Occasional Tales

Passing through. Well, here I am again. Two months have passed since the last entry. August in Chengdu continued to be grey and wet with rare sightings of sunshine. Unfortunately, sunshine often coincides with a hint of blue sky rather than actual blue sky because there's often a thin layer of cloud or pollution which admits sunlight, but not much else. When I saw some pictures of bright sunshine and clear blue skies in Beijing just recently, I realised how much I'd been missing such things. We went to Pudong (near Shanghai) for the usual start-of-term conference only to find that returning teachers didn't have to attend the first day, which meant that I was able to go into Shanghai for the first time ever and look round. But because I thought I was going to be stuck in a hotel for three days, I didn't bother to take my camera with me. Of course, the weather was absolutely ideal for taking photographs. And then it was back to school. This term held no surprises. The cla...

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 Bambo...

MSN must be fiddling with the settings again. Spaces has been out of action today. They've been making some changes recently so I assume they're doing some more tweaking. Hotmail was all right, though. The good news is that I've been reimbursed for all the expenses I incurred over the summer. There was a question about excess baggage, but that was unavoidable. It was possible to box up a lot of stuff, but not everything, although there was more stuff left over than I was expecting. I'd tried to pare things down as much as possible, but I didn't want to arrive in Chengdu and then have to rebuy a bunch of stuff that I already have. We're off to see some irrigation scheme tomorrow. There's even meant to be a hill with a cable car. We're going with a group of American school kids who are over here for a month. One or perhaps both of the teachers with them want to do some teaching, which means that there's a couple of classes each of us won't have to ...

No delays. Unlike previous experiences in China, my departure from Fuzhou proceeded without any hiccups and a little good fortune. Internet access and a land line were already live, so none of this nonsense about China Telecom using a debt of ¥3 to cut off the phone and demand a bunch of money to get a new line installed. The flat's all right, but there are downsides. The view is awful; the shower would be better if the bracket for the nozzle wasn't broken; there's nowhere to put books or DVDs; and not really enough room for clothes. There's a large cupboard at the end of the sitting room, but it's only really good for hanging things in or for items such as towels. I need a chest-of-drawers. Chengdu feels more lively than Fuzhou ever did, although I note that there are lots of foreign tourists around. All the pretty girls? Well, there are some, but no more than anywhere else, it seems. Short shorts are on display, but that's no different from Fuzhou or Beijing.

Who's the boss? It seems that the whole matter of being ferried from the airport when you arrive and to it when you leave is a mere courtesy. Formally speaking, the people who actually employ me should be doing that, but the school has to do it in their stead. In other words, I'm on my own tomorrow when I depart. Do I have any regrets about leaving Fuzhou? A couple. One is that I never had a bike so that I could explore the city more widely. I think there's rather a lot that I missed seeing because of my comparative immobility, and once I knew I was departing, there was no point in getting a bike. The other is a couple of cute girls here, but since I'm told that the most beautiful girls in China live in Chengdu, I may find that there's ample compensation for that loss. (Yes, I know. I'm a sad old perv who knows that age, academic and cultural differences really preclude any chance of meaningful relationships here.)