Sunday 30th March, 2014                  1315

Apologies once again for the break but I really have been incredibly busy. At least the cough has scarpered.

Besides working on a self-assessment of my teaching year in 2013 (another thing I suspect which is down to the impending inspection, seeing as we have never been asked before) I have been translating Chinglish to English as well. Easy enough but when you can’t open the file you are sent and can’t edit the file itself it presents a problem. Even when I managed to open, copy and paste, tidy it all up and then send it back from whence it came, it lost all its format! The problem was that with my not being a geek I was using Works which is apparently “so last century”. It took a while to download something suitable (our internet is still up and down like a whore’s drawers) and then of course I had to learn how to use it. In addition I now have to think up kids activities for both indoors and outdoors.

I was asked for suggestions by the small school which in fairness, some they already do but I wasn’t aware of and some they have now adopted, one of which was taking the kids out in good weather. Last weekend that met with mixed results. The first class had naughty boys who just wanted to climb walls but the second really put some effort into the role play I set them. Yesterday though I was downtown all day because the owner wanted me to double up due to my absence the following weekend when I go to Nanjing. I found some outside activities but also looked at the weather forecast, which for once was correct. It bucketed yesterday - thankfully not when I rode in and rode back - and so it was just as well I had prepared stuff for indoors as well. Another of my suggestions was that I am useless at teaching Chinese children. This is completely true. I don’t speak Chinese and the teachers they already have do a pretty good job. Add to that the fact that as soon as I walk into a classroom there are chants of “play a game!” and you get the drift. Ergo, the school has abandoned any pretence of my actually teaching and now simply want me to play the games!

So yesterday poor old Pepsi was locked in from eight till five whilst I languished in town for a nigh on four hour lunch break before the afternoon classes. As it turned out, I used most of the four hours (and spent a lot of money!) by having lunch, buying medicine, shopping, getting my glasses fixed (which broke in one of the morning lessons) and on the spur going to the bike repair shop.

Some time ago I took Yvonne somewhere on the bike and she managed to bust the bull bars. Not her fault entirely as they weren’t particularly robust. This has meant that the bars constantly rattled when the bike was in motion. Eventually they deteriorated so much I ended up ripping a section off, leaving the machine resembling an e-bike version of an old banger and it’s only 7 months old. For the princely sum of 280y they removed the rest and fitted a new set which is far stronger and has proper fold down footrests for the passenger. What with the forthcoming trip I will not be saving anything this month.

On Thursday I took Yvonne to the German restaurant (see photos), the first time I have been there for well over a year. We don’t go there purely because of the expense - Thursday night cost me 450y for two - as much as it cost to take six to the Sichuan place. Sure, the food was better than last time, we had large Jamie Oliver spare ribs to share as a starter, she had chicken cordon bleu, I had pizza and despite my only asking for one portion we both ended up with homemade cake. Drinks aren’t cheap either because they are all imported. German black beer, a free Italian drink which smelt like Coke but tasted like medicine (she didn’t like it so I had to drink both), I thought she’d like a Baileys but amazingly she didn’t so I had to drink that as well, completed by two actually quite good Bloody Marys. But so expensive. And as I hadn’t charged the bike fully beforehand I worried all the way back as to whether we would make it but thankfully we did.

Late last night when I took Pepsi for her walk I took the bike off charge as we left. While I was doing that another dog which I assumed to be the mum/shutter dog turned up and I never noticed in the dark it wasn’t her. Pepsi went off - she knows the route - and it was only when we were halfway round  I suddenly realised to my horror she was being mounted. No problem with that at first because Mum sometimes does it but then I saw it was a male! Pepsi hasn’t been spayed! I hope to God I caught them in time because I can really do without a repeat of the Robin episode with shit and pee all over my nice wooden floor, not to mention the aggravation of trying to farm them out. Fingers and toes are crossed now and from now on I will have to be more vigilant. Hasn’t been a problem previously as the two dogs who normally play with her have always been females.

