Temeraire
Temeraire: Black Powder War
Temeraire (who is a dragon and a major part of the British Aerial Corps during the Napoleonic Wars) has made an extremely dangerous enemy; another dragon, who no longer has anything to lose. When Temeraire and his captain, Laurence, are recalled to Britain via Instanbul – where several precious eggs are in need of collection.
Due to transport difficulties, the party much travel overland with a guide who is half Nepalese and all too secretive. The land itself creates enormous difficulties, as do the locals – including a band of wild dragons.
When the group finally reaches Istanbul things just get worse. The eggs are there, but there has been some kind of major miscommunication and it is unclear if the eggs were ever truly intended for Britain or simply used as a lure. They are imprisoned within the palace complex, and their fate – and the fate of the eggs Britain so desperately needs – is unclear. Temeraire’s enemy has travelled ahead of them, sowing poison every step of the way.
This is a brilliant book – they all are. At this point it is sometimes hard to be sympathetic to Laurence’s superiors who are constantly screwing him around (and are, let’s face it, somewhat Imperialistic). The frustration of the characters transfers a little too well to the reader. A lot of the action and danger is indirect or physically distant, which does weaken it. But the relationship between Temeraire and Laurence continues to grow and develop (rather dangerously, because Temeraire’s ideas about society are quite sensible, but revolutionary), and it never stops being fascinating.
Rating: PG for battle violence
Free sample (as a captain, Laurence is responsible for the education of his younger crewmen):
Granby sat Roland and Dyer down to practice their penmanship by the firelight while Laurence attempted to make out their attempts at trigonometry. These, having been carried out in mid-air and with the slates subject to all the force3 of the wind, posed quite a serious challenge, but he was glad to see at least their calculations no longer produced hypotenuses shorter than the other sides of their triangles.
Kong Fu: Cheung Chau Island
Cheung Chau Island has no cars, which SOUNDS like a haven of peace and gentle living. Not so. There are bicycle hoons everywhere, and the select few with licenses to drive a “cart” (a kind of quad bike with the volume of a Harley and a similar effect on conversation in the immediate vicinity) seem to be everywhere.
We ate lunch by the harbour, and they were passing constantly.
It is, however, packed with gorgeous narrow alleyways.
And islands are just always cool.
Narrow alleyway #2
Bonus door in wall (below), followed by paper dim sum (burning paper items gives them to ancestors in the afterlife – you can buy paper houses, massage chairs, iphones, etc).
The below ferry took us from the middle of the island to the pirate cave end (saving us a walk, which was handy since the walk over that end of the island was quite steep for ladies who’ve recently had babies).
Graffiti is always cooler in Chinese, and cooler still on bamboo.
Lonely Planet described the pirate cave as “a hole in the rock” so when we saw some Chinese graffiti indicating an EXTREMELY narrow cleft between two hunks of rock, we thought we’d found the alleged cave. I call this picture “Me and my pirate hoard”. We’ve trying to make it look like it goes back further, but we’re in as deep as we could get.
hh
This photo with Bil (having some formatting problems, sorry) was the real cave. If one was a spelunker (which one is not), one could go quite far inside. So. . . that was our pirate cave.
But the whole end of the island was gorgeous, and well worth the trip.
PS
All day today I’ve been so tired that I honestly am at the point where I lie down and feel like I need to hold on. The whole world is swaying gently from side to side. I can see it and feel it, and closing my eyes doesn’t help. Oh well. It doesn’t feel too bad, but I am officially Not Safe to Look After The Child Unsupervised, and have made sure CJ knows it.
I just had a nap of 1.5 hours, and was then sick.
A small defiant part of me wants to breastfeed on the Great Wall of China. I shall almost certainly have my chance next week, and I intend to take it.
I also had a genius idea for an original new children’s picture book. Hush hush, of course, since it’s all in the concept.
Look! A random picture from tomorrow’s entry!
