Ice storm cancelled...

...due to lack of interest.

We're going to get some freezing rain tonight and tomorrow morning, but no ice storm.

Weather warning (plus the shame of Canada).

First the shame side. The Province has an interesting editorial that harmonizes with my view on that Robert Dziekanski fiasco in Vancouver. Nobody who isn't circling the wagons can look at that situation and say that everything went the way it should have. As the editorial points out, every involved agency in that sordid affair has brought changes into effect to prevent such an incident from happening again. Every agency, that is, except the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The RCMP in this matter have smeared not only their force's honour and reputation, they've smeared the reputation of the country as a whole. I know of no Canadian expats anywhere who've not had to contend with people asking questions about Robert Dziekanski and how his death was allowed to happen. Canada's image as a kind, gentle and above all humane nation was struck a serious blow by this affair and it looks like the RCMP are bound and determined to keep it that way.

The testimony of the first officer (Constable Gerry Rundel, for the record) is flatly laughable. Four burly, presumably well-trained men (they'd better be damned well trained for the price tag that force bears!) in body armour felt afraid of a solitary pudgy man with a stapler? Excuse me? If it were not an actionable piece of slander or libel (whichever applies to online communication) I would suggest that Constable Rundel has been spending just a little bit too much time in the special section of the evidence room with the funny plants if he thinks this is a plausible explanation.

This goes double for when this same "peace officer" said he was afraid of the man's combative stance. (That combative stance, for the record, as the video shows, was hands down at his side, albeit with a stapler in his hand. Pretty fierce weapon a desktop stapler. I can see why four burly, well-trained, armoured police officers were in fear for their lives!)

Finally, the flat-out lying in the testimony gets to me. Constable Rundel claims that the four "peace officers" in question didn't discuss a game plan before encountering Robert Dziekanski. That this was allowed to go unanswered in the inquiry is beyond belief. In the video of the matter – the full video, not the bowdlerized version that reached television – you can clearly hear one officer asking for clearance to taze and another giving it: both before the officers had even come on the scene, mind, to assess the situation. Not only had some planning been done beforehand (and caught on record) but that planning basically consisted of "let's taze him and call it a day".

Not the RCMP's finest hour indeed. I can't help but remember that the Airborne regiment was disbanded for similar behaviour and they, arguably, had something resembling a reason to pound that Somali kid. (Not a good reason, note, just something resembling a reason.)

OK, rant is over. On to the weather. Tomorrow is going to be a lovely day according to forecasts. A high of 0C with freezing rain and the threat of a full-blown ice storm. Given the hinky nature of infrastructure in this city, if the ice storm happens you can expect me to be incommunicado for anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks depending on the severity. If I suddenly drop off the face of the planet don't worry about it. I'm probably just shivering in my home without electricity and/or Internet.

Global warming my ass.

First week of school.

Well, before I talk about my usual boring drivel, let me talk about a shameful thing I have done. I have signed up for Facebook. I resisted it for years, but it finally caught up with me. (Thankfully I've managed to avoid the pressure to sign up for MySpace or LiveJournal!) My blog here gets echoed over to Facebook, but pictures and stuff like that don't show up over there so this blog is still the main point of contact if you want to keep track of things.

The shame aside, this week was my first week of classes in the new year. In a pleasant surprise, I'm now only teaching four hours at the Sweathogs campus and eight hours with the real students. Three out of my four classes in the main campus are my students from last term and the last one is the one I inherited from Virginia after she went home in the middle of last term because of her cancer's sudden and drastic return. (I'll blog on her at some point but right now don't feel like it for reasons which will become obvious when I finally do get around to it.) The two classes at the Sweathogs campus, however, are new to me. They were Gudrun's students (the new teacher who replaced Peter when he ditched for a job that paid over five times as much) last term, but apparently I got them this term and she got at least two of mine from last term. The poor girl.

I really hate having to constantly contrast the two campuses, but really, it doesn't get much more "light and day" in comparison. Out of my four classes at the main campus, each class 27-29 students (except for the one I got from Virginia which weighs in at 39), I had four students missing total and maybe two or three who came in a few seconds late. Out of my two classes at the Sweathogs campus, one class at 24, the other 25 students, I had six students from one class not show up at all and three from the second (plus an additional four who snuck out at break and didn't come back before I closed the door). And I had well over a dozen total who came in late – some of them as much as fifteen minutes late.

You may have spotted that bit about the ones who snuck out at break and didn't make it back in time? Yeah. I'm harsh with those retards this term. And here's the funny thing: I told them I was going to do it. I gave them a single sheet of very simple rules that very clearly stated I would be doing this! It doesn't get much clearer than "the door closes when the bell rings and if you're not in here, you're marked absent". Yet four boys decided to sneak out during the ten minute break to buy breakfast. (Why aren't they buying breakfast before class starts? Well, you got me there. I have no damned idea!)

