You would think that going away for a few days, you would be able to drag yourself away from writing.

You would think, after doing it every day for the last six months, it would be time to take a break. But the trouble with good intentions and being in a different place is that there’s a ton of new and different sights and things to write about.

We are away primarily for a wedding, with part of it being a Chinese Tea Ceremony, and of course, I’ve been reading up on it, and there are several descriptions, making it difficult to get a clear idea of what happens.

I guess I’m going to have to wait until the day, next Friday.

In between, there will be a dinner that will have as the centrepiece, Peking Duck, my absolute favourite duck dish.

I had it last in Hong Kong two years back, before the riots at the restaurant in the Peninsula Hotel, and it was exquisite.

Then it’s my brother’s 70th birthday. As he is working feverishly on the family history, and having jetted off many times overseas tracking down the long lost relatives we knew nothing about, it’ll be time for a progress report.

I must admit that some of those relatives have roused my writer’s curiosity. When I helped clear out my parents’ house after they moved into a retirement home, we found a great deal of ancestral material, the most interesting of which was, would you believe, about my mother.

We have found a whole lot of letters she received from her first boyfriend and then from my father. It shows a side to her I never knew about, and a side to my father that, given what I know of him, is totally out of character.

There will no doubt be more on this subject later.

And finally, but not least, there was a baby announcement, always a subject of much joy and happiness.

This is only day two. There is definitely more to come.