Advertisement
Published: June 10th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Bumper Cras (!)
At a city centre amusement prak (!) New photos on:
http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/ (click on the photos to enlarge)
…..you'd think after three years here I'd be used to the alien dynamic of road rule observance, & the corresponding lack of the same, in China. However it's still difficult to cope with the assumption that for traffic lights red & green are just pretty colours that change to add variety to an otherwise grey, smoggy & now, (see below), smoky day. I can still hear my mum saying, “look left, look right, look left again...etc”. The words come to mind today as the guy's phone flies out of his hand & lands, probably several metres away, in the middle of the bike lane.....
…..the average traveller in the middle of a central Australian desert, with the nearest vehicle or person hundreds of kilometres away, would pay far more attention to their surroundings than the average Chinese pedestrian in a city with 4 million people milling around. If you're standing in a bike lane, sending a text message well, that's just par for the course here. When you have pressed the 'send' button that is, for you, a definable point in time. If for you that event
On a clear day...
From the top of the bridge to the office blocks is around 200m. This was taken around midday. is just a signal to start walking, across the bike lane you should realise that, for a cyclist whose front wheel is already a metre or so from your leg, it is a random event. You really shouldn't be surprised if your phone is knocked out of your hand. To paraphrase a famous Australian public service ad., “Sleep, walk, you're a bloody idiot”. I hope his phone is OK.....
…..life seems to have become insufferably busy. Preparing English tests for my students, which most English speakers would consider pathetically simplistic, accommodating an increasing list of obligations & invitations as end of year dinners, all the birthdays of foreign teachers born in June, July & August concatenated into a couple of weeks before the end of the year, organising the accommodation for Bruce & Kerry when they visit China at the end of this month, (& myself of course), plus gigs, not many but enough with everything else that's going on. We're almost certain that, with the exam planned out some nameless idiot in the upper reaches of the system will decide that certain classes have to be cancelled due to some pointless activity that the kids HAVE to take
After Dinner
Kevin, Chance, Dave, Elaine, Jenna, Sunny, Paerhat part in. As my old mate Brian used to say, “Minds IMMEASURABLY SUPERIOR to ours have worked this out......”
…..this is an opportune mood in which to take a final tilt at the Windmill of the Chinese Internet, the most frustrating, pointless, random attempt in history to assert authority by attempting to prove that your method of nailing jelly to the wall is the preferred method & that users will only be allowed to use the jelly remaining on the wall. Attempts to access, for instance, a Google search of innocuous images to use to illustrate vocabulary in an English class will probably, no, CERTAINLY, result in the search being blocked after the first three depraved licentious & debased images of downhill skiers, national flags or Dutch tulip fields......
…..just tried it to see if I was exaggerating. Maybe the Swiss flag is just too politically contentious to be on public view.....
…..I think my views have been influenced by the oppressive grey blanket that's enveloped Yangzhou over the last week or so as the stubble in the wheat fields is burned off, not just in this area but probably the whole of the eastern part of
Julia Goes Forward!
My Grade 8 student Julia gets recognised publicly as the first from the school to go the final of the CCTV English competition. China. Building 200m away are a hazy outline, the school is invisible from the bridge & the power station, less than 2km away, is totally invisible. It's like a midwinter's day in the most dismal part of London except that the temperature is in the mid 30'sC, humid & sticky. Just the sort of conditions that would provoke the most sympathetic observer to wonder what the hell they're doing in a place like this.....
…..it seems I've embarked on an unprecedented China bashing session this time. I should mention that this evening I went for dinner with old & new Chinese friends & colleagues from the school, had a fantastic dinner which cost, in total, about Au$6 per head in one of our favourite eateries, Laoma. Some dear friends couldn't make it but Kevin & Paerhat, who are usually busy working, managed to find some free time to join us.....
…..George's friend, Kim, has invited him, Paul & me to a dinner tomorrow, (Sunday), to thank us for the help & encouragement we gave her in her recent IELTS (International English Testing System), exam. She didn't even get the grade she was hoping for.....
…..I think one
Chinglish
Great slogan, what does it mean? of the other frustrations is English. OK, I have been accused in the past of being something of a “neat freak”, a term used by people who can't spell “obsessive compulsive” but for years I've queried the incongruities in my native language. My brain dead students don't know enough to notice, the ones in the middle are struggling with the basics & accept whatever you tell them. The bright ones ask awkward questions but don't always know enough English for me to tell them why, for instance, there's a 'd' on “I use
d to like it” but not in “I didn't use to like it”, (when you add the verb “to do”). If a Chinese person translates directly from their language & says, “Yesterday I go to shop” it's hard to justify why in English you have to say, “Yesterday I
went to
the shop”. Why “went” & not “goed” & why do you need “
the” when it's OK to say, “Yesterday I
went to school”.....
…..I've also wondered why we never tidied up our chaotic spelling the way the Germans did. what's the point of having an alphabet to indicate the sound of a word, then using it
Watering the flowers
Near Gloria Jeans coffee for, “through, though, enough, cough, hiccough, borough, trough.....
…..if it wasn't for the fact that every word in Chinese sounds like a hundred, (or more!), others & that the system for putting it in writing is so bloody abstruse, arcane & impenetrable, well, if not for those insignificant & unimportant details, maybe we'd all be speaking Chinese now......
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0432s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb