Merry Christmas

Good afternoon - I would just like to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and point out that I have lots of new photos within my Picasa links and as shown in the top row..

Recent news ....

Well it has all been happening recently ...
Ping and I had an excellent holiday in China - visiting Guangzhou, Zhouqing, Changsha, Heng Shan (Nanyue) Macao and Hong Kong - pictures still to be done...

Ping passed her Actarial exam - ST6 - an incredible achievement and the results were published 8pm 11th Dec 08.

I actually went swimming for the first time in ages ...

China trip

Hello, thank you for reading the blog. Seems I often reported the my bad mood in the past in this blog - why the life is so hard, etc. But this time something is changed as I want to tell you a good news. I am going to China with my Bob next week. It is fantastic. I am so delighted with this forthcoming trip!!! After I have been in UK for more than two years, eventually, I get a chance to go to China and see my family. I miss them so much. I also missed mum and dad's dumpling, I want to see my niece who I have not seen since she was born. I want to have Chinese food, sadly I even can not remember what is the taste of the Xiang food and Cantonese morning tea which used to be my favourite food. It is so long time since I last have them. I want to .......Oh, so many many things .... China, I will be back!!!!

Nightmare journey to the dentist ....

Hello, Well I haven`t written for ages and thought to note a recent journey to the dentist....
Left work early - 3.15 expecting max 1 hour drive to get from South Edinburgh to Dalgety Bay in Fife. Initially no problems, round the ring road onto the A90 and then stop... for a long time - luckily I had my book with me ... (Currently reading Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - which is excellent but that is an aside to this story) then waited for approximately an hour before a slow crawl to the bridge. I did call to say I was going to be late - but the story goes on... By the time I did get to Dalgety Bay at 17:40, I just arrived and parked to just miss my dentist and friend Chris just driving off. Arghh. I needed the loo by then but Ping was still at work and was waiting for a lift back. Therefore I drove passed home to get to Prudential - only to see Ping on the company bus - Arghh Arghh - so i then turned round again and got home for relief. Total 3 and half hours later with no good results. Whilst on route and stationary again this sign annoyed me somewhat!

Edinburgh Bank of Scotland Fireworks 2008

Good evening well the Edinbugh International Festival has just finished with a bang.
Here are videos of most of the fireworks as seen from about 3 miles South along with the music from Radio Forth and our chat!

I recommend that you right click any of the following links and "save as" to your computer and then view at your leisure.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Feel free to comment etc....

If some of the videos don`t work it is because they are taking a while to upload - I am sure they will be all present and correct by about midnight today (310808).

How can people make snesible decision about their future.

Everyone always holds the nice hope on her/his futures. Like a friend of mine, looking forward to becoming the beautiful mum; another friend want to go to university then find a good job. What shall I do? From outside, people think I am in the very good situation - getting married with a not so bad person; at least having a job; very caring families around me. However, I really feel I am suffering so many difficulties now. I am losing my confidence gradually since I start this work. I am always worrying if I speak right and clearly. It is so stressful situation. How can I do in my future? Why is my life so hard? It is really not easy for a foreigner to work in a place where they look at you in a different way. Should I continue to keep quite standing in a corner or to bring myself back.

Oh it is so sad I sold my car a while back...

Hello,
I was just driving back home this evening and was just reminiscing about my Honda - and more specifically how much I miss it. I had a Honda Prelude L918 JVP - the quickish one with the 2.2l twin cam engine - oh it was good. In the end I couldn`t afford the fuel so it had to go. I tried selling it privately but any offers I received didn`t turn into cash so I ended taking it to the auction. Perhaps not the best decision I have ever made - after costs - and excluding the Road Tax that was on it I cleared £41!. Someone has got a fantastic car for virtually free.

I did take some photos on its last days with me and I shall include them here later...

Paragliding Broughton

Paragliding Broughton 080216

Well yesterday the 16th Feb 08 I drove down to Broughton and found it to be quite strong wind and cool but everyone was flying and having a great time. I wasnt in the right frame of mind or nervous or something because I ended up frittering the day away before it eased to a level where I felt comfortable to take off. Result an extended bottom to bottom! - last pilot of the day. I am sure if I had got off the ground it would have been one of the best days ever for me - so now I am full of self loathing - but I should be happy as any flight is still a good thing.

What an excellent weekend that was ..

I would just like to write a little bit on last weekends activities.
It started off very well on Friday evening when I met Ping in town. We then went for large starters at The Mussel Inn Rose Street, Edinburgh. I had the crab - lovely but Ping had I guess one of the specialities - 0.5kg of mussels with a garlic and shallot sauce with lots of lovely bread - excellent.

Saturday - we went for a good swim with Ping. We then went for a hotpot at Chinois in the Omni centre with Richard, Ronnie and Danni - very nice with a few beers and well stuffed. It was even better as we were the only foreigners in there and it was very busy and vibrant being just after Chinese New Year.

