Better Than High School Musical

Background: when i graduated from HS, i skipped the ceremony to go mountain biking in Canmore. I missed the grad dinner 'cause i was accidentally very late, and also got held up when security hassled me and my date for being "inappropriately dresssed", and skipped the parties afterwards. (typical teenage rebellion) In my mom's words: "You passed high school. How hard is that?"

This year was my school's first graduating class. The school's 3 years old, so those gr 10'ers have completed the trial, somehow or another. All 19 of 'em have at least got conditional acceptance at Canadian universities. And the $ to do so.

Yes, i griped about the extra duties i took on, organizing a bunch of media stuffs for the ceremony and dinner party, for a bunch of students i've never taught.

But in the end i must say it was all worth it. Although at least 3 of them were nodding off during the preliminary speeches, as soon as their beloved teacher began a wonderful speech about his years w/ them, the tears started flowing.

Then during dinner and stuff, a few more tears. Then after the boys had a drink or 2, they decided to add 1 more performance to the bill to sing a song (and it sounded a hell of a lot better than when they were sober). Then 1/2 way through the girls decided to jump on stage with them. Then they called their homeroom teacher into the mix, and it shortly transformed into a group hug w/ most of the gang bawling. Then my coworker pointed out all the parents who were crying. Next thing you know, I'm hollering and clapping and misty eyed myself. Music blaring in the background. It was pretty f'ing hilarious. Gosh i really never realized how totally entertaining it can be to watch people's eyes turn into fountains. i was loving every minute of it.

Truthfully, my expectations were quite low, but it ended up EPIC. Yes, there were lame-ass speeches about Studying Hard and The Future Is Yours and other BS by people who don't know shit about these individuals (all made doubly boring by requisite translations). But then vicariously hopping onto their emo-rollercoaster ride was great, as aided by the beer (5 glasses uncomfortably served to me by my own gr 11 students, all wearing unnecessarily sexy server's uniforms). "Hey Ivana, can you go get me another beer? I think my students know I'm getting drunk."

Cuandixia

After pretty much all of China worked a 7 day work week, everyone had a Mon, Tues, Wed holiday for Dragonboat Festival. Me and Qianqian head out to visit Cuandixia.

Cuandixia is a tiny and ancient ol' Qing dynasty town a few hours outside of Beijing. A historical spot, which has quickly become a hot little tourist destination.

Quite beautiful, to see these little courtyard houses all slowly cascading down the face of the mountain. I was stoked since i was under the impression that there's nothing to do there but wander around, read books, and possibly have a toke.

i was pumped for a couple days of quiet nothingness and sweating my way up a mountain or 2.

Well the town sure is gorgeous, but upon closer inspection the gorgeousness starts to feel rather forced. For example: like Lijiang and Dali last summer, i started to recognize the freshly laid "historic" cobblestones.

Also 90% of the buildings are now converted into guesthouses and restaurants.

I was mostly disappointed in that I was hoping for a peaceful couple days out, but the music blaring out of the restaurants and karaoke places was a bit much. Shania Twain and Avril? Canadian content: covered.

Oh well, we didn't get to the peaks as i had envisioned as that stairway was blocked off, and Q isn't as inclined as myself to break rules, but after a puff, we were too lazy and rubber-legged to gain much altitude anyhow.

Although the above looks pretty negative, i must say that i was still quite content to get out of BJ, and have a night out and a wander around.

And hey, the more holiday time before school's up, the better. And how.

The Future Is In ... Somebody's Hands

I just sent this email off to my employers. Not my principal, but the actual people who write out the paycheques. The woman has a reputation for not caring about her staff, though truthfully i've never had a problem up until this one.

Anyhow, I have requested to move outta the 'burbs to downtown, which is where i was supposed to work when 1st hired. It's closer to Qianqian, and more convenient for pretty much anything i want to do, save riding my bike/running in farmlands etc.

Hello X and Y,
How are you doing? Hopefully everything is wrapping up well for the end of the school year at all the SBS locations.

