A busy term is coming to an end :)

Well I can't believe that we are only 4 weeks away from our Christmas and New Year holidays, this half term is the longest of the year, but it has sure flown by :) I have had reports to write, parents evenings to do and planning to hone... so I have been busy at work so this has helped it to go fast. In fact I even took part in a charity event one Sunday where I took a one and a half hour stint in goal for a "beat the teacher" game. We raised a lot of money and it was actually quite fun in the end!! But all these things have been things I have worked up to and now passed; the final big hurdle of the year is the Christmas performance..... I hope I can take to that last hurdle Colin Jackson style and go into the Christmas holidays ready to chill out. I have orgaised a trip to Thailand for Chrimstmas and New Year, with a stopover first in Hong Kong to meet up with Jessica. It's a 3 week holiday in total, and it should be a pretty good one!! I am meeting Paul in Thailand, a good friend from Taiwan. He should show me a rope or two in Thailand, as I am a bit of a Thailand virgin (errrr...meaning I haven't been there!). As long as it involves laying on a beach at some point I don't mind what we do, but 3 weeks of slopping around in flip flops and shorts can never be bad.

Recently I have been testing out some of the nightlife that Guangzhou has to offer, and found some pretty cool places. I really like going out dancing, so night clubs were high on the list of things to discover. I have been to two good clubs here... one is called Velvet, and is a weird concept for a night club, but it works surprisingly well. I think mainly because the music is usually pretty good. None of this pop songs made to sound like dance tracks rubbish :) It is basically a large room with a large bar in the middle of the room. The dance floor is effectively anywhere around the perimeter of the bar, in fact there is probably more space used up for the bar than for the dance floor. Then there are stairs up to a balcony that acts as a more conventional dance floor. It sounds weird, but it actually works really well. Both times i have been there I have had a lot of fun and danced non stop pretty much the whole night..... they also put on these "shows" on the bar, with maybe dancers dressed up as a cop and a "naughty woman who must be punished", or a dancer wearing a crazy wedding dress.... I think this is their attempt to send out the cool vibe, but I usually find these moments a distraction from the music and dancing. But all in all Velvet is pretty good. Then I have been to BabyFace, a far more conventional club with two areas.... a techno dance floor and a r'n'b type deal on another dance floor. The music was good but not as interesting as in Velvet, each track was too similiar and for some reason it just didn't flow as well. But anyway, there were a lot of people and it was still good. I will have to go there again to test the waters a second time. Another place I have been to is called Tang, it is a latin music style dance club, they have a live latin band and all that. The actual building is very spectacular and well designed, but I just can't handle a whole night of off beat latin music and old dudes bumping into you on the dance floor whilst attempting to recreate a latin dance!! It is novel for a few hours at the start of the night but thats about as far as it goes :) Now, I have explained some good experiences in Guangzhou whilst out on the town, now here is one that wasn't soo hot! Before I start I would like to say it was a good job I was with some cool people this night or I would have been so up the creek without a paddle. Well, this place is called the Wave Bar... and as soon as you walked in the place you felt like you were in some scene from the 80's. The walls were mirrored and the music was loud and too commercial. We ordered our drinks and went upstairs, now this really did take me into a world of 80's excess... there was a small circular stage with a scantily clad woman dancing and singing karaoke. Her stage was lined with stools with men perched on enjoying the show. You look around and the other tables dont have single drinks on like they would back home, they all have bottles of Jack D's, Vodka whatever.... the feeling of excess is in the air. OK alot of places in China are similiar but I think the decor just made it feel wrong... and the music was unforgivable. You see bars are easy for me, I can enjoy myself at most bars as long as they aren't too noisy. But for me Nightclubs are all about the music, I just can't enjoy myself in a club that churns out dance tracks that are essentially massacered pop tunes...aarrgghhh!

I have also sampled the delights of KTV here, which turned out to be indenticle to Taiwan, in fact the company that owned the KTV I went to here is Taiwanese! It was an all night affair from 1-6am. It was fun, but basically consisted of me trying to pull off too many cool sounding Robbie Williams songs (English songs are limited as you can imagine). You are in a small room with your friends, with a TV and a Karaoke system. This was a little crazy as it included a buffet... I arrived at 1am, and people were still eating.... this was a real Chin moment :)