Crypticity's abound

Stepping stones

2011-12-31T05:35:00.003+13:00

The last seven days have captured a lot of the year: the sweetness of being together; the trickiness of living here; the ridiculousness of bureaucracy; the sheer endurance required just to keep one's head above water at work. It has had it all.

2011 in all may be a foundation year. It is of hard work, of learnt lessons, of persistence, of accrual (and not financially, let's save that till 2012). It was the consistency of the challenges that came that will make it memorable - and a brief look through the blog of the last year shows it: it was the year the bucked the trend increasing the number of blogs. I've thought a lot this year. Most of my thoughts never got close to being transcribed here.

One feeling that all trampers have is that of descending to the valley, down to the river. It could present a rapid descent, or sometimes the sound of the river teases you as you wind your way nearer and nearer. But then you get to the river-level, pass it in the way that you conjure, and then... It is (often) back up another steep incline, back into the trees and ascending to the next ridge. New years might be arbitrary markings in time, but they provide a reasonable landmark for us. A river between ridges to ascend. I like the significance of it. I like going from one phase to another.

Let's cross.

Stepping stones

2011-12-31T05:35:00.001+13:00

Let's cross.

2 out of 2

2011-11-20T15:23:00.001+13:00

"I've had a day here now: I've been approached by hawkers; eaten my first street food; smelt that funny "Please let that be anything other than sewage?" odour that wafts out of drains in the city; and been pushed in front of by little old ladies. Yes, if the sign after customs hadn't said it already, I'm indeed in China."

That was my first blog upon coming to China to work on November 15, 2009. I'd boarded my plane on the ominous day of Friday 13 November and the odd but now familiar time of 11:59pm, and landed on a cool, overcast day. The taxi driver that picked me up tried to talk me into teaching his son for 50 yuan an hour. Jetlagged and sleep deprived, I started to muse about teaching to help the less advantaged but remained wisely noncommital. Things have come a long way.

Two years have passed. I didn't celebrate it; someone else decided to randomly celebrate something else a day earlier and not wishing to detract from that randomness, I kept my own special day silent. Life also passed a stressful passage: the search for a new apartment. It ultimately ended in failure, we'll stay where we are but in some ways it cannot be regarded as a disappointment. It is only when you look at your other choices closely enough that you consider how lucky you are. Our apartment is wonderful (although a little far away), our rent comparatively cheap (we do want to save) and our landlord is fantastic (although too inclined to DIY repairs). Of course, it is when you re-sign your lease that the neighbours start renovating noisily from 8am every day. These walls make the scratching and hammering sound like they're in your room.

Work is attrition. Half the centres in my city are situation red, including my own. Our problems are two-fold: a historically struggling centre - students often don't come to class regularly or transfer out to the bigger centres; and it had been overstaffed to the eyeballs for most of the year and then shed almost all of its international staff... in fact, for a week in December and from early January, the international staff will be the boss and I. Staff deprivation unfortunately means that we cannot be picky about who we get, but students are. One of our soon to leave teachers is not appreciated by students by and large. He likes teaching but he doesn't have the skills to do it effectively or interestingly. He had got pressure from the boss to lift his game or face losing his job. He didn't like the pressure or the way his urgent need to improve was presented and resigned. When he leaves in early January, if no-one new comes, it'll be just the two of us. And then the students can have what they want: the two best teachers teaching continuously...

Part of my coming to the centre has been to help turn it around, not on the management side, but in terms of teaching quality, centre spirit, team spirit and innovation. I think the first three can still be delivered regardless of the red situation. It is great to be in the classroom and getting involved with students. But my plans for revitalising the centre academically (which have already been accepted by management) will be put on hold for at least two months. There is timing in these things. A season for holding steady, a winter perhaps, and a time to grow and get active: Let's hope I can spring in Spring!

In stride

2011-10-27T04:41:00.001+13:00

If there is one thing that is true in my life, apart from work I can barely reasonably do one thing well at a time. Chinese has done well from me in the last two years (well, the reading classical novels and Cantonese parts at least). But these things rose and other fell away. One thing that did was my general fitness, and then my general health.

My trip back to New Zealand was a good reminder of this. The doctor said my immune system was low: that can be attributed back to diet and perhaps stress. Part of being a vegetarian in Guangzhou is the lack of variety that my body has become use to. And part of being away from the hills, valleys and mountains of my homeland is a lack of naturally occurring fitness. My fitness daily has been 15 minutes between home and subway twice a day and the stairs at work.

Part of being back has been to search for ways in which to make up for these. One concession has been to the expat way of eating. I've gone back to cereal and milk for breakfast and, with the luck of my new workplace, I've been enjoying falafel and humus and all the joys of a mixed diet.

My new workplace also has the novelty of inconvenience by subway yet the comparative convenience of food: at the quickest it'd take me 40 minutes to the office by choosing either bus or subway; by foot I can do the distance in an hour fifteen, which though not fast makes it a reasonable choice when I have time and leisure (and going home I often do). The temperature cooling, I can once again run without sweating myself parched. Ping pong and shuttlecock kicking becomes an easier option too (the latter best if there is no wind).

Our latest preoccupation has been whether to move. Our place though with inherent strengths has always been inconvenient. And two other dark marks against it: a poor sofa and a rotting cupboard under the sink. And it would of course be nice to save a few more pennies on rent. Yet there is no such thing as the perfect apartment. And the more one looks the more one is torn. If anything there is a temptation to spend even more. And with every place we look at it the better what we have looks.

A crisis of conscience and social trust

2011-10-20T04:55:00.001+13:00

A mother distracted at her stall; her precocious two year old wanders onto the street outside; a van driver distracted runs her over with his front wheels and stops briefly; either not wanting to know what he hit, or perhaps fearing that he hit what he knew he hit, he continues running her over a second time with his back wheels; the CCTV records numerous passers-by having a glance some even stop or slow their vehicles; her mother has already realised she has disappeared but has headed up the street instead of down; another mother, walking hand-in-hand with her child, walks around the bleeding, crying, crushed little body on the road; another vehicle runs her over for a second time; an old lady, who spends her days pulling plastic bottles from rubbish bins for recycling, is the first and only person to do anything for her; she pulls her to the side of the road and gets people's attention; the mother finally comes over.

This is a what you could see uncensored on Chinese internet (TV clips of course are censored) of a very real event from earlier this week. It makes for brutal viewing - the first time I saw it I cried. It sent this country into a frenzy of blame and a gnashing of teeth about the sickness of the society. There are of course the two drivers who ran her over; they're in police custody. But the eighteen apparently normal people who didn't so much as call an ambulance on seeing a run over still living two year old infant boggle the mind. From the life of an outsider in China, it's the worst possible consequence of several factors which become increasingly apparent. This may have always been coming.

China is abound with the fear of all kinds. One of the fears is that of extortion. A pertinent example is the case of a good Samaritan who stopped to help a fallen elderly person. The elderly person was thankful at first but as soon as the authorities came suddenly changed their story to the good Samaritan having knocked them over and demanded they pay the medical costs. This is one of a huge range of "tricks" that exist in society. Most children from young are told to not pay attention let alone, consider believing, what they see and hear of people in need. Gangs do disfigure people so that they become better beggars. And there are those the prey on the basic goodness of people. Avoiding the bother that helping could entail is the consideration beyond the simple moral equation. We can ask how this justifies ignoring the cries of a mangled child whose life hangs in the balance, but it does if one considers that a mother could come out of the sideroad screaming to high-heaven that it was you who hurt her child, that if you don't pay up she'll go to the police and then even if you can prove it wasn't you, you've had terrible bother. It's an easier thing to just keep going.

Even the drivers' behaviour can be understood to an extent. In some small towns, drivers who hit people might be dragged out and beaten by family members (as some people can escape justice through their connections, villagers taking justice into their own hands is often common sense). This has been used to explain hit-and-run cases here. Drivers will often turn themselves in shortly after on their own terms straight to a police station, as is also the case here.

Every country has its outrages. Outrage is good. It would be a lack of outrage that would be truly evil. With outrage let's hope that it settles into introspection: those eighteen weren't deviantly amoral, insensate; they were just like all of those carrying outrage. Let's hope that those outraged notice and in themselves seek to change the way they react to the hurt and unfortunate.

It is interesting to know that the only one to do something was poor and uneducated, yet showed instinctive care. It took no moral courage to act. She was given money by the city representatives and gave it straight to the young child... who regrettably is likely to die soon or become a vegetable.

Autumn Floods

2011-10-16T15:20:00.001+13:00

I walked home from the bus-stop barefoot on Thursday night. Many people did. It is not something I ever expected to do in suburban China, with its reputation for filthy streets, but there you go.

It'd started raining in the afternoon. It wasn't heavy but rarely let up. Rain of course isn't a rarity here. Even though the summer steam has eased, autumn is still rather tropical. Rain is a big problem for public transportation too, as the taxis become difficult to catch and people clog the dry subways. Rain snarls up the traffic so buses also come less and less often.I take buses in general these days, which is cheap and generally comfortable. My bus eventually came and pleasantly I got a seat in which to observe the outside happenings. The bus goes through and underpass, which was a foot deep with water at the time. The bus, like a charging elephant, ran through the river with a groan.

Guangzhou is a river city. The beautiful, yet stinky, Pearl river halves it. There are also numerous branches and canals through the suburbs (my apartment looks over one such branch). Though river cities flood when the water level rises, I've never seen this happen in Guangzhou. Guangzhou floods because Guangzhou can't drain. Guangzhou's extensive network of canals and streams should facilitate its draining but through civic mismanagement it doesn't. The humour from last year was that the city government put a lot of money into modernising its underground drains in one area only to flood worse than the old system ever did.

Anyway, so I was on the bus overlooking the aquatic mayhem. To be honest it didn't look that bad. I got off my bus and put up my umbrella and walked to the edge of a block, which was cut off by a decent bank of water. The sight of a passer-by, or should that be a wader-through, gave me enough to gauge it was close to knee height in places. I went to the other end of the block. Again: water, water everywhere. I was on an island! Looking closely at the people who had resigned themselves to standing under eaves and in shops and banks you could tell that they too had sensed no other option. There were no taxis to catch. Buses on this side of the road would take you farther away and possibly to even deeper, less familiar waters, and not many people have friends with cars to call over to pick them up. So suddenly one has to think how much damage a walk in the drink will damage one's shoes and tailored pants. Or how long it will take for the flooding to ease. (If the did wait they'd be disappointed: it rained well through the night and even heavier than you could ever imagine.)

Then came the answer to me: a gentleman came onto our island, plastic bag with his shoes and pants rolled up, walking calmly by with his umbrella. If the notoriously dirtophobic locals aren't scared of walking through floodwater barefoot, I'm certainly not. So off came the shoes, up-rolled by pants (although the material of my pants always made them slowly unroll, requiring re- and re-rolls) and I set off home. It was a good feeling. Guangzhou rain is fairly warm so it was a comfortable splash; the road surface nicely massaged the bottoms of my feet; and unlike New Zealand, and let this be known as one of the advantages of Chinese streets in general, there was no glass (which is fortunate because I'd hate to think what was in the water).

Children

2011-09-26T02:50:00.000+13:00

So we were kicking around a shuttlecock in our apartment complex patio area when a voice came from behind us. It was a mother talking to her children about the game and presumptiously asking if they'd like to join us in the kicking. The two boys said they didn't but still walked around to a position that incidentally completed a triangle to observe us.

Mid-play, the shuttlecock launched off the side of my foot in their direction and they leadfootedly let it drop down next to them without any attempt to kick it back into the air.

"No-one got it!" I dramatically cried in Mandarin.

Their mother from behind called out that they should join in when the oldest one stomped away yelling in English: "I'm from New Zealand!"

I had never expected him to say that! "I'm also from New Zealand!" I called back but he wasn't listening or wasn't interested.

Wind has turned

2011-09-23T14:21:00.001+12:00

I was walking through the old town looking for something to eat. I bumped into three friends, all of whom were considerably older than me. We were on our way to somewhere, when we came across a blood donation facility. We went in. One of my friends muttered that he didn't want to donate but the others had already grabbed an application form. We'd mostly filled in the form when it became clear that there was a space to stamp a chop. We told the woman attending us that we didn't have a chop. She told us that we couldn't donate then. We were frustrated and were about to leave when I asked: next time, besides a chop, was there anything else we needed?

"Anaesthetic."

"Why do you need an anaesthetic? We don't use anaesthetic to donate blood in New Zealand."

"Because it's painful. You need to get one of these," she showed me a bag of liquid that looked the same as saline solution.

"Can I donate without anaesthetic?" My questioned trailed as she trailed away. She left the room never to answer my question again.

And that was roughly when I woke up. Chinese bureaucracy and service have obviously entered my dreams. It has become easier to dream, too, with the night temperatures dropping into the low twenties. The wind, as they say, has turned. It is cooler in the mornings and cooler in the evenings. Generally speaking it is a nice period to be outside and active. I went for a two hour suburban tramp this morning without the feeling of sweat running down my back. This is how mornings should be.

Zaraz Khan

2011-09-08T13:46:00.001+12:00

I'm not quite a pacifist but have extremely mixed feelings no war. Especially when wars explode with an unwritten pretext. Being in China slightly takes away your scope of the lead up to events. China is after all a very inward looking country, even when it's staring outward. The first news about the Libyan war I remember was that the Chinese government was evacuating all 60,000 nationals from the country in a very short period of time. "Why are there so many Chinese there??" a student puzzled in Lounge Chat. It is a piece of the puzzle, the massive diplomatic and economic internationalisation of China, that most of China are unaware of. Economically China is extrememly international. And beside we all learn more about the world through America's wars, and even about ourselves.

Wars, though: The flags wave. Guns splitter. The media flickers. The anti-war people splutter. The rulers family are hunted. People's lives runs red in the streets. It's the devil's circus. A compelling one, at that. There is always one aspect of America's wars (and probably the war's of others, but allow me this indulgence) that was particularly offensive to me and it comes from great TV programme in China which finally gave me a name to get closer to linking it to the true inhumanity of it.

Zaraz Khan was a tall Afghani, he was famed in his small village for it. He walked out into the desert with two other gentlemen with him, purpose unknown. Does the fact that we don't know where he was going lessen what comes next? There is not much next because a missile from an unmanned Predator drone obliterated him and his companions. The people behind the obliteration of a completely innocent human were talking at ease. "Yeah, we spotted him with the drone. He was tall, and we knew Osama was tall. And he was dressed like Osama so we got the order to fire." The obsenity of it is the manner in which people weigh up the lives of others. Zaraz died because he went for a walk, was tall and dressed like a devout muslim. But his killers showed no remorse. It is not hard to find other cases of unmanned (and probably manned) bombers too. Of course, apologists could say that the other side shows little distinction between those military and those civilian. It doesn't quite gel to me: you don't go to the level of your opponent; and the stronger power has the ability to be cleaner with their actions. This kind of slaughter justifies the 9/11 event. The scale in this particular example is different but the obscene result is the same: innocent, truly innocent people burning in the indiscriminate destructive forces of those wishing to kill.

Teaching Learning

2011-08-26T02:54:00.001+12:00

Language, of all the things we can spend our time learning, is a peculiarity. Almost any thing you can learn about is easier to learn as you get older peaking in your twenties and then declining marginally ever on. We don't even try to teach finance to teenagers, maths to a toddler or philosophy to a tween. A language, however, is best learnt when we are young. There are many reasons for this: like walking, producing sound is a physiological process, a body skill; the brain is primed to learn language when we are young; and producing sentences is requires procedural memory, something more easily formed when young. Language is hardly a body of knowledge after all, but a body of skill. It is more akin to swimming than other subjects.

As we age the disabilities toward learning language accumulate: a tongue that doesn't naturally want to go between the teeth for the "th" sound; an inability to grasp the concept of tense; a reliance on translation from the mother tongue, and others. Experienced teachers often approach the realm of being a therapist to their students. Just like rehabilitating people who've lost the ability to walk, we have to nurture the desire to take those baby steps again, slowly and carefully, and provide the framework of poles so their muscles can again form to do the task. And that's why at our centre we have Dr English.

It was an idea adopted from another centre, but we quickly dressed it up better with signs, appointment times, and 10 minute slots. Being one of the doctors has been interesting as students who go to it have often struggled immensely with one aspect and have time to explain. I listen to their language, check their notebook, ask a few questions, diagnose and prescribe.

It is only now that I really have tapped into an area when I can contribute something groundbreaking. I didn't realise that I had such an advantage over almost all the other teachers in the school: I've been continually learning languages since I was 13. Most teachers in my school have never learnt a language successfully. Now, shall I preface this by saying that you can be a brilliant presenter and effective classroom language teacher without the experience of learning. But learning is a skill in itself, and language as mentioned is an almost unique field of knowledge to learn. To know how to advise people on how to learn, it is best that you've tried, failed and occasionally succeeded to distil great advice. You also need to have the realisations that your way of learning is suited to you, and what works for you may not work for others. And then you will have to build on this knowledge and use analogy to form advice for the others. That's where the over eighteen years of bumpy language learning come in.

I started with Japanese, which I approached wrongly, at high school. I used my academic brain to master its structures and memorise characters; the only thing I did right was to write down characters compulsively until the point that my hand had coordination to write characters smoothly. By the time I got to Japan, I was still mostly functionally unable to speak and listen although I had enough vocabulary to survive. My listening was terrible and I could only pick out some words and guess the meaning of the sentence. I then went onto Chinese at University which I started off on the same foot as Japanese but set myself better: I used language exchange at University; I had a long time in Taiwan to make me realise the heart of my mistake: I may be a very strong visual learner, but no matter how much I read and wrote, it would make no difference to how I spoke. This seems incredibly obvious but every student that I tell it to just like me has had the face of a recently enlightened Buddha when they hear it. In Taiwan, I wrote a 20 minute speech on a topic that burned deep within me (the treatment of trainees). Motivation and channelling interests into a language are of course crucial; yet most students are directed to BBC to topics that suit only the few interested in world affairs.

It was only when I returned from Taiwan that I started to read in Chinese for periods of time, and only then I discovered radio. It might seem strange that someone who is a visual learner might find the radio a learning tool. But that is one of the discoveries of my learning trajectory. You learn through your prime learning method and then review with the skills you are weaker at, without much assistance from your strongest suits. I tried it with Maori when I was learning it. I'm using it with Cantonese. It works. One method to learn; another method to generalise and consolidate the knowledge. In this world of subtitled movies, most students will use these together which obliterates the chances of nurturing your weakness; it only feeds your strength.

The difference in time and experience shows with my experience with Japanese. After coming back from Japan, and having had 5 years of high school Japanese under my belt and some misguided self-study at University, I failed level 2 of the Japanese Proficiency test. 5 years later, a period in which I only went to Japan for a few days, had predominantly studied only Chinese, and went to one Japanese class a week for three months, I passed level 2 easily. The five years represented me finally realising what kind of learner I really was. It had taken twelve years of my language learning career: two thirds of the time! 12 years of inefficient unsuccessful, disheartening learning that had been eroding out of me every day. Other teachers at my school try to emphasise this to students: if you don't review, you are frittering away your money. But that's when it comes down to the key point: What is good review (for this particular person)? There is a concept for choosing learning strategies. It is called meta-cognition.

I went to the school lounge yesterday while I was heating my dinner and was beset by Betty, a great student who found she couldn't understand authentic English outside of the school. She could only understand with subtitles (English subtitles for English films). I asked her for her notebook, then gave it Jimmy who was looking on. I asked Jimmy to read from the most recent page: "Diseases are caused by germs." Betty's eyes lit up and said: "What's that? What's that?" I told her that if you want to review properly you will need someone else to read your notes to you and test you on the words that you have recently learnt. You learn listening by listening. And went back to get my dinner. I was starving. I hope she gets the idea and keeps it going. I'll ask her in a couple of days.

But if a small number of people have the quality advice and can only dispense it one person at a time it is incredibly slow. Dr English itself is a form of reincarnation of an old add-on service that "they killed off". When I started teaching here were what were called PAA, an acronym which I'm finding it more and more difficult to remember the meaning of. But in essence a student could book a whole hour with a teacher to ask for study advice. They could do it once every three months. As one of those who did them, I loved it. Students who knew about them loved it. (As with Dr English, the take-up rate was fairly low.) But there was a company idea to slowly move teachers to the chalkface where the money is made: classes which the money is linked to, and not the nice extras. Study advice was moved onto another department, the progress managers. (Chinese staff who are very proficient in English, who follow the progress of the students and check that they are studying at the right speed. They have lots of duties.) Over a year on, I've heard countless pleas from progress managers to give them help in giving study advice. My next step is to make an effective training for them to give quality specific study advice. But also give them a tool where advice can easily be shown on a powerpoint. Up to know, their advice is often challenged by intransigent students. It's time to give them the knowledge and authority to tell students how to improve.

Implosion, division and entropy

2011-08-20T14:34:00.000+12:00

The process that began with the slow-motion firing of my ex-boss three months ago has led to a dramatic phase: complete reorganisation. Looking at ourselves this week perhaps the staff looks much the same to three months ago: next week two people effectively leave, the week after a new centre opens moving two people over and in that same week, too, another teacher departs. Compared to April, the school has effectively halved its staff, the schedule will be ripped to shreds and weekends splayed all over the place.

I have been a perceived loser in this process. For most of this time I've been seen as the odds-on senior teacher to go to the new centre, something that was seen as a developmental opportunity: I'd have been the main manager with a Director of Studies only in my school once a week. I'd have had the freedom to manage and organise staff as I would have wished. It would be the intermediary step to becoming a Director of Studies (one of my announced intentions of being in China – to get the experience to be an academic manager). It'd have been a challenge, to be clear. But it is not one that I've lost any sleep in losing. I need more time to get my style and ideas together. I even need more time to get my administration together and teaching consistent. This is my project after all. And teaching is going to be one of the main things I'll be doing over the next few weeks as a shortfall of teacher bites. But there is always a plan for us in this life.

I've been thinking more about those three who were leaving. One of them seems to be in some sort of strife now (something I'm not privy to), but when it gets down to it I still cannot really figure out how he led himself to this path. Of course, I really don't understand him well enough to speculate but I find myself doing so. Speculation is the son of Partial Ignorance and Curiosity. He seemed for a long time out of place, taking time to establish friendships, or perhaps needing time for his workmates to get used to his idiosyncrasies. Idiosyncratic is a good word for him. But nestled in his make-up as a person was an essential negativity or outward facing critique. A lot of the things he verbally has expressed frustration about have been the things that our old boss introduced, ironically where he has been persuaded to leave to.

There were several boiling critiques of particular policies and another department in meetings. There was an oblique suspicion of his drinking during working hours. (It was an unconfronted issue, addressed indirectly to the whole staff – whether he was embarrassed about it, I don't know.) And there was one flashpoint involving me: I'd noticed that he was late for a Lounge Chat and there were students there waiting, and went over to remind him. He said he'd get to it in a minute. Minutes later he left the office and the building all together, not going to the Lounge Chat, to who knows where. Over lunch with my boss, I speculated that it might have been him reacting to being called out on it. It was about that but moreso that another workmate also appeared to be scheduled for it at the same time as him. It was a mistake on the schedule that I knew about already that day. He saw his workmate was just sitting there watching online TV not going to Lounge Chat and felt he was the being picked on. He hadn't spoken to his workmate to make arrangements to share the duty. He hadn't queried me for why I was speaking to just him. He just did the rather extreme action of leaving without a word and aggravated the situation. He resigned the next day. Yet we know that he didn't resign over this issue. One of the interesting things that my ex-boss taught me was that when someone has resigned or is about to resign yet is doubting themselves, they may subconsciously create a conflict situation that will consolidate their will to leave. Leaving with anger where one can clearly state to themselves and others why they're leaving helps one come to terms with such big decisions. His attitude was one of the reasons that he wasn't approached by management for some flexibility in departure times. He took the fact that he was the only one who wasn't approached to reconsider his resignation as indicating that we always wanted to get rid of him and expressed his feelings to other staff in and outside this department. The most irking thing for me really is that despite all this, thinking back through time, I can't think of any incident involving him apart from the minor. He has had a pretty decent time here from my outside view. I've had no incident with him either – I was disturbed that he'd leave the building over a perceived slight given that we had nothing but a clean past. Given time, he'd have progressed more as a teacher. Our school is pretty good at developing teachers. Or maybe it was just the city. An NZ colleague left the company early in his contract last year stating one of his reasons as Guangzhou itself…

I don't know if he'll regret any of this in time or have introspection on the point. He is still in his twenties, and perhaps that is an interesting range of ages to consider deeply from across the fence of thirty. Most teachers are either in their twenties or thirties and there are those common characteristics for each group. To manage a school you need to have a grasp of those different age groups and work subtly with their psyches to avoid these things coming up early.

The departures of the other two I'm quite sad about: a teacher I've helped mentor and a teacher who was widely seen as the most promising local teacher. I've enjoyed working with both, but I think it's unfortunate that they've chosen to be part of a simultaneous resignation. Does anyone want to be part of an evil plot to harm? Of course, it was expedient for my ex-boss (probably used as bargaining leverage) to get them to leave at the same time, but inflicts a rather savage blow to their former employer, and it's a blow that is not borne cleanly by those who my former boss would like it to hit.

Of course, the other side of them leaving was the option given by the other side. We can only imagine. My colleague thinks that a picture has been painted of what is possible over there. Our school doesn't offer part-time work. For people interested in travel and study (and that is a lot of us, including me if I weren't also interested in accumulating savings) there isn't an option; all three who left my ex-boss knew were interested more in those other areas than in career building. My boss thinks it was the birdy in the ear chirping how bad things were here and how over there it would be better. The birdy in this case is not my ex-boss but a disaffected teacher from the past, someone who general opinion has a very colourful view of.

Our company in this region is haemorrhaging people. Ours is not the only dismantling going on but I always think of ours as mundanely Shakespearean (well I was analogising to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, wasn't I, just a post or two before?) Either way, I hope the promises of the promised land aren't desert mirages for all three. I'm going to try and keep in touch. In crisis there is opportunity and in the haze of this sandstorm, I've been offered a parallel move to another centre. Let's see what comes of it.

Stories to tell

2011-08-13T19:19:00.001+12:00

Our office has been particularly hit by a nasty cold. In our company you get 60% of your daily salary when you are unwell and it's hard to know if this is a good idea. You don't want people to take sickies; but you don't want sick people forcing themselves to work. The current spate of illness could be linked to a colleague who despite quarantining herself in a small demo room most of the time, but the rest of the time having necessary meetings, triggering two people infected, calling in sick on the same day (with scheduled classes, this is a big issue: the classes need to happen so teachers who are on duty that day sometimes have heavy schedules). This continued onto two other teachers, one of which didn't call in sick either, and perhaps that was why I'm sick now. I kept asking him whether he was OK and eventually sent him home early. I faded yesterday and then felt the full weight, in my head, of a nasty headcold this morning and dutifully called in sick. Fortunately I carpetbombed virus with vitamin C and banlangen (a Chinese herbal treatment) from the very first signs. Either way, I was feeling horrible in the morning and feel about 50% better now. An afternoon nap and a good sleep tonight might be enough to put me right.

Sick leave is a pleasant life pause, anyway. DVDs that were lent and gathering dust are playing. The most awaited was the middle segment of a documentary on modern Chinese history. Of course, when I was not hampered in my access to knowledge, I learnt a lot of what happened in the last century in China. But when you are on site in the country, in the city, in the space though not the time, your desire to know is all the keener. When you speak to those of that time, you are all the more thirsty to know.

And so I watched taking a few notes here and there because I like notes. You hear names in general and names, though in history class may remain just names, are the very tip of a human story, a human story that once suckled on a mother, had first love with limited knowledge believed something did something and perished. Throughout history a name could be deleted. Or stained through inclusion. Do something wrong and people will put your name on a board with your crimes, hang it from your neck, with very thin wire that would eventually burst capillaries and veins, while you kneel in front of a jeering crowd, the blood running down the wire and onto the board. While your father and brother look at you from amongst the crowd. In some cultures, names are face. And then we hear numbers, numbing numbers. Numbers, whether the American debt or people dying because a country wanted to make a leap forward, greatly, have no context or means to be interpreted. We just know they're high, far too high.

But when we get down to it, history should be the amalgam of countless stories, yet only a few that get to impress us as "the" story. I heard words from Jiang Kaishek's son (Jiang was the leader of the KMT who fled to Taiwan), I heard people denounced as they had, upon one moment where their tongue loosened or their heart boiled to say something, were beaten and sentenced to jailtime. We also talk to their tormentors, a gentleman admitted candidly that he liked to hit people, to see their pain. Former disillusion red guards. Former landlords. The son's of former landlords. The son's of former landlords talking about their sons, and how they cut their relationship with their sons to avoid them suffering the brunt of an intergenerational hatred.

This particular DVD set is likely to be a copy, made by someone who knew there was money, sold in a shop by people who knew foreigners would buy it. Of course, none of it would ever be allowed to be sold through any legitimate shop, and it would be interesting to know what would happen to a proprietor who allowed it to be sold. Possession would probably just mean confiscation, based on my experience on the border with a Mao book. Confiscation and taking are a big part of history. I went to an ancestral house on a trip to the countryside during spring festival and noticed that there were marks that things had been removed. I asked and heard it was the Red Guards, Mao fanatics, who for a brief time ran amok destroying anything cultural and assaulting anything that was authority. It was a beautiful stone carving of what I don't know.

History, as is well known, is written by the winners. But sometimes both sides prevail and fortunately eyewitnesses survive too. And, of course, as we know in this Michael Moore era (the filmmaker, not the former Labour leader), the documentary you see is the documentary someone has chosen to do, has selectively edited and purposefully edited. What the purpose, criteria for selection, and importantly the transparency of the desire to make such a film are all very important. This documentary leaves egg on everyone's faces, so I hope that it is as fair as possible. But really the egg is just the worst sides of human nature that we all share. We can be partial to sides but history shows the acts that members of both sides are capable of, and looking deeper will hopefully show how we can avoid the excesses of our own selves, rioting, destroying and whatnot.

Class struggle

2011-08-06T04:32:00.000+12:00

It was likely very early in our history, possibly in our pre-history, that someone noticed that having all the warriors charging at each other on both sides was always inferior to having some sort of arrangement and timing. In chess, I always read: a strategy no matter how feeble is better than no strategy at all. Ambushes, surges, tactical retreats and ceasefires all came into the reckoning and all leaders knew their worth. Soon as an opponent sees the strategy it is a bother to him and he has to think of a counter. And China has never been a cold ground for conflict or war. Its culture was there earliest to codify war and study it. It produced the The Art of War and The Thirty-Six Stratagems.

