Can­thy and I talk sev­eral times a day, but mainly at night­time when the kids are in bed. Week­ends are our main fam­ily Skype time when things are more relaxed and Canthy’s mum comes over to help babysit. Over the last few weeks Tanya has become closer to Can­thy and wants to spend more time with her doing things. She has also become less jeal­ous of Ali­cya and is play­ing a more active role in look­ing after her as her big sis­ter. Tanya will often say to Can­thy “I miss daddy and I want to see daddy”, so it’s great that we can Skype at almost any time of the day when she misses me.

I often worry that Ali­cya doesn’t know who I am, but she seems to recog­nise me. Although she is still very young so I am not sure how much a six month old baby really knows. The coolest thing is she can now lift her body and crawl on her hands. A few weeks ago she could only crawl on her belly, so she is devel­op­ing quite quickly. Can­thy said Ali­cya is crawl­ing fast, so you can’t leave her unat­tended for a minute. I can’t wait till I am back home and get to play with my crawl­ing lit­tle baby.

It’s been a while since the view from our apart­ment has been such clear blue skies, but this is how I remem­ber Bei­jing weather use to be like. The weather toady was 30ºC, but breezy, so a lovely day to go out­side and play. As daddy was home Tanya wanted to go out boat­ing and play on the lake at Tuan­jie Hu park.

It’s been a long time since we last came here and the first time to bring both kids. Tanya is still very pos­ses­sive with her toys and clothes so its hard for her to share with Ali­cya. One of the biggest prob­lems was she wouldn’t let her sis­ter use her Stokke stroller. Every time Can­thy tried to put Ali­cya into it, Tanya would scream and stop her. So we decided to buy the Stokke Sib­ling Board, which has turned out great. Tanya now lets Ali­cya use it, as she can also ride on the board.

Can­thy told me that Tanya has been get­ting closer to her over the last few months, since I went away to work in Shen­zhen. Now instead of want­ing ayi all the time, she is aways want­ing her mummy. So now it’s “mummy mummy” and Can­thy can’t get any rest, but she said she would change it for the world.

Tanya likes dri­ving the boat, but her favourite activ­ity is feed­ing the fish and ducks. The lake have thou­sand of golden koi carp that swim up to the boat when you feed them. I have to hold Tanya in case she falls in, as she always leans out too far as she is totally absorbed in feed­ing the fish food. I keep telling her to be care­ful incase she falls in and then she will become fish food and be eaten by the fish I prob­a­bly shouldnt scare her like that, as you never know what young kids remem­ber as they get older.

The other rea­son Tanya likes to go boat­ing is because of the food served at the restau­rant next to the park. It serves the best Shang­hai Hong Xiao Rou which Tanya loves. I also tell Can­thy we are going for Tanya, but actu­ally I enjoy the boat­ing and the food as much as Tanya if not more.

I was telling Can­thy it’s a “bum­mer” hav­ing to work the week­end but she didn’t under­stand the Eng­lish expres­sion. So I had to explain that it means “dis­ap­point­ing” or “a pity” that I couldn’t fly back to Bei­jing ear­lier for the May Day hol­i­day. Can­thy knew the word “bum” so sent me a pic­ture of Alicya’s fat bot­tom, which made me laugh. Can­thy is still breast feed­ing five or six times dur­ing the day and night, which is why Ali­cya is grow­ing so fast and strong. She’ll be five months old in a few days time, but as I am fly­ing back to Bei­jing tonight, I cant wait to hold Ali­cya her and squeeze her bum

Next week it’s May Day so there is a three-day pub­lic hol­i­day in China. How­ever to get the hol­i­day the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment makes you work the week­end before, so it’s a bit of a con. Work­ing on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day never feels right, but one con­so­la­tion is the cam­pus is nice envi­ron­ment to work in. So at lunchtime I took time out and went for a walk around the lake. The air qual­ity is Shen­zhen is so much cleaner and fresher than Bei­jing and the smell of the trees and plants are quite strong around the cam­pus. I might have to work at the week­end, but I think myself lucky that I can take time out to smell the flowers.

What orig­i­nally drew my atten­tion to this bill­board was the paint­ing of the old Chi­nese horse-drawn car­riage and the tri­cy­cle parked in front of it. I thought the idea of show­ing the ancient trans­port with the more mod­ern pedal pow­ered made an inter­est­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion. When I first came to China in the late 1980s the cycle still dom­i­nated the roads and more than 90% of the traf­fic was bicy­cles. Nowa­days the traf­fic is 90% cars with fewer and few pedal cycles. I’d love to find my old pho­tos from that period, but I think they are in stor­age some­where in the UK prob­a­bly at my par­ents house. So next time I go back to the UK I will try to dig them out. As Can­thy is often ask­ing to see old pho­tos of me from my first trip to Bei­jing in 1988.

