I finally managed to collect the package sent from my parents about, oh, a month and a half ago. How, you may be asking, was I so colossally dumb to miss picking up a package for a month and a half? Well, I'll tell you.
I got the notification as per the usual routes: my school "served" with with a notice that I had a parcel waiting in Chashan town. From my previous visits to the local post office, I knew exactly what I needed: both the notice they sent me, as well as my passport. A little much for a package, but hey, not entirely unreasonable. So I put off picking it up until I could return passport in-hand.
Unfortunately, somewhere between Thursday and Monday (my weekend), the notice pulled a Houdini. Poof! Gone. Lost. Without A Trace. May as well call in the Cold Case Files, because not even CSI could have found it. (Have I put in enough references to CBS weeknight programming yet?)
So there I was: SOL. Without the slip, I had nothing... and so the box sat. And sat. And sat. (I'd like to point out at this point that the Chashan mailbox is not something you take a leisurely stroll to. It takes planning to get there. Even if you know which bus will take you to the town, it's nowhere near the bus station. It's not somewhere you go unless you're sure you can get what you want.)
Eventually my predicament slipped out to my parents - the senders - and they, not without reason, made sure to make fun of me as often as they could over it. Especially once they got here. And I certainly had it coming.
But finally the post office realized that they had a box sitting in the vault that no one had claimed. And - surprisingly - instead of ransacking its contents for themselves (and it would have been a haul), they issued me a second notice! As soon as I could, then I grabbed my passport and - this time, notice tucked safely away in my wallet - made my half-hour trek in and picked up my box.
And it was well worth it! Kashi bars (minus the ones I had to toss because of peanut-paste salmonella), coffee, almond butter, and the cherry on top: the beef jerky! Straight from the local bemusingly-named Meat Shoppe in Montana. Unfortunately, some of it had... well... turned. But the stuff that was still good was delicious!
Nothing else to report at the moment.
(CS)WC Out.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Teabaggers
Even in China I heard the uproar. The popular uprising against the tyranny of the Obama Administration; that grassroots, populist rebellion against his anti-American, appeasing, Muslim ways. And I knew that Real America was ready. Ready to strike back at those liberal, atheist, socialist, fascist, blame America first, freedom-hating, appeasing, pro-death, hippy, Nazi Democrats.
Except not. It didn't take a very close inspection to see the string-pullers behind the scenes... mostly because their idea of "behind the scenes" means at the front of a crowd yelling about how big and how "grassroots" this mock protest really was. I don't blame Faux News and its ilk for such a shoddy show of pseudo-populism, though. After all, their target demographic aren't usually the brightest crayons in the box. They're the ones who think O'Reilly is a stable human being, and who believe Glenn Beck when he - between bouts of histrionic sobbing fits - foresees the End Times. No, Fox has had 8 years of a lock on every moron idiotically waving an American flag at NASCAR races; the ones who think Paris is a city in central Texas (or a socialite), and the French invented french fries... sorry, freedom fries.
They saw how well a grassroots movement can work with the Obama campaign. How it organically grows, taking on a life and form of its own, even (or, perhaps, especially) without the constant tending of an over-zealous gardener. But they seemed to have missed that last part. Instead of allowing what was a small series of protests to burn and fizzle naturally, Murdoch emerged from the safety of his Secret Kangaroo-Pouch Lair and decreed from on high (or was it from down under?) that the time to act was nigh! I'll get back to that momentarily, though. First I'd like to focus a bit on the protests themselves...
Tea Parties; the theme of the day. A la the infamous Boston Tea Party, in which a small mob of drunken, ill-informed Bostonians dressed up as Indians and threw British tea into the harbor. They did this to protest the fact that Parliament had enacted several new tax laws - including one on, you guessed it, tea - to help pay for the enormous cost of the French and Indian War (known globally as the Seven Years War) that the Americans had started, and then forced the British to fight. The problem was that there were no American representatives to Parliament, and thus they had no say in the enaction of these new taxes.
These days, things are a little different. The tea parties are mostly in landlocked states, mostly in what we'd refer to as the Middle of the West. And the modern protesters have abandoned the time-honored tradition of dressing up as a savage Indian, in favor of khakis and a button-up shirt. The brave ones wore colonial-era costume. And one really brave one wore a big-breasted demon Obama in his underwear outfit. They were, however, united with their colonial forebears on the idea behind this protest: taxation! Specifically, "no taxation without representation!" The battle-cry of Boston!
