I left China can you believe it!!

Well as the title suggests I have actually left China. Yep one and a half years it seems was enough and now I've gotta go back to England sort my life out and sort of start a career or something like that, thats generally what people do isn't it?

Anyways this will probably be the last post I make here but ill upkeep my blog on blogspot, even after it didnt work so well in China but then again cant really blame blogspot. It should really be the thousands of chinese people blocking internet sites daily. So the next one I will start will probably be when I get back to the UK which will be wait for it.......... 16th of March. Yep this is the day of reckoning. I'm currently looking at starting a PhD and if it so happens that a prospective uni pitys me and kindly offers me one I will take it with arms open wide (not that im desperate or anything :)). So this is a short farewell to China for me but I'm sure I will be back soon and maybe, just maybe ill repost on here again.

For now my loyal fans wait with abated breath until the start to the UK/Phd era. I'm sure you can't wait (ok sarcasm really doesn't come across well in text but i've already gone over this topic I think).

excuses, excuses

So I guess by now that I haven't written in my blog for so long that people have pretty much given up on me and dont look at it anymore. Why am I writing it then, well 1) Hope - there may still be a few hardcore followers who are still checking this every hour on the hour. 2) I do actually write this for myself so that when I come back to it in a couple of years it will be able to fill those gaps in my brain that have lost those precious memories due to too much wiskey and green tea.

So excuses, excuses? Well mainly excuses as to why I have not kept up with my proposed 1 post a month idea and why I have slackend off so badly.

1) China seems not to like blogger and on the few previous occasions (which I believe total to an amount of 2) I could not even see the blogger site nevermind log in.

2) Only 2 days ago did the blogger site start working but now I seem to get everything in Chinese. Now ok this is probably good for my chinese but to be honest I havent learned all these technical terms like what the characters for: password e.t.c. (basically computer terms) . I also do not go on the blogger site enough to be able to navigate by memory which I seem to be able to on hotmail even when it is in chinese. This basically has involved me cutting and pasting lots of chinese characters into a online chinese dictionary to make sure I edit post and not complain to the administration of blogger about an offense post by myself.

3) I spend too much time on facebook and it seems recently to be my most used form of contact with others.

So with excuses over as it stands at the moment, I will finish my teaching in China at the end of June (which is coming ever so close). After that I intend to stay a while in Malaysia for a bit and after that im still not sure. I would love to come back to China and spend one more year doing a job physics realated and properly study mandarin on the side but this is looking like less and less of an option. Sorry this hasnt been the most entertaining of posts (got a bit of a serious side eh?) but things are coming to a head my time is getting short and im still unsure what im up to. I always have a plan B but now i dont have B, C, D or even Z. Maybe I should just screw it all and go on a world tour that would be worth blogging :).

On a lighter side I have recenlty managed to buy a song (english translation of a chinese song) that I hear in China all the time. Its a beauty (well maybe only funny if you have heard it for the 38th time). If you are a facebook member you can get it off my profile as I have put it there -listen and learn. If not then it is called "Take me to your Heart" by MLTR (or Michael likes to rock). This i think is a very good example of the type of english music that the chinese get a taste of. Well that and Jack Johnson, which I heard played religiously in one bar (I must have heard the album at least 8 times).

Well its now 11.11pm and I have a 10pm start tomos - I have become pretty weak in China eh. None of the 3-4am night outs and raising out of bed for the 9 o'clock lecture (or not as was somtimes the case - I really was an excellent student if I do say so myself:))
Anyways hope those who read this are keeping well and I will hopefully see you soon
Keep well

Well its only 3 months late!

So it has been a long time since I have posted. I know it was meant to be once a month and yes I am damn lazy. Sorry to one and all. Free time is not a thing I seem to have either that or I have become an expert at wasting it, which I wasn’t before (so at least china has taught me something). So what has been up the past 3 months or so? Quite a bit as you can readily imagine, although it probably 1) would take far too long to go through everything and my fingers would be bleeding after the epic novel that is my life was put on the web 2) would take you all about a month to read and 3) A bit like point one but I don’t think I have the patience left to write so much.

So round up: January included my birthday – which was fun cos I got to go bowling, you would be surprised at how hard it is to find a bowling alley in China – I mean we ended up bowling in the basement of a hotel which had 4 private lanes in a small ish room. For 10 RMB a game I think it was a bargain. The other interesting bit was that I heard of a massive new bowling alley recently and supposedly bowling teams could be set up. Bring on the laowai rollers (laowai – is the term in Chinese for foreigner).

February saw the end of 3 months straight teaching and I was let off on holiday for 4 weeks for spring festival. Traveled from the north to the south of china and basically spent more money than I had and came back broke. But the places were fantastic, took far too many pictures that I ended up buying a new memory card for my camera. Will post the public links to facebook where I have put all my pics. So if you have a couple of hours to spare and feel like wasting your time on something frivolous feel free. Im not selling it well eh. They are good but it is just me and lots of other people you may not know in relatively famous places.

Anyways to give you the list of the places I hit and in travel order: Shanghai – Haerbin (for the famous ice festival – basically lots of ice sculptures) – Beijing (come on you have to: great wall, temple of heaven, forbidden city its got it all) – Xian (I think I could take on a real like terracotta warrior) and finally Kunming (the city of eternal spring).