The week after cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, Britain’s most dec­o­rated Olympian and six-time Olympic cham­pion retired from the sport, I have started cycling again at the gym. I’d for­got­ten how hard it is, so I can’t imag­ine how much train­ing and effort is required to get to Olympic stan­dard. The spin­ning bikes recently arrived at the gym on cam­pus, but there aren’t any classes which I am use to doing. So I have made my own music com­pi­la­tion and put on my Jabra wire­less head­phones and do my own class by myself. I prob­a­bly look a bit strange, but it feels great to do spin­ning again. The only prob­lem is the bikes like most of the equip­memt in the gym is not very good. But it’s the only gym around for miles so its bet­ter than nothing.

Many years ago when I first heard about “Sec­re­taries Day” I thought some­one was jok­ing, as I didn’t remem­ber it being a spe­cial day in the UK. The hol­i­day orig­i­nated from the US but has become part of the cor­po­rate cul­ture in Chi­nese com­pa­nies. Although it’s not an off­i­cal pub­lic hol­i­day, so they still have to work, I think the sec­re­taries gets gifts or bonuses. We had a fruit party for our team sec­re­taries, which made them feel spe­cial and appre­ci­ated. As often their work goes unno­ticed, but if they weren’t there we would soon notice and miss them.

I’ve been eat­ing can­teen food for months, so I have a few favourites that I like but I am often still not sure what’s in them. It can be hard to know what meat you are eat­ing or whether its chicken or duck. With all the food scares in China I often avoid the meat dishes and try to get tofu or some­thing more veg­e­tar­ian. The can­teen is self-service with thou­sands of peo­ple being served, so you don’t have time to ask the servers too many ques­tions, as the line of peo­ple moves so fast, you just have to grab what you can and hope for the best. It’s trial and error, especilaly for for­eign­ers, but as there is nowhere else to eat you soon get use to whats on the menu.

I always know when I have left Bei­jing and landed back in Shen­zhen because the first thing you notice is how crappy the taxis are. The city is one of the rich­est cities in China with a pop­u­la­tion of over 10 mil­lion peo­ple and some of the most mod­ern and tallest build­ings in the main­land. Yet despite this a large major­ity of its taxis are old, filthy dirty with these metal grills across the cab. I always have to decide whether it’s safer to sit in the front, where there will be a seat­belt. But if you crashed you would whiplash the back of your head on the metal grille. Or sit in the back where there is no seat­belt but some­times feels safer. At night­time the front feels safer as the taxis drive faster, but day­time I pre­fer the back seat. Bei­jing use to have the same prob­lem with these old style taxis, but they got rid of them back in 2008 before the Olympic games. Unfor­tu­nately Shen­zhen still has them and I can’t see them being phased out any­time soon.

Another day and another visit to the hos­pi­tal as Ali­cya had a slight tem­per­a­ture and her face had swollen up. I told Can­thy is was noth­ing to worry about, but she insisted we go back the hos­pi­tal again. When we got there I thought I heard our doc­tor say “you lai le”, which means “you’ve come again” but appar­ently I heard it wrong. Although I think Can­thy has prob­a­bly been to the hos­pi­tal almost every­day this week, but with two sick kids to look after on her own its bet­ter to be safe than sorry. Our doc­tor (called Ray­mond) checked Ali­cya and told us the swelling and rise in tem­per­a­ture was prob­a­bly a minor reac­tion to the antibi­otics but noth­ing to worry about. It was good to know and he put Canthy’s mind at rest so she left the hos­pi­tal feel­ing relived, relaxed and happy. Which is why every­body loves Dr Raymond.

Tanya’s symp­toms got worse, as she was cough­ing and being sick and hav­ing trou­ble breath­ing. Her fever was over 39C, so Can­thy rushed her back to the hos­pi­tal. She called me in tears and I did my best to calm her down. After more tests, they con­firmed that Tanya had pneu­mo­nia which was prob­a­bly caused by bac­te­ria or a virus. Can­thy asked the doc­tor to call me and explain and he said, it’s com­mon for chil­dren under five to get this. It called “walk­ing pneu­mo­nia”, as the patient can still move around is not con­fined to bed with the more deadly type of this virus.

For­tu­nately it’s not too seri­ous and a course of antibi­otics should clear it up within in a week. I tried to be philo­soph­i­cal and told Can­thy not to worry, as there are many chil­dren with far worse ill­nesses, so we are lucky. But Can­thy reminded me she is a “mother” who has “two sick babies” to deal with on her own. Being two thou­sand miles away when your kids are sick and your wife is stressed makes you feel help­less. But at least we have full med­ical insur­ance, with inter­na­tional lev­els of cov­er­age which is very impor­tant in China. Also as they attend the United Fam­ily Hos­pi­tal, which is the best inter­na­tional pri­vate hos­pi­tal in Bei­jing, which gives me some com­fort and peace of mind.

Update on Ali­cya: The poor lit­tle girl has also been put on antibi­otics as she has a seri­ous urine infec­tion, which is what was caus­ing her fever. Hope­fully now Tanya and Ali­cya are on med­ica­tion, they should both recover quite soon.