Ocean of Morality
  • Blog
  • Family
  • Relatives
  • Countries
  • Gallery
  • Guestbook

Hair-raising

29/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
If a whole class of students use a plastic slide on a warm, dry day it really builds up the static electricity level, as this little girl at JD's kindergarten found out yesterday whilst sitting underneath it!
0 Comments

Changing nappiesĀ and nannies

27/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Our full-time, live-in Nanny finally left today after two years with us, changing nappies, washing clothes, bathing and feeding JD. Ma-in-law finally saw her off with yet another tirade of abuse a week ago, and we were lucky and grateful the Nanny agreed to stay on for one further week to give us time to find a replacement. After some thought, Ava and I decided it was time to try and "downsize" to a weekend-only Nanny, with me taking the main responsibility for looking after JD throughout the weekdays. So we have welcomed "Molly" into our family [see photo]. She is a biology teacher during the week but will look after JD Friday evenings to Sunday evenings aided (or otherwise) by Ma-in-law. She comes to us from foreign colleagues at work who didn't need her help anymore and she speaks some English too. It will be an interesting time of transition for us all, and it remains to be seen whether the new arrangements will be sustainable long-term. Fingers crossed.

0 Comments

Yep, more Chinglish

26/4/2015

 
Picture
Another odd bit of Chinglish spotted recently
on the outside of a shop being refurbished.

Flashback: This day in ...2008

25/4/2015

 
Picture
Another in my occasional series of "Flashbacks" looking back at blog entries made before this Weebly version started.

Picture
There seems to be a lot of firing going on these days!

First, there was the secretary at my school fired for foolishly writing a rude comment about an adult student on a piece of paper and then, really foolishly, leaving it where the person could, and did, read it!

Then the foreign teacher fired for showing his class a DVD in the lesson - not a sackable offence in itself except that it was the third DVD film in the last four lessons and the parents weren’t happy.

And last night, I had a fun evening playing mahjong with Chinese friends from the school and one of their husbands, a policeman. Rather mischievously, I asked if he had a gun and had ever used it. He said it was rare to use it in action, but there were regular “executions”! Intrigued, I asked whether they were still held publicly in football stadiums (as they were a decade ago), and how often they happened. He said they now used remote areas in the forest and, in Kunming alone, about 15 criminals a month are shot!! Ouch!


No ifs, no boats

21/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
JD steering an electric boat on Green Lake yesterday afternoon.
0 Comments

Two birds with one stone?

19/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Most Chinese couples work full-time and rely heavily on their extended families to help look after their young offspring. Ava's family consists of just her mother, while my family are far away and so, both being full-time workers (her to earn decent money, me to get a visa), we felt we needed to employ a full-time, live-in nanny for JD's early years. Xiao Zhang has been part of our family for over two years but now feels it's time to move on (primarily down to my irascible ma-in-law!). I've been increasingly keen to look after JD by myself during weekdays and we now think we've found a suitable part-time replacement to cover the weekends (when Ava and I are usually both working).

Now, Ava started up her shop business again last week after the Spring Festival to find two of her three shop assistants were planning to leave (one to marry, the other to retire). She then had a brainwave and today asked Xiao Zhang if she would be interested in working in the shop instead of nannying. Bingo! Xiao Zhang will do a handover weekend to our new nanny and then start her shop training. It seems to solve a couple of problems in one go, although I suspect it will create others we have yet to think of. Such is life!

0 Comments

It made me simle

17/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture

There are only 4-5 HUGELY popular western songs in China. They seem to be passed on from teachers to students, year after year, always diverging more and more from the original! One of these is, "Yesterday once more" by the Carpenters. So it was no surprise to see the lyrics posted up in a local shop the other day. And equally no surprise to find them starting well enough before descending quickly into a series of misquotes and typos. Will I never see accurate English in this country??

0 Comments

So say we all

15/4/2015

0 Comments

 
About a year ago I treated myself to a special offer - all four seasons of the revamped Battlestar Galactica for £25. A real bargain. Since then I've been trying to watch 1-2 episodes each week and have now just finished the last one. It was a great series and I really enjoyed watching it. I had originally watched the first three seasons about a decade before, but the last one I'd only seen in bits and pieces. And I had never seen the finale. However, the one disappointment was that finale - a real hotchpotch of naff ideas which didn't really know when to stop. Far better, in my opinion, to have finished the series with the penultimate episode and leave a few loose ends up to the imagination. Ah well, I enjoyed the ride.
Picture
0 Comments

Relative pain

13/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Back to the hospital this morning. JD had a simple, but painful, procedure on his "jiji" (as they call it in China!), and I had the first of four treatments on a new hospital machine which, they assure me, will cure my tennis elbow in four visits. After two unsuccessful years of trying other treatments, I can only hope. I was told its English name is a "non-invasive rectilinear ballistic extrinsic shockwave machine"(!). It's similar to the ones they use to pulverise kidney stones. It is supposed to gradually induce blood vessel growth. All I know is it was jolly painful at times though not, I suspect, as painful as poor JD's visit!

