What an anticlimax.
As the Heathrow Express emerged into the dusk as it departed from the airport, I felt happy to be home for the first time in three years. And then on the Monday, things turned bad.
I had ordered a new Switch card and had included the information when I'd be collecting it because I knew there was going to be a delay between the request and my arrival. When I got to the bank, I found that the card had been destroyed, although I learnt today that it perhaps should've been left alone because it seems that the date I'd be collecting it was passed on. I'm not sure of the facts, though.
I ordered a new card, but want of it left me in a difficult position because I was limited to withdrawing £50 a day. My plans to buy things like a new laptop, some games and various other items went up in smoke. I was told that a replacement card would take three to five days to arrive, but when I went into the bank yesterday, the card had yet to arrive. It turned up today and I hurried off to the bank to get it, thinking that I was free of the shackles which had been constraining me for the past week.
Let's just say that the shackles were loosened a little, but not removed. When I got the card, I was then told that I'd need a new PIN number, which wasn't going to arrive for five days. It might turn up on Friday (though I think not). I can get out as much money as I like (but only from the bank), and I can do some shopping online, but I can't use the card in money machines or shops. Thus the card isn't completely useless, but I still continue to be chafed by restrictions.
Today, I bought stuff via Amazon UK, including a new laptop which should be arriving tomorrow.
Overall, this has been a disastrous holiday because of the retarded banking system in this country. For a lot of last week, I was wishing that I'd stayed in China, and even thinking that I ought to go (or, have gone) to Hong Kong where I don't have any of these ludicrous problems. If I'm back next year, the Switch card won't be an issue. Mind you, I still don't know what next year will bring. It may be another of those occasions when staying in China is better than leaving the country because of practical reasons.
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Friday, 13 June 2008
Nanny does it again
The yin and yang of blocking.
I've just been over to Danwei where the news is that at least from Chengdu and Beijing blogspot is unblocked, but blogger is allegedly inaccessible. Previously, you've been able to post to blogspot even if you can't read it afterwards unless you use a proxy. The Internet Paranoia Squad are going to need to sort that because hordes of foreigners are going to want to post on their blogspot blogs while they're here. (Not to mention Live Journal and any other blogging services which are still off the menu.)
Although things relaxed a bit immediately after the earthquake, local paranoia is apparently trying to prevent people from discussing the destruction of schools during the earthquake (although I've yet to see whether schools really were disproportionately affected or whether this belief has been coloured by parental hysteria). I was expecting something like this to happen eventually. The pattern is the usual one. The Party lets the people scream and shout for a bit, and then expects them to be quiet. "Of course we'll look into the matter," says the local 夫人 who isn't really about to do anything.
Anyway, this summer I'll be briefly giving up one paranoid self-deluding country for another as I return home to the UK for a couple of weeks for the first time in three years. Apart from the language, I'm not sure whether the two countries are that different. They're both surveillance states; they both have education systems which are all about exams and little else; they both have governments that believe they know best. This is mostly a shopping expedition: bookshops and perhaps a new laptop.
I've just been over to Danwei where the news is that at least from Chengdu and Beijing blogspot is unblocked, but blogger is allegedly inaccessible. Previously, you've been able to post to blogspot even if you can't read it afterwards unless you use a proxy. The Internet Paranoia Squad are going to need to sort that because hordes of foreigners are going to want to post on their blogspot blogs while they're here. (Not to mention Live Journal and any other blogging services which are still off the menu.)
Although things relaxed a bit immediately after the earthquake, local paranoia is apparently trying to prevent people from discussing the destruction of schools during the earthquake (although I've yet to see whether schools really were disproportionately affected or whether this belief has been coloured by parental hysteria). I was expecting something like this to happen eventually. The pattern is the usual one. The Party lets the people scream and shout for a bit, and then expects them to be quiet. "Of course we'll look into the matter," says the local 夫人 who isn't really about to do anything.
Anyway, this summer I'll be briefly giving up one paranoid self-deluding country for another as I return home to the UK for a couple of weeks for the first time in three years. Apart from the language, I'm not sure whether the two countries are that different. They're both surveillance states; they both have education systems which are all about exams and little else; they both have governments that believe they know best. This is mostly a shopping expedition: bookshops and perhaps a new laptop.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Out, but perhaps not completely out
Loadsa 老外.
