Friday 8^th November, 2019 1700

Well on Tuesday I found myself locked out of the campus internet. I only lug the laptop on the days I am stuck there over the two and a half hour lunch break, which this term means Tuesdays and Thursdays. Luckily a Chinese teacher was sitting using his phone in the classroom I was to teach in after lunch, hence I used it to eat mine. He kindly logged me in with his details and I promptly complained to Brenda.

For some unknown reason she enquired as to why I need the internet in school. Read the news, reply to emails, the usual thing! All credit, it was sorted for Thursday, apparently there is an expiry date on internet access for all teachers. I am guessing the validity is three years since it hasn't happened before. I now wonder if that wasn't also the problem I had at home.

The classes are slowly improving. In China you will never, ever have students as active as in the UK, the bulk of them will simply sit there mute but if you can get a quarter of them contributing you have achieved something. I am getting there.

I have been thinking of the idiotic things celebrities say and the imbecilic phrases they coin as if they are changing the language for the better. There was “conscious uncoupling” by that psycho Paltrow, as if you can break up in your sleep as well. Now I read that my being single means I am now supposedly self-partnered! Maybe now the police will send out solo patrols and pretend they have their partner with them? The 11^th November in China is known as Singles Day each year and sees the biggest one-day internet shopping spree in the world with billions of dollars spent by singles bagging online Taobao bargains. I wonder if they will now call it Self-Partnered Day?

I remember the days when I could board and alight buses with ease and even as late as five years ago that was still the case. Sadly, not so now. I need the grab-handles. Unlike the UK, here when a bus arrives it's not boarding in order of your arrival, it's scrum down and stuff everyone else. After all this time I am reasonably adept and heavy enough to ensure I secure a position close to the doors and no longer have any compunction in pushing in. However when I attain the doorway I need to extend one or both arms to grasp the handles to haul myself up. Every time, I end up elbowing a Chinese or two who seem to think they are skinny enough to be able to get on the bus alongside me when they aren't. I can only assume they understand the reason I blocked their passage with my outstretched arm when they see I don't leap like a mountain goat. Didn't stop a young girl yesterday of about eight who tried to dodge underneath and found herself squashed against the door! Might be interesting if I see her at 1630 again next Thursday!

I constantly see western news outlets telling tales of Chinese woe and wonder if I am in a different China. We have had the Trumptions supposedly crippling the country but all I have observed is that the States are suffering. Now we have the swine flu epidemic. Admittedly it has hit pork prices (maybe costing me personally an extra £1 a week) but I haven't seen any change in shoppers' habits. It's still the most popular meat. I do sometimes wonder whether their reporters are based here. It's the price of salmon that gets me, especially when legally it could be sea trout labelled as salmon anyway.

Oh well, it's the weekend, it was payday today and I managed to save ¥2,000 last month toward the summer. Now I'm not catering for the hordes every week I hope I can do that every month........