Ok, seriously, I had way too much wine that night. Gay ninja? What? That's a the biggest burst of energy from me than I've had in months!
The story behind the video is that while at my curry party Mag was showing me youtubes of some guy who has a hundred uses for a shirt, and one of the uses is being able to make a ninja headscarf thing. Apparently pink is the gay ninja color. I just happen to have a pink t-shirt (what luck!) and then things just got out of hand.
Rob was commissioned last week by a woman he used to work with at a previous school to do some translation services. At first the job looked totally sweet; all he had to do was quickly proofread some articles that were written in Chinese and English for any major errors, then record the English in his own voice so that the recordings could be uploaded to a website the following day. This was supposedly going to take him about two hours of work every night, and a small sacrifice to make for nearly a thousand dollars a month!
Well, you know what they say about things that seem to good to be true...
On the fourth day of our trial (I say our trial because by this point the workload had become so heavy that it was taking both of us the better part of the night to complete. But I'm getting ahead of myself), we thought we finally had everything down pat: I was going to handle the editing end, then hand the files over to Rob to record the voice part. Well, easier said than done.
There were too many mistakes in the editing. Oh, the editing style wasn't great. Rob speaks to fast. Rob speaks to slow. Rob speaks like a retard. Could you try speaking a little slower, but only on select words? Your voice is starting to sound a little exhasted... (This comment irritatingly added after the fourth RE-recording of one file).
A job that was promised to take only about two hours of Rob's time took us both more than five hours last night and we only finished three quarters of the recordings.
Now, just so you can see that it's not just me, I'll give you a few of the sentences that I was expected to edit. Bear in mind that these were the worst of the three writers that were on the submission team. Ironically, it's the head of the team! Ok, get ready for some bad English, here we go:
The taking out food need to have it to pack with for dinner and the late night snack the convenient plastic bag will not be forgettable to use.
...
Many people only eat vegetable without meat appetite may easily feel hungry and eat more starchy food invisibly. By this method, human body will induce severe burden with the certain causation of increasing the rate of blood sugar, especially to the chronic patients.
...
Due to the domestic rice has achieve to self-sufficiency, three month of safety deposit still remained presently and the fallow lands have run up to 220,000 hectares.
...
Anyway, that's all the complaining I'm going to be doing for one day. I'm truly grateful now that I have my nights and my boyfriend back, and we'll just have to figure out a different way of making up that extra cash necessary for the trip.
For more English mix-ups and other such fun and nonsense, check out engrish.com
Just a few shots from that photo hunt I went on the other day.
Those pink things are supposedly edible. I know this only because they were sitting outside a bakery. Anything that is that particular shade of fuschia and doesn't melt in 30+ degrees is not edible in my books!
I've decided also that I need to venture further than three blocks from my house on the next photo venture. I think I have sixty shots of the same bushes from five different walks. The city just lacks any sort of inspiration for me... Actually, now that I say that, I think my next project is to capture the essence of night markets: the noxious neon, the raucous teenagers, the cacophonous cabbies... if only smell-0-vision existed for my camera, I could share the unique odors as well! (No, you don't want that, actually).
If these were cave man days and my form of artistic expression and broadcast media were limited to cave drawings, I would be marking this day as the first official day of summer in wide swaths of charcoal. And also, I'd probably be hiding in my cave, where it's cool, and where I wouldn't have to deal with the heat induced ill-tempered cave peoples.
Of course it's not really the first official day of summer; I am familiar with how to read the Gregorian calendar. However, local forecasters are tagging the city at 32 degrees celsius in the shade, and that, to me, is summer weather by any standards. Clear blue sky on top of that, you'd think we'd be rushing out with sunscreen and shorts, cartwheeling in parks, frolicking barefooted with carefree ease. That was my natural first instinct when I woke up to see the clear blue sky this morning, and after a full winter of complaining about the cold and feeling like a monkey in a cage I'm certainly ready to leave the house a bit more. But am I really ready to deal with this heat?
For the time being the weather outside isn't quite hot enough to reach us in our inner sanctum, meaning we don't have to rely on the air conditioners or the space heater to make a comfortable temperature.