As June 30 approaches quickly, I'm trying to get ready for Sept next school year. As I have requested to change to #25, I hope to know soon if that will be a possibility so I know if I need to pack up my apartment soon.

I understand from talking with [#25 principal] that #25 has an opening for an English/Social Studies/ Canadian Studies/ Planning teacher. I (and [#8 principal] and other teachers) have always thought that jobs between the SBS schools were transferable.

I hope that the position at #25 is not being saved for a new teacher because it is easier to find someone who is willing to move to downtown Beijing as opposed to Fengtai.

Although I myself was originally hired to work at #25, when you asked me to come to #8, I understood the need to be flexible. I never complained. Indeed I really have had some wonderful teaching experiences and learned a great deal here in Yihai. However, as there will be an opening at #25 which I could fill, I would be quite disappointed to find that another teacher with no experience working for SBS received that position. I have always worked hard and with dedication for SBS.`[#8 principal] , my co-workers, and my students can all attest to this.

I have gained many teaching skills in #8 which I hope to bring to #25. I understand #25 also has many challenges which I am happy to face. I always aim to reflect and grow as an educator.

Please let me know your decision when you make it, so I can begin any necessary preparations.

Thanks for your time and consideration!

Peace,

Well, we'll see what pans out.

Canada Bound

Yup, Qianqian got her visa!
All systems go.
Tix booked.
Itinerary is liquid, but hopefully will start congealing before long.
Roughly: 1/2 time in AB w/ the parents, roughly 1/2 time in BC w/ friends.
Possibly ok w/ places to crash, possibly not.
If you are possibly open to having me and Q stay with you and entertain you with wild tales of life in exotic locations, offers would be most welcome.

Other than that here's what's planned:

• hang out w/ my bro and parents in Calgary
  
• a canoe camping trip w/ friend Elise.
• Wreck Beach
• Sooke (possibly more camping, or at least an overnighter on some beach or something).
• Midnight Mass bike ride: i hope that's still going...
• DIYDharma meditation group
• Maybe Whistler (more for the ride than the destination)

Other than that, just wanna meet up w/ lots of friends, hang out, drink organic coffee, smoke BC bud, ride around, etc.

Oh, and from Calgary, Q will hit Montreal for a week.

Stoked to eat back bacon and drink lots of Molson Canadian!

That's about it.
Yo.
Let me know if you want anything from China.
Like porcelain. Over here, we call it "china". Go figure. Or chinese smokes. No opium, sorry. Too much border hassles. bootleg dvds? Maybe but they might not play in Canada. Other things, no prob, drop me a line.

Lurkers, feel free to drop me a line, we can connect. Ha.

Say, did you know since i came to China, i started using f'ing emoticons a lot? Really i have. What can you do :P Oh well.

Look fwd to meeting up w/ peeps.

Thanks for hangin' in there w/ me and my f'ing more and more sparsely posted blogs. what a guy.

Crickety Cricket

i had this great idea to purchase a cricket from the outdoor market by my house. They sit there all noisy chirping away and it seemed pretty crappy to be crammed into a cage which can hardly contain you and your thorny limbs.

So i bought one of the buggers. Me and my coworkers eyed, it, fed it watermelon, then took it outside to let it jump around.

It bit me through the cage, which caused me to shriek.
"Yeah right, i'll believe it if there's blood," yawned J.
Upon closer inspection, in triumphantly declared that the mofo had indeed drawn blood out of my left index. i gather s/he was not pleased to be jostled so much as of late.

It took considerable poking and prodding to get him/her to come out. When s/he did, i was rather disturbed to note that s/he was missing his/her left hind leg. Oh, shitty. How was s/he going to jump around and entertain us now? No, instead of cavorting instilling us with childlike shrieks, s/he just trudged around on the pavement slowly.

So i took a few pix, and then let him/her go in the dinky patch of grass next to my apartment, which is all the convenient wilderness to be found around here.

