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October 23 Dummy TitNow I know that this might sound like a really lame excuse...(well, it is lame, but that doesn't mean that it's not true). Its been a long time since my last blog. 'Oh, Chris - Why is that?' I hear you all asking. Well, of course the school term ended in July and my (mildly) successful experiment in student blogging had already come to an end. Then there was the summer holiday - 4 weeks in Thailand - no point going online when you are on a tropical paradise island - just lots of R & R - reading and rum. I’ll blog all about that another time. Anyway, back to the main point. So recently I wanted to have a look at my blog, maybe add something to fill my dull afternoons of unemployment. I’ll explain that too another time if you are unlucky. Right – so what was the address of my blog? Oh dear – I’d completely forgotten. I had to google what I could remember I’d written to eventually find it. Hurrah! Thank goodness for search engines – I found my lovely blog! Now what was the sign in address? My ‘Spaces ID’ or whatever they call it. Hmmm. Try this one? Nope. Try another … That doesn’t work either. Oh, drat. But wait! I know what to do. I’ll click the ‘help’ button. Now I expected a doctor to suddenly arrive at my house and give me a brain scan or something like that, but in fact all that happened was that I was re-directed to a web page where I could send a message to those nice people at MSN. Which I did. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, they said that if I had forgotten both the sign in name and the password there was nothing that they could do. I was up sh|t creek without a paddle – without a packed lunch or a flask of tea would be a more accurate description of the situation. That was months ago. I just left it at that. No point in messing about trying every single combination of email addresses and passwords. That would be just plain silly. This morning I woke up early, very early, and since I couldn’t sleep any more I switched on the computer and thought I’d try one more time to get that damn blog open. I tried every single combination of email addresses and passwords (plain silly?) until finally… I got it. For all those geeks who want to know how I cracked the ‘unbreakable’ MSN code, here’s my secret. I’d confused a .com for a .co.uk. Was it Alfred Einstein who once said ‘Genius is a fine line between dumb-ass stupid and loop-de-loop insane.’ Or was that Freud?
April 13 Thank you allI'd just like to say thanks to everyone who sent me a 'Get Well Soon' mesage this week.
It was very nice to have your warm support.
I'm feeling much better now and look forward to seeing everyone again next week.
April 09 The internet is...What do you think?
I'm not talking about the pathetic speed of our connection.. That IS
S h i t...
I'm white, but my great, great, great, great, great (etc) granny was black Just a quick note to all those people out there who think of themselves in some way better than the rest of us.
We are all entitled to our opinions, and there are more religions out there that I could possibly name. What all religions seem to have in common is love and respect for our fellow men.
So what’s gone wrong?
When I turn on the TV news, I can’t avoid the hate and violence unfolding in the name of religion. It makes my heart bleed and tears well up in my eyes.
Why is there so much hate in the world?
Freedom of speech comes with a huge degree of responsibility. I do my best to respect the opinions of others. What I cannot bear is racism and hate.
I’d like to coin a new word. Hateism – the intolerance of hate.
Is it ok to say that you hate ‘the Japanese’?
Is it any different to saying that you hate:
tall people
black people
Catholics
Protestants
Jews
Muslims
homosexuals
disabled people
the blind
people called Donald
farmers
twins
people who wear glasses
footballers
children
the French
people with perms
HIV positive people
twitchers
prostitutes
geeks
fat people
thin people
people
animals
farts
transvestites
… and so on. And on, and on…
I’d like to think that the answer is ‘NO, it's NOT OK, it is no different.
It is NOT OK to hate.
The latest scientific opinion is that we are all descended from one woman. And she was black and lived in Africa.
We are the same.
We are one.
We are brothers and sisters.
April 07 A Window on ChinaIt’s a sin when you have to get up early and leave a comfy, warm hotel room. But that’s what we did. Our plan was to get to the ‘Window on the World’ in Shenzhen early and spend the day there.
The idea is simple, much like the quaint miniature villages of merry England, but being in China, it’s on a huge site with scale models of hundreds of famous places throughout the world. Visited by 7 million people in its first year, it’s become one of China’s most successful mainland tourist attractions.
Look! – There’s the Eiffel Tower, and the Coliseum, and the Pyramids, and the Leaning Tower of Pizza, and Manhattan Island, complete with six foot twin towers – and there’s a plastic life-size dinosaur! All these sights look just a little bit tatty and worn. A sad reflection of the reality – but good enough, it seemed, for the snap-happy visitors that swarm around this most Chinese of tourist destinations.
