New Kindergarten Classes/Thoughtful Reading

With the recent addition of this three times a week early morning kindergarten lessons, my teaching schedule has been somewhat packed of late. Should I be complaining? Probably not as I am working a full time job that requires me to teach a now whopping 26 hours a week, and although one could argue that teaching hours require more mental and physical energy than office hours (depending, of course on the job), it’s a different world compared to the usual forty hour week. Anyway, this recent injection of pace into my professional life has certainly made me treasure my days off and not mull around on a supposed “working day” spending time rather unproductively waiting for the time when I have to reluctantly venture out for my sole 90 minute evening class. Teaching is also a job where you’re often required to take your work home with you, and I’m one of those people who like to get all my planning and marking done first so I can have stress free gratification of what is essentially one single day off a week after all the paper work mentioned above is taken care of. Suffer first and then be joyful afterwards, perhaps a Buddhist approach that is also mentioned in “Roads Less Travelled”, not a poem by Robert Frost, but a book on human fulfilment and spiritual development by psychiatrist Scott Peck which I initially thought was one of those Bill Bryson-esque quirky travel books, hence leading me to buy it. It wasn’t, though it’s proving an interesting food-for-the-soul read anyway. These types of books seem to be everywhere in China, both in English and Chinese, with authors like Peck and Malcolm Gladwell appearing in almost every street seller of pirated books, right next to those directly titled self-help books  such as “How to Talk to Anyone” and “How to Make Friends and Influence Others”.

Anyway back to my point about my recent attempts to make use of my spare time. I’ve just got back from Beijing’s expat exhibition, where various companies and organisations set up stands and smother you generously with brochures, key rings and pens as they try to pitch their product. It was quite a pleasant experience though, not what you would normally imagine given China being a place with quite a few people, and we were able to glide effortlessly through the stands, with the main aim being the curry stall. My girlfriend was there on professional duty doing research for her boss on various education companies, though I just hung around chatting to various expat company representatives whilst conspicuously eyeing their rubber bouncy balls imaging the possibilities annoying my neighbours playing one man dodge ball by rebounding the balls off the walls of my apartment. Apart from the cheap and delicious curry, the highlight of the morning was chatting to a Beijinger who was promoting wine by giving out free samples of Californian chardonnay and biscuits. We switched between Chinese and English whilst chatting, though it took me a while to pinpoint his English accent, though it turned out he studied in New Zealand. I revelled by sipping on my wine whilst listening to his mixture of northern Chinese English (which swings towards an American style) and his Kiwi accent, which in terms of uniqueness and unpredictability, blows South African English out of the water. Lovely guy though, and he’ll be certainly getting visits by us in the future if we ever want 20% alcohol wine. Yeah I was tipsy at 10am after sampling that stuff… living the dream.

The international atmosphere was pretty friendly, and I was surprised by encountering a group that organises Celtic themed evenings, with Irish bands, tug of wars and so on included in the festivities. The Welsh flag was featured on the brochure, though as an ashamed half-Welshman who doesn’t really know what we would do during such events, (insert sheep joke here?) I didn’t ask any questions and signed up for notification about coming events.

It's not just about sheep...

It was nice finding out about these organisations that were until this morning were unknown to me, goes to show how much Beijing has to offer. After just missing the chance to appear on a bilingual radio station at the exhibition, I did put my name down to appear as a guest host on their chat show, and should it come to pass, I’m going to have to be on my best behaviour to avoid being a Mandarin speaking Alan Partridge broadcasting to the ears of locals and expats alike. Might go down well though, who knows- “This evening’s hot topic is which is the best rice? Is it a) Chinese, b) Thai, or c) Condoleeza?” We’ll be taking your calls right after…Ruddy hell, it’s Soft Cell”. Classic Partridge.

Ahaaaaa!