The hols were a great laugh and it was real hard to get back into the teaching lark again – especially with the demons that are class 9. Not only do they make so much noise your head begins to think that an airplane engine is quite but they never listen. Im considering in next class bringing some duck tape along and threatening to tape up mouths that speak out of turn (if only I had this power).

Well now im back at work plodding along and trying desperately to apply for some physics/renewable energy work in good ol China for next year. Seeing as my effort at learning the Chinese language has been moderate I feel one more year and really pushing myself should get me hopefully to the almost fluent stage – but we shall see. At least I can now say hello to people.

No pics sorry - too many to choose from and well once i get the facebook links sorted you can see em all at your own leisure. Arnt you just eggin to see Tian'an men square :)

My first update after a long time

Well it has been a while. Its now 12.40 am/pm im not sure (its pretty late) on a friday evening/saturday morning. I thought I would try to forgo the 20 minutes of attempted (and probably fruitless) chinese learning and try to keep you all entertained for at least 5 minutes. Well recently I have won the interschool badminton competition against all the other teachers in the school, however, I do have to say that there are not really any serious badmionton players so even at my poorish level as was kind of expected to win. Both singles and doubles and the prizes i got for both were not only the same but were basically hair care products. Good job I wanna relive the good ol days and grow my hair back then!

Secondly to explain my tardiness in keeping all you wonderful fans :) upto date with my oh so interesting life in China I have been very busy. Bascially I got lumbered with another EFL teacher (named Marie-France) (yep thats right france as in the place and she speaks french and all) to prepare 12 new plays, one for each of my classes and have them ready to present on parents day on the 28th of dec. So we have both been working solid last week to get the plays written and then this week editing as the kids had other ideas on what they should say and also in some cases writing whole new plays.

So with all the work on at the mo ive not really had time to 1. Study some chinese (which I really need to as its still atrocious) and 2. not visited any new places.

So to try to make you all jealous that im still here and seeing as so many of you liked the last pic i posted here is a pic from panmen - which is a garden in Suzhou. Suzhou is famous for its gardens and hopefully you can see why from this pic.


Before I leave I intend to whack all my China photos on facebook (if anyone is interested). Im not saying its the greatest thing in the world but I have unlimited storage and can make as many albums as I want - so even if all you wanna do is check out some pics the only hurdle is getting a facebook account - which takes no time at all.

I also got conned into a thing called Flickr run by Yahoo. It looks real good but you can only show 200 pics at a time and have only 3 albums with a free account. (sorry if you are getting bored but the important bit is coming) The only cool thing is you can put a marker with your photos to point on an inbuilt map on the website (bit like google earth) then when your friends look at your photos they can see exaclty where in the world you took them. I guess you can also get your mates to share the same map but I lost interest when I found out the photo limit.

If you are interested (and I will test it to see if more than 200 photos will go on the map - cos im sad like that or maybe figure a way around it without paying) check it out at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kianskian/map/

Should be cool if I can get it to work then maybe - you never know but somehow the photos from places you all have been can also be shared there. Ill defo stick on where im staying and where my school is so you can all see how ridiculously close it is and why it is a 3 minute ride when I am late.

Keep well all and hopefully you all feel a little better for reading this :)

Will write soon

Kian

One to start us all off - the basics

cme
So finally you may all say i got round to writing a blog. I have to say this may not be a good thing, however, fortunately I will not be able to wirte as prolifically as I did in HK as then I had a good 8 hours a day free. Here in good ol China im workin a little bit harder (not much with the 15 hours a week i have) and teaching is not a breeze as you may think, though sometimes it can be pretty fun.

So to the basics so I dont have to repeat myself again about 100 times :).
1) I am teaching english in China
2) I will be here for 1 year - that is my contract ends around june july 2007
3) I am currently staying in Suzhou which is a small city about an hour away by train from shanghai.
4) My accomodation is free and im getting about £200 a month which doesnt sound a lot but in china im living quite comfortably.

So now we have got off the train of basic info lets get on the maglev of interest. (anyone who understands this sentence first time gets a scooby snack)

So the students are pretty good most of the time. I teach 13-15 (junior 2) and 15-17 (senoir 1) kids. With 12 junior classes and 3 senoir classes. To go through the past 3 months would probably take you all about a week to read so sod that.
What I will delve into quickly is why im actually restarting my blog. Bob's fault. A picture of bob in china is on the left if you dont know him. Yes he is visiting me here in China and managed to convince me that all you people back home need some Kian lovin. I hope you all approve :).

Now ill go back to what has happend to me recently so you dont all get too bored (the ego never gets tired). I went with Bob and a few others from the "british council" crew ("british council" is the scheme by which I came to china) to a place called Zhou Zhuang which is an old traditional village. It was really beautiful although unfortuantely it rained all the time we were there as its now the rainy season. Anyways a day and bit (one night) we stayed and eat good food (nice pork leg with loads of fat on it and seeping in oil) and saw amazing views. The one below should suffice, needless to say i will eventually if i get my ass in gear put the pics on facebook.