Occasional Tales

The things kids bring to school. One of my esteemed colleagues came into the office yesterday morning with a bottle of concentrated nitric acid, which he’d taken off one of the nitwit students who’d brought it to school for reasons which I still can’t fathom. This is the stuff that would be found in research labs, and was a mostly full bottle. In a civilised country, this would be a rather serious incident, but in the great imperial chicken coop, the concepts of health and safety are the subject of meaningless banners displayed on building sites. The cretinous student in question wandered into my class the following period without the slightest hint of contrition (or an apology for being late) and then seemed to be narrating the entire aftermath for the entertainment of his classmates. No serious consequences will arise from this, of course. My colleagues in the English Department, whose Chinese is way better than mine, were talking about the concept of common sense in Chin

But no one will’ve learnt anything. I was on my way to Yamazaki to buy something for lunch when I found that the intersection at Jiefang Lu was a little blocked because some clown on an electric scooter had had an encounter with a car. I don’t have to scratch my head to guess who was more at fault although the rider of the electric bike doesn’t seem to be injured. As for the injury I sustained a week ago, the bruise which appeared on my left wrist has turned yellow although the bruise at the base of my thumb is still a dark bluish black. My hand has somewhat greater functionality, but I still get twinges when I try using it the wrong way. We have tomorrow off, but before that, we must suffer another student concert. I’m tired for the usual reasons and perhaps as a side effect of the antihistamines that I’ve been taking for the allergy/cold/whatever (delete inapplicable answer) which hit me a couple of days ago. My initial diagnosis was an allergy caused by the air con, but

I’m the emperor. Red lights apply to other people. I’m almost across Jiefang Lu yesterday afternoon when some f_cking plonker on an electric scooter comes out of nowhere from my left and cuts across my bows just as I’m accelerating. I slam my brakes on and end up tumbling off my bike, coming down hard on my left hand at the base of the thumb and severely bruising it. When I get up, I find that my bike is upside down, sitting on the seat and handlebars, and the culprit has run off like the snivelling cur that he probably is. My thumb has been feeling a little better today, but my left hand has minimal functionality. Above wiggling my fingers, there’s not much I can do with my left hand. For example, I can’t grasp things [ Mentally? –ed.] or pick things up where some bending of the wrist is involved; and mastur… I mean, reading spiritually uplifting volumes is rather difficult. The base of my thumb is swollen and my fingers feel puffy as well, and I’m back on the diclofenac

I have no desire to go to the (icy) barren wastes. I wanted to switch to the IB programme for a couple of reasons. One is the lack of intellectual depth in EFL programmes. Another is the lack of motivation among students. A third reason is the opportunity to teach some real English (or to put it another way, teach English as an academic subject). But that’s not going to happen because I was wondering whether one of my esteemed colleagues would be making the switch to teach business or English. Since another of my esteemed colleagues has been approached to teach business, Colleague 1 would be teaching English. I can’t compete with Colleague 1 because he has a wife, family and home here. I cannot imagine that I’d be appointed ahead of him even although moving is such an enormous pain i’ th’ arse for me. (Possibly, though I don’t know for certain, I’d have to pay for the move myself.) There is an added complication because one of the centres in the programme is leaving it, and

Plan? What plan? I’m a writing genius! I started marking the AS writing this morning, but I’m not putting much effort into it because their writing, which is definitely more sophisticated than that of the PAL students, is typically annoyingly inane. They’ve been taught to write vacuous waffle at New Oriental or English First using words and phrases for every occasion, which sound impressive, but say little or nothing as they waste ink and consume space. Actually, that, in my experience, also suits undergraduates quite well. I know lots of them like writing blah, blah, blah. Anyway, we’re not interested in undergrads today. We gave the little darlings the opportunity to produce a plan, but because they’re ever so good at writing, they don’t need to plan. Some of them have enough focus to be able to maintain a discussion about an idea for a paragraph although the internal mechanics won’t necessarily be that good. Coherence is usually all right (or sufficient; sentences are rarel