0 Comments

Bi Bi See

11/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Ask JD who this guy is, and he'll say, "Lao Bi" ("Old Bi"), the nickname of Bi FuJian - one of China's most popular and famous TV presenters. JD used to enjoy watching his "China's Got Talent" show when he was younger. So, it was a bit of a shock to see Bi's face featured on the BBC website yesterday. Apparently he was videoed singing an irreverent song about Mao Zedong at a private dinner. The clip was posted online and quickly went viral. Within hours, it was removed from websites throughout China and Lao Bi has been suspended from TV work! Despite most Chinese people having, let's say, "mixed" feelings about Chairman Mao, public criticism or mockery of the founder of modern China is still way off limits, even for the rich and famous. Poor Bi.

0 Comments

Cross words

9/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
One of the things I've been telling each intake of Lattitude trainee teachers for years is that Chinese students are fascinated by English crosswords, word searches and codes because they have no equivalent puzzles in Chinese. So it was mildly embarrassing to have one of them send me a picture of a Chinese crossword she had spotted in a magazine. It seems each box contains a character, so therefore the clues must be to a compound word or short phrase. Interesting.

0 Comments

Eh? Two Zed?

7/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Even the newspapers here aren't immune to the odd headline typo!
0 Comments

Graves

5/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
As well as being Easter Sunday, today is also the Chinese festival of QingMingJie, where families traditionally visit the graves of their ancestors to tidy them and leave gifts of fruit, flowers and incense. Ava and I headed for the cemetry where her great-aunt is buried a couple of days early to avoid the crowds. Ava was raised by her great-aunt, calling her "grandma" to this day, and holds her in great affection. She died just as we started going out together, so I never really met her, although I attended her funeral.

Picture
It took us 45 minutes to drive to the cemetery on a lovely sunny day, with a cooling breeze. It's a strange place, up on a hillside, with thousands of small grave sites, all very well-kept and with fantastic views down onto a lake and temple. There is piped music everywhere you walk and an odd mix of quietness and noisy family groups sharing picnics near the gravesides. Ava spent some time at her great-aunt's gravestone before visiting a small, nearby temple to burn some fake money and light some incense.

0 Comments

First class

3/4/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
We've started taking JD to a small hour-long class, twice a week. It's been set up especially for very young children of "western" families. Teacher Zhou [in blue] speaks some English, and is very patient with the toddlers as she leads them in singing, dancing, drawing and simple Chinese character recognition. So far, JD and the other attendees have been fairly distracted, but we hope with time they'll have a good chance to mix with other kids in a semi-formal setting, and get used to a regular "trip to school". The Kindergarten school itself is really nice - astroturf playground, swings and slides, very friendly teachers and lovely displays of children's work on all the walls. Unfortunately, it's quite a trek across the city to get there. But we've signed up for three months to see how it goes.

Picture
1 Comment

Smart news

1/4/2015

5 Comments

 
Picture
Seems you can buy a smart anything these days. But the ability to cram technology into a pair of chopsticks is still very impressive. This pair, on sale from today, will set you back 700RMB (£70) but they do register and tally up all the calories you are eating and alert you when you should be feeling fool.

5 Comments
    paul hider

    Author

    Paul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and regularly updates this blog about his life there.

    Past blog entries

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009

    Tags

    All
    April Fool
    Basketball
    Birthday
    Blog
    CAL
    Car
    Cataract
    Cemetery
    China
    Chinglish
    Chippenham
    ChongQing
    Christmas
    Competition
    Construction
    Cooking
    Cop15
    Countryside
    COVID
    Dali
    Dancing Lady
    Dave & Esme
    Den
    Dentist
    Disaster
    DnD
    Dorta
    Druncle
    Earthquake
    Ebike
    Education
    Everton
    Exams
    Exercise
    Family
    Film
    Fishing
    Flashback
    Food
    Forest
    Fossils
    Friends
    Furniture
    Games
    Gardening
    Geese
    Gym
    Halloween
    Hamsters
    Health
    Heijing
    Holiday
    Home
    Homework
    IELTS
    IKEA
    Illusion
    JD
    Jiajia
    Kindergarten
    Kunming
    Language
    Laos
    Lattitude
    Leaf
    Lego
    Lexulous
    London
    Ma
    Mandarin
    Merton
    Minority
    Molly
    Mountain
    Movie
    Museum
    Nancy & Family
    Nanny
    Neighbourhood
    New Flat
    Olympics
    Painting
    Parents
    Park
    Party
    Paul & Crystal
    Pets
    Podcast
    Police
    Pregnancy
    Primary School
    Private Tuition
    Random Travel
    Relatives
    Renovation
    R.I.P.
    R.S.L.
    Running
    Schools
    Shenzhen
    Shopping
    Ski
    Sport
    Spring Festival
    Sri Lanka
    Swimming
    Temple
    TESOL
    Thailand
    Theme Park
    Traffic
    Training
    Transport
    Travel
    TV
    UFO
    UK
    University
    Vietnam
    Violence
    Visit
    VSO
    Water
    Weather
    Wedding
    Wildlife
    World Cup
    Xishuangbanna
    YUFE
    Yunnan
    Zoo
    Zoom

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.