Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Contrasts (redux).

Other interesting contrasts.

Today the cherry trees in the pictures I put up last time got hit by wind. Flower petals flew around everywhere in a veritable blizzard. It looked truly spectacular -- another one of those moments of sublime beauty that keep me in this country. And along with it came another contrast.

The contrast this time was social, not visual. The students, upon seeing the petal storm, were electrified. My class was utterly and totally disrupted (and I didn't mind, believe me!). The students all ran to the windows, throwing them wide to see more clearly and to allow the petals to come into the classroom. Pandemonium reigned for a few moments as they took in the sight and, in many cases, broke out their mobile phones to snap pictures.

Not just the girls. The boys were just as ga-ga over flowers.

I think back to my school days and I can't find even a single memory of a boy who'd publicly go ga-ga over flowers. Here it's perfectly normal. Tough, seasoned warriors in ancient Chinese novels weep at the sight of gorgeous blooms. It's just the way life is here, and to me, the outsider, it's truly a wonder to behold.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Contrasts

Another busy week. I started a WUISS Linux User's Group (hopefully to expand into a Wuhan Linux User's Group) and the WUISS English Club.

At the former I pretty much organised it all myself and did the keynote speech ("What Is Linux and Why Would I Want to Use It?") since Linux is so rare in China. I had about 18 people attend with 14 staying through the whole meeting. One small problem developed when my laptop's CD drive refused to burn anything. (That's about the fourth laptop in a row, from three manufacturers, whose built-in CD-ROM screwed up. I hate laptops sometimes.) More people will probably show up at the next meeting in two weeks.

At the latter I was smarter. The goal here is to give the students their own English Corner -- one made for and by the students and run by the students. I'm acting in a strictly advisory capacity and as the teacher who gives them credibility when they're asking for funds, equipment, locations, etc. I'm doing as little work as possible there because I want the students to find out for themselves how hard it is to organise things. Yesterday was the first activity they ran and it went reasonably well. The only thing that really got screwed up was the advertising, something we'll be talking about next meeting.

Spring is finally springing here in Wuhan and I can finally answer a question that I'm frequently asked. "What is it that keeps you in China?" Nowadays the answer is more obvious in the form of Joan, but I was in China two years before I moved to the city Joan was in and four-and-a-half years before I married her. What kept me here all that time?

The answer is a single word: contrasts.

China can be a profoundly ugly country. Buildings look dilapidated less than two years after they're built. Everything is dirty and grimy. The air is so polluted I rarely see blue in the sky, and when I do it's a blue with an unhealthy brown tint. Yet intermixed with all this deep ugliness is equally profound beauty. I don't just mean my wife, either!

Consider for example the photo (taken by my lovely, talented wife) at the top left of this blog entry. This is an example of the profound beauty I'm talking about. It doesn't show, however, the contrasts I'm speaking of. For those you have to look to the photo to the right (taken by the significantly less lovely and less talented me). Here the cherry tree in full bloom (part of a long line of them along an alley you can see in the photo below) is stunningly beautiful. The photograph simply doesn't do it justice! Yet around it is a wall that's crumbling, a building that's falling apart and just general signs of decay and unpleasantness. It's the kind of contrast that makes me swoon (nearly) and keeps me interested in this place. Somehow the juxtaposition of ugliness next to beauty makes the beauty more mysterious and captures my imagination.

So I stay.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

One Year Ago Today...

Image Hosted by ImageShack.usOne year ago today the unfathomable occurred. A lovely, young, vivacious, otherwise-intelligent Chinese girl by the name of 王琼 (Joan Wang) consented to marry a cynical, cranky Canadian. Friends and relatives of said Canadian flew in from Canada unable to believe, without seeing it with their own eyes, that their Michael Richter was actually getting married.

One year ago today they saw it all. I really had no choice, in the end. Once I met Joan in 九江, it was pretty much inevitable that I would fall in love with her and seek to marry her. Joan, however, had a choice and, in an incredible event that warped both time and space in its significance, nonetheless chose me. Not a day has gone by without my wondering what I did to deserve such a perfect girl. My end conclusion was that I must have done something truly spectacular in a past life, because nothing in this life can explain what happened.

One year ago today this lovely girl and I both had to adjust. I had to adjust to a life spent, now, with someone else. I had to learn to give more and take less. I had to learn how to be a good husband and a decent person. I had to learn how to stop having money flow from my hands like water from a faucet. It was hard learning it all -- I still haven't accomplished it completely -- but worth every minute and every hard lesson. For her part Joan had less to learn. What she mostly had to learn -- or at least exercise -- was forgiveness as a cranky man set in his ways painfully adjusted to a newer, better life.

