Oh yes, I have been busy, too tired or just downright too lazy to post since Sunday.
What has happened?
Well for starters the majority of the 29 buses seem to have disappeared and been replaced with ex 7 (small) buses or old 29s that are equally as rickety and uncomfortable. They have hard plastic seats, the suspension is virtually non-existent and I had to wonder why, on the busiest bus route in the city, they had put smaller, obsolete buses which instead of being green are now a garish yellow.
I may or may not have had my answer this lunchtime, for whilst setting off to get the bus for some shopping I encountered Tina (my very first Chinese helper when I arrived straight out of teachers’ kindergarten five years ago). She assured me in a short time all will be back to normal and the hybrid buses with the comfortable seats and ride will return. From that I can only deduce a fault has been found with the vehicles. Personally I blame Volkswagen!
Tuesday night/Wednesday morning at 0200 just after I had dropped off to sleep I was rudely awoken by what sounded like World War Three in my main room. Genuinely thinking all my cats were ripping each others’ throats out, I got up and went to investigate. The four big ones were on the windowsill screaming so loud the sound-sensitive stair lights were on. It was a feral cat that had come upstairs but faced with this naked and unrestrained display of sheer brutal aggression, it slunk off down again, leaving peace to reign once again.
The school has introduced a dynamic new innovation on their website for accessing information/inputting marks etc whereby you only need one username and password and only log in once per visit. That would be great but apart from the fact that lately for me any URL with a suffix of .cn is normally unavailable, when I did finally manage to get in and try to access the data it told me in Chinese that my teacher number didn’t exist! Anthony (my new helper) insists that using my details he can log in, so why can’t I?
Anyway before all this happened I searched the teachers rotas basically to do Andrei a favour because as far as I know they have no log-in details as yet and their computer cannot translate the Chinese. I would have told him his class details.
Only he was still not on the teacher list. There is however a Richard - the mythical South African everyone has been talking about. Well on Monday Richard’s freshmen students will be rested from the mid-autumn “holiday” (some holiday - Saturday and Sunday!!!) and be arriving bright tailed and bushy eyed for their first foreign teacher class. Except he isn’t even here yet. Cutting it fine if he is coming.
Yesterday Andrei had his interview with the new boss of our department (I think I mentioned Prof Fang has moved upwards even though she insists it is sideways) to decide whether he is good enough to teach. The sceptic in me, and after a lustrum here, strongly suspects that Andrei is a back-up in case of a no-show by Richard and also a means of getting Juliette to agree to come. Why do I think this? Because I have five classes and there are five scheduled for Richard so where are the rest to employ Andrei coming from? I honestly hope that Richard fails to show, not out of malice towards someone I have never met but for Andrei’s sake because otherwise he is in no-man’s land. Juliette can earn money but because he is on a tourist visa he is prohibited from working. Ok he derives a certain income from his Spanish restaurant but even so.
I suppose he could (if he has the money) always open a business - western restaurant - and obtain a different visa and I am sure if he kept his prices in the middle range certainly for a while he would be a novelty and coin it in.
In the meantime I hate him.
Last night he cooked dinner, again I was relegated yet again to simply bringing a guest (Amy) and a couple of bottles of the red stuff. He produced a salad and a moussaka, my first (yes, believe it!). I was relieved he hadn’t found minced lamb as I am not keen on it but he used pork instead. I ate rather a lot of it I must say. It would be interesting to see what it tastes like with the addition of cinnamon. For dessert he concocted crème brulee which for both he and myself was slightly too sweet, just as Ollivier’s mousse au chocolat was but it was good nonetheless. I really hate him and as I type am plotting my revenge.
They also found a tiny kitten outside two days ago, if anything slightly smaller than Bristle was when I got her. The feral cats don’t seem to suckle their young for very long and this little mite could in no way fend for herself (at least the general consensus is that’s the gender). They plan to grow her until she is big enough to be released but I think they will be the same as me and keep her in comfort.
Mind you, it’s probably as well that the France v Romania game didn’t kick off until 0200 here or there may have been friction upstairs after I left!
Sadly, because my upstairs neighbours are currently borrowing all my cooking equipment including using my oven, I couldn’t bake a bread pudding to give Amy slices of for her dormitory. I have a loaf of bread I must use tonight before it starts turning blue so I may rectify that and deliver some to her later.
We are currently basking in 28C with the forecast authoritatively informing us it will rain tomorrow, although yesterday it predicted a washout and today it says it will be something I wouldn’t even bother taking an umbrella for. I hope the latter is true because tomorrow morning is the freshman passing out parade and even though it is as buttock-numbingly boring as a Budget Speech, I try to go to support the new students - even if none of them will be mine.
So an early morning will be had, followed by another shopping trip. If I go in again at the weekend I will have to suppress my fears and take the bike, albeit taking an evasive route to bypass the “pelvis roundabout”. I can get a guaranteed seat going but not back at the weekend.
In the meantime I may well have to slap Andrei around the chops by cooking my world famous chicken wings plus another course to be decided. Watch this space.
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