It was the deepest, most intense exhaustion i ever felt last friday night oct 14 after the forbidden city concert hall double bill concert with katie targett-adams (scotland) at which point i almost collapsed. we managed to drag ourselves back to the pompous and overly priced landmark hotel with our gear, i fell into my 12th floor room bed utterly drained, feverish. what with rehearsals all previous week, an amourous karaoke evening, foolishly nabbing a cold which developed to a racking cough and sweats, it was an uphill battle to make ready for this big concert featuring myself and katie as headliners performing scottish, greek and chinese repertoire with invited BJ chinese performers. it was a disappointing physical condition to find myself in. but the show went on. we did pull it off. there were some technical dissapointments (my first power intro, da ban cheng, the vocal was too quiet!, my guitar conked out halfway thru my 2nd set, the gorgeous quartet version of ‘good morning sun’ arranged my musicat composer ye min was marred by expected sounds from backstage coming in thru the pa system, and the musicat’s ‘jie ri’ was marred by the violin too loud). But most of the concert was wonderful, katie with her gorgeous voice and harp and duets between all of us and with dongling and liu xiang. Shiqing filmed the show . looks great. had invited a slew of people . see what plays out .

the weekend immed after the concert i remarkable found a great medical clinic with tony’s help and the staff there gave me injections over 2 days of an antibiotic that was transforming. the fever, cough and most symptoms vanished in a day and a half. combination of eastern and western medicine. the effect was dramatic and the speed simply remarkable.

past couple of days have been staying at at the luxurious (joke) 2-star sheng tang hotel close to the west gate of people’s university. this eve depart from BJ by train to go to Nanjing where the National Chinese Athletic Games are in full swing. BJ TV has asked me to go down, thay want to do an MTV style shoot. Got a phone call today from the university – am being recommnded to the BJ municipal government as an Olympic Expert Volunteer Educator.

Weather is cool , colder in the evenings . Great roast duck dinner last night. Made Tibetan friends the other day, jewellry pedals near the landmark hotel. Real heart. They have invited me to Lhasa next year in 2006 july when the railroad from BJ is finally complete. Real character. The colour of China lies far out on its borders.