One year ago today 王琼 changed my life forever for the better.

One year ago today.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Another Busy Week

Well, it's been another busy week, but this time at least I'm used to getting up before 6AM to start my day.

On the home front I've been making very heavy use of my printer and the refill kits. I learned three things by using the refill kits:

  1. Printer manufacturers have one Hell of a scam going on with their ink prices.
  2. Printer ink is really, really, really messy.
  3. Printer ink is also very, very, very persistent.
I'll be sure to keep you posted on the fascinating life of printer cartridges.

Other computer-related stuff isn't so happy. My network feed has been ... well, it's China Telecom. That pretty much says it all. It's low-grade service presented by a bunch of people who'll be paid the same whether the customer is happy or not, so would rather sit on their fat asses all day than actually provide a service. This is what happens when you have government-mandated monopolies (or, as Microsoft demonstrates, monopolies of any kind).

Sometimes doing business in China is intensely frustrating. I knew that China Telecom was going to be a problem the moment they set up my connection. The guy setting it up got very antsy when it turned out I wasn't going to be installing China Telecom's spyware/adware to connect -- and that, indeed, I wasn't going to be using Windows at all. He kept trying to load the software -- Windows software, note! -- on my system and was wondering why it wasn't working. While he was out talking to someone on the phone, I just took the userid and password he was using and put them into my router. Time taken? About ten seconds. When he came back, I was merrily surfing away. He still wanted to go hassle someone else to get a Windows laptop to "check my connection". (Apparently having the connection working in front of him wasn't enough to convince him that it was working. Or something.)

Sure enough, the first thing I found out about the feed after a week of use was that they had about 100 people connected to a line which could give actual broadband service to maybe a tenth of that. During the evenings in particular I'd get about 5KB/s speed tops. About the same as using a dial-up modem. That's "broadband" according to China Telecom. I decided then that I really want to get a different provider.

The building I'm in has boxes for China Netcom. China Netcom isn't very reliable as a provider in my experience -- they go down more often than a Vegas streetwalker -- but when they are working they are bloody fast! My normal speed when I was using them was 8 times the maximum speed I can get from China Telecom even in theory. (900KB/s vs. 120KB/s) That means that they were over 100 times faster normally than what I'm getting from China Telecom, say, right this minute.

Try contacting China Netcom sometime, though.

Their equipment has no telephone numbers on it for contact or servicing. Their web site is a dog's breakfast of one window after another before you get numbers that... don't work. Email? Hah! No business in the world has good email support. Not even the companies that exist, for all practical purposes, entirely on the Internet. A big telecom company? Not a chance.

So after literally months of searching, we finally figured out how to contact China Netcom. Who don't serve this building. They have the equipment here, though, because when they get enough customers they'll hook up the boxes and provide service to the building. But they won't actually sign up any customers because they haven't hooked up the boxes. The circle of stupidity that was this explanation apparently made sense to them, even as it sprained my brain before I thankfully shut it off.

So back to hammering China Telecom. They insisted up down and sideways every time they were contacted that they could do nothing to increase the speed of service. Until the last conversation where they said if we contacted the University office (which had hitherto never been God-damned mentioned!) we could actually pay more for improved service. Which is something I literally asked one week after getting connected and seeing how crappy the service was!

And we still can't upgrade because of stupid bureaucracy that Joan doesn't have time to deal with and the foreign affairs office doesn't want to deal with because it would mean actually doing a job.

And this is business in China. Big business, I mean. Small businesses aren't run by retards. They want money and if you're willing to give it to them, they're willing to bend over backwards and then twist themselves into a pretzel to help you give that money to them. I'm getting my leather jacket resized now, for instance, and while they're at it I asked for a couple of alterations to the styling. No problem there! But big businesses? They seem to think that just existing is reason enough to give them money. "Give us money," they say. "We'll figure out what we'll offer you in return. Someday."

I mean really! I was there, I was waving (metaphorically) hundred-RMB notes in their faces saying at the top of my lungs "I have money! I want to give you this money! Price is no object! Let's do business!" and getting blank incomprehension in response. With China Netcom they just had to string one cable about 25 metres. That's it. And I was willing to pay a month's salary to get it! About enough to pay for ten people in one of their existing accounts for a whole year! And China Telecom? Add "incompetent" to "criminally corrupt" to the list of charges I'm drawing up against them in my head.

OK. Now I've got that out of my system.

In other news, at just the right time I'm getting two of the books from my wish list sent to me. Someone also shipped me a book that has opened my eyes to web design. It was in electronic form, so the physical copy is now in my wish list as well -- it's a really good book about web design with hardly any HTML or CSS in it. A book that isn't just boilerplate and pages and pages and pages of code, but instead offers a deep glimpse into the world of visual design.

