Wednesday 2nd October, 2013             1800

I forgot to mention in the last blog something which happened in my Monday class. All my lessons commence with me inviting the students to share an interesting story that occurred since we last met and on this occasion Ryan, one of three boys in a class of 39, volunteered a tale.

“I read an article by a very famous writer. It was called ‘Life is an Adventure’ - perhaps you know the author?”

Somewhat taken unawares I chuckled, for I was that writer. Since Cinny took over as my assistant and she was the editor of “Sunflower” (the foreign language department’s biannual newsletter) I have been helping her by proof-reading and emending some of it, particularly the student submissions. This was the first time I had actually penned an article for it though and it was based on the Yangmei Story from my 2009 holiday in Nanning. When the paper comes out the first class I take it is always a battle to get them to put their copies away but naively perhaps, I never thought they paid much attention to it. I was wrong and it looks as if the message I was trying to impart may have hit home for at least some of them!

After deciding to have a lazy day yesterday, today I rode to town. I needed animal meat if nothing else but it wasn’t a good day to be out and about. Aside from the myriad wedding convoys (I have no idea why the date is so popular for getting hitched) the lunatics had taken over the roads in vast numbers. Quite aside from finding myself on several occasions on a head-on collision course with cars whose drivers clearly assumed my e-bike was the two-wheeled equivalent of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang I saw an utterly idiotic near disaster on the way back not far from school. I was coming down the road by the small farms (one of which a couple of years ago I snapped the farmer tilling his rice paddy with a water buffalo) and coming in the opposite direction was an e-pickup. He crossed to my side of the road which after more than three years here said to me he was turning into one of the houses on that side. It certainly meant that to the girl on the e-bike going in his direction for she was completely taken off guard when the imbecile suddenly crossed both lanes to turn off and only by dint of her taking avoiding action which nearly saw her lose control and come off did he miss contact by about two inches. She of course said nothing but the old fart was treated to some passing invective hurled at him from the Silver Streak. How I never see more accidents than I do is beyond me.

Once home I took Pepsi to the sweet pork place while I sat and mused on the bike with refreshments. There is a little bitch puppy which hangs around the place - dogs often do as the scraps are put out the back - and she has gotten to know me and runs up for a tummy tickle. Nearby a little fat boy (yes, there are actually some in China) of about 8 years was playing with his sister of about four. Spying the puppy sitting under my bike, the boy came over and started stamping and shouting at the little dog, thus causing it to flee in terror. I didn’t like that. Here I have a great advantage sometimes in being both a laowei and enormously fat and I used it by climbing off the bike and doing what I thought was a creditable Incredible Hulk impression. The little shit - sorry, boy - in turn fled with eyes as big as saucers. Just maybe he got the message.

After that I went to my office. Whilst we are on a weeks holiday it is not a ghost town, with some students staying to study and others who think it’s not worth travelling home and back as their journeys each way take half a day. One of the latter, Vivian, came and asked me if she could chat with me. Naturally I agreed and we talked. She is majoring in multimedia and it wasn’t very long before I found out her real reason for coming up to me. Her class has a project to do and some of them want to make a “documentary” about my life here. Would I help them? After establishing that it won’t (I hope!) be reality TV I agreed on the condition that I get two copies of it on DVD, one for me and one to send to my mum. Aside from the classroom and my office I have no idea what they will film but she did say they will borrow an ebike from a teacher to follow me! I did enquire as to why they chose me rather than Kevin or Ollivier and it had nothing to do with my on screen charisma, innate charm or handsome physique. It’s because I am the most visible foreign teacher on campus…….