Roll out the clichés; we’ll have a cliché of fun. It’s monthly test time. Yawn. Another opportunity for me to see the same errors my little darlings made a month ago. I tried to teach them how to write interesting responses to the writing tasks, but they’ve reverted to type and been dull and boring. Unfortunately, I can’t mark them down for being dull and boring, or regurgitating something half-remembered from Chinese English classes. Yes, once again I’m dishing out good marks for dog turds. They’re also doing the usual thing of mixing up articles and letters. Knowing that they like to do this sort of thing, I’ve tried to make it clear that an article ≠ letter, but I’ve been doing that for years. One nitwit has just written that snake charmers might be entitled to government acid . She probably got overexcited or was busy thinking about the Chemistry exam. Another nitwit talks about the younger generation becoming more interested in working with snacks (common error for

Is the EU just more of the same? I’ve been wondering about the EU over the past couple of days. I’ve long supposed that its creation was to prevent more European wars of the same magnitude as the First and Second, but I’ve also started wondering more recently whether, subconsciously, the EU is just more of the same going back to the days of the Holy Roman Empire. That is, some European country wants to be the predominant power in Europe, starting, I think, with the Germans once the Dark Ages were over and done with. The Spanish had a bit of a go as well, and then the French from the late 18th century before the Germans reformed the band. Then someone thought that diplomacy might be a better idea than fighting horribly destructive wars which had become tainted with unpleasant political ideologies. Either way, it’s all about whether the French or the Germans get to run Europe. The British don’t really want anyone to run Europe, hence we don’t mind the pretence that the French and

Zum Befehl, Herr Oberst! At some time in the past, and more recently, I’ve had the distinct impression that a lot of sonnets can be quite shouty sorts of things. They seem to have a high percentage of imperatives, which the poet employs to berate the object of his desire like some mere servant. Samuel Daniel’s first sonnet to Delia isn’t so bad. He doesn’t start shouting until the third quatrain. In the second sonnet, he’s shouting from the very beginning “Go, wailing verse… Present the image… Witness your father’s grief…” Nag, nag, nag. It’s not just Daniel because I’m sure this is a phenomenon I’ve noticed in passing before. Perhaps the shouty ones were written by schoolboys (although they were probably 16-year-olds at university; same thing back in the 16th and 17th centuries), who aren’t known for their moderation. The next day. I thought I’d use the first sonnet from Michael Drayton’s Idea series as the next sonnet to torment my little darlings. The qualitative d

Nothing much happens. The temperature seems to be beginning to take that late autumn tumble when it goes from being cool to being cold. Our gradual shift to winter seems to be being a little more benign here. Two years ago, we had snow on the 1st of November and winter lasted until late April with rare bouts of pleasantness that were false dawns on each occasion. Last year the shift to winter was less dramatic, but it’s been awhile since one of those years when the weather has been reasonably tolerable to the end of December before the winter freeze in January. It’s been a day of new stuff. New version of Freegate, which I’ll use from home while I can; new version of Firefox, but I’m inclining to Chrome; updates for Windows; and a new version of Font Creator. Thanks to the first of these I was able to watch the Need for Speed: The Run videos on gamespot, which are otherwise blocked. (“I was f_ckin’ rubbish at Hot Pursuit,” admitted Emperor Jintao, “which is why I had those f_cke

Another pointless post. What the hell is wrong with the Greeks? Mind you, what the hell was wrong with Europe pretending that the EU could adopt a single currency all those years ago. I may not be an economist, but even I wondered how the economies of such a disparate group of countries were meant to function successfully together. I’ve also wondered on other occasions about the point of the EU. 66 years ago after World War II, it might’ve made sense after 145 years of the French and the Germans squabbling over who got to be Top Nation in Europe. I don’t believe there was any harm in Western European countries working closely together (which was undoubted spurred by the Cold War), but a united Europe makes less sense than a civilised one where the wars of the past millennia and a half become part of history. Meanwhile, there’s been another spate of stories about hacking and fingers being pointed at the Empire. “We never done it,” the government whines. “We’re opposed to hacking

Oh, bugger! 4am again. I do not sleep well. It takes me ages to get to sleep and if I’m being woken by an alarm clock, I tend to wake up early in anticipation of the alarm going off. Sometimes that can be a little too early. This week things have got worse. I'm guessing I’ve waking up at about 4am every day this week, and I cannot for the life of me get to sleep again – not properly. I might drift off a little, but the damage has been done. It has become a pernicious habit over which I have no control. Normally, there’s one night, often a Thursday, it seems, when the pattern is broken, but not this week. I hoped I might get through the whole night without waking up too early. No such luck. It’s no good going to bed sooner, and I don’t want to go to bed later either because of the lead-in time before I actually fall asleep. I’m also not good at leaping out of bed, either. I need time to make the transition between being half-awake and actually awake. I need to feel t

