March 2nd, 2016

March 2nd, 2016

11:41 pm on the 1st

I still have posts to catch up on, but I wanted to actually do some writing. Something with a bit more zing to it, more immediate.

I just finished watching Trumbo- of course I liked it, a movie about a guy that writes movies, it's like it was made for me. As Trumbo was repeatedly told throughout the film "... but there's a good story in there somewhere." The scene where he finally sees his name back on the screen, for the credits to Spartacus, and the close up of his eye is held just a little too long. I half expected an actual tear to drop, even though that would have been entirely outside of the character Trumbo.

Rather that shot should have been cut, in favour of a lighter touch, so that it would be all the more touching when we see his wife sobbing after the movie, thinking to herself that the nightmare was over. 

There were many well done scenes, a lot of great dialogue, but whatever liberties the creators took with the true events for the purposes of dramatization, they were too restrained. Many great scenes should have been cut, sad but true. I imagine the extravagance in having these scenes has much to do with the pull of Cranston's Trumbo, and even more the awe that the memory of the real man has for the creators.

As portrayed on screen this man had incredible grace.

It's funny to think about a writer like that- with the Midas touch. He writes something, and you just know it's going to be good. How? What separates a good writer from a bad one? I'm not asking what separates a bad writer from a good writer... oh, you didn't know? Yes, that's a different question. With an answer, even! Bad writers lack style, lack story, lack substance- all lack. I suppose I should have asked what makes a writer, and then what makes a good writer, a great one?

I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm reminded of piano lessons when I was little- these particular lessons must have occured while we lived in British Columbia, but I could be wrong about that. And I remember playing and the teacher saying I wasn't putting enough FEELING into it. I played again, but this time I did my very best to play exactly the same. "Yes, there, better," said the music teacher. I felt that I'd caught on to some secret then- that the Emperor had no clothes (well, "cliches are cliches for a reason", so the meta-cliche goes).

But it is possible to play music with feeling. I've seen it- I've even done it, believe it or not.

Ah, maybe that's it- a good writer will write with feeling?

I suppose that's enough musing for now- I don't think I've been too pointlessly roundabout just now to scare you off quite yet, and so I should definitely quit while I'm ahead.

For the sake of tradition, I spent my day off at Web surfing the internet until I was too embarassed by my lack of life to do anything but leave and return to my apartment. I considered dropping in on Lina at her store, it was easy enough to find, but it's weird enough showing up at a friend's workplace unannounced, let alone the briefest of casual acquaintances.

They seem to have raised the price on my vitamin tablets again, now the 15 Yuan is 30. That's quite a jump that I'd love to have explained.

I ate with Adam and Jasmine, and out of the corner of my eye I think I saw Nikita/Harry/"Goliath" like Frankenstein's Monster- if he wants to join that's okay with me, but I think I dissuaded him earlier today when he asked about my next class and I told him I had no classes, and then said "any questions?" I meant, literally, do you have a question you would like to ask, but he may have taken it like "get out of my face, it's my day off".

Checked my e-mail, I saw a few messages from Teksavy regarding the internet payment bouncing off my maxed out credit card back in Canada- I was expecting this, but of course I wasn't actually prepared for it. I forwarded the mail to Jordan with the site password attached so he can save himself from being internet-less like some unsavoury character we would do well not to name (but it rhymes with "Pie-saac").

I picked up some sort of fruit pudding cup monstrosity at the grocery store below my apartment, as well as bananas. The pudding, more jello than anything else, comes with three tiny spoons that make a mockery of what a spoon is and does. I know the serving sizes tend to be smaller in China, and these pudding cup things aren't quite as large as I'd like, but with spoons like this, everyone getting a bite, I could at least feed a kindergarten class or two. These spoons are too tiny to balance any scoop of processed whatever on top of it.

Naturally this calls for my regular-sized, though still smaller than I'd prefer, spoon. My mistake came when I rinsed the thing off and thought I was done for the day, eating-wise. I ended up going back to my pudding cups and having the last one. Looks like it's just you and me, tiny spoon.

Another close call with my laundry not wanting to rinse out its water- I may have stumbled onto a new method of activating the device that will solve all of my worries on that front in the future. We'll see. While I had my laundry swishing back and forth I was incredibly tired- it was 8, 8:30 and I wanted to sleep badly. I only stayed up because I needed to monitor my laundry, and I had my oatmeal and pudding cups and water, and I eventually passed that hurdle to become the energetic stallion you see before you. Not enough energy to do any exercises, but enough to finish Trumbo- long movie- and hang my clothes, and of course write here.

And perhaps enough to even floss and brush my teeth. Well, let's give it a try. - 12:35 am

March 1st, 2016

March 1st, 2016

(Relieved and confused editor's notes: Oh, good, the 29th, and I see I am referenced in the entry! Makes sense.)

10:07 am on the 3rd, talking about February 29th.

After a week of being sick and not exercising, I wanted to do something physical. Throwing on my long johnny's and shorts, the sweater lining of my winter gear, and my toque, I went for a jog north. It wasn't quite warm enough for my hands, I should have brought gloves, but other than that I was okay, and I quickly warmed up.

