06 Jan 07
As many of you know, I ended up working this weekend. The reason really made no sense to me, or the other westerners; however, it seemed to make perfect sense to the Chinese.
We worked Saturday and Sunday so that we could take Tuesday and Wednesday off, following the holiday on Monday. The thought, on the minds of all of us westerners, was, why not just take Saturday and Sunday off? Instead, this goofy approach messed up all of our schedules, their schedules, and, undoubtedly, the schedules of millions of people across the country. I really think that the reason was just to do something different; whatever the reason, I worked Saturday.
I would have also had to have worked on Sunday, except that I traded classes with another teacher. Julia has several of the same classes that I have.
Remember, the students are assigned to a class group at the beginning of their college life and that class group is given a number (easy enough, I have classes one through five). They then attend all of their classes, and many out of class activities, as a group.
Because she, Julia, also has classes one through four, we were able to make a trade in the classes. This left us both with classes on only one day, I did Saturday and she did Sunday. (And no, Julia is not her real name. However, her family name sounds a bit like Julia, it is a name that I can pronounce, and the students know who I am talking about when I say, "Julia." [Even if they do laugh when I say it]).
An example of the, out of class, activities, that are attended as a group include the Friday that immediately preceded this weekend, in which I had to work. The student classes reserved large rooms at the college and held various parties. As a teacher I moved between the groups that were, generally about two classes, or about a hundred students. Some of the parties focused on, student produced, skits and dances. There were a lot of song and musical instrument recitals. Some of the classes got together and watched movies on the large, projection screens (there is a… um… "Free" web site there in China that allows a person to watch any of hundreds of movies, there is a reason that this site is unusable for my classes; however, it allows anyone with web access to watch them. So, the students start the projector and the movie, and then they enjoy free theater.).
On Saturday I then showed Titanic. I used some discs that were purchased here in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />
I ended up showing the film twice, this allowed me to show it to four of my classes; like I said, I was doubling up my classes. I first showed it at
On Sunday, because I had made the arrangement, I had no classes. Instead I went to the usual meeting with some of the westerners, which we hold on Sundays and then returned to my flat in order to do some writing; I also did quite a bit of lounging around and reading. (Wow, it is hard to type this, my fingers are cold; thus I am producing a lot of typos. Therefore, my usual, very slow, typing, is slowed even more by the number of corrections I am making.)
Monday was a rather normal shopping trip. Ellen, a female student of Michelle's, went with us and provided quite of bit of help. It is always funny when you ask for help finding something. All I wanted was some spices and vinegar. I ended up being brought vegetables, soup mix, and other things that I can not remember or identify (they seem to be food), in the pile were my spices and vinegar; so, I did not complain.
It was at that time that Michelle and I discussed the possibility of an upcoming trip to Wuhan. We are both considering purchasing backpacks for our, upcoming, winter break. We were initially planning to purchase them when we arrive in Xian, while we are on vacation, and still may do that. However, there is some logic in purchasing them ahead of time so that we are not left carrying two pieces of luggage. I would also like to visit the museum in Wuhan. One thing that has disappointed me, in
That night I went to dinner with He Zhi Qing and some of her dorm mates (There, a real name for those of you who complain that I do not include real names. She tends to ask me to call her HZQ because I often mangle her name so badly.). Even though her roommates are not English majors, instead they are majoring in Chinese, they speak English well enough to communicate.
We did not go where we had planned because the place was full. Instead, we went to another nearby restaurant. From her I am learning to identify restaurants (not always as easy as it sounds) and going to more "authentic" places. She is the same student that took Debra, for several hours, and showed her what the student dorms look like.
We (He Zhi Qing, her roommates, and I) made plans to go on Tuesday and walk around the city; however, it was snowing so we called it off. In all, the vacation was too cold to enjoy.
That night, I had a slight problem. The house phone rang, I differentiate that from my cell phone, which is used for almost all communication. The house phone is primarily used for calling people on campus, and in the dark, while stumbling to answer it; I stepped on the power supply for my computer. Not only was it a wrong number, as most of my house phone calls are, but I broke the power supply. Breaking the power supply prompted me to write this letter to my good friend from High School; and all around Mac Genius, Mike.
Last night when getting up to answer the phone, it was a wrong number, I broke the connector on my Macally power supply, I long since replaced my Apple supplied one.
This power supply has a plug in the end that connects to the supply; so, the cord that plugs into the computer also unplugs from the supply. It uses a non standard plug. However, I am first going to look for the plug, if I can not find it I will solder the cord directly into the supply.
My question is this; the cord that connects to the Mac has one strand and a shield (thus, two conductors). I am assuming that the shield is negative and the core is +24VDC@2A. Looking at the tip I see it as having three elements, a shield, as is found on an RCA audio connector and a plug in the center that is similar to a stereo headphone connector, just smaller. This very small plug has three elements. What should the voltage be at these various points? (Yes, I checked the apple site, it has no real useful information on this that I was able to find)
I got a response from him that advised that, seeing as the part is made in
The really funny thing is that a lot of the stuff made here is not available. When it is, it costs more than it does, after conversion, in
I did manage to get it fixed. There is no "do it yourself" culture and near all tools are only sold to licensed repairmen. As such, I took it to a computer repair shop and HE ZHI QING (my student, I can not pronounce or spell her name) was having trouble telling them what I wanted done because the idea of fixing something was totally unknown to her.
