Wednesday 17th September, 2014                 1200

What a busy few days it has been! As you know I finished the 18,000 words and was then brought a video of a training advert by Ollivier. They want the speech produced in text. No sooner did I agree to do it but I had a call myself asking me if I could do another 10,000 words by this morning. The video, although only five minutes long, is a pain of a job because it will be play, stop, type, play etc and will take forever. I asked them if I was to do the video first and the documents later because I couldn’t meet the deadline of both for this morning. The video got bumped. I finished the text last night and have until noon tomorrow to do the video. I’ll make a start on it a bit later but I am taking Yvonne for dinner at the new place to have blackfish and on the way in I want to see if there are any train tickets left to enable me to get to Yiwu and back in the golden week.

I had both my three year classes yesterday so that’s me otherwise idle as far as the school is concerned until next Tuesday when I have them again. My freshmen started their military training today so the earliest I will teach them will be next weekend if that weekend is designated for catching up missed lessons in golden week. We have a slew of inspections this term apropos the upgrade to full uni status. One will be fellow teachers observing each other and commenting, another will be whatever lesson we will be doing in week 11 but earlier and with volunteer students (poor buggers will have the lesson twice), an inspection by provincial authorities and finally the main government one in week 11 in November. The best of it is, the main inspections are all Mon. Tue, Wed and by the time the biggie comes I will only have one class on the Monday (my 3 year students will graduate) with Tuesday and Wednesday off so the chances of me being picked are minimal to say the least.

Ok I’m going to look at train times now in case I can actually get tickets, then shower and make a start on that damned video. I hope to resume this tomorrow.

Thursday 18th          1300

Buying train tickets in China can be complicated if you don’t use the internet and don’t know the rules. I am learning them!

We went to the station ticket office and although I knew you could buy tickets a maximum of twenty days in advance, having been reading in the Chinese news of record ticket sales, I fully expected to be told there were no seats. We never got as far as that. Incredibly, at the station you can only buy them up to six days in advance - at the STATION??

Well there’s no way I would attempt to buy them online so from there we went to the little ticket office where I bought the Huainan ones. You can buy them 20 days before there. And to my surprise every train and time I had specified had a seat so I now have four tickets. It’s a bit of a disjointed trip as I am going from here to Wuhu then change for Yiwu. On the way back I will go from Yiwu to Hangzhou and then back here. The reason for the return leg being different is because I will get back at 2300 instead of 0300. Makes sense to me.

I shall only stop for three nights and the first of those will be wasted as the train gets me there at 2200. I have splashed out a little for a good hotel in the city centre which has a WalMart opposite so I may even be able to find some western ingredients to bring back with me.

I took Yvonne to the hotpot place where we had blackfish, spuds, cabbage, spring rolls etc (far too much for two of us) and on the way out she pointed out another of the new restaurants in the development. It is the same chain as the one we were going to go to in Anqing before the semester started but she cancelled in order to accompany her little sister to a new school. I will have to pay it a visit now I know which dishes are best.

The video transcription ultimately took me fifty minutes last night, less than I thought so it wasn’t too onerous. Still, I wouldn’t relish the thought of any more like that though.

It’s a wet old day here and supposed to remain so until the weekend. I have no need to venture very far as I bought enough meat previously precisely because the damp was expected. I may just motivate myself later to actually have a bash at making chips in my new machine.