I set my clock to tell me after a half an hour, and the time hit just as I was leaving a standard area of buildings- after this point everything was starting to get spaced further apart, like I wasn't in the city anymore, a more suburban area. Up ahead there was a roundabout with some cartoon whale figure that I'm sure Cool Geoff would have liked a picture of. 

The alarm went off and I was all set to turn around and have an easy walk back the way I came... but, eh, I decided to walk west instead. I live dangerously.

The road must have curved south ahead, because there was a sign ahead that read 10 km to Shinghai park, which I'm pretty sure is that square at the waterfront, i.e. south. I was walking along a main street, blocked from walking south by a train track fence, when I found some stairs to go underneath the tracks and come out the other side. It only smelled vaguely sewerish, which is much better than expected. The tunnel was only about 5 meters before exiting by some factory smokestack. Surprisingly, it didn't smell like much of anything, despite the piles of garbage (are they burning garbage here?) and the burnt up SOMETHING dropping off a conveyor belt to the outside.

Ah, the wind turned. Smells bad. Could still be worse... this is the only advantage in having taken shifts at a pig slaughtering plant, you get a whole new measure of what smells bad at a factory. There are plenty of disadvantages.

I walked through an open air marketplace with plenty of fish and pieces of meat hanging around. The baked goods were tempting.

I hung a left, trying to keep my barings- I was pretty sure I was still headed south. I popped out at a Wal-Mart I had passed on Xi'an Lu before, before getting a friendly "hello" from a kid wearing a Space Deleter backpack (Power Rangers/Sentai rip-off).

There were two more strange entrances that I had to check out on my way home, both of which led to more crammed to the brim sales floors, the one had more food, like a supermarket without any sense of walls (there were walls though, just far away) and the other, just north of my apartment, had a second floor full of school supplies and toys and a lotof kids blocking the tight aisles. I cut my exploration short to go home and attempt to peel off my sweater lining- my twist-tie zipper had recently come off, the remains of which I keep in my back pocket if I ever risk it and zip this sweater closed, but if I can't thread the remains of the twist tie properly I may end up entombed within that sweater. It's possible I should buy a new one, with a functioning zipper puller. Zipper head. Zipper lock/unlock device. Thingy. Add it to the list of things I should get.

Ooh, I thought I saw some good looking collections of bed sheets in the one marketplace, that may come in handy later.

I shower and go to Roosevelt for food, where I was invited to eat with a young woman named Lina who works at a mens clothing store in Roosevelt. I assumed she was a new student when she invited me over, but nope- fairly decent English for someone who isn't studying it though. She has short, somewhat spiky hair, except for a thick braid of longer hair- a very bold style. We had a simple conversation before she awkwardly left- I kind of love how awkward people are here about leaving conversations, "well, I have to leave now, so, bye". But she returned to give me a bottle of coke and we waved goodbye again.

Whoo, I don't know if I'm un-used to coke or if it's different here in China but that is SWEET. Like I could feel the drink draining the life force out of my enamel.

I drank about half before I had to screw on the bottle and take a break.

At Roosevelt I internet surfed and answered various questions from people. Ivy came by and said hello, and I asked what happened the previous night. "Ohh, I didn't go, I stayed home." Well, I guess I don't have to worry about romantic intentions from Ivy after all, so that's good, but, you know, I rather thought my days of getting stood up were over. Guess not.

Bradley also wanted to talk about the idea of "design", and, amongst other words, I introduced "aesthetic". It was cool, man.

And Stella had some questions about some phrases contestants on The Apprentice used- "she couldn't sell her way out of a paperbag". So I got to explain that it was a bit of a mixed metaphor because the phrase is "she couldn't find her way out of a paperbag", but, unsurprisingly, the people on The Apprentice will get it wrong because they're reality tv contestants, i.e. people that make grandiose, "cool" sounding statements that are ultimately backwards and/or straight up idiotic. I didn't use those words at the time.

Ah, but it seems she missed out on the "it's not rocket science" phrase and a student had to correct her on the meaning. Ouch. Yup, that's why I talk about Hamlet- too tough for any student to possibly correct me! HA HA HA 

Okay, that's all I remember. - 10:56 am

February 29th, 2016

February 29th, 2016

(Dimensionally stable editor's note: Then... if it's written on the 3rd... about the 28th... what about it is the 29th? Maybe I'll read to see if he switches over to the true final day of the second month... doesn't look like it, what is happening?!)

9:11 am on the 3rd of March, talking about the 28th of February. See, easy to follow instructions.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this for the previous post, but I waited around after work for a bit the day before, expecting Adam to show up- I told him I would attend his birthday party- but there was no sign of him. THEN I went home.

Okay, so the next day, well, let's get through the classes quick.

A class on Directions with Haven, April, and Nikita that was somewhat teeth pully.

A class on Life Experiences of some characters they have you study here with Bale, Amaris, Sissy and my pal Steve. Went well, had some laughs.