The irony of it all was quite breathtaking. The outside world, shut off from the people of China for so long, miniaturised and neatly signposted. It’s perfect for photo opportunities and an ideal way of avoiding all the horrors (and cost) of real travel. You can see the whole world in one afternoon and still get home in time for tea. But that’s not where the true irony lies. With a one day ticket priced at 120 Yuan, even this counterfeit world is, for many, still as far out of reach as the real thing.
We blended in with the crowds and tramped from Europe to the Americas, to Australia and back again. I was pooped by lunchtime. The trip up the Eiffel Tower was our last stop before leaving. Although, at 100 meters tall, it’s only one third the height of the real thing, it was still tall enough to get a great view of the surrounding city, and the way that the tower was slightly swaying in a light breeze made it just that little bit more exciting. Take a look at the photos in my album.
I’m not saying I didn’t have a good day, because I did. It was just not what I was expecting.
It never is.
Read all about it...I'm proud to say how happy I am to buck a trend in English teaching.
My poor students are bogged down with tons of writing. Eight essays in total per term is the required amount. So I'm 'lucky' enough to have piles of essays to read and correct. That is usually the end of it - the students don't actually learn much about how to improve what and how they write - it's the score that counts here.
I'm just happy that my long-suffering students have a chance to read something that I, myself have written.
Looking back, I don't think I have ever in my life read anything that one of my teachers had written, so I feel good about myself for what I have tried to achieve with this class blog project.
I don't want you to think that it was all part of a clever plan. I couldn't have expected it to work out this way. Interesting new things like this just keep popping up unexpectedly. Serendipitously, I'd like to say.
More on the unexpected outcomes of blogging later...
A night by the seaThursday
China’s a funny place.
On Thursday night I met up with my good friend Jared and we went over to Sea World in Shekou. It’s a place near the ferry terminal that’s full of westerners, with everything that they need to survive away from home. Supermarkets and shops with western food at western prices. Check out Subway for delicious sandwiches and a pizza shop with food to die for. I picked up a jar of mustard and a can of black olives on the way to Tony’s house when I first arrived. Yummy!
It was already evening, and we made our way to a bar called The Terrace. Sitting outside we could have been anywhere in the world. It seemed like I wasn’t even in China, and with a glass of beer costing 38 Yuan, that only reinforced my feeling. From our comfortable seats we looked out over a huge boat ‘docked’ at one end of the short main street. Only in the daytime would you discover that it’s in fact miles from the sea. It’s a mystery exactly how on earth it got there. I suspect aliens.
 After a while, the band began to play. We went inside and took our seats in a stylish and modern bar – high-tech waitress with Dell PDAs (or whatever they are called) to take your order. How strange it was to hear the singer’s rendition of ‘Wo ai ni’ (I love you). Where else could you possibly be but in China. What was more interesting, however, was that it wasn’t a Chinese singer but an American guy singing the song. Who would believe it? In fact his Chinese was very good, and he sang it quite well, although I must admit that I have heard that song about a billion times since I came here so for me, maybe it’s just a tiny bit hackneyed.
 The waitress was quite pretty but a little over-attentive, and finally after asking me for the third time if I wanted another beer, I snapped at her to stop bothering me. We didn’t stay for another beer.
On the way back to the hotel, we came across some street artists painting people’s faces on T-shirts as well as on paper. They were very good and so fast. I watched with just a hint of envy as they captured the essence of the sitters face with such ease and so few brush strokes. I have always wished that I could draw or paint. I have never got much further than the blackboard scribbles I sometimes use to illustrate a word’s meaning. I would like, however, to add that I am a Pictionary champion.
April 06 Where have I been all week..? All over the place..!Let's start with Wednesday.
I finished my last class at 12 noon and zoomed home on my bicycle. As usual I packed too much into my old, trusy and very well-travelled bag and got ready to go to Shenzhen for the weekend. I left the house in a big mess and walked to the bus stop.
It's not too far to Jiuzhou Port - about 30 minutes on the bus - and I arrived just in time to catch the next boat. I have taken the ferry to Shenzhen many times, and I still can't work out why the ferry company says that the journey takes 60 minutes. Maybe I always get onto a dodgy, slow one - but it always takes me 70 minutes to get there.
On arriving in Shekou - still very familiar (I lived there for 6 months) - but changing so fast - I made my way to my old friend Tony's house. He assured me that getting a room in a hotel wasn't a priority, so instead I went for dinner with him and his girlfriend, Joan.
Having satisfied our bellies, it was time to get into a taxi and meet some of his friends at a house party. We talked and drank beer and caught up on what we'd been doing since the last time we met. Before I knew it, it was 4am and I really needed to get some sleep. So he bundled me into a taxi and we sped off into the night. It wasn't until 5am that I finally got my head down, but the bed was comfortable and I slept like a baby, waking just before noon.