Robots and their automated responses. All the writing which I have seen out of this year’s PAL classes so far has been a veritable fest of clichés. Their answers to the first writing task in the monthly test were almost all identical as they wheeled out the same dull stuff about not having seen some nameless relative for a long time. The response to the second writing task was a little less uniform. Anyway, because of all the marking, I’ve only just looked at some of the practice writing I had them do before the test. That, too, is larded with clichés, almost all delivered in the same order, and yet there’s no conspiracy here. One student didn’t do all the writing while the rest copied. As anyone who’s taught Chinese students knows, they are completely lacking in imagination. As far as I’m aware, Chinese class doesn’t occasionally involve the teacher saying, “Write me a story.” When I’ve asked students why they’re not writing anything, a typical answer is that they don’t kno

Unless you’re using Firefox. Sort of. At school I was able to append material to existing entries on my Live Journal blog, but I was unable to post anything new. At home, I still can’t access Live Journal at all via Firefox, even via mail messages advising me of unwelcome comments. That has been the means by which I’ve been visiting LJ from school. For want of any solution to the problem at home, I switched to Chrome and – make surprised face now – everything worked. I could log in to LJ, see my blog, and post a new entry. I double checked with IE9 and met with the same success. What is it about my version of Firefox at home that’s preventing me from getting near Live Journal? I thought it might be noscript, but disabling that made no difference. I wondered whether some cookie was affecting access, but deleting ones with .ru in them didn’t help. But… but… Doh! I should’ve deleted the LJ cookies. Done. And? There’s my blog… No, I can’t log in. Nor can I get to th

The new version. After several days of reasonable good service, the forces of ignorance seem to have been trying their hardest to strangle my Internet assistant. However, this afternoon, I managed to get the latest version, and things seem to be fairly steady at the moment. Once again, I’m able to see the real Internet as I ought to be able to see it. If the Chinese want to stick their heads in the sand and their government want them to stick their heads in the sand, they’re welcome to wallow in their ignorance. In fact, there’s something disturbingly wrong with countries whose governments are so obsessed with keeping their citizens so ignorant. In China it’s because the government is obsessed with keeping power at all costs; though because the population is so zombie-like already, they could unblock most of the Internet, and it wouldn’t, I believe, make any real difference. The number of people who hate blocks on Facebook, YouTube and other non-porn sites is, I suspect, tiny. I

And only another couple of kilometres to go. It’s been a slow business escaping from the choking tendrils of unwarranted censorship today. After working so well, my little helper has been choking badly today, and if I can post this entry, I’ll be very lucky. The connection to reality keeps coming and going, which makes me wonder whether the hysterical reactionaries are fighting back in their ongoing campaign to keep the benighted populace of the inGlorious Motherland in witless ignorance. I finished marking the PAL tests at the weekend and have started on AS, which is always painful. The PAL classes did quite well for the level at which they were being assessed, but that tells me that they’re good at this level and would, on average, get a C, which is the maximum mark they can attain in the Core exam. As I noted on my WordPress blog, their writing was boringly identical, and the range of marks was typically 7 to 9 with a few 10s. But it’s also worth noting that if their writing

A lunchtime update. I’m using lunch as an excuse to add some further information about the current state of Live Journal, but I should really be ploughing through lunch and getting on with marking some tests while at the same time enjoying a horrible little headache. There’s a story about Live Journal on Global Voices which offers some hints about the current cranky state of the service. I don’t know whether everyone is banging their head against a brick wall trying to access their blogs or anyone else’s. The Information Policy site has this post from early August about the mis­treatment of Live Journal. It looks like the Russian authorities (though which authorities is another matter) are probably to blame for the current state of affairs and that Live Journal is about to become Dead Journal. 17.10.11. The latest update is that I was able to update an LJ post and access most of the site, but I was unable to post anything new. 18.10.11. Still unable to post new entries o