I got you, babe: baby on the move
Wow. Hong Kong and two months old. Louisette is doing amazingly well, although of course she has some bad times. She keeps getting super tired, but everything is so INTERESTING she gets all excited and wakes up. When breastfeeding (or bottle feeding for that matter) she lacks a certain focus, too, which is a problem.
This is the starbucks at Kowloon harbour just a little way down a street that has a Maccers on the harbourside corner. I was so impressed at having found a relatively discreet location that we went there on both our way in and our way out (both times there were girls on the most inside booth, which was fine, but the second time there were also some gentlemen – who were kind enough to move when I asked them too).
And that’s as racy as my blogly breastfeeding photos are going to get 🙂
Louisette really doesn’t deal with having a blanket over her face particularly well, and she often gets painful wind during a feed, so ultimately it just doesn’t work. I had CJ hold up the wrap like a curtain whenever I needed it. On the planes, I simply didn’t bother – and that worked a lot better. If anyone asked me to breastfeed, I would say no. Until Louisette was born, only CJ had ever seen my breasts. I’m so sad to have lost that, and only Louisette’s ignorance makes it okay.
My breasts are a lot less painful since accepting that formula was always going to be necessary (and letting Louisette demand feed instead of trying to stimulate milk production by constant feeding and expressing) but unfortunately it is clear that I’m one of those women for whom the body’s milk production process will always be painful. Yay me. . .
Kong Fu: Day Two in Hong Kong
I really should be asleep right now, so let’s make it snappy.
Today, for the record, was AWESOME.
It’s very easy to get around Hong Kong by taxi – there are heaps of Westerners everywhere, and pretty much everyone speaks English (one of our taxi drivers didn’t, so he called the taxi centre to get them to translate our address from English to Cantonese for him). I’ve had a couple of conversations (about Louisette) in Mandarin, which has been a lot of fun, but I probably won’t have any more until we go to Beijing (on Thursday).
Focus, Louise!
Okay.
The food was, needless to say, delicous. I wrote about it at weekend notes.
The City Hall building is RATHER nice. It used to be directly on the water, but Hong Kong is slowly reclaiming land from the sea – including all that you see in the foreground out the window. The first shot is of Bil and his fiance, and the last is of the fiance and Louisette. She’s British, and impossible not to like both immediately and permanently. Her whole family is a lot of fun (and her Dad showed up for the first time last night in a truly horrific pink number after his Rugby 7 attendance).
After stuffing ourselves with Hong Kong culture, we returned to the 2IFC building, and went as high as we were allowed to go (for which we needed to show I.D., and we were only allowed up to the 55th floor, which was about halfway). All of Hong Kong is very shiny, but the 2IFC building is particularly so. Including the lift. And the lift ceiling.
There’s more at weekend notes, including photos.
Then we caught a ferry across to Kowloon Park, which I wrote about at Weekend Notes.
This is the street literally just outside Kowloon Park. We all thought it looked just like Generic Asian City Street Of The Future.
Before heading back home, we sat on the harbour (with many others taking photos of the scene) and looked back towards Hong Kong proper to watch the lights come on as the sun set. The tallest building is the 2IFC, with the much smaller, cute-looking IFC two buildings to the right of it (both have giant concrete “teeth” on top). You can just make out “The Peak” in the dip of the mountain. The view from the place CJ and I are staying is basically behind this one and looking in the opposite direction.
Okay, now I’m REALLY going to bed.
Tomorrow we visit another island of Hong Kong, and see a pirate’s cave.
Kong Fu: Day One in Hong Kong
So here we are in Hong Kong, with all CJ’s immediate family and the family of his brother’s fiancé. We’re staying in four different locations, and all of them are spectacular. To me, Hong Kong is exactly like an unrealistic-but-awesome fantasy land. I just love the way intensely steep and be-jungled mountains have been shoved together with glittering cityscapes. And beaches! And more islands! Mountainous ones! It really has it all.
If you live on the Eastern side of Australia, you’re probably familiar with the Clyde Mountain road (the one with Winnie the Pooh corner). It’s a fabulously twisted road through gorgeous semitropical forest. Hong Kong is like that, but more so – and with skyscrapers. And the ocean.