In the end, the whole thing was kinda depressing. Is it better to be "free" in an environment where (since yr a bred creature in the 1st place) you have no survival skills, not to mention no left hind leg, and your future is either waiting to get eaten by a bird or something? Or better to live in a cramped cage, cheerful that your missing left leg opens up the space in that feng shui kind of way, singing along with your buddies who all have the misfortune to live in little cages cramped with every natural limb that a cricket should have.

I unscientifically hypothesize that the bugger's got a max life expectancy of perhaps 3 days more. Shit, what a life to live trying to survive crippled in a bizarre and unknown territory. Yup, this teaching business is a cake walk in comparison! It made me a bit sad to think that i could've made things worse for him/her than if i just left him/her alone. Oh well.

Good luck, buddy!

Hanging w/ the Band

Q's friends w/ this German guy who's in this band, and they came to BJ on tour.

Quite fun hanging out w/ them. Such a chipper and friendly gang, you'd never guess that (particularly in comparison w/ their previous tour in China) this tour was plagued w/ bad luck, accidents, poorly promoted shows, and had turned into a financial nightmare.

Q helped them shoot footage for a documentary they're putting together. Hit 3 shows in 3 nights in 3 venues.

One show was opening for Marnie Stern who's been getting some extremely impressive press as of late. Funny how as soon as she started, EVERYONE was like, "the drummer's great, but everything else SUCKS." So we made a break for it.

Along w/ a ocunded up hitting up KTV, since nobody in the band had done karaoke in China yet. We all drank lots and sang awfully. Then briefly stepped into a club w/ obscenely loud and disturbingly loud music.

Throughout that night and the next one, it was interesting to hear battered tales about touring. Kinda made me glad i'm not a musician.

Great Wall Marathon. 2.

Sluggy wake up, rushed exit, tense taxi ride to catch 3:30 am bus by small margin.
Sunny coolish morn turns to sunny hot day.
Aerobics warm up.
I'm one of the few people calling out "woo woo" since i feel bad for the aerobics girl sadly trying to get people excitied enough to yell "woo woo".
Although i really wasn't into "woo woo" in the slightest.

Run.
Run up the hill for 5 km.
Run w/ friend Jessica who runs up the hill faster than i want her to.

Run on the great wall.
Up stairs,
Down stairs.

Jessica's knee is less than stellar at descending stairs, and after finishing the wall section, she decides she must walk the rest of the course.

My stomach tells me i should've eaten more than a banana before the race.
i purchase some overpriced chemical chocolate-cookie-marshmallow thing.
Mm-good.

Run through small town, and farmer fields.

Decide to run til the finish line.
Decide to run faster for the end stretch.
The end stretch takes an unpleasantly gruelling time to appear.
(omg, where the f*** is it, already?)

Before: contemplated doing the full marathon next year.
Now that seems like sheer stupidity.

Finish the race.

Wait in uberlongo lineups for food that also deserve a finish line.

Eat a sandwich from the Veg box, but later realize it's beef.
But not much beef.
And who cares, the sandwich is easily 2x bigger than last years.
Plus there was a beer thrown in.
Which i admit, i hardly enjoyed.
Oh well.

But dang, that was one helluva sandwich, that's for sure.


Photo of me and my surprisingly sweaty back by Jessica.

Unbelievable Knifings

Turns out China's more violent than anticipated.
Lots of attacks in the last month, most notably, THREE of which took place in NURSERY SCHOOLS, injuring and killing children, in three different locations.

All of this news comes from English news sources, seeing as how 90% of the news i read about China comes from the UK's Guardian. I did peek at China Daily just to confirm, and yes, the news is there, though details are conspicuously absent.

Details such as... numbers of people attacked, number of victims injured or murdered. You know: details.

Disturbing snippet from the Guadian:

Since March there have been at least six attacks on nurseries and schools resulting in 18 murders, two suicides, an execution and more than 40 children being injured by cleavers, knives and hammers.

