2017 Christmas Letter
22/12/17 11:18 Filed in: Christmas Letters
Dear all,
To sum up the year, it’s another mixed bag of happiness and sadness. There’s always changes and, thankfully, people helping me along, for which I’m always grateful.
Our Toastmaster club celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. That was a happy occasion. The club relocated to new premises at the beginning of the year (and dealing with the catering company Sodexo which supplies our food). Those were not happy occasions. The catering manager had better not try and find a job in the F&B section of the hotel industry. However, from that meeting I met a new guest who turned into a member and with her help and encouragement, I am now a qualified trainer and assessor, able to teach at vocational training institutions.
This helps supplement my IT business, which has seen a small, positive growth this year, owing to some of my great client(s). The year didn’t start off well for the business when one of the clients wanted me to provide my services for him until we see positive results, which could be months. I refused and, come to think of it, I haven’t heard from him since then!
Uber driving is still interesting, most of the time. The winter months are quite boring as business is slow and so there’s not many people to talk to. But as my IT side of the business picks up, I have reduced the number of hours I drive and surprisingly, I’ve found that I’ve picked up “better” riders. I have now garnered 5-stars ratings for a consecutive 8-9 weeks. I still enjoy stopping to take photos of Sydney.
Teaching is kinda fun. Most of the time it’s quite frustrating. You should have seen or met the students I had. If today’s youths are tomorrow’s leaders, well, I don’t think we have much hope from this bunch. With this lot, I fear for the survival of our modern civilisation.
My apps are selling well! At the end of last year, I had 5 app which sold a total of 23 copies. Currently I have 8 apps which sold a total of 105 copies. Not enough to retire…not even enough for pocket money but the figures are encouraging. Hopefully my brain will work better next year and I’ll come up with some more ideas for other apps.
Dad’s 2 CDs are getting played more at steaming music services like Apple Music and Spotify and they actually sold a few songs! I kept wondering if Dad would have approved of this, but this is the only way I can think of keeping his recordings alive for the future. Thanks to the internet, his music are broadcasted through out the world, which they would not have previously, so I guess it can’t be a bad thing.
The family is fine, mostly. The most asked is, of course, “How’s mum?”. Mum is well, for her age. She still doesn’t need to take any medication. Her memory and sciatica is getting worse. She moves much slower these days and to see her from being able to walk on her own a couple of years ago to needing to hold onto someone when we go out, saddens me. I know, it’s called ageing.
For various reasons, I started to have heart palpitations. So I went to get it checked out. Basically, the cardiologist told me I’m fine. When I came out, people asked me “Well? Is it serious?” and I told them I needed open heart surgery. Then nobody believes me! Very strange.
On a very sad note, one of my favourite cousins, William, passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was one of the very few people who actually read my Christmas letters. Even rarer, he was one of the very few who would take the time to reply to me after reading them. He was always generous and kind to me. When I was working in Hong Kong many years ago, whenever I needed help, he would offer his assistance.
10 years ago, the first Father’s Day after dad left us, I was transiting in Hong Kong, waiting for my flight to come back to Sydney. Somehow we started emailing each other and I told him that it was Father’s Day but I don’t have my dad to wish a Happy Father’s Day to anymore. He wrote back with comforting words and for about half an hour after we were just emailing back and forth, talking about my dad.
William was cheeky, funny, with a great sense of humour. I loved watching him teasing his nephews and nieces. Yet a few years ago, I found out he was also very conservative with some of the very traditional Chinese values and customs - we were in Hong Kong and over the phone, he apologised for not having the chance to come (we just couldn’t tee up the time to meet) and pay his respects to mum.
That’s what I liked about him. He told me back in 2011 that he was “honoured” that he was mentioned in my 2011 Christmas letter. Every year after sending my Christmas letter, I would look forward to receiving and reading his reply. It always made my day when they finally arrived in my Inbox.