Let’s say stupid things. I’ve just been reading Meeting signals pressure on microblogs from the China Media Project. It’s about the new State Internet Information Office and its antics. This paragraph is classic Doublespeak At yesterday’s meeting, Wang Chen emphasized that “[we] must thoroughly apply a series of guiding spirits of the central Party in regards to internet construction, development and management, keeping to the guiding principle of ‘positive use, scientific development, management by rule of law and ensuring safety’ …” Wang said the government must “thoroughly give play to the positive role of microblogs in serving society, taking concrete steps to develop and manage [them], working together to preserve a healthy and orderly online communication order, serving the overall work of the government and the Party, and serving the masses.” Which is basically saying, “We must utterly control everything to the sub-atomic level as usual”. Don’t even get

Grow up, Nanny. Last night Internet access kept cutting out and some time just before 11pm, Google got blocked and I lost access again. This morning, things weren’t much better. At first access was all right. I could see Google again, but when I went to The Guardian, I couldn’t get past the main page, and I then lost Internet access again. The message claimed that my username and password weren’t being recognised. Just before I came to school, I did manage to get online again, but Google was blocked once more. It looks like we’re in for a few days of disruption because the hypocritical Chinese government is having another infantile tantrum at Google.

Dose of the flu? I did a little experiment last night, posting to WordPress using IE9, Firefox and Chrome. Apart from the WP toolbar being quirky with Firefox and Chrome, there were no further problems. Live Journal has remained quirky today. From home I still can’t access LJ or if I can, it’s temporary. I can see some parts of the site, but not others, and then the former join the latter. From school I was able to edit an entry, but when I tried to post a new entry, I hit a brick wall. The odd thing is, it doesn’t matter whether I’m using Freegate or not: I can’t post new entries on my LJ blog. When I did manage to see the LJ status page, it claimed all was well. Mind you, that may be like Windows saying, “This device is working properly” when you rather suspect it’s probably doing no such thing. I’m hoping the current situation is temporary although I don’t know where the problem lies. Of the various blog hosts, what’s still accessible from this darkest of dark holes o

Server maintenance. This morning things have gone from bad to server maintenance. I was able to see my WordPress blog, but when I tried to go to the dashboard, there was a lot of wheel spin before a message popped up saying that some work was being done on the server. Over on Live Journal, I cannot still see the blog at all and get an unhelpful error message. In fact, the entire site is now inaccessible; unlike last night, I can’t even access the page for deleting unwelcome comments. So as usual, I’m left scratching my head wondering whether it’s coincidence that the only two accessible blog hosts have been buggered (one blocked, the other apparently malfunctioning). I was able to post an entry on WordPress a little later this morning, but after some initial success from school with Live Journal, the service is inaccessible. I can see my LJ blog, I can’t do any­thing else. Later. Now trying Chrome. Access to LJ possible but painful without my little helper. Access to Wor

Another victim falls to self-delusional paranoia. I was at school this afternoon when Linda told me that she’d been unable to access my WordPress blog ( Green Bamboo ) all day. I checked and yes, sure enough, without that little program to help me get past the big, bad wolf, WP had been blocked. I’m surprised that the service has been accessible for so long because in the past it’s been one of the victims. If blogspot has been buggered, then WP has probably also been buggered. What’s the deal this time? Well, it might be mainly because of the spat about a Mr D. Lama of Tibet trying to visit South Africa for his friend’s birthday only to be prevented from going for the most doubtful reasons. That’s top of my list, but I have also seen stories about the imperial government getting even more paranoid about social media. Although that might specifically refer to Weibo and other Twitter rip-offs, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nanny was skimming through the list of blog hosts and found

English is a multifarious subject. I’ve suddenly realised something. I was having a look at PAL 2’s Learner Diaries today. Last week before the holiday, we started a unit with a food theme while, unknown to me, the little darlings were also doing a unit about chocolate in their Chinese English class. What have I suddenly realised? They mistook the theme of the unit for the subject of study. The pupils in my classes for the past ten years have probably thought that English class was actually a kind of pot pourri of subjects. I may be trying to teach them English, which is likely to be thematised, but I suspect that they don’t understand the object of the exercise. The food vocabulary at the start of Unit 3 is just vocabulary per se , but I wouldn’t be surprised if students expected to be tested on it specifically whereas the actual focus of Unit 3 is the writing of an informal letter about a trip to a restaurant. ( 09.10.11 Lo and behold! in one of the Learner Diaries I saw thi

