Chingle all the way

Dubai here I come. After working my socks off for the last 4 months I’m taking a well-earned trip to Dubai for 3 hours of luxury and whatever else Dubai Airport has to offer. This will of course be followed by a quick 2 week visit to Dublin to see the re-birth of the Celtic Tiger…..which I’m just hearing has been deferred for another 10 years.  Oh well.  But might I just add that those suggestions in your local propaganda sheets suggesting that China is in for a bit of an economic bump this year is just Western bitterness and jealousy. There is no mention whatsoever in the 5-year plan about an economic meltdown. It’s all growth and glory. So there!

To celebrate the end of term, the departure of students, and my forthcoming homecoming, I decided to give my good class one more assignment. They were to write this post. I would combine the best of them into the final entry of the trimester. So here it is. Enjoy the fruits of my fabulous (and, indeed, award-winning; check it out below) teaching.

"Outstanding" is probably an understatement.

And teacher Philip let us our hopes and colourful dreams to come true you have, to must have dreams cherish your life. And he told us, nàge, with his beautiful blue eyes and high nose, not to start every sentence with ‘and’ and that’s what we’d do, nàge, if we ever listened. And I hate the Japanese.

Last week we watched a video in class and it showed, poor people and, my heart was touched inside, nàge, and I knew, I had to cherish the life I have to let me live a beautiful life and colourful shopping. And I was deeply. I love my family and Steve Jobs because it give me something to do in class.

I wish to want to go to an American university like, nàge, Harvard because it is a dream in my mind and touch my heart very lovely. And then I want to be an businessman and run my father’s business. I don’t know what he do but him a manager and that’s what I like do cause I will have lots of, nàge, money and I can to spend it on really inappropriate clotheses.

How many marks, nàge, is this worth? Is it even worth my while?

 

The NIT Annual Dinner

I can safely say without embellishment or exaggeration that this was the worst ‘celebration’ I have ever attended. It was obviously planned by someone who hates fun. As crashing disappointments go it was a 457 car pile-up. Starting at 8.30am with an absolutely pointless 2-hour listen to some profoundly boring speeches in the freezing sports hall and realising after about a minute that you should just have clocked in and then did a runner back to bed. Followed by hanging around the Hilton Airport Hotel in your finery waiting for it all to begin and concluding at 9pm that it never was going to begin and the only feeling to shake you out of your near-death numbness was the feeling of relief that you were on the bus going back to school. I though the 2 bottles of wine on each table were just the appetiser to get you started before the event began, when in fact they were the entire event. The drunken rant by the Doctor could have been a highlight if it wasn’t so unsurprising and so Chinese. The ‘entertainment’, the spot prizes, the outrageous prices…plus 15% service charge for waiting extra long to be served at the bar…in a not unexpectedly not very busy bar, the who really gives a toss toasting, all convinced me that next year I’ll be sick.

Now it’s all over, the school is almost empty, the heating is off, the great migration from Beijing has begun, and I’m packing my bag with stories to tell. With the Euro plummeting daily I should be a Euro millionaire by the time I hit Irish soil. But I guess a pint is about a trillion Euro now so that won’t last too long. And the one big question remains to be answered. Will the sins of my advertising career be expunged by the nobility of my teaching career? For the answer to this and many other questions, feel free to pick me up from Dublin Airport at 11.30am on Thursday 19th January. Over and out.

Still cold

It was all a misunderstanding

Sealed with a kiss

Well not quite. The thought of it is just too frightening. Even thinking about writing the thought of it is too frightening and I have to wonder why I’m even writing it. So maybe a hefty salary increase and various other additional benefits can make you do things you may not want to do, but not even that. Anyway isn’t it nice in these troubled times to read about someone getting a good bump (obviously well-deserved) in salary….oh, I see. To be honest I should have asked for more but I’m not quite a banker yet.

Welcome to the New Year not-at-all special edition of VB with absolutely no new features, or developments. It’s the new austerity VB. So yes I’ve signed a new contract, I’ve handed over my passport which I’m not entirely confident of seeing before I’m due to board my flight to Dublin on January 18th, and now the school is in the death throes of another trimester with no idea who’s going to teach what next term, and they’ve also decided to introduce an American stream which involves different subjects and even more teachers, theoretically. Sometimes I think there’s some bitter and twisted drunk at the top making all these random decisions. Now that I think about it…

Where's me food

Goodbye to you my trusted friend

Exams have started again, and rules are rules. At the presentation of the new improved invigilation rules in the new sports hall (which I don’t think has yet been used for sport and which has foregone any presence of heat because that’s just weak) I was tempted to ask the question about the minimum number of invigilators (2) and the fact that that there must be one invigilator for every 20 students and does this conflict with the last exam I invigilated where there were 24 students and I was the only invigilator. I’m just saying…I chose not to ask the question due to a personal linguistics shortfall.

I’ve finished teaching for the term and I’m sure most of my students are thinking thank god we won’t be seeing his ugly mug (and beautiful blue eyes) again, little knowing that in a few short weeks they most certainly will. Ah, who’ll be laughing then? I was somewhat disappointed, however, that no tears were shed.

Party on

Of course it’s not all work, work, work here. The latest batch of interns have been quite a diverse, entertaining, and surprisingly (considering they’re teaching English) multinational collection, and frankly better (fun) than the bunch I arrived with over a year ago. So the Christmas meant some late nights reliving my early 20s. My best mates appear to be a 27 year-old from Leicester of Bangladeshi extraction and a 22 year-old Canadian of Chinese extraction, while I’m daily beating off the advances of hot German chick number 1 and hot German chick number 2. (You’d probably need to be working here to understand what any of this means.)

The hotties and the homies

Let’s just say I have lots of photos from the Christmas celebrations but my own camera found it all a bit much on the first night and took its leave of me, just when I had finally mastered how to take decent ‘night-out’ photos. Perhaps it’s a good thing. It’s probably a bit late to say I’d love a camera for Christmas but since I didn’t get anything (and was unlikely to) it’s all a bit moot.

