Occasional Tales

But not gone. I'd rather forgotten about this blog until I saw that someone visited Green Bamboo (the other one) via this blog a couple of days ago. At the moment, this place has lost any vague purpose it might've had. Perhaps I should revive the ethical and philosophical problems again. So what's been going on? Well, I spent July and the first week of August riding around Chengdu and visiting the sights (although if you want pictures, you'll have to go to Green Bamboo). I spent three weeks in Zhuhai in August doing a TEFL training course. It was a lot of work, especially because I had to do a four-week course in three weeks. Anyway, on the final day I was awarded my certificate, which means I'm now formally qualified to do my job. It also means that a job in Hong Kong is more likely than it was. I'll be talking to some people about that when I go there next week for the National Day holiday. I'm still undecided whether I should spend two years here in Chen...

And accelerating into oblivion. Today began so well. At about 6am, I was woken by the band (Naval School?) playing that incessant piece of music over and over again for about four hours. The symphony of the early morning was accompanied by the plinkety-plink music from the school, some traditional Chinese music in the form of those annoyingly high-pitched pipes, and then Happy Birthday which, like Jingle Bells , has ended up as kind of general purpose public music in this country. Both are typically played in the plinkety-plink style just to make them that extra bit annoying. I ended up sitting around here all afternoon waiting for a technician to turn up to get the DVD working, but waited in vain. I just heard a few moments ago that he went to the wrong place. The latest plan is that someone will come tomorrow morning some time before class at 11am. We'll see. I was having another look at the menu options to see whether there was anything that might hint at what needs to be set. ...