21/09/03

I had internet for a total of one day, and how exciting it was. I’m sitting here on Sunday afternoon, it’s raining outside, which isn’t helping the cause of my damp laundry. The weekend has been fairly good, but it being Sunday I’m trying fruitlessly to write up some lessons plans for tomorrow’s classes. We don’t know when the textbooks are going to get here so we’re still having to pretty much figure it out as we go, and right now I have no idea what to teach these guys tomorrow.

Friday wasn’t bad. My stomach wasn’t happy with something I’d eaten, have no idea what, but as a result I didn’t do a whole lot. A bit of tidying up for Dad’s arrival later that night, but for the most part I just lounged around and tried to figure out what I could eat that would spend more than half an hour inside me! Les called in the afternoon to let me know he was in bad shape, and that he wouldn’t be coming in for the nighttime classes (he won’t be in the future, but for the first week was going to just to get things rolling). At about 5.20 I figured I’d head over to the guest house for a sandwich before class. After wandering over there however, I had to wander back, it was set up for a major function. Turns out Li Ka-Shing was in town.

Mr. Li is a philanthropist from Chaozhou (just next to Shantou) that now lives in Hong Kong. He has made a lot of money over the last 30 years and has donated most of it to education and medicine. He was named The Times Entrepreneur of the Millennium, and is an extremely successful man, and unlike most of the rich today, he has given back most of which he has earned (if you’d like to know more, visit the Li Ka-Shing foundation homepage, just search for ‘Li Ka Shing’ on any search engine). Among the projects he has become involved in, one is Shantou University. In fact he pretty much built it. So when he comes back to town, it is hard not to know about it.

So after wandering down to the guest house, I wandered back to the apartment, and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. When I turned on the TV Mr. Li was on pretty much all the Shantou TV stations. He had given a speech at the University earlier in the day. After my impromptu dinner I headed over to the medical building for class. It went really well. At one point in the second half someone came along knocking on the door asking if they could join. Les and I are beginning to think that word about the new program is spreading, which for us is a good thing, we’re still on a trial basis!

Dad arrived at about 11.30pm, his flight had been delayed, bit of a pain for him. When he got in we had a quick chat before hitting the sack. He brought me up a bunch of stuff from Australia, of most interest to anyone reading this website may be the web cam I now have. If I can figure out how to link it to the website, you’ll all soon have Sam-cam (If you do happen to catch me doing tai-chi naked at 5am, my sincere apologies). If I can’t get the website figured out at least MSN Messenger will be a whole lot more fun!

Saturday morning was fairly quiet, my stomach still wasn’t feeling all that good. We had a bit of breakfast, sat around for a while, then went for a walk round campus. We ended up walking veeerrrryy slowly. It was about 35 degrees, and must have been 90% humidity, on top of that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. When we walked from the sun into the shade it felt like the temperature dropped about 10 degrees, was quite a day. We wandered up to the lake, and around the campus, and then made our way over to the east gate for some lunch. Knew if this food didn’t cause me a whole lot of trouble then I was on the mend, the cold chicken they make with a chili oil sauce had a bit more bite than usual, was good. We got back to the apartment at about 3pm, and were both soaking in our own sweat, and zapped energy-wise. Dad crashed, and I wrote a few emails then did the same. That was after Mum called to inform us Collingwood was back in the AFL Grand Final.

If they call Melbourne the city where you experience four seasons in a day, then Shantou deserves some credit for it’s ability to change from clear and oven-like day, to a day more reminiscent of one in the middle of a fifty year storm. When I woke up it was absolutely pouring, on top of that the lightning was dotting the campus left, right and center, and the thunder was getting up there in decibels. I started writing a few more emails before lightning struck just next to the building, sent me through the roof, and brought an end to my day long internet escapade. I assumed the LAN connection to the building had been fried. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted! The storm itself was quite entertaining, having spent the last 6 years mainly between Australia and Canada, without regular thunderstorms, I quite like it here.

We had planned to head into the city first to try and find a cable that could connect the laptop to the TV for the purpose of DVD watching, and then to meet Les for dinner at Hayley Cafe. After finally waking from our collective slumber we got away at about 5.30, and thanks to the rain, it was taking a fair bit longer to get into town. Destination A got scrapped, and we went straight to Hayley Cafe to meet Les. We got there at about 6.30, and left at 11.30. It was a good night, bit of food, lot of conversation. I think we covered everything there was to cover business-wise that’s happened in the last 15 years. China got in there as well. By the time we made it home by midnight, it didn’t take too many sheep.

Today has been fairly quiet. We sat around the apartment until Dad headed off to the airport at about 1.30, and that’s pretty much where I’m at now. Have to finish off these lesson plans before 7pm when the Sunday night expat dinner is on, we’re off to a restaurant down on the water. Sure hope this rain lets up!

- Sam