One wonders is it a good example to set for students for pretty much all the foreign teachers living on campus to be nursing tired and emotional states on Christmas Eve. And never has so little drink been drunk by so many on Christmas Day. At least the food was good. Last year we went to a posh restaurant on Christmas day and paid a heap of money for hints of food. This year we went to a less luxurious joint, paid half as much money, and got about 3 times as much food; go figure. And then there was New Year’s Eve, and soon it will be the end of term, more crazy singing, and many departures. I’m just glad I’m heading home for a bit of peace and quiet.

"Just pretend that you know me...and try and look happy."

Today’s gratuitous word

Happy double-dip recession and best wishes for the second great depression

A juicy big pay-rise, another year in paradise, a day off for the New Year, and holidays on the way. But most importantly, the best present of all (unlike the zero amount of gifts I’ve received from home so far; every day I trudge crestfallen from the admin office as my presents have failed to arrive yet again.) is that (hopefully) I’ll be back in Dublin in late January to show off my wodges of Chinese dosh. (I went into a bank looking to buy some Euro, and they laughed; and still they laugh. They asked would I be interested in Monopoly money.) Well, that’s my plan if everything falls into place as it should. Otherwise I’ll be somewhere else trying to get away with it.

They don't really do Christmas here

Yes it may be true that the economy here has been growing at around 200% a minute for the last few years, but inflation has been rising too and now you poverty-stricken Europeans apparently can’t even afford to buy our cheaply and shoddily made goods which means we here in China won’t be as wealthy as we would like to be. Could this be the death knell for the nouveau riche in China? If Chinese people aren’t super-rich then they won’t send their kids at outrageous expense to NIT and I won’t get the monstrous salary I deserve. So stop your whingeing and your worrying and start buying Chinese stuff. They make great Christmas presents. Ah, just to see that child’s face light up on Christmas morning when they open their present and spy the reassuring label ‘made in China’ and they think to themselves, “my parents are sensible and care about the future; I’m the luckiest child in the world. I don’t know what this is but I’m sure I’ll have hours of fun with it because it’s all I have now.”

I don't even know her name. How cool am I?

Having corrected 95 essays I’ve now had to listen to 95 presentations about festivals and ceremonies around the world (though not in China). Even though I listened to every one of them I don’t feel I learnt anything new. Well I guess I did learn some things about Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Valentine’s Day (not to mention ‘International Nurse Day’) which were very surprising, or else badly translated. It’s a bit like listening to a Foo Fighters song; (If you’ve no interest or knowledge of the Foo Fighters, and I don’t blame you, you should skip the rest of this paragraph.) the DJ says, “And now the Foo Fighters.” And you say to yourself, “This band is incredibly popular for some reason so I should really listen to this song to hear how good they must be. And 4 minutes later another song has come on and you’re humming away to it and you realise the previous 4 minutes of your life is a complete blank. I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make here but I guess I’ve made it now…or maybe not.

And now that I’ve corrected 95 essays and watched 95 presentations I’m going to have to watch Slumdog Millionaire 4 times over the next few days, and then to cap it all I will have to correct 95 reviews of the movie. So if I do make it back to Dublin in January, don’t anyone even think of asking me what I thought of Slumdog Millionaire….not ever. I just hope it’s a happy ending.

Speaking of movies, I have become less discerning in my selection of movie viewing options recently; if it downloads, I’ll watch it. But I would like to say that, in my humble opinion, Drive is the coolest movie since (the original) Assault on Precinct 13.

The Christmas family portrait

So welcome (belatedly, as in the 6th paragraph) to the festive edition of VB. Oh how I’m looking forward to Friday, saying my goodbyes and wishing people happy holidays, and then enjoying Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and Stephens Day/Boxing Day, or, as we like to call it here in China, Monday. While China is slowly and happily embracing the whole Christmas spirit thing with gaudy lights, trees, and decorations springing up like recently struck oil, it hasn’t stretched to shutting up shop and settling down to a week of dodgy food, dodgy TV, and thinking you’d prefer to be back at work. I guess they feel that the Spring Festival thingy is enough for them. Incidentally, I will happily accept Spring Festival gifts in lieu of Christmas gifts. They like to give ‘red pockets’, which is basically a red envelope full of readies; in case you were wondering.

I shall be dining in the Filling Station on Christmas Day. I only hope this is a proper restaurant and not part of Shell’s attempt to diversify. On Monday at 8.30am while you’re watching another content-free Sky News bulletin and thinking it’s time to call it a day I’ll be back at my desk after just another weekend. So like the aforementioned Sky News bulletin this too is a content-free VB bulletin. It only remains for me to wish you millions out there the best for the last Christmas ever since the end of the world is due in 2012, I think.

My little tree

There you go, 850 words or so of nothing, and no license fee. Now that’s what I call value.

38

Not what it seems

On Fridays during the summer we often visit this barbecue place in Dongba. It’s not your traditional barbecue manned by fat blokes with burgers and chicken that takes forever to cook, but it’s meat on sticks accompanied by the finest of beers. We imagined we were eating lamb on skewers, and quite tasty they were too. Now it seems, allegedly, that we have been eating cat and dog meat soaked in sheep’s urine to give it that lamb flavour. This is somewhat disturbing. I just hope the beer is beer.

That'll be winter then

Tragically due to me being terrifically busy working, and not much else happening besides snow arriving and the temperature dropping to minus a million or so, I don’t really have much to say but I thought I’d publish just to keep the revenue flowing in so I can think about all those Christmas presents I’m not going to buy. Just a few random things then:

North and South

You can’t beat that feeling of schadenfreude when the Northern Irish protestant and true-Brit realises to his horror that he’s been drinking in an Irish Republican pub. I did tell him the 1916 proclamation was on the wall, but maybe he didn’t know what it was, or maybe I said it quietly as Gaeilge. (It’s not a very ‘Irish’ pub as the owner appears to be American, they do Thai food, and I seem to be the only genuine Free Stater who frequents it.)

