The company I work for is quite an international one; we have offices in 18 countries, with the head office here in Bristol. We often have people from our other offices here visiting, and last week it was the turn of one of our guys from Beijing.
Now Bristol, Bath and the towns and villages in between all lie in the Avon valley. This valley is about five miles wide for most of the distance between Bath and Bristol, and fairly steep-sided. After a few warm, dry days, the air pollution starts to accumulate; for someone used to the fresh air of South Australia, it is not very pleasant.
Late last week I was walking from the office to the train station with our Chinese friend. We had walked a little way in silence, and I was about to comment on the poor air quality, when he had the same thought: he turned to me and said, "The air is so clean here! In Beijing it is terrible."
I guess these things are all relative.
3 comments:
Ha! Found you.
Oh well, on to something else then I guess.
Mr. Brown
Philip and I can attest to the "smog" in Beijing (I choose not to to judge it by calling it pollution!).
We've just returned to Adelaide from our Pakistan/China trip and Beijing does smog that beats anything in Pakistan to Philip's surprise. Before going to China Philip was sure Pakistan could do anything China could in the pollution stakes!
There were days we came out of our apartment building and thought there was something wrong with our eyes because we wern't able to focus on the trees a few metre away.
One day after lots of rain and strong winds we were able to see blue sky and the sun! A real treat after cloudless yet "overcast" days when the sun resembled an orange disc!
Hey Tom, can you write something about your new job? It sounds really cool and I'm sure we're all hanging out to find out what it's like!
Cheers, Jack
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