So far today I have prepared this week’s homework and emailed my self-assessment to Cinny. I still have to concoct a class activity before bedtime. However once I have posted this it is shower time and an outing into the cool but sunny day.

Monday 24th March, 2014          2000

Still here but I have simply been too occupied and tired to find time to blog. In fact the last thing I want to do right now is that but I note it has been a week since my last.

I can’t remember much about the early part of last week other than the usual round of teaching and shopping trips. What I do remember though is Kevin being told that if he stays here next year it will be his last. The reason? Chinese teachers retire at 60 and next March he will reach that milestone. He has pointed out that he can’t claim his UK pension until he is 66 but apparently the school “authorities” decided all teachers including foreigners must be disposed of at that age. Fine for the Chinese as they get their pension and I believe a nice lump sum but no use to us. So, if they keep me on for a further year as well I would be faced with the same ultimatum this time next year. Kevin has requested a meeting with the brass but I don’t hold out much chance of a sea change, they are paranoid about people dying on them. In which case it means I just have to hope I have another year here and will then have to spend that year putting as much aside as I can in order to fund a move and two months without wages when I find another job somewhere they don’t have problems with wrinklies. If I have to move jobs I will certainly be looking at going further south where the winters are milder though.

Last Friday we had a student mini-concert (see photos) which I had forgotten about. Joanna was back for a couple of days to take an exam but luckily she was able to switch going out with friends to Friday, allowing me to take her for dinner on Saturday instead of Friday as I had arranged. That night I slowly developed a cough, which by the time I went to bed had worsened so that I got next to no sleep, which was great considering I was at the kids school in the morning. On Sunday I went to town and thankfully was finished just after eleven - I would have had to go anyway as there was no food for the pets - and came back at lunchtime determined to get some kip because Jeff the businessman was taking me out again last night.

I didn’t get any sleep at all because every time I was dropping off there were interruptions such as someone drilling elsewhere in the block (Kevin denies it), then students bringing me food from Park the Korean teacher followed by a six pack later with apologies for the noise. Somehow I don’t see students owning drills so maybe they had a party above me when I was out. Anyway, by the time Jeff came to collect me I was pooped.

This time he took me to a restaurant we have been taken a couple of times by the school and he had brought along a maths professor from another uni here. As we walked into the place he said he had something to tell me. I asked if it was bad news and he said yes. He had invited three other friends - hardly bad news when one turned out to be a famous chef (famous at least in this city) and the two others were rather good looking cousins, one divorced with a very young daughter. Actually when they arrived it was quite humorous. We were in a private room near the top of the stairs but had the door open. I spotted the two young ladies making their way up and when the divorcee (I only got told their Chinese names and never remember those) lifted her head near the top of the stairs it was a picture. She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes widened like saucers and her chin hit her chest. Clearly Jeff hadn’t warned them there was going to be a laowei.

Anyway, before the food started to arrive I looked on the wall where there was a framed menu, presumably of the specials, printed in English as well as Chinese. I was aware of this of course but had never seen it in all my time in China. You can dine on crocodile and alligator there. Bizarrely the most expensive “cut” is 268y for a crocodile head. I would have given it a try had it been ordered but thankfully mein host doesn’t like it so I was spared that ordeal.

Which is not of course to say that I was spared any ordeal at all, for after he and the prof had both drunk 250ml apiece of Jing Joh it was decided to hold me hostage. Aside from my fatigue I never minded at all because I was sitting directly opposite the divorcee who kept giving me enormous and beaming smiles (in fact I hope he invites her again!) and the ransom to be paid was that as I had only drunk six pints of pijou I would not be released and driven home until I had emptied ten bottles. Manfully I tackled the task and eventually an end was called to proceedings. Jeff wasn’t driving of course, in fact it was the divorcee who had been invited to dinner so she could drive us back. She owns a restaurant which is currently being redecorated and when it opens again we will go there for a meal. I look forward to it and regret not having taken my camera with me.