Sadly, he won’t get to read this letter in which he featured quite prominently (and most probably not for the reason he’d preferred) or any of the letters in future and I won’t be getting any more of his replies.
For me, visiting Hong Kong now will always be with a sense of loss.
Vale, brother William. I will miss you.
I made three trips overseas this year. Two of the three trips was visiting family and family, getting together, mini-reunions.
We met up with my uncle and cousin in Genting Highlands (Malaysia) for some eating and gambling. For those who don’t know Genting Highlands, it is a mountain full of casinos.
The second trip was to Xian, China, to visit the Terracotta Warriors. We flew via Shanghai to Xian instead of going via Hong Kong normally. BIG mistake!
We had a fairly good time in Shanghai. We met up with my cousin Robert’s son, Robin, and his wife, who are expats working in China. The last time
I saw Robin, he was about 2 or 3 years old! 2 months after meeting them, I got upgraded to “Grand Uncle Bevan”. How about that? Yes, I’m reminded again I’m getting old.
We visited the Peace Hotel and watched the Old Jazz Band performed. Here’s a video of mum enjoying the music. All these years growing old in a music household and she still can’t get the rhythm right. Please press the “Play / Pause” button to start / stop the video.
Other than that, I really don’t like China.
But I love Xian. More accurately, I love the Terracotta Warriors Museum and one of the staff at the hotel!
There were so many tourists so early in the morning and I had to wedge my way through the crowd to get to the side railings. I was not expecting much, just some old statues standing around - boring stuff.
Then I saw them.
These lifelike statues, built 2200 years ago. I looked at the floor…that was built 2200 years ago. 8000 statues estimated, they’ve only discovered about 2000(?) and rebuilt at a pace of about 5-6 statues a year - many of these are destroyed and the workers have to put them back piece by piece like jigsaw puzzles. I remember posting on Facebook and using a word I very rarely use, as it’s overused by so many people these days: amazing!
I took lots of photos and I put them together as a slideshow. Click here if you are interested. Be warned, it’s about 15 minutes long.
However, I am not happy with some of the photos and the slideshow so I will be going BACK again next year to take more photos and improve on my slideshow!
I met this very nice lady at the hotel named Emma. It’s because of her that I had a chance to try out some of the more famous cocktails which I often heard about but wasn’t game to try. She reduced the alcohol content so I probably still didn’t taste the REAL taste of these cocktails (and not get drunk!) but at least I had an idea.
Our yearly Hong Kong / Taipei trip was a bit special this year, marked by the 10th and 25th anniversaries of my friendship with a few people whom I met at certain important junctures of my life - 25 years ago I lived and worked briefly in Hong Kong, 10 years ago I started staying at my favourite hotel in Taipei. It was very nice to be able to keep in touch and managed to meet up on our anniversary year. It was one of the icings on the cake for this trip. The other icing on the cake: We had another mini cousins reunion. We didn’t spend as much time this time as we all had busy schedules but we made sure we always got together for dinner and that was always fun. We had so much fun we didn’t take a proper group photo! ☹️
While in Taipei, we visited the National Palace Museum. The last time I visited this place was in 1978 so I don’t remember much. This time, I took lots of photos. If you haven’t been, but interested in Chinese history and culture, I highly recommend visiting this place. Of special interest, is this priceless piece of jade called “翠玉白菜” or “Jadeite Cabbage”:
Google it, it’s fascinating.
Last but not least, Kismet. She really is a sweet cat. On days I am home late, apparently she would be quite restless until I got home, then she’d jump up on the seat next to me and kept me company while I ate dinner, like “ahhh, everyone is home”.
That’s it from me for this year. This year marks the 10th anniversary of dad’s passing. I still miss him.
For all of us missing a parent, a sibling, a life partner, a relative, a friend, I thought this song might be suitable: “You’re All I Want For Christmas” by Bing Crosby.
For all that I’ve been through this year, I wish you all, a Very Healthy and Safe Christmas.
Your friend,
Bevan
