Posted 6:49 AM by Gobbler
Schools out for Summer. Schools out forever.

Its true you know. Already my teaching days proper are over. Officially i finish teaching a week on wednesday but as I teach 500 odd students it will take me 2 weeks to get through them all, and I began already this week.

Its strange but although I havent blogged for a few days again i cannot think of anything particular to write, boo hoo. So we'll have to settle with a few of the highlights from my exams.

Q: What colour is that tree?
A: Red and Yellow. (correct answer: green; age of student: 20)

Q: What is the capital of England?
A: Paris.

Q: What is your favourite food?
A: Blue.

Q: What day is it today?
A: Six of July.

(On talking about food) "English people all the day are eating cake."

Q: What is your name?
A: Pardon?

Posted 8:58 AM by Gobbler
Survival Instincts

Babies like a good cry. They do it to get attention/obtain a goal and/or because they experience emotions they are unable to deal with. At first, all the crying is for the latter reason as they dont know anything about emotions and how to deal with them, but as they get older the former reason gains in prevalence as children encounter more emotions and learn to deal with them. Certain adults may be emotionally immature and cry emotionally 'as a child' at moments when most adults would not, but often the act of crying in adults is done to get attention. Only rarely do adults encounter emotions that they are not at all or not sufficiently familiar with, and as they cannot rationalise or understand their emotions they are reduced to tears by them. Hence tears of happiness at a long anticipated reunion or marriage or tears of sadness due to bereavement; in these unique and rare cases people have no experience of their emotions and cannot deal with them rationally.

But people are in command of their emotions when they need to be because at certain times it simply isnt practical to start booing it. You only need a little practical knowledge to know this. At first babies know absolutely nothing but they learn pretty sharpish. Take young toddlers. Now, they tend to cry a lot. they cant get enough of it. Hurt yourself? Got a pain somewhere, what is that? Crying will help. Crapped yourself, oh dear! How did that happen? start crying. Fallen over, dash! Waterworks please. A Skeleton man about to come out of the wardrobe and get you? Holy smokes, start awailing. But if skeleton man is about to come out of the wardrobe to get you (and this example isnt really babies anymore, its me when i was 4)you cant just start crying, that would be fatal. for one thing skeleton man would be alerted to your presence and jump out to get you. First of all you must take shelter under the covers, draw them tight about you and then, only then, when you have some protection, is it safe to cry. This is exactly the sort of thing that happened the other day.

Mother, father and most beloved daughter (one child policy remember) on the escalator at the supermarket. One of those really irritating ones for trolleys that roll along at half a mile an hour at an angle of 3 degrees and grip the trolleys wheels so that they dont roll away. Father holds the trolley, mother stands by, daughter stands in trolley, arms over the edge, enjoying the ride. I should mention that this is apparently a bad idea and forbidden in sainsbury's and other responsible supermarkets. you may not stand in the trolley or sit in the trolley, you must use the fold out seat provided which, as i remember, provides a rubbish view of the supermarket. Why oh why are you not allowed to stand in the trolley and pretend you are driving a racing car or something? Perhaps they want you to buy more food and you will take up space in the trolley, unless beloved parental miniature is willing to bury you under the groceries. Anyhow, daughter stands in trolley watching the scene. Rubers and i accompany our trolley up the ramp just behind. They get to the top of the ramp. Catastrophe strikes. Because the trolleys wheels are wedged into the grooves of the escalator the trolley gives a little jolt as it detaches itself. Toddler in the trolley who has stopped leening over the edge of the trolley and is freestanding feels the wobble and somehow topples headfirst out of the trolley with a pitiful squeek.

It was almost comical the way she fell out. first she wobbled backwards, then forwards against the front of the trolley. then her head seemed to be of extra density as it kept on going and brought the rest of her with it to the shop floor. Naturally this mishap warranted a good cry, nothing less than a thorough wailing. She hadnt expected That. As she lifted her head up to her parents i saw in her face the crumpled look that tells you that they are about to cry. But the tears and wails did not come, for she had noticed something. The back wheels of the trolley were still stuck in the escalator so the front was advancing irrepressably towards her. The father struggled unsuccessfully to manhandle the trolley out of the way of his prone daughter, the mother struggled to shake the husband into moving the trolley out of the way of her prone daughter. But there was nothing to be done, the trolley came on like the bow of a ship, edging closer to the little girl.

It would indeed be an ignominious fate to be crushed by a rampaging shopping trolley and as such it was one of the worst possible moments to start crying helplessly. Young girl rapidly changed her mind about the subject, picked her terrified self up on all fours and scrabbled as quick as the nimblest crab out of the way of the trolley, turned to face her parents, slumped down, began impressively uncontrolled bawling and was swept up a short time later by two very upset parents who will probably now agree with mr sainsbury as regarding his policies towards allowing people to ride in the trolley.