This term I'm not going to take any bullshit from these cretins. Their marks are divided into 40% for performance in the first half of term and 60% for the second half. I told them that missing class three times means that first mark is 0 and missing class five times means that second mark is also 0. And four boys decided to test it and are 20% of their way to getting zero for the whole course.

God-damned idiots.

At least, however, I get this all over with early in the week. My first class with the Sweathogs is Monday morning and my second is Wednesday. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings are good students and Friday afternoon is my last class of good students. I end the week on a very high double note.

The weather has taken a turn for the colder in this first week. In the two weeks leading up to classes the weather was getting warmer and warmer to the point that we were seeing 25C in the daytime and lows of 11C at night. Now, however, we're getting rain and temperatures that break 10C in the daytime only if we're lucky. I know you guys in Canada are laughing at the notion that this represents cold weather, but let me point out three salient features of this weather: humidity that never goes below 80% and is usually stuck straight up at 100%, medium to high winds and, last but not least, nothing at all is ever insulated so that outside temperature and humidity is pretty much also your inside temperature and humidity. Only the winds get broken. Somewhat. When your crazed wife and her crazed mother aren't opening them all for circulation. (I'm SO in trouble for that now when Joan reads this!)

Still, the weather this winter was a joy compared to last winter. This winter we had the usual two days with snow, none of which stayed on the ground longer than a few hours. It's almost embarrassing that I had a winter jacket, a fleece vest, a pair of winter gloves and a nice wool sweater sent from Canada this year to keep me warm. I mean I put them to good use here and there, but for the most part it was all overkill.

The Barrie Connection and other stories.

So, tomorrow school restarts and we'll see if my conviction to blog at least once a week (holidays notwithstanding) holds true.

Last time I posted I made a cryptic reference to synchronicity and Barrie. I thought I'd expand a bit on this this time.

Many years ago, while I was in the Army Cadets (2596 Royal Canadian Dragoon Cadet Corps)—where I met Canada's current Chief of Defense Staff while he was still a lowly 2nd Lieutenant—I went to Ipperwash Army Cadet Camp over the summer and had my first real romance. That first romance was with a girl (Marie Ruddy) from Barrie, Ontario. Fast forward a few years and we come to the story I related last week about my half-sister Anne. Who lived, at the time, in Barrie Ontario. Rounding it out, I've done on-and-off searches for various classmates and friends over the years and finally, just a short time ago (as in less than two weeks before today), I tracked down one of my buddies from Lahr Senior School, Brent Kogan. Who after a stint in Winnipeg wound up running a business in Barrie, Ontario.

I wonder how many other Barrie connections I will uncover in the upcoming years?

So, enough reminiscence and back to the present. Joan bought a bicycle over the summer because she was tired of taking very inconvenient buses to get to work. (Walking to catch the bus that took her to work was basically almost half the distance to work to begin with.) That bicycle was stolen last week when she went out to Huazhong University of Science and Technology to register for her Master's program. As a result she had to get a replacement and this time chose to do what she was supposed to do in the summer: get an electric scooter. (I still don't know what made her think a bicycle was a good idea.) After five hours, 38 minutes, 25 seconds (I was counting!) and visiting at least ten different places selling these things we finally bought one. It's a cute little unit which I'll have pictures of shortly when the weather lets me take pictures that don't suck. It's a dark-ish red bike designed to hold one person Joan's size comfortably. (When I get on it it's comical how wide I have to spread my legs to be able to turn the handlebars!)

The theft of the bicycle, however, reminded me of something that's been in my thoughts for a while in reference to China: honesty. For all practical purposes it doesn't exist here. Or, rather, it exists as long as you redefine it.

As far as I can tell when someone is introduced to you in China as "honest" it means "he probably won't steal money from you". In terms of speaking the truth there seems to be very little to no honesty outside of the family unit. Lies drop from Chinese mouths like they do from fishermen or cops telling stories of their exploits. Even during the negotiations for the scooter I saw glimpses of this. Joan was not entirely enthused at the price of the unit she eventually bought (directly as a result of me telling her to buy it because she so obviously liked it!) so the price dropped by a token 100RMB to help sway her decision as "the lowest we can possibly go". Later a man bought a black version of the same model and was getting it outfitted while Joan was still dithering. She boldly approached him and asked him how much he paid for it. (Signs of mistrusting the sales staff, obviously.) He answered 2580RMB (Joan was being offered the bike for 2480). Later he came in while we were (well, Joan was) still dithering and asked quietly what we'd been offered. Without missing a beat Joan told him "the same as you".