Copyright in China

I tuned in to Newstalk to listen to commentary on Leinster v Glasgow in the Heineken Cup. After a few minutes they interrupted the live broadcast to say that for copyright reasons the broadcast was not available in my area (or something to that effect) and they’d be playing some old stuff for us foreigners. After about 30 seconds the live commentary returned. Ah, the joys of China laughing in the face of copyright restrictions. But really, they are making strenuous efforts to do…..just about nothing.

The fighting Chinese

There appears to have been a mad outbreak of fighting in the school. In one of my classes a student was nursing a bandaged head wound while three of the other boys in the class served one week suspensions for fighting to defend the head-wounded one. In another incident, some boys from Year 10 were helping police with their inquiries after beating up some younger kid. And just the other night apparently there was a fairly massive 40 boy (I assume the girls aren’t involved) fight between the various different schools on campus. There are times (many times) I think that this whole school is on the verge of collapse and I’ll be joining the (non-existent) Chinese dole queue.

Another blue sky day

Compare and contrast

The first major task for my year 11 students was a compare and contrast essay and all my 95 students misguidedly saw fit to hand in some kind of transcript in the end. Some were heavily reliant on cut and paste, many were badly delicious food translated colourful dreams from Chinese to Chinglish, one or two were barely comprehensible, and a few were actually pretty good. I am now fully aware that Chinese students work too hard (and are therefore way more intelligent) and western students basically do what they like, according to most of the essays I read.

Contract negotiations

So Lily says asks would I like a new contract. I said maybe. She mentioned a fairly ok increase in salary and various other benefits. I said I’ll think about it. She said I should stay in China and get married; there are plenty of nice looking female teachers in NIT. I should ask one of them out. I was inclined to think she was pimping out her teachers to me to convince me to stay. I wonder who’ll be the sacrifice.

Self-praise is no praise

We all have to fill out our self-evaluation forms by tomorrow, awarding ourselves scores under heaps of categories. I’m pondering should I take the Chinese approach and mark really generously, perhaps recommending myself for a promotion and a massive pay-rise. Or should I take the humble approach and be tough but fair?

Sports news

That English rugby team, eh? Great to hear them complaining that the Irish were worse and yet somehow got away with it.

And finally, that little cackle you let out just as you check out the football scores from the night before and see that both United and City have crashed out of Europe.

Another bleedin' willow scene

There you have it.  I promised nothing, and delivered less.

No way am I wearing a Santa outfit

Soon we’ll own you all

“The EALD teacher is really kind and handsome, thus we have no excuse to get bad grades in his class.”  This is just one example of the outstandingly high standard of English in my classes.  The sentence is explaining the meaning of the word “thus” and as their EALD teacher I can find no finer example of perfect sentence formation, not to mention blindingly perceptive observation.

What are the young people of China in to these days?

The problem with having 4 reasonable classes who are inclined to do their work is that I’ve more correcting to do and hence no time to focus on the important stuff like chatting up those lovely Chinese teachers, surfing the web, and keeping VB ticking along.  The first major written work for the students was to write a diary for 4 days and then I had to correct 95 (yes, every bleedin’ one of my students handed in their work!) of those blessed documents.

Just because

So it seems that Jay Chou (?) is very popular among the ladies.  They all want to realise their dreams in their hearts.  A lot of girls fell out with their friends.  There are things that I now know about my students that I would prefer never to have known, and one student appears to have two fathers, in a confused rather than ultra-modern liberal way.  And of course there’s the native English speaker who was born in Canada, raised in LA, and whose mother is an Olympic diving champion.  In his diary he talked about dissing his girlfriend, beating up some guy, and meeting a new drinking buddy.  The guy is 15 and looks about 12 and I can’t help feeling he’s been heavily influenced by Ross O’Carroll Kelly’s son.  And then there was Eva who decided to copy 4 random diary-type pieces from the internet and who has sulked ever since, giving me the silent treatment, just because I gave her zero.

next week I’ll be collecting a potential 95 essays which I’ll have to spend every waking moment marking.  I’m encouraging them like mad to have these essays done in time when really I should be saying, “you’re young and you’re rich, why bother?”

They’re watching you

After well over a year with nobody actually witnessing me teaching (besides the students who have little idea what I’m going on about anyway) the day finally arrived when the head of English went to see what I had to offer.  Frankly I was a little bit nervous that my complete inadequacy was about to be exposed.  At least he didn’t fall asleep or spend the class on his mobile phone, though maybe I should have bribed the class beforehand to make me look good.

An end to cynicism

No more Billy-no-mates

I’m beginning to look back fondly to last term when I had all the rubbish classes; I attended 2 parents meetings and met 1 parent.  Now we’ve just had another parents meeting and there was practically a riot as they battled to speak to me about their child.  So I promised every parent that I’d pay extra attention to their offspring, even if I’d no idea what student we were talking about and obviously I’ve completely failed to deliver on these rash promises.

The pressure keeps piling up.  Ah, how I pine for those halcyon days planning how to spend a client’s millions that would make or break their future, wondering if anybody was going to see the spot I’d booked for 23.37 and deciding that it was obviously the flawed creative execution that made the whole thing crash and burn because it certainly wasn’t my fault.

Just say no

Sports day arrived again and we got to don our shiny new tracksuits which I wore in public for the first, and last, time.  All the teachers were to do a dance with flowers for the opening ceremony.  I stood my ground and said no, maintaining my perfect non-singing, non-dancing record in China for 14 months and thus keeping my dignity for just a little bit longer.  This could have been me….