Sunday - paragliding - drove down to Tinto (as usual!) where it was mobbed - I saw at least 17 wings in the air at once - in Scotland - this is very unusual - and had 2 short flights. Walked up the hill with George and then faffed for a while before having a say 10 minute flight down and across the hill (aiming to get to big Tinto) but I was especially happy with this flight as it was as far as I was concerned perfect - take off, smooth flying and the best landing I have perhaps ever done - especially pleasing as this was my first flight since early last October. I then packed up and walked to big Tinto, found the light breeze had veered East so walked back towards the car and had a very short top to bottom to get down at dusk. This was also good as it must have taken me less then 10 minutes from getting there to landing at the bottom. Packed up and got back to car and it was late dusk or very nearly dark - so I definitely got the last flight of the day.

The weekend just passed

Friday - Burns night and I arranged to meet Ping in town so walked from Tollcross along to Argyl Place to purchase turnip and potatoes before walking into town to meet Mrs Veitch. Then of course I was reminded that Ping was going to a party that evening so I ended up just going home and pottering around till Ping returned at approximately 2am without any Burns celebration.
Saturday - my mums birthday so we all as a family met at lunchtime at Cafe Marlayne, Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh and had a really lovely meal with some very quaffable white house wine to accompany. I had the crab starter - excellent, followed by the lamb and the chocolate torte - I almost always choose the chocolate thing however in this case having tried a little of the other sweets I should have had the sticky toffee pudding - delectable.
After lunch Ping and I went round town for a while - 90% off at Harvey Nichols - still out of our league! and then just as we were about to get the bus home Richard called so I arranged to meet him initially at The Standing odour but then changed to All Bar One where we had a few beers and we followed this a few more at Le Monde - a very pleasant evening after a lovely meal.
Sunday - nothing amazing or suprising (slightly fragile head) - I bussed over to Currie, saw Susan and Allan before going for a walk in the Pentlands from there to Hillend - very windy but nice. Then I went to Richards who then gave me lift to the bottom of Morninside before getting the bus home. Vegetarian haggis at last with potatoes and neeps - a good weekend basically.

Wedding of Robert Veitch and Ping Wang

Wedding photos

As you may know Ping and I got married on the 21st december 2007 and what an excellent day it was. To see the pictures collected so far click the picture above and here is the story from my perspective.
I and my best man - Richard went over to my parents whilst Ping stayed at home with her sister and parents to prepare. As you can see I hired a great kilt set from The Kilt Hire Company and I was wearing a Scotland the Brave tartan - I think you will agree I look better than just good!. I had hired the same for Richard but just without the sash which is reserved for the groom. I had prearranged transport however by 2.45 there was no sign of it, and after a lot of frantic phone calls a taxi arrived and got us all to the Registrars office at the corner of The Royal Mile and George IV Bridge - a very lovely venue. Ping arrived a few minutes later looking fantastic and we met our guests for some photos and chat before being taken upto the wedding room. Richard and I were briefed on the ceremony and then it all started.
Ping was brought into the room by her dad - who looked very impressive in his traditional Chinese outfit. Then the ceremony at which I was very emotional - especially at the part where i say "with this ring I thee wed" (It was slightly embarrasing as I was virtually in tears as well as getting a runny nose right at thye same time!) so with a small - get me a hanky break this was completed successfully. I suspect that both Ping and I managed to mangle slightly the normal English of the vows to some extent due to the emotion of the moment.
Vows, rings exchanged and ceremony complete - in what seemed like 10 minutes - signing the marriage certificate plus posed photos doing the same, photos outside and down the stairs - then outside to sparklers which Richard arranged prior to a quick journey for my wife and I to The Cafe Royal via the hotel where we dropped off our stuff.
I had been a little worried about the reception meal at The Cafe Royal but I shouldnt have been - it was fantastic - the staff, the ambience (especially as the bar next door was packed with revellers on the last Friday evening prior to Christmas) and the food was I and it seems everyone thought was excellent. I am using that word a lot in this post but really it was that good. We started off with pink "champagne" and then everyone had a small range of choices from the menu we had chosen as shown here. The reception really started about 5pm and between courses Ping and I tried to do as much mingling as possible and it was great. Later on in the evening we had the speeches and the cake cutting ceremony before heading for the hotel for our honeymoon night. Richards speech was very good and most of it is also available via the above link.
Other comments - as the evening progressed it was noticeable that the people who were accidently using the revolving doors trying to get to the bar were getting more and more inebriated and most were very funny in their reactions to seeing the error of gatecrashing our wedding!.
Summary - the wedding ceremony and the new registrars was lovely, having my friends and family at the wedding and the reception was more better than I hoped and the food at The Cafe Royal along with the service far exceeded my wildest expectations.
Thankyou to everyone who helped to make the wedding of Ping and I such a success.

