The Engleson Files

Well, tomorrow Magnus and Svea (mostly Magnus) will receive their Wii from ol’ Santa Claus and I know Ge Ge is going to go through the roof with excitement when he sees it. Him and his best buddy Carter have been battling away on it for the past year and he will be so excited to get his own. I remember the Christmas when my brother and I got our Atari 2600 under the tree - and I can only assume the kids will feel just as excited as we did back in the day. Hope all is with family, relaxing with a rum and coke and enjoying all the best this time of the year brings! Merry Christmas folks!

I have always loved the Christmas season, so when finding a nice little Lego short celebrating the christmas season I simply could not resist! So, grab your x-mas box of Nuts and Bolts, pour yourself a rum and coke and enjoy this nice little Christmas vignette….3 days folks!!!

Last Saturday the big guy flew into Dalian, Kaifaqu to visit the kids, bring them some gifts and wish them all a very Merry Christmas. The guy we have is an ex-colleague and has been our Santa for the past 4 years. He now works in Tianjin (close to Beijing) and miraculously flew in for the day just to be with our kids again! It was a very special gesture and basically saved Christmas for another year because our kids recognize him and now know this to be Santa Claus. I am not sure if other Canadian 7 year olds believe in Santa but our kids still 100% do and there is no question having our guy again for another year continued that. Both Magnus and Svea got a small treat from the jolly old elf and all in all a great day was had by adult and child. Thanks Santa, and thanks Thomas Patten!!

What better way to follow Chrissy the Christmas Mouse with Bjork’s Jólakötturinn - The Christmas Cat. Enjoy! Getting close folks…

I downloaded a bunch of Christmas tunes awhile ago and have been listening to them non-stop these days. I am not too sure why this has happened to me but for some reason I cannot stop listening to this Christmas song and continue to hum it at work all day long - sad, I know. So, with that I pass it off to you to see if it has the same effect! 6 days folks!

Tonight is the 7th year the Jólasveinar have come to our home to wreak Christmas havoc. Tonight when I came home from work I banged and slammed on the door repeatedly to spook the kids. It worked and they have been worried ever since. “Have you been good today?” I asked them, to which they shuddered, “I was only a little bit bad today Daddy. Are the Jólasveinar coming to get me?” I only shrugged my shoulders and said, “I hope not.” I am thinking Svea will get a potato tonight to give her some time to soul search, while Magnus will be okay. To say I have enjoyed the Jólasveinar would be an understatement and time is not on my side anymore with them. I hope to continue it as long as I can and try to cement happy, fun thoughts of their Christmas past. Tonight Jólasveinar cometh!!

Let’s see…December 13th, 2010 - December 13th, 1968 = 42 years old to the day! I would just like to send out a quick “Happy Birthday” to my big brother on this bright and beautiful snowy day! Mom and Dad told me about your new fancy skis so I hope you are able to get out on them right away and try them out. All the best, do whatever makes you happy and enjoy your special day!

Remember: according to Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the number 42 was the answer to “life, the universe and everything.” This is a big year for you Bro!

Markus Naslund does not go down as one of my own personal favorite Canucks of all-time, but that does not mean I do not respect what he has done for the franchise. Tonight Naslund’s #19 jersey was raised to the rafters and I think that is an honor well deserved. Sadly for me, Markus Naslund immediately reminds me of the Mark Messier/Mike Keenan years which I repented like the plague; this is certainly not his fault but, unfortunately, my own emotions of that horrible era get placed onto him - sorry Markus! But I do also hold very fond memories of his leadership and play during the Brian Burke era where the Canucks were a great, upcoming team that were very exciting to watch. The Naslund-Morrison-Bertuzzi line was a truly spectacular line and ripped the league apart offensively. I know a lot of pundits claim this honor is a joke and is symbolic of the mediocre standards the Canucks have - but for that I have to truly disagree. Naslund’s standards on the ice were tremendous and he holds many of the individual Canucks records, but more importantly, his class and dignity shown off the ice were remarkable and are certainly on par with our other great standards in Stan Smyl and Trevor Linden. So, as a Canucks fan I think Naslund should be honored with our highest honor and tonight I celebrate him as one of our greatest Canucks and ambassador to the great community of Vancouver. Thanks Markus and congratulations!

Here it is - the song that officially begins the Christmas season for me. The family here is looking forward to a wonderful season and are very excited to be having my Mom and Dad come over from Canada. The house is all decked out here, lazy days are in full order while listening to Christmas carols - simply put, life is good at this time of the year! Merry Christmas everyone!

My heart breaks when I think of this little guy these days. Magnus has always been a beacon of positive energy and happiness and to see some (a lot) of that get tainted lately has been very difficult for me to take. There is no question Magnus is a very sensitive person (just like myself) and needs to learn to not take everything to heart so much, but there is no question he is struggling to attain what he feels he deserves at Maple Leaf and that is affecting his mindset. Magnus works very hard in his studies and does everything he can to gain positive feedback from his teacher(s) but rarely ever gets it - and this bothers him a great deal. Magnus is a very tired young boy these days and his senses are becoming more heightened as a result. Too many times I have wanted to storm down to the school and strangle everyone there for what they are doing to his spirit, but I resist and just try to help him work it through. My Christmas wish for him is that he gets some rest, has some fun with his new Wii (don’t tell him!) and can find that smile that we all know he is famous for. The Jólasveinar will be very good to him this Christmas season!

