' committee. Most communities have these: normally they don't do much, but they seem to have a small budget to fix things and maybe they are the ones arranging for the old people to help out here and then. Anyway, there are always a lot of signs in our elevator all the time from the committee with updates and things, so if nothing else they do make a lot of effort to communicate!

The volunteer pulled out a form and asked me to vote. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "i don't really know any of these people so do i have to vote? who should i vote for?"

Volunteer: "it doesn't matter, just vote for anyone".

Me: "Can you recommend any of the candidates - who is good or bad?"

Volunteer: "I don't know, you need to pick 2 of the 9 who you don't think are competent. Just pick a couple, maybe the ones in the middle, and put a cross by their name".

Me: "ok, i'll pick X and Y"

Volunteer: "good. can you write in your room number, circle option 1, 4 and 5 and also sign on behalf of your landlord"

Me: "ok"

So i have maybe contributed to ruining two people's lives by giving them a vote of no confidence. And i have voted on behalf of a landlord whom I have never met. On the plus side it seems probably no-one else knows who the 9 candidates are so it is unlikely i'll be influencing the vote -- it's going to be entirely random which ones get elected, or else the volunteers are influencing the vote by encouraging giving a no-confidence vote to the ones in the middle. Looks like the ones with names at the beginning and ends of the alphabet will get in then. Would it be any better for such a local election in the "West"? Probably not!

I wonder if they can sort out our hot water. The whole community has had no hot water for a month. It's a bit of a pain. Andrea boils water and then washes from a tub. I just have a cold shower. Our neighbors and even friends (who are lawyers) complain every day. The signs in the lobby change regularly trying to placate us and explain why this is necessary. People are not really happy. Apparently the hotel across the street is doing good business with people ganging up to rent a room to have a shower!