My sources inform me that the programme's foreign backers have pulled out because they weren't getting kids from the programme, replete with the contents of mummy and daddy's capacious wallet, going to their fourth-rate institution. There's a surprise. Actually, the foreign backers were only in the programme because the institute in question was in financial difficulty a few years ago. They also never promoted themselves in the schools and since we no longer had anything to do with them, we weren't about to be doing that ourselves.
In place of them, the school is getting some Cambridge-based programme (A-levels?) which is possibly like the one that they were getting at my school in Beijing just before I left. I assume that the teachers on this programme have to be accredited so that I couldn't switch from our programme to that one. Besides, if the salary I'm hearing is right, they're only being paid ¥20K (c. £1450) for the (academic) year which is the usual amount you get for working directly for a school here. I get paid quite a bit more than that. For our rates of pay to even out, they'd have to be teaching the grand total of three classes a week. You could survive on ¥2K a month, but I'd find it difficult. (Then again, I confess that I've been spending far too much money recently; wine shops selling real wine are dangerous ^_^)
Apparently, there will eventually be thirty such teachers here, although not next year. I'm not sure whether the school has even considered what a headache that's going to be. We're being moved to the 5th floor (well, the 4th in the real world), but it's not clear whether our classrooms up there will remain as they are or put to some other use. I hope that we won't be up there because the last thing I need is Dowager Empress Cixi being next door. 拜拜 media studies days. Also not clear whether we'll be expected to share our facilities with the new kids. That could be awkward.
My sources inform me that the programme's foreign backers have pulled out because they weren't getting kids from the programme, replete with the contents of mummy and daddy's capacious wallet, going to their fourth-rate institution. There's a surprise. Actually, the foreign backers were only in the programme because the institute in question was in financial difficulty a few years ago. They also never promoted themselves in the schools and since we no longer had anything to do with them, we weren't about to be doing that ourselves.
In place of them, the school is getting some Cambridge-based programme (A-levels?) which is possibly like the one that they were getting at my school in Beijing just before I left. I assume that the teachers on this programme have to be accredited so that I couldn't switch from our programme to that one. Besides, if the salary I'm hearing is right, they're only being paid ¥20K (c. £1450) for the (academic) year which is the usual amount you get for working directly for a school here. I get paid quite a bit more than that. For our rates of pay to even out, they'd have to be teaching the grand total of three classes a week. You could survive on ¥2K a month, but I'd find it difficult. (Then again, I confess that I've been spending far too much money recently; wine shops selling real wine are dangerous ^_^)
Apparently, there will eventually be thirty such teachers here, although not next year. I'm not sure whether the school has even considered what a headache that's going to be. We're being moved to the 5th floor (well, the 4th in the real world), but it's not clear whether our classrooms up there will remain as they are or put to some other use. I hope that we won't be up there because the last thing I need is Dowager Empress Cixi being next door. 拜拜 media studies days. Also not clear whether we'll be expected to share our facilities with the new kids. That could be awkward.
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Themes are subversive
Unless they're from Google.
This country is pathetic. Really pathetic. I thought it was about time I changed the theme on my iGoogle page and started looking through what was available. At first I could see all the themes, and then I could only see the ones from Google. Everything else was getting blocked. I can't believe that every non-Google site from which the themes were coming was somehow offensive to Nanny.
I tried one of the offending themes in case they were available in spite of their innate subversiveness, but it completely screwed up my home page and I had to choose one of Google's own themes.
I'm largely not bothered about Internet censorship. As I said somewhere long ago, most of the things that really get Nanny having a tantrum aren't things I'm remotely interested in and thus blocks on such sites don't matter. I'm bothered when the block affects some site which is innocuous, and irrelevant to Nanny's petty paranoia. What reason can there be for Omniglot to be on the proscribed list? It's a language site. How is information about Occitan on the Internet an affront to the nation?