But wait... they do have representation. I thought they were represented by those aging, pale, well-fed gentlemen sitting around in Washington DC doing their best to uphold traditional American values, such as hyper-capitalism, mudslinging, character-assassination, xenophobia, neo-Conservative expansionisim, ideological imperialism, and feeling-up underaged male pages. You know... the cornerstones of our great society. These are the people they voted for. Some of them even managed to keep their jobs after this last election. Did this somehow escape them? That when they check the box next to a name in a ballot box and cast it, that is their representation?
I'm torn as to the explanation. It could be a simple case of sour grapes. That does seem the liklier answer. After 8 years of the biggest neo-con daisy-chain in history, the party's over for them. They lost... big. And worse, their whole house of cards culminated in the biggest game of 52 trillion card pick-up in history. They're discredited, and they're out of power. It's no surprise they'd be pissy over it.
But there's some part of me thinking it may actually be something worse: they might actually believe that they're currently not being represented. That is to say, these people may feel that being a minority literally equates to tyranny. That's certainly the rhetoric they like to spout.
Regardless, if we're playing by the rules of Godwin's Law, these people lose already. I'll blurb the law, for those of you afraid of hotlinks: Basically it states that as a discussion - especially internet discussion - grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. And in virtually every situation, the person or persons intellectually vacuous to make such an asinine comparison automatically loses the argument.
I'd like to finish with the sage of our time, who can say it better than I ever could:
(CS)WC Out.
Except not. It didn't take a very close inspection to see the string-pullers behind the scenes... mostly because their idea of "behind the scenes" means at the front of a crowd yelling about how big and how "grassroots" this mock protest really was. I don't blame Faux News and its ilk for such a shoddy show of pseudo-populism, though. After all, their target demographic aren't usually the brightest crayons in the box. They're the ones who think O'Reilly is a stable human being, and who believe Glenn Beck when he - between bouts of histrionic sobbing fits - foresees the End Times. No, Fox has had 8 years of a lock on every moron idiotically waving an American flag at NASCAR races; the ones who think Paris is a city in central Texas (or a socialite), and the French invented french fries... sorry, freedom fries.
They saw how well a grassroots movement can work with the Obama campaign. How it organically grows, taking on a life and form of its own, even (or, perhaps, especially) without the constant tending of an over-zealous gardener. But they seemed to have missed that last part. Instead of allowing what was a small series of protests to burn and fizzle naturally, Murdoch emerged from the safety of his Secret Kangaroo-Pouch Lair and decreed from on high (or was it from down under?) that the time to act was nigh! I'll get back to that momentarily, though. First I'd like to focus a bit on the protests themselves...
Tea Parties; the theme of the day. A la the infamous Boston Tea Party, in which a small mob of drunken, ill-informed Bostonians dressed up as Indians and threw British tea into the harbor. They did this to protest the fact that Parliament had enacted several new tax laws - including one on, you guessed it, tea - to help pay for the enormous cost of the French and Indian War (known globally as the Seven Years War) that the Americans had started, and then forced the British to fight. The problem was that there were no American representatives to Parliament, and thus they had no say in the enaction of these new taxes.
These days, things are a little different. The tea parties are mostly in landlocked states, mostly in what we'd refer to as the Middle of the West. And the modern protesters have abandoned the time-honored tradition of dressing up as a savage Indian, in favor of khakis and a button-up shirt. The brave ones wore colonial-era costume. And one really brave one wore a big-breasted demon Obama in his underwear outfit. They were, however, united with their colonial forebears on the idea behind this protest: taxation! Specifically, "no taxation without representation!" The battle-cry of Boston!
But wait... they do have representation. I thought they were represented by those aging, pale, well-fed gentlemen sitting around in Washington DC doing their best to uphold traditional American values, such as hyper-capitalism, mudslinging, character-assassination, xenophobia, neo-Conservative expansionisim, ideological imperialism, and feeling-up underaged male pages. You know... the cornerstones of our great society. These are the people they voted for. Some of them even managed to keep their jobs after this last election. Did this somehow escape them? That when they check the box next to a name in a ballot box and cast it, that is their representation?
I'm torn as to the explanation. It could be a simple case of sour grapes. That does seem the liklier answer. After 8 years of the biggest neo-con daisy-chain in history, the party's over for them. They lost... big. And worse, their whole house of cards culminated in the biggest game of 52 trillion card pick-up in history. They're discredited, and they're out of power. It's no surprise they'd be pissy over it.