Moral of the story: Dont get trolleyed

Bills likely comment: Nick, why you not help her?

Chairman Maos words: "In this world, things are complicated and are decided by many factors." 'On the Chungking Negotiations' (October 17, 1945)

Posted 10:55 PM by Gobbler
They think its all over.

Firstly apologies for a gross inaccuracy. Apparently it wasnt 'whales are big fish' but 'Trout are freshwater fish'. Ah. Thanks Rich, what a fool I am.

This may come to you as a surprise, but my teaching days are now almost over. Today sees the last minutes of normal classes after which it is exam time. I dont wholly believe it myself. For the next two weeks I'll be assessing the legions of assorted half-wits and talents and grading them. I only hope that i dont have to mark my middle schoolers, that would be a real pain and near impossible. How is it practical to give a class of 46 individual orals in 80 minutes of classes? i hope i do not have to find out. Two more weeks of the fruit game would do me just fine.

Ok well I'd better get ready for todays lot. I plan to tape record them all so that i have a better idea of how good they are, and then mark them out of 20. I hope it works out all right...

Posted 9:21 AM by Gobbler
Whales are big fish and have underwater weapons - Mr Scruff

Or:

"Fishy fishy fishy, here fishy fishy" - me

Apologies, Its been some time, but you cant get the staff these days.

It was one of those possible plans that very rarely gets put into practice. A bit like the plan to go to the minigolf run by a friend of Bill's, that model I mentioned. Part time model, full time mini golf manageress. Great. But we still haven't been. The possible plan mentioned above was to go fishing on Saturday with Pan, the Tai Chi instructor. I dont know whether Pan is his first or last name. if it is his last then i guess his first name should be Peter, otherwise Pan is just a silly name. Be that as it may, his name is Pan and that is as much as I can tell you. Fishing with Pan, what a plan.

Being one of those possible plans that very rarely gets put into practice it was with some surprise that I found myself getting up on Saturday morning and some small time later boarding the tinted-window private car with Mr. C Tofer for the hour or so ride to the river where we would be fishing. After an hour or so the car duly stopped somewhere in the countryside. All around were fields of variously coloured edibles, and obscurely shaped buildings of miscellaneous construction, tall trees peppering the scene and finally a straight canal-like river slicing through.

It was a somewhat unusual river that we were fishing in, in that it was actually an artificial rectangular pond next to the river, but these minor details didnt bother any of the Chinese in the party so it didnt seem to even warrant mentioning to Pan as he led us to our spot. As Pan was seeing to Chris a little farther down from me, I had the confusing help of another man in the group who measuredly instructed me in Chinese the noble art of fishing. "Aha, ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha." My only possible response to his advice. Then he smiled at me, pointed at the water and said "Fish!" "Ha!" i returned, and smiled. We were on the same wavelength. He handed me the 10-12 foot long telescopic fibreglass rod and we looked on at the little white floats lying in the water waiting for a) some more to appear, which meant that a fishy had gobbled the worm and was heading skyward, or b)for one or more to disappear which indicated that a fishy had gobbled the worm and was heading somewhere else.

There was however a problem. My eyesight not yet having fully recovered from the party the night before and having not understood what the guy had told me, which had presumably included something about watching the floats, I did not initially connect the little white bits floating on the surface of the water with my own fishing activities; I was expecting to feel a tug on my rod as sole indication of Mr Fish taking a gastronomic and fatal interest in Mr Worm. All I had established for certain as I took the rod was that, in theory, a fish would at some point impale itself on my hook, that I would at some point later realise this and that i would then pull Mr Fish out of the water and plop him down on the bank.

Waiting for tremors in my rod (no rude comments please) I was somewhat surprised when my mentor and a couple of other onlookers, one of whom a cursory glance told me was 117, began making such noises as indicated I had bite and that i might like to reel the little chap in. I say reel the little chap in as purely an apt metaphor, for there was no reel; the method of capture being to lift up the long rod so as to pull mr fish from the water. This I duly did but alas it seemed that I had not been quick witted enough, for as I pulled the hook clean of the water it was plus zero fish and minus half a worm.

The friendly man helping me took the rod, presumably his, to show me how it was done. Through his assistance and helpful translations from Pan, i realised the existence and relevance of the floats and that the raising of the rod after a bite served not just to bring out the fish but also to hook it good and proper with a solid yank. Before long both Chris and I had caught our first fish. We were surviving, we were hunting, grrr, and immediately an unspoken competition began for the most fishies.