X-Scotia - and Robert Veitch

Well, recently a lot of things have been happening for me :- Wedding, Christmas, New year all of which I hope to add some more detail soon. Here I am going to tell a little more about my decision to try and enter X-Scotia - a paragliding / walking event to be held in Scotland in April or May of 2008.
When I first heard about this I initially thought no - Bob that is just stupid and plain daft - look at you - 43, fat, unfit and so forth. But over the next week or so I continued to think long and hard about it, to the degree that I actually had sleepless nights - before deciding to register my interest. I did this before New Year so that my decision didnt become some New Year resolution that would then be cast aside at the first hint of difficulty.
Having made this decision I looked at myself with fairly unforgiving eyes and realised that my basic level of fitness was !"£$% (poor) I dont have and wont have a nice lot of lightweight kit, I couldnt walk for hours - with or without my paraglider, my flying is also not very current and I need to do something about it. To this end I commenced walking almost everyday - without loads - just to get the muscles used to that - just shows how bad things were - and having investigated "marathon training regimes" on the net (which i am not qualified to start on !) I am basically trying to gradually increase by about 10% per week my distance, speed etc.
Pre start of "training" I weighed about 107kg in the birthday suit - plus wing etc comes to a lot!.
Today its only the 14th Jan and already - although most people wouldnt be able to tell I have lost a little bit of weight and am a little more toned - although the last weekend did impress on me just how big a task I have taken on:-
Saturday- a flyable day - my first since the last of The Scottish Nationals rounds in the Ochils last October - after some of my usual dithering loaded up car and drove to Tinto. New walking boots to replace my old ones partially held together with tape and also a novelty for me - walking poles - purchased during the sales when I was down in Ambleside. Anyhow wlaked - quicker than usual up - following the forest on the left straight up Lochylock Hill as the low cloud arrived. Met Sean F - who did a first time pack using one of these new concertina bag things here - apparently works quite well - at least I was quite impressed.

Tinto-080112

Thinking that it was still relatively early - the walk up had not completely killed me off as normal and hoping that the lovely blue skies might return allowing flight - I decided to go for a walk.- Och I shall just walk along to big Tinto, down and back to the car, so off i went - arriving at the snow covered top - after glimpsing blue skies above - beautiful for a few seconds alittle later. Ah yes my kit - Mac Eden 29 from 1998 - weight a few Kg, Harness - again a few Kg - Woody Valley peak, Reserve a white big thing - yes you guessed a few Kg, Full face helmet, flying suit, Renschler Sol17? vario,Garmin GPS76S thingy, 1 camelbag - nearly frozen, no food! compass, Alinco DJ190e radio, mobile phone, camera - with no spare memory, gloves, lightweight waterproof, flying suit and glider bag roughly "oh my that weighs at least as much as a heavy child" quoting someone else at the top of Tinto. I then basically followed the Northerly path dow past Totherin Hill and then turned right ending up eventually - after a few slips - pretty close to Fallburn - about NS970375 and Thankerton - in the dark. Not such a bright idea wearing black and carrying black bag on a dark night to commence the walk back to the car. No buses apparent - sticking out thumb didnt work, those roads back are populated from my research by quite a few people carriers going remarkably briskly :-). Continued walking for the next few hours until I got back to Wiston where I finally left my glider just at the village hall and walked the last 2.7 miles back to the car - totally knackered - 8pm ish at the car, to then drive home after picking up wing and getting home about 2145 - hungry but more desperate for a hot bath - I was so achey - everything, felt like it ached but shoulders and calves worst plus a nice blister on big toe. Amazingly for me I didnt eat anything all day and even though very tired on the drive back etc I slept poorly. The end - afraid not - the plan was to go for a walk with Richard and Roy on Sunday - so called in the morning I called Richard and said nah - cannot - I am a wreck - ok. A little later text back saying dont worry you could do this walk in a wheelchair so I changed my mind. Picked up at around 9.30am and upto Tyndrum - had a lovely bacon sarny at Real food place and then walked from lower Tyndrum railway stn to waterfall

Tyndrum 080113

and back - just a few miles but I was still jiggered and as such wasnt very quick and what is more crossing a small stream I fell through the smow and ended up with a very wet foot and leg - just the one though. Definitely ache - pushed myself stupidly hard yesterday - starting to realise the magnitude of the X-scotia task and as I sit her quite worried and basically crippled! - ankles worst now. I think a slower progression of walking with weights required. Measuring the Saturday walk it was about 21-23km and as such is the furthest I have ever walked with a paraglider by a very long way - and my body is telling me so. Hopefully future training won`t be so long winded! or painful. I will be interested to find out and I shall try to keep you posted here over the coming months.