Pudding and Chopsticks

When you get to China the first thing that you are supposed to do is register with the fuzz. Lots of fun. I didn’t do it for sometime until I needed to extend my visa. So I had to go the my local police station and say that I live where I do. Kinda scary because I can’t really understand that much. But luckily I had some help. After the registering we headed to get a new visa. So this would mean that the cops only have a record of my old visa and not my new one. Fast forward a few months. Last week I had the guards at my building saying that the cops were looking for me. Awesome. Yeah I didn’t do anything wrong but still. I had someone call them. They wanted to know if my visa was expired. Nope it’s not. Then the other day they banged on the door. Nope, I’m not home. Then today the guards stopped me and called the po-pos. Not awesome. They really wanted to talk with me. I went back up to my apt and waited. I was a little worried. Someone banged on the door and I got some money just in case I needed to bribe someone. They asked for my passport and what not. 10 minutes later and basically the jest was this: they only had the old visa on record and not the new one. I actually had to explain and point out that I am allowed to stay till next month. You would think that cops here could read Chinese and figure out what was going on. Nope. They left and I was happy. Good times. I was a little nervous that I would be spending the rest of the day hand cuffed to some part of the police station.  But here I am, I moved to a friends house, fired up the wireless router, turned on some Universe, and started to blog away. This weekend should be some good blogging material. Since I am leaving next week and I have a friend in town, I think some socializing and lite drinking might me in order.

I don’t usually write about work for the obvious reasons. But as of now I don’t have a job and well I got a few soda pops in me right now. So where I worked, well, it sucked, gigantic things. So without being to specific, like anyone would know where I work anyway, I will try to break down the last four months.

I never had a set schedule. What this means. Phone calls saying I need to come in, not being able to plan anything or do anything, not knowing when I can leave. It wasn’t till later I had a somewhat set schedule. But even that sucked. Trust me set times for work are awesome.

Who did I have class with at what time? I don’t know. I knew 5 minutes or less when I had class. What this means. No preparation, not being able to teach as well as I could have, etc.

What to do in class? Hell I don’t know. What this means. Well I can’t do my best to teach you English if I don’t know what you need. What do they need, um, just do something with them, um, ok.

When can I leave, not yet. Um, ok, when, I don’t know. 3 hours of being bored later, a student rolls in, awesome. Or not so awesome.

Hey dude you got to come in. Um why I don’t usually come in till 3 pm, it’s 9 am. Yeah but there is no one there, these kids want class, and I got too drunk last night. Um, great, ok be there soon. I go in no students. Hey where are the students. Um. they’re not coming in. WTF… Not cool, I’m leaving.

Oh and I almost forgot. I didn’t have a day off for 3 months and worked eight or more hours a day and taught probably 35-40 hours a week. About 20 to many above the average English teaching job. I also got paid half as much.

So that’s basically the main things. There were quite a few small things that I couldn’t stand. I have a few pet peeves. I’m on time, I want to know what I am doing and at what time. I want to know when I can leave. I want to get paid on time. This job broke all of them. So I quit.

Where to now. Well I’m currently looking for a job. I have a few ideas right now as to what I would like to do. Teaching is actually really fun. It’s was just the place or really my specific boss that sucked. So I may end up teaching. I didn’t make good money where I was, however I know that every other teaching job pays twice as much. So that’s always an option. I really want to do something creative. Photography or similar employment. So I am heading down south to just north of Hong Kong to an area called Dongguan. Sounds exciting I know. This also means that my creativity won’t be stifled. Really. The last four months have been the worst in my entire life. Barring a few incidents, I can safely say yes, the worst in my entire life. I didn’t feel like doing anything. Photography, writing, getting out of bed. Today, I finally felt like I wanted to do something. Why, well, my last day of work was yesterday. I quit. This also means it was the first of the month and I needed to go back and get paid. How long did I wait for my boss to count out some bills and pay me, 4.5 hours. How long did it actually take, 5 minutes. How happy am I to be done with this bullshit. 100%.

Hopefully I will be writing more. So stay tuned.

So last Saturday I got the chance to go out and do some activities. Mainly eat some amazing food, walk through computer heaven, and around the city itself. So here are some photo from the extravaganza.

The first stop of the day was a restaurant. Food. Chinese food. In fact the best Chinese food that I have had to date. And trust me, I’ve had a lot of Chinese food. I don’t remember the name of the place. Basically the food was really close to western style, whatever that means.

Sweet and sour pork. I think. Heck I don’t remember it was four days ago. However I do remember that it was amazing.

Dumpling. Amazing.

Eggplant in the States, you might as well throw it in a fire and pour more gas on it. Eggplant in China, apply for a marriage license.

Potato wedges covered in sticky sugar. Weird and interesting all at the same time.

Sweet sweet light in the PRC.

Some dude. Some water. Some nice light.

Window.

Corn cob grilling lady.

Windows, apartments, birds.

Out the window of my apartment.

Again out the window. Looks like someone forgot to flip the switch on one of the buildings. I must apologize about the crudeness of the panoramas.