Not for me

But at least they didn’t have to do this, unlike the poor English chap (on the left, below) who surely never expected to look like this in his first week in school.

Eat your heart out X-Factor

Food news

Hot Pot:  I’ve given it several chances now and it’s still the worst thing ever.  Honestly, fondue was way better.  Hot Pot is just completely unsatisfactory, and probably harmful.  Twice in a weekend is twice as wrong.  And to cap it all off, Dim Sum is almost as bad as Hot Pot and to have both on the same day is what living nightmares are made of.  November 6th will remain a dark dark day in my soul.

Meanwhile the canteen continues to amaze as it sets lower and lower standards every day.  The few reasonable dishes seem to have gone for good.  You go have your lunch and you think, this is it,  this is the worst ever, surely tomorrow can only be better.  But they keep digging that hole and ever if they get all the way to the other side of the world they’ll somehow find somewhere else they can dig just so they can go even lower.

World news

The tragedy of China’s embrace of capitalism in all its sorry forms is that kids have decided that American “culture” is all that matters so they’ve chosen Taylor Swift, Linkin Park, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs, and the NBA as their idols.  It makes Australia look like a cultural nirvana.

America may be winning the “cultural” battle but, on the other hand, with China already owning America and about to own Europe I guess China is winning the overall battle for world supremacy and is willing to take the hit on “culture”.  Anyway, it’s nice to be on the winning side for once.  I wonder how things will go in the January transfer window.

How’s that smoking ban working then?

It reminds me of the good old days before the smoking ban in Ireland when you’d arrive home after a night out and all your clothes would be reeking of stale cigarettes.  So I wouldn’t say it’s working too well then.

The nature photo

By the way…

WordPress has been blocked here for a while now so I’m not sure if VB is looking as well as it should, and naturally I’m risking life and limb just to get these few meandering thoughts to you.   It’s because I care.

Just turn it on now and stop your messing

Guerilla Knitting

Obviously it was a terrible mistake going to Australia; all that (alleged) freedom, (genuinely) blue sky, decent coffee, pedestrian lights, pleasant service, knives and forks, proper internet, non-stop rugby world cup on TV. Well I’m delighted to be back in China inhaling whatever the hell they put in the atmosphere, enjoying whatever they want to show on TV, and surfing whatever they feel is right on the internet. So I’m joining the real party and giving up on social networking because it’s just subversive and it’s what the party thinks and whatever it thinks, I think.

The O'Hanlons spoiled me rotten

2 weeks in Australia
“Which way does the sun rise in Australia; east or west?” – Conversation overheard. (For clever people, it’s a pretty stupid thing to say…apparently.)
Where’s the storm? I was promised a storm as I flew from Melbourne to Sydney and when I got to Sydney there was nothing.
Laneway Art – guerrilla knitting; sometimes you can call something really banal, art, and get away with it.
I was the only person in Australia without an iphone…and I was proud.

It was late

The glory of Ireland doing better in the Rugby World Cup than Australia…while I was in Australia. (Sadly followed by devastating heartbreak in China; and still I weep.)
Order a coffee and they give you a gallon of water also.
They almost speak English.
Step out at a zebra crossing and the traffic stops. Even if you’re kind of near a zebra crossing they almost plead with you to step out just so they can stop and let you cross.
Book shops and record stores don’t seem to exist anymore. Or maybe that’s always the way it has been in Australia, which explains a lot.
Being attacked by some bird in Sydney. Actually really I was bashed into by some bird which refused to apologise. And there was nobody nearby to offer me sympathy and comfort. So I walked into a pub in my blood-splattered t-shirt, my ear dripping blood and my hands fairly bloody too. “You should see the other guy,” I brazened. Sadly nobody took a blind bit of notice. What do I have to do to get some decent sympathy?

The 'I didn't take many photos but here's a picture of a bridge shot'.

Experiencing Friday after-work drinks again, even though I wasn’t working. Good to see they still do this in Sydney, something that probably doesn’t happen in Ireland anymore as the few people still working are probably warned not to hang around together in one place as it may lead to trouble.
And 4 chicks pouring (well 3 of them anyway) copious amounts of wine into themselves and flaking at 10pm and proving once again that chicks are lightweights.
Glebe – a very cool place to stay in when you’re in Sydney, and a place that makes Sydney a not so bad city after all.
Tiger Airways – well they’re back in the air now and I don’t care that they were grounded for a while for reasons I didn’t wish to find out about. All worked fine for me.
Red Dog – so where the hell was the dog?
Fish noodles.
Still rubbish TV though.
China Eastern Airways chick searching for and finding me in Melbourne Airport, after I’d checked in and gone walkabout, because she’d forgotten to change my seat to an aisle seat. I forgave the fish noodles.
Having to stay in a hotel in Shanghai for a night because we were too late for our connecting flight. So they looked at all the Chinese people and the 2 foreigners and decided the 2 foreigners would have to stay in the same room or else pay for another room. And so I roomed with a Colombian, obviously planning some big drug deal because that’s what Colombians do…isn’t it?

The final countdown
I arrived back in school on a pleasantly warm Thursday afternoon and there were no students about which made it fairly nice and I was thinking this place isn’t so bad after all….as long as there are no students about. Then it was back to work and having to endure an 8-day working week because this is China. And before I knew it I was ‘teaching’ again. My timetable is very nicely balanced; my classes are all pretty fine,  generally enjoyable, and about 3-1 in favour of females. One of my students is the son of a Chinese Olympic diving gold medalist, and apparently we have to send her son’s homework to her every week, which is just a little bit worrying for me. Meanwhile, I now know everything that’s going to happen during the term (opening ceremonies, sports day, talent shows, and meetings), so I’m kind of concerned that I’ll have nothing to blog about over the next few months. I’m really going to have to engineer some news, create a few scandals, or just become very economical with the truth; time will tell.
In one class when we were getting to know each other, I was asked my age. Naturally I knocked a few years off so as not to scare them, and they still thought I was 10 years younger; bonus marks for that class.
I was asking students what job they’d like to do and one girl said she wanted to be my representative. I was flattered and a little bit worried as I contemplated my forthcoming super-stardom in China. Later that day I found out that she wanted to be the class representative for English which I guess isn’t quite the same thing.