A salon class on "A Dangerous World"- Galaxy was listed on the attendance sheet, but she didn't show up- I said to everyone, "man, Galaxy would be all about this class." It was mostly just talking about dangerous things and words for getting hurt. Scalded, poisoned, electric shock, etc. etc.

A beginner class with Bonnie, Derrick, Sheen, and Ruby. I've maybe taught Bonnie before, but don't quote me on that.

A lower intermediate level salon with Will, Queena, Sunny (one of them), Eric, Marcia, Anna, a second Sunny, Mandy, and JK (who I impressed by noticing his haircut- he was slightly more in focus, either he got a haircut or my vision improved) titled "Just Talk About It", the main idea being to grab a topic from the list and talk for at least 90 seconds. I was concerned about Mandy, she usually seems a bit behind the rest of the class, but she was able to get through okay, maybe a few seconds short- I had JK using his phones stop watch function, much easier than me listening to the speeches and counting down the seconds in my head.

Okay, those were the classes, now let me rewind a bit to the lunch break- I went with Anna, Ailsa, Steve, and Dany- later joined by Nikita and Bradley- to a pizza place in the basement level. Pizza pizza pizza! And they had pineapple! It took awhile to get seated because of how busy the place was- every restaurant was busy- but it was while we were waiting that Nikita joined us, seeing us waiting in line.

I sat across from Steve and, despite his telling me that he was bored by my Hamlet English Corner, we talked Shakespeare- he's actually read a lot of it! 

Plates were brought out, as well as a single glove per person to wear while eating. I mean, we're at a pizza place, but we're not animals. When the pineapple pizza was served I was offered the first slice. There was no tomato sauce, which seems like an odd thing to skip, I know they have tomatoes here... but they made up for it by loading the thing down with cheese on a thin, crispy crust. The total pizza and its individual slices were way too tiny- not sure how much was ordered, I ate in step with everyone else. A second pizza, sausage or pepperoni came out and I gave a slice of that a go.

Some fried chicken came out, but I wasn't entirely enthused by the prospect. I did make use of my glove to eat this chicken, so I did end  up getting use out of it- Ailsa used her glove even during the pizza eating process, not that there's anything wrong with that.

I kept getting asked if I was still hungry, but it had become clear that Anna and Ailsa were insisting on paying and I had no intention of adding to the bill, and so waved off the idea. I told Dany later "of course I was still hungry, did you see the size of those slices??" (I did manage to resist the impulse to immediately go to Food Bazzar after leaving this party)

Through the course of the conversation I mentioned being terrible at knowing how old people here are. Anna then felt the need to ask how old she looked.

Ah, okay. That eternal problem- what guess to make that is both flattering, but not so low that it becomes clear that you aren't giving an honest answer... I went with 27, and Dany, who was of course also asked, said the same. While everyone laughed at the silly foreigners (or out of sheer joy) Dany and I exchanged the look that said "yes, we have both most certainly lied, but out of self preservation".

That was lunch- back to classes, which I've already discussed, fast forward to the end of the day where I'm keeping an eye out for Ivy who wanted to go see the new Stephen Chow movie "The Mermaid" which I was told would have English subtitles. No sign of her- and this is the day after I had a similar situation with Adam. Instead I went to Food Bazzar with Dany and Will where I was merrily munching away until I thought "eep, maybe I was supposed to go to the theatre part of the mall and meet her there?" I finished my food- I was hungry- and went to the theatre. No sign of her. Waited until the half hour mark, then returned to Web.

Just in case I had the time wrong, I waited at Web until the next hour mark, and then walked back to the theatre to cover my bases. Nope. Okay, let's go home. - 10:06 am

February 28th, 2016

February 28th, 2016

(Is this the last of the Editor's notes: Two points; 1. I'm much less an editor as I am a copy/paste-er. A) I know these notes probably took almost as much time as deleting the dates. 1:38AM, March 2nd, -G)

11:46 am on March 1st about the 27th

My first class of the day was on how to review or judge a restaurant, what makes a restaurant good or bad? Students for the class included Jennifer, who was a little late and had apparently been out all night for a party, talking and playing billiards (also called "pool"- she liked that, as "pool is easier" to say), Will who got up late and had to run here- I told him he didn't seem to be sweating nearly as much as I do when I have to run somewhere, and even if he was, his complexion wasn't altered at all, whereas mine, you know, gets all red and whatnot. And then there's quiet Emily- she's a weaker student, and also lacking in confidence in speaking, which only compunds the problem. HOWever this class was easily the most I've ever seen her talk, so I think she was more comfortable with me.

Of the first possible ideas to use when judging a restaurant, Jennifer had the first suggestion: atmosphere- cool, nice one, very surprised that got to be first, instead of, you know, taste.

Oh, oh, they also had homework, they had to describe how to make some food- Jennifer hadn't actually written anything down, but she gave a fine answer.

In the last few minutes before the end of class I described s'mores, aka smores to them. Marshmallows are tough to describe.

Then I had a salon titled "What's In the Papers" where the first thing we did was to have our three groups come up with the who/what/when/where/why/how of the headlines... let's see, something like "The Dark Side of a Bubble Economy", "Man Happily Washes Dishes" and... I forget the last one.

