The little pest
Like Dracula, he keeps coming back to get swatted.
I seem to have acquired a little pest over on Green Bamboo (the active one) recently. Someone – and this can't be automated – keeps leaving a comment with a bunch of links to sites which claim to be selling virtual merchandise for various online games. A Google search seems to reveal nothing good about these people. The stupid thing is that unless you happen to be searching for the content of the post (the comment has appeared with several different ones, but only one at a time), you're never going to find the comment.
The culprit appears to be Chinese since the comment always starts "Welcome to visit…" which is a piece of typical Chinglish. A search also leads to quite a few Chinese sites, several of which Google marks as harmful. I seldom see such warnings and the whole thing stinks.
Apart from that, I'm all right, although I've been suffering from a tension headache for the past couple of days. Green Bamboo's been doing quite well. I thought the surge at the start of term might be a blip, but I'm now averaging around 350+ hits a week over there. The majority are coming from RSS feeds, but what makes them a little strange is that a lot of them are feeds to old entries. I still keep expecting the number to decline as if my present level of popularity is exceptional.
I'm about to renew my contract, but that has brought uncertainty with it. The foreign partner in the company I work for has had next to nothing to do with the programme for some time now and is pulling out. Their direct involvement in the second year was a disaster. Actually, the whole thing was badly planned. It wasn't until the third year that a proper programme was established, and now we're about to head back to Square One. When I first came here, there was no overall programme. The school gave us Look Ahead (to call the book dreadful is to be unreasonably polite) and that's what we used.
Even when we had an established programme, it was clear that the schools never really understood the idea. They seemed to think that they ought to dictate what we were teaching and even where we were teaching. Some schools seem to have thought that since we were being paid by someone else that it was acceptable (probably for a small fee paid to the school) to be farmed out to other schools. As far as the first part goes, the schools are going to be free to decide what we do. If we're lucky, nothing will change. Her Ladyship, the Wicked Witch of the North, who seems none too wise about education matters, has told the schools as much.
I can't help but feel that this fragmentation is a Bad Thing and the schools may find they're disappointed. Some schools may continue with things as they are, which would be wise: harmony and social stability are Good Things (in this case). Other schools are likely to move in a different direction and find that various things they try and get us to do just don't work. Then they'll try various other schemes in rapid succession (that's what happened with the Senior 3 classes), none of which work. Then her Ladyship might realise that her decision is a terrible mistake.
Will there still be an academic manager? I don't know. I assume that someone will still be managing the HR stuff, but it may not be a foreigner. In other words, we may not have anyone who cares to speak on our behalf.
Several schools are pulling out of the programme, but not the one I'm at. There should still be classes here for at least the next two years because there will be new Senior 1 classes next term. But if we're asked to do things which I think are unreasonable (e.g. conversation classes), then it's really time to move on. At least in this programme, I don't really want to leave Chengdu. I've lived just outside Beijing and appreciated what it had to offer; I've also lived in a place where there was nothing of interest to foreigners. The latter is where most of the schools in the programme are to be found.
I don't know whether there's going to be a conference at the start of next term or merely a reception followed by dispatch to our schools. I'll be curious to see how many of the old lags are still around. I'm the sole surviving first gen out of a fairly small intake. I don't know how many second gens might be lasting into their sixth year. More recent generations seem to be less durable.
I seem to have acquired a little pest over on Green Bamboo (the active one) recently. Someone – and this can't be automated – keeps leaving a comment with a bunch of links to sites which claim to be selling virtual merchandise for various online games. A Google search seems to reveal nothing good about these people. The stupid thing is that unless you happen to be searching for the content of the post (the comment has appeared with several different ones, but only one at a time), you're never going to find the comment.
The culprit appears to be Chinese since the comment always starts "Welcome to visit…" which is a piece of typical Chinglish. A search also leads to quite a few Chinese sites, several of which Google marks as harmful. I seldom see such warnings and the whole thing stinks.
Apart from that, I'm all right, although I've been suffering from a tension headache for the past couple of days. Green Bamboo's been doing quite well. I thought the surge at the start of term might be a blip, but I'm now averaging around 350+ hits a week over there. The majority are coming from RSS feeds, but what makes them a little strange is that a lot of them are feeds to old entries. I still keep expecting the number to decline as if my present level of popularity is exceptional.
I'm about to renew my contract, but that has brought uncertainty with it. The foreign partner in the company I work for has had next to nothing to do with the programme for some time now and is pulling out. Their direct involvement in the second year was a disaster. Actually, the whole thing was badly planned. It wasn't until the third year that a proper programme was established, and now we're about to head back to Square One. When I first came here, there was no overall programme. The school gave us Look Ahead (to call the book dreadful is to be unreasonably polite) and that's what we used.
Even when we had an established programme, it was clear that the schools never really understood the idea. They seemed to think that they ought to dictate what we were teaching and even where we were teaching. Some schools seem to have thought that since we were being paid by someone else that it was acceptable (probably for a small fee paid to the school) to be farmed out to other schools. As far as the first part goes, the schools are going to be free to decide what we do. If we're lucky, nothing will change. Her Ladyship, the Wicked Witch of the North, who seems none too wise about education matters, has told the schools as much.
I can't help but feel that this fragmentation is a Bad Thing and the schools may find they're disappointed. Some schools may continue with things as they are, which would be wise: harmony and social stability are Good Things (in this case). Other schools are likely to move in a different direction and find that various things they try and get us to do just don't work. Then they'll try various other schemes in rapid succession (that's what happened with the Senior 3 classes), none of which work. Then her Ladyship might realise that her decision is a terrible mistake.
Will there still be an academic manager? I don't know. I assume that someone will still be managing the HR stuff, but it may not be a foreigner. In other words, we may not have anyone who cares to speak on our behalf.
Several schools are pulling out of the programme, but not the one I'm at. There should still be classes here for at least the next two years because there will be new Senior 1 classes next term. But if we're asked to do things which I think are unreasonable (e.g. conversation classes), then it's really time to move on. At least in this programme, I don't really want to leave Chengdu. I've lived just outside Beijing and appreciated what it had to offer; I've also lived in a place where there was nothing of interest to foreigners. The latter is where most of the schools in the programme are to be found.
I don't know whether there's going to be a conference at the start of next term or merely a reception followed by dispatch to our schools. I'll be curious to see how many of the old lags are still around. I'm the sole surviving first gen out of a fairly small intake. I don't know how many second gens might be lasting into their sixth year. More recent generations seem to be less durable.
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