Fish bleedin' noodles again!

Why don’t they love me anymore?
Back in June I was bitten a few times and I was looking forward to 5 months of self-pitying pain, and then they kind of stopped. And now as the mozzies launch their farewell raids, many of my fellow teachers are mentioning how they’re been plagued by mosquitoes and I’m wondering am I in some parallel non-mosquito inhabited universe. So I guess my blood is entirely poisoned or I’ve just none left. Frankly, I’m offended.

It should be us; it’s going to take some time.

And the results are in…

So just how good a teacher am I?  Obviously in my mind I’m the greatest teacher ever but I think we should let the numbers confirm my belief and speak for themselves.  The fact that I award these numbers has no bearing on anything.

Year 11-C7:   13 students, 13 Es.  Top mark 12%, low mark 0.25% (rounded down to zero)

Year 11-C6:   18 students, 2 Ds, 16 Es.  Top Mark 38%, low mark 3%

So that’s 31 students for me in Year 11, and 31 failures.

Year 10-6:      19 students, 1 C (a pass mark!  Yippee!!  Crack open the champagne; 10 D’s, 8 E’s.  Top mark 59%, low mark 2%

Year 10-8:      21 students, 2 Bs, 9 Cs, 10 Ds.  Top mark 67%, low mark 38%.  Now that’s what I call success!

That’s a total of 71 students, and 59 failures.  I also appear to have lost about 8 students during the term.  Well I think that confirms everything.  And my 10-6 class awarded me the top mark of 5 (exceptional) in every category in their teacher assessment.  Maybe I taught them irony too well.

So who do we blame for the failures?  Remember, you never blame the teachers, so it’s obviously the parents’ fault, the system’s fault, their friends’ fault, drugs, drink, TV, computers, the Irish banking system, the intransigence of the US political system, El Nino, Simon Cowell, and of course Lady GaGa.  My conscience is clear.  At least I’m not running away…even though I’m in Australia right now

Anyway, I was hoping that next term I’d only be teaching Year 10.  I mean, look at the figures, obviously there’s no way they could have me teaching a Year 11 class with my record of 100% failures; “here’s your new teacher.  Last term all his students failed, but maybe this term one of you might pass.  Yes I know your parents are paying a stack load of money to guarantee you the best education but what the hell, we have your money now so we don’t really care and we can massage the results anyway.”

So the plan was that I’d just have to teach Year 10 nest trimester.  Then things changed and I would be teaching a year 11 class after all.  And then there was a day of madness just before the holidays and everything changed.  Once the exams were all marked I was cracking into planning for the next trimester and I’d done frankly tremendous work in preparing a plan and all sorts of other stuff for Year 10 and I was kind of looking forward to it.  So naturally on the final day I found out I’d be teaching 4 Year 11 classes and zero Year 10 classes.  Well that’s the last time I plan anything.

Entertainment news

So why the hell does Chinese television show the Emmy awards if they don’t show any of the programmes?  Is it to show Chinese viewers that their rubbish is much better than American rubbish?  And why was I watching them?

Disappearing Canadians

Bobby, our enigmatic and virtually silent Canadian, gradually turned up less and less and eventually didn’t turn up at all.  Was he ever there?  Is he still there?  Did he just fade away?  Silent Bob; still silent, but bobbing no more.

Fashion update

September’s colour is green, especially if you’re visiting Australia; best worn with a very smug expression.

Now for some real coffee

Last one out, please turn off the lights

Never ever ever ever again will I have to deal with the dreaded C7; no more devising detailed lesson plans that will never come to fruition; no more counting up to 3600 in my head just to pass the time; no more wondering how I’m going to get away with the untimely and unexpectedly early demise of 13 useless students from wealthy homes.  Now some other poor suckers are going to have to put up with them next term because their parents sure don’t want them.  My last teaching hour of the trimester was with them, and I don’t even think they noticed I was in the classroom.

"Ah, there you are."

 

If Michelle can do it…

Week 12 had dawned and I realised I’d only have to spend a week and a half with the aforementioned Year 11C7 zombies.  And then I thought, hey, I’m not giving up; there’s still a chance to get through to them.  So I decided to watch Dangerous Minds; if Michelle Pfeiffer could turn around (I was guessing she was successful) whatever low-life she was teaching, then so could I.  I just needed the inspiration and who else to give it to me than the lovely Michelle.

Putting aside the unreality and improbability of it all (I mean seriously, Michelle had been a marine!?) some of it was surprisingly resonant, well maybe just one or two little bits.  But you know, Michelle’s unconventional teaching (Bob Dylan, sweets, going to an amusement park…like that’s really unconventional) apparently worked the magic.

OK, I hate to criticise the extremely talented Michelle Pfeiffer, but this was drivel; movie-making by numbers.  Let’s just slap a giant cliché on the screen for an hour and a half and see how much money we make.  So after weeping for hours at the incredibly moving and unexpected ending I decided stuff C7, I only had about 6 hours left with them and I’d no wish to win them over, not that it was ever going to happen anyway.  And it would probably be an affront to the teaching profession to use this movie as some kind of template of inspiration.

The school really cares; and that's not all...

I'm gonna shop 'til I drop....the full €5

 

Wait for me…

As this latest trimester draws to a close, and having read about yet another Chinese sports team fighting (this time a basketball team coming to blows with some American team on a ‘goodwill’ tour of China), I take a look around my office at my fellow educators and realise that most of the foreigners won’t be back for the next term, some having terminated their contracts early, some reaching the end of their contracts with no wish to renew, and one who seems set to disappear (or be disappeared) mysteriously at the end of the term; well he is Canadian and they (Canadians) do seem to be an unusual teaching race.