I gave the group of two, Lexie and Kevin first pick- Lexie unsurprisingly picked "Man Happily Washes Dishes". Lexie... um, has a very cynical relationship with men. Melody, Amaris and Zale had the headline that I forget, and the boisterous Dora and Gina (plus the not so boisterous Sherry) had to deal with the "Bubble Economy" one. "Noo, it's too hard!" You'll be fine.

Kevin had a tough time opening things up for his group, so I moved on to, again, the one  forget, I think we got through that one, and then I threw Zale under the bus. He tried to say he couldn't do it, but I dragged it out of him. Somehow I made him the "who" for Kevin and Lexie's "Man Happily Washes Dishes".

Gina and Melody, meanwhile, came up with an interesting narrative regarding the low birth rate putting Gina, um, one of those nurses that helps with getting babies born... um, I know this... urgh well, you can look it up yourself with your precious internet and google at home- right, well, it put Gina out of a job, so she had to get a sugar daddy. Hey, don't look at me, this was their story, I told you they were boisterous. Also, Gina says "baby" like "bebe" which you KNOW I commented on.

Everyone was given a short article they had to decypher- there was a lot to decypher- and I shifted the groups slightly. I threw Melody on team Lexie/Kevin, leaving the weakest group, Zale/Amaris on their own- no, it's not because I'm a monster, it's because I was going to help that group personally. After I convinced the two that they could do it, both Zale and Amaris had a ton of questions, but that's good! And they got through it! Actually, Amaris isn't that weak a student, she mostly needed motivation to try.

Then came my break, and who knows what I did. Presumably I got food. This may be when I sat with Leon, Ailsa and Ivy- I'm glad Ailsa and Ivy seem to be friends now, Ivy was mostly sticking to herself until this point.

I had a full, ten person, lower intermediate salon class about "Making Choices" which had more to do with saying, yes, this is something I will do, or may do, or will not do. On the guy side of things we had Leo, John (I... don't know which one is which) and my favourite little dude, Bill and then there was Ailsa, and to my left there was Lily who smiles at my jokes, Cherry who I've seen all the time but have never had a class with before, Cindy, then Caroline who I don't remember, followed by Queena, then Jessi. Yup, that's the whole table, in order... Caroline, Leo and John have a little wiggle room, position wise.

We had some questionaires to work through, and, I figured Ailsa would like to go through it with me, so I didn't hum and haw too much before pairing up with her and getting the other groups of three to work. But then we were the last to finish! Whoops... holding up the class. Ten points from Teachyndor.

Well, I guess that's all the important stuff here. Bill did a lot of the heavy lifting for his group, which looks funny since he must be 11 or 12 and the other guys are at least 16. But a bright kid is a bright kid.

After an hour break where I watched Adeel's English Corner about wealthy Chinese people and conspicuous consumption - buying yachts, etiquette classes about banana cutting, gold toilets. One English commenter on the video, a yacht salesman or something, said luxury items are a weapon on the battlefield of success. Incredibly, grossly backwards. Especially in cases where it could be true.

Then I had a class where, at first, only Lily from my last class was present- but we were soon joined by Jessi and Daisy. This was, yet again, a class where we construct "Dyned City". This class is possibly starting to blend together with the other times I've done it. It is a fun class though. Daisy did NOT have a phone to take a picture of the homework at the end, so I told her I'd be happy to get a photocopy for her, no problem- of course this was the one time the photocopier was in use, by someone double sided printing some 30 pages of whatever. What are the odds? I'm just glad she was mostly done with this print job, but it still took an uncomfortable amount of time to print off the homework, give it to Daisy (who, in exchange, gave me a "Zhang Cheng Nougat cookie" which I held onto until I got home) and get to my final class...

Talking about proud moments in our life with Gary, Leon, and Tyler. Oh, but first I told them, to the best of my ability, the names of football/soccer positions in English. Because priorities, amirite?

I don't really want to record what they told me- oh, no, not for moral reasons, just because I want to finish this post, shower, and get some food somewhere. My stomach has the rumblies.

So, in short, we gave appreciative speeches about our partner and their accompishments. Outside of class, perhaps this was earlier in the day, I sang the praises of S.E. Hinton and "The Outsiders" to Ailsa and Jasmine who were asking me how they could improve their English (read stuff), and also I gave my facebook contact information to Nikita/"Goliath".

Finally, returning home, I had that Zhang Cheng Nougat cookie- I guess that's the nougat in between two crackers? Aand it tastes like chewy, retaining-wire destroying cardboard.

Don't worry, my retaining wire is okay, but not for lack of trying on the part of this "cookie".

Okay, that's enough. Let me get some food and wander around a bit before I catch up on my last two posts. - 12:49 pm

February 27th, 2016

February 27th, 2016

(Post-future Editor's note: March 1st?! Was I still 27 at the time this was written?! -G)

10:42 am on March 1st, talking about the 26th

Ah, another weekend comes, and that means another day in the future of catching up on posts. My notes are brief, so let's see what I can remember.

