31st August - International Blog Day And Where I Used To Live

Apparently today is International Blog Day, where we celebrate the wonderful world of blogging. It's also the perfect excuse to link yourself to 5 other bloggers, or, if you're a cynic like myself, a great time to get more traffic to your website.

I haven't been reading many other Blogs of late, so I am not sure who to link to. If you have a good idea, leave a comment and I'll link it in the next post.

In the meantime, take a look at the link below. The big building in the middle is the old office in Shanghai.

So this is JingAn District, Shanghai, PR China.

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29th August - Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines

People flying planes at high speed ridiculously close to each other can certainly draw the crowds.

The Red Arrows were in town last week and I tottered on down to see if I migh tbe able to get a few interesting shots. unfortunately it was like trying to photograph mosquitos in a field, so nothing too mind blowing.

So they fly upside down (as above) and there are a few of them (as below)

But that wasn't what really stood out on that day.

You know those disaster movies in cities where some great natural disaster/sea creature/alien invasion is causing all the people in there cars to just abandon them, get out and run? Well along the Bournemouth cliffs last week things looked very similar. People had parked all along the sides of the roads and the late comers decided that just stopping in the street and getting out was th ebest way to do it.

This was the scene during the Red Arrow display:

And looking back at the same stretch of road about 15 minutes after it was all over.

The lengths some people go to...

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25th August 2006 - The Rest Of The Walk

Following on from those guys fishing at sunset, as seen on my evening stroll along the beach at Hengistbury Head, here are the 'best of the rest' photos that I snapped en route.

In the order they were taken, first up is of a complete stranger who was also enjoying the solitude of this particular stretch of the beach:

A little further along and there was this seagull on a groyne:

Finally, there were a few different guys fishing form the shore. In the background is the Isle of Wight and The Needles lighthouse:

Not a bad way to spend a Monday evening.

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23rd August (pt. II) - Just Couldn't resist...

I posted already today, but having been for a Monday night stroll along a quiet section of the beach, I had to post one of my favourite snaps. Fishing at sunset

It is my favourite and in all honesty it's probably a lot better than any of the others I intend to put up, so maybe I should have saved it till last. But, as the title says, I just couldn't resist.

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23rd August - To All Potential Employers - I Am Worth Millions!

Now you might think that somone who wants a job as much as I do might not be in a position to demand millions of pounds, but I think I've just got a very strong bargaining position. What is it?

Well, if Jean Alain Boumsong can be valued at £3.2 million pounds, I've got to be worth at least double. Because as a professional, he was/is quite simply useless. Utterly. Useless.

So my wage demands and transfer fees are rising accordingly.

Slight strange of subject, but did you know we are all doomed? No? Well then you better go and get yourself educated and maybe even add to the 10,000 reasons why the world is doomed. I gave reason 179.

P.S. If you happen to actually be a potential emplyer who has come across my website because of the strange e-mail address I gave on my application form, I don't really expect millions, but I am always open to offers.

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August 17th - BA Cancels Flights

Amidst all the drama, there is always humour....good ol' humour.

Nice work, Mr Caldecourt.

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August 15th - Could This Be The Future??? (pt. II)

Looks like that guy just about survived the ordeal.

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August 15th - Could This Be The Future???

OK, it's not something I've had the pleasure of experiencing yet, but the future could (and hopefully!) involve intersting 'in-law' experiences.

Like I say, it's not something I've expereinced YET, but there are SOOO many things I can relate to.

Here's a snippet of one American man's experience of his Chinese in-laws first visit to the US:

You told me to ask the waiter to boil your lettuce. I said he wouldn't even understand what you meant. You insisted. I asked. The waiter was confused. The lettuce never got boiled.

Go read the full thing here. Laugh or cry funny, I promise.

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August 14th - Thanks But Not Thanks

I'm getting abit mroe proactive in my job hunt these days, as the funds close in the on hte magic '0' mark - days of nothing could soon be a thing of the past. Ah well...

Anyway, it's been a bit up and down in the job hunt. It's obviously a bit of a downer realising that, at 29, most people need a bit more than a happy face and good attitude in the office. But it has also been a bit of fun putting in applications for positions that are usually reserved for Oxbrdige graduates and CEO's.

I got a highly expected rejection from one of those just today and it said soemthign like "thank you for your application.....but you don't have the skills we need for this position.....it wa snice to meet you the other day." All very polite, but with just 1 small problem.

I never met them. Ever.

Fair enough, I don't have the skills but in all honesty I think I am quite happy not to be working for someone who can't even remember if he met me. Maybe that rejection is a blessing in disguise.

Or maybe that's just me making myself feel better.

Whatever, I'm sure there will be a few more downs before employment comes knocking at my door again.

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August 10th - I Want To Be FREE!!!

It's been very interesting seeing JEwel settle into life in England. For her, it wasn't the jaw-dropping whirlwind of what-the-hell that I experienced when I first got to China, but more like quickly settling into a rhythmn and noticing small nuances in daily life.

