Madness In The Middle Kingdom

I realize that a blog can be for more things than a record of what the family is doing. It is a chance to invite people into your world and maybe once in a while show some creativity. Now let’s be serious - you aren’t going to see me writing poems or exposing my inner soul (neither of which are interesting to anyone including me) but I would like to use this post to share a puzzle in logic with you that I really enjoyed working on. Yeah .. I’m a nerd so what? I like Star Trek. I have a major in Mathematics and a minor in Computer Science. I enjoy playing Trivial Pursuit cause I am generally good at it. I prefer doing a crossword puzzle to reading the entertainment (or dare I say it) even the sports section in a newspaper. The history of mathematics and mathematicians is interesting to me. My favourite book as a kid was Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts (mosquitoes have 47 teeth in case you didn’t know - at 1o years old I did). And that is just the tip of the iceberg of my nerdiness so if you are feeling like getting in touch with your nerdy side and tackling a logic puzzle try the one below.

Who Owns The Fish?
There are five houses in a row and in five different colours.
In each house lives a person from a different country.
Each person drinks a certain drink, plays a certain sport, and keeps a certain pet.
No two people drink the same drink, play the same sport, or keep the same pet.
• The Brit lives in a red house
• The Swede keeps dogs
• The Dane drinks tea
• The green house is on the left of the white house
• The green house owner drinks coffee
• The person who plays polo rears birds
• The owner of the yellow house plays hockey
• The man living in the house right in the centre drinks milk
• The Norwegian lives in the first house
• The man who plays baseball lives next to the man who keeps cats
• The man who keeps horses lives next to the one who plays hockey
• The man who plays billiards drinks beer
• The German plays soccer
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
• The man who plays baseball has a neighbour who drinks water.

Who Owns The Fish?

Have fun!

A few weekends back we got photos done with the local photographer extraordinaire - Wanru. The photos are a gift for the family back home but we have decided here at MIMK ( for Craig who detests acronyms thus explaining his recent I hate ABBA post) to give a sneak peek from the photo shoot. A few shots of the boys

Whatcha lookin’ at?

What am I looking at?

Amma and Ampa (also known as Gramma and Grampa) this video is for you.

Everyone can watch but this is especially for family.

I give you “Da Boys”

No, no, no! This post has nothing to do with circumsions for those that may have “gone there”. Today’s post is to chronicle Carter’s first attempt with the digital camera and the video feature. He picked up the camera and was trying his best to take a picture but instead had the camera turned to the video mode and this is what he shot.

Some things in China just never go they way you want them to … tonight was no exception. Currently in our suburb of Kai Fa Qu the Chinese National Inline Hockey Championship is being contested. The sad thing about it is … no one in Kai Fa Qu knows about it. We (as in the teachers at Maple Leaf) are fully aware of it however and would desperately love to play but we cannot enter in the tourney officially because we are not Chinese. Seems reasonable so our fearless captain Adrian has being doing a lot of background wheeling and dealing (approx 40 phone calls in 3 days) to get us a side game with a team in the tourney.

Tonight was to be the pinnacle of success in foreigners cultivating guan xi (connections) and we had a game arranged with a team from Tang Shan. If you have heard of the city before it is because it was the site of a 1976 earthquake that killed more than 500,000 people. That however is not the focus of our story tonight though. As mentioned we had the game arranged for 7:00 PM but when we arrived the building was locked up with the lights out. We found the “turn the lights on guy” but no amount of offering alcohol and cigarettes was going to get him to open up shop. We tried to contact the big boss man to present him with the necessary “gifts” for it to happen but we came up empty handed.

The long and short of it was about 30 guys milling around for 15 to 20 minutes before finally accepting fate and going home. We are told that tomorrow at 4 PM conditions will be more favourable.

I would post photos or video or even a chinese press release about the championships but as none exist none can be posted.

I’ll just let the video speak for itself

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