Things decidedly took a turn for the better about halfway through the proceedings when the old man mentioned earlier joined me in an advisory capacity, freeing my original helper and allowing him to sit down. On closer inspection it seemed that the old man was not 117, and that a fairer age would be about 89. Of course thats only a guess, but it seemed at the time that counting the lines on his face as you may do with the rings of a tree was a not unreasonable method of dating him. He wore a grubby old shirt and trousers of the sort that everyone in China from office managers to labourers wear, and sported a marvellous hat that I conceived of buying off him but couldnt work out how to go about it. His most memorable features were however his rough hands that appeared to be made out of clay, and the end of his thumbs had been left to dry and then squashed a little so that the clay cracked and split leaving grubby ravines in the thick skin.

This chap, besides having a nice hat and interesting thumbs, also had a thing or two to say about fishing. Naturally I have no idea what those things were, but when he produced from his pocket his own bag of worms it looked as though we were in business. Indeed these worms must have been imbued with qualities of rare yumminess, for whenever he skewered one with the hook and delivered it unto the water it was rarely long before Mr Fish or a relative of his took a lasting liking to it. Some fish later he got me to look at how he kebabbed the worm. Worms, like most of Gods creatures, dont take kindly to having a hook shoved in them, and tend to wriggle quite a bit when this happens. My man was wise to this however and so before attempting the operation he placed wormy in the palm of his hand and clapped the other on top of it, which seemed to pacify the worm markedly. After a couple of demonstrations I was beckoned to pick my worm and set about turning it into fishfood. This I managed in the end and before long a couple more fish were caught. As I lifted yet another fish from the water, however, calamity struck. The rod suddenly became light and after a second or two I realised that the end of my rod was missing. With hook, line, sinker and fishy all gone too.

While everyone had a jolly good chuckle I stood mute adn confused. As tends to be the case with confused people, i did a 360 on the spot. This leant me some inspiration as after completeing the pirouette i put down the rod and looked to see if i could get the end back. though most of it, including the fish, were in the water, I was abel to grab one end. Pulling it clear up came the line and floats and the fish too, hooked good and proper. Shortly later old man produced some sellotape from somewhere and fixed the rod, and I was good to go again. I dont know how but both Chris and I caught more fish than everyone else, and by the end of our two hours or so I had 13 and Chris 9. Ancient old man with the super worms bade us farewell with a smile and a wave and we were off for lunch, which was also a highly entertaining experience.

Having lunch with ten people youve never met before, will probably never meet again and who you cant understand would appear on the face of it to be a rather laboursome enterprise, but this was not the case at all. Predicatably, beer was produced in quantity although thankfully bijiu, the grim and highly toxic rice wine, did not. We tucked keenly into the multitude of random dishes ranging from sliced pig stomach to crayfish, pausing regularly for a toast or gan bei, which means literally 'empty glass'. Chris and I had just about got through half of our bottles when two more appeared in front of us, just in case we were getting thirsty. Given that the Chinese eat just about everything, including prawns/shrimp shell and all (you put it in your mouth, bite off and spit out the head, and chomp down the rest) it was surprising to be demonstrated a clever technique regarding crayfish. If you pull the tail off carefully, you will bring with it the string of stomach running along its back as with shrimp, and so remove that dirty and unpalatable part in one easy action. As well as eating lots of food and accepting numerous toasts it is also the done thing to smoke several cigarettes during the meal whilst eating and drinking, it being rude not to accept the offer of a cigarette even if you are already smoking three youve just been given by other people. I exagerrate slightly. If youve already got one given to you by one person and someone else offers you one you simply discard the first and begin with the next. While this cannot be beneficial to the health it does keep everyone happy and nicely guan xi'd. Chris and I chuckled our way through this happy and generous meal until, as is the strange way of things here, without ceremony everyone stood up and left. I made a tentative inquiry with Pan to see if we should pay for the meal for the day but it didnt get very far, and we returned to our respective abodes each with eight fish.

"I'd take pleasure in gutting you, boy." - The Rock

How do you gut a fish? The question seemed to warrant a no doubt abhorrently expensive phonecall to my holidaying parents to find the answer. Its really quite simple. Stick a knife up its arse and cut forward to the gills. Remove contents. It was fish for dinner. Quite tasty.

Thats it for now. We have still to hear about the peculiarities of the chinese supermarket and the truth about crying babies. All in the next edition. Hopefully it wont be too long before then.

Bill Quote of the week: "My girlfriend, she dont like me to go to the Banana Disco. She don't like my crazy."