For the sake of my sanity and yours, I'll stop rambling now. I'm going to finish my strawberry-pineapple-papaya shake, grab my camera and head out of doors to see if there's anything to see. I go with optimism. Wish me luck that on my photo hunt I'm able to shoot anything worth it's meat.
We painted eggs in class again this year, and once again my co-teacher Jenny decided against taking my advice on not draining the insides. Giving hollowed-out eggs to five year olds and expecting them to be gentle with the fragile packages whilst painting them is a pretty tall order. We know this from last year; we had many egg casualties and many tears. To my surprise, this year was nearly a complete success as we only had one broken egg. The shit-for-brains kid who dented his egg was the same one who ruined my Five Tastes science experiment by spitting his salty taste back into the common bowl. That was the closest I've ever come to hitting a child. And I'm completely within my rights to call him whatever name comes to mind, because he is in fact a complete tosser. However, at school he'd never know that I didn't think he was my bff. This is my version of being professional, I suppose.
To go off on a tangent momentarily, I often wonder about this boy and his wild and erratic behavior. Is he this rambunctious naturally, or does he act out because he's the only Caucasian in the class? Or is it the overbearing mother? I suppose it must be all of the above, each to some degree. My knowledge of early childhood education and development comes solely from my immersion in teaching, and not through any bookwork.
The bunny eggs turned out well, and the kids were happy with the results, which is the reason we do these crafts, right? One of the bunnies, sadly, will never see properly again.
Happy Easter, and Happy Spring!
It has only been a few short weeks since I last blogged, and I remember writing the last blog in my warm pyjamas and slippers on my feet, and a hot tea in hand to warm against the frigid winter air. What a change in weather today; bright blue skies, at least for the better part of the morning, and 26 degrees.
My class took a trip to Chiang Kai Shek Residence for a picnic and to view the acres of flower gardens. In fact, I never got to see any residence, just row after row of roses and cabbage-looking things. Oh, of course there was a cafe to by ice lollies and coffees, but there were far too many people in queue to even consider it. My jeans and polo shirt were definitely not an appropriate choice for such a hot day. I actually like that the seasons change with such abruptness here; at least it's predictable. Ooh, and also, happy first sunburn of the year! Go, go melanoma! Just kidding. No, not kidding, melanoma isn't funny. Sorry.
We had a very lovely picnic, and actually it was so typical of what I remember picnics to be from my younger years that I hardly noticed I wasn't supposed to be enjoying myself. Well, considering how much I was hating this winter, I was quite taken aback by my relaxedness today. We played games and threw balls and ate junk food and got cranky from too much sun. I broke up fights and bandaged some wounds, both physical and emotional. There were about seventy five thousand too many people at the park, literally, but I found that I was able to ignore the crowds and just enjoy the moment.
I think that we were all enjoying the first real day of good warm weather, and it shows on their faces. I was going to say that the kids were praising the sun, but I was playing fetch with them and the picture was a little bit staged. :) Yep, I'm not above subjecting my students to fetching just for a photo-op!
One of the memories that stick out for me from elementary school was playing with the giant nylon parachute; how we would whip it up and around, creating a storm system of synthetic waves and undulations. How we would bring it low, then quickly overhead, darting underneath and tucking it under our bums, the parachute sinking slowly, slowly, silhouetting our bodies like psychedelic snow under rocks, us lost in a world hidden from reality.
The picture of the still-closed rose seems cold, bleak and uninviting, a bizarre juxtaposition to the sweat that was dripping down my forehead when I snapped the shot. I was going to post-process some vibrancy into the petals, but then I was reminded that everyone has their own way of dealing with the changing of seasons and weather, even flowers.
Just a short update: Rob never got to have his meeting with the bosses yesterday because one of them, Kimberley, suddenly had to go to the hospital. Presumably this was because of her dad, although no reason was given and I suppose none should have been expected. None of my business, I get it. How convenient, though, that she had a hospital emergency the moment she was going to have to confront Rob in a face to face meeting and deal with her own managerial incompetence.
I actually think this is a good sign, because it means they're afraid.
