Verity's panda bag prize

Verity put an entry in for an eco-bag design competition a while ago and thought nomore about it. On Sunday she won third prize, got her design on a bag and a huge bag of art materials!

Xiamen: Palm trees, islands & the Carbon Trust Cities Programme

This week Richard Rugg, who created the Low Carbon Cities Programme in the UK, came to China to help Tim orient the team. Since most of the team is based at Xiamen (on the coast opposite Taiwan), they went there for the workshop. Everything went well and they managed to fit in some site-seeing before the flight home as well as catching a stomach bug that knocked Tim out for most of the weekend.

A walk on the island

Before leaving Xiamen, we went for a walk on Gulangyu island where there are lots of crumbling foreign houses and winding lanes. It was warm and relaxed - very pleasant.

DIY dentistry

Private dental care is expensive and takes time to organise. Tristan had a shard of tooth poking through his gum that kept annoying him; Lou had just seen the cost of braces and didn't want another trip to the dentist and Tim had ... a set of pliers. The oddest thing was that it worked.

Kisses sweetie

Verity heard that they're looking for children to model things and thought she'd practice ...

Product Footprints, contracts & tax

Tim went to Shanghai on Tuesday to start a pilot to analyse the carbon footprint of a set of products. He came back on Wednesday night then had to work until 2am to try to get contracts in place before year-end and to make sure that he could pay his tax bill. Paying tax is complicated in China - it has taken weeks of emails and conversations to get the estimate right and today it took over an hour in the bank to pay it; he now has to pay it monthly so he hopes it will be better next time round.

Verity's Teacher

Verity's Teacher also had to dress-up ...