Friday: The Meeting Place

Whenever you meet someone in town, this is where you meet.  By the horse statue, on Ban Jelacic Square.  

As expected, we were there to meet someone.  My colleague, Mark, is relatively new in town.  As his family is still settling in, K. and I told Mark that he needed to stay at home tonight and look after the kids, while we took his wife, Arlene, out for some much needed respite.  We have had a most pleasant evening, and I think she enjoyed the distraction.

I learnt two interesting things today, completely unrelated to this post:

i) The Chinese have a word for that feeling when you haven't seen someone for many years and, when you meet, you pick up exactly where you left off, as if no time has passed.  The word is 'yuanfen' - I love that there is a word for it!

ii) Chinese people are apparently reading a lot less than they used to, so Chinese lawmakers are thinking of introducing a law which requires people to read more.  How on earth would you enforce that?

And on that subject, I have finished Slavenka Drakulic's 'Balkan Express'.  It was a good read, but I found it more abstract than I had imagined, by which I mean I found her stories of war quite difficult to relate to where I now live.   Maybe because her descriptions are so far removed from what I see here.  But on to something different now, with 'The History of Mr Polly' by H G Wells.