Here is a picture of the alley where we live. The speed bump in the foreground points to the entrance of our stairwell on the left. In an apartment complex of 12-14 identical buildings, the sign at the end of the street is the only clear indication that I'm in the right alley. Let's hope they don't rent out that space too soon, or I'll be lost in my own neighborhood!
We've been feeling a little bit like frogs in hot water recently. You know the old adage: place a frog into boiling water and it'll jump out; put the same frog in cold water and apply heat, you have a cooked frog.
Although I don't mean to belittle the experience of Jews in Nazi Germany by any means, I sometimes do feel like I know to some extent what they went through in the years leading up to the concentration camps. Hitler didn't just suddenly round up the jews and the gays and ship them off. His process was a very slow and dedicated method of stripping the jews of their rights and freedoms, one at a time. I suppose one must have thought, "Well, we can't go to the market on Tuesdays anymore. Well, what can you do? We still have the rest of the week." And on this note Hitler was able to suppress any uprising by doing it slowly and methodically.
My point is that schools here, and mine is the case in point, have a tendency to hook you into working for them, and then slowly and continuously pile on the work, contractual obligations and promises be damned, until it reaches a breaking point. I haven't had to suffer this so much recently as I work solely in the kindergarten, so my kids don't have as much homework and tests as the older kids do (but they DO get some homework, almost everyday. These are four and five year olds. With homework. It's sick).
Rob's getting the shit absolutely thrown at him: they are demanding nearly four hours of out of class work per week, unpaid, which includes creating homework and tests, marking the homework and tests, as well as writing daily personal records in each of their communication books that get sent home to the parents. The most recent disgrace is that, even if he spends several hours creating the tests and homework on the weekend, the boss can say that she doesn't like it, change anything she deems unfit, and then not pay him for the work because it wasn't good enough.
Oh, and they also wouldn't mind if he could teach them the material in the curriculum as well. Did I mention that his Chinese co-teacher quit suddenly a few weeks ago, and there hasn't been even a whisper of a replacement? That means he has the work of three people now, as the co-teachers usually do double the work of a normal person, for half the pay and double the hours. Did that make any sense? Basically we make six times what they do.
The administration are walking on thin ice treating Rob in this abusive manner. He's ready to pack up and go, and frankly if he loses his job today, they don't lose only him, I'll be right behind him, quitting on his heels. They may think they can afford to fuck with him, but the school is in dire straights recently and I know they'd be rather screwed if they lost two teachers mid-semester; the parents just wouldn't put up with it and the school would see many kids pulled. Thankfully, Rob has a meeting today with both of the directors of the school to see if he can't get something resolved. I think he's going to ask to either be paid for his time, no questions, or get out of creating the extra homework and tests, especially if they are going to claim veto power.
I just want to add that we are aware that "real" teachers in the west are overworked and underpaid and have all worlds of extra work that they are expected to do. However, I do believe that this is laid out in contracts, and is a known aspect of the job, so it doesn't come as a surprise to them when this happens. For us, we were hired for a job and they are slowly cooking us alive with these menial tasks and downright disrespectful and abusive behavior.
Will keep you posted.
Those statues are the welcoming committee outside the cultural center in xinbeitou. We very nearly went in, too, but had very little cash on us. Next time.
Also outside the cultural center was an amazing and ingeniously carved barricade or fence... Wooden stumps with iron faces holding hands. So creative!
Right, then in the park by our house I decided to try to haul my fatass to the top of the pole. I was surprised by my success! Look carefully and note the absence of a ladder or steps. Will note location of the pole should I ever get chased by a dog whilst beside this park.
Rob by steamy hot springs. Locals often come to cook eggs here. Yes, I think making eggs taste as if they've gone bad is a really great idea, too.
Man in window.
Hot Springs info. To paraphrase: Really hot sulhpuric and acidic water from a volcanic source, one of only two in the world of it's kind.
A lot of people will actually go downstream from the source to soak their feet, as the water has cooled considerably by this point. You won't catch me in there; I'm not convinced that all the grey water from the hotels' hot spring baths isn't just dumped right back into the stream.
