Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

One of the more peculiar aspects of life here is that we are sick at almost exactly the same time every year.

Why that is, I don’t know but it’s been happening for four years now. Each June, we’re sick within a few days of the same time the year before, likewise each September.

In some ways, we can understand June. They’re spraying the fields at exactly the same time each June so we pretty much take it for granted that something in those sprays is causing it.

September is different though in that it’s in the midst of the grape harvest so there isn’t any spraying going on.

Weird, huh?

One thing’s for sure: the weather doesn’t mess around over here – it’s either one extreme or the other.

We’re just through a really major thunder and lightening storm the like of which you just don’t see in Northern Ireland.

All being well normal south of France weather will be resumed tomorrow with the sun and cloudless skies that usually characterise September here.

That’s the question we’re asking everyone that comes here at the moment.

A few weeks ago, Poland unexpectedly moved into the starting grid when a Polish family assured us that they do a “proper” Christmas with Christmas trees and carols.

The Belgium family with us tonight have moved that country up a few notches though. Belgium is a slightly peculiar amalgam of France and Holland and therefore takes traditions from both sides. Net effect? They do Christmas in the way us northern Europeans/Anglosaxons expect and also do New Year as the French do.

Germany is still in the running though we’ve not had any Germans staying for a while so we’ve had to start researching the options ourselves.

How to get there is the next issue to think about. Pricing-wise there’d be little in it between driving to Belgium or southern Germany as compared to flying there but either would take us around 12 hours of driving ie two days and probably around EUR 100 each for petrol and tolls.

We’re just beginning to get our heads above water and wondering how we did (no time for that in mid-Summer!).

June was down a little as could be expected as I was off in Belfast for almost all of it which meant that we needed to leave our availability a little bit more loose than we would do normally ie we couldn’t list more rooms than we actually have as we normally do over the Summer. If you’re doing that, you really need to be on top of the bookings as they come in and close down availability on systems as you fill up.

July was also down a little as I wasn’t back ’til the end of the first week so same problem as June. Also we had the first “visa booking” of the year: 20 days in a row and cancelled just a few days in advance. As a consequence of that, we’ve tightened up considerably on potential “visa bookings”. When we get one, we give them two options: 1) pay the full balance and we help you get the visa or 2) we cancel the booking and inform the French embassy. We’re currently sitting with two of these; we fully expect the South African to cancel in that she’s made no acknowledgement of any of our e-mails. Hard to say about the guy from Barbados as he has been very keen to pay the balance.

We’d fewer Visa pour l’Image bookings than expected but then we were quite full over that week with other people so didn’t really have the availability for any more people.

So far, it’s very hard to say how the rest of the year will turn out. We’ve nothing for November or December which isn’t unusual but the bookings for October are also fairly low for this time of year.

One of the visible signs of China opening up a little bit is that there are a growing number of expats living there now.

Feve is an American living who is living in Chengdu and is searching for Chengdu, China  Blogs with a view to establishing a little network of them. I think it might take a “while” though as there’s only the one listed on the expat list over at Ministry of Propaganda and it’s been running for quite a while.

Other welcome signs of the opening up are that we’ve even picked up a listing for apartments in Shanghai.

Perhaps I should be cheeky enough and ask him to include me on his blogroll or cheekier still and ask for a little article on Chengdu for our Whole Earth Guide?

Anyway, Feve’s blog looks like it will be quite an interesting one to follow as they settle into life in China.