Fire! I was in one of those tacky little market shops in Chengdu yesterday where I saw a card which said “Thinking for you”. Must be the one the imperial government sends out at Christmas. Yeah, I know. Too easy to take a swipe at this one. I had no idea Steve Jobs had died. Millions in the Empire will be mourning his passing as the purveyor of modern-day shiny beads, which distracted so many of the nation’s youths. The government is probably more upset than anyone else. Why think about how rotten the system is when you can have a nice, shiny iPad? The other news item which I missed because I was away was the quashing of the convictions of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kerchner. I’ve been sceptical about the pair’s claims of innocence, but I’m also not missing the point that there does seem to have been sufficient uncertainty to undermine the certainty of the original conviction. I don’t like the sound of Knox’s reception back in the

Party time! Yes, it’s that day again when the Empire celebrates the occasion when the new emperor stepped up to the microphone in Tiananmen Square in 1949, took a deep breath and said, “Would the owner of the Audi A6 who’s left his car outside Zhongshan Park please move it as it’s blocking the entrance.” There was a pause. This was not the announcement the crowd was expecting. “Oh, shit! That’s my car. Sorry about this.” (The headline in The Daily Propagandist the next day was ‘Grateful nation gives emperor Audi A6’.) And when he got back to the mic, he spent three and half dull hours reminding everyone who wasn’t a.) the new emperor of the Chinese Empire or b.) rich and important that they should obey the law. “Coming up next, the Hundred Flowers Campaign in which I’ll trick everyone into revealing what they really think about the new regime and how it’s the same as the old one, and then I’ll destroy their lives. And if you think that’s fun, wait till you see what I have

“Let’s have a sports day.” Sports days in the Empire always seem to coincide with the threat of rain, and this week, we’ve been threatened with rain all week, rain that didn’t arrive until yesterday evening. It would appear that we can blame Typhoon Nesat, which smacked the Philippines around and then Hong Kong. I arrived at school this morning expecting to be teaching, but around morning exercise time we got word that the sports days were back on in spite of the increasingly heavy rain. I’m a little surprised at the decision, but I suspect that the school hierarchy schedules sports days so that they can go off on their hols a little early. Right now, the students are either huddling their umbrellas in the stands or taking part in some events on the running track. I’m stuck here mainly because I want to avoid being rained on more often than I can possibly avoid. But with the hols starting tomorrow, and having done all the necessary preparations for the resumption of cla

Random, not religious. I started clicking on the Next blog link without logging on to Green Bamboo. What did I get? Religious nutjobs. I clicked on the link again. There was another; and another; and another. What’s wrong with you people? I want random blogs written by sane, rational people. Why would Google think that I’d want to see a bunch of blogs by barking mad religious types? Ah, a little light comes on. It’ll be because my blogroll includes the British Humanist Association and Investigating Atheism, and for some reason a lot of people think that atheism must be some sort of alt. religion like Buddhism, for example. It’s not. Atheists don’t believe in disbelief as if it’s something that we worship. We just don’t ascribe life, the universe and everything to some alternative to the flying spaghetti monster, but rather to scientific principles. Born – live – reproduce – die. That’s it. In between, we may achieve something which leads to lasting fame, but for most of us,

Verge of disaster or business as usual? I’m not an economist with a special interest in China, but I have been seeing stories about the Chinese economy faltering. This is of some concern to me because the students in my programme come from some very wealthy families and my job depends on these people, their capacious wallets, and their love of conspicuous consumption. I’ve been wondering whether the two flats flanking my place are anything to go by. Neither of them has been occupied in a long, long time, and when people are there, they seem to be using the place as a matter of convenience. Someone turns up in the flat adjacent to this room to use the shower, but no one seems to live there. The other flat has occasional visitors, and seems, on occasion, to be lent out to people on a temporary basis. At the moment, I’m guessing it’s being used by Mr Shag-on-the-Side and Miss Concubine. Either that or these two like washing their underwear. But neither flat has been permanentl

