I find myself utterly alone, staring into the blackness that has consumed my existence.
No seriously, Nancy's taken a trip down to Wenzhou few a few days and it's nighttime here. Jeeze, where'd you think I was going with that?!
Nancy's catching up with friends, family, and getting the appropriate paperwork filed in order to have the baby. That's right. Apparently they won't let the little bugger out until she's correctly crossed all the 十's and dotted the 工's. The most perplexing thing is that, as a Wenzhou native, she cannot get any of this - marriage, child paperwork, etc - done outside of her home province. Meaning that it's a trip back every time something new needs to be signed. At one point such a system would've struck me as a ridiculously arcane and needlessly inefficient and time-wasting procedure. But after almost two years here, I know the truth: China is, in fact, simply one giant inefficiency-producing machine. And it doesn't operate on diesel, coal, or nuclear fission. Instead, it uses redundant paperwork as its fuel - nay, lifeblood.
Work continues. I've finally reached the point where I've exceeded my contractual teaching hours, and stand to make additional money for the hours they give me from here on out. As such, I've stopped getting frustrated as they pack my schedule ever-tighter. 1.5 hour class at 4 on Sunday - which pushes me 1.4 hours over my 17.33? Alright... that works out to an extra 800+/month. And with the upcoming (and retroactive) change to the contract, they're now calculating over-hours monthly... rather than the prior system of calculating it in 6-month intervals. That was just stupid.
Still, I've just about reached the limit of my available hours... which is to say, almost all of the time slots where there actually could be a lesson now have one. Everything else is too late and/or is on a school-day.
And that brings me to Plan B: tutoring. I recently went in for a quasi-interview/meeting with a tutoring agency called LinguaTutor. It went well, and they've already given me a student. An 8 year old. I'll be going to her house and meeting with her tomorrow. I'm still feeling the agency out, but it seems pretty legit. We'll see how this works out during the week... and hopefully be able to fill my remaining time-slots with students a little closer-to-home than this first one, which stands to be a hefty train ride away... in the opposite direction of my work :P
(CS) TAW Out.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