The nation likes to boast (in truth, somewhat inaccurately) about its 5000 year old history, but it's never grown up. It's all part of the culture. For centuries, governments, professing benevolence, have invariably been remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal. The people who have done all the work for these governments are pigs with their snouts buried deeply in the trough. People's lives have meant little or nothing to their rulers. Regimes come and go, but their philosophy is always the same: don't trust the people to think for themselves. Why not? Because the people will, sooner or later, overthrow the old regime, usually at the behest of someone who wants to be the new remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal ruler, who finds that he can't really trust the people because they might just as easily dispense with him and install a new megalomaniac.
The government always acts in the name of the people, but really it's just acting in its own self-interest. It doesn't want the people to think for themselves. I can decide what Internet sites I'm going to visit and which ones I don't. I don't need someone to decide that for me. Of course, this is all well and good because I'm not one of the soggy-brained youths of this nation who are so easily likely to behave hysterically at the slightest provocation, but we're looking at a vicious circle. Young people, unable to think (rationally) for themselves, behave irrationally. The government, fearing the consequences of irrational behaviour, try to direct how people should think, but the result is that they can't think for themselves. So round and round it goes.
I've seen consequences of this recently. Sometimes it's necessary to make an executive decision. As much as you might like to inform the drooling imbecile higher up the food chain, that person isn't around. Such a decision was made recently, but Dowager Empress Cixi just couldn't get such a notion through her thick skull. Another consequence is the inability to think about something before reacting to it. Logical consideration beforehand would obviate invalid conclusions, but no one's trained to do this because no one's trained to think for themselves.
I get really sick of this stupid place at times.
This country is pathetic. Really pathetic. I thought it was about time I changed the theme on my iGoogle page and started looking through what was available. At first I could see all the themes, and then I could only see the ones from Google. Everything else was getting blocked. I can't believe that every non-Google site from which the themes were coming was somehow offensive to Nanny.
I tried one of the offending themes in case they were available in spite of their innate subversiveness, but it completely screwed up my home page and I had to choose one of Google's own themes.
I'm largely not bothered about Internet censorship. As I said somewhere long ago, most of the things that really get Nanny having a tantrum aren't things I'm remotely interested in and thus blocks on such sites don't matter. I'm bothered when the block affects some site which is innocuous, and irrelevant to Nanny's petty paranoia. What reason can there be for Omniglot to be on the proscribed list? It's a language site. How is information about Occitan on the Internet an affront to the nation?
The nation likes to boast (in truth, somewhat inaccurately) about its 5000 year old history, but it's never grown up. It's all part of the culture. For centuries, governments, professing benevolence, have invariably been remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal. The people who have done all the work for these governments are pigs with their snouts buried deeply in the trough. People's lives have meant little or nothing to their rulers. Regimes come and go, but their philosophy is always the same: don't trust the people to think for themselves. Why not? Because the people will, sooner or later, overthrow the old regime, usually at the behest of someone who wants to be the new remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal ruler, who finds that he can't really trust the people because they might just as easily dispense with him and install a new megalomaniac.
The government always acts in the name of the people, but really it's just acting in its own self-interest. It doesn't want the people to think for themselves. I can decide what Internet sites I'm going to visit and which ones I don't. I don't need someone to decide that for me. Of course, this is all well and good because I'm not one of the soggy-brained youths of this nation who are so easily likely to behave hysterically at the slightest provocation, but we're looking at a vicious circle. Young people, unable to think (rationally) for themselves, behave irrationally. The government, fearing the consequences of irrational behaviour, try to direct how people should think, but the result is that they can't think for themselves. So round and round it goes.
I've seen consequences of this recently. Sometimes it's necessary to make an executive decision. As much as you might like to inform the drooling imbecile higher up the food chain, that person isn't around. Such a decision was made recently, but Dowager Empress Cixi just couldn't get such a notion through her thick skull. Another consequence is the inability to think about something before reacting to it. Logical consideration beforehand would obviate invalid conclusions, but no one's trained to do this because no one's trained to think for themselves.
I get really sick of this stupid place at times.
Monday, 28 April 2008
It's not you; it's me
Where's the lovin' gone?