My first class was "The Survival Game", a salon exercise where the class has to determine which items to bring on a 100k trek on the moon. It's fun! The groups were supposed to be made of three people, we had 8 in the class, so I was nominally part of a group- but I didn't end up helping them- you're on your own guys, if I helped it would be too easy!

When we were looking at the different responses my group started off strong, but then took a detour into the "signal flares" territory. Nope, not-a-so-good.

I've actually written down my picks, want to see?:

-Oxygen

-Portable heating unit

-Five gallons of water

-Food concentrate

-Map of the stars as seen from the Moon

-Life raft (to carry things)

-First aid kit

-50 feet of nylon rope (to drag the life raft if nothing else)

-Solar powered reciever/transmitter

-Parachute silk (like a back-up life raft/nylon rope all in one)

And then the five items I wasn't taking on my trip:

-One case of dehydrated milk (too heavy, we have food and water, it's all good)

-Magnetic compass (would it work on the Moon? No, right?)

-Signal flares

-Box of matches

-Two caliber pistols

I'm looking at the class list I've written up- Jasmine, Sissy, Nikita/"Goliath", Kevin, Ann, Mandy, Monica, and Jessica. And I'm drawing a total blank on who Jessica is. Better luck next time, Jessica.

Next was more of my Hamlet English Corner- I was much quicker to skip segments of repeated description, though I still have room for improvement there. We finally got to the ghost telling Hamlet what was up, but we didn't quite finish the speech/scene before the end of class. I was like "uhandHamletsaidwe'resoclosewecandothis... fine, class is over."

After the break came a private beginners class with Sino, Tom, and Laurence. I'd taught Laurence before (maybe the day before?) but I forgot his name and I don't think any of these guys had their English names written on the attendance sheet. Laurence is a Bruce Lee looking guy with glasses, skinny, or rather, taut- he looks very strong, with the most visible sign being his exposed forearms and a thick, well-muscled neck, but he has a shy smile, and these little spaces between his teeth that, the moment you see them, make him seem as young or younger than he is.

Tom was a slouchy young man that looks like he should be using "radical" in everyday conversation- he was the weakest student of this class, which is likely why he wasn't paying as much attention as the others. As opposed to the other way, where not paying attention begets the weakest student. 

Sino... I forget about Sino. Except that when I was talking to Dora at reception I said Laurence had a nice name, Sino had a weird name... different. Dora is improving her English faster than I am my Chinese. Way faster.

Then I had a beginners salon with Laurence again, Jane, Cathy, Andy, Manda, Daisy, Linda who was late but always listens intently and smiles, and a gentleman who has no English name but has a Chinese name that sounds like "Yoshua"- I suggested "Joshua" would be a good name for the sake of ease of rememberance, but we'll see what he does. I wouldn't be surprised if "Yoshua" forgets my suggestion, in a class of beginners he was the weakest student, so he very likely didn't understand me entirely.

Besides that, I have no idea what we discussed here, I didn't even write down the title of the lesson.

Finally I had a lower intermediate level salon class with Sunny (no idea which one), Sherry, Sam, Judy- who had a blank name on the attendance sheet, so I remembered it, the Daisy I'm familiar with, whose name I "locked in" and Steven, who congratulated me on remembering his name, but I told him that I wish I could take credit for this, but no, it's written on the sheet, see? Easy.

I prefer to take credit where I deserve it, and not take credit when I don't deserve it. Usually.

There was also a woman who wasn't supposed to be there, she entered the wrong class, and so all the students were telling her that she needed to leave and find where she was supposed to go. As far as this activity goes, there was a lot of class participation. Sam switched back to English to tell me "wait a minute" and I thought, hey, I'm not going anywhere.

When we finally started: the class was titled "A Tense Lesson" and of course I felt like explaining the joke to everyone, because they only recognized "tense" as in the time frame, not like stress.

For warming up I came up with sentences, pointed at a student, and they had to respond with weither it was past, present, or future tense. The toughest part was me coming up with present tense sentences- and there was Sam, young Sam, large glasses halfway down his little nose, that eternally surprised expression on his face, ALWAYS getting it wrong. Even when basically everyone is whispering the correct answer to him. One time I said "Sam, this is amazing- you've answered three times, there are only three different answers, and YET you still haven't said the correct one." But then he started to get it, joining in with the group sharing answers to whichever student was struggling in the hot-seat, and then I went back to Sam... and he got it wrong again. "Sam! When it's someone else's turn, you know the answer!" 

Don't worry, he was a good sport about it, I think I'm good about knowing which students I can rib and which ones to be more gentle with. But maybe I'm secretly bad at it, and I'll end my days with a shiv in the back. We'll see!

While the groups were working through the worksheets that were about, you know, something, I was writing on the board three past tense sentences about myself, a present tense sentence, and two future tense sentences. Maybe because they were lower intermediate, I don't know, but for whatever reason there was no curious student that got ahead of the worksheets enough to look up and read my sentences in advance- YES. Once everyone was ready, the class read the sentences on the board all together, about where I was born, where I completed high school, what I studied in university, that I was teaching English right now, and that I will become a better teacher in the future...