Of course, modern wars often make a mockery of strategy with one-sided thrashings, descending into guerilla action where it finally begins again. In the business world this remains. And so when we had three resignations in two days out of the blue, it was at first a surprise and then a realization. Our opponent had struck a blow. One adorable thing about Romance of the Three Kingdoms is that the protagonists all knew each other. Cao Cao had shared drinks with Liu Bei. Zhuge Liang's brother was a strategist for the Kingdom of Wu. In the shower the other day, I was reminded of Liu Bei actually, and for the benefit of those who haven't read the book (most readers I presume) let me describe in my own words:

As Cao Cao had effectively usurped the Han throne – holding the emperor as a puppet, Wu (near Shanghai) was already an established kingdom… Liu Bei, however, was the model of loyalty and considered Uncle to the Emperor, and only late realized that the Han could not be restored and fled south, pursued all the way by Cao Cao and the soon to be Kingdom of Wei. Eventually, and it took time, Liu Bei arrived in Chengdu and set up his own kingdom, the Kingdom of Shu. Through charm, negotiation and battle, many strong generals eventually came under Liu Bei's flag and fought strongly to almost take down Cao Cao's evil empire. (It is worth knowing that the original is biased treating one side, Liu Bei's Shu, as the good guys and Cao Cao as the ingenious baddy; history may differ.)

The Liu Bei in my time would have to be my former boss, who from prominence as the Director of Studies at my school, fought battle after battle till he was beaten from his position and was sent lurking on the outside, looking for another position to ascend. This we have all known. And we knew he was about to get what he wanted. Then three resignations came within 24 hours, all with exactly the same text in the letter, almost tempting one to think that the strategy was going to be personalized. There was scrambling in the office as my current boss met with all to see who was leaving or staying. Thoughts went toward whether this was specifically timed: we have a new centre opening shortly, now it is unstaffable; it'd be a great revenge wouldn't it to deliver a blow to the company. And it is in the timing that such resignations become a strategy. It was bidden-time. It was a co-ordinated strike. It was the Twin Towers, albeit on a comparatively much less destructive scale.

Tied into this drama are loyalties. Several days prior to this flare up, there was a big meet up between my former boss and many company employees from many different branches. He announced that he had taken a regional manager position and will start from September 3. Resignations started coming in on August 3. I wasn't invited to this event. In fact, I only found out about it after the resignations started rolling in. (My fellow senior teaching buddy was invited, but couldn't to; now she wishes she had gone to find out this plan ahead.) I've never even implicitly been headhunted or lured. That despite the fact my former boss and I had a very good relationship… good enough for the higher-ups to suspect me of being the inside person. However, I wouldn't have left my job in his school under his leadership. Maybe he knew that.

My school chain could easily be spoken as being an evil empire. It is riven by power struggles. There is a degree of corruption and bureaucratic meddling. But this is not the only company with these issues, especially in China. Will the grass be any greener for the leavers? My senior teacher buddy still believes that this strike was not done by our former boss with spite; these were after all people he built great trust with, whose abilities he is sure of; any addition nuisance he caused to his old employers would be just a bonus. I'm a little less certain. And my current boss and his new boss hate him with a vengeance. I'm not in Wei dreaming of Shu. I'm where I am and I think this is still very much the place for me.

The measure of a man

2011-08-04T13:20:00.001+12:00

He said earlier: "I have something to talk to you about," but then looked up to see his next "meeting" rise from her computer and then muttered that he had an appointment and that his topic could wait. An hour later, I was leaving and he said that he'd walk me out. I threw my papers in my bag and headed out with him. He asked a few questions indirectly without getting to the point. Had we been asked about any aspect of his performance? No, we hadn't. And then he just started talking and talking. Sometimes I interrupted to offer a parallel story for comparison, but his eyelids would bounce with slight impatience before continuing on at his disbelief at how his appraisal had gone.

Appraisals are a big part in my life. I'm creating systems for them. I'm being subjected to them. I'm occasionally taking part in the appraisals of others. And it is something that very few people take well. Some just swallow it, preferring to take what is given with passive acceptance. Others raise the fences, and launch spears to discredit the system (which will always have flaws) or the people performing those. Some, regardless of the appraisals high or low view of them, will just ignore it and get on.

He, however, had done what was "expected" of an appraisal, the thing that is often the least expected thing to do: he took it seriously. He spent hours poring over the descriptors and details; he tried to be as objective as he could in his own self-assessment to produce a copious document of reflection. What he was met with, though mostly complimentary, was a meeting that was about dancing the process step-by-step, arguing from authority's superior vision rather than any evidence. For what could they really know about his performance? They didn't ask for his observations. They didn't observe a single training he conducted. His main mentor wasn't there; we, his closest subordinates, were not asked at all. (But, of course, the system was not going to recognise the need.) And he was dumbfounded. And after, the conversation with me really was just him bouncing his experience off someone in an attempt to make sense of it.

He's my boss. And now, in terms of a major project that I and a colleague undertook, he is now a chief supporter. Our project is to have a transparent system of standards for appraisal. When we first talked to him about our project he was a skeptic and said it without blushes: There needs to be some blurriness in the system so the manager can have some discretion. That was a horrid idea to us, and how we were inspired into the project by our previous boss and mentor. Our previous boss had said that appraisal should really be a simple process of ticking off things with as little subjectivity as possible. My current boss had the opposite view until we used our tool to assist him in appraisals. He was shocked. If someone in their self-appraisal said they exceeded expectations, you could show easily that they only met them. It wasn't opinion anymore. And if anyone had any doubts about how to get higher, you just need to point.

Tomorrow I'll submit it higher into the atmosphere, which like the Explorer deep space spacecraft may yield life or may just end up for eternity in a dark void. But whether it is taken up by the company or rejected, it represent work, an achievement, and one that I'm proud of. An item that I'll raise in my own appraisal. Because it is what I've done. And it is what I want to measured on.

(This was written two weeks ago but, due to a technical problem, unpublished.

“没有天然的对错，只有必然的因果”

2011-07-01T03:55:00.001+12:00

I might have mentioned that one of my chief sources of Cantonese learning is a radio programme that is a talk-back lifeline. It has been nourishing me lingually for almost a year now. I stumbled on it while listening to the radio (on my cellphone), headphones plugged in, walking back from my regular late night suppers. Once I realised that my foundation was good enough to pick up words and ideas from just exposure to Cantonese I quickly started listening to channels I randomly found. Some frequencies were more to my ears' pleasure, and particularly the drama of talkback on Ziu Gwonggwan Sangming Yitsin （赵广军生命热线). The stories were twisted and quaint. The hosts could be patient and clear; they could be sharp and devastating. Each call in, each text message read out was a little tale of mystery to my nascent Cantonese listening sklls. At first I was catching the general theme and thieving particular repeated words that I'd check at home. Soon my listening vocabulary covered a huge range of themes from family, love, life to career.

It is through repetition that language is learnt and the stories through life are often thematic and similar at their hearts. But ironically it was the most repetitive of language that was the hardest to crack. The programme as it begins and restarts from breaks had a recording with a man saying clearly several sentences with background music. These isolated wise sentences were some of the hardest for me to grasp. They were stripped of context and words that I had often learnt already in Mandarin in passing but were not familiar enough for me to guess. Others were of a deeper meaning so that even though I might have the language knowledge to know every single word, I wouldn't necessary think it was likely because it might seem meaningless unless I trusted my listening to take it one more step of thought.

One of the more fascinating was the phrase in the title of this blog, "mut yau tin'yin dik deui'cho, ziyau bityin dik yan'gwo" ("There is no inherent right and wrong, just inevitable (cause and) effect.") I might translate the last bit to "inevitable consequences". It apparently comes from a poem, or that's what I thought I heard when someone called in to ask. It is a very interesting aphorism and maybe a good reflection of the philosophy of the programme. There are no inherent right and wrong, is a phrase that would make a lot of people argue. But that is missing its true strength. Whenever we are in a dispute or trouble, we see more sharply the rights and wrongs of others and sometimes even ourselves. Seeing that the weight of error ways (more) heavily on others often causes others to abdicate responsibility. He did it! And with so many calls you hear exactly that: parents are unfair; husband is abusive; the boss is biased; my son doesn't listen to me. So how can I change them to see that they're doing wrong? In fact when others have done us wrong, we can feel like we need to get our pound of flesh, because it needs to be extracted, right?

But that's when the second half of the phrase kicks in, all actions when applied to situations will cause changes that will either be adverse or beneficial, or perhaps even neutral. If we are going to enable someone to do something to improve the situation, it often pays to take the right and the wrong out of the consideration and see where different actions will take us. What actions we can take. What can you do? Bothering to list the rights and wrongs (especially when it is from one side of the story, which is the only one you have access to) hardly will give anyone any more than sympathy. But what do we really want? "So why are you calling in?" or "What do you want to achieve?" is usually a question ten minutes into a call.

I'm quite proud of my listening now. I can listen and enjoy the stories. Sometimes I can understand smoothly enough to not realise that it was Cantonese that I was listening to (which is peculiar but a good peculiar). This though is the result of what is crucial to a learner, to understand how they learn. Listening was the sustenance to my Mandarin for the long time that I was in New Zealand without Chinese classes. Japanese radio online was what got me to pass the Japanese test I did in 2005. And now armed with an iPod (thanks, Brenda), archived radio programmes, and live broadcast I can have an hour's worth of exposure. And with my teaching skills I know how best to use this exposure to generate real improvements to listening skill.

The Unconsidered Life

2011-06-30T03:48:00.001+12:00

I might arrogantly propose that my local chinese swimming pool could be taken as a microcosm of many aspects of Chinese society. It is a fifty by twenty metre pool with lanes painted on the bottom but no lane dividers on the surface. People swim both lengthwise and widthwise, standing splashing at all areas of the pool. Crashing and weaving. There are signs not to dive and jump into the water but the sound of bombs, dives and near misses (screams) prevails. Life guards watch from their platforms but only to blow the whistle when the pool needs its lunch break. Then it rains and people, for some reason, run out of the pool and to shelter...

The key themes are that words whether spoken or clearly written don't matter as much as what is being done. Even with a clear design of how things should work, people will find a way to subvert it, not with malice but with apparent laziness, or just a bizarre can-do attitude (it can be done so why not). People don't seem to consider their actions in non-set situations. (E.g. standing on the escalator they will think about everything except about how they are standing on the escalator and how their position affects others.) And even obvious supervision is not for the purposes you think they are there for. But anything unexpected can elicit the most unusual primal responses.

The general la-di-da-ness of your average swimmer here is depressing. They really don't seem to check where they're jumping, swimming and who might be coming from where. In the subway, people seem to treat getting to the scarce but hardly comfortable seats a matter of utmost urgency, worth preventing disembarking passenger getting out, worth pushing the elderly and women carrying babies. Apparently Guangzhou isn't the worst city in this regard but it is still a travesty.

I'm not sure which of the hoi polloi Socrates was musing when he pondered that the unconsidered life wasn't worth living. Was it just one that was considered for its Grand Purpose, or merely the correctness of their actions like I might like to regard it now? Probably both. Of course the relativist in the corner of my brain (he's often locked in his room) may cautiously aver that everyone has someone who looks at their lives as unconsidered.

All of this thinking while I attempt, in a wish though not a death wish, to swim a length of backstroke might lead you to think I've mastered the art of swimming while meditating on the universe. Regrettably this isn't the case. Getting back into swimming has been a relief as I've lacked a regular fitness habit but it is a recent thing for me. Swimming is perfect, and at 12 yuan (NZ$2.40) it is pretty cheap even though at peak time you'd be lucky to survive. And so close, barely 5 minutes away from home. Swimming in a hot climate is something I haven't had the pleasure of much prior to the recent months. The water is now at a constant air temperature close to 30 degrees, which allows entry without any shock at all. The "cold" shower after the swim is a pleasure. In fact, I might swim just for the freshness of the shower at the end. Swimming hasn't yet returned to the ease it had prior to my initial departure in late 2009 but that is just a matter of time.

The sooner I swim off this belly the better.

Sound and vision

2011-06-16T03:43:00.001+12:00

The city management swooped in, in a matter that could only be coordinated. Two vans shot up next to the roadside and proceeded to take away tables and chairs from the pavement in front of the restaurant we were eating at. The owners and service staff swarmed out onto the street to occupy the ground. Apparently it was not theirs to take. People talked in strong words. The owner struggled to retrieve his plastic chairs from their confiscation. Cameras were always out on the city management side, quickly recording the proceedings, whether to protect themselves later, or for recording identities, who knows. And where were we, sitting at a table that should really have been confiscated too if there were to be any consistency, but we sat there at the tables while the others were take away. One colleague got up in tautoko of the establishment that we regularly ate. The rest of us watched the scene.

"You can't do this, we're Chinese!"

"You aren't Chinese!" such petty name calling. I was off to the bus.

"Blue, Blue, that's the colour of my room, where we will live…"

And the Guangzhou tower glowed red as the bus proceeded home. I had my iPod on giving a tune to the world I observed. The bus was a new thing for me in commuting. I had been loyal to the subway but now it seemed that bus could easily beat the subway. This was something paradoxical: apparently the small transitions in the subway system: from home to station, from station to platform, wait for the train, get out of the train for first line swap, wait for train, board and get off train, cross platform, and board again, get to the station and emerge once more; all of these transitions though seemingly short make it a very long journey, while the bus takes all the changes and swaps out and make a simple long journey. The tortoise wins this race.

"Well, honestly, I don't remember who you are…"

The iPod moved on and I've got off the bus. It was already after ten-thirty but there was a daylights worth of people on the street. Why would the shops shut? I guess no-one looks for real estate at this time. I go into a dairy for a Pokari Sweat. There is a cat on the counter. Miao! I pat it. Miao! I pay for my drink. Miao! I pat it again! Miao! it comments with a big mouth. I head out again. The night sight of people is always a worthy scene in China. I pass a small supermarket. The shifu is still working directing people to the good fruit. He's "solid" as my colleague would have called him. The shifu is the kind of person who'll tell you that there is no fruit ripe enough and to come back another day. We've eaten two durians over the last two weeks and he was right about all of them.

I got home earlier than expected and gladly so; it'd only be then that I'd blog.

2011-06-05T02:34:00.001+12:00

Swings and round-abouts

We're on the verge of Dragon Boat festival and have entered the teeth of summer. It is pumping hot. Hot in the morning; even hotter in the day; and steamy in the evening. I've done better than last year in the simple act of keeping hydrated. Pokari Sweat (an isotonic drink) and pineapple beer (a local product, quite nice, but would kill for a Phoenix Ginger Beer) are staple drinks, I drink them on more days than I don't. I'm fine but don't ask me next week. At least I've discovered a swimming pool in the neighbourhood which is surprisingly cheap and surprisingly big.

Work has been waist-deep and though still fascinating, it is more than one can do in a forty hour week. I'm doing overtime, but I'm hoping that will end next week when the new boss takes the Continuous Professional Development off my list of things to do. The new boss is an American probably about the same age as me. He has had experience leading teams and centres, and is approaching the task earnestly. He gives me another point of reference as I create my own way of managing. He's revived policies that haven't been seen before for a while (an English-only environment in the office) as well as some quite original ideas that can only be from someone who hasn't been in this environment for long.

China is about to swell with national pride as one of a billion did what none of the others, or their predecessors, had done: won a major tennis tournament. Li Na is a sensation here. China will long have an instinctive craziness as it breaks through ceilings and goes into fields it hasn't achieved in. Let's see if it is the exception or the breaking of the rule forever onwards.

So this is the aftermath...

2011-05-16T03:24:00.001+12:00

You might, from previous blogs, think that my mind has been completely immersed in work. And to be honest, work has been the number one priority for me in a way that it has never been before. It is an absolute necessity now, for a period, to think through every facet, get everything as right as I can and try to manage the things that don't go as right as they could.

My boss has been neutralised by the company, but not fired. He can't tell us exactly what he was given to keep his voluble mouth quiet, but he had at one point been asked by the company what it would take to persuade him to "resign". He made a list. He was probably given most of that list. He wouldn't have expected that. The company hasn't had a good record on dealing with staff on their way out. He said it was a complicated negotiation and it took place at a cafe. The result is that he is leaving in just over two weeks. We have to wring all the distilled management wisdom out of him till then.

One other factor is that my senior teacher buddy is leaving for several weeks to finish the practical side of her advanced teaching certification on the coming Friday. I might not have explained it before but that being the biggest branch in our city (and with a new centre opening soon) we were entitled to have two senior teachers instead of the regulation one. It meant that we have had an academic management team of three, my boss and the two of us. We could put our heads together to produce plans and nut out strategies. Each of us covering key responsibilities. Come June, I'll be the only one at the bridge for several weeks, with no support but the team in my hands. The boss has even told me that his last week he's going to step back even further to put me in the deep end but with him as a lifeguard at the fringes if things get life-threatening. Either way, with the imminence of the change I'm focussing like never before.

The last few weeks have been a process of gradually switching to the leadership figure. If I had to write what I had learnt, it is a little bit difficult. Many of them are knacks. Others are concepts.

you are not the company: this is an interesting one because it went against the sense I understood. With customers you are the company and must reflect that. As a leader, though, you must have a set of priorities of who you really have to consider: The team, the branch, and then the company. They are all high priorities, but the team ranking at number one means that it'll be a functional, strong, motivated group of individuals. When the team is strong even when they are dealt a load of crap by the company, they will take it and get through adversity together. If a manager takes a "I'm the company" approach with staff, quickly the see there is no recourse to them in adversity; there won't be trust. As a company where teachers become managers more often than not, we are forever troubled by managers who will just be messengers of the company, and they'll be one-way valves for information. Staff need to know that their voices and ideas are heard, even if they do in the end amount to nothing. And as my boss often says, his team are his eyes and ears - if they trust, they do say everything.
leave the details to one on one discussions: this is the most common mistake by the other senior teacher. Meetings are ruined when you have to tell individuals details information verbally. a) the people affected won't necessarily "get" it, b) and the rest of the staff are left wondering how useless meetings are.
visual, kinaesthetic and auditory learners are in the office too: teaching is a funny field because we're taught about the different learning styles (and you can even put Gardner's intelligences on that too) and have to make our lessons as accessible to different learners as possible. But anyone who's been through teacher training knows that there is no practice what you preach - it is delivered in the same traditional style. The quality of training and meetings are affected by these different styles so a manager must use a variety of styles.
for trouble staff, make behavior as felt and answerable to the team, not management; and if it continues give them a rope to hang themselves: the area of discipline is one that regrettably has to be handled delicately. My boss has taught us how to make sure that documentation is just a statement of something happening. They can word it how they want as long as it is documented and signed. Don't intervene before the mistake, and where possible emphasise that wilfull bad behavior impacts the team, to the team - in fact make sure that the whole effects of the team are borne by all. Letting something happen was one of the hardest lessons; but only when it happens is it real and something to discuss with the person.
praise, check on people and encourage and follow documentation: praise and documentation is a part of recognition and in difficult situations people do need to be checked on. Three teachers got slammed yesterday by their own workloads when we had to cover a sick person's classes on a tight day. One teacher did six contact hours, one of which was observed by me, in an eight hour period. He thanked me at the end even though in the past teachers have been upset when they have sick cover, not to mention on a day they're being observed. Many of the appraisal descriptors relate to willingness/enthusiasm to help out and these can all be noted.
everything is important: It is easy to downplay concerns, but to an individual what may appear minor is actually a major. You need big ears and a good memory...
get your hands dirty and make sure your seen to be doing so: senior teachers are in a horrid position because with negligible teaching hours at times, and many of the outcomes of our work not easy to see, it can cause some resentment if one is not seen to be doing something.

And even when that is all done, things can still go wrong. Well, I've still got a lot to learn...

The dirtiness

2011-04-26T13:01:00.001+12:00

"Are you telling me that floors don't get dirty in New Zealand?"

It's a good question, of course. But I think I still emphatically say that Chinese floors accumulate dust faster than any other surface known to man, woman or cockroach. As a barefooter in the house, I can accurately measure dust accumulation from a morning of wandering around the day after we've mopped the floor. Today, a seemingly reasonable floor browned the soles of my feet in barely minutes. Where does it come from? The doors are shut overnight yet by morning there is dust again. Where does it all come from, I ask?

Of course, I'm not that much of a clean freak when it gets down to it, but there are other sorts of hygiene that are tragically lacking in China in ethical and business practices. With the benefit of not having my name mentioned here and no company brand to be tainted, I can dare open my mouth. In the blog age, we shan't mouth off about our employers for the risk of dismissal etc. if we do. And I can attest that no potential students would have the patience to get through my content. (Even capable high-level former students on mine in New Zealand told me they struggle with the sheer content of expressive writing.) And besides they'd need software to get past the Great Firewall to see this blog. And I'd still steer potential teachers to my company anyway because it is very good for professional development.

My company is a western company in China. We're told from the start that it works via western rules but the more you stay the longer you see that it is more of a fusion of approaches. Some might cynically say it selectively chooses which approach benefits the company, especially its finances but also its management. I could talk about that general topic, but I'm more interested in the dirt right now, and especially practices that would be illegal or unethical in other countries. It is depressing to keep it all in. I'll work my way from minor to major, and along the way describe what to avoid in management. I should also add a little note: The evils I'll talk about aren't specifically relating to Chinese business nor am I claiming they don't exist in the West. They shouldn't happen anywhere except where they are allowed to flourish.

Many jobs are dictated by a fancy acronym, KPI, or Key Performance Indicator. This is intended to be an objective numerical measure of your performance. Of course, it is hard to quantify performance and so a set of KPIs might be needed to evaluate it. In an ideal world, these would be unfudgeable and would be decided by those in an objective position. Regrettably, this is not the case here. My boss's boss's pay is determined strongly by one KPI. This is one related to the number of classes and how many students are in there. Unluckily for me, the scheduling of classes falls into the ambit of my job, to schedule classes at the right time so that they are mostly filled. Because the boss of my boss's boss wants to look good, they set the target very high; the pressure is high because its a big part of his pay but the ability to add (fictitious) classes is completely at the hands of us at the lowest levels. In terms of our academic team, it was a compromise we had to make and there was no recourse to complain. Several levels up the chain are all happy about this cheating because a high number reflects well on them. There is with all likelihood complicity quite high up the level. In China, there is a poor man's version of the prisoner's dilemma. There is no virtue to honesty nor any benefit whatsoever. So no team can meet the targets without cheating. So many targets cannot be left to doubt. Of course, you get into all sorts of irony. We get told to cancel classes because of a lack of demand... yet the classes are "full". One week I taught lots of classes without ever entering the classroom...

My boss is about to be fired. It is a salutory story, which I won't attempt to explain in its entirety here. But he is one that has tried to make an issue out of following procedure and standards. The latest idea the company had made him quite irate, and in a way that neither I nor my fellow senior teacher could understand at first. Now we know: They introduced an appraisal system that would be linked to pay. They described each level of performance with descriptors like: "The teacher prepares his class in an appropriate way = 1. The teacher prepares his class appropriately considering potential contingencies etc." The staff member being assessed will assess themselves and then will meet the centre director and academic manager to discuss their evaluation of him. Then the combined assessment will be sent to the the area academic manager for a sign off and a monetisation of their performance, their bonus for the next year. My colleague and I thought this was an improvement on what we had, great teachers will be rewarded. My boss, however, explained how it was an unacceptable system. First of all, the descriptor is flawed. "Appropriate" is insufficient for anyone to give an objective evaluation, and so it becomes opinion. If a staff member challenges the assessment, the manager can just say that they weren't appropriate enough. In practice, an appraisal system must have concrete criteria. He illustrated it well in a directors meeting where he gave our dress code to everyone and then the standards in the new appraisal system for dress and asked everyone to assess their colleagues as if they were perfoming the appraisal. Not surprisingly, on a scale of 3, some people's scored varied from 0 to 2, demonstrating that the existing criteria would be too subjective and staff in some centres would be advantaged by lenient grading leading to "nice" centres and "mean" centres. I gave myself a zero because the standard for a 1 was to follow all the requirements in the work manual, one of which was to wear a tie. I don't. Others ignored that aspect and went for a nice mark of 2.

There were other issues raised (it was going nationwide of course so the area manager in the room was never going to do anything), but the one objection he raised that makes this slip from incompetence in system design to dirtiness was a specific problem my boss never broached in that meeting but later over a meal in a restaurant with us. The performance appraisal is not just verified by the area manager and ticked off. Internationally, managers just need to tick off the objectively observable strengths and weaknesses, and the area manager should agree because there is no room for doubt. But because there can't be too much excellence in the school (which would cause budgets for bonuses to be exceeded) the area manager needs to be a gatekeeper to knock scores down. Who goes up and who goes down? Opinion, again. What does each appraisal score equate to in terms of a bonus? Completely at the discretion of the area manager. Our top performing teacher stepped on the area manager's toes a few months earlier and despite what would have been a complimentary appraisal of his performance, his performance bonus was barely above the lowest possible rise. A moderately performing colleague got more than him. The system is not only biased to favoritism, it is open to use to punish those who have gone against the upper management. It becomes a tool. But nevermind, talking about salaries is a fireable offence, so punished staff member will never know, will they? And thus we get to the crux of my outgoing bosses argument: there is no reason to improve these things because with the vagueness comes their utility. An objective system cannot be a tool, but they need it to be a tool. It sounds almost dictatorial and, shall we say, communist.

This brings us back to the western company in China situation, and perhaps exposing what is just human nature. In Christianity and even the secular values of western nations, there is a belief that humans need to be reformed with systems. With the developing nature of the Chinese economy there haven't been the struggles yet that created strong institutions and managing principles that have taken a long time to establish in western nations. Playing with numbers and using your opinion when only reason should suffice is very human, not specifically Chinese, and we can only look to those who established the system here for their lack of nous. And the later is probably one of my central theses from my experience so far. Don't expect teachers to be able to do the jobs of managers unless you train them. The worst of human nature will come out when a system is poorly designed.

My bosses imminent departure was never going to be good for me. He has been something of a mentor, and still we learn daily from him, but at least I've managed to step up a lot in the last month. I've had many achievements - I stopped the area manager in her tracks with a brilliant presentation (saving my boss from a sooner dismissal, he was planning an all-out assault) and also designing a more effective way of presenting notices. He may go next week, next month or if they are patient, August. I still have a lot I'd like to learn - he is a goldmine of experience. But all the same I should also try to go it alone without the back-up he provides by simply being in the room. He believes by going, in the long term, the school might become a cleaner place.

I'm not so sure.

Lethal Vegetarian

2011-04-23T03:24:00.001+12:00

I've conspired in the death of another rat on the office floor. This one was more of a struggle and required the coordination of three people for five minutes to corner and then kill the poor blighter. He and another had fallen from the ceiling and after a brief scurry around the computer lab had bolted into our office from where he'd never return. For three minutes of the pursuit a service manager (not our staff) stoutly stayed in the corner on what would presumably be a very important call. Her bravery was shattered when it dashed to her corner crawled up her leg and into her jacket. One staff member was in tears and she hadn't even been in the office when it came in. Another felt uncomfortable just being in the office again.

If my boss had been on duty, he might have led us all out. I didn't feel brave enough or qualified enough to do that without some ground laid with the centre manager. He reacted quickly coming to work and getting an exterminator for the next day.

A spoonful of sugar

2011-04-16T01:56:00.001+12:00

One aspect of Chinese culture I'd always steered well clear of is the medicine, and even their theory of looking at nutrition. It never appealed but with standard health services pretty bureaucratic and unhelpful (I'd love to have my GP here), I decided to take the chance and go to a community Chinese doctor.

His doctor's office was a waiting room and pharmacy of the herbal sort. Inside random patients would sit and wait their turn to sit with the doctor, who'd often converse with them while conducting examinations. His examinations were simple: take their pulse on both wrists and talk about your symptoms. Then he writes in glorious longhand your prescription and doses and sends it across the table to his apprentice. She then puts liberal amounts of sticks and leaves on some cardboard, and funnels them into standard red plastic bags for you to brew in your medicine pot in the comfort of your own home.

In a special pot you put each dose of the medicine into a pot and add four bowls of water, then boil it down till there is just one bowl of liquid left, usually some shade between brown and black. I've had two different prescriptions, the second outdoing the first for sheer disgust factor. It is the kind of thing you hope you can down before your retch reflex knows what it hit it and passed it by. I'm far from loving it, and far from seeing an effect but time will tell. For your information, the diagnosis was that my blood is toxic, which apparently isn't as bad as it sounds...

Coffee vent!

2011-04-09T02:24:00.001+12:00

Deep in the ocean, amongst the coral and coelacanths, is a subterranean volcano set to erupt. Beneath it brews fire and steam, bursting through a coffee bean substratum, building pressure beneath the ground. One day this sea will be infused tan; one day we'll all wake to something other than the oceanspray.

No! That's not a coffee vent, this is:

China may never be renown for coffee. It is sometimes disconcerting how bad it can be sometimes. My sister and I once scoured a whole city to find a single cup of barely drinkable beverage that goes by the same name. That was a second tier city, though. I live in a supercity (of the sort that Auckland will never be). There is coffee, but still Starbucks is regarded highly. Occasionally one may come across a good cup but it remains an exception. Just a week ago I moaned to a friend that there really aren't any decent cafes here.

But then I went to Xiamen. Xiamen is one of the most important cities in Fujian province, just up the coast from Guangdong province and just opposite Taiwan province, that mysterious province that lies beyond the mists of the People's Republic of China's authority. Xiamen itself is a pleasant place but its jewel is an islet by the name of Gulang Yu. Crossing in a ferry, you find the cutest cafes on almost every corner, and many of them are redolent with well ground beans. The coffee itself is decent. In one cafe I had one of the best macchiatos I'd ever had. (A real macchiato and not the sickly sweet caramel thing that calls itself it that at Starbucks, and a cafe close to work.) The cafes themselves have the boutique kind of quirkiness, which this critic found quite delightful. Many of them specialise in a regional sweets or tea (which the province is definitely famous for) which makes the experience even better.

So I drink my frothy words: There are cafes here, and they are good.

(But, of course I could easily speak so delighfully about the tea on my trip.)

Vermin

2011-03-16T05:29:00.001+13:00

We share the world with an abundance of other animals, whales, plankton, albatrosses and aardvarks. There are more bacteria biomass than that of all vertebrates. In NZ this abundance of life is most noticeable by birdlife and roadkill possums. In China our shared world is mostly evident by the little invaders, cockroaches and rats.

Cockroaches are not a daily thing. They might not even be a weekly thing in the apartment but when they're there it is horrible. Huge ugly things that can critter at a rapid click. They can fly when motivated. I used to not be able to bring myself to crush them with a slipper but usually give them something more painful, like spraying them with Mr Muscle. Now it is all on. Even the littlest one will be splattered mercilessly. I feel so barbaric.

Today probably raised the level of brute force to another level. It is important to know that most buildings have an ongoing rat problem. Both schools I've been in have had them in and out of the offices, sometimes they sound like they're playing bullrush in the ceiling. I used to be oblivious to it until someone pointed out the sound and now every time I hear it my ears prick. Mouse excrement is sometimes around the place but that surprisingly has not been as bad as actually meeting the guests (or are they the hosts?) when they fossick in our world. At my other school, I came back into the office to see one deposit gifts on the senior teacher's desk before looking over at me and bolting down a cord hole. And just to make you glad for the joys of hygiene, there was a day a few weeks back that the air conditioned air smelt of... urine, presumably theirs but who can be sure.

