Yeah, so, well, I missed a day. Sue me.

Yesterday, courtesy of a week of insufficient sleep followed by a night with at most four hours of sleep I was a zombie come update time. I'd like to say that I decided not to write my blog but that's not what happened. Instead I sat at my keyboard and drooled lightly. No decision was involved at all.

I had my first Saturday session teaching at Wuhuan Engineering today. It went well. As is usual for adult students I had a class of motivated people willing to do what I told them even if sometimes they weren't quite sure why. (I always wind up explaining why, but I like to leave a bit of a sense of curiosity in my students at times to keep them interested.) The theme of this week's set of lessons was "learning how to learn" so I closed off the week with a semi-unregulated discussion consisting of them discussing (in English, this being the whole point) things like what they wanted from the course and how they viewed the relationship of teacher to student.

I got some surprisingly good thoughts from them. I really love teaching adult students.

In other news, it's hot now. Yesterday cracked 34C and today I think peaked at 35 or even 36. Even now, at 7PM, it's 31C. Thankfully we haven't hit the high humidity yet. It's only 55% which makes the current "feels like" temperature something like 35. Given that it's only early May, I think this summer is going to be a real scorcher to make up for last summer's mild summer.

Delightful Chinglish

I had a fun week with the good students. The subject was idiom and translation—basically an introduction to not speaking Chinglish. Of course it's hard, typically, to find a good example of why learning proper idiomatic expression is important. Luckily I had a secret weapon at my disposal: the packaging of a lock Joan got with her new electric scooter. (I know I promised pictures when we next had good weather. We honestly haven't had any good weather recently. The closest we got was a half-overcast day on Friday and instead of going out for pictures we worried more about things like laundry.)

This lock package has what is probably the most delightful example of how not to do it that I've seen in China. It is absolutely breath-taking in its incomprehensibility. Let me give you a taste:

Quality is our fundamental
Ares locks on a "quality-oriented, good faith for the first" for the purpose of the constant pursuit of true wood products is expected, good looks, so that Every consumer to buy a Heart, and must feel at ease.

Maintenance:
In the course of use, such as the case of Ni Chen debris into the Keyhole, a key rotation or impeded access difficult situation, not to inject viscous – The lubricants, use a small gasoline into Suoxin, and then repeatedly inserted key cleansing, and afterwards in a few keys on the increase Qianfen(pencil Core Mo) can be lubricated.

(Note: all formatting and spelling errors above are verbatim from the package. I made sure there are no transcription errors.)

And so it goes on and on. Splendid, isn't it? It's like the god of bad English descended to make a perfect example for my lessons.

What I initially intended to do turned out to be too difficult, so I had to dumb down the exercise a bit. Originally my plan was to have them try and back-translate the Chinglish into the original Chinese and then translate it properly. It turns out that they couldn't recognize the relevant Chinese idioms and structures when expressed in another language. In the end I had to have someone in the class type out the Chinese on the screen so that they could just do the straightforward one-way translation.

The point of the lesson, of course, was to show that there's an awful lot more to language than mere grammar and vocabulary; that when (not if!) they found themselves having to do business in English with people from around the world they'd better learn idiom as well on top of everything else.

Of course their translations were better than what's on the package. (They'd have to be!) However the exercise highlighted other problems. Aside from the usual bunch of spelling and grammar errors (which aren't really important here since I'm not teaching English majors) there was a big difference in communication style. Their translations were circumlocutory and frustratingly vague with overuse of the passive voice. This is not the favoured language for business communication. Next week's lesson has practically written itself!

One of the questions I asked the classes was "Why is there any English on this package at all?" I got the usual suspects in terms of answers: maybe they want to sell abroad or to foreigners living in China, etc. I did get an interesting thought from one student however. He opined that the English was there to make the company look international to Chinese eyes. If he's right—and he well could be—then the quality of the translation doesn't matter at all. It's intended to wow the rubes, after all, not native speakers. That was food for thought, something I always like getting from my students.

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.

Don't Step in the Leadership

I never had any insight into what, precisely, was wrong with corporations and corporate management until I came to China. When you live in a country that gives the illusion of freedom and choice, it's all too easy to miss the more unpleasant cases within it.

One of the things that drives me most crazy in China is the so-called "leadership". These people aren't leaders. They're bureaucrats. Vicious, petty bureaucrats from the lowest levels on up to the Chairman of the Party. And, as such, they have all the leadership qualities of bureaucrats: none whatsoever.

A case in point is what's happening with my extracurricular activities. Smart people would see self-motivated employees doing extra work for the benefit of their employer and/or employer's customers and say "wow, that's great!" But that's not how corporate nor communist leadership thinks. They think instead, at a deep level, "if people are doing things without my oversight, that means they'll think I'm useless". So they meddle.

Way, way, way long ago, back when I worked at Pronexus, I saw this behaviour first-hand when Ian, the owner, walked into a skunkworks design session that Jeff Cooper and I were having with an eye toward updating the technology of Pronexus' product line so that it could thrive and expand in a rapidly-changing world. He demanded to see everything we were working on and then, basically, canned the project. (He later claimed he didn't tell us to stop, but I interpret "I'd rather see you working on things that will actually see the light of day" as a statement that he's never going to allow our project to see the light of day. I wasn't the only one who interpreted it that way either.)

This was my first taste of "leadership" screwing things up to their own detriment just so they could stay in control. I saw similar things happen at Entrust (Jeff and I, in fact, were just talking about one such incident two nights ago) all the time. New ideas are suppressed not because they're bad ideas, not because they won't make money or do good things but because any such new ideas are a threat to the position of the leader that allowed it to happen without oversight.

So imagine a country of 1.3 billion run exactly like that.

Today, after running my English Club and my Linux User's Group meetings for almost a month now, I was told that if I want to use a classroom over lunch hour I'd have to write a document explaining what I was using the classroom for and that I'd have to register my "lessons". Here I am, building something that will add value to the school's image and they decide that since it's not being done with proper oversight that I have to be told to do extra, unpaid work -- on top of the extra unpaid work I'm already doing voluntarily.

Guess who's not doing extra, unpaid work for the school anymore?

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.

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.