But there's some part of me thinking it may actually be something worse: they might actually believe that they're currently not being represented. That is to say, these people may feel that being a minority literally equates to tyranny. That's certainly the rhetoric they like to spout.
Regardless, if we're playing by the rules of Godwin's Law, these people lose already. I'll blurb the law, for those of you afraid of hotlinks: Basically it states that as a discussion - especially internet discussion - grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. And in virtually every situation, the person or persons intellectually vacuous to make such an asinine comparison automatically loses the argument.
I'd like to finish with the sage of our time, who can say it better than I ever could:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Nationwide Tax Protests | ||||
| ||||
(CS)WC Out.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
I'll begin with the update, for those of you keeping score:
My phone interview did in fact occur on schedule last Wednesday with Wall Street Institute. I think the interview went well, as he hinted he'd be calling me back "soon" in order to discuss "the next step." But I've heard that line from enough women in my life to take it with a grain of salt from anyone. Not that it particularly matters. I'll explain. I found out about midway through said interview that Marco, as he goes by, was hiring for... I think it was Xinjin. Name aside, it's the city closest to Hong Kong that actually "in" the PRC. I'll save you the trouble of getting out a map: Hong Kong is nowhere near Shanghai... at all. As such, I'm fairly reticent to consider going further away from my destination... no matter how nice the position sounds.
Fret not, though. This wasn't my "hold out." This wasn't my dream job. This was a random, semi-unsolicited phone interview instigated by me sending a resume to an email address. I'm not losing sleep over it. I've managed to snag a couple of possibilities from people I know here who used to live in Shanghai... believe me when I say there's no shortage of jobs in my line of work. And the turnover rate (which, admittedly, I'm planning on contributing to) is astronomical.
Onto other things...
Nancy made yet another *surprise* trip away yesterday. This time, thankfully, it's only to Guangzhou (in south China...very south), and it's only for the weekend. I've been as supportive, nice, and understanding as can be... but I think enough of how I truly feel about the "Surprise!" part has managed to seep through between the lines. It's not that she leaves. Not at all. I totally understand and support that. I'd just like a little heads-up is all. Something like, "oh by the way, two weeks from now I need to go to an exhibition," rather than, "gee, my plane leaves in two hours. Bye!"
In spite of my disdain for the manner in which this whole thing (once again) went down, it's actually rather nice to have some alone time. You know what I've done with that? I've spent it alone. Some people go nuts when they're alone. I enjoy it. Most of the time, I prefer being alone. Often, as was the case last night when I made myself go to an aquaintence's goodbye party, I have to cajole myself into leaving the house. It's not that I'm a shut-in or an agoraphobe, I just like time by myself. And I think it's a good thing that I've come to accept that. If I want to go out, I'll go out... but if I don't, I don't have to beat myself up over it.
That's all for now.
(CS)WC Out.
My phone interview did in fact occur on schedule last Wednesday with Wall Street Institute. I think the interview went well, as he hinted he'd be calling me back "soon" in order to discuss "the next step." But I've heard that line from enough women in my life to take it with a grain of salt from anyone. Not that it particularly matters. I'll explain. I found out about midway through said interview that Marco, as he goes by, was hiring for... I think it was Xinjin. Name aside, it's the city closest to Hong Kong that actually "in" the PRC. I'll save you the trouble of getting out a map: Hong Kong is nowhere near Shanghai... at all. As such, I'm fairly reticent to consider going further away from my destination... no matter how nice the position sounds.
Fret not, though. This wasn't my "hold out." This wasn't my dream job. This was a random, semi-unsolicited phone interview instigated by me sending a resume to an email address. I'm not losing sleep over it. I've managed to snag a couple of possibilities from people I know here who used to live in Shanghai... believe me when I say there's no shortage of jobs in my line of work. And the turnover rate (which, admittedly, I'm planning on contributing to) is astronomical.
Onto other things...
Nancy made yet another *surprise* trip away yesterday. This time, thankfully, it's only to Guangzhou (in south China...very south), and it's only for the weekend. I've been as supportive, nice, and understanding as can be... but I think enough of how I truly feel about the "Surprise!" part has managed to seep through between the lines. It's not that she leaves. Not at all. I totally understand and support that. I'd just like a little heads-up is all. Something like, "oh by the way, two weeks from now I need to go to an exhibition," rather than, "gee, my plane leaves in two hours. Bye!"