And then they got to my last sentence: "I will ALSO remember Steven's name." Standing at the side of the class I was staring at Steven, waiting for that moment of recognition on his face, and there it was, one of those dawning smiles. Ah, that's a nice memory.

At some point in the class, maybe at the end, Daisy had to ask my name- so at the end of class, when she was the last student in the room I said it was funny that she forgot my name, because a week or two back I forgot hers (I mentioned it here at the time), and she said that she recognizes that I have a lot of students and will sometimes get confused. I appreciate the understanding- assuming she means it, of course.

That's everything for that day! - 11:42 am

February 26th, 2016

February 26th, 2016

9:41 am

I had a little disagreement- verging towards a fight- with a friend of mine on facebook yesterday, and I'm still going over it in my mind. A part of me wanted to tear into him, dredging up all sorts of marginally relevant past history. No one can hurt you like a friend can- and in this case I'm talking about me to him. There's nothing he could say to me that doesn't apply to him a hundred fold, and for that reason he can't touch me, like only I've got the nuclear codes. I think I must be a little scary to him?

It's tiring enough to always have to defend him against other people, I don't like the idea of having to defend him from myself.

I took the subway to the Qingniwaqiao Web center where I was to finally meet with the HR person and get my fingerprint entered into the clock-in system. Interesting note, this HR person spelled my name wrong, and said she would correct it later- and she did! Plot twist!

Afterwards I went back to Victory Plaza to get some sweet chicken pieces at the store I found last time. The store owner was happy to see me return, and she asked me a few questions, where I'm from, what I'm doing in China, through an interpreter from another store "Kung Fu Cheese" who was having lunch there. The Kung Fu Cheese guy asked me if they liked cheese in Canada- and if dating profiles are anything to go by the answer is an overwhelming yes- and invited me to stop by his store next time I was around.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about what I should do for my English Corner today- my previous Hamlet talk didn't go so well, my fault for choosing a repetitive section, and I thought maybe the students needed a brain break from Shakespeare. I was trying to think of something to do with The Notebook, or Sexiest Man Alive- you know, something half the class would really dig. I got to the Roosevelt Web center and had just enough time to send my backlog of blog posts to Cool Geoff before I was approached by Adam and then also joined by a newer student whose name I don't know. 

They asked if I had work to do- say, preparing my English Corner, and I said I did, but we could talk anyways. We talked about rollercoasters, the joys of getting sick (Adam: "When you're sick, friends you haven't seen in a while will call you, and maybe buy you presents." That's positive thinking!). When Dany arrived at work to claim his chair beside mine, the party looked like it was over, but I said why don't we keep chatting in the English Corner area? They thought it was a great idea.

We started talking about Hamlet, and I was greatly pleased to find out that they could tell me everything that had happened so far! And they're enjoying it! What! They gave me the encouragement I needed to keep going with Hamlet for that day as well- but the girl whose name I don't know also said I could do a sort of "day in the life" English Corner about life in Canada, which is a fun idea to have in my back pocket. Also, through the course of being encouraging, Adam had a ton of nice things to say about me: I did the ol' "uh-huh, yeah, and more and more..." bit, but it was very sweet. Apparently I'm NOT an asshole- someone should tell facebook.

Okay, but now I really did have to go prepare for my day of classes, I jammed through the first bit of scene three of Hamlet for any tough words- there was one phrase that I couldn't immediately translate into an easier idea, and an internet search didn't help either- I'll tell you know, that was an awkward moment during my English Corner.

My first class was with Queena and Queenie (I... am not sure which is which), Bill, who is so cute and happy my eyes water, and Vera, who was wearing some new glasses. So the first thing I asked them was whether or not they knew who Superman was. I drew a rough Supes on the board, and they all said they did- and then I told them about how he actually has a job at a newspaper, but that they don't know he's Superman, he calls himself Clark Kent, and the reason nobody knows he's Superman is because he wears glasses, so... who's this? My attendance sheet says Vera (okay, well, it has a Chinese name I pretended to read, if the attendance sheet had her English name written on it I wouldn't have had so much trouble learning her name) but there's no Vera here, just some new girl with glasses.

It was a lot of set-up for a pretty simple gag, but it was worth it, everyone laughed, and Vera said "that's right, I'm Superwoman". I remember my first class with Vera, not too long ago, she didn't say much, shy, maybe worried about answering wrong. She's still all those things, but she's also very clearly more comfortable and more ready to answer. It makes me smile. Bill answers more, too, now that I think about it!

My English Corner had a surprise guest sitting near the front, a girl from Qingniwaqiao that I remember, red brown shoulder length hair with, I think, a new streak of purple, roundish glasses, light skin with some freckles- in the class I had with her I recall her English was relatively solid. She seemed pleased to be remembered, and also seemed interested in the presentation. Today was all about Laertes, who we'd seen before, and Ophelia ("who's that?" let me answer that in a second... two lines in, Laertes refers to "sister", easy answer) as well as old people that go on and on giving you advice that you already know- Polonius! At the back was another student I'd never seen before, a large gentleman, sort of hunched over, yawning a lot- like some sleepy bear. I thought he was bored out of his mind, but he's the guy that came up to me after class, shook my hand and thanked me, and said it was good and funny.

