Monday,  Leap Day, 2016                         1900

I had a grenade lobbed into my life late last night and can’t tell a soul, ever. That will prove difficult due to the nature of its relevance to me personally.

However, this afternoon I had yet another “first”. I prepared to go through my new student spiel (two classes still to see on Wednesday) and was about to get them to enter their details in my personal book I use with their names, telephone numbers and hometowns, when I suddenly realised some of them looked familiar.

I stopped myself in the nick of time and asked them if I had seen them before. Yes, last Thursday. I have this class twice a week (that means I will run out of activities pretty sharpish). Not only that, I wasn’t prepared for a proper lesson because I thought I had five new sets of students - no matter, I found out the “new” course book is the same as the old one, it simply has a different cover - phew.

And then in conversation it transpired that Richard didn’t teach them last term. That threw me completely. So who taught you? Which teacher? Well that elicited odd looks and a general muttering. To cut a strange tale short, after their first term, students here can apply to change major. Many times in the six years I have had classes which increased in size in term two because one or two from chemistry/history etc had switched.

Never in all that time did I have a COMPLETE class of 29 who have ALL changed major! That left me stunned. Still, they don’t seem a bad lot, a little reluctant to volunteer at first for reading the dialogues but we will get there.

The teaching area has now become a no-go zone even for bikes. The cones were out in force today and security were there in abundance in case anyone had the audacity to try and get through on an e-bike. Doesn’t bother me using the back lanes so it’s not important.  There were cars abandoned on all the approach roads and I did point out to my students that those in the administration block (closest to south gate) could still park right by their building, there being nothing blocking their way. Those at the top of the food chain who made the decision get to park, yet deans and teachers must walk. Personally I had a problem just getting my bike through to underneath our building because of the unusually large number of other bikes already there, ones which would normally park out front. I have a feeling that perhaps there is another major inspection looming so just maybe all this is for that, certainly the bollards aren’t cemented in and can be removed by a forklift or crane. Time will tell.

The meal to ascertain my future? Nothing happening so far, although I have spotted a missed call from Anthony made when I was taking a shower at one. He has yet to reply to my text this evening. Notwithstanding, I have polished up my CV and will now commence moving matters forward, the last thing I need is to be jobless at the end of the semester.

A few days ago I got Joan to order 20kg of cat litter, 10kg of cat food, a kilo of cheddar and a dental cleaning kit. The cheapest thing was the cleaning kit but I am highly conscious of the brown stains from smoking and Eucryl (at 50y a tub!) helps but doesn’t work 100%, neither does the electric tooth polisher I bought last year.

Well the litter and cheese came Saturday and Sunday and today the cat biscuits arrived. When I worked out roughly how much it would be I had thought it would be somewhere between 400 and 500 yuan so when Joan said it was 562y I was surprised. She would never diddle me so I thought the delivery charges must have been inflated. No. she made a mistake and ordered double the amount of cat food, which explains everything. Even with my five fat moggies I somehow think I won’t need to buy any more in March!

Dinner tonight is pizza from Papa John’s (the doughiness of the crust I now realise is the cheese stuffing) but had I finished earlier I would have had something I haven’t had in probably four decades - chip butties! It will happen one night that’s for sure. I am still mulling over attempting home made sausage rolls and Cornish pasties and even had a hankering for home made crumpets the other day (nowhere online are they available here and toasted crumpets with baked beans and cheese on top are delicious), so much so that I bought bicarbonate of soda and a lemon yesterday. All of the aforementioned will probably be complete disasters but it can’t hurt to try.