Recently in my new office I saw a mouse cross desks in broad daylight before going down the cord hole on my computer. I moved back quickly and it took only a fraction of a second for the office girls to read that reaction to know that it was time to stand on chairs again. Tonight, tonight, tonight, ohhhhhhh, I was sitting at my desk in the office when I heard a sound to see a rat (a rat rat, not a cute mouse) walk into our office. Pursuit was engaged. I, at one stage, had my leg kicking along a window sill to deter it. Rats are sneaky though and he dropped down to the ground and scurried out the office. Students saw it. Potential clients saw it. Fortunately for all concerned it didn't know the floor plan and ran into a dead end. It hid below cabinets before bolting out and straight under my nimble foot. Such a move cannot be done with delicacy, so when it was apparent that it's tail wasn't moving, it was obvious that I had taken him out.

I'm pretty OK about all these critters, to be honest, but it's sad that there can't be a way for them to be a rarity. How is it that NZ has so few? A few colleagues raise legitimate concerns. Such places are unhealthy. There is a very small chance that we'll all contract the plague. There is a distinct possibility that some of our sick days are the direct result of rats and mice. The school fortunately is not waiting for the building management to act any more and is doing its own thing. Thank goodness is all we can say.

The Shaky Isles

2011-03-01T04:22:00.001+13:00

It is a week since Christchurch shook its fatal shake. Not being in NZ as something so big happens is hard. I wanted to know everything: The Herald with its videos were my breakfast. By the time I'd got on the metro, I was reading it in the Chinese media: Chinese too died in the quake. The day after it was front page news for that reason. A picture of a father watching forlornly at the TV broadcasts. His daughter, a Guangzhou native, was in the quake, she was trapped in a fallen building but had managed to text him saying she was struggling; she texted again for him to take care of himself and then her messages fell silent. She almost certainly perished. The news of the quake reverberated around the school. A large number of students could raise the name of the CTV building, which is a temporary tomb for a large number of the victims. A language school inside made it even more relevant and poignant. That tragedy made the comment that this was not just New Zealand's disaster all the more apt.

Though I'm far away from home, the inundation of news about it became a compulsion. I sometimes hear people repeating the sentiment that it is sick to be so interested in the images of disater. But there is something very human about this. It is rooted in many emotions: sympathy, grief, astonishment, curiosity and fear. Disasters are when again the veil of routine life is pulled violently from before our eyes and brutal realities strike us again. One cannot appreciate normality until they accept the true normalness of this tragic event.

The scale of it is hard to really interpret. Any shock happening or development can be hard to really grasp, and only with time can we really know. The Erebus disaster (which occurred during my lifetime) will likely still stand as New Zealand's worst disaster. But its impact on the New Zealand, beyond the lives lost, was mainly psychological. The Napier earthquake at number two can only be imagined. 256 lives disappeared in 1931 in that tremor. It is almost frightening to think that in that in what was a small town, everyone must have known people who died. With 80 years to accept the tragedy it is remembered for the positive effect of Art Deco rebuilding and land for an airport. Beyond the immediate carnage and death, one can only think about the fear after the quake. One clip was taken at Christchurch airport where people were fleeing the city. People were vowing that they would never return. But there is no place of earth where the earthquakes didn't stop shaking. Let's hope that this last series is the last and the true rebuilding can begin.

In Guangzhou the spring festival feeling has gone and the spring weather has come. About the time of the quake, the Guangzhou temperature became warmer than Auckland for the first time in the year. It is a world away in feeling, and creates almost a contradiction in my head.

Words and letters (2): You say tomato; I say tomato.

2011-02-10T14:43:00.000+13:00

I usually spend my days switching roles between a self-studying student, to a teacher, and then occasionally a student with a teacher. One interesting recent experience has been a new role: language researcher. Just up the road (75 minutes by bus) over to the neighboring city of Qingyuan is a realm slightly removed from from my Guangzhou Cantonese world, a world of distorted sounds and fascinating words. Qingyuan dialect is a close relative of Guangzhou Cantonese and for me, an elementary learner of Cantonese, the twists and turns of it were enough to leave me dizzy when I first heard it in September last year. I've just come back from my second time in Qingyuan and this time it was for nine days. Every day was a step deeper into a language for which there was no reference but the speakers themselves. Every day there were little discoveries which speak a lot about languages in general and that is what I feel most moved to write about.

The language is always strongest in the older generation. Generalising and innovation might come from the youth but their parents and grandparents have the most authentic and unique speech. This also makes the learner's job a challenge. I can remember when my students in New Zealand used to complain about them not understanding their elderly host parents. The shoe was firmly on the other foot when the rapid speaking extended family in Qingyuan spoke to me. What little language I had got me through in a basic way but some people were completely beyond me. But they are the storehouse of a language. As soon as I realised some of the rules they were the easiest to spot them again and again. The elderly present another problem which fortunately for a language learner is a blessing. Accuracy is a requirement - they don't understand you either unless you use the correct tone and pronunciation. Children and younger people can guess your meaning even if you say pronounce something crudely. The older the person the more feedback you get to improve your speech.

A conversation after three days on my second visit:

"Why does he always start his sentence with that word 'gui'?"

"That means 'he'"

I was gobsmacked. I had had conversations with them on the preceding days but hadn't noticed that I was missing one very fundamental word. What's more I only found out on the second to last day that the same word can be used as a determiner "that". This I hope illuminates how much one does feel around in the dark. (Or how blunt my brain is.) It is deciphering and matching patterns. You can't even ask a native speaker to tell you the differences between their own dialect and another (in this case Guangzhou cantonese). You own language is not strange to you and you don't spend your days thinking of these things. As for "gui" (he), I probably misunderstood a lot of sentences about myself!

"What is syu-gee?"

"See-gei (Guangzhou Cantonese for "driver"). But that might only be in our three villages."

Three villages? Well, actually I've found out it is more than that but the shocking point remains that a whole variant of language can exist in a fairly small number of people. It is only because most English speakers live in colonies that have a generalised English (with accents but without dialects) that we don't notice this. Countries where the languages originate have the widest varieties of the language. England itself is a case in point with a lot of regional variance. And conversely New Zealand, too, proves the opposite. We have an indigenous English with our own vowels, our own phrases and idioms and grammar unique to our area, in a population of only four million that has been around as an English dominated state for 171 years.

See-gei in one place and syu-gee in another place just a stone's throw away seems astonishing. This is an element of language known as a vowel shift. Many sounds in Guangzhou pronounced "see" are pronounced in Qingyuan as "syu"; many sounds with -ei endings here are pronounced as "ee" here. English went through its own series of vowel shifts that are shown by the words that are spelt as if they should rhyme, but don't; or that aren't spelt like they should rhyme but do (e.g. love and grove; meat and meet). Grasping different vowel shifts was crucial to understanding and being understood. There is also a massive vowel merger in Qingyuan dialect too where three different sounds in Guangzhou cantonese are now just one in Qingyuan dialect. In New Zealand English we may have a merger underway. Many young people will have some trouble grouping the following sets of words into rhyming groups: here, hair, hare, hear, peer (n), pear, pare, peer (v), dare, deer, dear.

There are plenty of unique words and usages which escape any "rule" too. Language is not physics and language will always form its own idiom, which brings us back to that fruity vegetable, the humble tomato. There is something about its fleshy delicious texture that makes people want to name it in different ways. Taiwan mandarin says something completely different to PRC mandarin (xihongshi and fanqie respectively). And now while discussing cooking I find that Qingyuan has its own way of naming it, different to Guangzhou just down the motorway. Sometimes the lack of a rule is a rule itself.

The trip, if taken solely as a language investigation, was a great success. I can talk to both adults and children in two variants of Cantonese about simple topics. Cantonese is still just a push bike to the race-car of Mandarin (or the bullet train of English). But I have a bike. I can ride. And there are some interesting places I can go with it.

The speed of a censor

2011-01-30T15:34:00.001+13:00

On the work computer I watched the following video (article and video uploaded on 2:15pm UK, Thursday January 27, 2011) on the work computer:

(if you are a little big squeamish don't watch)

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/China-Year-Of-The-Rabbit-Cartoon-With-Political-Satire-Overtones-Censored-By-Authorities/Article/201101415913138?lpos=World_News_First_Strange_News__Article_Teaser_Region__0

The next day from home, again, I could still see it. It will be a nice objective measure for the speed of a censor to a foreign media site. I'll try until the time I leave. I didn't expect to be able to see it today but that perhaps shows how big the job of monitoring the internet is!

Life is movement

2011-01-27T14:35:00.001+13:00

Seasons change in nature and seasons change the people. It is the turn of winter now where the oddly named Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, erupts. It triggers off what some people call the greatest human migration on Earth, which incidentally happens on a yearly basis, increasing in scale with every change of the calendar.

The official Chinese New Year travel mania period begins 15 days before Chinese New Year and lasts about 40 days according to Wikipedia and is most easily observed in the prosperous cities which attract labour from other provinces. Guangzhou is exactly one of those cities. It has such a large proportion of its population with a hukou (their household registration) outside of the city that every day leading up to the actual festival (the coming Wednesday, by the way) and this is the population that leaves to return to their hometowns. It causes the subway system to be clogged with people carrying excessive bagging (usually camped at the doors of the train to obstruct people getting in and out), speaking in a variety of unintelligible dialects and, without wanting to be too mean about it, usually having the least cultivation or politeness.

For a school it is a hollowing out experience as the students become sparser and schedules become leaner. Some teachers are left with one class of substance for one nine hour day (including lunch break). From this weekend, teachers (including me) will be leaving for their vacations meaning those left behind might be the only ones "holding the fort" in the office, alone. The office's lack of heating becomes more apparent. If there is one good thing this year, it doesn't seem as cold but maybe that is just a different house at at different time and a different set of clothes. I'll have over ten consecutive days off (for the cost of three days of annual leave) and god I feel like I need a break!

Lessons

2011-01-25T03:03:00.001+13:00

It is one of those transformative aspects of writing, whether it be for blogs or books, that as you write your idea is crystallised, you yourself are persuaded, and deepened is your knowledge of self and subject. This is even truer when writing is done over time. Could your view be changed as you write? The intended conclusion is somehow reversed or dramatically altered during the organisation of one's thoughts? And over time, with the turbulence of experience, could you have hardly honestly even continue on a topic?

I will seek to write this in one go in the hope it holds my view back of the week. The week under inspection really did begin on the Saturday past and I write on the Saturday of the present. It'll start with the mundane details, forgive me, of a regrettably common part of my job, an incident report:

Kelly (name changed) breezed into work at 11:08am. She was due in at 10:30am to begin her iLab helping at 11:40am, a scheduled activity that involves helping students in the computer lab. It was an hour that staff often take as their office hour, but my boss was very serious about changing this bad habit and we were generally cracking down on tardiness, so, to be consistent, I invited her to a small meeting to fill in an incident report. I'd done these routinely in my time at the school, always in a low-key way with the person concerned and always explaining that it wasn't disciplinary, but a way of improving a situation.

During the meeting, of which I can remember fairly little of the exact words but most of the substance, I explained the situation and she explained her dilemma: she lived far away and relied on a shuttle bus that worked on a half hourly schedule; she could either come 40 minutes early or 10 minutes late. I said it was good to have it in writing (i.e. the report) so I could see if the management has any solutions. She had had an incident report (never with me) before and she seemed familiar with the drill.

The next morning a sales staff member approached me asking for Kelly. She was booked for a 10:40am placement test with a student. It was 10:35am and she hadn't arrived yet in the office. I felt it was important to know that she was going to be able to do it on time or else I'd try to get some cover for her so I called her mobile to see when she would be in the office. She picked up, I greeted her then asked about the time she'd be in.

She answered: "You can write up an incident report, I don't care."

"It's not about that. There is a student waiting and I need to know when you'll be arriving."

"Whatever. Write an incident report!" she said and hung up on me.

I was taken aback for a moment before I saw her come into the office at 10:38am and did the test. I was irked because I felt I was only doing my job and so wrote an unCC:ed e-mail clarifying that I was only inquiring about her arrival time, had never raised the idea of writing any report and would appreciate it if she minded her tone. She wrote back and said that I should mind my tone and at that point I was just confused and left it there. I thought I might explain the incident later to the management team in case I had missed something.

As I left that night though, an e-mail went to my manager; it was a forwarded copy of my previous e-mail with my sentence "Please mind your tone," font enlarged and put in red. She said that I showed no respect for her, treated her like a child and she couldn't bear working with me anymore.

Fortunately I had a nice day off and recovered from a cold oblivious to it all until the morning before work I checked my e-mail to see there was the e-mail from my boss replying her and CC:ing me and my co-Senior Teacher saying that we'd have a management meeting called "Managing your team" to address the problem. He'd already met with her in a meeting where she had cried about the series of events.

I'll halt the narrative here because taken alone, as fair as I can be, it looks like a disaster. What did I do wrong? What advice would you give me and what way forth should I take?

The meeting was great, even if hard because it was all due to the mess I had somehow made. Fortunately my boss is great, something that I was going to elaborate on in the blog that began before this episode. We discussed the practicalities of the job, breaking my case into the steps and exposing ways to improve. We agreed on a consistent approach. Both of my colleagues had experienced something similar to the above in the past. My senior teacher colleague had it much worse, if only because her manager at the time was not as adept as our present one to know how to heal the rift. The key thing is that despite only what we recognised as one misstep (calling before she was late) and an error of judgement (following up the call with a personal e-mail), the event was not a discrete event but the culmination of an invisible antagonism.

I met with Kelly later and apologised for making her feel like a child and hurting her feelings. What came then was a surprising but enlightening outpouring. She'd been continuously irritated by me in ways I was unaware of. She went further to see that many people were annoyed by it. She listed the in detail and I asked for as much as she could give me. If I enumerated them here, you might think many of them petty, and most if I were defensive I could easily explain them away as me just being me. I said that I was new to the job, I was learning and was didn't intend anyone to feel oppressed. We shook hands at the ends with a smile and that was the end. Well, I can't say that can I. How many more inconspicuous barbs in my personality will come out in the future?

My new starting point is with that raw material she gave me. My role has changed and part of that will require me changing with it. My manner has to be one that people can work with and I need to reflect on the very way I interact on a daily basis. This has been quite invigorating.

That was just one story from the week, but the theme continued in some ways. It was first of the three big professional lessons of the week. (I'll speak only of the first for fear this will be too lengthy as a blog.) But maybe I should reverse this blog back to where my thoughts were prior to all the excitement. That was, my boss is a great manager; and his boss is a disaster.

One of the biggest reasons for the differences between them is one that will blight this school now and limit it in the future. It is simply that great teachers are moving out of the classroom and into the manager's seat, without any succession plan or training. Few can transition easily. Few are naturally talented leaders. I'm used to managing a classroom not a staffroom. I rightly need training because my personable nature and teaching skills won't stop me from running a school into the ground.

My manager, in addition to a teaching career, has worked in Exxon Mobil as a manager. He has managed before and received training in it. His model for both of us Senior Teachers is to prepare us for succession. Much of his job he isn't meant to show but he does because "if I were to get hit by a bus, who would know where anything is?" He is highly critical of the lack of succession planning and training. In a word, we're lucky to have him.

At my last school there was a fallen dragon. He was the first local (i.e. Chinese) Director of Studies in Guangzhou. He was succeeding from a high flying Director who had received a more pivotal position elsewhere. He was promised support but received none. His school failed as he couldn't manage the team, contend with a powerful (apparently, corrupt) central operations manager and then was humiliated by the regional director of the time. He was given a haven at my previous school, not a step down to senior teacher, but plunge to being an ordinary teacher. The humility of the man is that he doesn't show any of that pain and is a dedicated passionate teacher.

It is a salutary story. It could have been me. I could be me: There is a chance I'll be the sole manager at a new branch school shortly. How much I learn in the next few weeks will be crucial to my success if given the chance.

Forge

2011-01-12T01:56:00.001+13:00

The two western festivals of Christmas and New Year came to this city with the commercial hustle and subway bustle expected. And as those two bumped by a cold sopping blanket also descended: winter. The semi in semi-tropical reflects the fact there is a winter here, one that last a couple of months. But with a house that is now a home, it can be warm and cosy, in atmosphere if not of physical actuality.

Learning a language is a constant reminder that the more you learn, the more you realise how little you know. I've felt like I've had a few breakthroughs on several fronts. Without direct study, I'm assimilatiing Cantonese more naturally than any other language I've learnt. But that is not saying much: I'm poor at assimilating language. I generally need to see language on paper, broken down into pieces and reformed. While I still have the desire for my new language to be served on a plate, I have felt more able to take language naturally in.

And for its big brother, Mandarin, I'm slowly but surely overcoming one of my big failings with it: tone combinations. The tonal nature of both languages is a significant part of my learning. It is the third dimension of the spoken language. Mandarin has five tones counting its neutral tone; Cantonese has six if we don't include three that some include. That might sound hard enough, but there is more texture to it than that. Some tones have more stress than others (a fact I only learnt with my superteacher last year). I knew way back in Taiwan that sometimes a second tone followed by a first tone was a huge difficulty, I couldn't say them correctly together. This is true for so many words including the country name Taiwan. I'd tend to change a second to a third tone when it was followed by a first. My throat couldn't cope with the change without my larynx collapsing in frustration, and when my teachers of the past had tried to help me with it, after five minutes my will and composure would collapse with it. Usually I just got the giggles. I'm rarely caught on that one anymore, which is pleasing. Now next on the list is a third followed by a second. And slowly but surely this to is becoming less of a problem. My teacher told me yesterday that there weren't any real problems, just slips.

The festival of the Chinese year, Spring festival will descend in less than a month and I'll be again on site to report from the cultural core: the family home. Last time I got to spend it with my friend's family and was immersed in it. For another Chinese new year my Cantonese will be proven and tested.

The Mountain ahead

2010-12-24T14:15:00.001+13:00

(I believed I'd sent this three weeks ago but apparently sent it to a non-functioning address. Sorry for the delay!)

I came back to New Zealand as a visitor for the first time. Loose plans became firm. The food I had been denied for so long was now in huge supply at Countdown. As with my previous return from a long stay in 2000, the same things dawned on me: New Zealand is a great place; the air truly is sweeter; and …. Another thing that struck me is that I still don't really have a best friend in China , someone to chat about the nitty-gritty of life with. The absences of my life in China were more apparent in New Zealand .

And New Zealand blessed me with a rather brilliant run of weather, sending areas into drought. I could tramp in ideal conditions, swim at the beach twice and drive without any meteorological oddities. Going back, there was a seamless transition between the weather in Auckland last Friday, Hong Kong on Saturday and Guangzhou , as if the weather gods had decided to smooth the way.

New Zealand had barely changed. As I walked up Mt Eden road the sight almost merged with the memory of walking there before I left. A few restaurants had changed hands; cafes renamed; but it would be a fairly difficult game to "Find ten differences". The biggest and most pleasant change was the roading. The Taupo bypass has been completed; the Hobsonville bypass is half-done; the work on the airport motorway seems nearly finished; and the diabolical Manukau on/off ramps are now in fiendish form, sending me off in wrong directions twice.

Guangzhou, likewise, had changed about the same amount in the month I had been away. My return to the People's Republic featured one of the more extraordinary aspects of China 's information control system and one of my more inadvertently stupid acts. On the way to New Zealand , I wanted to buy a certain book which is banned in the People's Republic but available in Hong Kong . I couldn't find it then but on the way back into China I spotted it in an airport bookstore, Page One, and seized it (for the not cheap price of HK$150, NZ$30). I read the first chapter in Hong Kong while waiting for the train and then put it in one of my three items of baggage. On the train I didn't touch it, reading other books. Once I had disembarked I went through customs and then had my bags scanned by one of those big machines I assumed could only pick up knives, guns, bombs and organic matter. They came out the other end but as I picked up my bags, an official gestured at me from behind a desk.. I went over and he grabbed the exact bag carrying the book and without hesitation grabbed the Page One bag which contained it. He pulled the book out and flicked through the pages. "Can you speak Chinese?" he asked. I answered in the affirmative. (In retrospect, this could be either a curious question for a foreigner carrying a Chinese book, or a more probing question intended to find who I was bringing it for.) He asked and looked at my passport. He just looked at me with an almost-grin and said: "You can't bring this book into China ." I clarified with him innocently and he shook his head. He gave back my passport to me before taking the book away to the side. I stood there for a moment and I waited for a moment thinking that he hadn't told me to go, but moments later with a slightly humored wave he sent me along to the next step.

I was quite unsettled and astonished but then technology must be serving the surveillance society well. There may have been something in the book (perhaps a requirement for China to the Hong Kong publishers) to make the book detectable; or perhaps it is even more high-tech and can sense the book cover; or perhaps every book has a detectable set of dimensions and any book matching any of several banned books would be pulled up. Either way, I was happy to just have the book confiscated and nothing more (I think). It boggles the mind and is a salutary warning: I'd carried a certain banned book around China on my first trip. It is not something that will be possible again.

And so I'm full circle, back to where I was a year ago, seizing an apartment in November for the year ahead. My objectives are so much more clearer and potential outcomes all the more tangible and in reach. It is certainly an interesting time to be me.

Watershed 盛筵必散

2010-10-25T13:34:00.001+13:00

The day passed, but I was only tired. The banquet finished, and all the people departed. I am no longer a teacher at my old centre, but from today a senior teacher in a new school. Emotionally, there is little feeling of loss yet. I was smiling whenever I told my students, often upset, about my imminent departure. Platitudes flowed and downcast faces were the gauntlet I walked, out the door and onto sidewalk. Will I miss them when I'm greeted without that adoration nor the same veneration in my new school?

The teacher-student bond is a special one; but only when you realise that a teacher is not a mere instructor. A teacher packages learning into every interaction: both academic and beyond. An instructor follows a plan and delivers "lessons". And I think I'm increasingly more able to be a teacher, but only perhaps because I can teach and model how one should be a student. Being a student is not a passive or receptive role, and to see it as any other is a mistake. To see being a teacher as being a solid agent of change is a mistake too: every case is unique and requires you to adapt to the new condition; the human condition is not one that can be taught with any one approach. And that the most important teaching often doesn't happen in the classroom, but rather when sitting down with the student to go deeper into their specific needs and issues.

As I exited I had a few slips of paper to give my contact to a few, a very few. Vic didn't, though he wanted to keep touch – I might contact him indirectly and I know that I can. Oscar wanted it, but I thought I'd give it to her later. Emil got it; he was a Filipino, a very serious student of high level and though sullen, possibly recently divorced, was most emotional when learning English. Rainbow would have given a kidney for it, seriously, and even said that I was the best teacher she'd ever had, seriously apparently ; but didn't get it. Tea got it but you could get more sincere than Tea. I found numerous ways to avoid giving any contact details to the highly emotional Ling; she'd be too much. Question Kevin got it despite being a nuisance at the best of times; he got it on virtue of his sheer desire to learn. And so for some it may be the last time they see me while others, virtue of my reasons or my whim, may keep contact.

And if I go back just over ten days, I can remember the question: "Would you like to end here on the 24^th?" I answered in the affirmative, and realised later that would mean about 10 days before I leave, only 8 days of which were in the office, three of which were dominated by mentoring three teachers, one of which was swallowed by meetings; another was taken up with a referral event, and what was left were a load of lessons and a lot of garden-variety tiredness. At least my desk is clear.

Tomorrow though I will enter the door at my new centre, make myself a cup of coffee as a senior teacher, shake some hands and get down to preparing a Travel Club lesson.

The sound and sight of silence 此地无银三百两

2010-10-16T13:38:00.001+13:00

"The Japanese foreign minister begins to outline how they'd be negotiating with China over the sovereignty of a disputed island when-"

PICTURE OF THE FAREWELLING PINE ON THE YELLOW MOUNTAIN

A stock standard Hong Kong advertisement appears suddenly on Chinese TV: It's a cantonese advertisement educating the populus about the Hong Kong education system, which is a silly choice since it is not a part of the life of virtually any of the mainland citizenry.

The normal service of the morning news program resumes: "And the bullet fired into the Chinese embassy in Japan is being investigated. It is believed to be a threat relating to the incident which inflamed the whole situation when the Japanese navy arrested a Chinese captain for sailing near the isla-"

PICTURE OF THE FAREWELLING PINE ON THE YELLOW MOUNTAIN

Another stock standard advertisement appears. This one is a nicer one: A rather pretty, exuberant lady charges around picturesque Hong Kong scenes swearing her love upon the mountains and the sea, "We'll be together for a life, for an era!" Who is she declaring to? Her teeth! Great concept. The ad also ends prematurely as the ad is cut before we learn how to preserve the relationship with our teeth till death you shan't part when again normal service resumes again:

(A map showing the position of the island): "And on this map the island still carries its original Chinese name."

Such is the quality of a news broadcast on a channel broadcast from Hong Kong into Mainland China. It is one of my favourite channels with the best presenters and the best content. It is permitted freedom to broadcast what it likes but the feed into China is censored as above. The picture of the farewelling pine (on a finer day than the picture above) could be symbolic of the freedoms long since farewelled (actually in mainland China if I think of a longer time frame of history, I'm wondering if there were ever an era that had any absolute freedom of information and media preceding the current powers). I remember first hearing about this pine when I arrived in post-SARS China in 2003/2004 and bumped into some ex-pat teachers who were travelling. They recounted the stories of the pine when they were trying to find out anything about the worrying spread of the disease.

I'm not sure what that does to a local viewer psychologically. In my current events class the topic of the island does come up and most (as usual) will say what the powers that be would expect them to say. I watch it and think that if I were a chinese person I would suspect that "what isn't shown" on a channel unbound by ideology must be something rather devastating to that perspective, and probably doubt it.

Students here are fairly free with their views. You'll hear views against the government quite freely and complaints about certain policies. But on some issues, often points of patriotism or national pride, most people will toe the line. And perhaps there is no voices of skepticism heard.

How to Navigate Chinese Streets

2010-10-14T16:28:00.001+13:00

After my 11 months of Chinese life, I have learnt many of the basic skills of moving from place to place in China and wish to share them with my treasured readers.

1. Don't look where you're going.

Consideration will drive you mad here. In New Zealand, people have a luxury in considering giving space to others, yielding the footpath to others. But increase the number of people and the calculations of consideration suddenly become complicated. Chinese pedestrians generally don't pay attention into whom they're about to be walking. They'll have an absorbing conversation with their friends as they stroll not looking forward at all. It is like that sure-fire way of winning that classic car game, Chicken: unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window. If you show that you are not changing course (and can't), whoever is the most aware will be the one to change course. If you are not going to change course you won't need to. Both people and traffic moves like a river here, with swirling eddies, white water, torrents and all. Of course people will bump into others which brings us to the next guideline.

2. Don't worry, be apathetic now!

Zen parable: You're in a boat in a lake relaxing when suddenly you notice a person cruising a boat towards you causing you to jump up and take evasive action. How would you react to them? Now imagine the same situation except an unmanned boat. How would you react? The point of the parable is that often we react to unintentional and incidental accidents differently. It is true in NZ. If someone were walking down the footpath with an umbrella (though under shelter) moving it side to side, spiking people with the prongs, others would curse them. But if a tree moved side to side and spiked them with its branches they'd be less upset and get over it quickly. In China though, regardless if it is the most inconsiderate pedestrian behaviour or reckless driving, most others will treat it as completely incidental, an unmanned boat, and most certainly nothing to get upset about.

I wish it were about Zen enlightenment. It is actually about a very low expectation of how other people will consider others. Road rage is left for actual accidents and not near misses. There isn't enough energy for the latter.

3. Cars give way to people; people give way to bicycles; and bicycles give way to cars

Nuff said. People don't mind potentially ending their lives walking in front of cars but be careful of the bicycles. They move like lightning and they know they have the right of way. Get out! I've almost been nailed by bicycles twice. I was walking straight. It was them who gave me the dirty look.

4. There's always room...

Subways and buses actually can fit a million people, if they are willing. Elevators are the same. Don't worry if the elevator just beeped overweight and the doors aren't shutting and haven't shut for a minute: the people waiting will wait and at some stage the elevator will descend.

5. ...and once you're on, you shall stop.

You were at the front of the queue of about fifty and proudly got onto the subway carriage with only two people sneaking in front of you. Stop in the doorway. This is important as if you go too deeply into the carriage, you'll have some pushing to do to get off. I know what you're going to say: What about the forty-eight people behind you? Well, if they want on they'll either push you further in or move around you. Either way, that is their choice.

6. Speed and urgency is all about scarcity.

Give a random set of Guangzhou citizens the simple task of going from A to B on a footpath, they'd take all the time in the world in far from straight lines. Give the same set a subway station to get from A to B and the whole thing becomes about competition. Get onto the train! Don't queue. Push! Get a seat! Suddenly old ladies put their heads down. Parents send their children ahead ducking and weaving to get ahead of people so they can follow. According to a friend, this is drilled in by parents and grandparents from a young age. In the most populous country if you yield to one you yield to all. And then you come last.

I've got a feeling 秋意

2010-10-12T22:49:00.001+13:00

Mid-Autumn Festival appropriately fell on the first real cool sway of the year. A passing typhoon (killing scores, villages inundated etc.) brought a refreshing breeze and a delightful temperature drop: people started to wear pants instead of shorts; men refrained from flaunting their uncovered paunches. The fringe clouds of the storm blotted out the moon for most of Guangdong for the festival evening - it is an evening when we are meant to enjoy viewing the moon with our friends and family. I enjoyed it with the thought that the summer, which I had feared before coming to China, had now mostly passed. And it is possible to miss the heat - it is 29 degrees now; will I freeze in the New Zealand spring? I'll soon finish my eleventh month in China.

Birthday season also passed and it was the first time I haven't done it with some form of party in many a blue moon. I'd have to go back to my birthday just after returning from Taiwan in 2000 to remember another year without a party. There is a sense of decadeness about it all. I went to mainland China for the first time in August/September 2000. As I may have retold on this blog, Guangzhou was the least impressive of all the places I visited then. I feel the changes both in me, the city and the country.

What can I remember? I can remember talking our way (my classmate and I) into many rather shady hotels; some were wonderfully priced decent places. I still remember the one in Yangshuo fondly. Shanghai was shabby. Xi'an felt lavish, though we were both with iffy bellies by then. Despite the niceness of the room, I remember there was a communal unwalled shower for the whole floor. I remember chatting to a fellow traveller there. Nice conversationalist. I remember the room on the top of Mount Tai and the wake-up to see the sun-rise. I remember the toilet and restaurant there too. (Toilets were quite memorable back then - not so much now.) Even though it was an unintended destination, I remember dusk at Liuzhou and the street where I ate sparrow rice porridge. I remember that it was my first sight of a still current phenomenon: men, often disabled in some way, writing long poems in chalk on the footpaths and streets recounting their lonely predicament, with a can for a coin or two. I remember men sitting on the side of the road selling peanuts (a scene still today) in Guangzhou. I feel rather privileged to have a degree of scale in the development of China. Of course, I have had association with others who were here even before the 80s, but they still provide a perspective and an understanding.