Here's the two hour break, and when my previously mentioned internet disagreement happened. I'm not a hundred percent on this, but I feel like I may have been a bit shocked, a little adrenalin may have been pumping, I left to eat and only picked up some beef and mushroom dish as well as a bowl of the yellow porridge business. I ate alone at first, but Bradley came up with Stella, Grace and another person whose name I don't have locked down, and I asked to join them.

Impressively, as we were eating Bradley looked at my tray and said that I usually get more to eat- I thought that was very perceptive of him, and I told him so.

My next class was that one where the students share some research about a famous historical figure: Henry did Steve Jobs, Cindy did Napoleon, and Walker, a student I'd never met before, but is someone I'd absolutely watch a tv show about, who studies navigation, talked about Magellan.

Henry kept his pretty simple, so there were few corrections needed, Walker kept dropping the past tense "-ed" from things, but I told him the good side was that, because he did it SO much, he wouldn't make that mistake again in the future- in fact, as we kept going over his assignment he started adding the "-ed" before I had to mention it. Nice!

And Cindy had only prepared a simple timeline of events for Napoleon, making up the sentences on the spot- and she did a wonderful job! There was only one thing I told her to correct, but other than that it was perfect- I was perhaps overly effusive with my praise, but I was honestly impressed.

Next was a salon with a full roster: Jessi, Sunny (a new one I'd never met before), Bill, Walker, Daisy, Sherry, Shark, Baron, Sam, and Henry. We talked about Can vs. Will (similar to the Can vs. May distinction people harp on in the west), so the first part of the class was getting everyone to tell me something they could do, and I wrote it on the board, it was a nice little positive exercise- Sam can play a little violin? What! Awesome! I said how much I love the violin and it sounded like he offered to give me one... I don't think your parents would like that- "my dad would". Maybe his dad doesn't like the sound of violin practicing? That's the best explanation I've got if I heard him correctly.

Then we moved on to degrees of propbability- will, probably will, may, probably won't, will not, that sort of thing. It was straightforward, but there was a decent amount of student talking time, which is the ultmate goal for the salon classes especially.

My last class was with Shark, Nina, and another Sunny. After asking about their weekend plans- Shark is taking a business trip to Beijing, he's a furniture salesman, a good one- Shark, I believe it!- Nina is taking her six year old daughter to pick strawberries, and Sunny is probably going to see a movie- we just had to answer some questions about a guy from the computer courseware, very straightforward- we got to a question that required explaining the distinction between can and will, so I recruited Shark to explain from what he learned in our previous class together. Eventually we got to a section of the lesson where I again had to talk about degrees of probability, though this lesson introduced a few more degrees, with a few more vocabulary options- or "alternative" options.

To explain "alternative" I wrote "vanilla, chocolate, strawberry" on the board, circled chocolate, and pointed to the other options as alternatives, other choices you could have made. But they were all mystified by the word "vanilla"! I didn't expect that, it was funny.

And that was it for me that day. I did laundry at home. Played pokemon. Ate the last of the fruit snacks that tear through my system. Obsessed over that facebook exchange. Same old, same old. - 11:37 am

February 25th, 2016

February 25th, 2016

7:58 am

Let me tell you, if you ever need to clean out your system I have a fruit snack for you that'll empty you out faster'n anything- I ate some yesterday morning and naturally my stomache was bothering me from about 4pm on... but now I used the fruit snacks strategically, ate some before bed, let nature take its course in the morning. Okay, you aren't interested in this.

I arrived at work right on the 1pm buzzer- I had plenty of time to walk down, but it seems I was meandering a bit, having too nice a time, because I looked at my clock and found I had less than three minutes to get there and I was still outside across from the plaza- whoops! I ran for it and just got in during the 1 pm minute. I'm still kind of sick, so I didn't want to be running, but I really didn't want to be late.

As soon as I arrived and got my papers together, Ivy came over and asked if I had had lunch yet- I hadn't, but I wasn't really planning on getting anything then. Since she asked, I went and picked up some tomato soup and, to thank her for coffee from the day before, bought her lunch, which was some tapioca looking egg in a plastic container, and corn on the cob- she impaled the cob with a chopstick, effecient. I didn't stay much longer after I finished my soup, I had to much to prepare- I didn't even have time to reply to any messages on facebook yesterday, let alone send my latest block of blog posts. I saw there's a small kerfuffle over my posting an article denouncing the radical left or radical socialist or however the article was titled, with the chief concern being that trigger warnings are too a good thing- which both completely misses the point of the article and in part demonstrates what the article was about. A moderately interesting turn of affairs. I obviously won't name names, but a friend messaged me to tell me he also agreed with the article, but didn't want to like/share/comment for fear of the eventual blowback from the people the article was criticizing... which is also demonstrative of the kind of social censorship the article discusses, hampering a free exchange of ideas. Well, anyways, maybe you don't care about this either.

