We passed the government inspection. I also discovered it was nothing to do with elevating the status of the university, apparently the road to being granted the right to confer masters degrees is a long one and will take some years yet. This one was a routine re-certification of what they already are, which begs the question - why was there such a flap when they should know what is required and be doing it all the time anyway?
In the two student cafeterias, if they are eating they can have as much soup as they like for free. It’s free because it is virtually water anyway. However I found out on Friday that for the three days of the inspection the soup suddenly contained bits of meat, vegetables, tomatoes, eggs etc but the moment the inspectors left it went back to being mucky water again!
Friday night saw the foreign language society’s “English Corner”. You may recall the first one was a dire affair at which nothing actually happened. Well this was quite simply, the Jack show. It was buttock-numbingly boring and so cringe worthy there were times I was glad no rotten tomatoes were close at hand.
The topic was public speaking and Carol (who is head of the society and who after the first dismal failure I offered advice on how to improve it) invited Jack to speak along with Vivi. Now, Jack came first in the school heat for the national cup although he got nowhere in the provincial run-off and Vivi came second. In my opinion Vivi was far better than him but as always seems to be the case here, the male of the species was preferred. They both went to Bengbu for the provincial and in fairness Vivi never shone either.
Jack however, loves the sound of his own voice. “Hey - look at me!” is how I would describe it. And boy, didn’t he drone on and on and even subjected us to watching his performance in Bengbu on video. Now the roundhouse was full at the start but after fifteen minutes of piffle around half of the students had left. After all, why should they be bored witless in their free time when they can do the same sitting on their dormitory bunk?
To make matters worse, when, after half an hour of telling everyone how terrific he was and I breathed a sigh of relief because he was done, he and Vivi were invited to answer questions! And some students (must have been plants!) actually prolonged the agony by asking some!! Poor Vivi never got chance to even attempt to answer any questions because Mr Lookatme never let her get a word in.
And then after he had prattled on for a total of about 40 minutes I was asked to speak on the topic. What??? No way was I going to complete the communal frontal lobotomy by waxing lyrical! I think I spoke for about one minute although as Jack had by that time already beaten a hasty retreat I suspect my pithy comments about holding your audience and keeping it interesting were somewhat lost.
At the close, all the society officials were summoned to a snap crisis meeting. I have told Carol I am happy to advise her on how to run the next affair and it is up to her whether she takes my offer up but all I can hope is that the students have not been put off for life. I know I would be and if the third event is as bad then I too will be reluctant to show my face.
Saturday was a better day.
The society held a speaking competition at which Kevin and I along with Tina (my ex-assistant) were judges. With 26 speakers speaking for an expected three minutes apiece it was set to last a couple of hours or even more but thankfully all were relatively brief and some were remarkably good for freshmen, particularly impressive were the non-English majors. It finished early enough for me to go home and take Pepsi out before I set off downtown.
This was for the meal for the small school’s singing contest judges. As I had already arranged to take Joan for dinner, having been told the meal was on Sunday and then having it switched, the owner told me I could take her as well and so I did. It looks as if there will be five or six judges - two teachers from the school itself plus maybe the owner, two music teachers from a middle school in town and myself. This Saturday afternoon I will judge one of the heats (I refused to do both morning and afternoon sessions due to Pepsi being cooped up all day) and then the final will be held in an hotel on the Sunday before Christmas where they will also have a party and I assume a meal for the hard working judges afterwards. Oh, and I also have to be Santa.
Yesterday I again took Joan for a meal but as she had prep in the evening we went for lunch to Love In The Town. With my 40y discount coupons burning a hole in my pocket and a hankering for the sweet and sour I simply had to go. Except you can’t use the coupons at weekends! I now have seven coupons…….
We ordered food, the big prawns, sweet and sour, rice cakes and yam balls but when the sweet and sour came I had apparently ordered (from the tablet computer thingy) deep fried gristle. It was appalling although Joan actually ate it. As I had only really gone there for the sweet and sour I wasn’t to be thwarted and after much discussion with the waitress we finally decided which picture it was (the first time I ordered it by accident so had no idea what it looked like on the computer) and I got it. Not as good as last time but still very nice and now I know exactly which one to tap on future visits. The weather was also kind enough to allow us to travel on my bike.
Although, I have noticed on my past two return trips to town I have got back with very little juice left so the batteries are feeling tired. On asking around how much to replace five 12v batteries I was told 600-700y. That sort of money made me sit back and think. If I am going to spend that much plus more later on new brakes and tyres for about 300y I may as well bite the bullet and buy a new bike because I will only hand over 2,500 and it won’t look “tired”. Plus I have never washed the current one in the 15 months I have had it. Decisions, decisions but the Christmas jolly has to be taken into consideration.
Today is utterly miserable and has been raining for most of it with the forecast saying it is here until the weekend.
I wanted to show today’s class a short video to end the lesson but couldn’t get the damned computer to do it (it’s all in Chinese of course) so ended up with them watching twenty minutes of one of Ollivier’s French films. The students could read the subtitles (Chinese) but of course I never understood a word other than “merde”.
Two days off now.
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