I haven't broached the topic w/ any chinese staff yet, but am curious to know if they have heard about it. Alongside of increased police presence around schools, teachers have been equipped w/ defensive poles.

Anyhow, it's all pretty nuts.

That's about all i have to say about that, except that i hope that after a (mentally ill or not) scapegoat or 2 gets what comes to them, things become a touch less violent.

Visa Vis

Boy, us Canadians don't know how good we have it.
With minimal hassle we can generally get into most any country we want. We'll complain if we need to get a visa beforehand, which generally amounts to an application.

Not so for Chinese (and other developing country) folks.

Canada is particularly wary of young, educated, English-speaking people hopping over the True North Strong and Free border for fear that people might decide to stay.

So they dug up some red tape and strung it around.

To tell the truth, i haven't been too careful figuring all this stuff out, 'cause there's not much i can do for a lot of it.

What i have had to do has involved things like getting all appropriate and strangely inapplicable info details into my parents' letter of invitation for Q. i secured the current 3rd party confirmed financial statements of my parents' incomes. Collected my dad's proof of citizenship and immigration status. i am currently hassling Q and my dad to start emailing each other so we can print off the emails so as to "prove the correspondence" between inviter and invitee. Trying to get an early contract from work so as to have proof that i too am returning to BJ for Sept. And other less exciting details. I also should try and find pix of Q and i together and maybe try to hack together an album so as to "prove" our relationship.

Q doesn't seem too worried about it, compared to, say H and her BJ bf who is also planning to go to Vancouver this summer. He's actually got his parents to "sell" him their car and put 1/2 their apt under his name, so as to show he's got assets he should be unwilling to leave behind. H has also put together a sickeningly sweet photo album as mentioned above. Unfortunately, it's true i don't have so many of that kind of photo. Generally not my shooting style, which i never thought was a problem until presently :P

Anyhow, it's only a couple months before the plane departs, so hopefully this stuff all pulls through w/ minimal hassles. Feel free to cross fingers for us.

ByeBye Poo Machine

First, take 4 1/2 minutes to watch the ever so eloquent Dan Savage wax on adoption issues. IMO, flawless.

I have often reflected on this 4 1/2 minute vid clip considering my own issues regarding Hulu, the Weird But Strangely Lovable Cat. Hulu the cat who has developed a frustratingly regular habit of defacating on the floor near the litter box, in the garbage next to the litter box, on the sofa, then on the towel which covered the sofa, then on the cardboard that covered the towel that covered the sofa.

Q expected to zip off to Cambodia for 10 days, so we didn't want the trouble of moving Hulu and accessories back to her apt, just to bring him back here.

Tried a number of things, read multiple websites, but didn't find anything which notably curbed said problem.

Q also at a loss of what to do. She considered giving someone money to take him on, but we both baulked at the thought of someone who wouldn't put up w/ any probs and throw him out. That said, i felt he oughta prepare for potentially spending more time outside, so i started putting him out myself. Hey, you'd think for a cat w/out enough space, this would be a dream come true.

However, his poor eyesight and lack of fighting abilities tended to make him constantly hover by the apartment. He couldn't even get himself down .6 metres out of the cubby hole to take a shit on the ground.

Anyhow, in the end I placed an ad, and found a new owner for him. Often i considered myself like one of the hetero lousy parents mentioned by Mr Savage, whereupon i find myself taking care of a little one, find myself unable to deal w/ the ongoing problems it presents, and decide to shove its responsibility onto someone else.

Yes, the owner knows about the poopoo problem. If however the poopoo problem turns out to be too much to bear, then perhaps Hulu will come back to my/Q's care.

However, the hope is that in a new home where he has more company, much less time alone, and a bigger space, he'll be less inclined to misbehave. As far as first impressions go, the woman seemed to be pretty gaga over him, and has reported already that he poo'd once in his litter box, and once in his travel box, but said "no problem."

Anyhow, i sincerely wish him and his new family the best. Hopefully they will have many long and happy years together, with much litter box sand under the bridge.

Here is a decided un-cute picture of him.