I was just getting back home at midday when I had a phone call from Central Command. It turns out that there isn't going to be any Senior 1 intake next term after all, and only three of us will be required – me, Glen and Row. Brian's been offered a place at another school somewhere. It means that the programme here will be coming to an end about a year from now. Moreover, my pay would remain unchanged because there will only be three of us here. Considering how long I've been with the programme, I'm not happy about this.
I later heard from sources close to the Dowager Empress Cixi that the school would like to continue the programme because they make money from it. The decision to end it came from Central Command. I don't know why such a decision should've been made because this is one of the better schools in the programme. Possible reasons are politics and money. I also wonder what effect the new foreign partner might've had.
When the programme expanded, I thought it'd grown too large too soon. When a new foreign partner joined the dance last year, I wondered how that particular threesome was going to work; whether the groom would start raising the red lantern before the new concubine's room while the first wife languished.
Where to next? I don't know whether there's much chance of getting a job here which pays as well as the present one. I'm not out of a job because there are other posts elsewhere in the programme, but with a few exceptions, they'd be in places which don't interest me. I don't want to end up in another anonymous provincial town. It's also possible that I'd end up working for the concubine, something I considered briefly last year until I heard what the job entailed – no thanks. My preferred option is to try and get a job in Hong Kong, although that creates other complications. On that, the rest is silence.
I was just getting back home at midday when I had a phone call from Central Command. It turns out that there isn't going to be any Senior 1 intake next term after all, and only three of us will be required – me, Glen and Row. Brian's been offered a place at another school somewhere. It means that the programme here will be coming to an end about a year from now. Moreover, my pay would remain unchanged because there will only be three of us here. Considering how long I've been with the programme, I'm not happy about this.
I later heard from sources close to the Dowager Empress Cixi that the school would like to continue the programme because they make money from it. The decision to end it came from Central Command. I don't know why such a decision should've been made because this is one of the better schools in the programme. Possible reasons are politics and money. I also wonder what effect the new foreign partner might've had.
When the programme expanded, I thought it'd grown too large too soon. When a new foreign partner joined the dance last year, I wondered how that particular threesome was going to work; whether the groom would start raising the red lantern before the new concubine's room while the first wife languished.
Where to next? I don't know whether there's much chance of getting a job here which pays as well as the present one. I'm not out of a job because there are other posts elsewhere in the programme, but with a few exceptions, they'd be in places which don't interest me. I don't want to end up in another anonymous provincial town. It's also possible that I'd end up working for the concubine, something I considered briefly last year until I heard what the job entailed – no thanks. My preferred option is to try and get a job in Hong Kong, although that creates other complications. On that, the rest is silence.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
The little pest
Like Dracula, he keeps coming back to get swatted.
I seem to have acquired a little pest over on Green Bamboo (the active one) recently. Someone – and this can't be automated – keeps leaving a comment with a bunch of links to sites which claim to be selling virtual merchandise for various online games. A Google search seems to reveal nothing good about these people. The stupid thing is that unless you happen to be searching for the content of the post (the comment has appeared with several different ones, but only one at a time), you're never going to find the comment.
The culprit appears to be Chinese since the comment always starts "Welcome to visit…" which is a piece of typical Chinglish. A search also leads to quite a few Chinese sites, several of which Google marks as harmful. I seldom see such warnings and the whole thing stinks.
Apart from that, I'm all right, although I've been suffering from a tension headache for the past couple of days. Green Bamboo's been doing quite well. I thought the surge at the start of term might be a blip, but I'm now averaging around 350+ hits a week over there. The majority are coming from RSS feeds, but what makes them a little strange is that a lot of them are feeds to old entries. I still keep expecting the number to decline as if my present level of popularity is exceptional.
I'm about to renew my contract, but that has brought uncertainty with it. The foreign partner in the company I work for has had next to nothing to do with the programme for some time now and is pulling out. Their direct involvement in the second year was a disaster. Actually, the whole thing was badly planned. It wasn't until the third year that a proper programme was established, and now we're about to head back to Square One. When I first came here, there was no overall programme. The school gave us Look Ahead (to call the book dreadful is to be unreasonably polite) and that's what we used.
