King in Beijing

Good afternoon from chilly Beijing!

Still no internet, so computer mark 1 is still my weapon of choice. So, space rockets! Did you hear about Shenzhou 6 (the ballistic m1ssile that the Chinese strapped 2 men to the side of and blasted into space)? We did... Amid the wall-to-wall nationalistic fervour created by the launch, I found this moving tribute from class 9:

I knew they were excited about it, but not that excited...

Anyway, for those who are suffering from MHUWS (Mr. Huge Update Withdrawal Symptoms), never fear! He was able to recite 'the rat ran over the river with a lump of raw liver' without mentioning tanks, and then spent the rest of the lesson drawing what appeared to be an anaconda on the back of his book. One word, legend.

Ok, time to go one feels, hunger setting in and those dumplings won't eat themselves,

zaijian!

Thomas

LOOKING FOR THE CAN IN THE CANDY STORE

Wan shang hao!

Or good evening, whatever takes your fancy. My internet is broken, so I am in the school office using what appears to be China's first computer - and it doesn't like English much! First up, a couple of thank yous:

1. To the people who kindly organised a sports day which started at 7:30am on Sunday. I didn't need any more sleep at all, and the screaming down the microphone was a lovely touch.

2. To the internet powers-that-be here for blocking access not only to bbc news, but now to my favourite online encyclopedia wikipedia. All that free information was making me scared and confused - but what shall I do now???

Here is a picture of our road, courtesy of Mr. Huw (in my opinion the next David Bailey!).

To explain my title, I was playing a 'blind date' style game with the students on Friday, when guess who's number gets pulled out of the bag? Poor old Satan! Amid a deafening roar of barracking from the other 57 students, she had to pick her date from 3 shoe-gazing numpties who I named Tom, Dick and Harry for the purpose of the exercise. When she finally picked Harry, the screams from the class made a football match look like a Trapist monk convention, and Satan went as red as she is in her pictures! If looks could kill, I'd have multiple stab wounds. The wrong side of Satan is NOT the right side to be.

I also had a curry on Friday. I am not one for over-exaggeration, but it was the best meal ever. And Rolls-Royce paid for most of it! Thank you Phil!

Right, time to go, I have a Hallowe'en lesson to plan, woooooooooooooooo!!! Until next time, zaijian,

Thomas

I CAN'T BELIEVE I SPELT IT WITH AN O...

Afternoon y'all!

The feedback I have received from my last 2 posts has been somewhat critical of my alarmist attitudes. I thought I might have been a little hasty, but then one of those group emails dropped into my inbox from the Foreign Office. It was titled:

'10 things you need to know about pandemic influenza'

Here are some of the hightlights:

'3. The world may be on the brink of another pandemic'. Ok, I can live with that, just as long as Britain and China are ok right?

'4. All countries will be affected'. Yikes. Well, it should be ok as long as it's fairly isolated...

'5. Widespread illness will occur'. That's not good. Surely there will some sort of remedy for this?

'6. Medical supplies will be inadequate'. Really? Well maybe people might just shake it off?

'7. Large numbers of deaths will occur'. Oh my god, that's terrible

'8. Economic and social disruption will be great'. (Quiet sobbing...)

And that's from the government and the World Health Organisation! I may go and live in an oxygen tent somewhere. Anyone know of any places that don't have birds?

Will update you all with a more sensible post soon,

Zaijian,

Thomas

2 MONTHS! (AND THIS TIME I HAVE THE DATE RIGHT!)

Ni men hao wo de peng you!

... or hello my friends, which is a lot simpler. Apologies for the slackness on the update front. A hectic weekend of drinking and kindergarten teaching (although sadly not in that order) and the inevitable recovery time has put me out of action for a little while, but I'm back with avengence!

So what's been happening? Well, I don't wish to alarm you (especially as my last post was a little jumpy), but strange things are afoot at Beijing No.12 Middle School. They have been 2 building plinths (is that the plural? I am an English teacher you know) to put something on for a while now, and last week they unveiled:

A sundial. Quite classy you think, a nice touch. So what's on the other one?

Right. From the rising and setting of the sun I have worked out the missile is facing due east. So which countries are east of Beijing?

North Korea. That's not so bad, they seem to get on ok considering. South Korea. Hmmm, they seem fairly small fish to fry for the Chinese (who seem to prefer dog and turtle anyway). What about further east?