What of me? My ideals have changed somewhat, and my zeal for contrarianism has ebbed. At 20 I thought my views were extraordinary. Of course those views have been balanced by the conservatism of middling age. It may have taken ten years to cool off the heat of my feeling of being different and relax into being what I am, an ordinary person with a belief of commonality with everyone despite being quite different in some respects. Everyone is different: does it take this long to realise that one's own distance from others is a rather mundane fact of life? In the face of China the first time round, I wasn't shaken, but marginally stirred. I felt in my element even though, and this is a fact that hasn't changed.

So the wind has changed and I must plot a course for myself from this age to the next. I have to find whether this is the season for me to progress or hold. It should be interesting.

English Principles

2010-09-08T12:25:00.001+12:00

The old joke goes: Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach. It is quite unfair as a blanket statement but of course there is an element of truth to it, and moreso in ESOL teaching: Those that can't, teach English in Asia! (It is your birthright! Shitloads of money!) Many of those over here are a form of economic refugee; their original profession was hit by the recession and so moved to a place where they could economically "winter". But they aren't necessarily teacher material either by temperament or ability. Thus a new truism forms: Those that teach, do; those that can't, entertain; those that can't entertain, draw complaints; those that draw complaints, leave at the end of their one-year contracts; and if they happen to be male and single, prey you may on the nubile female "student body".

My school chain, one that is seen as a premium product, treats all staff like dedicated teachers. This is, of course, is a good policy. If you treat someone as a professional, they'll tend to lift to that level. But all schools face the uncomfortable end of the labour supply sword, and it is even worse when you try to be a premium product. The more you screen out undesirables or the unqualified, the fewer your teachers, the smaller your capacity to offer your service, and the smaller your profit. In this market, you can't be too picky.

I've had two colleagues go recently. Both were not necessarily teachers of nature or ability: both entertained, both were irked by the willingness of management to extend "ideas" upon what in many schools is a simple job. These ideas, some good, some suspect, were often the whims of new managers or a product of an ideology. So our school, stretched as we are, lost both entertainers. The former was expected to leave (he wanted to study and he was at the end of his contract) but the latter was a new recruit who had a fluttery mind - he saw another job with more money and spread his wings. We're still contemplating whether he is a loss to the school. In the last month of his short stay he was already dating one student (some of it during the time he was living with his previous girlfriend) and by the end of his contract had moved onto another.

All this is the background to my extended stay in my first centre. I can't leave until I have a replacement and they've been very picky when recruiting local teachers, and they accept any international teacher who fulfils formal criteria, but who are increasingly difficult to lure over.

Never trust a eunuch

2010-08-11T01:57:00.001+12:00

The Dowager Empress thus sent an imperial order for her son, He Jin, the de facto ruler of the Empire. Receiving it, he prepared to leave for the palace when the Imperial Clerk warned him: "The eunuchs are surely behind this order from the Empress, so you can't possibly follow it. If you do, there'll certainly be disaster." He Jin calmly replied that there couldn't possibly be any danger in responding to a request by his mother, the Dowager Empress.

Cao Cao advised: "Only go into the palace once the eunuchs have come out."

He Jin laughed and said, "This is the advice of a child. I hold the power over the whole world, what could the eunuchs possibly dare do?" Yuan Shao advised that if He Jin had to go, then they'd go with armoured troops and thus Yuan Shao and Cao Cao chose five hundred troops to accompany He Jin and nominated Yuan Shao's son, Yuan Shu to lead them.

Yuan Shu suited himself head to toe in armour and arranged the troops before the outer green gates of the Forbidden City. Yuan Shao and Cao Cao personally then lead He Jin before the Palace of Lasting Happiness. There the officials of the Inner Bureau said that the Empress had particularly specified to allow only the Grand General, He Jin. Therefore Cao Cao and Yuan Shao were held back at the palace door, while He Jin confidentally strode into the palace.

At the Gate of Great Virtue he was met by the eunuchs Zhang Rang and Duan Gui, and then others quickly surrounded He Jin. They blamed him in angry voices: "What crime had Empress Dong done for you to posion her? And then at the time of her funeral for you to feign sickness so not to attend. You are just the spawn of a butcher, yet it was us who raised your family to the palace and gave you honour and wealth. And in response you want to kill us. You say we are debased, but who is the cleaner?" He Jin panicked and looked for a way out but the palace gate had closed. Just then fifty soldiers came out from their hiding place and sliced He Jin into two pieces...

Thus went another character to the grave in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a classic Chinese novel written in the 14th century, creating a semihistorical narrative around the turbulent Three Kingdom period (250CE - 300CE). I'm rather enamoured by it, although I must proudly state in advance that I'm relieved that I can actually read it at all. I've always had a fascination with classical chinese with several of the philosophy books I love (written over 2000 years ago) written in it. But writing and language develops. The language of 2000 years ago is harder to read than that of 700 years ago and most parts of this classic are readable without assistance; only in some small parts do I need character by character reference to retain my grasp. I bought a copy while I was sick hoping just experience it. I opened to the first page and found I had just enough knowledge to deal with the first page, and with a little bit of study of the common words I found that I could read quite swifty.

And it has to be said that it is rip-roaring yarn. I'm benefitted a lot though by the fact that I don't know much about it. Every page brings its own surprises. I don't know what will happen next. There are computer games and table-top card game based on it. The youth are still fascinated by it, although it must be said that more have seen the cartoons and games of it than those that have read the original. The theme for the week at school two weeks ago was Literature so I thought I'd stealthily measure how much an average class had read. I talked about famous literature and brought up the English names of the four great Chinese classic novels, then got the class to act out a scene in them.

There is a culture gap too when reading these - the culture of the past is far different from that of the present. I couldn't understand one part of the book where there was a sorcerer was holding a whole army off by conjuring a black qi from the sky. One General strategy is spelt out here:

"He's using magic! Tomorrow I can slaughter some pigs, goats and dogs for their blood. Then I'll order some soldiers to hide on the cliff top. When the rebels come we can spray it upon them from above, and then it will counteract their magic."

Apparently pouring blood from a high place counteracts that sort of black magic - not surprisingly this method worked a treat. And here is a section for the feminists:

Zhang Fei had raised his sword to cut his own throat when Xuande ran forward to stop him, grabbing his sword and throwing it to floor: "The Ancients said: One's brothers were like limbs and one's wives and children were like clothes. If the clothes break, they can be mended. If your limbs are cut off, how could you go on?' We made a pledge of honour in the Peach Garden, that though we don't seek to be born together, we'd want to die together. Though I've lost my castle and family, how can we end here only halfway though our adventure? Why would you, my dearest brother, seek to end his life over a momentary lapse?"

This band of blood brothers so far are almost comic relief especially the character that tried to kill himself, who seems to have temper/alcohol/personality issues. His momentary lapse was not listening to his blood brothers suggestions of staying off the booze while he was the one responsible for looking after their walled city; naturally on the very first night with this heavy duty he got plastered and forced other officers to get similarly wasted, threatened violence on those who didn't drink, and then in his drunkenness whipped the father-in-law of a rather aggressive neighbouring General fifty times. This neighbouring General upon hearing of this disgrace launched an assault on their city taking control of it. Very momentary, indeed, this lapse. The gentleman dispensing the advice in the quote, Liu Xuande also known as Liu Bei, is one of the three famous characters from the Three Kingdoms and frankly seems rather simple-minded though very diligent in his application of duty and honour.

With vivid battles raging on in the pages, my quagmiraculous promotion seems rather fictional. Having been told that this was the week for the move, I was told two weeks ago that alas my replacement has been diverted to a centre in more immediate need. That was before one of our newly arrived international teachers was lured by more money in Korea and resigned last week, not to mention the other internal promotion in our office that is waiting to move. Effectively there is only one international teacher who isn't moving anywhere and it will be those over whom the HR eunuchs have control (i.e. internal promotions) that will have to stay put till they find three teachers to fill the short fall. At this point it seems like September when I'll be moving but it's really not best to say. This is strangely reminiscent of a certain visa I waited for last year.

Pin-drop

2010-07-27T15:41:00.001+12:00

On Sunday 25 July, in excess of a thousand people gathered in front of the Ocean Oil building in the prosperous Jiangnan Xi shopping area, Guangzhou. They were there to protest the proposal to increase the use of Mandarin being used on Guangzhou TV during prime-time. The outrage by locals at the proposal had been widely felt, especially in Haizhu district where the Cantonese population is a vast majority. The fear is that it will be the thin edge of the wedge that will eventually take Cantonese from television and radio.

The demonstration continued from 4:30pm well into the evening, with police observing and occasionally moving to free passage for pedestrians. On one occasion the crowd chanted: "Let him go! Let him go!" indicating that perhaps there was an arrest. On the whole there were no signs of violence. At about 7pm when this reporter went down stairs, he saw with his own eyes the riot police kitted up in their gear and assembling in front of the building. From a distance, the crowd appeared to be peaceful, with a few people inspired to say provocative comments, which would create roar in the crowd, which sent all the students in the language school to the windows to see "what happened".

The Cantonese dialect, leveraging off the cultural engine of Hong Kong, has had a privileged status among dialects. It is not common that TV channels and radio statoins have dialect as their main language, but in Guangzhou it is. For many people, there is a palpable pride in the Cantonese dialect. Often shop assistants will use Cantonese with you even if you speak to them in Mandarin. Some people neglect their ability in Mandarin to that extent too. It is true that there are more and more migrants from other provinces in Guangzhou and Mandarin is now easily heard in all areas of Guangzhou; the riposte of course is that they have come into a Cantonese city and should learn the language of the land.

I went home that night and turned on Guangzhou TV and didn't hear a peep about the demonstration. I scanned the papers the following morning and the morning after to find not a mention. After the people scattered, the ripples in the media were negligible. Apparently CCTV reported that there was a gathering to celebrate 110 days till the Asian Games. Again China has shown that there is a latitude in Freedom of Expresson, but the lack of media freedom makes it a relatively meaningless act. On the internet it took a long time to find any sites that could be read from China about the event. Eventually I found the following:

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-07/555743.html (English)

http://www.oushinet.net/172-2795-80944.xhtml (Chinese)

That being said, this blog too, isn't accessible from China...

The drip

2010-07-21T01:42:00.001+12:00

Time has been rather uneven over the last month, with the hi(gh)s and byes of my whirlwind trip to the Philippines and then being brought down my a throat infection whose stay has already exceeded ten days.

At its worse, the infection, which started out as a cluster of nasty ulcers, stopped me from speaking altogether, but fortunately my colleagues ably covered for me. Yesterday, after days of thinking it was getting better, I slipped into a fever. I only realised it was a fever for the unexplainable nausea that slowly enveloped me while I was calling home. My third trip to the doctor gave me another experience with a doctor scoffing at the previous medical advice I'd received: "What? They gave you solely Chinese medicine to deal with that?" But that is going to the expected course of the public health over here: I went to one hospital on the second night of it got a diagnosis (tonsilitis) and a pile of medicine (including a powerful antibiotic); got worse and went to a different hospital and got a different diagnosis (ulcers, the previous doctor didn't look far enough) and got a pile of pills, all of Chinese medicine. Almost a week passed with my ability to speak returning and I could go back to work. But yesterday all pretensions of a return to health were blown away. My throat wound had started suppurating (a word I wish not to define in layman's terms, click on the link), obviously infected so badly it triggered a fever. I had a IV drip attached to my hand last night and the fever vanished; I had another drip today for good measure; and still with a disgusting throat I at least am starting to feel a bit more with it, and under the right conditions can talk at ease.

Fortunately, my days haven't all been bad: The Philippines was a wonderful break to get to see my little sisters in all their chubby, chundering (they got me once) and crawling glory. They were worlds apart from the tiny, premature babies I knew before I left. My little brother was still a handful but it was good to play with him again. I also got to know some of my "Philippines whanau". I got to swim: something that is so distant or difficult in China. I regret only that a lack of knowledge about how close the airport was causing me to hastily leave without being able to say goodbye to everyone properly.

The week prior to my departure was also a curious thing. I'd applied for a higher position in early June and heard nothing right up the week before my flight. Then on the Monday I receive an e-mail, which I didn't have to acknowledge the receipt of, saying when the interview was (the Thursday) and then I was to fly the next day. The e-mail interview offer surprised me: if they'd sent that on the Friday saying the interview was on Monday or Tuesday I wouldn't have been any the wiser that I'd completely missed an interview! (I shan't make any comments about my thoughts on any communication issues that my bosses may or may not have.) I was pretty relaxed about the interview. I had the favourable wind of being the National Academic Star the previous month and very positive support from the boss. When the list of the other applicants came out there was more reason to be confident, I was one of only three. The school I was applying to already had a "local" senior teacher (local meaning Chinese), and one of the applicants similarly was "local" (there was reason in managing a large staff to have a balance of local and international). The other applicant is an interesting chap. He is seemingly able but anyone who I mentioned him to told me there was nothing to worry about, scratching more deeply, apparently he had a history of making female staff members feel awkward around him. This being all said, the interview wasn't a walk in the park and I was put over the coals on a theoretical question. I walked away pretty confident and fortunately on the bus to the airport, my boss texted me: "Congratulations daniel on ur position ill be sorry to lose you." Of course, that was the first I heard of it but apparently it was in motion and there was an offer waiting for me in my inbox on my return.

There has been time for theorising and learning too in this time, but I might have to leave it to another time.

Words and letters (1)

2010-07-06T23:36:00.001+12:00

Language is an odd beast. Learning them to a decent level and teaching them to a high level grants you something on an insight into the soul of each tongue, not to mention the mechanics. Sometimes students will get exasperated about the idiosyncrasies of English, not noticing the tics of their own. When one is only wrapped up in one language it is easy to overlook some of the obvious lessons of language:

"The North Koreans call Jin Zhengri the General," a student explained on one day.

"Kim Jong-il," I correct saying the name of the dictator in anglicised Korean, which is quite close the original.

The student looks at me strangely so I elaborated: "You need to call him: Kim Jong-il, that's his Korean name."

The student is perplexed: "Who?"

"The name of the leader of North Korea is Kim Jong-il. What you said was his Chinese name. He has a Korean name. He is Korean," I say, almost regretting immediately being impatient.

"Jin Zhongri is the General of North Korea."

"He might be in Chinese but no-one else will understand you saying that."

That particular lesson of course might seem particular to Chinese - Japanese and Korean names can be pronounced in Chinese with reference to the characters that all three languages share (although the sound may differ). But this affects English too in a way. We have ways for describing foreign names and things. Placenames like Florence, Serville and Vienna differ a lot in pronunciation from how they actually are pronounced.

It works in reverse too. "Do you know what tofu is?" I ask, a shake of the head is the only response. I explain in English the appearance and characteristics of this obiquitous Chinese product. Often, but not always, they will gasp: "Ohhhhh, doufu."

"In English we call it tofu; that is the Japanese pronunciation." Students are often perplexed why English would take the Japanese pronunciation for a Chinese thing. We also say Zen (Japanese) and not Chan (the Chinese pronunciation of the same term). I assume this is because they've historically been more open and developed than China. When you trade, your terms are taken on board. And English has always traded not just goods but words. We generally take the foreign word and not find the need to make our own. We call pasta pasta; Chinese call it all "Yidali Mian" (Italian "noodles"). But then occasionally English will use a very general term for a lot of specific foreign terms or things, dumpling being the obvious example (I will argue with speaker here saying regarding many different Chinese foods saying: "We call them all dumplings," only to be told by the student that dumplings are jiaozi (a small parcel of stuffing wrapped in a skin of pasta) - look up dumpling on Wikipedia if you're not sure).

Chinese generally will make its own terms for things, leaving transliteration for foreign names and (some) places. But that means that foreign words that are transliterated are often overlooked. A student didn't believe me that Luoji (the Chinese term for logic) had come from English. Not even when I asked him to tell me the meaning of Luo and Ji did he concede. The local staff are often driven nuts by students who discovering an English word has a transliteration in Chinese use only the transliteration. Sample situation:

"Teacher, what is 'store'?" (this is usually asked in Chinese)

"A store is a shop." Even though they know what a shop is, many students don't accept this explanation.

"A store is a place that sells things."

"A store is like seven-eleven. It sells things."

Then the student, should they be Cantonese, will often gleefully realised: "Oh: See-door." (the meaning for see-door, the cantonese transliteration of store, is a little different, implying a small grocery store). The teacher nods but says: "Store". But then the student feeling that the word is the same, uses it rather than listening to the actual English pronunciation. This sets in motion a chain reaction leading to the explosive breakdown of the teacher in question.

It is easy to pick on students and think they're not that sharp. But everyone has these moments. I still have some "sticky" misunderstandings of grammar and expression in my Chinese. Often I say them again and again. And I remember that no matter how many times I corrected my Chinese-learning friends that Beijing is pronounced with a hard J, they still went back to the anglicised Beijjjjing.

2010-07-01T03:14:00.002+12:00

"You're indispensible to this school, Daniel." So spoke Hanson, an elementary student with a penchant for learning a word and then using it on everyone. The sentiment was strangely timed: I was about to head back to the office to print off a few more documents to prepare for my interview at another school.

"Thank you, Hanson. You're so kind." The interview, early tomorrow morning, has hardly rippled me yet. But it may lurk in my dreams tonight. I'll be sitting before three interviewers, all whom I expect to give me a testing time. And so they should if I were an interviewer, I'd insist on troubling applicants so much that they'd all thought they'd failed, just so that we can know that there was some questions that pushed them to the exact lines of what they think they are and what they might in fact be. I'm sometimes scared about the discrepancy between what I think I am and what I really am.

If it comes to be that I leave my school, I'll be sad and I might not be the only one. Perhaps one of the keys to my motivation to teaching is that I believe that I subconsciously buy into the progress of all of my students. It makes it easy to spend time with them when you are sometimes just as dedicated to their progress as they are. But at the same time, I have this connection with between fifty to one hundred students; to leave them feels like leaving the job undone and letting them down at the same time. I'm taking some solace in the fact that several of the longer term students with whom I've established a great teaching rapport are nearing the ends of their contracts too.

The summer rains descended on Southern China, drowning many and cleansing the land. In the cities though, it was just a damp period of weeks: washing doesn't dry; you can enjoy days without sweating yourself silly before one even goes through the front door in the morning and; mosquitoes feed. Of course, there is still the daily maximum near 30 degrees but at least the temperature can drop to 25. Needless to say, that relief has ended and we're back in the sauna again.

I'm also two days away from being in the Philippines. This is after a lightning whip around Zhuhai and Macau two weeks ago. Life is not going to let up anytime soon.

The hot unbothered

2010-06-18T13:39:00.001+12:00

Watching Phoenix Satellite TV, I got to hear the mangled English of John Key, the bouncing jumps of a haka powhiri and the sight of the Chinese Vice-President, Xi Jinping, speaking about New Zealand and China's relationship in Auckland, it is easy to see that NZ as small as it is does register well here. News from home does register here. My students knew that New Zealand drew with Slovakia in the World Cup. Even the sad tale of a slain Chinese high school registered. Though the occasional student couldn't say where the archipelago of NZ is, most know that it is a very beautiful place.

Kiwidom is in fact flowing through my school at present. We may have the only three kiwis in all of the Guangzhou schools in my chain, the latest arrival, a teacher from Christchurch, also continues the tradition of us snaring all the proficient Chinese speaking international teachers. In addition to him, one of our local teachers also went to Victoria University and identifies strongly with New Zealand so we're probably more New Zealand than American.

That being said, I'm leaning myself away from this centre that has been home for the last seven months. I'm a strong candidate for a senior teacher position at another school in the chaim. I've been fortunate to have received a national award to strengthen my bid for the job and it may be up to me not to make a mess of an interview to secure my next position. Going to another centre, as uprooting as it may be, is essential for my growth as a teacher, to see how others operate, and give me the experience to possibly in this time abroad take the reins as a Director of Studies in my own right. Also, my school, though comfortable, is not necessarily the best place to develop. I want some professional pressure to improve myself and the possible position will ensure that is the case. I won't be top dog there, and I'll have a Director of Studies who is legendary for his punctiliousness.

But it is best not to get wrapped up in work, and with a fortunately timed national holiday I set off to Zhuhai and Macau to let off some steam for three humid days. These are two cities on either side of a historical border. Macau was once a Portuguese colony that was only returned back in 1998; Zhuhai was its "Mainland" neighbour who benefited heavily from its proximity to a formerly western trading port. Unlike Hong Kong which has many million people, Macau barely registers as a city bar its historical significance. It is now famous for casinoes but has more going for it than just that - it is quite a pretty little peninsula. I drank lots of port and ate egg tarts by the half-dozen. One night I had a great dinner almost alone except for my travel companion in a restaurant. The awesome service staff climbed out from behind the bar and bearing guitars gave us a rather impressive exhibition of song and music. Occasionally they fused a Chinese song with latin guitar. They merged their voices in a resonant harmony. They sang from classic to recent, and never seemed to miss a beat for their appreciative yet small audience. Food, or at least the atmosphere in which food came, was the greatest feature. Again I could have a cafe-feel. Again I could appreciate food in a room designed for ambient austerity, not hustle and clatter, where service helps but never crowds and often genuinely smiles: A western service concept.

And the whole time the mercury crawls ever upwards. It is not yet the "hot months"; it is merely rather hot. It was 29 degrees at midnight last night and now at 9:30am it has again crossed that on the way back up, probably to peak at 34 sometime in the afternoon. I may be beginning to be physically affected by the constant swelter - my stomach is not itself and I'm occasionally dehydrated; but overall I no longer feel annoyed by it. Many of the local men seem to have the whole day shirtless. I wish I could. On my trip I saw people in the water at a beach. I wish I could be there too. I can only shut my eyes and imagine being tumbled by a wave of cold salt water at Port Waikato.

Be scene, be herd

2010-05-28T05:08:00.001+12:00

Let one day be a microcosm of Chinese tourism. That day will be the 22nd of May, 2010:

We arrived at the airport to find my name was misspelt on the booking system. We called the agent, who in turn called their man at the airport to deal with the matter. He consequently disappeared with my passport and my friend's ID for twenty nervy minutes, before reappearing with corrected tickets. We made it to our gate on the final call, and were directed onto a packed terminal bus. We squeezed on and waited, and waited. Apparently someone else was late. After ten minutes suddenly a wave of annoyance arose within the group: "It's freakin' hot," "Let's go!" erupted. Just then a young women strode calmly over, sat in the seat next to the driver and we left. "She must have been doing her make-up!" someone quipped. The flight gave us only biscuits and bottled water for the one hour flight, which no-one on the flight consumed because they knew that the food on tour groups would be poor, and so they were all keeping it for later. Once on the ground, we jumped on the bus and headed on our way to the parks. On the way, we were given a spiel for traditional Tibetan medicine to adjust to the altitude. My friend and I always wary of a sales pitch declined. We arrived at Huanglong park, the first sight of our three day trip. Though starting at a height of 3150 metres and going to a height of 3500 metres (almost as high as Mt Cook), we still insisted on not taking the cable car to the top, preferring to do it traditionally, on foot. Within half an hour my friend was hit by the altitude, first by tiredness, then dizziness and finally nausea. She shooed me onwards, saying she could rest while I could make the trip worthwhile, so I steadily strode toward the main beauty point at the top. Having just had a dry winter, the water wonderland was less than wonderous for most of the walk. The blue sky was suddenly darkened an hour up, and the chatter of the climbing masses silenced by a thunderclap: it began to snow on a warm day. That passed, and I got to the top, admired the beauty for two breaths, before heading back down to see my friend. Down, we climbed back on the bus. Another sell began: "On this trip, you'll have 12 hours of enjoyment, for what was a very cheap price..." Apparently there was a performance on the evening of the second day which we had to see for the price of NZ$64. We fluttered the tour contract in front of the tour guides forehead: There are to be no additional costs on top of the original cost of the tour. He said that it was strongly recommended we went and that money would go to charity. We didn't bend. He said at least one of us should go. We said we weren't going. He told us that we were the only ones not going (we weren't) and that our intransigence stood between the event making money to give to the needy. We just blinked but didn't give. And thus we would "miss out". The bus had to stop for technical issues twice on the way causing us to have dinner at 10pm. That night I shared a room with another member of the tour, who smoked in our room while I was in the shower.

But it was a great trip. Chongqing, the so-called western capital, and Jiuzhaigou were wonderful. Both were set in the southern spice belt of China, where dishes run red with chilli. I didn't meet a single dish that was too hot, enjoying every bite. My friend's family really took me in in Chongqing and really took to the region. The dialect was interesting, sounding like a Korean speaking French but with words strangely similar to Mandarin. If I knew the topic, I could almost understand everything; but soon as the subject drifted and the thread slipped through my fingers it became inpenetrable again. After learning a few key words, my general comprehension lifted to about the same level as the Cantonese I've been working on for months.

The star destination was a place called Jiuzhaigou, a place is regarded as one of the foremost natural treasures of China. We got there the day after the one I mentioned above. The park started at a height of 2500 metres and stretched to 3000 metres in places, higher than Ruapehu's summit. "Once you have been to Jiuzhaigou, you can't enjoy waters," they say and I can say that it is not an overstatement. This place certainly has beauty up to the level of the best sights of the Southern Alps with water colour only slightly paler than the Emerald Lakes of the Tongariro Crossing. A place drowning in beauty that exhausts the eye. But this is China, a place that democratises tourist spots. In New Zealand, many of our natural jewels are the preserve of the a-bit-more-than-able-bodied and the super-rich in their copters. In China, everything is boardwalked, gondolaed and staired. Jiuzhaigou had a bus fleet ferrying people from one visual splendour to the next. In this relatively remote place, these buses were more packed than any city buses I'd taken in Guangzhou. This allows the elderly and the young to enjoy the beautfy in a way that New Zealand could never do; but also opens natural scenes to the emotional pollution that an incorrigible human mass and their idiosyncrasies can bring to one's experience of beauty.

As mentioned we declined a performance on our last night, preferring to walk slowly around the township that supplies the park its accommodation. I ate some very authentic food (from sites that looked like refugee shelters), chatted with Tibetans and bought cheap. What in English we call Tibet, in Chinese is called Western Tibet; we were in an area thought of as Eastern Tibet. It was good to escape the group. Back at the hotel we heard that we would be getting up at 5:30am. We were doing this so that we could go to expensive stores before we flew back. One shouldn't complain: the reason the tour was cheap is because the tour receives a commission of sorts to bring tourists in. And it is rather slick, if not sickening. The selling actually starts on the first day when the tour guide tells us "expected prices" and that to buy outside of authorised dealers is dangerous. Then arriving at these shops we are hustled into theatres to be told: "Gold hair crystal: the beloved of the successful and rich. Bringing wealth to those who wear it." "Green crystal, the favourite of women," etc. in an attempt to mesmerise or guide the tired, weak travellers.

Mercury creeps

2010-05-07T14:06:00.001+12:00

I've come back into my home with the moisture content in my clothes weighing more than that of cotton of which they were made. It was a day where I spent most of my time in an air conditioned office but the small time in between air conditioned places makes a big difference. The maximum temperature is now consistently scrapping past thirty degrees and the humidity sustains itself despite the heat. So far I haven't had any trouble with it - it's just the comfort factor of wearing pants and long sleeve shirts to and from work. Rumbled tumbled thunder intones from the murk. Now thunderstorms are sweeping the city so I've opened the curtains and turned off the lights to appreciate it. It is 2am with 23 degrees, and 100% humidity now.

My cantonese is very much on the up-curve. I could just hear words before, especially the Mandarin analogues (originating from a common ancient language there are words that are directly related but sound rather different). But now my mind is stringing words together and thus meaning is gelling together. I've overheard two phone calls understanding more than just the gist recently, and I've started ordering food and buying in Cantonese, even unwittingly to unfortunate service staff from other provinces who don't speak Cantonese natively - they understand, nonetheless. Poor Mandarin will linger in the margins of my mind. Lightning camera flashes explode from my hind. Internet cantonese radio chatters in the midst.

I don't know if I've mentioned the back alleys but now they're my highways. Chinese neighbourhoods, especially the older ones, have little lanes dicing communities providing the populace with ways to race to the main arteries of the city. The alleys themselves are a picture, a microcosm, of life, dotted with random shops, with the mandatory street seller plying their trade of fruit or pirated DVDs in front. It feels exceptional to have them mapped down to the very guy harking on the corner. I feel safe scurrying through there, occasionally seized by the moment to buy random stuff like loquats and mangosteens. Part of the way is along a stinky river which I no longer appreciate the stench of. It is just a pleasure. To walk past the meandering stream, wander through the muddling denizens is something I really might actually miss. In this increasingly steamy environment, a portion of the local men choose to do go without shirts, or at least do what can only be called a paunch-show, perhaps one can tell the temperature by the percentage who choose to do so.

I've been rejected for a second time for a credit card which is rather annoying, and now will go to the travel agency to buy a ticket for my next adventure: Chongqing and Sichuan in central China. It will work out as a time to cool down with temperatures merely in the low to mid 20s.

Cantopopped

2010-04-21T04:28:00.001+12:00

I'm amidst an obsession. I can't stop listening to Cantonese, wanting to hear Cantonese or learning every scrap of Cantonese vocabulary. My ears seize passing words and suck their vital essences, for future reference of course. Bizarrely, or not so bizarrely, my ears are quite intuitively seizing the language. It is quite possible that my Mandarin brain has finally connected the dots and has united the language engine of Mandarin with the Cantonese vocabulary and knowledge that I've been diligently gathering for 14 years. I'll immediately recognise unknown words as cognates in Mandarin and understand the gist of what is being said. Natural phrases spoken rapid and naturally are hooked in by my senses and sensed by my brain: I know what is being said without knowing why I'm understanding it. It may be that I'm learning the language as a Mandarin speaker rather than as an English one. Or maybe I'm enjoying the best of both worlds. A friend noted: I don't have the same inaccuracies as a person not from the province, I can pronounce and "hear" the sounds that don't exist in Mandarin with the tones that don't exist in English.

One odd side-effect is that when I switch back to Mandarin, at first it is completely alien, and the a complete relief and flowing into my intellect without any problem with understanding. The problem with switching between languages has always been a problem for me, and to be honest it probably helps that I stay in one language. Chinese students have always integrated English with Chinese, so it is not hard to understand how they have no issue switching; or, for that matter, have such trouble dis-integrating their English from the pernicious influence of their mother tongue.

Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese relatively uninfluenced by the races that took the Imperial throne in the north. According to one of my early lecturers Mandarin was simplified because the Mongols, who took Beijing as their capital for less than 100 years, couldn't get their tongues around end-sounds. Perhaps the Manchus, who ruled the last dynasty of Imperial China before it became a Republic, also aided in the reduction of tones down to the mere four (or five if you count the neutral tone) that exist in modern Mandarin. Cantonese has six tones, or nine if you count the three represented by end-sound words. End-sound words are those where you almost aspirate a sound, but don't. Say "sick" aloud for example: we say SIK-kuh. The kuh sound is the air released from our throats. In Cantonese, and many other Chinese dialects, the air is not released. It is held. In this, it is similar to ancient Chinese: ancient poetry sounds better in dialects such as Hokkien and Cantonese simply because they are less adulterated, the similarity is greater, than Mandarin.