Here’s a paparazzi shot of yours truly hastily writing yesterday’s blog entry (our home location didn’t have internet, so we took my laptop etc to lunch at the soon-to-be-in-laws).
And here’s my own paparazzi shot of CJ and his dad, both with binoculars looking at the view.
Louisette and myself, same window (the pollution hazing such a stunning location is simply heartbreaking).
A random sculpture for your Monday afternoon.
Louisette’s first time at a beach. She was about as impressed as I expected. (The others had been on an epic hike/nice walk (depending on who you ask) up a nearby mountain, which has views arguably better than the famous views from The Peak (which is where, since we’re tourists, we will be going on Wednesday), but no crowds. I opted out, and Louisette and I slept.)
We sat on the sand and watched the sun set – from left to right in the first photo: CJ’s mum (also Mum of the groom, who I call Bil as in brother-in-law), the bride’s mum, the bride, and the bride’s sister.
We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant on the water – and yes, naturally we ordered the fried morning glory. It was just a spinach-like vegetable, sadly – not even an unusual shape.
Tomorrow we’re having dim sum (which we never had in Beijing, since it’s a Southern Chinese specialty). It was VERY high on my Hong Kong to-do list, and I can’t wait.
PS: Tomorrow (by which of course I mean today) was much less polluted. We took 100 photos, and you’ll only see the best.
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The League of S.T.E.A.M. (and, Hong Kong!)
If you’re a lover of steampunk, you’re probably already a fan of the League of S.T.E.A.M. series of online videos. The acting is hammy, the writing even more so, but the costumes and gadgets and silliness are all brilliant. This episode features Grant Imahara (of Mythbusters fame) as an expert who dives neatly into the “oriental gentleman” trope.
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We have now arrived safely in Hong Kong. Louisette was simply brilliant on our 9.5 hour flight – she never cried for more than thirty seconds at a time. At night, she honestly slept from 11pmish to 7amish, just like at home – having apparently glanced at a clock and made allowances for the time difference.
Hong Kong is stunning. It’s fabulously mountainous and covered in thick, flourishing trees and vines and flowering bushes. And then there are skyscrapers poking up here and there like bizarre rock formations coming out of the trees, above and below you as you drive on narrow lanes apparently welded to thin air.
“The Peak” is where all the tourists go in Hong Kong. We are staying in a diplomat’s house which is in the same area – so this is our view, including several islands (notice the skyscrapers poking out from behind a hill just to the left of the one in the middle ground). More on Hong Kong tomorrow (or possibly the next day; things will be pretty crazy)!
When they come to you, ask yourself why
PS This is several hours early because CJ and Louisette and I will be travelling to Hong Kong tomorrow, and our housesitters have enough menial tasks to do without posting my blog for me.
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Here is an article from an extremely helpful website, Writer Beware. It’s solid advice, because it is all too easy for us wannabes to fall for scams.
“I don’t often write posts like this, because it’s really like shooting fish in a barrel. And there are so many red flags here that savvy writers may wonder why I bother. But there are a lot of new writers searching for agents, many of whom are probably new to Writer Beware, and may not yet be clear on what to watch out for. I also think it’s important, every now and then, to emphasize the basics of author self-protection–because as cataclysmically as the publishing landscape is changing, the basic warning signs remain the same.”
“Temeraire: Throne of Jade” by Naomi Novik
This is the second book in the “Temeraire” series. This is where we first discover Novik’s penchant for investigating other nations from the same historical period. And, given that the series is about dragons, China makes a whole lot of sense. China has a whole lot of dragons, and Great Britain is just very lucky they’re not interested in the war. Or are they?
The rest of this review is at Comfy Chair, where I get paid for it.
Heels
I bought these shoes for the upcoming China wedding. It’s so good to wear heels again, even if I seem to now be a size 11 (yikes).
Felicity Banks 