It was about 2230 when I got back - making it the longest ever meal I have had in China at 5 hours - and I couldn’t face cooking for the animals so opened a tin each of Pedigree and Whiskas. Swines never touched them but I can’t blame them really, all they have ever had is plain boiled meat but I shall leave it out tonight to see if any of them at least nibble. At 18y (£1.80) a can it’s a damned site more expensive than a slab of liver costing 10y, hence I don’t buy it - imported.

Joanna left yesterday. She quit her job and departed to start a new one selling women’s clothing in Nanjing. The plan is for me to go there during the Qingming Festival (tomb sweeping holiday) a week Saturday and stay for two nights. I got all excited about seeing the museum devoted to the Japanese massacre there and was intent on going to the shipyard building Titanic 2 to take pictures of her under construction. Sadly, yesterday I learnt the keel won’t be laid until September. Rats.

And last night again I hardly got a wink due to the cought so I hope tonight exhaustion takes over. No class until after lunch so I shall get up when I wake up.

Monday 17th March, 2014                 1945

Yes I am sure some of you think I passed away but I am still kicking and moaning.

Part of my absence was due to being incredibly busy since my last entry - both socially and otherwise - but half of it was down to a terrible accident a few nights ago. I managed to spill almost an entire glass of wine onto my keyboard. The initial effect was to transform anything I typed into complete gibberish (not far removed from the norm some may say) and on sending Kevin a message his immediate reply was to switch off, which I did. He said the keyboard needed washing and drying but of course my skills in that area are nil. I left it off until the morning for it to dry out, hoping that all would be well. Sadly when I switched on again not one key even typed nonsense, the only thing that still worked besides the laptop was the optical mouse so although I could visit my favourite sites I was completely unable to respond to anything or do searches.

With Kevin also busy, as an interim measure I paid 32 yuan for an external keyboard which got me up and running again and the proper one is currently with Kevin, having been washed and dried. He suspects the damage may be too great and the keyboard (rather than me) is deceased, something we shall find out when he has time to refit it. Besides having been unable briefly to post anything online it is not too serious as I can always buy a replacement board if necessary. The last one cost 50y so even if prices have doubled it won’t break the bank.

On Wednesday I was taken for dinner by a friend of Cinny’s. He owns his own engineering consultancy business and wants to improve his English. If I am honest I didn’t really want to accept the job. For starters I am not keen on one to one teaching, much preferring an audience and also it would obviously have to entail evening or weekend work. However Cinny is so good at looking after me I couldn’t refuse. His English name is Jeff, he’s forty and married with a 16 year old daughter. It was arranged for him to pick Cinny and me up in his car for a get to know you meal. He duly arrived and collected just me (Cinny was already in town as it turned out) in a brand new state of the art Audi A8 quattro so he’s not short of a bob or two.

Off we went to a new barbecue cum hotpot restaurant where we were joined by Cinny and his wife. To my relief he doesn’t want lessons, simply wants to practise his English with a native speaker, probably over lunch or dinner (at his expense) at weekends. That’s more like fun than teaching and he’s quite a nice chap which is a bonus. Anyway, four hours later he brought us back and to my surprise when I exited the car he did too and followed me. Bemused as to why (I thought maybe he wanted to see my flat) it all became apparent when he thrust paper into my hand. I had no intention of taking anything for a simple meet and greet session but he was adamant and it would have been churlish to push my point. I did however think that perhaps I may enjoy doing this for the next couple of months, in fact I was quite disappointed when due to business commitments he had to cancel a proposed dinner on Sunday! Damn.

Anyway, I had said I would return to the Sichuan place at the weekend because on Monday the act were returning to Beijing. I asked Yvonne if she was free but she has a part time job flogging milk at Lottemart so she couldn’t. Instead I asked Elizabeth who is in Yvoinne’s class and last term I gave them both the top highest marks of all my students. Why not reward excellence?