In spite of my disdain for the manner in which this whole thing (once again) went down, it's actually rather nice to have some alone time. You know what I've done with that? I've spent it alone. Some people go nuts when they're alone. I enjoy it. Most of the time, I prefer being alone. Often, as was the case last night when I made myself go to an aquaintence's goodbye party, I have to cajole myself into leaving the house. It's not that I'm a shut-in or an agoraphobe, I just like time by myself. And I think it's a good thing that I've come to accept that. If I want to go out, I'll go out... but if I don't, I don't have to beat myself up over it.
That's all for now.
(CS)WC Out.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Holding My Breath
Just a quickie for now...
In my office today, I got a phone call from a strangely-familiar number. Having nothing better to do, I answered it. It was - surprise of surprises! - Marco, the man who had called earlier from Wall Street English to set up the interview last week and then never followed through, much to my dismay.
Well, it turns out he hadn't just blown me off completely. He'd been quite ill last week, which was why he wasn't in at work when he'd said he'd be. Having had a few bouts of "Oh God I'm gonna die" here myself, I can relate.
So the interview's back on for tomorrow, 3 o'clock. Be there or be s-q-u-a-r-e, yo!
(CS)WC Out.
In my office today, I got a phone call from a strangely-familiar number. Having nothing better to do, I answered it. It was - surprise of surprises! - Marco, the man who had called earlier from Wall Street English to set up the interview last week and then never followed through, much to my dismay.
Well, it turns out he hadn't just blown me off completely. He'd been quite ill last week, which was why he wasn't in at work when he'd said he'd be. Having had a few bouts of "Oh God I'm gonna die" here myself, I can relate.
So the interview's back on for tomorrow, 3 o'clock. Be there or be s-q-u-a-r-e, yo!
(CS)WC Out.
Monday, April 13, 2009
And Then There Was Hot
It's been Wenzhou's version of "winter" for a long while. Coolish-warm, dryish, and cloudy with the occasional "humidity-meets-cold" spells which leave my desert-dwelling self shivering. Though it had been becoming more and more temperate as the "Niu" Year progressed, it had remained relatively cool and dry... until now...
Yesterday the weather was fabulous... the type of weather my parents happened to see while they were here, but was absent for virtually all of the rest of the year. Not really knowing the climate here I took it with a grain of salt and went about my business.
Nancy and I decided to go to dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Since it was so close, we just opted to walk. A delicious meal ensued, and afterward we were planning on walking to the Century Mart about a (city) block away.
That's when the rain started. At first just a tiny sprinkle, but rapidly progressing into a gale-force torrent that caught up completely by surprise. Since it was past 10:00, there were precious few stores open for us to duck into, and we were forced (after a spontaneous kiss in the rain) to run as fast as Nancy's high-heels would allow to the front of Century Mart... to find it locked and closed.
We had missed the closing time by 16 minutes.
Fortunately, we found a tricycle (sanlunche) man who was still on-the-clock to give us a ride home... fortunate because by that point the streets had basically become rivers.
This morning I awoke to the familiar sound of rain on a tin roofs. Thinking it would be - as it has been for the past few months - wet, cold, and dark all day, I bundled up and headed off to work in my usual morning stupor. But virtually as soon as I'd stepped out of my door I realized my grave error. It was raining, yes. But cold? Hardly! This was the kind of tropical rain that would actually allow beautiful people to comfortably wash their hair under a waterfall. Warm, soft rain that made my heavy leather jacket, and even my cotton inner-coat seem very over-dressed.
The rain broke up by mid-morning and the sun came out, which only furthered my fashion-out-of-place-ness by warming things up even more! And apparently I can just pack my winter clothes away now, because it's supposed to just keep getting warmer from now until...um... well, December.
I never saw it coming.
(CS)WC Out.
Yesterday the weather was fabulous... the type of weather my parents happened to see while they were here, but was absent for virtually all of the rest of the year. Not really knowing the climate here I took it with a grain of salt and went about my business.
Nancy and I decided to go to dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Since it was so close, we just opted to walk. A delicious meal ensued, and afterward we were planning on walking to the Century Mart about a (city) block away.
That's when the rain started. At first just a tiny sprinkle, but rapidly progressing into a gale-force torrent that caught up completely by surprise. Since it was past 10:00, there were precious few stores open for us to duck into, and we were forced (after a spontaneous kiss in the rain) to run as fast as Nancy's high-heels would allow to the front of Century Mart... to find it locked and closed.
We had missed the closing time by 16 minutes.