Tomorrow -- China Telecom willing -- I'll be making a very special celebratory blog post, so please stay tuned.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

First Week Ruminations

The first week back is always fun (in the ironic sense of that last word). Lots of things have to come together all at once:

  • I have to get used to waking up at 6AM every day again.
  • I have to figure out where my classes actually are (as opposed to where I've been told they are).
  • I have to re-introduce myself to my students because, as with students anywhere in the world, they've forgotten everything they learned prior to their long vacation.
  • I have to get back into the whole "delivering information" mode that's atrophied over a month of disuse.
After five years of this, though, this all becomes increasingly easy. (Except for that first item.)

So, this week I just did a mostly teacher-talk lesson. I had to go over the previous exam and identify the strong points (many!) and the weak points (only two) the students had. I also started off the extracurricular activities I have planned for this term -- in effect replacing the school's anemic "English Corner" with one that the students actually want to attend. And, finally, I went over a brief look at what was happening this term. (The secret words are "public speaking".)

One thing I've found I really like with this batch of students is their eagerness overall. In five of my seven classes, for example, we actually had to elect people into the positions for running the new English Corner. Enough people were interested in the position that I didn't have to appoint anybody in the remaining two. I put my contact information -- notably my instant messenger accounts -- up on the screen and now have at least a dozen students who've gone to get GoogleTalk accounts to speak with me online. From this I stumbled over a couple who are avid Linux users and a couple more who, because I'm using Linux, want to give it a try. So now I think I'll also be arranging a WUISS Ubuntu User's Group as an outside activity to help these newcomers learn more about Linux. I've also ordered 300 CDs from Canonical's free "shipit" service to give as gifts to the students.

So, now the week is over and the weekend upon me (and also almost over) I find I'm a little bit lonely. Joan went off on a junket with her female colleagues arranged as part of International Women's Day (little-known trivia: the Mandarin pronunciation of the date -- 三八 or "sanba" -- is a homonym for a Cantonese epithet for women). She left very early Saturday morning and her mother subsequently took off for a while to the apartment in Hanyang (like she does most weekends). As a result I've been here mostly by myself which is now sufficiently unusual that it's actually uncomfortable. I guess that means I'm well and truly used to married life.

Something I'm still not used to is back pain. (You'd think that by now I would be, wouldn't you?) While under control, it sometimes flares up and this last month of inactivity made it flare up more. Following this with the week of lugging a laptop to and from class has left my back in pretty bad shape. The medication is controlling it -- I'm only taking it when it flares really badly -- but I'm running out of it to the tune of eight remaining doses. After that I'm going to have to either get some more shipped to me at tremendous expense or go on another likely-fruitless search for methocarbamol here in China.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Printer Shafting

So, I'm getting a lot of good use out of my new HP printer (despite a few problems with the Linux driver that have yet to be fully worked out -- luckily I'm not printing photos!). Joan, when buying the printer, was already eyeing the price of ink nervously (the printer cost us 300RMB; one spare set of ink cartridges cost us 290) and got even more nervous when she noticed that I blew through the demo cartridge that came with the printer (3ml of black ink instead of 10ml, for example) with my first print job.

She was right to be nervous.

Printing at any kind of readable resolution sucks through ink at a prodigious rate. The printer manufacturers don't make their money from printers, you see. They make their money selling the ink cartridges. I have, since getting the printer, printed off five books on various things needed for my work (reference manuals in the main). Two books (of about a hundred pages each) is all I get per cartridge.

Luckily I live in China. In my neighbourhood you can hardly fling a brick without hitting at least three shops selling printer ink. And not just official cartridges, but, too, third-party cartridges (at half to a third of the price) and cartridge refill kits. These latter are the real life-savers.

Today I bought some ink refills. These are 30ml syringes (the black cartridges are 10ml, recall; colour cartridges are 8ml each colour) with the ink you need in the colours you need. Using them is simple: you peel back a sticker, insert the syringe, push the plunger and when the ink seeps a bit out of the hole you're using you're done. And they cost, literally, a tenth the price of the cartridge.

Going with the black cartridge (the ink I'll be using most often), that means that for one tenth the price of an official cartridge I get three times the ink. And refilling a cartridge is hardly difficult work! Fumbling with the packaging and tape of a proper cartridge means replacing a cartridge takes two to three minutes. Injecting the ink takes five. Hardly an onerous task when you consider that my print batches take hours.

