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Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
New place for Jacob's Photos
You can find our page here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30241711@N04/
However, you need to be invited to view the page. We're not getting exclusive, it's just that friends have told us how some people take baby photos from the web and do nefarious things with them. We'd kind of prefer that didn't happen to Jacob.
If you'd like to see the photos, drop either Joan or Nick an email, and we'll send you an invite which will allow you to do so.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Jacob's Name in Chinese Pt II
Jacob's Name in Chinese
Blogger seemed to have difficulty with Chinese fonts, so I couldn't show everyone Jacob's Chinese name in the last post. A friend made me a gif file, and now I can display it in all its glory! Thanks YuChao!
There are three characters above. The first is Joan's family name, Wang. It means "king", and is ironically one of the more common surnames in China. Astute observers familiar with the days of South A will note the similarity between this character and Nick's beer-can throne, which also had the character for king on its back-rest (outlined in Toohey's Red cans on a background of VB cans). This was either startlingly accurate prescience on Nick's behalf or, as seems more likely, overly egotistical hubris.
The second character means "one" and/or "first", and the third character means "ocean". Hence, we have the first Wang over the ocean.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Heralding the arrival of Jacob
On the 25th of August 2008, just after midnight and after keeping us waiting for almost two weeks, Jacob Yiyang Wills-Johnson was born. Although his mother should take most of the credit, his father and maternal and paternal grandmothers pitched in. In Beijing earlier that evening, a vast fireworks show occurred to herald his arrival, and his paternal grandfather made sure that all major news outlets were informed of his coming.
His middle name reflects his Chinese heritage, and means "first over the water", reflecting the fact that he is the first member of the Wang family to be born overseas.
Damn Blogger won't let me write Chinese characters!
Since his arrival, Jacob has managed to keep three people, his mother, father and maternal grandmother, busy for almost 24 hours a day. Somehow, he manages to do this without really even moving from his bed; clearly he is future CEO material. However, slowly, very slowly, his new beat is being incorporated into the rhythm of their lives.
These photos chart the days of Jacob’s life thus far.
The first three focus on the main man himself. The first and third are on the night of his arrival, and the second is him trying on some new threads (thanks Ben & Delphine). His expression bears more on the fact that he doesn’t like his dad’s nappy-changing skills than it does to his sartorial preferences. The next photo shows him with his maternal grandmother, not long after he was born, and the photo after that shows him with his paternal grandfather on the same night. The last two photos are from the night we planted Jacob’s tree (the first with his maternal grandmother and the second with his parents). We planted it on top of his placenta, so that that which nourished him will now nourish the tree. Apparently it is an Aboriginal tradition; something we found out after we decided to do it. Since Jacob’s tree is a mandarin tree, it can nourish us as well. He is quite the sustainable boy.
More posts, probably until everyone but his parents are sick of reading them, to follow.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Back to the China Wedding
With all these new citizens, it's all to easy to forget about the wedding photos. Now we're up to the transporting of Joan from her parent's place to Nick's (well, their hotel, anyway). Nowadays, most people use fancy cars. We decided to go old-school. The first photo shows Joan getting into the palaquin. Pretty much as soon as the bearers set off, they started up with the traditional rocking of the bride. This involves making the palaquin swing wildly from side to side, all the while singing songs about brides up-chucking. It's more fun to watch than sit in the palaquin...... apparently.
The second shows our little procession making its way along the side street near Joan's parent's place. It seems there is one, just one, rule associated with traffic in China; give way to weddings. Our little procession went straight down the middle of the road, getting in pretty much everyone's way. All the cars and buses were honking, not in annoyance (as we first thought) but in congratulations. On one of the buses we stopped (driven by one of Joan's more distant relatives, it turns out), everyone got out their mobile phone cameras and proceeded to snap away.
The final photo shows the reason why we didn't proceed right up the middle of the main street, just like we did on the side street. It's a police motorcycle. The palaquin bearers were all ready to march wherever they damn-well pleased. The fact that there were four lanes of traffic in the way didn't even slow them down. However, the policeman had rather different ideas, and waved us to the pavement. I'm sure our bearers were quite put out by this flagrant breach of the one rule in the Chinese traffic code. Fortunately, we were at the hotel soon after, where our friends and family were waiting with explosives. That's a story for next time.
Australia's Newest Citizen
We don't do things by halves in our family. Rather than creating one new Australian citizen (JB), we decided to create two. Joan was accepted as an Aussie late last year, and her citizenship ceremony was on the 31st of March, at the Town of Victoria Park. The first photo shows the mayor, successfully having mispronounced the names of all new citizens, reading the oath. I think Joan is swearing the oath on a copy of Pig International that she smuggled in from Bar Dudenberg..... Or maybe it's the Bible.
The second shows Joan getting her certificate of citizenship. The third shows the happy family after the formal bits of the evening. Naturally, once the champagne and canapes were over, we did what all good Australians would do; we went out and had Chinese for dinner.
Since this ceremony, Nick has been trying to educate Joan in the ways of politics, but it seems she will squander her vote on the other mob regardless. She is in fact the first person in the history of the Wang family to be able to do so.