But that history is not an issue. The only issue for me is that I'm in Canton, the beat of this land is Cantonese and I'm finally starting to dance to its beat.

In defence and attack

2010-04-10T06:11:00.001+12:00

It is a line that I've heard many times since I came here but it really does hit a nerve: "Your Chinese is fine; why would you need to learn more Chinese?" It isn't the inquiry itself that is grating but the tone: bewilderment. I struggle not to shriek when I hear such, isn't it a good thing that one seeks to improve one's self as a natural desire? Shouldn't only the opposite, the desire not to learn, be the really bewildering thing?

Interestingly, the query has been asked of me twice in the last week, both in different ways: the first, inappropriately, by a language teacher, and secondly by a colleague. The colleague actually went about it the best by enriching the initial question with follow up questions and statements that validated it: "But surely you come to a point when you should be happy with what you've learnt." Perhaps, we all do reach a point when we, for any field, cease inquiry, cease to ensure that progress has been made. It is a point; however, I'm lusting after Chinese language. And being in China makes this all the more irresistable.

On Monday, I went to karaoke with some of the office staff and a couple of teachers. The some of the office staff were knocked back by the fact that I can actually speak Chinese well; they hardly knew this because in the office I refuse to speak Chinese except when inquiring about Chinese words I hear or see. This adherence to a professional principle, to never speak Chinese to students or usual staff, has probably hindered my progress. But I refuse to bend. Most of the students I teach on a regular basis have intuited that I have an unknown level of Chinese, but the staff were mostly in the dark. I sang a complete song in Cantonese for the first time. It'd caught my ear while listening to a collection and then I could only channel my past frustrations through full throated renditions of its plantive lyrics. One of the desk girls came over and proposed singing along with me for a few other Cantonese songs to which I agreed: I struggled immensely, not having practiced to the same extent as my chosen song.

Today, I have class with my new teacher and I've overprepared myself in all honesty. I met her through a colleague and then after thinking through how I'd best learn, presented on paper what I thought would be a good system of study. She approved of it so thus I'm facing another phase for my learning: having a teacher. This might be cruel wording: my school does, in fact, offer us a teacher; but she is untrained and of the wrong temperament to be a teacher of any strong impact. We do learn words and have a Chinese environment for an hour before she disappears again for another week.

Outside of class, I'm finally using more Chinese too with a regular dinner companion, a local, who not only doesn't mind me using Mandarin but occasionally fires a few Cantonese phrases at me to keep my awake. It all gives me hope that I might actually have some hope of tidying up my Chinese.

It is hard not to think about language when you are an English teacher. Even when I conduct our placement tests I am absorbing language from the pure beginners, who ask me whether I can speak Chinese in Chinese in an interview to determine their English proficiency. There are also the echoes of questions I ask: I ask English and a perfect translation of it is emitted in Mandarin or Cantonese as the interviewee considers how best to answer. Sometimes it is a bizarre mixture of both:

"What movies do you like?"

"Gongfu movies," the reply comes.

"What kind of movies are they?" I ask even knowing Gongfu is the Chinese word from which we get Kungfu.

"Do you know Chinese Gongfu?" they ask.

"No, what is that?" I deny and ask.

The student looks to the ceiling considering how to explain for a moment; after that moment passes and still no explanation comes I thought I'd better help.

"Do you mean Kungfu?"

"No." Oh dear, are you sure?

"Do you mean fighting movies?"

The student pauses: "Maybe," looking not sure where I was coming from.

"Do you mean kungfu movies?" I ask again, with a kungfu pose.

"Yes. Maybe."

And maybe many rascally shtudents can't help but speak Chinese on school grounds, which to me is galling: Don't you want to learn English? Wouldn't you rather keep this as a haven of English than pollute it with the ease of your mother tongue? The answer is yes, since for most people, English is an obligation to be accepted, and hopefully avoided. Probably since I have such a strong discipline about not using Chinese myself on school grounds it generates a rather blinding impulse to eliminate all those who dare enjoy the luxury of speaking in Chinese. In Taiwan, I barely spoke English in the language building and was better for it, after all. One student, though speaking "English", adds Cantonese sentence endings to everything: "Really aaaarr?" and thus drives me nuts. I'd be concentrating on an explanation for another student when the "laaaaaar" from afar hits my tympanum with such a thud that all thought and speech comes to a crashing halt forcing me to stride up to the student and beg her to show some restraint.

Language is a nourishing liquid that surrounds this school of fish; it is what we oblivously swim in regardless of where we are. Let's all enjoy the crashing waves or the smooth waters of lakes.

Spring rolls

2010-03-30T03:42:00.001+13:00

"Does it often get this hot in winter?" I sweatily asked a student in mid-February, which is often considered part of winter in the northern hemisphere.

"We don't have winter," was the response. The not-winter period featured rather cold, damp periods punctuating by warm summer stretches. Now deep in March, the humidity has been low at times and high at times with temperatures in the 20s. In such conditions with a breeze, it feels like a sheet, fresh from the drier, is caught on your body, flapping around, but without the air resistance. I guess this must be Spring. Many of us in the office have simultaneously developed sore throats. My theory is that the far-flung sandstorm shredded our throat linings, ever so subtly. My body has been playing tricks on me as it grapples with the demands of living in this warm, dirty, pressurized metropolis.

"This is a subtitle. This is a subtitle. This is a subtitle. This..." ran continuously across top of the big LCD screen in English on the biggest shopping mall as I waited across the street. Postmodern, perhaps. Time hasn't generated much traction lately: it runs through my fingers like dry sand and street dust. The milestone of the fourth month in China past two weeks ago, but I didn't had the accompanying unease as at the end of the third month. This time has featured the whirlwind arrival and departure of my sister; increased responsibility at work; plans for travel forming for both June and July and some clarity appearing for what I may do at the end of my contractual year. In terms of the latter, I'm placing myself well to be promoted to a senior teacher before the end of contract, whether it be in my own centre or another. In my own centre, I'm arguably the academic head (although with the imminent arrival of a new director of studies, that may change).

With my Chinese learning coming back into focus once again, I'm enjoying the prospects of the next month...

Tiger Tiger Water Water

2010-02-25T05:08:00.001+13:00

The water crept in some time on Monday night. I thought they had taken a hose to the hallway and the water had somehow seeped under my front door; but the bathroom hadn't dried from my shower; the kitchen seemed far from dry too. My passport on the coffee table had its corners curling throughout Tuesday; before I realised that moisture had swamped this city. Today we stood around the staffroom telling each other of our various aquatic home disasters.

The weather in this topsy-turvy month has been the biggest feature of life. The day before my Chinese New Year break was bathed in brilliant sunshine; the dust smog had vanished; if one were to photograph Guangzhou for a tourist guide, this was the day. Then I went on holiday and the temperature crashed from the mid-twenties to below ten degrees. It remained that low for the whole holiday period and then the first week back. The classrooms cold, the teachers wearing beanies and coats, students remaining at home, and mice were even heard stirring. And now we're swimming and warm, the mid-to-late twenties. My energy has surged like the temperature. My last class I was absolutely wired.

The second biggest feature was the coming of the Year of the Tiger. It roared into action in the cold. In the day before New Year's Eve, I was at a loss with how I was going to spend the festival. In a supermarket queue, which was miles longer than it had ever been, I texted a friend, to ask, to be presumptious and beg, for a chance to share his family's new year. It was a big request but after consulting his family, he said yes. It was a great day. I'm eternally grateful. We had lunch at his grandmother's place where they accommodated my eating preferences well; his father is a keen drinker and seemed rather glad at my arrival. He'd raise his glass ready to clink at every opportunity. Thankfully that was lunch and he had to drive. Dinner, however, there was no restraint. We went to a restaurant and he brought cognac. Needless to say, his glass was often raised; and I was obliged to do what I needed to do for his arm to rest again.

The Flower Market is a Guangzhou tradition at New Year. In the lead-up, there are several streets that sell flowers, kumquat trees (tiny grape-sized oranges), peach flower trees and dahlias. The sign outside my apartment says they should eliminate superstitions, but the fact that the "quat" part of "kumquat" sounding similar to the cantonese sound for "auspicious" all means that they sell like hot cakes. Oddly though at an occasion called a Flower Market, the number one thing to buy on the night of new year's eve is a toy windmill. That is because the spinning of the windmill turns and pulls the luck in. My friend's cousin wanted bought one for me, which I gaily and drunkly ran down the street with.

The year turned but the weather didn't. I rested a day and then I walked the city exploring two mid-river islands. One thing that is useful to know about Guangzhou is that it sits amid the Pearl River Delta. The whole area is riven with many rivers and islands. My district is a large island although you'd never know it until you looked at a map. Another island was completely taken by the colonial powers after one of the Opium wars and has a large number of colonial buildings. Another was covered with mansions and tree lines roads. Walking them was wonderful.

But now in sweeps the work and the wonders of a busy life. My sister arrives in Guangdong shortly and more exploration awaits me at every week.

The walk home

2010-02-11T02:52:00.001+13:00

There are some regular parts of life that are pretty much identical day-to-day. Your gnattering thoughts might differ; the weather might be different; but essentially the action is the same. Until, of course, some unexpected incident knocks you off your regular orbit.

I exited my school building for the second to last time of the lunar year and headed to the intersection to wait with the chattering pedestrians chomping at the bit to cross. One of the heads in front turned randomly, and then took a second take on spotting the tired white guy, me, standing jaded behind her.

"Welcome to Guangzhou," she said in correct but heavily accented English.

"谢谢" I thanked nonchalently in Mandarin. Her ears pricked up and immediately turned and launched into Cantonese, saying that my Mandarin was very good. I said in Cantonese that my Cantonese was not. She took a few misfiring sentences to switch her thought processes into Mandarin and then talked rapidly and clearly in Mandarin with the usual personal questions that traditional Chinese ask. I said I didn't have a wife or children to one question causing her to assume I'd left them in New Zealand, or Australia as she liked to refer to it despite my stating that they were two different countries.

"The milk in Australia is good and the air too."

"Yes," I said not bothering to halt her. She asked a lot about my educational background.

"I didn't complete my school; I gave up half way. Out of my group of students only I didn't finish school," she informed me.

"Oh," I said.

"Yes, I had a problem with my brain."

"No way ba," I said taking what she said as the usual phrase Chinese use to say they weren't predisposed to study.

"But then I saw a doctor and I was better again."

"Oh... that's good."

"I'm studying now again. I'm half-way through."

"Oh, that is good."

"After my husband died, I knew I wasn't going to marry again."

"Uhuh," I said not knowing how that fits in.

"He was a bit like you, open and happy."

"Is that so?"

Then she talked about cars and the Nobel Peace prize. I'm not sure how it was that she brought up the Nobel prize, but we arrived at a corner near my place. We'd walked in the same direction I was starting to worry that she would follow me as far as I was going to walk, to my apartment if necessary. I was loaded with thoughts that this was some sort of trick to ask for money. Or some elaborate prostitution solicitation. Or a marriage offer. I stopped at the corner and she completed her thoughts about Obama and the Nobel Peace prize. She asked if I was going to the right; she said she was going straight. I said it was a pleasure to have met her and bid her farewell and she did the same. We parted and then after I had walked 10 metres, she released a loud "Bai bai!" I reciprocated with just a little less enthusiasm and kept walking.

So she was just kind-hearted. Or still marginally mental. Anyway, I can thank her for an interesting walk home.

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Xiaogang Park at 6:30am

2010-02-08T14:58:00.001+13:00

Twisting and turning, bothered thoughts at the dawning, I rolled out of bed and put on the rain-pants I had mysteriously brought to China and onto the streets I went, searching for the apparent East Entrance to Xiaogang. The pavement renovation on Changgang East had been completed: I was free to break into a jog at will. Oncoming eyes were no less starey-starry at this time of the morning. I passed through the park gate: Khuuurrrk phut!

In a city of over ten million, the early risers number in the hundreds of thousands. The welcoming cheerleaders were the old and not-so frail, moving in synchronicity. I broke back into a jog and passed a back/front clapwalker. It was the second time I'd been to Xiaogang Park: the first was completely accidental even though the map I always use clearly shows there to be an extensive park barely 200 metres from my school. It is large enough to lose one's self: Khuuuuurk phut!

I walked a bit as I approached a bridge. My hope that that the torrential rain had cleansed, temporarily, the river of its stench was in vain. Above a bird was making a rough morning call. Or was it coughing? Have you ever heard a bird cough? If there should ever be a bird coughing, it'll be in Guangzhou with the air as it is. I charged back into a run and tailed a backward walker. His steady pace backwards meant that he could spend some time scrutinising me as I eventually pulled passed him: Khuuuuurk phut!

I passed the barbeque area and approached the badminton courts when my ears snared the familiar hollow tap-tap-tap of a ping-pong ball. I've been hoping for a ping-pong table for a long time and shot up the stairs for a peek. Passing the tables, there was a man sternly standing straight, sword in hand, ready to swing; Cantonese opera screeched from a 80s tape deck somewhere yonder as his onslaught failed to eventuate. A bare-chested runner bounds past: Khuuuuurk phut!

Those buildings are on my left again. Full circle I must have come! It was not the last time I would see those buildings on my left either that morning: Khuuuuurk. I stopped for a moment. Something wasn't right. I turned around slowly to spot a hunchbacked woman on a park bench. Phut! she spat into the bush. I turned back on my course and ran towards where I hoped the way out would be. The sun had risen and my twilight muddle had nicely brought me to the day.

Down is the new Up

2010-01-27T03:57:00.001+13:00

I should have known last Tuesday: the clapping girl outside the fashion shop had lost her mojo, and I was half-way to losing mine. She had been paid to clap all day long to create an atmosphere conducive to sales, but her listless, arrhythmic beat would only be able to scare away the pigeons, if there had been pigeons. Me? I'd sustained a packed working week before launching myself headlong to Fuzhou and back in a busy three days off to see a friend, and then I was back at work, bleary-eyed staring at the clapping girl staring at me. I marched on to get a hot chocolate at a rather neat cafe, but the writing was on the wall: My immune system had sustained a hit; I had a cold, sniffle; and I was going to be out of order for a wee while. I struggled through Tuesday, slept through Wednesday on my first sick leave; and the was launched down to Shenzhen for training, heavily drugged, for Thursday and Friday. That all didn't mean that I didn't ace the test at the end of the training but by the end of it all I was as sick as when I had started and back at work, without a semblance of working order. In such situations, the body is great; it secretes adrenalin; I act nuts; the students smile; class dismissed; let me collapse on my desk.

Now, I'm back on the verge of health and ahead of me is a nice period: Despite the sickness and the medication, the bootcamp in Shenzhen was rather inspiring: I've been given a boot (in the arse) forward. I think my teaching is already exhibiting a sharpness it didn't have before the training. Ahead of me is Chinese New Year, where not only will I have a chance to taste the sweet nectar of travel, but also do what I want to do: study! Since finishing my first novel in Chinese since arriving, I have got a third of the way through another. I have a colleague who is rather dedicated to teaching me Cantonese. (She plopped herself down to be last week and declared we were going to speak Cantonese and used the same methods she'd use to teacher her super-beginner students; for the first two students it was painful listening and then sudddenly I could understand, intuitively everything she said. Cantonese is fun.) Ah, sickness sucks, but life can be nice too.

All this should not miss what happened before the cold struck: I landed in the city of Fuzhou, home to a high school friend of mine. The nature of China, Chinese culture and the vicissitudes of life abroad came floating to the surface. It is interesting where your thoughts lead you. I'm yet to understand what I think of all that I heard and felt.

Not a way to die

2010-01-12T04:44:00.001+13:00

You know when someone abroad is busy: silence prevails in most of their correspondence; blogs are not updated; e-mails cease. With the ray of sunshine that temporary Facebook access has given, a general busyness has consumed me. I've been rather in my stride at work. I've been on top of things, rollicking in my task but it is tiring me too. I've been slowly developing cold symptoms.

It has been wet and cold for a while now, but it is about the same as mild coldness we have in NZ in late Autumn. I'm thankful for my big umbrella. Christmas did go better after the last blog was sent. I had a nice Christmas Eve party (where a lot of institutional gossip was spilt) and the Christmas party wasn't bad either. I spent most of Christmas day at home calling home and when I bought myself some shoes as a gift.

New Year was quite well spent too with a rough and ready New Year party that doubled as a farewell for the fellow I'm replacing. I reverted back to my role as a teacher for a moment there when some "students" (from another school) started asking me questions that I couldn't refuse. They rewarded me with the Chinese phrase: "To receive a day of teaching, you must treat the person as your father for life." When I heard the phrase come up (I hadn't heard it before) I cringed. I was desperately thinking what the "fu" at the end could mean, other than father, but nothing came and then they clumsily translated it in its glory, with innocent smiles. Apparently as part of treating me as a father, I'm going to be treated to the divine korean cooking of one of them. That can't be all that bad.

Not everything has gone smoothly though, and last night's happening really took the (expensive) cake. Many of my friends have suggested I'm paying too much for my apartment; and though I find it comfortable, it has to be conceded that it is not the best. Late last night, for example, it tried to kill me. I entered my bathroom in the all together after midnight and shut the door, only to have the whole metal handle disintegrate in my hand. I was incredulous for a moment until it dawned on me that I'd arrived in a peculiar situation: apart from a narrow window, the door is the only way in; the remains of the handle provided no way to open the door; I was thus effectively locked, naked, in my own bathroom. The bathroom window only lead to my laundry and then out into the outside air, eleven floors above the ground. I tried to see if I could fit through the window, and without a reorientation of my skeleton it wasn't going to happen. I had few implements to work on screws and joints with and while evaluating and testing a few options, I was starting to consider the rather horrid situation I'd be in if I couldn't get myself out. It was cold. The only heat would be the shower and then as soon as the shower ended I'd be freezing without a towel; no-one was coming; no-one at work knew my landlord so without getting the attention of anyone in the building; I could yell out the window, but I'd never heard voices, ever, in my apartment. The sound pollution is pretty bad outside I could be yelling out the window for ever; but vibrations travel well within the building: I could bash the ceiling until someone who happens to be taking a midnight pee is motivated enough to notify the front desk staff of the noisy neighbour below, who'd have to figure out who it is, contact my landlord sometime to get into my apartment with a key sometime and set me free. Or, perhaps with a few tools I could bore my way through the door with a pair of nail scissors - at least the action would keep me warm. The remaining stub of the door handle had a square rut that if turned could set me free: I plugged a pen into the hole and turned it, only to have the unfortunate pen dismantle itself under the pressure. My next victim were the nail scissors: I put them into the rut, opened them as wide as I could and turned; the blades twisted inside, and though the inner axel turned a little it wasn't enough. I sat back down and thought through it again. There really wasn't anything else I could do; I was cold, tired and had been stuck in the bathroom for between ten and twenty minutes. I returned to nail scissors, the only technique that had shown any promise, and after a few more moments of twisting at different angles, I pulled and the door popped open. This strangely mirrors another bathroom experience I had about twelve years agoin Japan.

I've been in this kind of queer dilemma situation before. It is weird: you aren't in imminent danger; there is no charging bull; but you are required to somehow "do something" to resolve it, because there is no going forward and no going back.

I'm on the verge of my second escapade outside of Guangzhou, heading up to see my high school friend in Fuzhou. My first trip out, to Shenzhen before Christmas, went like clockwork and I hope this one likewise is a piece of (quite expensive) cake. I'm looking forward to stepping into another world again; a place devoid of the Cantonese tongue.

Merry?

2009-12-20T02:26:00.001+13:00

I descended the fire stairs with critical thoughts spiralling down with me. We had our school and work Christmas parties today and the latter, held after a long day, I was always going to be easily annoyed. I was rather exhausted, hungry and the backroom staff were too busy to start the staff party on time; so we waited a bit longer and then eventually they informed us they were ready. We proceeded into the party room and were greeted by a pile of food. The only foods I could eat were plum tomatoes and cake, neither of which were giving me any feeling for the dinner my stomach needed to keep me even slightly content. Then we did a secret Santa. We'd been told about this just days ago and I hadn't had time to get a gift so I grabbed the authentic DVD I bought a while ago (which was the same value as the maximum budget for the secret Santa). I got my gift, which was the equivalent of a $2 shop gift, little photo frame. The other foreign teacher left - it was his second to last day and he couldn't be bothered hanging around. The backroom staff made their own circle and were raucously laughing in Cantonese and Mandarin, and I decided to get out. I spoke to my "pick-me-up" students and then headed off to get something nourishing in my stomach.

It wasn't a bad day though, but needless to say, it was never going to have a spirit of any kind, let alone something lofty like the Christmas spirit. I worked from 9:30am with three classes and then switched to Christmas party mode. The organisation was less than optimal: the principal thought the opening would be in one place; I was directed to another, and I had to do the speech to open the event. Then once I'd finished the speech I marched to my room to teach two hours of continuous lessons for writing letters to Santa and New Year resolutions. It was revolving doors of groups: a group came in and once they were finished, they headed out and another lot came in.

And then finally that stage was over. I chatted to a few students but then suddenly got caught in a swirl of cameras: For a brief moment in the early evening, I became one of the most photographed figures on the planet. (I was lucky that Obama had already left Copenhagen.) In student crowds, photo fever is a fast-moving contagion; it just takes one teacher to surrender his likeness easily for the whole staff body to be open game; and once you pose one time, other meeker students raise the courage, and their cellphones, to yank you around with one arm and raise their peace sign fingers with the other; and besides, I'm a soft touch. Since the assembled mass included a lot of "friends of students" it was important to stay present with the attendees, talk to the unfamiliar faces and also do what management here would include as "customer service". (I don't want to criticise this cold way of talking about students because members of the teaching staff do neglect this side of things.)

Regarding the situation at the end of the party, being the noisy person I am, I'll probably mention, politely, a few of my concerns to the school manager. Politely because she is probably part of the problem. The real Christmas day is still six days away and I'm about to venture out of my city for the first time. I'm hoping to be refreshed!

One moon

2009-12-14T03:44:00.001+13:00

If one week took a long time to pass, the last three weeks must have shot past because it doesn't feel like that long since I arrived. Time milestones often don't really amount to anything significant other than a number and the end of a first month is hardly any reason to crack open a bottle of Chinese whisky; so let this just be a title to a blog, and let it at least trigger some appropriate, although premature, circumspection.

One of my original goals was to get my Chinese on the tracks and, although it is not great as I would have wanted it, it is definitely on its way - I'm reading The Reader, in Chinese. My plan to establish myself a mandarin life external to my English school loop hasn't even set itself up in the starting blocks, which is rather disappointing, but I haven't even really tried. I'm far too comfortable and routine now. I've completely revived my classroom teaching and am leaving my own stamp on the school, slowly but surely. Teaching in itself is a joy, anyway.

Some of the students are truly energising. There are two young men who do nightshift at their jobs and come in bright-eyed and busy tailed at the surreal hour of 7pm to start their days with English lessons. One was a complete beginner when I arrived - I was there for his introductory interview - who has probably the best smile of any student. He chats in a basic way quite happily with me now (I haven't been teaching him - just talking to him from time to time); I've tried to buy his briefcase bag off him for the last few nights but he is only just figuring that out. The other exudes the greatest exuberance for learning of anyone in the school; he doesn't stop smiling, even when he told me he was assaulted on the way to the school! Both have only just made their first steps toward learning the language yet look forward without fear. Talking to each is a great way to end a day, a shot of human delightfulness that, at the end of the day, is the best way to head home on.

Discovery 100

2009-12-08T05:19:00.001+13:00

My discovery for the day was that a 100 yuan bill can survive a washing machine wash. This is good to know since I'd already spent 100 yuan having it fixed by two repairmen. I called one; he came; I put money in my chest pocket in preparation for payment; he pulled the machine apart; said it needed a controlling unit replaced; said that would cost 370 yuan plus; I called my landlord; was told to get a second opinion; the second one come; he turned the knob and it immediately worked. I believe the first one's dismantling incidentally fixed whatever problem it had. I had to pay both a 50 yuan door-service fee, something the landlord thought was high. So after a huge delay I washed my clothes, impulsively throwing in the shirt off my back, and today, ironing, I found my 100 yuan wrinkled but intact. They have paper money here so I'll take it as miracle.

But more significant a discovery was that my stamina is up to classroom teaching again. I did have a good day at the school with three near perfectly executed lessons in a four hour period. I enjoyed two of them immensely: one was a complete creation of my own and it fell into place perfectly on "the opening night". (I'll perform the same lesson two more times later this week.) Taking a lesson for the first time is a little scary and I did all three lessons for the first time today. The rest of the week will be easier now that I have a feel for those three which make up 50% of the rest of my lessons for the week. Every week should follow this rough pattern: Intense preparation on Sunday and Monday before teaching the first lessons for the first time on Monday and then having time to breath throughout the week.

The shrill whistle of the human traffic conductors is my alarm clock in the morning. The traffic, as chaotic as it is, can organise itself more or less with the subtle direction of the traffic lights. Pedestrians at major intersections, however, cannot manage themselves. (And I say this without any hint of irony.) Hwwwwweeeeeeeeeer! the whistle sonically torpedoes wayward walkers should they drift across the road without the green man as they usually do. They generally halt their steps in the face of the uniformed challenge. Four sunglassed conductors are required to hold the people-mass from seeping across the road. Of course, soon as they signal the non-cars to proceed across, the cyclists are unleashed rocketing like missiles through the churning intermesh of flesh and feet, often carrying twenty full water cooler bottles on the back of their bikes. At some time the conductors retire, the river banks are breached and chaos floods the streets once more until the evening falls and the conductors return to shoulder the burden of Sisyphus again.

People mountain; people sea. The population here, of course, can only boggle the mind of a Kiwi. The population density is double that of the densest part of Auckland, except maintained over an urban area three times greater. In my eleventh story room there is a telling view. Though I have great views from two of my windows, from two other windows I can get a scale of this large apartment building where I live: it is mostly occupied, a huge number of rooms; and it looks over a mass of old crowded buildings, all packed to the literal rafters; and in the not-so-distant distance, there are more apartment buildings, most of them labyrinthine, floor upon jaded floor, of identical floor plans, and doorways leading to rooms of the same or thereabout dimensions, accommodating a family with two parents and one point one rather overgrown children, who are usually in their mid-twenties. On an early Sunday morning I woke up and headed to the markets. Within my walk of barely five hundred metres, I passed close to five hundred people, all going somewhere on this beautiful Sunday morning. There is nowhere I can go apart from my apart-ment that I can part from the hustle-bustle of the neverending fanfare of life here.

Touch

2009-12-05T04:16:00.001+13:00

It was after the scalp massage, hairwash and the shoulder rub that I thought that I might genuinely be late for work. It was hairdressing, you see, but not as I had known it. I'd spent about 20 minutes in there without the blades of a barber's scissors even getting close to my scalp. I was sitting there having a shoulder rub, chatting to the masked gentleman rubbing my shoulders about all manner of things. Of course the relaxation momentarily disappeared when I spotted the hugest cockroach started climbing the wall, but soon the rub again released the anxiety and the world, I and the cockroach became one again.

The hairdresser emerged from his grotto later and chatted with me while he removed my laterally surging hair. According to my friend, barbers never used to chat to customers; so perhaps, it's a pleasant cultural appropriation from western barber culture; perhaps, the barbers in NZ could learn from the nimble fingers of my masked friend too. Either way, the barber was a good chat, and he enjoyed testing out my cantonese.

I did in fact get to work on time. And that day built to be a stressful one: observed by the boss on a class I'd never taught, but it went well enough; I'll credit student enthusiasm as the element that made it a good lesson. To be honest, after rushing the planning on a hectic day, I -thought it'd be a disaster. I'm par excellence one-on-one but classroom teaching will take some getting used to again. "Why are you shaking?" my students often ask. They have always asked that and the answer is simple: that's the kind of person I am. I've always had what the doctor calls a benign tremor, and the tremor is more severe in moments of anxiety, and I feed on my own nerves.

I have around me two very good, professional teachers, who don't have a heart for the job. They are efficient, knowledgeable and in some respects, good models to follow the example of. They control themselves with ease in front of the class and generally deliver good lessons. But they carry an element of annoyance at students. Whether it be style or personality, they sometimes release a sneer which is quite astonishing. The only other teacher loves students and loves teaching. He has vowed to know the names of all 400 students of the school. His lack of pedagogical polish is made up for in his sheer gusto for people. He and I are the only people who circulate in the student iLab (the area where the students take online courses) to aid and to chat with students. He and I are the only people who'd linger after class to aid students. It is technically the responsibility of all the teachers to go to the iLab but it doesn't happen for the first two teachers. That responsibility was given by the boss for whom many staff have already expressed their dissatisfaction with the management of. I have no objections with ideas of the boss: most of the points that the staff have issue with are things I'd generally think are appropriate things; it is seems apparent though that it is a matter of how changes and policies were delivered; there was no buy-in at all; perhaps, no buy-in even sought; they were just stated and that was that. A simple policy of no Chinese in the classroom and in the staff room was delivered; but the Chinese-literate teachers still use Chinese in the classrooms (this is against my religion); and when the wolf's away, the sheep do indeed come out and chat in Maaaandarin in the staffroom. And Cantonese. Which is fine by me. Incidentally.

On Thursday, I finally got out and about to a scenic area: White Cloud Mountain. As all decent mountains in China, it was staired; but it was still a good walk. It was good to head up and up. Looking back at the city revealed that Guangzhou was just White Smog City. Interpretations of some photos suggest that there is in fact no Guangzhou at all.

My flat-warming is approaching on Tuesday and I'm already thinking about how to amuse all my colleagues. They're a good bunch but we've always got the problem that on every day of the week, there are people working. Tuesday, I and two others have day off but we're all on the next day. They are good people and I'm hoping that release from the mental shackles of the workplace is enough to allow us a chance to be just people.

An interesting phase.

Where it's at

2009-11-30T02:13:00.001+13:00

Ah, time. In the scheme of things, this should have been the hardest week of all but it was pretty smooth. I agreed on and moved into an apartment; did my first lessons; had broadband installed; sat through endless bureaucracy and have settled into a nice routine.

Moving in was a little bit of a crisis in itself. Working late into the evening and then settling into my home without bedclothes nor crockery, I was a little bit panicked to get some of the necessities of life. Fortunately I have a massive supermarket close to my place that has everything.

Just 100 metres from my apartment is a daily food market with the freshest most wonderful vegetables. The long eggplant I had yesterday was as close to perfection as you can really get in life, art or the sciences; there were mushrooms galore; the choi-sam came with a gift: when I put it on the chopping board, in the corner of my eyes saw something dark moved under a leaf; lifting it found a creature that moved like a little like a worm, one end of it stretched into a pointy tentacle that reached out into the direction it wished to go, placing it and peristaltically creeped ahead. It was leech. The first I'd ever seen. The only drawback is what a colleague referred to as WAT (white-added tax); some of the prices sound dubiously high (by chinese standards) and usually I just refuse - they may expect bargaining but I'm hardly in the mood.