Now sure, the ink quality isn't quite as good as the HP official inks. The black isn't quite so deep. The cyan/magenta/yellow isn't quite so vibrant. But it's still better than the official inks I used in my old Epson before it gave up its ghost and certainly more than good enough for the kind of printing I do (text).

So why would I want to be given the shaft by HP for its cartridges?

Well, I do blow my warranty away if they catch that I used an unofficial ink. On the other hand, if I refill my black ink cartridge three times, I've saved more than the price of a whole new printer....

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Hello From Downtown Baghdad

Did I mention that today was Lantern Festival? That this means it's the last day of Spring Festival? And that this is the last day that fireworks are legally allowed to be sold or lit? That as a result I'm living in a damned close approximation of downtown Baghdad? You know why I haven't mentioned it?

Because there's no damned way you'd be able to hear me over the racket!

All in good fun, though.

Windows Security And Other Oxymorons

So, last time I installed Windows on Joan's laptop (my old Sony), I made a mistake. I installed Windows.

OK. More seriously, I made the mistake of installing anti-virus software after connecting to the network. Long before protection was in place her system had viruses up and running which could not be cleaned out with any anti-virus application. Still, the system was usable and there's no other Windows systems on the network for her to infect, so we left things lying.

Lying, that is, until her system was slowed down so much under the assault of viruses and adware that just minimising a window would take longer than 30 seconds.

So today it was "back up all your data so I can reinstall all the software in the known universe" day. This time, however, I did the smart thing and installed Windows, installed an anti-virus package, then installed the network. If this doesn't work, I'm going to tell Joan that she's got no choice. It's time to switch to Linux.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Aren't They Just The Cutest Thing?!

So, on Monday I begin the daily grind again. It's about time. I really don't enjoy holidays like this very much, you see. Travel is basically impossible unless you want to travel out of country or by plane. (Every expat needs to experience travelling over Spring Festival once while they're here. But only once.) Most places that would be of interest to me are one of:

  • closed;
  • overcrowded;
  • overpriced;
  • both overcrowded and overpriced.
So Spring Festival is, instead, a time of high stress family visits interspersed among long periods of intense boredom. You can't even do any decent shopping for geek toys or the like over much of that period.

So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to going back to work.

In traditional Chinese fashion I got sent my teaching schedule just shortly before the break began, too late for me to point out to them that the document they sent me couldn't be read. (It's a) in Chinese and b) garbled.) So I didn't even know which classes/subjects I'd be teaching until just this Thursday, not to mention small, unimportant details like where I'd be teaching them or when. I did finally get that information (with only one small question outstanding, but not requiring resolution until next week Wednesday -- so I expect to have an answer Tuesday night) just in time to plan lessons and arrange notes.

And today the monitor of one of my classes sends me an SMS message asking "will you be teaching us this term?". My answer is the typically Chinese one: "Maybe". Of course in context that means "yes". The monitor's response was a single word that makes me glad for my time spent in China. "Great!"

I didn't stay in China because of my employers. I didn't stay in China because of my coworkers (although I always found one or two at each place I liked -- Hello Nick, Wendy & Xiaoling!). I did stay in China to pursue the girl who later became my wife, but there was two years before that to account for.

No, the reason I stayed in China long enough to find the girl who'd later be my wife is simply the students. With the exception of the students attending the ratbag RMIT English Worldwide program at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology's International School (the non-REW students, too, were great!) my experience with students in China has been universally positive. My current school is no exception.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Just how stupid do they think I am?!

Received in the email today:

THE YAHOO LOTTERY INTERNATIONAL. INC

YAHOO LOTTERY INTL INC
Barley House Harold Road
Sutton, Greater London Sm1 4te United Kingdom.
MOTTO: FIGHTING POVERTY AROUND THE WORLD
Dear Winner,
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Contact Person: Prof. Desmond O'Connor.
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With the following are your Particulars. Security Code: AL/FEB/XX01 Ref: 4758961725
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NOTICE: You have received this message from Yahoo International Lotto Lottery prize dept. because you have visited one of our sponsored sites and have voluntarily given your email address to receive mails from their sponsors. If you wish to be taken out of this list do not reply to this mail, reply to the agent with the words remove. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print or copy any part of this message. If you believe you have received this message in error, please delete it and all copies of it from your system and notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail.
Thank you.
MANAGEMENT. YAHOO LOTTERY.
Wow! What a birthday present! One million dollars! I'm so there, man!

Replying by email (they lie, I lie):
Please send me the million dollars quickly. This couldn't have come at a better time. My daughter needs a life-saving operation and the family wasn't sure we could afford it!
I'll continue posting updates as I play these scamsters.

Update: March 3, 2007

Well, no word back from them. I guess they don't want to give me my million dollars to save my daughter....