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.
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