Even when we had an established programme, it was clear that the schools never really understood the idea. They seemed to think that they ought to dictate what we were teaching and even where we were teaching. Some schools seem to have thought that since we were being paid by someone else that it was acceptable (probably for a small fee paid to the school) to be farmed out to other schools. As far as the first part goes, the schools are going to be free to decide what we do. If we're lucky, nothing will change. Her Ladyship, the Wicked Witch of the North, who seems none too wise about education matters, has told the schools as much.
I can't help but feel that this fragmentation is a Bad Thing and the schools may find they're disappointed. Some schools may continue with things as they are, which would be wise: harmony and social stability are Good Things (in this case). Other schools are likely to move in a different direction and find that various things they try and get us to do just don't work. Then they'll try various other schemes in rapid succession (that's what happened with the Senior 3 classes), none of which work. Then her Ladyship might realise that her decision is a terrible mistake.
Will there still be an academic manager? I don't know. I assume that someone will still be managing the HR stuff, but it may not be a foreigner. In other words, we may not have anyone who cares to speak on our behalf.
Several schools are pulling out of the programme, but not the one I'm at. There should still be classes here for at least the next two years because there will be new Senior 1 classes next term. But if we're asked to do things which I think are unreasonable (e.g. conversation classes), then it's really time to move on. At least in this programme, I don't really want to leave Chengdu. I've lived just outside Beijing and appreciated what it had to offer; I've also lived in a place where there was nothing of interest to foreigners. The latter is where most of the schools in the programme are to be found.
I don't know whether there's going to be a conference at the start of next term or merely a reception followed by dispatch to our schools. I'll be curious to see how many of the old lags are still around. I'm the sole surviving first gen out of a fairly small intake. I don't know how many second gens might be lasting into their sixth year. More recent generations seem to be less durable.
I seem to have acquired a little pest over on Green Bamboo (the active one) recently. Someone – and this can't be automated – keeps leaving a comment with a bunch of links to sites which claim to be selling virtual merchandise for various online games. A Google search seems to reveal nothing good about these people. The stupid thing is that unless you happen to be searching for the content of the post (the comment has appeared with several different ones, but only one at a time), you're never going to find the comment.
The culprit appears to be Chinese since the comment always starts "Welcome to visit…" which is a piece of typical Chinglish. A search also leads to quite a few Chinese sites, several of which Google marks as harmful. I seldom see such warnings and the whole thing stinks.
Apart from that, I'm all right, although I've been suffering from a tension headache for the past couple of days. Green Bamboo's been doing quite well. I thought the surge at the start of term might be a blip, but I'm now averaging around 350+ hits a week over there. The majority are coming from RSS feeds, but what makes them a little strange is that a lot of them are feeds to old entries. I still keep expecting the number to decline as if my present level of popularity is exceptional.
I'm about to renew my contract, but that has brought uncertainty with it. The foreign partner in the company I work for has had next to nothing to do with the programme for some time now and is pulling out. Their direct involvement in the second year was a disaster. Actually, the whole thing was badly planned. It wasn't until the third year that a proper programme was established, and now we're about to head back to Square One. When I first came here, there was no overall programme. The school gave us Look Ahead (to call the book dreadful is to be unreasonably polite) and that's what we used.
Even when we had an established programme, it was clear that the schools never really understood the idea. They seemed to think that they ought to dictate what we were teaching and even where we were teaching. Some schools seem to have thought that since we were being paid by someone else that it was acceptable (probably for a small fee paid to the school) to be farmed out to other schools. As far as the first part goes, the schools are going to be free to decide what we do. If we're lucky, nothing will change. Her Ladyship, the Wicked Witch of the North, who seems none too wise about education matters, has told the schools as much.
I can't help but feel that this fragmentation is a Bad Thing and the schools may find they're disappointed. Some schools may continue with things as they are, which would be wise: harmony and social stability are Good Things (in this case). Other schools are likely to move in a different direction and find that various things they try and get us to do just don't work. Then they'll try various other schemes in rapid succession (that's what happened with the Senior 3 classes), none of which work. Then her Ladyship might realise that her decision is a terrible mistake.