This is a small example, of course, and not that different from what you'd get in an equivalent situation in Canada (with the exception of boldly walking up to raw strangers and asking what they bought something for, I think), but it's the proverbial thin end of the wedge. This is how absolutely everything is done in China: you say whatever the other side wants to hear to get your goals accomplished with no regard for the truth. The only place where honesty in the sense we mean it enters the vocabulary is within the family unit (as I mentioned before) where, in typical Chinese fashion, the dials are all turned to eleven and the honesty verges on the brutal.

Food for thought. I'm not sure where the thoughts will lead or what will follow from them, but it's still something to ponder I suspect.

Holiday is almost over.

Well, at least I think it's almost over. This being the Wuhan University International Software School nobody's actually bothered to tell me when my classes begin again. I'm guessing they'll begin on Monday, but undoubtedly I won't be told for sure until Sunday night or something. I think in the three years I've been here the longest lead time for information like this that I've ever received (without digging for it on my own) was three days (and that was for a 2-week intensive course with the same class every day for eight hours! – four semesters of English in two weeks).

I also decided to take a break from the blog over the official holiday, so I have a bit of catching up to do.

One of the first things of interest that happened during the holiday was a student of mine (Li Zefeng) who is one of two people at the Sweathogs Campus that has any worth as a student (and maybe one of six who have worth as human beings)—I am not exaggerating here!—dropped by for a visit. We talked a little about his future plans and goals (something I'll likely bring up in a future blog entry if I run out of family material) and he, naturally, brought gifts: a package with two tins of nice 西湖龙井茶 (West Lake Dragon Well tea—an internationally famed tea), a bag of coconut candies which Joan promptly hid from me and now doles out in small doses and a box of dried black wood ears (a kind of edible fungus, and a tasty kind to boot, but I think they're also considered medicinal). In return for this I gave him some software that will assist him in building the skills that he's not getting at his phony school.

The family did a few visits during this time, but as it's always awkward when I go visit because of the intrinsic clash of the communication barrier vs. the natural Chinese desire to be a good host, I stayed behind most days. Sadly this included a day when Joan and her mother were supposed to be buying a house-warming present for her uncle but she instead went to visit a park with Lucas for most of the day. I have pictures from this that I will be sorting through and uploading for Sunday's returned regular update so hold on for a bit. (Hint: Lucas does his incredibly cute routine again.)

Ah, what the Hell! I'll do that right now!

OK, I'm back. Here are some selected photos of Lucas at the park:

From Lucas

The last interesting thing to happen to me over this holiday was hearing from my half-sister Anne again. "Half-sister?" the two of you who don't already know the story are asking. "What are you talking about?" Let's get into the wayback machine to give some context.

Back when I was 30 years old and living in Ottawa writing software for Pronexus, I got the most surreal telephone call of my life. My mother called up and started saying things that I thought, at first, were a joke. There were only two problems with this theory: this kind of joke is something more that my father would have done (my mother has no discernible sense of humour!), and there was no punchline. The basic story was that six years before I was born my mother had a baby daughter out of wedlock and had immediately put her up for adoption. I won't get into the gory details of all this, but the practical upshot of it all was that I was told at 30 that I had a half-sister six years older than me.

As it so happens, I was the closest person to my newly-(re)surfaced half-sister. I got in touch with her by telephone and then drove my way from Ottawa to Barrie (which reminds me that there's an awful lot of odd synchronicity between me and Barrie) to meet her as the first representative of the family. The meeting went OK, she then went on to visit my mother, the two corresponded for a while.

Then she dropped off the planet.

Now, many years later, my mother asks me if it's OK for "Anne" to get in touch with me. I had by this time almost completely forgotten about this Anne and thought it was weird for her to ask me if my cousin Anne could get in touch with me. (Thought running through my head was "well, duh!") So I told her that there are only two people in the family I didn't want to ever hear from and one of them wasn't even in the family anymore. The rest were more than welcome. Then I found out it was half-sister Anne my mother was speaking about. (Not that this changes anything. There is still only one current family member I don't want to hear from.)

It was interesting to hear that Anne had contacted the rest of the family once again, so I of course looked forward to her email. I almost missed it, however, because changes in Anne's life involved a change in her name. I was looking for an email from Anne Crannie and instead got an email with a subject that looked like it came straight out of a spam artist's from an Anne Howat. For days it sat in my inbox because I was taking it easy for the holidays and didn't really want to wrestle with spam settings and the like, so it took me a while to find out that this was half-sister Anne. Once I did read it, however, of course I rattled off a reply (largely incoherent) and a pointer to this blog.

Thus stands the state of the family. And now that I've had my Spring Festival hiatus, I'll be posting every Sunday(ish) again.