Oh dear god.

Moving swiftly on, another Mr. Huge update for you, the guy is an evil genius. In a seemingly innocuous exercise where you had to say where you most want to go on holiday, and what you'd take with you (and after much cajoling), he wrote down 'I would sail to New York in a battleship. I would take some tanks with me'. I was in pieces the rest of the lesson, I think he has accidentally revealed his plan to take over the world to me.

Perhaps in my next post I can tell you all about the 'imposter spotting' I'm being trained to do, but I feel exhausted after all that. Keep it real and keep in touch,

Zaijian,

Thomas

IS IT ME, OR IS ENGLISH HUMOUR VERY STRANGE?

Ni hao,

Another off-beat look at the world of the 'middle country' awaits. Are you scared yet? You should be:

One of these guys waving their arms around like demented windmills might be running your life in years to come. Sorry, that might be a slight over-exaggeration, but I am prone to them... They are taking part in the morning exercise, which is done to a crazy half Gregorian Monk half Euro-house tune, while a drill instructor shouts at them over the loudspeaker.

So (my favourite classroom filler), what's been happening? Mr. Huge has learnt to count to 6 and can spell stomach, although his tank name badge has gone. Huw and I have been judges at the School Science (in English) competition, and I have been attempting to teach the pupils about dating, with mixed results (as they are not allowed to date each other in school - whoops!).

One of my exercises involved describing their 'perfect partner'. The boys are very predictable (Beautiful girl! Lovely girl!), but the girls have not been so. Several had written 'average looking' or 'ugly' on the sheet. When challenged, their response was 'if he is good-looking, all the girls will love him, if he is not, then he will love ONLY ME'. So young, but so cynical!

Right, before this post becomes officially uncool for our A.D.D. generation I shall sign off. Here is a picture of some typical Chinese supermarket snacks you can catch at your local shop:

Shell-tastic! Best wishes from the 'jing,

Thomas

GOT IT. LEONARD COHEN = SONGWRITER, LEONARD NIMOY = STAR TREK.

Ni men hao!

So what's new? I was shocked into shame to discover that not only has one of my good friends Stuart "Senator" Clash moved to Beijing, he has also taken up cycling:

Anyway, I settled in at 11pm on Saturday to watch England v Austria on China's premier sports channel CCTV5. Sadly, what was bad news for England and Austria fans was good news for China's millions of football fans from Uzbekistan and Bahrain, as they were showing that game instead... After much agitated button-pushing I managed to locate the proper football, although on a very fuzzy Taiwanese channel. Which. Fortunately. Doesn't. Seem. To. Have. Affected. Me. For the record, Bahrain and Uzbekistan drew 1-1.

After the week-long holiday I was forced back to work on Sunday - there is something very wrong about that. I'm off to see Mr. Huge and co. tomorrow (see the entry 'My Favourite Chinglish names for details of Mr. Huge), I'll let you know what kind of weaponry he's sporting on his name-tag this time.

On that note, I'll leave you to it, for now, a bientot!

Thomas (with one s)

Ni hao!

good to see the site hitting the big time, with over 100 visitors now! I'm sure there's only one person who cares, and he is now a person who has ridden a camel:

I think he had the hump with me though...

Anyway, that was at the Beijing Botanical gardens, we ended up there accidentally. A place we didn't end up accidentally was:

The Great Wall! Izzi and I managed to walk the 10km from Jinshanling to Simatai, despite having being driven there by a guy who had never driven on a dual carrigeway before... for 4 hair-raising hours. It was well worth it though. The people that must either sleep on the wall or get up at insane-o'clock to harass you most of the way along are not worth it, but they provide some entertainment. 'Looky looky, postcard t-shirt coke beer sprite water picture, you buy later?' No. All good fun though.

So, camels and walls aside, what have I been up to? October the 1st was National Day. In 1949 a chap who's name I probably shouldn't mention stood in a square that sets off most internet firewalls and said some things that most people won't find remotely interesting. But the upshot of it was that the People's Republic of China was founded.

The whole country has 1 weeks holiday, and most of it seems to have come to Beijing! We posed with various Chinese people for photos in 'The square' today, which was nice! Back to school on Sunday (to make up for the time lost in the holiday... why Larry??).

Ok, time to go, I'll leave you with a couple of adjectives that I always like to associate with my carrots:

'Delicious and safe'... mmm