Rebellion is never justifiable, is it? I’ve just been reading an article on The Economist about China’s attitude to the rebels in Libya and its wibbly-wobbly approach to dealing with the rebellion there. It includes one of those deathless lines, viz.: It does not want to send signals at home that rebellion can ever be justified. Let’s think. What happened the last time there was a change of government in China? Oh that’s right. A small number of people decided that by violently opposing the previous regime, which itself had not gained office through a popular vote, they had the legitimate right to govern the Empire. Did they bother asking everyone else what they thought? While we’re talking about irony, why are the Mainlanders complaining about the Americans selling posh kit to the Taiwanese? They should be quite pleased because Beijing doesn’t have to spend 一角 on the defence of Taiwan which, as we know, is part of China. (True, but a stupid truth.) Since the Taiwanese a

I have nothing to say, but this is the Internet. The financial world is going to hell. Again. And what can most of us do about it? Nothing. Europe seems to be about to slide down the toilet and even the Empire is apparently wobbling a bit. Meanwhile, there are particles which might just be able to exceed the speed of light. Confirmation pending. Amanda Knox might yet be released from prison. As on other occasions, I have no idea whether we’re being conned into believing she’s actually innocent or whether there really isn’t the proof to secure a certain conviction. I’ve seen one article, in The Guardian, which went into why the conviction was sound; but most of the time, overtly or covertly, the assumption is that the conviction was, at least, unsound. Meanwhile, the Americans are executing people on allegedly flimsy grounds and blocking Amnesty International writing campaigns. It’s also further proof that Amnesty International isn’t partisan. It leaves the Empire in an

Or tock, tock, tock. My access to the real Internet has been a little intermittent so far. I’ve had some quite good runs, but also occasions when nothing is getting through. It probably depends on the amount of traffic; and even if only a small percentage of Internet users in the Empire are surfing on authorised sites outside the prison walls, a small percentage of them using the same service as me is still quite a lot of people. As a consequence, posts here may be few and far between both because there isn’t always something pointless to say and because I haven’t necessarily been able to access the site. Right now, having got access to blogspot for the first time today, I’ve now lost it again, and even if I get it back, it won’t last. There, it’s back. I should go while I still can. No, it’s gone, and I’m having no luck getting through. Back. No, damn, gone again. Bugger! Total wipe-out. And there it goes again. 23.09.11 The ending to yesterday’s entry was abrupt becaus

It’s not deliberate, but it is stupid. Now that I’ve been able to view the real Internet again (within certain technical limitations; access comes and goes), I’ve found that neither the Phil Soc site nor the downloads section of the pgn mentor site have vanished. Both have almost certainly been blocked not because the imperial government hates the Phil Soc or chess games in pgn format, but because they’ve been taken out by the primitive Third-World software which does the blocking. The Phil Soc has probably been whacked because it looks like Tibetan or is a word in Tibetan. It’s merely the usual abbreviation for the Philological Society , which has no particular interest in the Empire or countries occupied by the Empire. If you’re one of the Empire’s Internet snoops (I expect you can surf wherever you please), check out the site. Harmless, as you’ll see, and blocked without justification. As for the pgn mentor site, I can only guess at that one. I suspected that pgn was the

The hole in the wall is still open. I had thought that the hole in the wall (by which I don’t mean some species of ATM) had been closed and that my brief return had been cut short once again. The news, unexciting, is that the weather has turned quite cool after last week’s summer-like temperatures, and the forecast isn’t looking promising. There would seem to be no gentle decent into autumn although I’m hoping that the present spell of chilly weather isn’t the harbinger of a long, cold winter to come. In my first year here, it snowed on the 1st of November and did not get warm again until late April The bicycle inventory which I mentioned led to reg. plates for our bikes. My plate is in my rucksack. I completely forgot about it last night. Honestly, I don’t want to attach such a thing to my machine, and I don’t see the point because foreigners, at least, don’t have to register their bikes. In fact, I’m not sure anyone does these days. The joy vampires have been at it ag

You really don’t need to know this. When Bruce came round this afternoon compiling a list of those of us who ride bikes, I got a sinking feeling that someone has decided we need a lecture on road safety. Road safety in China? What the hell are the road rules here? Cars at least obey the traffic lights (unless they’re turning right), and valiant men and women armed with flags make others stop at intersections because the electric bike people and cyclists think the pretty lights are optional. In fact, to them, all the rules are optional. There’s a hierarchy of size, but that’s a custom not a law. Riding the wrong way and riding on the pavement are also popular customs. It’s also a popular custom among the police to turn a blind eye to such indiscretions. Pedestrian crossings are a joke because the people crossing pay little attention to the cars and the cars pay little attention to the pedestrians. I’ve been riding a bike here for about five years now and have three basic