And it's never been more apparent thannow she is drafting her first full essay for the MA course. It's not the normal English-language-learners 300 words of 'the good ting about this is blah blah blah, but on the other hand blah blah blah'. No, this one is all about research, writing and referencing and the expectations in an academic insitution in England are veyr diffrent from those of one in China.

In the course of doing this assignement she has had to sieve her way through piles of magazines, journals and books and thoroughly research China in particular. The thing is, a lot of what she is reading about China here is as readily available in China itself, meaning that she has been reading things written from a slightly different perspective than she might normally.

After her years in formal education in the PRC, this migh tbe the first time that she has actually researched any sort of 'facts' about China. In general, information given to students in China isn't questioned and scrutinised in the way that us of a western education might.

Reading that 900,000,000 people in China are classified as 'peasants' (literal translation from Chinese to English) and that the very low salary people from her quite poor hometown earn is actually pretty normal for the vast majority of her fellow countrymen. Reading that the number of illiterate people in China (85,000,000) is more than the total population of the country she is currently studying in (60,000,000). It's eye-opening, both for her to to learn and me to witness.

And sometimes the road to discovery and realisation is more light-hearted...to start at least.

She has recently learnt that it is illegal for a soldier in the Chinese army to marry someone who is not a Chinese national. And this same law applies to government oficials, anyone who is in a position where they might have access to natioanlly sensitive information, criminals and those who are suspected of being criminals.

"Wow!" she said upon her latest discovery. "The Government in China really controls everything - even who you can fall in love with! What happened to freedom?"

Good question.

But before I had time to consider an appropriate answer, the voyage of realisation sped on. "But it's the same with Tony Blair here - he says what happens and everyone has to do it or they are punished."

Images of a 75 year old council-tax evading granny in prison and a 19 year old British soldier in a tent in the middle of Iraq appeared in my mind.

"Yeah but, no but.." I spluttered a la Vicky Pollard, before my own moment of realisation recognised that her bascially flawed argument woudl basically floor mine.

Learning, discovery, understanding and knowledge are all beautiful things. Freedom - it's relative.

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8th August - So, You Think It Was Easy, DO You?

It might just be my paranoia, but I get this funny feeling when a lot of potential employers see that I was an English teacher in China, they immediately start to think "Job shy, tax dodgin beach bum," (or something along those lines). Questions like "Yeah, but what is your REAL job?" tend to follow pretty quicly.

Well, just to set the record straight(ish) - it wasn't all egg fried rice and life without responsibilities, you know. Believe it or not, thre was actually more to it than standing up in front of a room full of Chinese people and having a good ol' chin wag with them.

And it looks like someone else agrees with me:

A twist on sweatshops: Foreign English teachers complain of abuse at Chinese language schools

Associated Press, Aug. 2, 2006, 12:06AM

BEIJING: Tanya Davis fled Jizhou No. 1 Middle School one winter morning in March before the sun rose over the surrounding cotton fields covered with stubble from last fall's crop.

In the nine months Davis and her boyfriend had taught English at the school in rural north China, they had endured extra work hours, unpaid salaries and frigid temperatures without heating and, on many days, electricity.

Hearts pounding and worried their employer would find a pretext to stop them leaving, the couple lugged their backpacks, suitcase, books and guitar past a sleeping guard and into a taxi.

As they drove away, "the sense of relief was immense," said Davis, a petite, soft-spoken 23-year-old from Wales. "I felt like we had crossed our last hurdle and everything was going to be OK."

It's a new twist on globalization: For decades, Chinese made their way to the West, often illegally, to end up doing dangerous, low-paying jobs in sweatshop conditions. Now some foreigners drawn by China's growth and hunger for English lessons are landing in the schoolhouse version of the sweatshop.

In one case, an American ended up dead. Darren Russell, 35, from Calabasas, Calif., died under mysterious circumstances days after a dispute caused him to quit his teaching job in the southern city of Guangzhou. "I'm so scared. I need to get out of here," Russell said in a message left on his father's cell phone hours before his death in what Chinese authorities said was a traffic accident.

As China opens up to the world, public and private English-language schools are proliferating. While most treat their foreign teachers decently, and wages can run to $1,000 plus board, lodging and even airfare home, complaints about bad experiences in fly-by-night operations are on the rise. The British Embassy in Beijing warns on its Web site about breaches of contracts, unpaid wages and broken promises. The U.S. Embassy says complaints have increased eightfold since 2004 to two a week on average.

Though foreign teachers in South Korea, Japan and other countries have run into similar problems, the number of allegations in China is much higher because "the rule of law is still not firmly in place," said a U.S. Embassy official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"A number of substandard English language teaching mills have sprung up, seeking to maximize profits while minimizing services," the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee said in a recent report on Russell's case. These institutes have become virtual "'sweatshops' where young, often naive Americans are held as virtual indentured servants."