A perfect start to a mini-break in the big city.
Photos FixedI think I have finally resolved my non-loading photo problems.
Sorry to all those who couldn't see any of my images.
I'm using photojerk.com now - hope it's more stable than filelodge.
Now I can get on and talk about what I've been doing over the past week. April 05 A ResultThanks to he wonder of the internet, the owner of the lost camera showed up this week.
I would like to say thank you to Oscar who was the one who was honest enough to give me the camera when he found it in his desk.
All I did was wait to see if the owner would appear. So it's Oscar who deserves all the credit.
Here's the happy owner reunited with his camera.
 Orange with his lost camera and friend.
A happy ending! April 03 Monday Morning BluesYou know what really pisses me off?
Students who come to class and don't listen to the lesson. Always doing something from their textbooks instead of doing what I asked them to do.
Having to say for the millionth time - 'Please speak English.'
That really pisses me off.
So - please stop it
It's rude and I don't like it.
Sometimes I feel like I'm babysitting a bunch of spoilt babies.
March 24 Who is this guy?WANTED
Does anyone recognise this guy?
 If you do - let me know - I found a camera and this was one of the photos on it.
Get in touch with me if you can solve this little mystery!
Life Begins at Forty?I'm finally forty
I'm still amazed that it was my 40th birthday on Monday 20th March 2006.
I half expected it to be a bit of a weird day. the idea of being 40 was something that I wasn't really looking forward to. Surprisingly I was actually really happy. I was almost amazed that I had made it this far!
Where has all that time gone? I can't believe that I've been here in China for over 4 years. It's true what people say that the older you get the faster time seems to pass.
So what did I get for my birthday? First I must say a big thank you to those students who gave me a gift that day. You have no idea how much it means to me. The great hotpot dinner on Saturday and that delicious cake from Jusco I enjoyed with my friends were just perfect.
I did try to spend the weekend on one of Zhuhai's lovely islands with the 6 good friends who came to visit me that weekend. Unfortunately we missed the boat - but that didn't really dampen our spirits. We still enjoyed the sunshine and each other's company. I couldn't wish for a better band of brothers.
Since I always take any opportunity to spoil myself at times like this, I headed out to the computer market at Wan Zai Sha and bought myself a present. I have had some problems with my computer recently - not just because of the snail-like speed of the internet connection, but from viruses and spyware that seemed to take over my PC and give it a life of it's own.
After re-installing the system, scanning and re-scanning for every type of malware, spyware, virus and nasty software, I finally got things back to normal. However, my digital photographs now take up a huge amount of space on my hard drive. I began to worry that if anything ever happened to my computer, I might lose them all forever. To back them all up on CD-R would take 7CDs. I don't really trust a CD-R disk to last any longer than my hard drive anyway. So I treated myself to an 80G portable drive.
Now all my pictures are safely stored there - and I can stop worrying about that for now. However - as time passes, my photo collection will continue to grow and grow and their safe storage and retrieval becomes a constant nightmare. Yahoo has a photo album storage facility online - so I guess that I'll have to be much more organized in the future and always upload any new pictures to the internet.
None of this ever entered my head when I first bought a digital camera. I'd like to see camera companies offering free and simple software that comes with a digital camera that can download the pictures to your computer as well as uploading them to an online storage facility. Now that would be something that would give users something more than a headache and a big pile of CD-R disks. Maybe I should suggest it to the camera companies...
I have suddenly become drawn back to the old 35mm film camera. There's something special about the whole process. That mysterious and even exciting period from when you take the finished film to the shop to be developed to the moment you get to see the pictures for the first time. A kind of thrill - never sure if they will turn out just the way that you had expected them to - and the joy when sometimes they do, and surprise when they could be unexpectedly better than you'd have thought. Having your photos printed on paper so that you can put them in albums and look at them is also something I miss. Those shiny blocks of frozen time and captured memories have a quality all to themselves. Digital pictures are just a flickering image on a computer screen, their virtual existence and ethereal quality lack so much of the concrete reality of a print from a negative. Maybe (because of my age) I'm just old school. How, I wonder, will young people who grew up with digital cameras ever know that feeling?
Digital cameras just don't give me the same photography experience. I know that you can have those digital pictures printed just like before - but for some strange reason - and I can't work out what it is - I just don't do it. I suspect a lot of others are just like me too. New technology, new methods, new experience.
I think I'll buy a 35mm camera to replace the last one that got stolen in Qingdao. That was the reason that I moved to digital. This is an example of those ripples on a pool. How one event affects others in so many unexpected ways.
I think it's time I started to make my own ripples.
March 13 Talking about Madonna: Sorry
Quote Madonna: Sorry |
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