Fortunately, we found a tricycle (sanlunche) man who was still on-the-clock to give us a ride home... fortunate because by that point the streets had basically become rivers.
This morning I awoke to the familiar sound of rain on a tin roofs. Thinking it would be - as it has been for the past few months - wet, cold, and dark all day, I bundled up and headed off to work in my usual morning stupor. But virtually as soon as I'd stepped out of my door I realized my grave error. It was raining, yes. But cold? Hardly! This was the kind of tropical rain that would actually allow beautiful people to comfortably wash their hair under a waterfall. Warm, soft rain that made my heavy leather jacket, and even my cotton inner-coat seem very over-dressed.
The rain broke up by mid-morning and the sun came out, which only furthered my fashion-out-of-place-ness by warming things up even more! And apparently I can just pack my winter clothes away now, because it's supposed to just keep getting warmer from now until...um... well, December.
I never saw it coming.
(CS)WC Out.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Letdown
As I mentioned in my last post, I got a call from some English School chain asking to set up a time for an interview on Friday. I agreed to a 1:00pm phone-interview, and we left it with the guy on the other end saying "OK, I'll call you tomorrow at 1:00."
Well, he never called. And yes, it was a letdown. Especially since I'd kind of been preparing for it all morning. I texted the number at around 2:00 wondering if he'd wanted me to call him (though he'd never said anything like that and didn't give me a number), but there was no response.
Ah well. It's nothing major, and I'm still sending out periodic shotgun blasts of resumes as I find companies hiring. From the looks of it, I'm actually pretty well-qualified... especially since the "class" I took with Jeff can act as a TEFL equivalent. It would seem I have more qualifications than a lot of the people I work around... and that's weird.
In other news, I'm fairly sure my Chinese DVD player is on its way out. It's decided to intermittently just spaz out and quit playing a disc midway through. At first I thought it was just a case of the common "badly burned disc" syndrome that one comes to accept as part-and-parcel to 8元 movies... but the player's been doing it too frequently, and most of the discs work in other players.
I've been told that most thing in China will break after about 6 months of use. My apartment is holding up quite well, actually (bathroom Odyssey aside)... but some casualties were to be expected. I'm just annoyed that it was something I like to use so much!
Finally, I found out last week that I've been "volunteered" to join two foreign students in a debate thingy against a gaggle of Chinese people next thursday... which is AWESOME because I just LOVE staying out in Chashan for an extra 7 hours so the school can show me off in some worthless... I MEAN REALLY, REALLY WORTHWHILE activity which is little more than simply keeping 10,000 bored Chinese students occupied. Yeah... great.
(Some people think it's difficult to convey sarcasm in text... but I think I manage quite well)
Well, he never called. And yes, it was a letdown. Especially since I'd kind of been preparing for it all morning. I texted the number at around 2:00 wondering if he'd wanted me to call him (though he'd never said anything like that and didn't give me a number), but there was no response.
Ah well. It's nothing major, and I'm still sending out periodic shotgun blasts of resumes as I find companies hiring. From the looks of it, I'm actually pretty well-qualified... especially since the "class" I took with Jeff can act as a TEFL equivalent. It would seem I have more qualifications than a lot of the people I work around... and that's weird.
In other news, I'm fairly sure my Chinese DVD player is on its way out. It's decided to intermittently just spaz out and quit playing a disc midway through. At first I thought it was just a case of the common "badly burned disc" syndrome that one comes to accept as part-and-parcel to 8元 movies... but the player's been doing it too frequently, and most of the discs work in other players.
I've been told that most thing in China will break after about 6 months of use. My apartment is holding up quite well, actually (bathroom Odyssey aside)... but some casualties were to be expected. I'm just annoyed that it was something I like to use so much!
Finally, I found out last week that I've been "volunteered" to join two foreign students in a debate thingy against a gaggle of Chinese people next thursday... which is AWESOME because I just LOVE staying out in Chashan for an extra 7 hours so the school can show me off in some worthless... I MEAN REALLY, REALLY WORTHWHILE activity which is little more than simply keeping 10,000 bored Chinese students occupied. Yeah... great.
(Some people think it's difficult to convey sarcasm in text... but I think I manage quite well)
And now, a poetic interlude
I have a poetry blog, but since I'm particularly proud of this little ditty, I'll post it here, too! This is what's called a paradelle, which is one of the more demanding French forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry in the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.
