Okay okay...

Nearly two years have passed, I know.  But I do want to get back to writing more.

The last 18 months have been fairly eventful, but I think the last 6 months were the most...impacting?  I'm not sure if that's the right word.

Last time I wrote in June, I hadn't finished up at my job yet.  Well, I did that, and that was good.  Then Craig and I went on our summer adventure to Beijing and Xi'an, which was excellent.  Well, Beijing was a bit average, but Xi'an was amazing and I would happily go back there.

I ended up taking a full year off, and spent a lot of that time applying for universities and trying to work out what I wanted to do.  In the end I was accepted to join the MSc in Marketing at City University of Hong Kong.  I'm about half way through my second semester now, and I will finish up in August this year.

Last summer Craig and I went off to Canada for a month, spending one week in Vancouver and 3 ish weeks in Calgary.  I wish we could have spent more time in Vancouver, because I really love it there.  Visiting Canada again was nice, and it was certainly a nice break to get away from the Hong Kong heat for a bit.  I got to catch up with a few of my friends, and Craig and I also did a few day trips to the mountains which was great.

So I started my masters in September and it is going quite well.  It is a coursework masters, with a greater focus on going into the industry, which is not really my plan, but it is good to keep learning (or relearn as the case may be) some of the stuff. At the end of the first semester I applied to enter the PhD program at CityU and also applied for the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship scheme.

This bit is harder to write.  In August last year my mum's health started declining.  She had two surgeries while we were in Canada, and the doctors found more cancer in her bones.  Craig and I flew to Australia for a long weekend in October to see her so that we could have memories of her while she was still her, so to speak.  From there things declined further, and a few days before Christmas my sister called to tell me we needed to get to Australia asap.  Flying out of HK at Christmas is very busy, but we got the earliest flights we could to try and get there to say goodbye.  Sadly, we couldn't get there in time, and Mum passed away in hospital on the 21st of December, the night before we flew out of here.  So Craig and I spent Christmas, unexpectedly in Australia.  Being able to be with my whole family at that time was invaluable to me.  I do so wish Mum could have known the news that was coming up though.

School started again in January.  My classes aren't bad, and I actually really like some of them.  The second week of semester came with some surprising news.  I got accepted into the PhD program at CityU!  I wasn't expecting to hear anything at all on that until March, so to get the news so early was quite nice.  The university also has recommended me for one of the fellowships.  That I definitely won't find out about until March or April.  But either way, I'm in, and I know what I'm going to be doing for the next four years!

Chinese New Year has come and gone.  I'm hoping for a wonderful year of the Horse.  Craig's parents were here, and I think they had a good time.  I was quite busy with assignments and such, but Craig did tons of touristing with them.  Apparently an accidental trip to Peng Chau is quite the thing!

And so here I am.  What am I doing today?  Reading up on the cleaning service industry in Hong Kong.  This is not for fun, but for a consulting project which will wrap up in the next 6 weeks or so.  At least I've got some winter Olympics to keep me company.  The view out the window certainly isn't inspiring me.  I will try to keep up more with this.  I do need to keep my writing up to scratch, and I should try and document more of the stuff I see.  We'll see, I guess!