Tomorrow morning will be my first real chance to explore my unpolished gem of a neighbourhood. Tomorrow will also entail having a lesson observed by the boss. Since she grilled a senior teacher just yesterday, I'm hoping (a) that everything goes dreamily; (b) that if it doesn't she shows some leniency for someone finding their feet in our system.

It's nice to have proper home.

353

2009-11-25T02:12:00.001+13:00

353: This number is one of the first things I see when I descend into the subway each morning; It is the number of days before the start of the Asian Games in Guangzhou. I arrived at 363 and thus it gives a me an in-your-face reminder every morning of the time as it passes. Ten days it has been and ten days that have been crawling by regardless of happiness and frustration.

Yesterday, I would have begged for euthanasia to escape from the bureaucratic hoops to be leaped through to become a resident worker. It all seems so needless really but then I'm obviously oblivious to the benefits of the system of forms, of going from one small office to another, of photocopying and of Chinese triplicate (not real triplicate, because you have to do the same form more than three times).

But now with most of the process done, I'm on the verge of moving into my new apartment and settling down properly. Once there I can buy a pantry worth of food and spices; I can invite people over (my current room is no good for guests); and I can walk to work in 10 minutes. I can't wait to get over that line. My landlord seems a good man (that being said, I thought my last landlord in NZ would be decent when I first met her) and has been very patient and helpful as we went through the steps.

I've got a Cantonese teacher now and after one lesson, boy does my head hurt. I think I'll have a ferocious learning curve ahead of me but will hopefully get the hang of it soon. By the end of it, a reasonably spoken sentence would half stick and half go astray. The most peculiar thing is that after chatting in Cantonese, Mandarin seems so, so easy. It is as if the brain turbo-charges to cope with the Cantonese so that when the Mandarin comes it is even easier than usual.

Real work is about to begin! My flurry of blogs may be about to cease. While I was dropping some documents into my school's head office in the north, one of the teacher liaisons came up to me and suggested I be head of the social committee for my school and around for Guangzhou. I suddenly thought of the shock of a full schedule, my obsession with language, my move and suddenly I felt I was rather not feeling like it. But we'll see...

2009-11-22T02:25:00.001+13:00

Red, white and green

As someone with a rather experimental tendency when it comes to food, it is a delight to have such an excellent variety here in Guangzhou. I live near a very average small-scale supermarket, and yet I can get the most delicious things: mangosteens, dragon fruit and chinese mountain yams. They have plentiful beans and mushrooms; nuts and grains. Cooking dinner (and leaving some for lunch) is never a problem.

And you need to keep healthy in the city. Pressures push us everywhere, and sometimes it surges us places faster than we could ever imagine. Well, that is the case on the subway at rush hour. My lord! When everyone needs to catch the train at the same time, you'll catch it whether you like it or not, and if you don't catch it, you won't be catching anything for half an hour. There is a logic there that can be understood after close study of the physics of sunspots, solar flares and the solar wind. Fortunately, on Tuesday when we did go at rush hour the surge was strong enough for both me and my orientation friend to squash onto the train.

And even when you're not at peak the pressure remains: Beep; beep; beep; SHRIEK! That was the sounds transcribed in Jiangnanxi station on Tuesday night as a girl did a feet-first long-jump style leap to make the train before the fourth beep announcing the rapid shutting of the doors. She and her trailing shoulder bag made it by millimetres before the jaws of the doors drew shut. Fortunately the door on the other side was shut for she would have passed right through at that speed.

The general foreigners here are a strange bunch. I noticed this in the past too. As a person who makes eye contact with pretty much anyone with their eyes up coming the other way, I reckon that foreigners avoid my eyes much more than the locals. I think only one pedestrian foreigner has done anymore than dash their eyes away. I gave him a polynesian chin-raise with a polite smile; he smiled back.

But then, apart from my colleagues (who seem like a good bunch), I think I'll try and give foreigners a polite distance anyway. I went to meet a relation of a friend last night and fell right into a pocket of westernism, swedes, germans and a British-born chinese playing a game of Risk with beer; it was strangely uninteresting.

A week has passed since I arrived and it feels like at least a month. I'm on the verge of agreeing on an apartment; my work is falling into place (I'm chomping at the bit to begin, in all honesty); the weather is still rather agreeable; and I'm watching a horror movie on public TV: Awesome.

2009-11-19T13:46:00.001+13:00

After the early faze

Last night I got home and struggled to sleep for the first time. It was nothing to do with jet-lag or unfamiliarity; it was excitement and anxiety after my first day on site at my school. And I should have slept because I was knackered. I haven't worked in so many weeks that to sustain concentration, to constantly deal with people and absorb copious acronyms and institutional knowledge was rather taxing. On the subway last night I felt too tired to do anything. I could have fallen asleep so heavy were my eyelids. This morning, though, I woke after the sun for the first time since arriving, meaning that I'm not far from running on Chinese time.

My workplace has been an enjoyable discovery. My workmates, both foreign and local, have been very easy to get along with. The school already had one Canadian, one Brit and one American so I add another flavour of English. In the two branches I've visited this week, I'm the only antipodean. The majority of foreign teachers are Americans. The students are cute. I'm still about two weeks away from my actual teaching but it has been good to be amongst it all. I do feel part of the team.

I'd like to officially retract that dreadful title that I bestowed upon Guangzhou: Guangzhou is not the arsehole of China. On Tuesday I went to a similar place to that which I visited in 2000 (can't be sure it was the same) and what a change has occurred: The people are probably less foreigner-struck than when I was in Shanghai two years ago; It is a great deal cleaner; Beggars are not on every corner; The people, aside from the service, have been great to chat with. Last night while I was waiting for my food at a local eatery, a young man (Lin Huangjie) sat down on the neighbouring table also waiting, we started a nice conversation and though he had some interesting thoughts about the difficulties of learning English, he refused to speak with me using English.

Yesterday may also mark the time that my Chinese study was reignited. Ever since my birthday the heat and fire of my study have been weak; even being here I didn't feel interested in pushing myself to learn. Two colleagues and I enjoyed a lesson with the visiting teacher. It was better than I had imagined although my demands of a lesson will probably see me seeking another teacher to supplement my studey. There seems to be a slight issue inherent in the class. When it was just my two colleagues in the lesson, the less proficient of the two was quite inhibited by his more fluent classmate (the Canadian is a very unrestrained speaker). And now there is a newer, more fluent fish in the pond; apparently he was even more affected. The teacher took me aside at the end of the lesson to let me know about this and we discussed teaching methods to deal with it.

I managed to make my first vendetta though as part of my quest to bring a good service culture to China. A colleague that I went apartment hunting with and I went to a "korean" restaurant. We ordered and within ten minutes my dish came - I didn't start waiting for the other order to come through. Ten more minutes passed and I grabbed a waiter and he grunted that he'd check. We chatted and after another ten minutes I grabbed the same waiter and asked him again where the dish was; he grunted again and headed to the kitchen. Then suddenly all the waiters swarmed over to our order sheet and then to the table next to ours where a lady was eating a certain Chicken Curry Rice that we'd also ordered. The orders were somehow confused and became the one. After about ten minutes the dish arrived. I told my companion that I'd like to raise hell / a complaint on payment, but mainly for the purposes of language practice and making a not-to-subtle point. But it didn't end there: after finally starting our meal, I asked for some tissues; they came but when the same waiter delivered them he added a charge that was even more of a red rag to a bull. When we went up to pay, I camped us at the till and explained how dissatisfied we were and how it was completely unacceptable. The staff scurried around; signals came back and forth from the kitchen; and even when they refused to recognise any obligation on their part to show any goodwill, I stayed camped at the till. The boss came out and said: "We're very busy here and these things happen, sir." I continued telling him that this was not good enough. He appeared to be starting to crack. But we decided just to pay the bill and tell him that we'd mention the service here to our friends in our language school. After leaving the restaurant, I felt myself rather untactful and suddenly much better ways to reason them into the ground appeared to me. God save the next restaurateur who crosses me.

Cantonese has been on the menu too this week and it has been good to be in the environment to hear it and learn it. When I walked with an agent to help me find an apartment, he'd always talk to the landlords in cantonese and I caught quite a bit of it. And the basics comments are all immediately understood. But, boy, I've got a long way to go (and a year to do it).

I've got a well-timed day off today. Whoever designed the schedule for new teachers had it pretty much right. I'll have another two days of "work" and then another day off on Sunday.

2009-11-15T22:41:00.001+13:00

Settle down now!

I've had a day here now: I've been approached by hawkers; eaten my first street food; smelt that funny "Please let that be anything other than sewage?" odour that wafts out of drains in the city; and been pushed in front of by little old ladies. Yes, if the sign after customs hadn't said it already, I'm indeed in China.

The hotel was almost a joke the moment I arrived. The internet didn't work; the TV was misconnected; the clock is perpetually 11:40; the bathroom light blew within minutes; and though the room had a kitchen, it was short of almost everything. An intercom call brought a worker up to attend to all of the problems. Before I left New Zealand, I had been pleased to see that I had a breakfast provided with the room, and had a picture in my mind of a small scale buffet with some nice warm Chinese breakfast food, rice porridge, perhaps. In the morning, I descended to the lobby, hungry since about 4am and was faced with an unattended reception, so I asked the doorman who dialed a staff member. A sleepy-eyed receptionist came down and informed me that breakfast would come with the room cleaning people at around this time. So I headed back to the room to find two processed, packaged cakes and a bottle of orange juice: A let down of sorts. But it is a room and now that I've done some shopping, figured out how things work, slept well and had a wander around, I'm at least comfortable.

My neighbourhood is reasonably uninspiring, but it has a good supermarket nearby (with some organic products!) and it looks like it has a reasonable cafe opposite (stocks wine too, NZ labels only, buy them by the bottle at ridiculous prices!). The trees are pleasingly verdant; a big difference from the limp, grey "greenery" of Shanghai and Beijing when I visited. I haven't yet had to take any evasive action while crossing roads. My new shoes have now really met Chinese pavements, too, which really is the fastest way to depreciate an asset ever.

I headed out at noon on my first tentative journey into the subway network, emerging at the famous Guangxiao temple and then heading over to the shopping strip of Beijing Road.

"May I ask you a question?" I was asked in English by a young woman as I waited at an intersection.

I thought that there was no harm in allowing her the pleasure of a single question with me: "Hăo!" I assented. Her face collapsed: "Oh. You speak Chinese. Nevermind. I was going to ask you if wanted a guide," she replied in Chinese, disappointed and walked away.

Oh and the most unbelieveable sight of the day? Definitely the men selling tiger paws on the footpath. Actually, that might be the most extraordinary thing ever. I'll have to think back to all the wackiest things I've ever seen in this country. I also found a rather outstanding spelling mistake on a sign ("STSRBUCKA").

From tomorrow onward my world will become a bit more routine with work beginning. But not real work, just starting the settling in process and visa requirements etc. It should be fun!

2009-11-14T21:25:00.001+13:00

Final daze

And so I'm amid the slow process of airport transits – definitely away from where I started from, but still a seeming eternity from Guangzhou and my welcoming party there. It is only eight in the morning and I have four hours to kill till my connecting flight. And I'm in Starbucks, which of all places will be home for this time, drinking an Americano. And though they claim to have free wireless broadband, it seems not to be accessible anywhere in the terminal space I'm confined to; this'll probably be sent once I'm in Guanzhou.

It was a long day on Friday, day of the flight, which could have gone smoother, but I can thank my lucky stars that, so far, I don't seem to have forgotten anything. Both Thursday and Friday proved that even with plentiful time to prepare, my brain still managed to leave many tricky tasks till the last moment; but still leave just enough time to complete everything before a rush to the airport. It is always the way.

The pre-big trip anxiety only hit me on the drive to the airport in fact, showing that this drawn out lead-in really did rob me of the nervous energy it would have otherwise provided for at least a week preceding departure. This meant that I slept well the night before I left. But now, it has dawned on me properly: I'm starting a long adventure from which the relaxation of home is as further away as it will ever be; my feet will always feel in the air till they're back on home soil; I'll have curious eyes on me every day; and I'll have a long time to adapt to my new city and to connect myself in with the Chinese world.

Airports always play on my nerves as I subconsciously think about all the things that can go wrong, wrong entrances I could go through, forms that could be filled out incorrectly and wrong places to go and fruit and pocket knives I could accidentally stow in the wrong bag. I may have done something wrong already: I'd packed a bottle of Ginger Liquour in my check-in luggage to act as a gift or, if no recipient becomes obvious, for my own consumption in Guangzhou. Last night I went to duty-free where I took forever to make the decision of buying a NZ-made gin (gin being another spirit I seem to enjoy). However, the man at the desk told me I could only bring a litre of alcohol into Hong Kong. I didn't even think of the combined volume of the gin and the liquour in my bag; that puts me up to 1450mls of drink, and a bottle of the size in my check-in does show up on the scan of luggage meaning that I should declare or face a potential fine. Fortunately it wasn't the most expensive bottle, should it be taken off me later.

The flight to Hong Kong, from whence I write this, was very smooth. (500) Days of Summer was the best movie in the entertainment book and it was worth the watch (I do like everything Gordon Joseph-Levitt, if that is his name, is in though). The Last King of Scotland was probably good except for being constantly obscured by my ever lowering eyelids; Forest Whitaker makes you forget that he really isn't Idi Amin; I didn't see the end though – the curtains came down. I had a few short patches of sleep but otherwise cruised through the flight peacefully half-awake/half-asleep. The Other Man was my movie of the dozy morning, clunking its plot along but getting at peace with itself by the end.

If the delays and my fall at Cathedral Cove were some sort of karmic stop-signs telling me I had made the wrong decision to come to China, there have been plenty of other interesting personal coincidences telling me that this enterprise is right. As I boarded the plane, walking through Business class, I looked over at a passenger at the same time as he looked over at me. We both recognised each other immediately. He had been one of my students six years ago. Although he was a native of Qingdao (on the northern coast) and had been staying in New Zealand for most of the time since, he had started a company near Guangzhou in the last two years with a family friend. He visited me later in Economy with his business card and said we should meet later. It is always nice to have these lucky meetings.

And of coincidences and decisions, back in Auckland Airport waiting an hour to leave, I bought a hot chocolate and read in my freshly delivered Forest & Bird magazine about the degradation of waterways due to dairy farming. I pondered an interesting resolution: to be dairy-free for this whole Chinese endeavour, where realistically possible. My flight meal was already vegan (the airlines smartly give a vegan meal to all who have moral qualms about food), which brings me back to the huge Americano to my right (a really, really long black). I've been popping Raw Cacao beans as if they were candy. Such a principle would gladly avoid the generally horrid milk in China and keep me away from foreign temptations. But we'll see. I'll probably be offered a slice of cheesecake somewhere and scoff it without any moral restraint at all, and probably have my expectations let down with a tremendous clatter (in terms of western food here, things that look like a duck, don't necessarily quack or taste like a duck).

And so as I sit in the bastion of capitalism and epitome of a soulless café, I sit and ponder whether I'll find a cheap voltage adaptor soon before my cyber enjoyment runs out. And wonder how softly I'll land into Guangzhou, the erstwhile "Arsehole of China", and my home for the next year.

2009-11-11T09:00:00.002+13:00

Gourmet

In the lead up to my departure, I've been enjoying food and drink. I doubt whether this is the best strategy: indulging in all the things I enjoy could lead to the feeling of deprivation once on Chinese shores. But not mind that, I've had fun.

Avocados so plentiful and creamy; yoghurt so smooth and rich; cheeses: gouda, blue and brie; chocolate from mid-dark to the darkest night; coffee brewed and prepared to its astringent best; breads light and pure; raw cacao beans; macadamia crunch; dainty ports drunk at the wrong part of the meal; manuka honey spread on beautiful toast bread; gin and tonic, hitting the spot; crepes thin and well filled with the sweetest filling; falafels and tabbouleh so morish and satisfying; milk so white and full; pure organic juice from any fruit; sandwiches with gherkins, beetroot and egg; hummus with garlic and golden kiwifruit scooped with a yellow plastic spoon.

Blogger is one of the websites that are not necessarily accessible in China. This blog was sent via e-mail, the only way I'll be able to continue on this site. And perhaps with such wonderful foods mentioned, I'm best if I don't see the foods listed once I'm in a place where they are no longer obtainable.

2009-11-07T14:54:00.002+13:00

The long and winding road

In June I got the news that triggered thoughts of flying away, and now, five months later, here I am with less than a week left before departure. It has been a rather trying time. I'd thought I be gone long before this time - I've been unemployed for six weeks - but there can always be reasons for such things.

Though I've been denied time with my sister in the UK and travel in Europe with my friends, I've gained in terms of time spent with my mother and friends here and the new connections I've made with my extended family. I've had time to contemplate, as well as explore my country and prepare for my trip.

This being a rather large endeavour for me, it has been nice to have time to adjust to the idea too and think about what goals I have and how I'll carry them out.

2009-10-24T19:07:00.002+13:00

To the root

With my new life postponed temporarily, there was plenty of time for distraction. My zeal for Chinese study ebbed once the immediacy of my departure faded, so where was I to go?

I happened to accompany my mother to a family get-together and was immediately struck by the need to have my lineage down on paper. This may not be an issue for many people but my immediate family, excluding my father's recent lateral extension, is rather tiny - I have no living cousins; but beyond that there are thickets of relatives most of whom were vague to me. I've also not been diligent in the past to follow the exact in's and out's of our family; and for whatever reason, our family has always seemed to do its own thing.

Despite us already being a long way into the information age, I believe I might be the first person to put the full power of the world wide web into the search for ancestors and relatives. And there have been more than a few surprising discoveries: the Auckland museum had a photocopy of my great-great-great grandfather's diary; his grave was a mere fifteen minute drive from home, but he was born on Jersey of the Channel Islands c.1823, coming over on a boat, the Merchantman in 1855. And our family history on that island goes back almost to the Norman Conquest!

I visited my only uncle last week on a trip to Waihi. I'd only met him once before in my memory (due to distance and a family disagreement I never really got to know him). It was a fascinating meeting. He naturally looks quite similar to my father but in terms of interests and attitudes, he is very different; we talked widely on all manner of topics. I'm tempted to go on a Coromandel genealogical jaunt to meet people and visit the dead. In fact, a Dunedin visit may well be due too.

Due to our patrilineal system of surnames, there is a strange tendency toward of fascination. I'm as much a Willstead, Holt, Brown, Harris or Hipkins as I am Goudie, but the search for the origin of Goudie, Denize and McNarey seizes me as more interesting.
Oral history presents its own difficulties. Speaking to my father or uncle about their relatives brings up a plethora of nicknames, and that side of the family has a large number of people who use their middle-name as their main name.

Other than banal facts (like that I'm 1/16 "german" and I'm not as "scottish" as I thought I was), it does give one a feeling a fitting in the world; My sisters and I are the last descendents of the McNarey family in New Zealand. It seems two brothers came over in 1910, got married but all their genes now rest in our hands. Location, location, location was crucial for many of the meetings of ancestors, like a cosmic dance which only can only be appreciated in retrospect. And I now know the Goudie name may not have originated as I first thought, and have always said.

One of the problems with delving into the past though is the relegation of once living, breathing people to mere names. And in the mist of time, people are reduced to names and numbers. They are only proved by their source documents, not by the memory of them. The Goudie name is indeed an issue where my line becomes fuzzy after the last definite ancestor, a William Goudie in the town of Maybole in Ayrshire, Scotland. The only way forth another generation back is through his record of birth, but there is no record of a William Goudie born 54-56 years before the 1841. Are all the records there? There was a well-documented William Goudie (he obviously had a dedicated genealogist - it goes back far!), but his birthdate would make him a very young father if he were the father of my great grandfather! Then I was struck by the ages on the census: the older people have ages of a multiple of five. They were only estimates! I found a likely William Goudie, born at approximately the right time, but is it really him? And that is as far as the internet could take me. But in all honesty, William Goudies were a dime a dozen in Ayrshire in the late 1700s, early 1800s, without distinguishing middle names, and apart from going to Maybole and having a chat over a tea with my distant relatives and non-relatives, there isn't much to do. But the William Goudies are all people who presumably lived lives, had children and died to become a mere number.

But when the number is fleshed, a picture emerges: In the 1841 census, William Goudie was "55" years old, a widower for the second time and looking after two sons to two different wives, with the help of two female servants. His first four children had all died young. His youngest surviving son, Thomas Cuthbert Goudie, at the age of 22, came to New Zealand with his wife, Sarah Ann, on a boat, War Spirit in 1863. (I don't know why.) After the death of Sarah Ann on the North Shore, he went over to the Coromandel, remarried and up to the age of 68, he had 6 more children. The youngest, Andrew Joseph Goudie, had two children; and the youngest of those two children, had three kids, the youngest which is I.

2009-09-24T22:45:00.002+12:00

The end of the end - 寿终正寝

At 6:05pm today I ushered my last student out the classroom door and ended my teaching enterprise that began 2:30pm Friday 22 July 2005.

I still remember that first day rather well: A week after my successful marketing meeting, I went to the client's office and then received each of my seven new corporate students for a fifteen minute Needs Analysis. The true scale of what I had gotten myself into became apparent: there were a wide variety of accents, issues and backgrounds and I had claimed that I could help them all effectively. Looking back, I can't say that I would have had the ability at that time to justify those claims; and still with the experience and knowledge that you can only get through teaching over three thousand hours of one-on-one teaching, it is hard to sustain. The lesson early is that you cannot fix; you instruct, support, motivate and facilitate the changing of habits, the learning of knowledge and the understanding and application of skills. And at first, some were quite happy with their English, but appreciated the amusement of a company-supplied teacher. Such encounters taught me the need to actively find out the motivations of the students and even be confident enough to confront students or get their managers involved. Another student had significant "fossilised" pronunciation issues (this means that the influence of his mother tongue is almost impossible to be removed). I learnt a lot about such conditions and recent students from Malaysia benefited greatly from the lessons learnt there.

At the end of that year, I was already positioning myself to jump back into the common pot of "employment" but missed out on my dream job with the Government security agency. That was a blow but the reason for me even looking was the conditions of my self-employment: I was struggling with the scale of the task; I'd failed to lure any other company into a contract; and I was only supporting myself financially with two full days of work a week. That finally changed in my second year almost a year to the day after I began: I found a new client. This was just incredible. After my second or third round of intensive cold-calling, I followed a name I had snared in a research call, and after my spiel I heard the most musical words for a cold caller: "You're exactly what we are looking for!" Apparently some Swiss employee was making noises about that company's responsibilities to seconded employees and that English support should be provided. And I came knocking at that time. With him came more.

This was the beginning of a rather magical period when I'd not only created myself a fulfilling full-time enterprise, but also had a juggernaut that threatened to drive me to my own expiration. My trip to China at the end of 2007 carried with it the dream and nightmare of weekly trips to Wellington, an excess of 30 hours of weekly tuition and no-one with me to handle that teaching burden. The Wellington lessons were a possibility that came from nowhere. My second client was just the Auckland office of an international company with offices throughout New Zealand. Two seconded Croatian workers in Wellington heard from their compatriot up in Auckland that English lessons were provided to them and they made some noise to have access to the same. And after a six month struggle to find a comparable tutor in the capital, they turned to their tutor up in Auckland. The suggestion sent me to cloud nine.

I was light with delight, but heavy with dread. As it turned out the dread was unwarranted: 2008 was a magical year, if only from a professional point of view. It was also the year that I finally felt fully in control of my powers, shaking off one of my perpetual self-doubts that I was not up to the job.

I would send one student out with a handshake and heartily welcome another one into the student's seat like a doctor would to patients. My mind would grasp a sentence and isolate the fascinating issue with it, scrawling it on paper for a graphical explanation. I had students explain the reason things are so with a perfect rendition of what I had taught. Naturally, a teacher's ego can easily go to far and take ownership of their student's learning when, in fact, it is the fruit of the student's talent and work that they have learnt. But I felt immense pride in these things I saw. And the friendships I made doing it were extraordinary: What other jobs can you help and chat with friends and get paid for it?

The decline when it came was not a surprise. Over the last New Year, I made plans in its anticipation. My industry, workplace training, is the kind that prospers in the good time and struggles in the bad. My income halved between 20 February and the 10 March this year. The dying phase has been an enjoyable time in that I've been able to travel, write and learn. While it was alive, this enterprise of mine, I hoped to breathe it back into life; and now, partly on a whim, I've set it aside, asleep, perhaps forever.

Naturally, this is just the ending of one phase of life. Another one is forming for me. But it is a time to look back on the passing of this entity. It was sad to leave both rooms that for quite some time have been mine. I could literally walk in and kick out those inside irrespective of title because I had it booked! I had my own cupboard with tea-cups, tea and books. They are now forbidden ground. I'll have the chance to see some of my students again first in my farewell and some in their home countries.

This has been a special four years and I will cherish it greatly.

2009-09-14T09:34:00.002+12:00

Forum rules

These are the rules to a Chinese newsite's tennis forum I look at to read about the US Open:

请您注意
Please note:
自觉遵守：爱国、守法、自律、真实、文明的原则
Consciously follow the principles of patriotism, lawfulness, self-control, truth and civilisation.
尊重网上道德，遵守《全国人大常委会关于维护互联网安全的决定》及中华人民共和国其他各项有关法律法规
Observe online morality and follow the government's decision regarding internet safety and other relevant laws and regulations of the Peoples Republic of China.
严禁发表危害国家安全，破坏民族团结、国家宗教政策和社会稳定，含侮辱、诽谤、教唆、淫秽等内容的作品
It is strictly forbidden to jeopardise national safety, harm racial unity, national religious policies and social stability, including content with abuse, slander, ___ and ____ etc.
承担一切因您的行为而直接或间接导致的民事或刑事法律责任
You accept all the direct and indirect responsibility for civil and criminal acts caused by any of your behaviour.
您在新浪新闻评论发表的作品，新浪网有权在网站内保留、转载、引用或者删除
New Wave Net has the right to retain, republish, quote or delete the opinions you express here on New Wave News .
参与本评论即表明您已经阅读并接受上述条款
Participating in this discussion indicates that you have read and accepted the above conditions.

Considering the recent crackdown on Internet in China, especially Facebook and Twitter, some of these are clearly not window dressing. Some are humorous such as patriotism given as the first principle to adhere to. Civilised behaviour should really be more strictly enforced considering that on this particular site comments calling Selena Williams an orangutan (or gorilla) have been abounding for this whole tournament and probably every other tournament, without moderation.

2009-08-26T08:32:00.003+12:00

Intermediate Tramping 101

On a crest of stress, I strode into two consecutive weekends out of town to play. To be honest, the preparation for both was an element in my anxiety, but the passing of both wound my mind down and relaxed my shoulders. The heart of the first weekend was the desire to do hard-out tramping; something that is not safe alone, but the number of potential companions are few; fortunately, longstanding leave was taken by one, and off we went.

The plan to trot through the Whanganui National Park was dashed by the immense impracticality of such an endeavour: it just is not a feasible tramp without a chauffeur. Plan B was to hop from forest park to forest park and that was what we did.

Completely incidentally the tramps went from easy to hard. The first walk was the summitting of Mt Pureora in Pureora Forest Park, which almost doesn't merit a mention apart from it marking the start. Oddly, I've been staring at this mountain for a while in my DOC brochure thinking it would be nice but it was a mere stroll. The biggest challenge of it was getting enough sleep the night after, as our cute cabin was also occupied by mid-age critical hunters and their leader, (General) John. John had trouble distinguishing between the hunters and the trampers in our hut and wanted to rouse us for the hunt by turning on the light and opening the curtains in the morning. He did, however, emphasise the need to make distinctions between trampers and deer when he had a gun in hand.

The next day was Colenso trig in the Ruahine Forest Park. I had once intended to stay there on the way back to Auckland from Wellington. The walk had a bodyslam of a start: straight up an insistent gradient. Trees frequently obstructed the path. Climbing through these became easier as we went, perhaps due to the familiarity of the task. Colenso trig was one of the first peaks on a range in the north-western section of the park. As we came through the tree-line and saw the grandeur of the whole set of mountains: their ravines, their snow-caps and their scale. We passed a tarn (a mountain lake) on the way up, before rising to the trig for a proper rest and appreciation of our view. It felt like a good challenge surmounted overall and we descending feeling proud in our ability.

We were the only ones in our huge cabin (more a batch, than a "hut"). There was a log burner there, on which I decided to test my skills. I've never started a fire by myself as I've never really been in houses with fireplaces or burners, but of course, the gist is well known: get paper, assemble kindling on it, and some dry thin sticks on them and should everything go according to plan, once there is ignition of these sticks, add bigger sticks. Easy? Well, it took me an embarrassingly long time but once done, we had our very own hot room. Coal sustained the heat long into the night. This experience served me well.

Our next target was the Kaweka Forest Park, just off the Taihape-Napier highway (Gentle Annie). We had planned our day from a DOC brochure, noting a high point Mt Kuripapango up which to ascend, then a track down to the Kiwi Saddle Hut to stay overnight deep in the park before looping around and back to our car on the second day. We aimed to leave early for this early but were completely foiled by a massive landslide onto the only road out from our hut. Lucky for us, trucks were already on their way to clear it but we were still delayed an hour and went on our way.

We found a carpark along Gentle Annie which had a sign indicating the mountain we wished to climb. We kitted up and set off. Compared to the previous day, the track did allow us a flat period to warm up, but the gradient was even steeper and harder than the previous day. I was genuinely running out of steam at one point. But patience rewarded us with the top of the ridge, but it was accompanied by a kicker: we had started from the wrong carpark. We had mistaken a carpark unmarked on our map as ours. Suddenly our original route didn't work so we decided on an alternative route, rested and prepared for a walk down to the hut. We were to be disappointed.

Though on our map, only Mt Kuripapango was marked as a highpoint, the track to the hut went much higher, one point being over a hundred metres higher. As soon as we marched onwards from our rest, we were greeted with curious patches of snow and fallen trees. The pines had been hammered here; at first I thought that someone had taken to them; then I thought wind must have dealt to them; but there was always an element of disbelief: How could wind have felled these huge trees as well as pulled so many branches down. The tree-traverses were more difficult than the previous day. Pine trees are not the most friendly trees for such; the mountain beech trees were far easier; but even they were cruel when, in what would be a delightful grove, the sheer quantity of little branches took away any scent of the path. The usual markers were scarce either due to tree-falls or a general lack. We employed all sorts of methods to determine the path, which time after time solved our navigation issues. Then we broke through the snow-line. Neither of us had experienced a backcountry track in the snow, and this added to our navigational problems. How do you know where to put your feet when everything is covered in snow? One foot is on a concealed shrub; the other falls down to the track. Time ticked onwards and how dearly we would have liked that hour lost to the landslide.

