distant ruminations

我

有

压

力

!

Sorry. Just thought I’d get that off my chest.

Back to my regular drivel:

So with my last class in Yizhuang over, I’m pretty much free from this place. All we’ve got to do now is pack and leave. The packing part I probably should be doing right now. The leaving part we’ll do on Saturday. Now, I suppose I could kick back and relax and enjoy the next two months. Or I could use all this spare time to get back into more serious Chinese study. But we haven’t managed to save a hell of a lot this year. So instead this afternoon I’ll be going around to some kind of language school/training centre for an interview and demonstration lesson. I’m not looking forward to it.

In my experience, training centres are best avoided. I only agreed to work at this one because it’s a part of the Petroleum University and/or owned by CNPC, so it’s a bit more trustworthy than your regular privately owned training centre. I hope this guy has got the message that I’m only looking for part-time work over the summer.

Let’s face it, I’m a lazy bastard. I really don’t want to be out looking for part-time or ‘freelance’-type work over the summer. I want a holiday. But with so little saved, it’s probably not a good idea to take a holiday, or at least not too much of a holiday. I should at least find enough work to pay the pay the bills over the summer. Although our savings and lzh’s (rather tiny) income are enough to get us through to my next pay check, that’d leave us starting from scratch yet again.

So this afternoon I’m heading down to Jianwai Soho to see about this training centre. I have a company that seems like a kind of introduction service for students and teachers interested in one-on-one tutoring lined up for after we move. I should get on to reading the documents they sent me and reminding them I’m still alive, about to move soon, and still interested. I sent my CV to a gas company looking for an editor/proofreader, but I suspect that, as always, all that foreign teacher experience will work against me. I should probably get off my arse and see what else is out there.

After all, this is not a cheap city, we have bills to pay, and it’s probablydefinitely better to keep as much of our savings saved as possible.

But sometimes….

….when my mate Frog got back from Laos and he was telling me his wandering-through-the-jungle stories over pastis at Balls or whatever that pub behind Gulou is called, I was daydreaming of finding myself a nice little corner of the southeast Asian jungle to disappear into.

Now, back in the real world, I guess I should be preparing for this demonstration lesson. Got a few ideas of what to do, just need to flesh them out a bit.

In a little less than an hour I’ll wander downstairs looking for my ride. Today will be my last trip to Yizhuang…. probably. I’m not so much looking forward to it as looking forward to no longer having to go there. It’s odd. For such a long time I was regularly passing the Third Ring Road’s turnoff to Yizhuang/BDA and seeing this mysterious place on a map and wondering what was out there. Then, suddenly, I find myself with not just the opportunity to find out, but regular trips to Yizhuang, and I quickly discovered it was nothing worth wondering about. So today should be the last trip. ‘Should be’ means there’s a chance the school has already arranged for another foreign teacher to go there, but forgotten to tell me of the change, but I’m probably not going to be so lucky. Still, this is China, and these things happen.

It’s an odd form of torture, these trips to Yizhuang. They’re not painful because of the pain inflicted on me; they’re painful because they’re so damn boring. There’s nothing out there. Nothing. And the students are so mediocre. They’re not bad students. Nor are they good students. They’re not even average students. They’re just so incredibly mediocre that I might as well spend the three hours conversing with the wall or staring out the window at the non-scenery. Spending three hours watching grey paint dry on a grey wall under a grey sky standing on grey pavement would be more interesting and far more productive.

I know I shouldn’t put stuff like this on a blog open to all comers, but by nine o’clock this evening my responsibilities to this school will be basically over and I will be entirely free until September 1. And in September I will be starting an infinitely better job at an infinitely better school working for an infinitely better boss with at least one infinitely better colleague.

And lzh and I have only five days left living in this dump. Five days and then will be living in the best part of downtown Beijing. The only downside to moving down to BeiGongDa is that we’ll be much further from Deshengmen and the 919 bus terminal, but that one disadvantage is so massively outweighed by all the myriad advantages that it doesn’t really matter at all.

我是一个破å??马桶的天æ‰?! Yep, it’s true. Since I’ve been in China, I’ve developed quite a talent for breaking toilets. I’m not sure how, I mean, at a little less than 70 kilos, I’m not exactly heavy. Anyway, at least I can lay claim to one talent.

One of the things I like about Beijing is that in the summer the rest of the country can be totally flooded out, but Beijing remains dry. Well, most of the time. Every now and then a very sudden, sharp storm comes along, resulting in surface flooding in some areas. Well, flash floods might be a better description.

For the last few days rain has been forecast, but in that stubborn Beijing way, it stayed cloudy and humid, and the rain refused to fall. Until late yesterday afternoon, that is, when all of that forecast rain decided to fall all at once. And oh boy did it fall heavily. There was also hail mixed up in it.

Well, like a typical summer storm, it was all over within half an hour, and I grabbed up some empties and headed off to A Bao’s for supplies. I got to the gate and was suddenly face with a lake where the road had been. And Lao Zhang, the school’s driver and Mr Fixit was standing in the middle of all this murky water in a pair of gumboots watching the water slowly drain away down a manhole he’d evidently just pried open. I stepped out the gate onto the last remaining sliver of dry land and looked around. The lake was quite large, extending all the way down to the student dorms to the left, and at least as far as the little prefab that was a fever clinic during SARS and is now a cram school for the local primary school prisoners pupils. I pondered for a moment, wondering if I should wait for the water to drain away, or just make a run for it. I thought, bugger it, rolled up my jeans, and wandered off.

And when I got to A Bao’s, it looked like he’d just had an entire river run through his shop, and he and his wife were busy trying to clean up.

And when I got back, remembering that there’s an apparently rather desperately in need of repairs sewer running the length of the road that had just become a lake, I washed my feet thoroughly. And that, if you can believe it, is how I broke the toilet.

And I forgot what else I was going to write about. There were three things…. Oh well.