I mentioned this in passing to Ollivier who suggested he, his wife and baby came with us and accordingly a table was booked for Saturday night. By coincidence Kevin had also arranged to go with two of his students so the restaurant had a clean sweep of all the foreign teachers in one night and on adjoining tables. Naturally I arranged for Elizabeth to be chosen for the rope trick (see pictures) but this time one of my “brothers” insisted I go on stage myself in order to take my photos. I felt a little uncomfortable because everyone else who tries it is shooed off but what the hell.

The meal was good even though I didn’t fancy a couple of the dishes but Ollivier’s wife (I think) ordered a platter of battered prawns with what looked like crispy sweet corn but wasn’t. I wasn’t interested in the corn stuff but the prawns were delicious! A good night all round and I look forward to seeing the replacement act in due course.

I did have some sad news though which I don’t think I have shared with you. The Japanese restaurant has closed up after seven months of operating. And boy did I have a close escape. I used up all the prepaid credit on my VIP card last time I went and unusually never topped it up, normally I was loading another 500y when that happened but on this occasion for some reason I didn’t and am I glad. It goes to show that even a well furnished place here can be here today, gone tomorrow so I shall be chary of any such prepay cards from now on. Anyway, enjoy the photos, Elizabeth is easy to identify seeing as she is the one on stage!

Sunday 9th March, 2014                             2130

Not a lot happening lately other than run of the mill stuff, however there are a couple of things that spring to mind.

One tale from last year I forgot (or indeed have forgotten that I told you!!)  to tell you was about Sad Joanna. She was a new freshman who was clearly feeling homesick, so much so that I spent the rest of the evening after I met her feeling miserable myself. I used her for my warm up tale in my classes the following week and Felicity (the girl interviewing me in the video on YouTube) after our lesson asked me for the girl’s phone number. Why? Because she had also suffered thus and wanted to comfort the newcomer. I thought it was a very nice random act of kindness.

A couple of days ago I had to surrender and went to the campus optical shop. I have been having problems as I said with small print and although I have bifocals (somewhere) I can’t wear them as they are scratched to hell and gone where the cats got hold of them a couple of years ago. Anyway, after many “timbudongs” I finally got through to the woman I wanted cheap reading glasses. They only cater for distance vision as apparently most Chinese with sight problems can see close up but that’s it. I didn’t  want an eyesight test, just some bog-standard magnifiers. Eventually the woman twigged and gave me some specs, which whilst cheap at 40y, are perfect for close up stuff and fold down into a case about half the size of a mobile phone. Now when someone texts me a number or QQ address I can actually read it. Happy chappy.

Earlier today - which has been slightly warm although it is freezing tonight - I inadvertently performed a good  deed. I had decided I wouldn’t cook tonight but would go to town for dinner instead and invited the lovely Chris who has the loveliest legs of any of my students during my tenure here. She accepted and so I went down to the campus shops with Pepsi. With time to kill before picking Chris up I had a couple of bottles. As is often the case there were two stalls outside the supermarket manned by students, one selling pot noodles, the other flavoured milk. With nothing better to do and seeing the milk stall wasn’t attracting any interest, on a whim I decided to drum up some custom. Within a pijou bottle’s shelf life with me all the girls’ sample plastic beakers had been used so I went into the supermarket to buy them some more because I know the usual deal is that they can’t finish until they give away all the free samples and they couldn’t without beakers. They also couldn’t afford to buy more seeing as I think they average about 2y (20p) an hour doing it.

The two girls may not have spoken English but they weren’t stupid. They guessed what I was up to - I hadn’t said anything - and one of them came and prevented me from buying more cups for them. They had been thrilled by me attracting tasters but must have been horrified when I went to buy more receptacles because it would appear the deal they were on with the supermarket was that once the plastic cups were used they could go! I reckon that given their level of salesmanship I shaved an hour off their working day.