I should say that there were outstanding views. The Bay of Plenty was visible, huge mountains and valleys surrounded us. Earlier in the day I spotted my first New Zealand Falcon (Karearea), and now we were treated to a snowscape with mammal trails. We'd both done Kepler Track in Fiordland in low cloud denying us of views: here we had them.

But those were Heaven so it's appropriate that I tell you about Hell. Late in the day, tired from trudging and falling deep into snow, struggling to navigate with very few clues to use, we approached a mostly smothered cairn that marked an entrance into a patch of pine. We rested, looking up into the pine: the track terminated barely metres ahead with the carnage of pine completely blocking the way. I sighed and queried whether it really was the cairn to mark the trail. And it was responded that it really was. So we struggled forth. Each series of trees presented a near insoluble challenge: we were ascending uphill through a never-ending labyrinth of fallen trees without any markers to assure us that we were on "the right track". I was sapped. I'd already said on three earlier parts that I was a hair's breadth short of knackered, and as I hit the front to survey two possible ways through a wall of trees I sighed in resignation: This is impossible. I dropped my backpack down and took a deep breath before saying that I would quest forward without my pack. I broke a few pine branches and crawled into a little pocket and then scaled a narrow passage up to a little clearing, scrambled up to the next blockage, rolled over over it, fell waist-deep into snow and then crawled up to... another cairn marking the exit from the pine grove. Hell hadn't yet frozen over completely. We emerged from it with speed. There were suddenly constant stream of markers but were also treated to the inevitable setting of the sun. The darkness would come within an hour. I had a head-torch but it would mean nothing without markers should we still be in the snow. But then the snow relented and we were back to a rocky descending path. Markers lead us down and down: And through a gap in the trees at the bottom of the hill was a flash of white: Kiwi Saddle Hut awaited us. Simple elation!

We quickly set up in this basic hut, the centre of which was a tiny log burner. We may have been able to get by without heat, but it would have been nice to warm up with a fire. With my recent experience, I thought I'd give it a try, sacrificing my chinese magazine to attempt to get it burning. Page after page was reduced to cinders. It could have been the damp environment or I could have just been lucky the night before. We both gave it our best attempt: this fire was not lighting. I had just a page and a cover left when I decided to give it just one last try to assemble the perfect set up. I ignited the paper and it burnt well but slowly it started to fade again. I picked a leafy twig in a last move. We had been stripping the leaves off the mountain beech branches (on the assumption that they contained water and that would not be conducive to burning); this was proven to be a mistake when the leaves exploded into flames. I yelped and through more leafy twigs into the minature inferno, and then yelped for more wood. Suddenly the branches were igniting and then it was time to get the ax out to start getting some decent blocks of wood. And thus we had a warm, warm hut.

Really that the end of the trip, we slept, descended, drove back to the normalness of life. But there is a special mental space occupied when you are tramping in the mountains. It is so otherworldly that when you leave, suddenly a flavour is lost from one's palate.

Positives:

Our approach to staying on the track was accurate. Even though the track was concealed for long portions of the ridge by snow and pine material, often without any observable markers, we determined the route without fail.

The clothing we had was tested by a strong alpine wind and passed.

I started a fire despite limited means and slightly damp wood.

My fitness, though pushed to the limit, came through.

That all being said, I think our approach was rather lackadaisical: we both lacked equipment that would have made it easier and safer; we were planning a difficult walk off a crude map; and then there is the lingering question of whether we could have made an adequate bivouac in the snow?

This was something of a wake-up call. Though it will (likely) be my last rigorous tramp for quite some time, it might trigger me to make a few purchases to prepare for getting back into tramping when I get back. I'll also want to take a mountain safety course at some stage (they are run and they should be a necessity if we are doing that sort of thing). So what I intend to bring from now on to back-country huts:

Bring:

Fire-lighting material/coal in a moisture-tight container. Take something that can act as kindling as well as a fire source. A lighter or matches is, of course, a necessity.

Candles, both to use and to leave in the candle holders.

Gaiters. These aren't just creature comforts: Hikurangi should have taught me that without protection some areas are close to impassable. On this trip, a lot of snow came into my shoes, melting to water but remaining at a low temperature due to the outside temperature. This is not comfortable.

Off the main walks, all overnight tramps should be navigated with a topographical map. A compass is a nice accompaniment to this.

So, in summary, this has been a lesson in safe walking, a reminder that might save my life one day.

2009-08-21T21:33:00.002+12:00

A Pincer Movement

The map has been drawn: The mist has mostly cleared from the next few months, just a few valleys and gullies yet to reveal their true contents. Around this scene, two fronts, a cold and a hot, have squeezed me terribly from both sides; with them, I'd fallen back, until recently, into an awful anxiety: My sleep, poor; tummy, contorted; shoulders, shrugged; my concentration, wayward; and this for almost three weeks. I'm glad to have reached the end of this track.

And busying myself as I had, somehow no great crises arose; well, until Thursday morning when I left on the bus leaving my car in the drive blocking my mother's morning commute. But that day was the day when finally I started to ease...

2009-08-07T16:49:00.003+12:00

Reignition

Sometimes motivation is just like a switch: without it you might think you can achieve something, but several months later it becomes a mere memory; with it, action flows like breathing. And such is my ceaseless study of the Chinese language. In China, over a year and a half ago, and in the weeks after, again I found my stride and lifted my general level. And then the power dissipated in the competing demands of life.

Now, again, on the scent of an imminent trip, I've swung my mind into a complete state of lingual urgency: absorb everything, spare nothing: not even a single character. My listening has almost reawakened; I still occasionally am overcome by streams of language, but generally it all goes in. My vocabulary will be the hardest to reactivate but some promising signs have emerged already; I've been hearing four-character phrases that I haven't seen for ages and recognising them. Feeling I was being misunderstood by one of the many agents in China, I launched a comprehensive Chinese e-mail to clarify what is a major city and what is not, and why a position in a major city is of high importance to me. And reading, apart from a few rogue sentences, has been fine.

All in all, nothing will stop me till my direction changes, and that could be quite some time!

2009-08-01T23:07:00.002+12:00

Where my heart is

Today I left my city-centre life and fell back to the suburbs. I'm the kind to get easily attached to a home. And my apartment was a fond place for me to live. It was the place that became mine so easily when I really needed a home; it was the place I emotionally convalesced from the worst trauma of my life; it was my base for the busiest part of my working life; and the launch-pad for my most prolific travelling. A home is so important to me that it was only when I found that I was leaving my apartment that I realised I'd also be preparing to leave New Zealand.

Last year winter had passed in the background despite the heavy rain. This year's winter has fizzled since June. It is so comforting that we have such mild winters. The prospect of a Chinese winter does leave me rather cold. I spent two holidays in the Chinese winter and felt dreadful each time. My only Taiwanese winter was blighted by some homesickness making the mild grey a darker shade of blue. In actual fact they'd only have the equivalent of a very mild New Zealand winter.

Perhaps, it is part of maturing that thoughts of seasons and of homes is what I'm thinking about most.

2009-07-24T19:54:00.006+12:00

Warping to reality and back again

My drive to watch ten movies waned after my sixth film and life got so much more exciting and busy. How can life be so crowded? But with the end approaching, I saw a slot of time and a movie marked tentatively as: maybe, and launched myself into motion once more and made it up to nine.

We Live in Public

This is the first true documentary of my festival and it was well-worth it. The reality of the individual in the film, Josh Harris, is odd; but the film swallows you up so that half-way through the film, some of the unquestioned assumptions seemed not worth challenging at all. Only once the curtain came down did I marvel at how amazing such a person could create such enterprises and pull so many people into his life-vortex of creation.

Like many of the biopics I see, I had no clue about Josh Harris before seeing it, and but this time that would go for most of the audience who crowded into watching this movie. He is "the greatest internet pioneer that you've never heard of" after all! Before the dot.com bubble burst he was consistently two or three years ahead of technology. He is a definite odd-ball, beyond the normal sense of the word. He probably is the one we can blame for the Big Brother tv series through his extraordinary concept of Quiet: We Live in Public, which for him was "a study of Cultural History", for others it was the ultimate Orwellian / Anarchic experiment. His quirkly life is what is intriguing, where a man with a bent becomes a millionaire, loses it all and becomes just a man with a very odd bent.

This was the third film where the creator made an appearance. I give full kudos to the director for not trying to be an element in the film despite the chance to. I usually dislike the 'documentaries' at festivals often have their creators having significant screentime and roles. The drama behind the scenes was fascinating; while answering the questions a lot of this came out. Her filming process is fascinating as she starts filming without really knowing what will happen and then finds the purpose of the film, and years will often pass while she films more and finds how the story 'fits'. For her, the advent of Facebook was highly analogous to Quiet, and for that it perhaps is a salutory film to watch. This film won the Sundance festival and she is the only director to win that twice!

The screening though was plagued with technical issues. Firstly, the sizing was wrong meaning captions were half off screen; the film ceased at one point; then another time, the screen went dark while the audio intriguingly kept going (and what's more the audio at that point had started to refer to the nudity and sex at one particular 'world' he created, teasing the voyeuristic part of the mind with hidden fancies); at that point, they stopped the film all together. The director of the festival was there in person at the end to express his apologies to the audience and the director in person, and there might be an opportunity to re-watch the film with my ticket stub if anyone is interested due to the botched screening. Another of my picks, the Limits of Control was not screened at all at my preferred time due to technical issues in a previous screening. I hope that the only problems.

All Tomorrow's Parties

Music "documentaries" come in many flavours, and this is simply chocolate! With virtually no narration, it launches into performances at the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival, interspliced with fly-on-the-wall scenes of attendees getting up to mischief, performing, mixing and living. It is a 90-minute sonic experience.

The principle for ATP music festival is that it is a festival curated by a particular band, done without sponsorship, usually in a sea-side town with many attending bands and artists from the obscure to the well-known. The well-known were some of my favourites: Nick Cave, Grizzly Bear and Portishead; whereas there were also a few bands I want to know more about (Animal Collective and Battles). But all of the performances dazzled. The opening by Battles transcended music completely. Nick Cave performed Snoop Dogg's favourite song (of a few years ago), The No-Pussy Blues. Portishead, characteristically, outdid their studio recording in a blasting rendition of We Carry On. But some of the odd things was how so unlike any concert it really was. The bands and the audience were mixing closely, staying in the same accommodation. Performances were often done in the immediate lawn of the holiday inn. A character who I've never heard of The Lightning Bolt, in a courtyard, dressed in a gimp-suit with extra masking tape, at a drum-set, was surrounded by fans demanding him to perform a particular song: "Thirteen Monsters!"; "Mrrrmrrr Mrrrmrrr?" he clarified. The fans yelled again; he still seemed unclear; One fan put up tried to put display thirteen fingers yelling the title, before he suddenly showed comprehension and launched into the fastest drum-sequence, sending them into ecstacy. Grizzly Bear took a group at sunset to the water's edge with instruments to perform Deep Blue Sea to close the movie. All footage was taken not as some deliberate recording but as incidental, by fans and others. All told: Wow!

Antichrist

Oh, Christ! was perhaps what many people uttered, instinctively and without any irony, during this film. I committed myself to watching it, too, solely on the director, Lars von Triers. I've seen many of his movies and have huge appreciation for his range. Only with Dogville and Mandalay did he repeat a technique. Dancer in the Dark, the first movie of his that I saw, remains one of my favourite movies and may well be the reason I have so much patience with his movies, just as Mulholland Drive gave Lynch a mile of leeway to exploit.

Once committing though, any reading into this piece could only give one the heebie-jeebies. Just with the synopsis and an accidental spoiler listed with the movie's rating (as they need to state the objectionable things in the rating, it did allude to some of the undescribables that would arise), I went into the cinema and was immediately absorbed into this story of grief, evil and madness. The acting was magnificently good: Charlotte Gainsbourg won the best actress award at Cannes for her role (she was Stephanie in The Science of Sleep); Willem Dafoe must've been a good contender in his category. (And interestingly, they are two thirds of the whole cast!) For the first half of the movie they were the relationship; I could even relate to some aspects of it from life experiences; it breathed reality. As the movie progresses into physical and psychological isolation, the sounds and sights become more distorted. At one point I noticed that in amongst the bird-song and tree-cry of the forest, there was a background beat to quicken your heart. The screen image seem to bend occasionally; images flashed from nowhere. The pace was deliberately slow, but only to give you a sense of balance before it pummels you to the ground in a lightning attack, psychological or physical.

The movie made attempts at a greater meaning that I'm still trying to make sense of. And it also almost fell into the ridiculous with the intrusion of a fawn, a fox and frenetic crow as an allegory straight into the plot of the movie. Both Dogville and Mandalay had attempts at greater meaning too, and both strained to do so. Mandalay helped itself in this regard by having archival photos of Blacks in poverty and oppression backed to David Bowie's song The Young Americans just to make its point clear. My feeling is that it is meant as an some sort of an artistic redress for misogyny: the burning of witches, the oppression of women, and for the deeming of feminine nature as evil or corrupting. The film reaches into the guts of this idea and the turns the creature inside out, creating the embodiment of feminine evil as almost a mockery, as a woman Christ to be crucified, to be what the men had said the witches were - evil for the sex, and to be burnt for it. And then take this embodiment and inflict it on a pure man of reason, knowledge and chivalry tempting him into sin. And as I try to hold the movie in my head to write this, it is perhaps only then I can take the significance of the title: Antichrist.

Despite the trauma, I'm glad I saw this movie. I might be wrong with my interpretation and might have rolled my eyes at the intrusion of the symbolic fauna, but it was a true cinematic experience (surpassing Birdsong in its uniqueness), and a great way to cap off the festival. It was, for me, the best film of the nine I saw. (Regardless of my praise here, only go to see this if you are truly broadminded about film, truly tolerant of gratuitously inflicted cinematic pain and patient to let a film open itself slowly to you.)

2009-07-22T09:45:00.003+12:00

Only two things are infinite

A week ago when shooting through a health shop I got some LSA, which, to those unacquainted with health food, is not some trendy drug but a blended mix of linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds. It can be thrown into smoothies or baking. I only got it because it was on special, but the reason most vegetarians would buy it is that it has lots of the oils that are in fish, but not in a great deal of plant foods, namely, Omega fatty acids, which, incidentally are good for the brain and focus. I had some in a smoothie yesterday morning but it either cursed me or was expired and had the opposite effect.

It all started after a good samaritan morning when I was being shouted lunch for my good deed. As I came back from the restroom and I was about to sit down, I attempted to remove my wallet from the back pocket (I hate sitting on my wallet) and found it wasn't there. A brief search of the cafe revealed it had been standing crease-up near the counter, completely unmolested by evil-doers. What a pleasant surprise!

Then later in the day, I left my home to go vege shopping, drove about 1o minutes, perused the odd vegetables at Mt Eden vege, bought some and headed back to the car, when the car demanded the keys and I was found wanting. I turned to find the cashier charging down the footpath after me, keys glinting in the sunlight. Service and dedication supreme!

Lady luck had insulated me from the worst aspects of my stupidity twice. But the third time she was utterly charmless. I got back to my car and drove a hundred metres down the road when something hit me: fortunately it was just a thought; unfortunately it was a disturbing thought. You see, I'm fond of saving time and also home cookery, which I must say is a bad combination. Before I had left home I thought that I could prepare for a dinner guest that evening by putting a small amount of lentils in a pot, covering them with water, turning up the heat to boiling, and then turning off the heat before leaving. This was the lentils can absorb water and cut cooking times in the evening. I had done this before. And regrettably I had nonchalently done it again: sans the very last step. I had left the lentils in less than a centimetre of water on the stove and full heat... for at least 25 minutes... and I was about 10 minutes from my apartment. I jolted myself out of shock and U-turned my way back homeward. I called both my landlord and flatmate to see if they were close enough to scream home and do whatever could be done, but I was the closest one.

A few months ago, there had been a fire alarm at our apartment complex. A smouldering in an underground carpark had set off the alarms for all the apartments (most of which would not have been in any conceivable threat), so I had visions of burly firefighters using a big ramrod to burst through the door and attend to my overcooked cooking. I pulled up opposite my apartment grounds, dashed across the road and while traversing the parking areas, detected in the air a whiff of one of those dreaded burnt odours, while still 30 metres from the door. I was pleased by the lack of alarm bells and a munted doorway as I shot up the stairs into my smoky lounge. I dashed to the stove-top, threw the smouldering pot into a full sink of water and opened all the doors, windows and extractor fans. But the main crisis was averted, and a jittery Daniel could collapse into a chair with a strong cup of tea.

I can tell you my lessons: lentils exposed to direct heat are reduced to a tar-like substance that will certainly doom any pot the process is carried out in; apparently white vinegar absorbs the burnt smell; my flatmate is completely unflappable; and the universe is certainly boundless.

2009-07-21T14:08:00.003+12:00

Playing it straight

The next three movies I saw have been of a totally different flavour: all historically recreated films. There is a lot of merit to such films: they're educational, thought-provoking and, at times, challenging.

Firaaq

As a historical moment, the partition of India has always interested me. Gandhi really did interest me in this respect to show the sheer power of politics, allying themselves with religion, to wrench a whole intact civilisation apart. Firaaq documents another piece of the aftermath to the division, the 2002 Gujarat Massacre. The plot follows several ficitional families and individuals, based on real accounts, as they wrestle with the collective trauma after the incident. Only the first scene and the occasional background TV reports make any direct illustration of the true carnage of the days of violence; the viewer can only feel the residual fear and anger the permeates the whole film. The film was well done, although I'd say that some of the less savoury characters in it do seem more caricature than character. There seem to be clear distinctions the virtuous and evil, the perpetrators and victims, the saints and the sinners, that one feels that it might not necessarily be a fair depiction. One can only pursue the information for themselves.

Che

Che was, in fact, two movies in one: a whole 260 minutes of film for the price of a ticket! That in itself was a tempting proposition. The director (Soderbergh) is acclaimed, the subject of the film a significant personage and icon, it was an opportunity too good to skip. And so the first movie began on how Che was involved in the Cuban revolution. History dictates the flow, so all we can see is the nuances of his personality and life, a man of resolute principles, of humanism above all. The second film starts after he returned from nuturing revolution into the Congo and in complete secrecy slipped into Bolivia. History dictates his demise here and so we see how circumstance brought his life to an end. I remember a review after watching The Motorcycle Diaries saying that it was more a hagiography than a biography. This may apply to these films too in that without personal research it is hard to know whether Che is as virtuous as he is presented; indeed in the film his only shortcoming seems to be asthma. This may or may not be the case. The two films put flesh on the bones of knowledge that I had; the story was presented well with style and technique. It was a wholly worthwhile movie to watch.

Birdsong

"Before the first screening I told the audience that my movie was the most unique movie of the festival. But I hadn't read the festival programme. So since then I've read the programme and I can say with certainty that this is the most unique movie in the festival. It may also be the best movie in the festival. Well, we can discuss that after you've seen it. Regardless, it'll be a true cinematic experience." So said the director of Birdsong, Albert Serra.

Of all the movies so far Birdsong was the first arthouse movie. And as such, it needs to be approached with an open mind, infinite patience and a sense of beauty. This is the "historical" story of the three wise men coming from afar to visit the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. They are devoted a mere three lines in the Bible, which Albert decided to inflate to just over 90 minutes. What it seeks to do is provide real humans and humanity to an arduous journey that has become something sanctified, holy and totally devoid of humanness. We follow the through valleys and deserts as the bicker and navigate, go silent and quest forward, never mentioning their goal (the plot is known to all, there is no need to use their speech to indicate where they're going). Joseph and Mary are recuperating after the birth, Mary with baby, and Mary with her goat. And that is the simplicity of it. I did enjoy it, although even I would have wanted him to use time less as a tool.

"That is the most terrible film I've ever seen." So said the ill-tempered hypocritical woman I sat next to after enduring it.

2009-07-15T23:03:00.001+12:00

Passing and fading

The news of the two trampers perishing was delivered by my last student for the day. It is sad to hear, as all deaths are. Death in the mountains is always a salutary warning to those with alpine proclivities.

Meanwhile, closer to sea level, I’m yet again proving the Daniel Paradox to be true; namely, the less busy I get the more careless I become. Yesterday I had assumed a student had moved his lesson rather than swapping with another student setting off a flurry of student-bothering texts; then I went to an evening lesson that wasn’t even scheduled. Today I arrived at work to find all my lesson plans were still on the printer at home. Am I even functioning?

Perhaps I am, maybe not, but my broadband certainly isn’t: it seems many separate factors are against me. Fingers-crossed tomorrow resolves the last issues. It has hampered my job search, while the Film Festival has siphoned off time I’d be using to redo my CV. I’ve informed one client about the possibility of my departure, which they were very sad about. They also said that there was very little chance of any more students for me.

Recently, I’ve chewed through many books in my low-gear way, Lolita being the current gristle. Two books before that I read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Konrad. How can two classic English novels be written by people without English as their mother tongue? Genius does truly transcend language, and once it seeks the tools in any tongue, it glistens like a gem. My gosh! I would love to write like either.

With the impending arrival of my new flatmate, I detonated upon household duties: spring cleaning the fridge, reordering the pantry, discarding all my previous housemate’s leftover food, and putting all the rubbish and recycling out. It gave me a whole look at all whole range of foodstuffs I possess; and when I go, what shall I do with it all? So, henceforth I shall consume, empty, share and produce in a grand stock clearance. But my flatmate didn’t come yesterday or today as first thought: his car broke down in Wellington and will be delayed till Friday. Well, he’ll have to wait to receive my generosity!

2009-07-12T22:40:00.004+12:00

Scream and Shout

The Film Festival has arrived and I am happy. After the disappointment at my lean pickings last year, I have now the opportunity and the desire to indulge in the movies I want to see. And with time in my hands, I've set the goal of watching ten! Here are reviews for the first few. (Don't worry, no spoilers!)

Thirst

Despite my disgust at most modern branding, I seem to strongly, and perhap hypocritically, follow particular bands, writers and certain products to extreme levels. Whether it be my complete collections of some musicians whom I consider genius, to buying 4-packs of Phoenix Ginger Beer to drink at home (and in cinemas!), there are some names that sparkle to me as if I were a magpie in a tree. When I saw Park Chan-Wook had a movie in the film festival guide, it was the only movie to earn an emphatic Yes! without consideration for content. Considering Almodovar, a well-regarded director didn't earn more than a cursory look, it should show my dedication. Park Chan-Wook earnt my adulation with Old Boy. He always brings a creatively violent, humorously gory take on what he does. Thirst is a vampire-priest tale - but one creatively and warmly done. How he came to be a vampire might have been a little unbelieveable, but how he deals with his problem, trying to avoid sinning in the process is amusing. Love enters, and love corrupts, and then there is no end of evil that can unfold. Moral: Being a vampire is not as fun as it first appears to be, and you'll be waiting for the other shoe to drop. A lot of blood is ceremoniously spilt. I love his characters too, the old matriarch of the family in particular.

Drag me to hell!

Horror is a genre that I rarely dip into. I was exposed to a good deal of horror movies in my childhood: my eldest sister indulging her fascination with it and, in doing so, filling my nightmares. Well, that is probably overstating it, but the truth is that I've always been of a jumpy, nervy disposition, and despite enjoying the thrill, I tend to spasm in shock at even a ruffle of paper on screen, and sometimes will seek leave of the room when there is an impending shock. The director cues me up with a soundtrack and a sense of foreboding, and I dance.

It was probably over 5 years since I last saw a horror in the cinema - and within the first five minutes of Drag me to hell, I was reminded of the usual way that I experience horror: in contortions. It was a proper horror movie, with all the traditional bells and whistles of horror. It was a sustained burst of adrenalin to the heart, enlivening, even though at times predictable.

Moon

As mentioned, I'm a name-dropping viewer. Sam Rockwell's name was my sole reason for watching this. He has dynamism on screen, and I've enjoyed him in other movies. Moon is about one man, Sam Bell, operating a Helium mining operation on the moon. And apart from the robot, Gerty, he is alone, bleakly isolated from Earth, his wife and daughter with two weeks remaining till he goes home, a long two weeks. He hallucinates; he talks to himself and his plants; yet messages from home drive him on. However, while on a routine trip in a moon buggy to a rock harvester, he has an accident and makes a rather astonishing discovery.

I enjoyed this movie. It never seemed to slow despite it essentially being the same actor on screen all the time. It also touches on many ethical issues about what technology could bring to us.

There is an odd background in the movie too: the director is David Bowie's son, christened Zowie Bowie (although apparently he changed his name since). David Bowie, of course, was made famous by the hit Space Oddity ("Ground Control to Major Tonk") and has other songs about life in space. An influence, perhaps?

2009-06-28T17:37:00.002+12:00

Of camels, backs and the real cost of $20

My apartment life has been interesting. It was the bed on which I rested in emotional convalescence; it has been my base for travel; it has been the first place that felt really like my own. It always had another side to it though: the landlord.

When I first met her, I remember she just kept on talking; she seemed fine and that was a factor in my immediate choice in living here. But things panned out differently: from acceptable to bad and from bad to worse. It has all seemed so needless. She is very houseproud and seems to have found it hard to leave this place in the hands of lesser creatures. I'd say that she is naturally that way and feels an obligation to her parents to keep the flat in mint condition, and this obligation means using any means at all to achieve it. She is duplicitous; she lies: both black and white. Without going into the details, we confronted her about her excessive interference with the flat; she relented. For about six months there has only been a few moments of irritation. She still hasn't fitted a blind for one of my windows (I've been using cardboard to block out a street-light for almost a year!). She said she would but it never happened. Apparently she is planning a wedding, which makes it perhaps understandable, even if she has long been putting expectations of us without fulfilling her own responsibilities.

Thus we come to yesterday afternoon: I was informed that my rent would increase by $20 from August 10 due to "an increase in the market rent" (I was sceptical but, yes, apparently rents have increased, year-on-year, by between 5-10% on average apparently). I knew then that my time here was up. My falling income was already making the existing rent excessively taxing. Upon informing my flatmate of the rise, astonishingly I discovered that the market rise seems to have only applied to the street-facing room: mine. More astonishing was my flatmate's response: she gave her two-week notice to the landlord today. She had had an offer of a room at a friend's place and the certainty of my departure (we are good flatmate buddies) and the landlord's general conduct meant that she shouldn't turn down that offer. It is rather depressing that my landlord stooped to this weird tactic. I have spoken rather abruptly to her in the past (in immense frustration) and it has probably led to this, I'm thinking. Strangely ironic, though, was that it led to the good flatmate to give notice (The landlord doesn't have much of a problem with her). And I am a good tenant, and in terms of the common area, I'm a clean-freak (most of the time): If she wanted to keep the place tidy, she is shooting herself in the foot. It most of all is annoying.

Over the New Year I had thought through three likely paths for the year: (1) My business prospers in the face of adversity; (2) My business is somewhat affected, so I put effort into finding new clients, develop my writing skills and travel; (3) My business is heavily affected and I go on an ambitious trip to the United Kingdom and Europe, head back through Asia to work for between six months and two years before returning home. I've had my head on the second route without any ardent desire to cross the threshold into the third. My heart was not moved by the prospect of travel. When I received that e-mail though, I was moved: I could picture myself off. I'm not sure yet, but this weekend has been a great push. It can be a launch pad for a brand new course. All for the want of $20 a week.

2009-06-24T11:37:00.002+12:00

Hidden highs

There are very few aspects of teaching that I don't enjoy. One of the ones I do enjoy immensely is just pronouncing words, preferrably multistress words, to model them for students: anXIety, eVENT, COMF'table. In my line of work, you can say them once, repeat them with exaggeration and drama. A single bugbear word can be several minutes of a lesson, first of all modelling the pronunciation with specific directions for tongue, tooth and lip locations; once mastering it, the student should next practice it in the context of a sentence, because producing a sentence takes some attention away from pronunciation - and pronunciation in real life has to be done with a lot of competing thoughts; and then they need to be monitoring themselves in speech to be aware if their accuracy has slipped. All of this entails a lot of repetition.

One of the recurring mysteries is how certain words can be so hard to say for some. ACcess, for one, is bothering one of my highly able students. He can say each syllable well, but together he either says: AXis or exCESS. When he stresses the first syllable, the vowel on the second automatically reduces; when he makes sure he says the correct vowel on the second, he instinctively stresses the second syllable, reducing the first. It does his mind in while I just get my kick from saying: ACcess, ACcess, ACcess.

There is also the mystery, constantly posed by another student, of how he is pronouncing what he is pronouncing. A common word like "that", he somehow mixes the "th" with "l" producing both sounds simultaneously. Usually mispronounced phonemes (sound units) are somewhere on a continuum of sound, like ten and -tain (from "maintain"). But there is virtually no continuum of sound between "th" and "l". I cannot replicate the sound (I may have once, but have no idea how I did it), yet he does it naturally when not monitoring the exact position of his tongue.

Of course, it's not always my students' pronunciation that can cause wonder; my own baffles me and others too. As stated in a blog sometime ago, my exuberant reading of difficult books in my youth caused me to create my own pronunciations for words I rarely heard. While teaching a few weeks back in the home of a friend, I defined a word my student, his wife, found: "AWry, that's when things don't go according to plan." The friend emerged from the kitchen cocking his head to one side to see this unfamilar word, before saying: aWRY. So much for the clouds of wonder that make an "infallible" teacher. "whilst" has also been mispronounced in a lesson by me.

Yesterday I borrowed a book I thought I must read: 100 words that everyone mispronounces. Here are the ones I have discovered that I fail at: niche, gnocchi, concupiscence, desultory, cadre, cache, lingerie, harass. (Of course, many of these have several "accepted" pronunciations which have to be considered correct.) While reading it though, I found one of my youthful pronunciations was in fact correct: BANal can have a first syllable stress!

2009-06-22T14:41:00.004+12:00

Music reviews

Prior to this famine, my economic boom funded a lot of uncharacteristically expansive spending. One particular area for my extravagance was music. And though the party is indeed over, I’m still merrily continuing this indulgence. Listening to music has always been enjoyable, usually with a taste for the esoteric, dark or extreme. Here, I’ll review a few of my recent purchases:

Portishead, Third

Until this purchase, I only possessed one single, burnt, live album. Paradoxically, it is one of my favourites. My penchant for dark music is deep and the lead singer, Beth Gibson, must have had extraordinary pain in her life, for what else could she be channelling when she sings? If it is all a pretence, then she is simply extraordinary. And if it be from a truly dark vein of her being, then we should all buy the records for her psychotherapy.

Though Portishead, admittedly, doesn’t have that much variety in tone (only one song is any from the respite of intense blues, purples and greys: a ukulele song in the middle!), they innovate constantly and texture each song further and further; deeper and deeper. The sound is rich and you can feel yourself easily getting lost in it.

Bristol is their hometown; and should I go to the United Kingdom, I’d have to do a pilgrimage there. Massive Attack and Tricky, whom I adore, both originate there. A lot of the music of all three has an underlying bleakness and austerity. Opening the Third CD case, the tone is minimal with an electric dark blue tinting an urban scene with powerlines draping across. The picture on the back shows Beth, seemingly overwrought with sadness, microphone in hand, while her bandmates are at their instruments at their stations completely unaffected.

