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My mother has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, she is 84.You are never too old to get breast cancer. She has Paget’s disease of the breast, see below for more informationhttp://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/Cancertype/Breast/Typesofbreastcancer/PagetsdiseaseI am going back to UK on 27th February with Dave who is going for a meeting. I will go to my Mum’s and…

Happy New Year! Chinese Style, New Years day was on Sunday 18th Feb. It is a very big holiday here with most businesses closed for at least 4 days, some 5 and some, like the post office, closed for 9 days! Dave has had the week off and we have done some stuff but really…

I can’t believe it is almost 3 months since I last updated this diary, but here we are in Taipei now and everything has just been so busy. Anyway, I will snatch a few minutes this morning before we go off to our Mandarin class to do at least one small update.We are now living…

I feel I need to explain as this seems to be common problem for nations as well as ordinary people.Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China. China is known as the Peoples Republic of China. These two countrys are entirely seperate.Taiwan gained its independance from China in 1947 when Chang Ky Shek exiled himself and…

Apparently their was an earthquake here last Thursday, 25th Jan., I had no idea until someone told me on Monday, it was 5 point something on the Richter scale!Everyone says you don’t worry about these things as they are a fairly common occurrence here! If you look at the island of Taiwan, formerly Formosa, you…

I have been here just over a week and am settling in ok. I started the week on Monday with a mandarin lesson. Dave had signed me up so we went together, no I don’t think I will be fluent anytime soon, it is another tonal language like Thai, only mandarin has four tones instead…

Look who is back! I have had a busy few months and will no doubt be writing about it all soon. For now, I am here in Taipei, I arrived a week ago tomorrow and am still trying to get myself into a regular sleeping pattern. It seems to get harder as I get older.…

As you may have guessed from my lack of posting, I went abroad for the holidays. My destination was the UK to be re-uinted with immediate and not-so-immediate family that I see on rare occasions. The two weeks I spent with them was lovely. I caught up with cousins I haven’t seen in a decade…

All good things come to an end, and next w/e we leave Bangkok. Tonight is our final farewell party (we had one before, for my work – this one is for all the rest of Bangkok (Tricia’s friends)). We have had a great time here, but are looking forward to the year end festivities in…

It is almost time for me to leave this beautiful country and I am very sad and full of regrets at not having done a lot of things; such as help with Soi Dog Rescue www.soidogrescue.org It is an organisation that works to help the soi or street dogs. They are abandoned dogs that of…