12/9/03

It's Friday night, end of another week. Now been two weeks since I left Melbourne (can you hear 'I still call Australia home' in the background?.... me neither). The last few days have had their ups and downs. I push the lever on the toilet, down.... the water comes up.... and four hours later it finally settles down. Getting things done around here is about as easy as it is having a meaningful conversation with George W. Bush. What was a sketchy toilet situation Tuesday, became a situation requiring a snorkel Wednesday morning. On a more positive note I finally have a phone line. I was so excited about actually getting a phone line that I just about peed my pants (technically I almost peed my pants because I had to walk over to the Medical block to use the toilet, but that just doesn't have the same ring).

Wednesday was my day off. I was really looking forward to a bit of a sleep in after consecutive 7am starts (that is a task for me). You could imagine how excited I was when at 8.30 the doorbell rang twice in the space of 5 minutes. The first time it was my neighbour David popping over to introduce himself, which was fair enough. However literally 2 minutes after getting back into the bed Money (the building super, I guess) was at the door with 8 contractors to fix the place up (2 to actually do stuff, the other 6 to maintain a professional attitude, discuss important matters, and basically to do things that closely resemble nothing). I sat there for a while, and then took off to try and find a nice quiet place to have a nap. I found one, and after 40 mins made my way back... wishful thinking. By 11.45 the several canyons (which for some reason hadn't caught my eye) in both the walls, and tables had been fixed, and apparently the place was in much better shape. Lucky me. I went back to bed.

I spent the afternoon sorting out a few things, getting in touch with home (their vacation was over!), before heading out to the east gate with Adam for dinner. I'm becoming a bit of a regular at the restaurant I've been eating at. Quiet night, ready for the last round of placement tests the next morning.

Thursday morning up at 7, back to the classrooms to whip through the last set of placements tests. Which we did quite easily. Les and I then looked through all 4 classes and spent an hour or so sorting out classes. It all seemed a little pointless not having resolved the scheduling conflict which I talked about the other day, but we got through it. Back up to the office, to discuss resources and whatnot. The office was still bare. We now had a water cooler, a bunch of pens and notebooks, but were short a computer and a bunch of resources. With classes starting Monday it was a little unnerving (as was the fact that we still hadn't agreed on a contract, so weren't exactly sure whether classes would start next week). We discussed textbooks, teaching methods, what we would do next week considering we hadn't yet any textbooks available for students, or a curriculum, and discussed timetables. 8am starts Mon, Tues, Thurs, yuck. Last class 7-9 Friday night, which makes for a fairly short weekend. But then I do have Wednesday off, and a fair bit of time off in the day... so I guess all is fair in love and war.

After the meeting Les and I headed back over to the east gate for lunch. Talked about where everything stands, what jobs Les has as backups. It's great sitting around chatting with Les, he knows a whole lot about a whole lot. The food again was top notch. Having left my cash back in the room I was now in debt a couple of lunches... a tad embarassing.

I spent the afternoon trying to sort out the toilet situation. I was getting a little tired of the long distance commute. After 2 hours wandering around the campus I came to the conclusion I was not going to get a plunger without a trip into Walmart, which I was thrilled about. So I headed over to the guest house to try and talk the folks there into letting me check my email on the computers there. No problems. The computers were about as slow as the England pace attack, and it took me about 20 minutes to get anywhere near a hotmail account. But perseverence paid off, and I discovered that I had precious few emails (to those of you who have written: thanks!.... and to the rest of you: may your pathetic attempts at life fail to impress the kind of people that cry tears of excitement when the microwave beeps having just heated up a slice bread covered in fish paste), but I guess something is better than nothing, and after reading as many as I could before the internet server decided that it was time for a break, I made my way back to Villa B-2.

Ian came up at about 6 and asked if I wanted to come out (with Adam, Shelley, Jenny, and Ian) to a mid-autumn day festival party (mid-autumn day festival, was a day when everyone when out and looked at the moon and ate mooncakes, heavy eh?), not feeling all that great I figured I'd better go along (the chances of me striking a working toilet were quite good, so long as I wasn't at home). It turned out to be quite a night. After meeting a few others (Brett, American who taught at the university last year but was now at another school in Shantou, and Fish, his girlfriend, a Chinese girl with a creative English name) at Walmart (there is also a MacDonalds there), and picking up a plunger (which I would drag around with me the rest of the night), we headed back to Brett's apartment (are you sick of brackets yet?).

If I thought my apartment was something, I had something coming. Brett lived in quite the place. The lady he was working for, Jean, was a very wealthy lady and owned among things (a huge nightclub complex, and a series of bars, as we would find out later) an English school. As a result Brett had a veeerrrry nice place, the eight flights of stairs were worth it. We sat around drinking a few beers, eating mooncakes (very heavy cakes, different flavours, originally just egg flavour), watching various Chinese and Japanese karaoke DVDs.... surreal eh? To top things off we watched an English one (no one was game to sing) that featured songs you wish hadn't been written put to a backdrop of montages of certain films, the combinations were really something (ie. Right here waiting - Richard Marx w/ The Piano).

A whole bunch of other people showed up, I'm not gonna go through them all, a mix of foreigners and Chinese folk. At about 10 O'clock, Adam, Shelley and Jenny headed back to the university (they actually get locked out of residence at 11pm.... ouch), while Ian and I decided to head down to the bar where a bunch of people were going. Quite a choice.

As a white person in Shantou, you are a bit of a rare commodity, and hence get used as advertising, and in some cases treated like a celebrity. When we got to the bar, Jean took us on a full tour of the place, which included a huge nightclub, and a few bars. We got taken up to the stage, behind the bar (where we were made to drink out of the bottom of what appeared to be a flaming pyramid of glasses and liquor created by the barman), through the security rooms, and just about everywhere. Then back outside to the table of foreigners where drinks were free.... quite a scene.

By 12.45, after hitting another of Jeans bars, we figured we'd head back to the university. Being very talented blokes, we tried bargaining a fare with the taxi driver before he even knew where we going... fairly unsuccessful, but we did get back in one piece. Some night, I spent a total of 8 Aussie dollars all night... and that was extravagant.

After getting back to the apartment I spent 20 mins up to my elbows in toilet water trying to unblock the toilet, before breaking the plunger and hence coming to the conclusion the problem was a little bigger than originally thought. So I put a note in Money's pigeon hole, had a shower and went to bed.

It's now Friday night. The toilet is still not working (apparently it's not longer blocked, but the process was quite an ordeal for the toilet itself, and was decided that it was better for both parties to extend the leave of absence), I have had contractors here all day, doing much what I did last night, before deciding they needed some heavy machinery. Funny how they figure I wouldn't have given the plunger a good go, it being my waste disposal mechanism. Nevertheless, from what I hear it will be back in action tommorow, so I look forward to actually using it some time next week. I spent the day not doing a whole lot. Decided to take to internet matters into my own hands, and went over to the network center and somehow communcated that I was after an account, picked one, and paid (sounds like a much worse idea now), and am awaiting a phone call.

I'm now going to amuse myself for an hour or two. Then go to bed.

- Sam