So once again it seems that NIT will be panic-hiring just about anyone who might speak English and may have once taught someone to do something or other though there’s no guarantee that that someone learnt anything.  And once again they’ll be economical with the truth, and then surprised when the latest arrivals are far from happy.  Or on the other hand I may be teaching just about every class next term.

Or maybe I'll just hide here

Whatever happens, I’ll be sticking it out to the end of my contract for the sake of my many reader.  I’ve been working for a year now which I suppose isn’t too bad these days.  I haven’t quite reached the weekly income I was picking up in those heady dole days (when I briefly experimented with it for research purposes) but I hope some day to reach that level again.

If the school has any sense they’ll offer me pots of money to stay on because I am, frankly, doing a magnificent job.  But if previous experience is a guide, the school has no sense and will presumably lose another prized asset come next January.  It’s a bit like Arsenal losing all their best players to clubs willing to pay more, and then wondering why they lose 8-2 to such a club willing to pay more.  (Incidentally I think Arsene was absolutely right when he said the 8-2 scoreline didn’t reflect the match; I reckon an 18-2 scoreline would have reflected it better.  I’m so glad I’m so over Arsenal and don’t have to care about these things.)  Some might say I’m the Fabregas of the WACE teaching team.  Well, maybe not, but I’m quite happy to say it myself.  (The fact that all my Year 11 students are going to fail their English exam is irrelevant.)

And now the circle is complete and starts again as a whole new bunch of interns have arrived despite all the trauma experienced the year before.  For an alleged learning institution, NIT never learns.  I wonder how long before the interns illusions are shattered, though with the current paucity of staff they’ll probably be doing a lot more work than I did when I arrived as a callow youth in shorts and t-shirt with a pocketful of dreams and ideals just a year ago.

Sometimes I have this feeling that I'm being followed.

 

Cycling news

Every time I’m out on my bike juggling with my life, I fully accept that it could be my last journey on the bike, not that I’m in constant fear of my life, but I reckon it’s about to fall apart (the bike, not my life) any day now.  And sure enough as I was setting off one sunny Saturday morning, I noticed that the back tyre was decidedly soft.  The temptation was to abandon the bike and head for the bus instead, but I decided a linguistic and cyclistic adventure in Dongba would be better fun.   So I took a very bumpy cycle to Dongba in search of someone to give me a bit of air.  Everywhere I went, I was directed further up the street, and eventually I found ‘The Man’.

First off, he removed the tube and showed me the patched-up shambles that it was.  He seemed to be strongly criticising me asking do I have no shame, though for all I know he was telling me a merry tale about chickens.  He then tossed the tube away and returned with a brand spanking new one.  Then there was the tyre.  He showed that to me, tut-tut’d a lot, threw it disdainfully to the ground and returned with a new tyre.  I was wondering, as I tentatively fingered the few notes in my pocket, hoping they were 100s but expecting them to be 1s, was he going to take my bike apart entirely and rebuild it.

Once he’d re-positioned the wheel with its brand new tube and tyre, he started spinning the pedals and noticed that they too were not right.  My shame was growing at an alarming rate.  So he fixed the pedals.  Next up he jeered (I’m pretty sure he jeered) at my saddle and that too was replaced.  I did, at this stage, manage to ask him how much this would cost and I wasn’t too alarmed, on the assumption that he was talking about the total cost and not just the cost for oiling the chain.

Meanwhile the chap having his lunch next door was finding this tremendously entertaining and offering me plenty of advice.  I nervously glanced at the front wheel hoping that would stay where it was.  Eventually The Man was satisfied that he’s done enough, I paid my €6 and he offered me a cigarette.  I guess this was a sign that I was back in his good books.  I have to say, I thought I looked very damn cool on my go-faster bike with a cigarette jauntily dangling from my mouth.  It was a whole new experience and I cycled proudly.

cycle-seeing

 

Counting down

So now classes are over and it’s just a matter of (mind-numbing) invigilating, marking (at least they wrote their name), and planning for the next trimester; and most importantly of all, counting down the days to my latest trip to Australia.  As a reward for my tireless dedication to the illumination of my students I’m taking myself off to Melbourne for a couple of weeks to monitor my godson’s spiritual and educational progress as any selfless godfather would, and to return to a state of speaking English (as opposed to Chinglish) as she was meant to be spoken…in Australia…oh.   Anyway, since I’m teaching an Australian curriculum it’s important to do some on-site research as it were.  Fair dinkum to that.

 

And finally….censorship isn’t always a bad thing

Sometimes you just have to take your hat off and say, good call.  There are those who believe in absolute and total free speech; even if what someone says is totally ridiculous, wrong, and even downright offensive, freedom of speech demands that they be allowed to express their misguided opinions.  But then again, maybe there’s a line which is just too extreme to cross and those who cross it should be stopped.  So I can only applaud the Chinese authorities’ decision to ban songs by, among others, Lady GaGa and Katy Perry.  This is the first instance of decent taste I have experienced in this country.  Things can only get better.

And finally, finally, the one and only true World Cup starts tomorrow; line up the beers and let the heartbreak begin.

“Teacher; movie”

A game of two halves

It was a dark night… 

Wang Meng, China’s four-time short-track speed-skating Olympic gold medallist, tottered back to her training camp in Qingdao (home of the oft’ mispronounced by damn foreigners, Tsing Tao beer, and probably not the best place for the renowned boozer Wang to be training in), along with 5 of her team-mates, in an increasingly familiar drunken state.  Her coach was decidedly unimpressed by this late and inebriated arrival and naturally felt it necessary to express his disapproval whereupon Wang, obviously provoked, punched the coach and then trashed the furniture in her dormitory, as one does on a drunken night.

