Welcome to the modern world! I’ve heard people talk about matcha recently, but never had it. Then we had “Chinese coffee” which I’ve had numerous times on previous visits to China in the last 10 years. Today I discovered that Chinese coffee is really matcha! The base is green tea powder

Where did the Teletubbies go? After their rise to infamy 20+ years ago I didn’t see much of the Teletubbies. Or maybe my kids outgrew them and we didn’t watch those channels any longer? Anyway, I found them again - they moved to China!

East meets West Lays Pringles (at least that’s what I’d call them in the UK). Chinese flavour of Beef Pie but seemingly endorsed by Sir David Beckham. Yesterday we had Lionel Messi Garlic Bread flavour.

English is the official second language in China. Which mean many products get English names. I often wonder if I could become a naming consultant over here to help them pick better names. Today I present to you “Fly Young” tissues.

This is what we're drinking

There's nothing better than enjoying a drink (30% rice wine with rosehips) with a group of rural Chinese villagers where the only common language is "nyim ju" or "Cheers". Nyim ju is village language for cheers.

It's village cooking time in very rural China. Two huge woks. One cooking pork ribs (with rice wine and beer) and the other cooking pork belly stir fry with celery, onions and garlic (and I think some rice wine too). It's 35C feels like 44C so I don't know how they do it!

We’re in my wife’s village in very rural China for the weekend. We’re an hour’s drive from the nearest city that you'll never have heard of. The village has a population of about 60 people these days. We had roast duck, chicken and goose to eat. Washed down by 30% proof rice wine with rosehips. /1

We had a traditional Chinese tea ceremony after eating. We drank black Pu-erh tea, red tea from Yunnan and orange tea. I had a turn at making the tea. I've done it before and it's tricky to make sure you do it correctly! I think I passed the test.

Another lunch time, another Chinese meal. Not surprising as I'm in China. We started with Chinese coffee (actually tea with added herbs), then pigs feet, chicken, fish, rice porridge, beef with pepper and onions, sweet potato leaves, noodles, sticky rice and other things!

A home meal in China with friends. The bottle of baiju (58%) between two of us will make sure I sleep tonight 🤣

I'm relearning 'ganbei' with baiju. It means 'bottoms up' or down in one. Baiju is 58% proof, so even though it's only a small glass, one every few minutes soon adds up 🤣 I can still type so there's hope for me.

Breakfast - Chinese style!

My view for a slow and leisurely breakfast 🙂

Can someone remind me why we choose to BBQ on the hottest days of the year? T-5 minutes to lighting time with a feels like temperature of 40.8C. Phew!

I've never watched Star Wars. Is this the kind of test you mean?

We've been adopted! This black kitten started following us round the garden a month ago. We've failed to find her owner, so she will be staying with us now We're not pet people and definitely not cat experts so we're rapidly trying to understand cat psychology! She's now called Sunny.

A cheaper alternative is an emulated version. There is emulator code to run on this hardware...

Remote HF transceiver access: https://g6fci.radio/2026/03/26/remote-hf-transceiver-access.html

My pre-Amateur Radio History: https://g6fci.micro.blog/2026/03/24/my-preamateur-radio-history.html

Experimenting with HF Packet Radio: https://g6fci.micro.blog/2026/03/24/experimenting-with-hf-packet-radio.html

Radio projects: https://g6fci.micro.blog/2026/03/24/radio-projects.html

The Packet Radio years (1986-1996): https://g6fci.micro.blog/2026/03/24/the-packet-radio-years.html

Early licenced years: https://g6fci.micro.blog/2026/03/24/early-licenced-years.html

Melted UnUn 0 G6FCI 1 I've fitted a replacement for the melted cheese UnUn this morning. Looks to be working OK - SWR is 1.2:1 on 20m which is about what it was before, and I'm being heard 8500km away in China. I hope that's the end of my UnUn melting career 🤣 #HamRadio

That's my HF vertical off air for a few days. The UnUn didn't like me using the antenna on 160m when it's not designed for that band. Oops. I'll pay more attention to which antenna is connected to the transceiver in future 😱 #HamRadio

Strange events - an air ambulance landed on Layton Rec in Blackpool this afternoon. No road ambulance there. No police to clear the landing area. No paramedics seemingly nearby. It flew back to Blackpool Airport afterwards. #Blackpool

Another goodie from the archive. A Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Linux touch screen handheld from 2002-3. It has a WiFi SD card in it too. I'll have to see if I can find the power supply to see if it still works. #RetroComputing

I can see the origins of my interest in Home Assistant. 14 Dec 1979 - Algol-W code to automatically log temperature data - see the comment. I had lots of fun as QXEC4 back in the day! #RetroComputing #HomeAssistant

Sorting through my 'archives' this morning and found an original 1981 Microsoft Macro-80 manual for CP/M. Well over 40 years since I last used it! #RetroComputing