After that Chris (who sadly blinked for the solo shot) and I went and caught the bus to go to the Sichuan place. Chris is in the top five of my students (I gave her 90% last term) and I thought she might be a little shy but when we got to the restaurant and were greeted by my fat costumed “brothers” I simply (from behind her) nodded in her direction and made as if I was handcuffed in reference to the rope trick. I didn’t think it would work but it did, as you will see from the photos.

Chris doesn’t like meat so our meal was devoid of any pork, beef, chicken or mutton but she does like lobster, which not only do I but they had some tonight for 168y - which was ultimately more than half the bill! It was nice but sadly far too small, however it did make an attractive photo on the dish - which I wanted to steal but wouldn’t dare as now the staff all know my name!

Wednesday 5th March, 2014           2130

Western Wednesday went very well despite a bit of a panic at one point.

My guest was Yvonne and we ate in Ollivier’s place next door as I don’t have anything to eat off - and won’t splash out on anything either until I know my future is secure for another year. I did the planned dishes whilst Ollivier produced an apple cake and a huge plate of crepes. I am pretty certain none of us knew it was Shrove Tuesday and Ollie makes pancakes every few days to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner anyway. Strange people these continentals

I had to try to come up with my food with two lessons in between so I prepared some in the morning and the plan was to come back after work and finish the job. When I got home I needed to have a little sit down to rest my legs after the class and taking Pepsi out but about five minutes afterwards we had a power cut. Great. I could still cook the cottage pie but not bake it and the soup would have been extremely lumpy because I needed to use Kevin’s electric blender. Not only that, I couldn’t get hot water to wash up the stuff from the morning that I needed to re-use. In fact I couldn’t really get water at all as it was a mere trickle because the campus water pumps had gone off as well. By the standards here it wasn’t such a long outage but it was a bit of a scramble to have everything ready for 1830. What was gratifying was that Yvonne, who had told me before the meal she wouldn’t like the soup (I found out later she didn’t like the carrot and lentil one) actually pronounced it delicious. She was also amazed to eat potatoes in two ways she never had before, in the soup and mashed. I think everyone enjoyed it, Kevin  certainly did for he snaffled the last of the cottage pie for his dinner tonight.

My free day was interrupted by a meeting of all the foreign teachers with Prof Fang, at which further changes were announced. Some of them are fine but one of them was a little awkward. We teach oral English yet we were now being asked to set homework. How can you mark oral homework? A solution was suggested by Prof Fang wherein we split the classes into permanent groups and each week they do it together but only one of the group (a different one from the group each week) gives a short talk on it and the group is graded as a whole. It’s something we can do but to be honest I am still not that certain about it. Other things were that we have to submit a self-evaluation each year, if we want to continue working here for another year we must fill in an application form (what??) and we have to have an annual medical. And it won’t just be the cursory once-over from the quack but the full gamut, x-rays, blood tests, ECG etc. time to get my wrist BP monitor from the spare room and start making sure mine is as good as it was a year ago methinks! Of course, if I am found to be in rude health then that can only help my problems in the “we don’t want you because you are going to croak it imminently“ department. If I am not that could be a problem but aside from generally being a  porker and of advancing years I feel fine so fingers crossed. All this for the inspection for the university application for promotion.

Lucy came to do the cleaning today so the place would be spick and span for Qing’s arrival tomorrow. Remember I said I wasn’t going to jump for joy until she was on the way? Good job. Always something comes up and it’s not as if I asked her to come, she called me and said she wanted to visit me. This time it is her friend Helen, who Qing has just found out has returned to Tongling and got back together with the bloke that was beating her up. She is upset, angry and a little fearful not only for her friend’s safety but also after her comments to Helen, that she may now think they are not friends any more so she is trying to see her tomorrow or Friday. She is now hoping she can come on Saturday, which would be terrific because I have made myself free for the weekend and I want to take her to the Sichuan restaurant to surprise her with the show. We shall see.

Anyway, here is the short video of Joanna taking part in the show last week - a little shaky but a fond memory for me. I hope you enjoy it.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eajdd1YMNcc

Monday 3rd March, 2014                1930

This time the hiatus was nothing to do with me!