Finally I walked behind his counter (with permission, if he understood what I was asking) and picked up his solder sucker, soldering iron and Multimeter and started working on it myself. After I had it all positioned I let him solder the parts together (and he did a terrible job of it). She was laughing the whole time; it seems that this is not the way things are done here
I suspect that I will hear about this in class... However, it is now working.
That Wednesday, after we had canceled our plans to wader about the town on Tuesday due to the snow; He Zhi Qing, more of her roommates, and I went to go and get this done. To go into town she first tried to hire a three wheel cab; however, the driver would not budge on the price so we took the bus. We then went to get the repair done, which was the, afore mentioned, ordeal.
After we did that she insisted that I go and eat lunch. While I had not eaten lunch I could have done very well to miss that meal (I have lost about seven Kilos since I got here, then I pretty much stopped loosing weight). However she was very uncomfortable with my having not eaten (she, and her friends had eaten before we met) so I had some soup that she ordered for me at a lunch counter.
[Then people ask why I hate using windows. Here I was typing along and I get a message that the windows OS had encountered yet another error and has closed word. I only lost a little because I save often; however, this does not happen on my UNIX, a real OS, based Mac …oh where was I…]
After we did some shopping, I decided that I needed more long johns, we went for a walk. The only problem with wearing the long johns is that it tends to reduce my level of empathy with my students. After all, I am not freezing, there is no reason that they should be acting like they are (other, possibly, than that the room really is freezing).
The walk we took led through one of the larger city parks and a small bamboo forest that had several footpaths leading through it. It was, obviously, a popular place for young people to stroll.
We then walked along the river; stopping at a playground to enjoy the exercise equipment (me v. them on the teeter totter was funny, if not a bit embarrassing). I took some pictures of the old city wall and we also did a bit of other shopping (I needed some eggs, which are not sold in cartons as they are in the west) and I returned to my flat.
We had walked quite a bit, including the entire return trip, however, it was fun. Even better, when I plugged in my, newly repaired, power supply it worked!
This week was obviously a short one for classes, consisting of only two days. We talked about many of the terms used in Titanic. I discussed the, upcoming, exam in my class. However, I was not able to use the material that I normally use in the second half of my class. I normally use a podcast from a pair of Doctors in Linguistics in
I use the audio skit in their program and then build more lesson material around that. I was not able to do this for one of the very reasons that you have not received these blogs in some time. The internet connection to
I hope that this is repaired soon and I will be able to send pictures of Wohan.
This afternoon, this being Saturday, I got a call from He Zhi Qing asking if I wanted to go on a bike ride with them. They are, of course, her and a couple of her roommates. One of her roommates did not want to ride and, apparently, claimed that she did not know how to ride a bike. So, she rode on the rack on the back of the bike. It is amazing, to me, to see how often people ride on the cargo racks on the backs of the bicycles. They are clearly labeled that they are not capable of holding people; however, many of them are padded and there are often handles and footrests on them. We are not talking of carrying small children, we are talking of full sized (well, fill-sized means something a little different when talking of Asian women) adults.
They generally ride on these racks by riding side saddle and mount after the bicycle is moving slowly. I have a cargo basket on my rear rack so I have not carried any passengers.
So, we rode the three bicycles, with one passenger, to the local lake. However, none of us wanted to pay the entrance charge so we then headed back on the other side of the river to see the construction on the Pagoda that has been in many of our pictures. When finished, it will be a temple.
While riding we noticed that He Zhi Qing's bicycle had a flat tire; so, as I rod off in search of a WC she went and borrowed an air pump from a repairman. I was under the impression that she had the tire repaired until we had ridden several blocks; only to discover that her tire was flat again. At that point we went looking for a repairman and were unable to find one and ended up back at the same person that had loaned her a air pump earlier.
By the time we returned, it was too dark for the repairman to see well enough to find the flat, he was completing the work he was doing by the light of nearby cook fires. I quickly dismounted the tire form the rim, it is normal here to leave the wheel on the bike while going the here, and located the hole by wetting my hands with water he provided me. I than roughed the area of the hole and he put the patch on for her. This was all done by the light of my torch (silly Brits' insist on calling a flashlight a torch). Instead of using the patches we are familiar with, he used a section of tube that one of the girls cut to the shape that we needed, he then poured some cement on the tube and used the cut portion for a patch. All I can say is that it worked.
While we were doing this it was getting darker rapidly. In addition, I received a phone call from Ilwn, a graduate student, reminding me that I had planned for him and Merry, one of my students, to have them over for dinner. So, once repairs were completed, we rode back, rather quickly, in the dark. I will point out that I do not recall seeing a single bicycle light in the country. Other bikers, in the dark, are the real scare when riding this way.
At that point He Zhi Qing and one of her friends joined us for dinner. They cooked, which made it a very easy night for me. However, I was getting a bit tired, and I expect that I was looking it. We also looked at the on-line train schedule and determined what train we wanted for the trip to Wohan.
Today, Sunday, I went to our Sunday meeting. After that, the Browns and I watched a movie, "The Bodyguard." I then went for a bike ride with Walik. I prefer to take my bike to the store and on local trips, instead of relying on the bus service. It just leaves me with a bit more freedom to do what I want.
After returning to my apartment and watching another movie, "timeline," Walik and I went to dinner. It was pretty much a slow day. Most of my Sundays are slow, which is just fine.
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