This took me a while to make...so without further ado, here it is:
Paradelle
I watched you float into my life
I watched you float into my life
As one would watch a snowflake fall
As one would watch a snowflake fall
A snowflake watched my life float
I would watch as you fall into one.
My heart is a blizzard of passion
My heart is a blizzard of passion
Covering sorrowful past in purest white
Covering sorrowful past in purest white
Purest passion covering my sorrowful heart
A past of blizzard is in white.
Dusk has come for the last time
Dusk has come for the last time
I open my heart to day light once more
I open my heart to day light once more
To day I open the last heart
My time has come, once more light for dusk.
My past has come to light as I watched
One snowflake of the purest white
Covering my heart in sorrowful dusk
I open a blizzard, watch passion fall
My heart in time would last for a day
Once more, you float to life.
This took me a while to make...so without further ado, here it is:
Paradelle
I watched you float into my life
I watched you float into my life
As one would watch a snowflake fall
As one would watch a snowflake fall
A snowflake watched my life float
I would watch as you fall into one.
My heart is a blizzard of passion
My heart is a blizzard of passion
Covering sorrowful past in purest white
Covering sorrowful past in purest white
Purest passion covering my sorrowful heart
A past of blizzard is in white.
Dusk has come for the last time
Dusk has come for the last time
I open my heart to day light once more
I open my heart to day light once more
To day I open the last heart
My time has come, once more light for dusk.
My past has come to light as I watched
One snowflake of the purest white
Covering my heart in sorrowful dusk
I open a blizzard, watch passion fall
My heart in time would last for a day
Once more, you float to life.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Coulda Been a Journalism Major
((Note: Title should be stated as though it were one of those "coulda had a V8" commercials, complete with ceremonial bonk on the head))
I was "invited*" to do yet another "guest speech." (*read: forcibly conscripted) This term's topic?
Newspaper reading, of course! How did I not see THAT coming? It seems so obvious, and I'm certainly the go-to guy on all things newspaper.
Obligingly... or was it begrudgingly? I always get those two mixed up! Anyway, I went about the business of painstakingly accumulating whole hosts of data on all things newspaper, which is to say, I cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia pretty much everything. But I did spend a lot of time making my powerpoint, which turned out rather nicely. And the students did tell me afterward that it was helpful, so that was nice to hear.
I was "headlined" as doing a lecture (ha) on critical reading of newspapers. Honestly, I am pretty green at the whole news thing. I only took a few political science courses, and those are pretty rusty banging around in the old noodle. So I filled it in with a good dose of history - my subject of choice. I learned quite a few things myself in the process. For instance, in 1690 Benjamin Harris published what is recognized as the first newspaper in Boston. Whoduh thunk?
Ah well, certainly could be worse. In other news, (apart from a haircut) I got a random call on my phone during lunch time from a rep at Wall St. English - apparently a rather well-established English chain - saying they were calling to schedule a phone interview. Lately I've been digitally "papering" Shanghai wanteds with my resume, so I suppose it's not surprising that I got a call. Still, it was just a little unexpected, and took me a little off guard. I hope tomorrows phone-thingy goes well!
(CS)WC Out.
I was "invited*" to do yet another "guest speech." (*read: forcibly conscripted) This term's topic?
Newspaper reading, of course! How did I not see THAT coming? It seems so obvious, and I'm certainly the go-to guy on all things newspaper.
Obligingly... or was it begrudgingly? I always get those two mixed up! Anyway, I went about the business of painstakingly accumulating whole hosts of data on all things newspaper, which is to say, I cut-and-pasted from Wikipedia pretty much everything. But I did spend a lot of time making my powerpoint, which turned out rather nicely. And the students did tell me afterward that it was helpful, so that was nice to hear.
I was "headlined" as doing a lecture (ha) on critical reading of newspapers. Honestly, I am pretty green at the whole news thing. I only took a few political science courses, and those are pretty rusty banging around in the old noodle. So I filled it in with a good dose of history - my subject of choice. I learned quite a few things myself in the process. For instance, in 1690 Benjamin Harris published what is recognized as the first newspaper in Boston. Whoduh thunk?
Ah well, certainly could be worse. In other news, (apart from a haircut) I got a random call on my phone during lunch time from a rep at Wall St. English - apparently a rather well-established English chain - saying they were calling to schedule a phone interview. Lately I've been digitally "papering" Shanghai wanteds with my resume, so I suppose it's not surprising that I got a call. Still, it was just a little unexpected, and took me a little off guard. I hope tomorrows phone-thingy goes well!
(CS)WC Out.
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