Davis said officials at her school in Hebei province piled on classes without compensation, dragged their feet on repairing leaks in her apartment and would deduct sums from her $625 monthly salary for random taxes and phone calls that were never made. These ranged from $30 to $85, she said.

Wages offered range from $250 to $1,000 a month for an average of 20 hours per week, with overtime that varies. Housing is usually provided, and many schools promise about $1,000 in airfare home upon completion of a one-year contract.

Jobs offers teem on the Internet. On Dave's ESL Cafe, one of the most popular sites, more than 340 were posted in three months, ranging from positions in prosperous Zhejiang province in the east to the poverty-stricken grasslands of Inner Mongolia in the north.

But also on Dave's ESL Cafe is an anonymous warning from a teacher about a school in China's south.

"They will use you, abuse you, cheat you, and disrespect you," it says. "You will hear it all when they want you to sign the contract. Then after it's oh sorry that isn't in your contract or a bunch of excuses that go on and on."

There is no standard rule on contracts - some are in English, some in Chinese.

John Shaff, a graduate from Florida State University, said everything went according to his English-language contract at Joy Language School in the northeastern city of Harbin until a disagreement over his office hours erupted into a shouting match on the telephone with a school official.

A few hours later, several men led by Joy's handyman showed up at his school-provided apartment, physically threatening him and cursing him in Chinese, said Shaff, 25. About 10 minutes later, they left, and soon, so did Shaff.

Like Shaff, Darren Russell had a disagreement with the manager of Decai language school in Guangzhou, where he had been promised 20 hours of classes a week. Instead, Decai had him teaching at two schools, where he put in up to 14 hours a day and oversaw 1,200 students, Russell's mother, Maxine Russell, said in a telephone interview from Calabasas.

The school had troubles with foreign teachers. Two had quit by the time Russell showed up, and a former Decai employee, a Chinese woman who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she left because she was asked to recruit foreign teachers by offering attractive contracts that went unfulfilled.

In April 2005, sick from bronchitis and exhausted from the work hours, Russell told manager Luo Deyi he wanted her to lighten his work load. An argument ensued, Russell resigned and threatened to tell police Luo was operating illegally, the former employee said.

The school then moved him into a low-budget hotel. A week later he was dead. Police told Decai and Russell's mother that Darren had been killed in a hit-and-run traffic accident. The body was shipped to California.

Maxine Russell, however, said Chinese authorities could not provide consistent witnesses and a time of death. According to the congressional report, which was the outcome of a family request to look into the Russell case, a California mortician who handled Russell's body said he had suffered a blow to his head and his body did not have bruises and fractures consistent with a car accident. The mortician, Jerry Marek, is a former coroner.

While Maxine Russell and the former Decai employee say Russell was a beloved teacher, Luo, the manager, insists he was often absent from class and his "teaching methods failed to meet the requirement of the school and fit the students." She said he had been hired on probation, which he failed partly because of a drinking problem.

"It was very strange and irresponsible for them to blame us for their son's death," Luo said in a telephone interview.

Maxine Russell denies Darren drank while teaching at Decai.

Thanks to the Aussie In The Orient for this one.

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4th August - How Times Change

Rewind 5 years and it's Friday night. Minimum 3 or 4 beers before I leave the house, 5 or 6 pints in a bar, followed by shots, more beer and an inability to remember what my name is.

Fast forward to 2006 and things ain't quite what they used to be. A Thursdy evening out and 1 pint and I'm struggling. A second one iwth food settles things down and a final third post dinner and I'm all at sea. I never thought it would happen to me.

Despite years of trying to prove otherwise, I think I can safely say that James and alcohol don't really mix all that well. But having been introduced to Kronenburg blanc last night, I might reacquaint myself with my old foe a little more.

Just not too much ;)

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2nd August - A Brief Overview Of My Day Today

Yawn. Get up. Slow, slow, calm, calm.

Relax, work, concentrate, concentrate, think.

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!

Curse, profanity, stress, stress.

Think, think, relief, relax, calm, relief, happiness.

Late lunch

Concentrate, work, puzzled, brick wall, blank brain, devoid of ideas, stress, frfustration.

Cup of tea.

Think, think, problem solved, feet up, relax, relax.

Dinner. Day done.

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1st August - That Went Quick...

...and I don't just mean last month.

3 entries in one month is not really harcore 'Blogging' I know, but July sure did fly by. Well it did for me, at least. But that's not the only thing that went quick.

On Monday morning I had an interview for a teaching position - not exactly what I wanted, but a way to pay the bills - on Monday morning. The school was 'desperate' and wanted me to start that afternoon, but as I had an interview on Tuesday afternoon, I said I would call back after and let them know.

Tuesday's interview was no good, so I called back and the job had gone. Now that was also quick.

Kind of ironic though, as I had spent most of Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning and afternoon umming and ahing over whether I really wanted to get back into teaching. I finally decided that I did (at leat for a few weeks) and then found out that I couldn't.

Got to remember to be a bit quicker next time!

Not to worry - it's given me a bit more time to get another pet project of mine finished...I hope!

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