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Published: March 19th 2011
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Sunset at the school
The clearest sky you get in Jiangsu Photos:
…..can the psychic ripples from a massively destructive event make their way round the world to affect us all? The closer you are to it the bigger the waves? I could complain about the broken charger connection on my mobile phone & the washing machines in the common room stopping halfway through their cycle, leaving a load of wet washing to deal with after morning classes, my reading glasses, one lens dropping out following the screw that held it in, the internet down or running slow, frustrating communications, all this following the death of my DVD player, (bought cheaply from a departing teacher). It all pales into insignificance when I watch the awful videos of the tsunamis from Japan. Could it explain general feelings of dissatisfaction, of the tiredness affecting a number of the foreign teachers here recently? I have no answers, I'm just watching & waiting.....
…..dissatisfaction could be partly due to testing my students this week, after a drastic reversal of the curriculum to supposedly ensure that, while they don't learn so much content they theoretically learn, use & retain the language concepts much better. Grade 4 students, whom I thought would just laugh in
Hazy Sunset, Yangzhou
A more usual afternoon Yangzhou sky the face of this painfully simple, four question test, still produced some who are having problems answering, pointing to two characters in a picture of three standing side by side, “Who are they?”. “They are his friends”. Some still give incomplete answers to get some marks, “Friends”. Yes, OK, one point for that but a whole sentence would be good. Some still give me the same look that I'd get if I asked, “Can you appraise me of the interpersonal relationships existing in this depiction?”.....
…..maybe it's also to do with the changeable weather. When we have a couple of beautiful days, not hot, just pleasantly warm, sunny & clear, & the winter jackets & beanies have been consigned to the bottom drawer for another year the wind blows cold, the sky turns leaden grey, it's miserable until the next sunny day. They're more frequent, I think, or am I kidding myself?.....
…..maybe it's the realisation that we are well past the halfway mark of our ten month school year, (excluding the two months of summer holidays). In fact it's now around the two thirds mark. I expected to be functionally articulate in at least everyday interactions in
In a blinding flash
Reflecting the sun from a galvanised plate into oncoming traffic Chinese. While I am BETTER I'm certainly not GOOD at it. It's still an aural maze of similar sounding names & words, combined with sentence structures that are totally inverted for an English speaker. “Where will you go for your holiday next year?” returns from a literal translation as; “You will next year for your holiday go located where?” I don't mind hard work but it's, well, hard work.....
…..I take my phone to a shop that Chen Chun, a colleague in my teachers' office, recommended. They agree to fix my broken USB charger connection for ¥35, straightaway. As I am waiting I manage to make a sort of conversation with the remaining woman behind the counter of the stall, one of many in this mobile phone bazaar. She is from Zhejiang, (a neighbouring province south of Jiangsu), & would like to go to Australia if she had enough money. I notice the phones on sale. NCKIA, NOKLA, Ericssom, Ericcson. I mention that they even look very similar to Nokia & Ericsson phones. Nod, nod, wink, wink.....
…..the spirit of Zhuge Liang, that great diplomat & military strategist during the Three Kingdoms period, around 1,900 years ago, lives
Message to Corey
From Year 12 students on in Yangzhou. There is a famous scene in the story, portrayed in the film Red Cliff, where infantry are facing a cavalry charge. Zhuge Liang has ordered them with to be equipped with shields which on one side are highly polished. The polished sides face inward. Positioned so that the sun is behind the attacking horsemen, at a crucial point during the charge the order is given to reverse the shields, the reflections from which blind the horses temporarily & throw the attackers into disarray. What has this to do with Yangzhou city centre on a Wednesday afternoon? I am reminded by the woman on an e-bike with a large sheet of galvanised steel mounted across the footplate, tilted back slightly to reflect the blinding glare of a rare, sunny day into the oncoming traffic. (See the photo).....
…..I was over the DVD player last week. I ended up getting a new one from the Electronics Mart for ¥185, or a bit under Au$30. My phone has been fixed. My glasses are repaired at the shop where I bought them, for free. Translations of the Chinese instructions on the washing machines are underway. The internet seems to be
The Banana Leaf
Part of the band at the Thai restaurant for Evi's birthday functioning again. Even the west wind, beating me back on the way to the city, doesn't turn before I return so I have an easy ride with a backwind. Life's not so bad.....
…..let's not be too hasty. Since Dante Alighieri described the underworld in his “Inferno” all those years ago Hell has undergone some modernisation. Apart from the large section where damned souls listen to endless replays of “Achy Breaky Heart” & Britney Spears songs a new “English Competition” cavern is under construction where an infinite parade of Chinese children repeat ill-conceived speeches of introduction with expansive gestures which even an epileptic Italian would find excessive & content that will cause the damned souls to squirm as much as any instrument of torture. ...I like blue because the sky is blue... ...I am a beautiful girl, I have small eyes & a big mouth... ...I am very clever, (usually preceding a memory lapse & protracted silence)... ...I am a happy boy / girl (often delivered by a panic stricken kid about to forget the following line)... I have had a vision of Hell at the elementary school lecture theatre. Be afraid, very afraid.....
…..I've included a photo
Evi's Birthday, Scarlett, Yangzhou
Emily & one of Evi's friends celebrating Evi's birthday of a message from a class of year 12 student's, left at the recently planted memorial tree & plaque for Corey, the American teacher who left last year to start a bakery in Shanghai, only to die recently of a brain tumour. It's touching in a peculiarly Chinese way.....
…..ripples from the earthquake & tsunami are being felt elsewhere I get a call from our friend Shen Yue from Nantong, where she has been with her family for several weeks. There is no salt available in the shops in Nantong. They have sold out because people are afraid that future produce will be radioactive following damage to the nuclear power station in Fukushima. In Shanghai the price has apparently risen from around ¥2 for a small plastic bag of salt to ¥10. The nebulous feeling of dissatisfaction is still there, not aided by the number of kids who couldn't manage even the radically simplified curriculum in the tests last week. I still think of the people in Japan, (& Australia & New Zealand & Pakistan & who knows how many other recently afflicted places) & say it again; life is not so bad.......
…..the lens in the repaired
glasses remains firmly in place but the damned earpiece has fallen off.....
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Peter
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A glowing recommendation for this blog.
I must thoroughly appreciation this variety of understandable English.