Or, Western vs. Oriental speed. A couple of days ago, I had an encounter with the Chinese director of our programme. I’d just got back to school from buying lunch and for the first time ever since I’ve been working at the school, I got reminded of the rule about wheeling bikes through the school. I don’t do that because as far as I’m concerned, rank hath its privileges and, as a teacher, I shouldn’t be subject to this particular restriction. I note that those teachers who drive cars don’t have to get out and push their cars and that the ground staff never get off their bikes. I think what’s really going on is the over-solicitousness which foreigners sometimes encounter here. It’ll probably be known that I’m quite fast on my new bike (although I was also quite fast on the old one), and they’ll mistake my reasonable pace for speed because their own pace is so sluggish and torpid. I have heard one story about a foreigner who bought a bike and could go nowhere without being surroun

Did you even miss me? Thanks to one of my colleagues, I now have access to the Internet again – the whole thing and not just some declawed cat. I’m now facing my old dilemma of what to do with this blog which has been so idle for so long. My WordPress blog remains my main blog with my LJ one in the wings. Apart from those two I have a couple of others for my more specialised interests, but they need not concern anyone apart from me. The first difference I note is that YouTube videos are appearing on websites where they have, until today, been missing. It’s not that I was a massive fan of YouTube, but it is a blasted sodding nuisance to miss out on the video part of some online article because of a bunch of mean-minded, miserable sods. In fact, I’ve started calling them joy vampires because they want to suck as much happiness as they possibly can out of everyone else’s lives. I see over on Language Log, Victor Mair has posted an entry about the use of the phrase “ hurt the

Last post for the next two years? I’m hoping that I’ll be returning to the Empire with some means of circumventing the Great Wall of Paranoia, although whether such means work depends on just how exceedingly paranoid the imperial government is. I’d like the Internet back, thank you very much. As I said, Spaces got transferred to WordPress, which first got crippled while the mandarins had their conference, and then got sent to intensive care – behind the locked door. So much for my main blog. That forced me to switch to Live Journal ( Green Bamboo ) and basically begin again because five years’ worth of blogging was no longer accessible. I assume that Live Journal has been left alone because it’s popular with the Russians, and since the imperial government views the Grand Duchy of Muskovy as safe (i.e., corrupt, paranoid, and authoritarian), such people aren’t likely to care about those little inconveniences such as human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and democracy. Anyway

And I’m bloody well going to do so. As I’ve just said over on my new main blog, I should be making some effort to read The Girl who Played with Fire , but I also feel that I should use and abuse my blogs now that all of them are accessible. On that matter, I’ve taken some steps which might get me round the petty paranoia of the current regime so that I can see the Internet as Al Gore invented it to be. I have seen one or two articles in the past couple of months which have observed that the Web hasn’t brought democracy because it’s spurred various disreputable regimes to extend their degree of control on the channels of information. In fact, the Web won’t bring democracy, I think, but rather offer a channel for the next oppressive regime to make a bid for power. In truth, the Egyptians will get more of the same unless they end up with some nutjob theocracy. (That probably means more of the same, but with prayers and mindless chanting against Egypt’s supposed enemies; all right, the Hit

And I'm pissed off. After a somewhat arduous trip this weekend, I'm in New Zealand where I'm able to get onto blogspot for the first time since that day in August last year when the site was temporarily unblocked. My suspicion is that blogger and YouTube are blocked because of their affiliation with Google rather than their alleged threat to the imperial government's raging desire to ensure the ignorance and stupidity of the Empire's citizens. Have at you, Critical Thinking! Away with you, Independent Thought! Rather annoyingly, after Spaces was transferred to WordPress, that site was partially crippled when the Party boys were having some conference, and then completely blocked long after that at about the time Ai Weiwei was serving crabs. Whether there was some link between that and the disappearance of WordPress, I don't know, but I wasn't surprised. So, now that I'm away from the Dismal Empire, I'm going to try and set up a VPN so that I can bl