Falling down again

But this is not where our story begins.  It begins way back in 2007 when Wang was just a 22 year-old poppet and was banned from training for 6 months after a conflict with her then head coach.  And the story continued earlier this year when Wang and her team-mates clashed with security guards on, you guessed it, another drunken night out, in Yunnan Province.  Yet despite all this drunken debauchery, Wang still managed to win 3 gold medals at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

In this age of professional sportspeople with their rigorous training regimes, carefully planned diets, and generally boring personas, isn’t it great, and surprising, that the mavericks have turned up in China.  And there’s not just one, but a whole team, with Wang as the ring-leader.  They’ll certainly be getting my support in the next Winter Olympics.  Even though Wang is banned, there’s always a way back in, especially when there are potential medals on the table.

As it stands, Wang Meng (the Chinese Amy Winehouse, albeit still alive and probably not a very good singer though I’m sure she’s tried on many a night out) and a member of the men’s team have been banned from training and ordered to reflect on their drunken brawl.  Meanwhile four other team members have been allowed to continue training but they too must reflect on their outrageous behaviour and (this is the bit I really like) they have to hand in letters of self-criticism. What a ripping idea, I thought.  Oh it’s so easy to criticise others but much harder to criticise oneself, so maybe we should all write letters of self-criticism now and then.  To get the ball rolling I’ve spent several days writing my own self-critical letter, holding nothing back and prepared to take the flack, and here it is.  I look forward to readers sending in their own efforts to VB:

 

Well what did you expect?

The above story is all essentially true, (well I read it in China Daily and did a bit of online research to confirm its veracity so it’s as true as it’s allowed to be assuming Chinese papers don’t make up stories, unless they have to, like they do in the evil West), which is a whole new direction for VB.  Look out for more true stories in future editions of VB, where truth matters….sometimes.

 

One year later

I’m now over halfway through the trimester and halfway through my contract; not that I’m wishing my life away but I’ll be glad when this trimester is over.  I was thinking I’d made it through the hottest months, June and July, and then the word came out that August is even tougher, and the worst month for power-cuts as air-con use goes through the roof, as it were.  Humidity’s running at about 300% these days, so I’m sweating off about a stone a day.

 

"Yes I am bleedin' roasting!"

But anyway, back when I was just a young lad, about a year ago in Dublin, I’d never have dreamed of watching TV or movies on my computer.  Now I’ve got a whole raft of different video players on my laptop and a gazillion or so sources of the latest TV shows and movies.  I may as well ring up the directors and ask them to email me the latest episodes when they’re made.  That’s about the only way I’ll get to see shows even earlier.  So, if you’re wondering what I’ve achieved in a year in China, that’s it.  I can download (obviously legally) TV shows and movies to my ready-to-die at any moment laptop.  Now, wasn’t the financial crisis worth that?

 

And so is my Ikea selection

Parent-teacher meetings

First up was Year 11 and the parents of these blessed kids were treated from 2pm on a Friday afternoon to speeches and videos of the glory of NIT and then we teachers were told to be there at 4 (and then 4.45) so the parents could talk to us about their children’s progress.  All we had to do was bring their up-to-date marks with us.  So I brought some sheets with an awful lot of zeros, and I sat with my interpreter (a Chinese teacher with a surprisingly strong Scottish accent) and told her not to make eye contact with anyone, otherwise we may have to try and explain how Watercress has somehow failed to garner a single mark in English even though he dutifully attends every class with his mobile phone, ipad, and some dodgy looking confectionary.   So I sat there for an hour and a half hoping no parent would approach and yet feeling somehow inadequate because none did.

The following week we had the Year 10 parent-teacher meeting and I did actually get to meet a yummy mummy, though I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do with her phone number.  Of course these meetings are just to tell the parents how fantastic NIT is and how fantastic their students are though all this brilliance appears to be happening in a parallel universe to which I’m not privy.

 

School tip #1

Be careful what words you teach the students.  We were allocating different jobs to students for them to make a short presentation on and one of the jobs was “logger”.  So when a teacher (not I) supplied this word to the student they typed it into Baidu (the Chinese Google) and up came a photo of two guys dressed….well not dressed at all, apparently.  So today’s tip is, don’t bring “logger” into the classroom.  Let’s just say, logger was quickly taken off the list.

 

School tip #2

If, on these hot and humid summer evenings you’re one of those teachers (not I) inclined to take all your clothes off when you’re back in your apartment, which just happens to be the apartment below the head of Wace’s apartment, then it might be a good idea to lock your door just in case the head of Wace, returning from a brief nighttime expedition, ends up walking into your apartment accidentally (or was it?) and is exposed to all the glory therein.  She’s looked haunted and shaken ever since.

 

School ‘how-to’ #1

So if a student charges into a class and attacks another student with a brick (yes, a brick) will the student be expelled or just suspended for a while?  Well, neither in fact.  It seems attacking another student with a brick just isn’t enough.  So I guess we’ll just have to see how shooting fellow students goes down.  It also raises another interesting question; is it easier for a teacher to be fired, or a student to be suspended?  Both are pretty close to impossible but further research is definitely necessary.

 

Sports latest

Rugby World Cup update:  I’ve watched all the Tri-nations matches so far and I’m inexorably drawn to the conclusion that there’s only going to be one winner of this World Cup.

Olympics 2012 Update:  Now that Britain has degenerated into the lawless entity that it was inevitably due to become (800 years of hurt tells you that) I hear that they are already looking at staging the (somewhat trimmed-down) 2012 Olympics in Ireland.   Every cloud has a silver lining I guess.  Usain Bolt in Santry Stadium, eh?