Saturday dawned (well I wouldn’t actually know as I never got out of bed until eleven on a rare weekend with nothing to do other than at some point go shopping downtown) cold and miserably, interminably wet so I decided to defer the shopping trip to Sunday and spend most of the day indoors.

At midday (and it was the 1st of the month, which we believe to be significant) I was online when suddenly I was cut off and attempts to reconnect were met with the request to log in. These in turn were greeted by “quack quack oops” so I was at a loss until Kevin also complained. The difference was, he had a student with him who translated we were being asked to pay. Sod that, our contract says - and it has always been - free for foreign teachers.

Enquiries were made and Cinny said we should wait until Monday when IT were at work as it may be that we had not been exempted, the Chinese teachers pay 25y a month now the system has been upgraded (that’s a joke) so I said to Kevin that faced with a weekend of no access and paying 25y for it I would rather pay and argue later. The internet takes over your life when you are in a foreign country. He and his student went and loaded 25y on each of our cards and then transferred his 25y to the internet. The cards can be used for that plus paying for a shower, borrowing library books or eating in the school canteens. I have never done any of the aforementioned but at least he never transferred my money to the web as it didn’t work, at least I can let a student borrow my card to pay for lunch though.

The next story was that they were debugging the new system and working on it yet nobody answered the phone when called. This was because they all went home Friday afternoon and turned off their mobiles. Our theory (and we’re sticking with it) is that  the upgrade was rushed and they forgot to tell it that it needed to roll over the credits to the succeeding month -hence 1st March was important. Kevin’s assistant Alice was cut off and she had over 100y in credit - the entire campus was bereft of internet access until just after nine this morning.

Ok, I had a load of dvds I could watch but my laptop chose this weekend for the dvd player to malfunction. Much of my time was therefore spent on my simulator taking Titanic into Southampton and running the VLCC Latitude aground in Rotterdam. It was a very long weekend  indeed, broken only by my shopping trip late Sunday afternoon and I wasn’t happy.

At least though I wasn’t in Kunming buying train tickets, the story of which has shocked everyone. Someone in the UK equated that perhaps my enforced online absence was more sinister than a screw-up and so I had to advise that I am further away from Kunming than London is from Rome. Somehow I don’t see them bothering to attack this little city. I hope.

This afternoon I was invited to a double birthday celebration dinner (which meant buying two presents, although I was only told about one birthday so the second one had to be hastily purchased opposite the restaurant) with Lucy and her friend whose birthdays are close together. Lucy is my cleaner and most of those present were maths majors.  Lucy is the one wearing the Santa jacket next to the chap in glasses who is her boyfriend. I had a really nice time and of course being students who have no contact with me (other than Lucy) I attracted much attention.

On Sunday morning Qing called me. She quit the job in Beijing because after working for maybe three months she was only paid a fortnight’s wages, something quite common in China and perhaps something they should do about to make it easier for workers to obtain redress but nonetheless she is now back in Tongling and her mother - for once I agree with parents getting involved with adult lives on occasion - has forbidden her to work in Beijing again. As it happens Qing didn’t  like it because she described it as too big and too lonely. I pointed out that all big cities are thus.

Anyway, she has some days off before she starts whatever she will do next in Tongling (go back to the uncle’s firm is my guess) and she has threatened to come and stay for a couple of days. Forgive me for not being ecstatic but in the past problems have cropped up to prevent her coming, so I will only be happy when she tells me she is on the bus or the train. I have missed her and of course you just KNOW I will take her for dinner and the show!

Tomorrow night is Western Wednesday on Tuesday (Kevin is otherwise engaged  Wednesday) so I am making leek and potato soup and cottage pie using a Colmans mix I bought in the UK in summer. It won’t be truly authentic because I could only get a pound of beef mince and had to buy two pounds of pork mince but at least there will be some cow in it. So my day tomorrow will be busy as I have afternoon class ands I will need to prepare in the morning and cook after class but hopefully it will be a success.