Will there still be an academic manager? I don't know. I assume that someone will still be managing the HR stuff, but it may not be a foreigner. In other words, we may not have anyone who cares to speak on our behalf.
Several schools are pulling out of the programme, but not the one I'm at. There should still be classes here for at least the next two years because there will be new Senior 1 classes next term. But if we're asked to do things which I think are unreasonable (e.g. conversation classes), then it's really time to move on. At least in this programme, I don't really want to leave Chengdu. I've lived just outside Beijing and appreciated what it had to offer; I've also lived in a place where there was nothing of interest to foreigners. The latter is where most of the schools in the programme are to be found.
I don't know whether there's going to be a conference at the start of next term or merely a reception followed by dispatch to our schools. I'll be curious to see how many of the old lags are still around. I'm the sole surviving first gen out of a fairly small intake. I don't know how many second gens might be lasting into their sixth year. More recent generations seem to be less durable.
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Then I saw it
Now I don't.
For quite some time now, I've been able to get onto blogspot via a very effective proxy. It seems, however, that that may have come to an end or a strong block (whatever one of those might be) has been placed on blogspot since the events in Τιβέτ. It's quite possible that the latter is responsible, because sites that might've been available via proxy before were also blocked. But it's also possible that a recent update to Firefox has messed things up.
As usual, Nanny has been incapable of being consistent during recent events in the imperium sericum. The main page of the Guardian Unlimited got blocked (though it's now available once again), but everything else was still accessible via RSS feeds. The BBC is now back in a way that it hasn't been in my 5½ years in China. As I type this in the early evening of a grey day in Chengdu, I'm listening to R4. The Beeb seems to have become fully functional mere days after the protests in Тибэт were effectively over.
I was able to read various stories about Τιβέτ on The Independent, but I assumed that on The Guardian, which obviously has a much high profile in Cyberia than The Indie, such stories were being instantly blocked. Instead of banging my head against a wall of blocks on English news sources, I switched to reading the stories in two Italian newspapers, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, which forced me to make some effort with Italian rather than the usual mucking around.
But the odd thing is that stories about Тибэт were available from both sites even although the name of the place and its towns are mostly identical with their English counterparts, and could be found as part of the URL of the story. It seems that apart from obvious languages (Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean), the rest of the linguistic world is less likely to be subject to Nanny's contrary tantrums.
I assume that like before, I can still compose and post blogspot entries, but for one reason or another, it appears that on this occasion I won't be able to check the entry afterwards.
For quite some time now, I've been able to get onto blogspot via a very effective proxy. It seems, however, that that may have come to an end or a strong block (whatever one of those might be) has been placed on blogspot since the events in Τιβέτ. It's quite possible that the latter is responsible, because sites that might've been available via proxy before were also blocked. But it's also possible that a recent update to Firefox has messed things up.
As usual, Nanny has been incapable of being consistent during recent events in the imperium sericum. The main page of the Guardian Unlimited got blocked (though it's now available once again), but everything else was still accessible via RSS feeds. The BBC is now back in a way that it hasn't been in my 5½ years in China. As I type this in the early evening of a grey day in Chengdu, I'm listening to R4. The Beeb seems to have become fully functional mere days after the protests in Тибэт were effectively over.
I was able to read various stories about Τιβέτ on The Independent, but I assumed that on The Guardian, which obviously has a much high profile in Cyberia than The Indie, such stories were being instantly blocked. Instead of banging my head against a wall of blocks on English news sources, I switched to reading the stories in two Italian newspapers, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, which forced me to make some effort with Italian rather than the usual mucking around.
But the odd thing is that stories about Тибэт were available from both sites even although the name of the place and its towns are mostly identical with their English counterparts, and could be found as part of the URL of the story. It seems that apart from obvious languages (Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean), the rest of the linguistic world is less likely to be subject to Nanny's contrary tantrums.
I assume that like before, I can still compose and post blogspot entries, but for one reason or another, it appears that on this occasion I won't be able to check the entry afterwards.
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