Overall, it is a darkly beautiful album. For me, it is one song too long; even I have my limits and the last song was probably the song that was most similar to their previous work, and broke from direly true to drearily despairing. I might just have to get their other two albums, though.

The Eels, Hombre Lobo

The Eels are a favourite of mine, and one of the musicians that I boast almost every recording. Much of the music has an autobiographical tendency and as such comes through as some of the most genuine, touching music you’ll ever hear. I was a little disappointed for the record and happy for him: there seems to be no more demons for him to exorcise and the album seems to be just him having fun and making music. It disappoints me in that without the emotional depths of the other albums, it leaves the music to speak for itself; and the music isn’t that original. It sounds like his previous work or him imitating other singers. There are a couple of songs which have sustained themselves through repeated listens, but others urge me to skip them. And it is not that they’re anything bad, just that they don’t inspire the listen to listen any closer.

Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear was one of the two bands that I heard on the terrifically good Australian radio station, Triple-R, that compelled me to buy. The song I heard was what I’d only call abstract folk, a folkish sound and instruments yet the vocalist set about being an instrument veering close to incoherence and sometimes singing in a fragile yet crisp clear words. The album I bought, at the brilliant Polyester Records on Brunswick no less, was Yellow House, thus named as it was recorded in a yellow house. My first listens were difficult, I recall; but then after returning home and properly listening to it unlocked a door to wonder. It had such a rich sound! The complete set of lyrics are written on the centre of the CD case, showing that the words are few, but repeated, rhythmically and with permutation. It was true listening music. The timing of their second release was perfect: I would buy anything from them.

Veckatimest, incidentally the name of the town they recorded in, on first listen disappointed me. They had discarded the folk sound of Yellow House completely in favour of more modern rock instrumentation. But the ethos remained the same: the voice is the richest instrument of all, winding its way through the sound and bursting through with sparks and, occasionally, ferocity. The lead singer is more audible but the songs are just as theatrical and non-standard. It is the perfect accompaniment to a winter’s day on the couch, in a sun beam.

2009-06-20T08:27:00.004+12:00

Celestial Sights

Winter is a day away bringing the dark so much sooner and so much deeper; the moon has waned to a sliver; and from the eastern dawning horizon, Matariki (Pleiades, known in Chinese as 昴星团) has again reappeared. and there I was by the obelisk this morning to see it.

It was by a whim that I was there on One Tree Hill. A few nights ago I had had a sudden desire to go to the Stardome for their show and finally got there last night. Upon exiting, I picked up a pamphlet saying that the Matariki Breakfast was on the 20th. I made enquiries and only mid-question did it dawn on me that that date fell today (i.e., the following day). Coincidence alone is enough for me so I booked it, slept and burst out of bed at 5:20am to head to One Tree Hill.

The night sky this morning was beautifully clear. More surprising was the arrangement: Venus and Mars clustered together; Mercury near Aldebaran lining up Matariki; Jupiter overhead beaming brightly. In other words, beyond just being a great day to spot the eponymous constellation, it was a brilliant day to look at planets and the sky. The group of 80 plus people were quite sociable and I chatted with lots of people and even made a friend. My $30 purchase of secondhand binoculars the previous day was well worth it as I spotted Matariki early and got to enjoy it as well as share around my lenses.

Another burst of astronomical yearning is again upon me. I have been looking at telescopes in shops again. And I'm very close to buying one. I was glad to get the binoculars even though they are a little out of focus when using both eyepieces at stars. (I use one eyepiece for the stars.) The binoculars have also fed into my nature-obsession too, being of particular use at Ambury Regional Park yesterday.

Winter Solstice and Matariki signposted a huge change to my life last year, so this weekend will be a time for contemplation.

2009-06-12T16:30:00.003+12:00

Distinction award

It is now customary for me to drink coffee rather than tea in cafes. It is not just that my palate has finally learnt to savour the bitterness of coffee, but the sheer disgust I have in paying the same amount for what is often a Twinnings tea bag in a cup (the sheer gall of it!). Aside from the tea cafes, there are, however, a few cafes that exceed expectation. One of these is Maggie Scott café on the Upper Reaches of Dominion Road (near Burgerfuel).

I sent myself there today, away from my usual writing haunt, upon espying a new tea brand, Tea Drop, which had a blend I hadn’t encountered: Lavender Grey tea. So I ordered, sat down and set up. My tea came over in a tea set but with the best arrangement I’d seen in a standard cafe: a tea cup and saucer; a 2 cup tea pot of hot water; and a tiny square saucer upon which a tagged silk tea bag sat. The latter is the distinguishing point: a tea aficionado rarely wants their tea to overbrew, and a little saucer is what is often desired for the spent bag or tea-leaf cradle.

It wasn’t perfect though: the Lavender Grey was pleasant, but not outstanding; they had a radio playing in the background; the china was unadventurous. But in terms of surpassing all other cafes on a single point, it does achieve a distinction.

2009-06-09T19:08:00.003+12:00

Time and space

I've never had a problem with time: time is my blood; space, however, has always strained my imagination, whether it be judging gaps in traffic, whether it would be throwing small objects into bins or filling bags. After driving along the Summit road of the Port Hills in Christchurch on Sunday afternoon, boarding a plane and then resting at home that evening, I again scratch my head over the matter of space.

2009-05-27T22:09:00.003+12:00

A Gorgeous Trip

Many desires cannot be consummated; the itch once scratched yearns to be scratched again. Travel is one of those. Set in motion by a promise to return to Wellington and designed to fulfil my hastily made vow to explore the lower Hawkes Bay, my road trip for the last weekend rapidly became the most ambitious tour of the year. The numbers say it all: 5 days on the road; 2084 kilometres travelled; 3 forest parks visited.

After an hour of teaching on Thursday morning, I filled up my car and went on my way. I hurtled to Taupo, and then through the autumnal beauty of the gorge highway to Napier. I didn’t know where I was to stay: My original plan of staying in the Kaweka Ranges at Te Puia Lodge was in doubt as the weather had been bad, but finally I received the call: yes, it was fine to stay there. I was caught unprepared: the Kaweka Ranges are accessed many ways; all I knew was that my way was to go to the end of Puketitiri Rd; and how was I to get to Puketitiri Rd? My fuel needle hovering over “half-full”, the sun heading to the North-western horizon, I scrambled around till I found my road and once upon it, I raced against the setting sun. And so on and on, Puketitiri Rd went. The map belied its full stretch. It was over half an hour till I sighted the snowy ranges and almost an hour till I saw a landmark on the map. My gas-tank pessimistically sagged well below “half-empty” toward the two bottom lines, a white one and a red one, that marked the bottom of the proverbial barrel. The road wound upon itself, through a gate and along a narrow road flanked by an unverged 50 metre drop and a rockface. At half past four, I landed myself in the car-park and I still had a 2-3 hour walk to the hut. The fuel needle rested for the night at half a millimetre above the white line. I reassured myself that the lines are not absolute, that there is still a buffer of fuel below the lowest line.

The track followed the Mohaka river gorge and was well-formed and easy to walk and run on. The last two-thirds entered into the spectacular. The river bent around huge bluffs and the mountains were nicely gathered around. Night fell too quickly and my headtorch went on; the delight of the view was reduced to the auditory pleasure of the river. The hut was unsurprisingly empty and pleasantly supplied with gas. The temperature went into a nosedive and to survive the night comfortably I put all my clothes on, put an emergency blanket over the top of my sleeping bag and put my towel around my neck, my woolly cap on and my sunhat over the top. I sipped my tea as the darkness overcame me.

I woke at 5:30, broke my fast and set off. I could wear just shorts and my tramping shirt and felt warm enough. The true beauty of the gorge was apparent with some scenes being simply breathtaking. I believe I could also hear the squeals of Blue Ducks in the river. As I followed the gorge down, I suddenly felt the chill. I became aware that all the mountains now had a green top and below a certain height were white: all the greenery below a certain level had frosted over. The mud crunched beneath my feet as I felt colder and colder. I arrived at the car. It was frozen over too. There were hot springs at either end of this trail but I was too rushed to go to either of them. My first taste of the Kawekas and it was a sweet and cool one. I want to taste it again.

After defrosting the car and packing up, I got in and set off again. I looked at the fuel needle: it was now on the white line. I was glad that I had joined AA just a couple of days before but was increasingly anxious about the prospect of running out of gas. I did my best to save petrol by coasting and trying to sustain speed the best I could. And at least the sun came out to thaw my fingers. Suddenly I was filled by another worry: There weren’t deer in the fields yesterday, so why were there now? Why is the mountain range on my left now? I knew in my heart that I must have taken a wrong turn but held onto a hope that I was just too focussed the day before. I decided to go to the next house I saw and knock to ask. The road-end, however, came to me first. Fortunately there was a house at the end as well and I leapt out to ask the farmer, who kindly clarified that my navigation was regrettably off: I had gone over ten minutes in the wrong direction and now the fuel needle was certainly on the red. I castigated myself thoroughly and roared off back down the road, then onto Puketitiri road again, round and round, coursing through the straights, the gate and past small communities. I was pretty resigned to running out: How long could this really go on? The needle was well below the red. This interminable road would have to end or the petrol. I coasted over a ridge and the horizon opened up to the bay view. Relief swept into me: Napier was almost here. I went through the semi-suburbia of Napier, turned into a Gull station and parked catatonically at the pump. After having a good drink of ginger beer, I got out of the car and filled up: 39.90L of petrol. I think I know the total capacity of my tank now.

Napier was a sight for sore eyes; it was warm and welcoming after my trauma. And it was only 10am! I decided to head up Te Mata peak as my main attraction here. Some of my students had told me about it and suddenly I couldn’t help but look at it: a huge blade of rock ripping from out of the ground near Havelock North. As my car went up the slope, I became the uncontrollably distracted driver of your nightmares. It was such an awesome view and every time I looked over my shoulder at the huge drop or the site back over the harbour I could barely contain my gasps or exclamations of amazement. At the top, it was easy to see tracks leading through the park. I want to go there again.

The Southern Hawkes Bay and Wairarapa were pleasant to drive through, the Ruahines and Tararuas following me down on my right. I had never been that good at remembering which mountain ranges were which but now I think I’ll never forget (even if I call the Ruahines the Rimutakas by accident). The blue and ochre of the Bay became the grey and green of the Wairarapa, which I have never visited. The main stop was to be Mt Bruce, New Zealand’s National Wildlife Centre for breeding threatened species. I saw Kiwis again and, maybe for the first time, a Kokako. It was spell-binding to watch. It was smaller than a tui and jumped rambunctiously around the leaf-litter before leaping onto the fencing ten centimetres from my face: “Mook-mook-mook?” it asked. I responded in kind, but he just repeated his question. According to Maori, this bird had the second best voice in the pantheon of NZ birds, behind the now extinct Huia, and this one expected me to sing! I continued south and the weather continued to intensify.

I drove to a hut at the bottom of the Tararua Ranges, and settled in for the stormy night. I got up at 6am and went on a walk to a lookout, while the weather took a little rest from its huffing and puffing. I really want to explore the Tararuas more. My only real concern was whether the Rimutaka Hill Road was open or not. It wasn’t, and my first trip through it was very enjoyable. It winds around the Rimutaka Range side of a gorge where it meets the Tararua Range. Just like Te Mata, the view could be lethal in its beauty.

From Wellington, I picked up a passenger and headed back over the Rimutaka Hill to go to the little known Cape Palliser. Unbeknownst to me, we were coming at the most perfect time. I had intended to do the Pinnacle walk but the storm that was centring itself on the lower North Island was powering up the seas and wind. Add onto that the fact that we arrive around high tide, you’ll soon get the picture: Behind a sign warning of falling rocks, rocks certainly were falling; sea spray hissed over the road; sea foam invaded the seal, imitating snow; miscellaneous driftwood strew the road. Yet on the other side stood cliffs and both jaggered and weathered rocks. We got to the end of the road where I climbed the stairs to the lighthouse (“Climb at your own risk”). The mid-section of the ladder felt perilous enough, but the last three steps were as risky as it could be. The wind-speed was horrifying. If you leant into it, it could more than hold you up, it could send you places. Descending was just as tricky. As we returned back down the road, I made a discovery. There were dozens of seals all along the foreshore. We somehow hadn’t seen them! And also new additions to the road had appeared since we had come down: a log had washed up and a whole tree had fallen over the road! This was nature at its rawest. I still want to go tramping here so I shall return.

The next day I left Wellington and after a quick look-see at the Otaki Gorge, went onwards through Wanganui to Mt Taranaki. As I entered the park, I saw a sign: “Kiwi zone: No dogs!” and immediately behind it, in my headlights was a ferret charging away like a greyhound. I sped up, lining him up with my left wheel but he broke to the left and dove into the undergrowth. The mountain itself was enshrouded in mist and I had to take it very carefully. Remnant snow was fringing some sections of the road too. At the top, the mist was so thick that to walk around without a head-torch could be enough to get quickly lost forever in the cold and the wet. Again, I was the only one staying at lodge but that gives one the freedom to spread out.

I woke at 6am and went on a short loop walk to see Dawson’s Falls, which was pretty small but good nonetheless. I headed down the mountain and the sun shone on me again for the first time since Friday morning. I headed onto the Forgotten World highway, a place I had always intended to visit. It was truly beautiful. It hasn’t got much development at all, but has all the material for a Great Walk and agricultural eye-candy, every corner an idyll. The jewel, Tangarakau Gorge, could only be gaped at, the only problem being that there were few places to stop to view it. And, further on, from a place called Nevin’s Hill lookout, there has to be the best view of Ruapehu I’ve ever had. As a whole the highway might be the best drive visually that I’ve been on, a Great Drive perhaps.

And then it was back via Taumaranui, Te Kuiti, Otorohanga to Ngauruawahia, and onward to Auckland. The last day was truly a case of sensory overload. I had to wonder if I had been reduced to a gibbering, gawping tourist: “Wooo, mountain; woooo, tree.” but on the way back through the agricultural Waikato, I realised what I had seen was truly special.
This reads more like a love letter to the North Island, and perhaps it is. I am suffering a particularly acute, yet peculiar form of patriotism; one that causes one to wish to possess the whole country in the mind.

2009-04-30T12:33:00.008+12:00

The undulating track

“I’m not here,” the singer moaned weakly through the car's drone;
to his voice, we flew through the night to the Taupo lakeside;
where Youth Everlasting, with a subtle smile, spoke slightly;
laconically receiving us for the night.

I watered pine trees in the morn;
with water of steeped tea tree leaves, brewed before;
down a diversion, a turn, and another, till we reached the rocky roads;
populated by swine and equines, that’d lead us to the Waikaremoana lakeshore.

Panekiri bluffs rose tall, and with it we rose too;
we crawled our way along the path, past fungi and pot-heads;
we leapt from cliff tops, but the darkness smothered our eyes;
ascending the stairs, in the gloom, we pondered cackling dusk birds.

The next dawn a storm-head wound around an early squall, holding us;
‘Shall we go?’; ‘How could we go?’; if we’d left, well, who could know?
It blew a backpack across the decking; but it hurled us on our way;
we rounded the bends and found the shore to the calm.

The blighters bit and the hazelnuts twisted;
ligaments strained; the falls eventually came; and so did we;
She was wrong, y’know; that DOC girl, that is: Who could go so fast?
How could we be so wrong, to think we were fast, to take it so leisurely?

Our pursuer, the night, caught us by the legs again;
possums prowled at every corner, their blood eyes beaming red;
we suppered at a lean-to: if only it could have been the Party House;
arriving at the hut, cleaned, we slept to the clatter of nails and tails.

Dawn breaking, the veil over the hut lifted too: a roof of green and red!
The insects muttered overhead while we curled around the inlet;
for the first time, the sun emerged full to sweeten the shore;
but our pace was not reaching the time set.

Text bell, flat; one bar, flat; one bar, two bars, flat;
the boatsman’s call rang out in the distance;
fishermen cried out in vain in our service;
we could only rest and make new plans;

At a picnic table we assembled again;
and spoke of deception, miscommunication and more;
on the shore, I could once again talk with the outside world;
our trip out was imminent; the blighters bit; and, back, the car roared.

“I’m not here,” the singer moaned again through the drone of the car;
we were; talked of talk; but there’s no such thing as a free meal.
That fella naturally objected to the ideal; she talked it to death;
the night was finally a comfort as we came to the final reel.

2009-04-16T22:39:00.004+12:00

The tail of the fish

The enigma of the Far North has finally been dispelled from my mind. It is now solid rock, temperate water and flowing warm sands of white, orange, yellow and grey. In my youth and in later excursions, I had never gone further north than Kerikeri; perhaps, at times, I even had doubts of the worth of a trip up that far: what would there be but metal roads, sand, marijuana and farmland? Inspired by the tales of my students, however, the Far North became the second of three destinations I vowed to visit this year. An Auckland Anniversary day plan foundered early, but fate dealt me a second chance: the internet meet-up group I had joined had proposed an Easter trip to Cape Reinga and around, and that was something I couldn’t possibly turn down.

Our first day, after escaping the greater Auckland area, had two major sights: a crag at Tokatoka and the Waipoua forest. The crag, the first walking of the trip, surpassed all my expectations: a steep climb and a stunning view over the Kaipara harbour and the Wairoa river. Night fell after our visit of the Waipoua forest and we car-ferried across the Hokianga harbour and eventually found our first camping site: Raetea forest park. For a free camp-site it was quite pleasant with a river flowing by and a well-maintained loo.

The next day, I rose early but not the earliest: our organiser is the first person to comprehensively beat me out of bed on a camping trip (and he did so on every single day). He’d already gone on several short walks by the time I emerged to cook my porridge! Day two was to be a big day: driving to the northernmost stretch of mainland New Zealand, the Aupouri Peninsula, tramping to Pandora’s Beach (near Spirits Bay), driving to Cape Reinga for sunset and then camping down in Tapotupotu Bay.

On the Abel Tasman track I had swum for what I thought was to be the last time of this warm patch at Awaroa. I was wrong: I swam four times this trip! I swam at Pandora’s beach with joy. Two others joined me. Large fish were swimming through each huge wave that crashed. You could body surf from the strength of the Pacific tide. I loved it! The sandy beach itself was utterly spectacular in its own right. Tramping in and out wasn’t anything special though, except for the effort that it required. Three of us enjoyed a run-tramp side-trip out to a summit, but otherwise it was just hard grind on a wide, unsheltered gradient.

Cape Reinga was different to how I expected, and it had apparently been very recently developed with a nice carpark, modern but befouled toilets, and a track leading to the lighthouse with plaques describing the significance. They have started to seal the road there too. This probably counts as a necessary development in view of the sheer number of people who go there and with a mind to prevent erosion and enable accessibility, even though it felt a China Tourism Board job, especially with recorded music playing as you went through the arches after the carpark. But have I yet said it was stunning? The view was special. The waters churned beneath us; North Cape and Spirit’s Bay stretched to the East, and the Three Kings Islands stood beneath the setting sun. Our group bonded at this Point.

Tapotupotu campsite is apparently the northernmost in the country and is famed for its biting insects, and this may be where Tramping Luck again shined on me. Although the weather was outstanding for the whole time we were there, there had been a cold snap mid-last week which may have killed all the nasties off. I was bitten once (I think) in the whole weekend and never had the need to use repellent. And the campsite, despite the numbers there, was very pleasant.

The next day got off to a slow start due to communication issues (I'll mention these later) but once we were off, it was grand. We launched into our biggest tramp, the Te Werahi Gate circuit. This covered a lot of the unique landscapes that Northland is famous for. We went through sandy, rocky areas, around capes and through the dramatic borderlines of desert-like areas and then thick bush and swamp. I swam at Twilight Beach, but the surf was a bit too timid for my liking. It was pleasantly exhausting with my joints filling with a pleasurable weariness.

In the late afternoon, we continued down the west coast to Te Paki stream, a gateway to Ninety-Mile beach. I’ve never been on the famous beach before and three of us indulged our tired bodies in the masochistic act of running up sand mountains. The sand cascaded down the sides like water with every stride. The top of the dune had a fine ridge: one side shaded and cool, the other side warm. The sand was the finest milled sort possible and you could bath in it with pleasure. We all charged down the sunny face of the dune. Someone even forward-rolled most of the way! After using the stream as a carwash, we headed further down to Rarawa beach, and oh, in the dusk cool, and with your knees getting swished by the warm Pacific water, it was bliss. Did it have the whitest sand ever? And how could New Zealand have such crystal clear ocean water?

Our final night was spent camping on the Karikari peninsula, just to the south-east of Aupouri peninsula, at a campsite called Maitai Beach. We arrived in the dark and after erecting our tents and feeding our stomachs went off to bed. The spells of these places are cast with the rising sun. I rose at 6:30am and had an Up&Go before donning my togs and heading for the shore. This was a plan I had had for the last few days: to have a morning swim. The breeze may have been cool but the water was the same temperature as it was during the day, a pleasant, tepid warm as I stepped my way deeper and deeper, passing the usual temperature-sensitive threshold points on my body with ease. I wore my goggles but could only spot evasive crabs sidestepping my potential onslaught. A fisherman patiently stood on the rocks nearby with a rod in hand. The morning sun was on me as I eventually emerged, and silhouettes along the beach approached: two of my companions were also out in the early morn. I pulled on a shirt and walked barefoot with them up the ridge that divided the bays and onto a knoll that looks out upon the whole harbour. It was the fourth day and I was now locked in a bodily ease that could last a lifetime. We descended and continued into the next bay.

One of my adventurous companions mentioned his desire to talk with the locals so I accompanied him up the hill to the baches. As we approached a gate, a Maori man waved at us, we waved back, and in turn he put his big dog in the house and shut the door. As we walked up the drive, he introduced himself as Henry and he happily chatted with us with his neighbour’s girl lurking at the side sipping tea and eavesdropping on the adults’ conversation. He said that he was always keen to build the personal connection with people, as without people, the world would be meaningless. He talked about his wariness of the Maori language resurgence - he didn’t put his children into kura kaupapa schools as he had a deep suspicion of the tradition that comes with it. (He spoke later of his grandfather as a hard man who may have contributed to the death of his wife, and thus denying his father the female nurturing of a mother figure. This may have been the tradition he feared.) He spoke of his fear of the gentrification of the peninsula and the stifling that multi-ownership (i.e., tribal collective ownership) can create. The land that his shack was on had been in his family’s hands for a very long time, mainly for dairy since who knows when. We left him to see whether our friends were ready to move on but I was left with the recurring thought that without a knowledge of the people, the land is just form.

After going to yet Another Breath-taking Beach (ABB), we headed for Coca-Cola Spring, which one of our car mates talked endlessly about. It is the name often used to refer to a popular freshwater lake on the Karikari peninsula. It’s name may say something of the namers because for me it was the colour of black tea; and it tasted like it too; or as one tester more specifically described it: Assam black tea. Three of us dove in completely. Fresh water is much colder than the ocean water and the initial wading was shiver-inducing. Three of us (each time I refer to three of us, interestingly it was a different three each time, me being the only common variable) lolled around in the water with a ball game called Commitment. The rest just sat and watched.
Diving under the surface was a surreal experience: you couldn’t see far at all. With your head under and eyes open you course through the brown darkness without any idea what is ahead.

From Karikari Peninsula we shot around Doubtless Bay. Fading small communities were bracketed by residential developments. In Taipa, a brick fireplace stands bereft of its house, alone and without comfort amidst a dairy paddock. The cows low and graze around it in the meadow of the present. It all acts as a reminder of the forces of change.

The main organiser was one of the more earnest people I’ve met, and it was saddening to disappoint him at times with our carefree attitudes. Like me, he was a time man; but I didn’t carry the burden of the planning and was mainly oblivious to what was left to do and what amount of time remained. Each one of us would take our time or do what fancied us despite his apparent urgency. The final slap in the face for him was on the trip home, when, at Mangonui, our vehicle predominantly wanted to “break from the convoy” and follow our own schedule to get back to Auckland. He still had two other sights he wanted the group to visit before we parted ways and his disappointment was palpable. There was irony, though, that our vehicle was lured to the first sight (Whangaroa had a crag that stood high and haughty, a temptress, softly drawing the attention of the menfolk in the car to knock the bugger off) and then bumping into them at the second sight, which appeared on our right and we thought it improper to pass by.

A side story for the trip was that of the Couple. They were fairly regular participants in the hiking meet-ups but always sustained an aloofness and desire for privacy that was at times incompatible with a group activity. They started on a bad foot: after arriving at the rendezvous point in Auckland almost an hour late, they nonchalantly stepped out of the car without any embarrassment, apology or explanation. During the weekend, they didn’t communicate or mix beyond the efforts of other group members to chat with them and operated on their own clock despite a tight schedule and rarely let others know what they were going to do when we arrived at each place. This wouldn’t have been too bad if one hadn’t been the driver of one of the two cars we took, carrying three others including the main organiser. The Couple frustrated him in particular to the point of saying: “I don’t care anymore.” He did still care, of course, a lot and bore the responsibility for their failures on himself as an organiser. There was a weird moment of redemption, though, where at Twilight beach they disappeared altogether without us knowing when they’d be back. Everyone was ready to leave, and some of the slower walkers had already left. But they were nowhere to be seen. They had been last spotted near a distant cave, so one of our members walked in that general direction to whistle and yell and, if necessary, go over by the cave to see. They may have fallen in. Eventually, in response, out from the rocks popped the obviously naked white body of the man. We gesticulated that we were moving onward, and we naturally thought they’d got up to some mischief in a pool or in the cave. Once they caught up with us came an interesting story: He’d spotted mussels in the cave, stripped off, dived in and started collecting them off the side of the cave. A stingray (which incidentally had been seen by another member earlier from the shore) had come into the cave freaking him to the point of leaping out of the water. He then broke open the shells and fed it by hand from the safety of the rocks. That evening he gave everyone else a nicely cooked mussel each. (Mine was donated to a lucky soul.)

I enjoyed this trip: I didn’t do any of the work planning it; I didn’t do any of the driving; I could just savour the experiences. There were places still yearning to be visited. I wouldn’t mind spending some time in Matauri Bay, Whangaroa Harbour or find out what is left on the west coast north of the Hokianga. It did open a world of new places that I would like to revisit, or places I’d like to share with others. The South Island sometimes feels like beauty without heart; the Far North felt like it had that heart and the form to match.

2009-04-03T14:32:00.002+13:00

Pedestrian Virtue

Although I am quite scrupulous in many facets of my life, I've always been quite liberal in my jay-walking. My mind has long since memorised the phasing of most of the central city traffic lights (in fact, even when arriving new places, I learn the phasings of intersections faster than I know the roads I walk through). I know when to cross and I don't need a little green-man to tell me. When I do cross, I'll look into the only direction(s) where vehicles could come from, hence, I'm self-assured in my safety.

A few years ago, my faith in the rectitude of this approach was shaken mildly by a single conversation with an older gentleman. He remarked how he had seen someone with a trainee guide-dog waiting at a central city intersection, and how hard it must be for the dog to learn when to cross when people randomly cross. This is true, but what I thought about was how hard it must be for parents to teach their children of the same appropriate behaviour. Do we as individuals share any social duty to provide a good standard of behaviour to model for the young?

An appeal for social duty is not unusual these days. But it is especially difficult to maintain in the pluralistic world we live in. The mores of the people in our city are many. We are comparatively individualistic; we don't tend to use social pressure for these matters (although we do for language in some respects, often referred to as "political correctness"). And with the multitude of ways people do things, the power of one person going against the "right way" is much stronger than a single one sticking to orthodoxy. (Interestingly, I'd say the opposite is also true: if everyone is not doing the "right thing", one person standing for "orthodoxy" is quite effective). Another example of this, a mother told her precocious son they couldn't sit in the seats for the elderly despite his pleading. After they sat down, another passenger took those seats. Naturally, the lack of a uniform social standard means that it comes down to adhering simply to parental authority.

There could be another appeal we could use: an appeal to protect the less streetwise. A few days ago, I was about to walk across Whitaker Place off Symonds Street. The red man was displayed but I was hungry and wanted to watch the news. Cars were streaming out from Wakefield Road, turning onto Symonds Street. I crossed knowing I'd just have to observe cars coming from Wakefield so I passed other people standing at the corner and went across. Moments after I got the other side I heard a beep. A group of girls who I had passed on the corner had followed me across when a car had come straight from Wakefield and headed quickly for Whitaker before braking mid-street to prevent hitting the girls. This is not the first time this has happened. Cruel arguments for Social Darwinism and relevant comments on personal responsibility aside, people do tend to follow others instinctively in our actions and inactions, and thus unorthodox behaviour can cause others to err; and in some circumstances, they may err to terrible consequences.

One thing chimes in my mind as I read those words: How conservative I've become, wanting to restrain individualistic behaviour for the "common good"!

2009-04-02T14:06:00.002+13:00

Awaroa Inlet at dusk

The tide has evacuated the mudflats again, leaving it pocked and strewn with bivalve tombstones. They crunch underfoot as I follow the empty bed of a stream, where once it supplied the bay, before the bay ebbed away back to the ocean past the sand-dunes.

The sky darkens, smudging the definition between the mountains and hills, transforming them into a unified black frame for the navy blue sky. Without any planets in the early evening, Sirius is the first to make itself seen; the Pointers and Betelgeuse follow: The night scene is forming again. The moon is far from rising and this Summer night sky would be a rich one.

After midnight, the tide would be back here, and if I were to remain, where would the water be up to? How far across the half-tide bay did the afternoon trampers get before they had to turn back? Was I there now? Had I gone already further than they had dared, all without challenging the water?

As I approached the remnant estuary, the mud sucks in my jandals, soiling the corners of my socks. The viscous mud pops, releasing my soles as I backstep to higher ground. My path intersects with past-laid footprints; they are deeper than mine, laid at a time moister than now.

A small strain of chatter is all that can be heard from the din of the hut; the glimmer of the candles and torches are weaker than the light of the Pleiades. Around the celestial south, does the sky spin in the wise of a clock, or against it? The mind wants the wideness of the sky; the mind wants the chatter to end.

Awaroa Inlet at sunrise

It is really something to fiddle with wet and sandy shoelaces with your dry, well-slept hands; at one moment repelling; at one moment sensual. The sun is up already, we know, behind the ridge, struggling to rise in a sky only marked by a few filaments of cloud.

Packs on, we stride onto the flats, to warm ourselves before the crisp air shivers us. There is no sparing the cockle shells, their transformation into sand and soil hastened by our transit. The evening’s footprints have been swept clean by an unseen tide, new prints laid by the early birds.

All that’s left of the expansive bay is a delta of small estuaries for us to cross. The water enters the top of the shoes and down to the toes; the water crosses the threshold of the knee and the knee-jerk shudder that brings. But that is as deep as it goes, and we linger in the flow.

Out of the stream and onto the mudflat, we see the crabs are out, and the oystercatchers are joined by a solitary grey heron in breaking their fast.