 

The recession hits NIT

Pay up, world

Say it ain’t so, Stevo

So farewell then Aussie Steve….

it’s hard to believe
that office number 3 in WACE
will have an empty space
where once you were seated
as we were treated
to your pithy observations
and demonstrations
of all that was wrong
and why you didn’t belong.

It seems like only yesterday
that you arrived saying “g’day”
and the whole Aussie collective
embarrassed by your invective
quickly began to worry
amid this flurry
that people would think
that all Australians could sink
to such base levels;
the language of devils.

How we’ll miss your chirpy chat
rat-a-tat-tat-tat:
“You know what you can do with that Peking duck
$%£ &(^* £$@? £$%^.
You really are the pits
you bunch of @%$& £$>@.”
were the kinds of things we’d likely hear
if we were standing anywhere near,
and our ears would cower
‘neath this verbal shower.

So farewell then Aussie Steve
now we just need some time to grieve
and wonder how we’re going to survive
with the vastly more polite Clive.*
And though you may be gone from WACE
we’ll still get to see your frowning face
because it’s (almost) impossible to be fired
and you’ve already been hired
to teach the younger kids in BIS
who’ll instead have to revel in your excess.

(*OK it’s Caleb not Clive,
but I just needed to rhyme with survive
to keep this whole verse thing alive.)

"We interrupt this poetry..."

Poetic license
You may have already guessed
that this latest post will be blessed
with the finest rhyme and verse
which can’t be any worse
than the turgid prose which has preceded
and is now being superseded.

Year 10 play competition
There were many efforts from year 10 classes
and I was most impressed by 5 young lasses
from my year 10-8
who chose to decorate
their literary advance
with an inappropriate dance
straight from the disco
or a Lady Ga-Ga video.
Suffice to say,
at the end of the day,
though a judge was I,
they didn’t qualify
for the final of the competition
and a chance to give a repeat rendition.

Enough already
Right, I’ve had enough of this poetry thing and trying to rhyme all the time. Seriously those poets have a lot to answer for, with their rhymes, and adjectives, and metaphors, and similes, and iambic bleedin’ pentameter. I guess poetry’s loss will remain prose’s gain.

Happy Birthday Meghan
A very belated (a month late maybe, but in the whole scheme of things and the millions of years the world has been around for, it’s not really that late now is it.) and heartfelt happy 10th to VB’s most loyal reader, the Megster; 10 glorious years (just 80 less than the CPC) of Wendlebury’s finest pupil and friend to the panda. I believe she drank the Red Lion dry on June 29th. Meghan, here’s a photo of my pandas celebrating your birthday recently.

"Who's birthday was it?" "Who cares, let's party!"

Beijing tip of the day #1
If the day looks dark and foreboding this usually means it’s going to lash rain with a bit of thunder and lightning thrown in also. So it’s probably not the sort of day to take your bicycle for a spin. And when you’re sheltering from the rain you should probably stay that little bit longer because you know when you start off again, the rain’s just going to get heavier too. And once you’re on your way thinking it’s all ok again, your chain will probably come off. And when you arrive at the bank soaking wet and a little bit mucky, the chances are their systems will be down and your whole journey will have been in vain anyway. (Yes, this all happened, though I did manage to defeat the fates in the end.)

Beijing tip of the day #2
If the following week you notice that it’s another dark and storm-threatening day then you should take note of tip #1 and accept that it’s definitely not a good idea to take your bike out because obviously you should have learnt from last time, and it’s surely going to take about 3 hours to get home in the pouring rain as you’ll be sheltering under a bridge for about 2 hours in the vain hope that the rain and lightning will ease off thus preventing you and your few valuable possessions being completely soaked, until you eventually just decide to brave the rain and a complete drenching anyway and realise that, after all, there was really no point in sheltering under that bridge for 2 hours.

"Soft day, thank God."

Beijing tip of the day #3
That very sensible and practical rain jacket you brought with you that sits unused in your wardrobe would be ideal if you’re fool enough to go cycling on days such as those mentioned in tips 1 and 2.

No flip-flops
For the latest set of exams we were instructed not to let students into the exam room wearing flip-flops, which I guess is kind of fair enough in an appropriate-to-wear to school kind of vibe. And yet that fashion monstrosity, Crocs, was perfectly acceptable. Immediate expulsion is the only answer for that, if you ask me.

My wardrobe, earlier today

Sports latest
TV stations need a new toy. I do in fact get to see a fair amount of major sporting events on my TV but to be honest I’m fairly sick now of super slow-motion. It was kind of novel at first seeing every tiny detail as a golf ball emerged from a bunker in a hail of sand or seeing a tennis ball change shape on impact with the red clay of Roland Garros, but there I was watching the British Open on some Chinese Travel Channel and having witnessed a super slow-mo of Darren Clarke drying his golf club with a towel I realised that super slow-mo had already jumped the shark and reached the peak of banality; stop it now, find a new toy.

Time for religion
As we approach the end of civilisation as we know it (and let’s face it, we’re all doomed. Some “the end of the world is nigh”, merchant will be feeling pretty smug someday soon, parading his new sign, “I told you so”, to nobody.), it’s time to get spiritual and think about a higher power. So I was wondering, does he/she keep up with all the latest new technologies? Does he/she have an ipad now and think “wow, how cool (or massively over-hyped) is that?” Or has he/she had an ipad for thousands of years and is now thinking, “well, humankind, you took your time figuring that one out.” And this leads to a vast multitude of other questions which I just don’t have time to deal with now even though I’ve obviously far too much time on my hands to let my mind wander down such unusual corridors. For further spiritual advice email VBcaresnoreallyhedoes@gmail.com

Nature, earlier today

Tune in next time for reports from my first parent-teacher meetings where VB will at last get to tell the parents what he really thinks of those year 11C7 students. Well, he’ll tell the interpreter who will probably translate it into something like, “your child is an excellent student and has won many awards and will be a great success in the future,” or “delicious food.”

Blame the stifling heat