Tuesday 18th November, 2014           1245

I hate computers.

Yesterday the big inspection started. Having risen earlier than I would normally in order to ensure I was presentable, I switched on the laptop and was told by Microsoft  I had no operating system and no hard disk. A great start to the day when my lesson topic was bad moods. There was nothing anyone could do about it at that time so I sent Kevin a text and we arranged for him to take a look after class.

Having been requested to dress formally for classes while the inspection took place, both he and I wore suits (you couldn’t tell the difference in colour between the jacket and trousers I opted for) and then proceeded to the teaching block. On the way down I spotted outside the library a huge fleet of black government cars. The inspectors are lodging not far away in the plush Peninsula hotel - they certainly have a good job! I couldn’t help but notice that the vast majority of the Chinese teachers were wearing the same casual attire as they normally do. There WE were done up like dog’s dinners.

Although I had been told by Cinny that my class hadn’t been selected for inspection, this being China I wasn’t going to believe it until the final bell rang. But they never so much as poked their snouts in. That may of course have been because I ensured the doors were locked once class had started…….

After class Kevin came to inspect the patient and declared it to be in a critical condition. In short, the hard drive has packed up. All should have been reasonably well had I backed the laptop up to my external hard drive sooner than 18 months ago but I hadn’t because I couldn’t remember how to do it and never got around to asking Kevin. In theory I have lost all my blogs and pictures from that period but of course they are all stored online in various locations. Quite how I get them back is beyond me but I am sure I will find out in due course. I have lost videos, which is annoying but thank heavens I had the one of my daily life on a memory stick. The drive from the external memory is now in my laptop (it was the old one from it in the first place, as Kevin installed a bigger one for me) and after spending four hours tearing my hair out trying to reinstal the thing that allows me to download i-player and downloading the player itself, I am now back in business to an extent. Infuriatingly, the school network keeps booting me off periodically and despite a “recovery” I still can’t get onto Skype yet but the whole thing could have been much worse.

It is now time to go and buy the ingredients for tomorrow. I will attempt a tuna pasta bake, Ollivier no doubt will make far too much sweet stuff but the students do seem keen to take the leftovers for their roommates.

1900

Ingredients were bought and a double filet’o’fish was consumed, thus rendering my buying a fresh baguette pointless as I am now not hungry. Meeting with the other two Laowei in my new office, I was relieved to learn that I wasn’t the only one getting booted off the college network. It doesn’t make it any the less annoying but at least I know it has nothing to do with my equipment.

The weather here is turning positively “binda” (frozen), with highs in the low teens and lows just a few degrees above freezing when I have to take Pepsi out. I really don’t like the cold any more. In my first year I would have ridden the bike to town but now I have become a wimp and take the bus even though it involves that execrable act of actually walking. Roll on the warmer weather!

I did notice on the bus both in and out of town that the Chinese find old habits hard to break. It’s at least two years since the new airconditioned buses were put on the 29 route yet they still shout “shah!” to get the driver to stop. I sat and observed four people standing by the exit doors with their hands on the pole immediately below the button you press to tell the driver you want to get off who still shouted out, completely ignoring the button. One of our students though did in fact press it, so there is hope yet. Mind you, it would probably help if they had an LED sign at the front of the bus which indicated in Chinese one you pressed that it was stopping.