"There is, by God's grace, an imeasurable difference between late and too late." ~ Sophie Swetchine (1782 - 1857)

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I don’t even remember what the last entry was about! It was a long time ago. The reasons for the delay are simple - it is hard to write a good blog when demoralised (lawd knows we may not succeed in this even when fully moralised) and we have been demoralised. I shall spare you the ins and outs (juicy and terrifying in equal measure) and attempt to cut a long story short. Firstly, it is the off-season. We have almost no trips running. So our normal jobs don’t exist. This means admin, paperwork, busywork and digging holes we later have to fill in (literally - the trenches we dug in Fuli are apparently wrong and are being filled in as I type this. This knowledge pains us almost as much as the actual digging did). The second reason is a continual problem of miscommunication from upper management; very few people know what is going on. The final reason staff have been unhappy is that pay has been late, and sometimes non-existent with no official explanations. No matter, we aren’t here for the money.

The 3 of us recently completed a level 1 and 2 PACI course - Professional Association of Climbing Instructors. This is a climbing course, and levels 1 and 2 allow you to safely take clients abseiling and top-roping. Including in this was the rescuing of climbers, typically using pulleys and prussiks to rig up a 3:1 hoist. The theory side of the course varied between “blinding common sense” and “incomprehensibly obscure”. By far the most irritating part was calculating the ratios of pulley systems, as it is quite clear no-one understands the first thing about them. Level 1 and 2 are completed and as soon as the company has some spare dosh it will actually send off the paperwork to be evaluated by PACI. We also expect this may have been a cunning ploy to prevent us from quitting any time soon.

Before there was a Bryant University (from across the pond) trip in town for a few days. They are apparently always fun, always get drunk every night but somehow always manage to turn up on time to every activity. They lived up to their reputation suitably well.

I pen this at 0146 in the Beijing international airport as I mentally steel myself for the remains of my 11 hour wait and 13 (?) hour flight. Feeling the increasing heat (and possible minor burns) my laptop is inflicting on my leg I realise that its fan has ceased to function…again. Last time was a ball of fluff lodged in it, and I can only hope it is as simple this time. However, I don’t have a miniature screwdriver to take the casing off and I don’t much fancy trying to track one down in this abandoned and locked indoor metropolis. And with that I shall turn it off before it turns itself off. C’est la vie.

Some interesting observations from my brief swing in Hong Kong: the British will queue for anything. Whilst walking through along a walkway on Hong Kong Island, I saw a long queue to my right, slowly advancing. Not wanting to be accused of cutting in, I joined the queue. 15 minutes later I realised the queue is for people with special discount transport cards, and the dozens of people not joining the queue are not in fact rude and pushy, but normal. I stepped out of the queue, thinking that the British would probably queue for the apocalypse.

More than a month later on:

Katie and Joe each enjoyed a splendid month back in the UK, Joe visiting friends and family and Katie having her friends and family come to visit her. Joe covered 1500 miles on his roadtrip and enjoyed eating honey nut cornflakes in a variety of interesting locales. Despite the biological improbability, Katie managed to eat nothing but fine cheese and chocolate for 4 weeks. During this time, Andy moved out to the Ecovillage to take up more or less permanent residence there. Learning from 3 Chinese bamboosmiths he is rapidly becoming an expert in bamboo construction and is taking a huge part in the building of the quintessential bamboo huts - “We can do with bamboo”. Bamboo beams, bamboo floors and bamboo nails to hold it together. He has become something of a wildman over the last months, with a beard like a gorse thicket and a primal fear of machines. Every 10 days or so he is allowed back into Yangshuo to shower.

Katie ran her first trip a few weeks ago - a Duke of Edinburgh expedition hiking the Great Wall near Beijing. For some reason, 90% of the management staff were on this trip making it a particularly intense and high-stakes week for Katie to work through. She performed valiantly, without losing too much nerve, temper or hair. Despite some minor sabotage of the handheld GPS units, all went swimmingly and no-one was killed, injured of even lost for an extended period of time. Success! Most of the students were at least bordering on competent, although temperatures dropped to -9°C at night, punishing the badly prepared students. Joe went to Nanbeihu near Shanghai at the same time, where he ran climbing and the high ropes course. The common feeling among the Nanbeihooligans was that the hotel was a direct transplant from the one in The Shining, complete with creepy, dingy rooms with old crooked portraits and stained mattresses. Nice. One of the trips here was an International Award trip - similar to the Duke of Edinburgh Award but severely watered down. On day 1, after a brief refresher for the students on map and compass skills alarm bells started ringing when students began asking “Sorry, what exactly is North?.” Being unable to directly interfere with navigation on the hike (the guides were there as safety supervisors rather than actual guides), the result was a deeply frustrating and very long slog through bushes, brambles and trees of all kinds. During this time, Andy was frequently called back from the Ecovillage to do day guiding - the tourist season is starting again and climbing traffic is increasing. A new school trip arrived this morning at 1am for which Katie is group leading.

Future excitements include a whole month of staff training in May, for which each of us have been assigned some topics to teach to the new staff, when they arrive. Other than that, the first Borneo trip is running soon (only one member of staff is required to go out unfortunately) and if it goes well then we may have a chance to go on trips there!

Chinacrew

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