Saturday 18th May, 2013          1400

Thursday was the usual horrible day this term - solid business all day with the added bonus of the entire afternoon being in the company of students who couldn’t care less. Yesterday is a day I look forward to not only because I finish at noon but both classes are active.

I wasn’t particularly pleased to be told that the three foreign teachers needed to sign contracts at 1550 though seeing as it was my afternoon off but considering recent events, I didn’t think it prudent to complain in case minds were changed! In the event the FAO was “unavailable” and so now we will be given them in the week to read through and sign. I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen on Wednesday as the intention is to have a final western Wednesday before the exams start.

The admin here is woeful, which brings me on nicely to the saga of the CVs. Now of course they were all sent here before we were even interviewed for the job but they need it on the computer system. All well and good, except in my case it has taken three years to get round to asking me and suddenly, due to incompetence and a mad panic over a pending inspection, it has to be done yesterday.

Ok I said, I will do it at the weekend. The problem is I don’t have Word and when I opened the file in Google, although it was ok, as soon as I went into edit mode all the rows and columns shifted. To cut a long, sorry tale short, I tried everything I could think of to no avail. Anyway, there are sections in it asking for contacts in China (I left it blank because the school is my contact so they should know) and also the contact details of all my family and friends together with their job details! Needless to say that has also been left blank. I managed to fill in the other parts but God knows if everything is in the right columns and I have said that if it’s not good enough then it will have to wait until Kevin is back on campus and we can use his machine. I have wasted two hours of my life on it so far and I don’t feel inclined to waste any more at present.

Qing is retaking her IELTS this weekend to try to get a higher score so we will chat on Skype tonight so she can practise - providing the internet is fast enough. Her oral test is in the morning and straight afterwards she is going back to Tongling for a family wedding, at which she is a bridesmaid. She may come here on Monday - it will be nice to have her here again and if she is still going to be here on Wednesday I will let her choose what I cook.

The weather is dismal and has been for days, almost constant rain which hopefully will clear up by tomorrow. Just when I thought the little school didn’t need me any more, they came up with two lessons in the afternoon. Not so bad, I will need to go downtown regardless of the weather as pet food is non-existent after tonight. In fact when I just took the liver out of the freezer it was smaller than I thought so I have had to supplement their dinner tonight with a small piece of very expensive beef! I won’t cut that up, Pepsi can have that while the cats argue over the rest.

1730

Well I am now the expectant owner of 16 allegedly British pork sausages. For what I paid for them - one banger would probably easily get me 1lb of Tesco value ones - they had better be good! They don’t look so good but I am putting that down to the fact they are hermetically sealed in thick plastic so when cooked they might look a bit better. I would have had some tonight for dinner but the campus fruit and veg shop hasn’t got any potatoes today and somehow for that price I simply don’t want to waste them on sausage sandwiches.

My cheddar arrived at the same time and as the packaging for both items was as usual large, I opened the boxes and removed the contents. As the rain had started again I was in my café and as always the ladies in there couldn’t wait to see what weird things the laowei has been buying now. The bangers they understood but the cheese was a complete mystery to them. In order to explain I had to do my impression of a cow, milking it and then churning. I am not sure if even now they fully grasped what the strange yellow stuff was. God help them when the snuff arrives if I’m in there!