Well, actually no . . .

Within an hour of the words "End of the Rainy Season?" having been typed into the computer, it began to rain and we had two thunderstorms in 24 hours! Last night it rained nearly all night. Oh well, Yunnan weather, like British weather, has a mind of its own. Today the sun is shining.
Today’s good news is that we have finally got residency permits in our passports. We are now officially allowed to be in China until 31 August, 2009 and to come and go as we wish without having to apply for new visas every time.
We are enjoying a visit from Andrew in whose flat we are living. His wife Anna has had to stay in Norway because Norwegian regulations require farm owners to spend 6 months of each year actually living on the farm but we hope to see her for a few days later in the year. Andrew is still working on the Myanmar/ Burma water purifiers. His latest idea is to use windscreen wiper motors as hand-cranked generators to produce the 12 volts needed to light the UV light which kills the bugs in the water. Discussions in the flat are passing straight over Judy’s head as Peter and Andrew discuss ‘worm drives’ (some new form of animal cruelty?) diodes and Ohm’s Law!
Peter has now produced 60 of the alarm circuits which sound a warning buzzer before the UV light goes out if the person turning the hand-crank slows down. He is now testing them and putting right the ones which don’t work properly (usually due to human error, his!). The aim is to get the purifiers to where they are needed as soon as possible after the rainy season finally stops producing clean water from the sky and the people are back to using polluted river water.
This is the annual national holiday when many Chinese get a week off and Judy’s school is closing down for two weekends. We plan to spend a few days in Dali, a small town about four hours away by bus and much visited by tourists. We have decided to go after the second weekend, when accommodation should be much easier to find. Andrew will stay here and take over our usual tasks.
A couple of Sundays ago we were waiting at the bus stop when an Australian introduced himself to us and assured us that the no. 80 bus (which was just arriving) would take us to our meeting. Reassured by his words "You can trust an Aussie" we got on, only to be taken to another part of town entirely, one which our new friend, (now feeling rather embarrassed) did not recognise. We eventually had to get off the bus, cross the road and catch another bus, at which point we noticed that we were being followed by a Philippino girl who rightly assumed that we were all going to the same place and wrongly assumed that we knew the way! She turned out to be a friend of Judy’s two Philippino colleagues. Last week, she and some other Philippino friends stopped their car and offered us a lift to the meeting and today we all had an enjoyable lunch together. So thank you, Cobber, even if we were 20 minutes late for our meeting!
One of the delights of living in China is what is known as "Chinglish". English is China’s second language and many signs are displayed in both languages, except that the English is often a bit surprising. we think we understand "Deformed man toilet", and then there are the T-shirts, nearly all of which carry a random selection of English words with no clear meaning at all.

These two signs are in our local Buddhist temple. Maybe some places we know in England could use them . . .

Yes, it does say, "NO CONFLAGRATION"! but our favourite is this one . . .