An update from Ainia's temporary non-sailors

Hello, just a couple of updates from Canada. Spring is coming very slowly this year. It has been interesting to see spring happen after being in the tropics for several winters. So far though the signs of spring have been few with quite a bit of snow.

About the paw, there is steady, but quite slow progress. The emphasis has been on regaining range of motion. This means doing about six sets of exercises for about 30 to 45 minutes a time. Picture bending and stretching every joint in the hand and wrist in every direction possible and you get the idea. I had surgery to remove two wires where there was a fracture at the base of the pinky and the wound there is still open and the exercises slow down the healing, but the doctor and hand therapist just say that it will bleed and not to worry about it. I would imagine that it will be two months more so our decision to put everything a year makes sense.

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Your China 101: Things About China That You Don't Know and Probably Should has been published.

This is a project that June and I have working on for the last couple of years. It is a sort of 'China for Dummies' book. We tried to get it electronically published when we in Australia but there were computer issues that were greater than we could handle there with the access we had. Well, it is now done.  When we got back to Canada we did some updating and June sorted out the technical problems.

I did most of the writing from the perspective of someone who wants to know more about this fascinating and complex country. June, who is a Beijing girl, provided a lot of interesting information and did the technical, epublishing stuff. There is even a photo of June in front of the Goddess of Liberty statue in Tianamen Square during the famous 1989 protests.It is available on the iBookstore for $3.99 and really should be read on an iPad rather than an iPhone since there are more than 200 illustrations included.  If you go to the iBookstore you can see a full table of contents, but the book contains a wide range of topics including history, geography, culture, travel, films and books about China, and, importantly, an examination of the issues that the country faces.

BTW #1, we chose to produce this book for the iBookstore because their ePub format does a better job of handling images, of which we have 200+. If you read the book and like it, thank you. Please do a review on the iBookstore. In this modern world of electronic publishing, writing the book is almost the easiest part. The challenge is to promote the book. Any help in spreading the word is most appreciated.

BTW #2, I am now working on a book about bluewater cruising based on our experiences and those of other cruisers we have shared a beer or two with. I was going to say it was the experience from one million miles, but in reality it is much more than two million miles.