My well-used passport.

I applied for a new passport as my current one is full of visas and stamps. Of course, the holiday season has delayed the process. I leave for England on January 16. I’m getting a tad anxious. Anxious about the passport, and about British weather. Britain in winter is not the most ideal of Island Getaways.

I will have to travel with two passports (there isn’t a enough time to transfer my China resident permit into the new document). While colleagues have done this with no problem, I’m a little worried about being able to get back into China, using a permit in an canceled passport.

Of course, that is, if I have a passport at all and am able to leave the country at all.

From the customer service representative at the Canadian Consulate:

I’m sorry, we have no way of knowing when your passport will arrive.

The reply from the Canadian government Passport Status Request web form:

We would like to inform you that any questions concerning your passeport (sic) application should be directed to the Canadian Government Offices located in China. We hope we were able to assist you.

No, you weren’t able to assist me. Given my past experiences with the offices of the Canadian government in China, I shouldn’t have expected anything more. Please, dear friends, cross your fingers, and toes, for me.

There was a short break in the never-ending rain this week (above). Like all good things, it didn’t last. Last Friday the storm set a record, dumping more rain in one day than any in the last 50 years. The road outside my school flooded, denying access to the buses that ferry the students home for the weekend. They were not amused. A weekend at school, in class?

I am never without an umbrella.

From the CBC

Soldiers scrambled to shore up soggy levies with sandbags Tuesday in southern China as forecasters warned that heavy rain in the central region could trigger more flooding on the country’s second-longest river.

At least 63 have been killed in the past month, the official Xinhua news agency reported, noting that flooding has killed 171 since the beginning of the year.

This year’s flooding in 20 provinces and the western Xinjiang region has forced 1.27 million people to flee their homes, while crop damage was reported on nearly 1 million hectares, Xinhua said.

Read the entire story at CBC News.

While some countries are dealing with too much water other have enough to wantonly destroy it. From Canadian news:

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly “reclassified” as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a “hidden subsidy” to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

Under the Fisheries Act, it’s illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as “tailings impoundment areas.”

Read the entire story at CBC News.