Here’s the most recent picture of our little girl - Svea Elina. She is growing up fast and becoming sassier with each passing minute. While we love her to tears she is definitely the one we need to keep a firm handle on or else she begins to run the show! These past couple of days both Kristin and I have had to go into full “Santa knows if you are being good” mode and I have even had to resort to the “be careful because Gryla (of Jólasveinar fame) will come down from the mountain and boil you up in her stew!” speech. This usually shapes her up a bit and I promise you all right here and now she will be receiving a potato on her first day to keep her in proper check! Svea is hoping to get lots of princess dolls, house Lego, a new playhouse, a pink gameboy, cupcake toys, a toy pizza maker and a tinkerbell fairy. I am sure Santa has heard all of her requests and I assume she will be most happy come Christmas Day - that is if the Jólasveinar don’t get her first!

Well, for years the Engleson clan in Dalian has suffered through the Charlie Brown Christmas tree syndrome. Long, skinny, weak, 100% plastic, pathetic, ugly - these would be proper adjectives to describe what lingered in our living room during the festive season. But living in China we were (rightfully so) just happy to have anything Christmas and enjoyed it for what it was: our China Christmas tree. But as the years have progressed in China the selection for Christmas paraphernalia has increased tenfold and options for what we can have in our house gotten much better. This is a bit of a weird phenomena since there is no case of Christmas at all in Chinese history; this is purely Western decadence taking over. Either way, this Saturday the family went into Dalian and bought ourselves a new tree. We were thinking about buying a real tree but it was too expensive so we just opted for the fake one again (I’m longing for a real tree!). Either way, we are very happy with it and with our house all decorated we are officially into the season and enjoying everything Christmas has to offer. Here is our 2010 Engleson family Christmas tree…

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogsphere, I am deeply sorry for my one month hiatus but as I stated earlier in the summer the logistics of maintaining a blog in China is simply becoming unsustainable. What should take 5 minutes to update becomes 30-40, and then from that sparks anger and rage of the circumstances - and the blog is supposed to be fun! At first I thought the Firewall was created to censor information (which it still does) but its most cunning development is for Market Protection of Chinese businesses. So things like Flickr and Youtube, which are used on a daily level to maintain a blog, are firewalled to ensure the people use the Chinese version of those products - and those websites are all, of course, only in Chinese. I have learned a few tricks to work around them but it is never consistent and it varies from computer to computer. So, sometimes when I have time at home in the evening I may try to do something only to find the websites out of commission, and our computers at school are all controlled too much to even try. (This post here took at least 3x longer than normal!) I thank all of those who have expressed the desire for me to get back at it and I feel now I have had enough of a rest to focus my efforts again and fight the Great Firewall of China once more. I truly wish this situation would change but it is not - in fact it is only getting worse. Much has happened over the past month and I have much to show and tell. Stay tuned as we once again delve into the web-based murk…

Photos courtesy of Neil McIntyre

Well, the second official Bombers convoy was a huge success and great times were had by all. My bike ran beautifully (with the exception I had no 2nd gear) and the weather was cool and crisp and was an absolute joy to be outside in. While not as naturally beautiful as the Canadian countryside, there is just something about the Chinese version that I absolutely love and am always captivated with it everytime I explore it. During this time of the season you really see the hold the land has over the people as they prepare themselves for the long winter months ahead - the people have very little and are working very hard for everything they got.

The Bombers were 10 bikes deep and turned heads everywhere we went. As I spoke about earlier, this trip had a little business mixed in with pleasure with the Red Cross coming along as well. We first met up with the French contingent and rode with them for the first part of the day and travelled to an old folks home/nursery to watch the great Phillipe Bizot give his workshop and performance to the locals. It was really neat to watch him captivate the audience of local farmers (especially the children) in their dilapitaded but friendly setting. Once his show was done the Bombers swooped in like Santa Claus and handed out toys and clothing to as many of the people as we could; it got a little crazy at times and we had to fend off a couple of stampedes of crazy women trying to grab goods for their children - but it felt nice to do this.

After that, we parted ways with our French companions and travelled northbound to a beautiful area north of Jinzhou called DongGuo, which is a very popular cherry picking destination in the spring. Here we stayed in a traditional chinese village and drank a lot of beer and bijiu - way too much bijiu! The spirits were high and ganbei’s (empty glass) got out of hand and (I believe) it was only 9 o’clock at night when I blacked out and needed to get carried to my kang for the night - a sad performance indeed from the Bombers team leader! In total, 5 bottles of bijiu were consumed by the Bombers along with the dozens of other road pops.

The roads were, for the most part, peaceful and the riding was nice. We probably added 150-200kms to our odometers and just travelled at a nice, leisurely pace. All in all, it was just a great weekend and, again, had that bizarre Chinese element that makes life so interesting over here - these will truly be the types of days I will miss when I come home.