My first class was a salon- large group discussion- that required me to cut out a number of slips of paper. Annoying and it takes a lot of time- part of the reason I left Ivy so quickly- however once I saw the class list was only one person, Lydian, the boss' wife I recalled running through that lesson with her before. I checked with her before asking for the next lesson plan in the sequence, this one titled "Staying Healthy". Then I spent my time reviewing Hamlet, looking up unfamiliar words ("jocund") until classes began.

As usual, Lydian and I mostly just chatted- for the purposes of the "Staying Healthy" topic I went into great detail about my work out routine here in China, and we talked about "metabolic rate", "six pack/pac", aerobic vs. anaerobic exercise, calf muscle, abdominal, oblique, all sorts of fun stuff. By the end she said I should talk to Leo about exercise stuff (I've mostly restricted myself to discussing healthy food in China) and I disagreed for two reasons- when people look at me they don't see an exercise guy ("YOU worked security?" is a common phrase I hear) and, I think for Leo, being the office's "Exercise Guy" is part of his identity, and so a part of him would feel I was a) presumptive in talking about exercise, as though I knew something about it or something and b) hey, this guy is horning in on my racket!

I said, "I don't mind being "Hamlet Guy"- I like "Hamlet Guy"!"

Speaking of which, next was my English Corner, and it was a disaster- it took a while to plug in because I'm an idiot, and, great, I reviewed the upcoming section of the play for difficult words, but I didn't review it for interesting content: we only got through the section where Horatio shows up and tells Hamlet about the ghost... so after I started the presentation with a reminder of what has gone on before in the play, everything else we covered in today was... a reminder of what went on before in the play. Ugh. And to top it off, I finished the scene with 6 or 7 minutes left in the English Corner- I wasn't going to start scene 3 that late, so I had to dangle in the wind for those last minutes. Brutal.

For today I'm going to try and come up with something else for my English Corner, they look like they need a break from Shakespeare.

Bradley came over and wanted to talk, which I was more than glad to do, and then Ivy came over to talk, so I said "we could all talk together"- a nice, platonic group of friends talking talking talking. 

My stomach started really hurting at this point, even while I started feeling tired, like maybe the medicines I had taken that morning decided now was the time to make me drowsy- I was a crumpled mess sitting in my chair listening to Bradley- but then he wanted to talk about what is design, and what is art, and I felt more energy about these topics and started lecturing a bit about the Romantics and Keats, because I always think of Keats. Er, when I'm not confusing him with Yeats.

Bradley suggested getting food, and Ivy didn't want to join us- while eating I confided in Bradley that I was worried Ivy may have seen my earlier interactions as romantic and he replied with his trademark phrasing of "don't worry about it" like my own little Michelle Tanner. You know, "you got it, dude"- come on, I hate Full House, but everyone knows that line.

Well, I mean, nobody hates Stamos, obviously.

Next class was about role models, a salon class, starring this guy Bale, Ivy, Rae, (guy)Sunny, Mandy, Amaris, and Diane. Amaris very strongly asserted that since turning 18 she makes her own decisions and has no outside influence, greatest or otherwise. Fine by me, I'm not here to argue- er, not that she was arguing. A lot of parents as role models, Sunny said David Beckham because of his good looks (great role model...) and because of his ability on the football field (okay, that's better). Once again, my role model is Spider-Man.

Then I talked about the Environment and social problems with Leon, May, and Kee Kee- apparently it's a thing here where doctors blackmail a patient's family for money, or else they won't do their best with the whole "surgery" thing. Yikes! More like the Hypocritical Oath- zing!

But actually that's terrifying news. Apparently it's getting better?

I also made a risky move in that I decided to be cheeky and write "patience" on the board to see if anyone would call me out on misspelling "patients"- and they all looked at me weird, and Leon said it was spelled wrong- good! It's of course a risky move because they may just think I'm covering for myself after the fact, and didn't consciously decide to test them. Maybe this post is me covering for myself even more- they learn English, find my blog, read this and think "wow, genius, he was testing me all those times he made mistakes!"

My plan is working perfectly.

Finally there was a beginner salon about describing things with Daniel and Vic, who I've definitely taught before, Linda who I think I've taught before, and Laurence and Shally who are new to me- I asked for the alphabet, and as it was spoken to me I wrote it on the board- G vs. J, tough to differentiate the sounds- but that wasn't the tough part, they could all do that- next I needed an adjective for each letter of the alphabet- I blanked on K, X, and Z myself, so that's unfortunate. Got any suggestions?

That's basically what we did for the entire class- not all about the alphabet, but I'd pick a word, split the class into two teams, and give them two minutes to come up with all the adjectives they could. We also had an exercise where we had to "sell" something- come up with good adjectives for something and sell it to our partner.

Meanwhile, a book has been sitting on the table here since my class on role models- turns out to belong to Ivy (I thought so)- I got Adeel to send her the message that it's in the desk drawer here at Web.

And that was my day man- I went home and ate all the rest of the cheap baked goods I picked up the day before, as well as a bunch more of those fruit snacks that were vehemently opposed to remaining in my body any longer than they had to. Had some medicine. Went to bed. Good stuff. - 9:51 am