Monday 18th April, 2016                    0400

Again it is late but twelve hours until my class and I assume Anthony has completely forgotten to organise another gas bottle for me seeing as it never turned up Sunday morning (although I said either Sunday or Monday at eleven or after) but I don’t know that I won’t have an insistent knock on the door in seven hours. I wouldn’t mind so much but the gasman knocks a couple of times, knows I am probably the only person on campus who leaves his door unlocked when he is at home, so he opens the bloody door, forgetting I have cats that escape.

It’s not warm enough yet for me to start hoping they will in fact escape.

Ok let me explain my absence even though it wasn’t that long. Well when I woke up on Friday we had no electricity. A shower was out of the question and I needed to go to town. I abhor leaving home without having showered. I waited for a while and then bit the bullet and started putting on Thursday’s clothes - no point in putting clean ones on if I wasn’t!

Just as I was about to leave there were pings and my appliances came back on. A few minutes later we had water. Shower, then downtown. No way would we have internet because it takes anything up to forty-five minutes for the main server to reboot.

Did my shopping, returned and still no internet. I tried everything I knew (which is not a lot) but no way was I getting online. I knew we would have a power cut in the early hours as we had had lightning and it always happens but this was many hours later. I didn’t have much time to spend on the problem because we had English corner and thank God Richard was on campus and had come up with a game because for one of mine I needed the internet for information (I now regret not bringing my Pears Cyclopaedia) but betwixt the pair of us I think we made them happy. So happy in fact that it went on until damned near 2100.

Joan was at mine studying because I had promised her smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, another first for her. The dinner wasn’t a problem but the internet was. Having sent a text to Dumpling I was told yes, the dorms had internet. I had already probably upset everyone in our section of the building by killing the main breaker to try to get our local server to reset but that hadn’t worked so I sent Anthony a text.

With nothing else to do, I had one bagel and Joan two (although the second she kept for breakfast) and on the spur instead of showing her something I had downloaded from the BBC I put her at the helm of the RMS Titanic on my simulator to try to show her how difficult it actually is to pilot a ship.

Well she didn’t get to the point of going aground or having a collision because Anthony turned up at the door. Slightly embarrassing for Joan as she was in her pyjamas but before anyone comments they were Chinese pyjamas, the ones they even go shopping in! More like teddy bear costumes than something people actually wear to sleep in. The problem was, it turns out Anthony is her form head teacher! She felt uncomfortable, for me unnecessary, she is my great friend and helper, I doubt Anthony gave it a second thought as he knows we are friends, nor would he want to organise my Taobao shopping every month! He also wants to join my HMS Conway friends and family Yahoo group and once he does I am sure he will be discreet as to what I say.

Anyway he made a phone call to someone in IT and after a while restored my internet. Un-bloody-believably once again it was only the foreign teachers who hadn’t had internet restored. How many times has this happened? I was however extremely grateful for his assistance because considering everything was in Chinese (Google translate doesn’t work if you are not on the VPN and so you have to be online first) and it was a process neither Anthony nor I had seen before and I would still be offline.

On Saturday morning I awoke ill.

Ejecting matter from both top and bottom, the latter in quantity. I thought perhaps the transit time for the smoked salmon had been too long (I froze it the moment it arrived) and yet Joan never suffered any ill effects and she had twice what I did. There was no trip to town that day. I did venture out to the office and with my customary two bottles there were times where I felt I may have to run outside and vomit and others when I was concerned I might need a complete lower laundry change.

I felt awful.

On Saturday night Alice asked how my checking of her 5,000 word thesis was going. Well in fariness I had been busy but I confess I had completely forgotten about it. Feeling guilty and ill, nonetheless I said I would try to do it that night. Oh, she wanted to come. Ok after Dumpling has left when she has eaten.

Poor Dumpling never got to see a film because I had to edit the thesis (that would have earnt me 550y online but for students here it is gratis) and then Alice turned up with Cherry. They wanted a film! Zootopia to start with. Well that’s been removed due to copyright on the sites I use. Ok, Ex Machina (God they want to watch some weird stuff) which played for ten minutes and then stopped and said we have to register! In the end I taught them a lesson and showed them Alien.

Sunday I still felt drab (remember from Friday night I had eaten one bagel and Saturday not even a biscuit) but I went shopping. When  I returned Joan was already taking a shower and was starving. Had she said before then I could have cooked one of the frozen supermarket pizzas in the freezer but instead she nicked four slices of toast and strawberry jam, took a twenty minute nap and then disappeared with indecent haste to go to the Boxue building to continue studying.

Me? I toasted a bagel (still unsure what caused my gastric problems even though two others reported no problems) and slapped pineapple jam on it. Hardly substantial but then I don’t eat much and I intend to have mash, ham, peas and Branston tomorrow and that will set me up for three days at least.

And so if there is not an email awaiting me when I wake up regarding a job interview it will be time for action. I know schools get desperate as time goes on but I would rather they did than me. The agency that everyone recommends is telling me my age is a problem and yet the same jobs are being advertised elsewhere and the school ads say “exceptions may be made”. Well I am an exception.