Category: General

Good morning all.

As a relative newcomer, and someone of incredibly poor memory, it does my head in when we each make comments trying to remember who is living where. It is especially difficult for the newbies like me.

I hope this suggestion is received in the spirit that it is intended but could we all leave a comment about our whereabouts?

For privacy reasons you make want to give just the country, for others less concerned with such privacy a biography of up to 10000 words would be fine. 🙂

For me it would help tremendously to know who I am conversing with and where. I could then refer back to this blog when my memory fails me….where was I? Oh yes:

I live in Catalonia about an hours drive south of Barcelona.

I have been born in Nuneaton which is quite an admission in itself. The place has become an absolute dump: Correction, it always was a dump. If I count Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, children and grandchildren, it comes to well over a  hundred of us. At the age of 38 I moved to Berlin where I lived from 1994 to 1999. Then on to Munich until 2002.

Due to a career move I then came back with Mrs Gaz to the West Country, where we lived for ten years in a little village very close to the river Severn. It was a lovely time and certainly not a boar.

Then, in 2011 on to France, Toulouse for three years.

Last year in October we moved down to Catalonia where we intend to stay until the ashes are spread.

Where are you?

I crossed the Pacific yet again. It was a last-minute purchase, Shanghai-Seoul-San Francisco on Asiana Airlines. It isn’t the worst airline I suppose. The last days in China left me deflated and exhausted – with a slight chuckle at an especially brutal attack by the gods of irony.

Continue reading “Transitions”

Having just come inside and battened down the hatches ready for tomorrow’s storm and heavy rain (nothing desperate I must add, just the usual monthly thunderstorms) I thought it perhaps remotely interesting to tell you about my wood passion.

Even though we live in a warm country and heating costs are quite minimal, we still prefer to sit in front of the woordburner during the winter months. There is something very special and cosy about real fire, rather than the dry but warm hum of the central heating system.

Obtaining wood here is not so easy, so I collect and cut my own.

Quite a long drive from home, in the foothills of the Pyrenees near the village of Oliana, (for those google maps freaks) is a large reservoir. The reservoir is remote, surrounded by forests and changes level regularly as the dam gates are opened and closed. Consequently, in the direction of the flowing current when the gates are opened, a large amout of flotsam gathers on the shore in a particular spot. Each year the new wood is deposited along about a kilometer stretch and dries in the sun. It is presented for collection by anyone who is crazy enough to go for it. I have only once seen  another person gathering it.

Continue reading “Woody Fetish”

Thought you all might be amused at my thank you letter to my friends in the UK

Continue reading “The Endurance Test!”

OK, I admit occasionally to watching Sky News (motto: Feeding pap to the masses), but this morning there was an item on their ‘vox pop’ slot by a chap advocating the removal of traffic lights in order to improve road safety, the premise being that drivers, however normally aggressive, don’t want to bend their car or themselves and therefore are more careful.

This radical proposal was immediately poo-pooed by the chunky Irishman and his hench-ladies, but hang on, let’s think about it.  Are you, however arrogant and self-possessed, gong to roar through a crossroads despite the fact that a fourteen-wheel forty tonner might be about to T-bone you?  No, you’re not.  You are going to slow right down and look first before proceeding in an orderly manner.  Job jobbed, says I.

Now let’s take this a stage further.  Idiots demand the right to drive, ‘normally’ for them, whatever the weather conditions.  They drive at the legal limit (or above) in snow, ice, fog, heavy rain or whatever.  “Where were the gritters”, they wail after a multiple pile-up leaves them and others on stretchers or worse, as if it were always somebody else’s fault for their failed attempt at a Darwin Award.

And something else.  I have driven on some very hairy mountain roads around the world and here in Portugal – narrow road, deep ravine below and no Armco or barriers of any kind, but there in nothing better to concentrate the mind and slow down than seeing an upturned, rusty wreck at the bottom of said ravine with only a forlorn little shrine to mark the occupant(s) demise.  Even the dirt track up to The Cave has eighty metre drops on the interesting side and will kill you if you get careless or cocky.

So, when I assume power, traffic lights will be removed, gritters will be left in the depots  and their crews employed removing barriers on mountain roads.  I’m not kidding!

OZ

I am once again facing an uncertain future. I will teach my final class tomorrow in Huzhou. Their beloved American will arrive Saturday and can start teaching Monday which effectively makes me irrelevant. In order to assuage the concerns of Chinese contacts I agreed to at least grant a hiring agent an audience. It was supposed to be for a well-regarded boarding school in Zhuhai, just across a narrow strip of water from Macau. It wasn’t that at all. It was an agent for a Chinese firm that places language teachers with foreign nationalities with schools that need them. Despite my disgust I went along with it just to get it over with. No need to be rude to strangers, she didn’t mean any harm.

Continue reading “Decisions.”

“Tai Hu” is Chinese for “Great Lake”. It is a large lake in north-western Zhejiang Province and south-western Jiangsu Province. To the north is Suzhou, a place which in the past was known as the “Venice of the East” due to its many beautiful canals, merchant culture and fabulous wealth. The emphasis is “on the past” as the canals have largely been filled in and, other than for what has become in effect a motley collection of tourist traps, the grand houses and gardens of the past have been levelled to make room for generic neo-Stalinist concrete blocks. T0 the south is Huzhou, a city with just as rich a past as Suzhou but none of the glamour and fame.

Today the Huzhou manager visited me unannounced. The principal of the primary school ordered my transfer and replacement with a teacher currently in southern Zhejiang Province. The order was not a dismissal nor was it based on character or ability. Most students and teachers have mentioned that they simply thought that I was in the wrong position although they recognised that I was sincere in my efforts. The Huzhou manager offered me a choice of schools — high schools an universities — located throughout China and hinted that a pay rise would be acceptable to the company as a manner of apology for the inconvenience caused.

I gave them an ultimatum. They could send me to any of the following places:

1. Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
2.  Taitung, Taiwan.
3.  Tainan, Taiwan.
4. Hong Kong
5. Japan.

Should none of these locations be remotely possible I requested that my contract be paid out in full to the end of the original year and arrangements for my repatriation to Europe be made. They offered me anywhere, anything else in China — anywhere from Jilin in the frozen norths of Manchuria to Zhuhai or Shenzhen, the last towns on the former Sino-Lusitanian and Anglo-Chinese frontiers respectively. I re-iterated my conditions: Taiwan, Hong Kong or Japan. I will not be subjected to this degree of back-biting, back-stabbing, defamation and general incompetence with impunity.

Today I received an email. In it I was essentially told that I was incompetent, incapable and utterly unsuited for the position of ESL instructor. After under three weeks on the job I was told that I am not nearly experienced enough. I was told that my accent is entirely wrong. This information was entirely based on lies and distortions by a nasty, vindictive shrew of a peasant. If their attitude does not change I might well return to Europe from Taiwan and let them wallow in their own filth.

Anything to convince himself that he’s still important.  I hope you enjoy this, Christopher.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/SNP/11910505/Alex-Salmond-tried-to-board-plane-as-Star-Treks-Captain-Kirk.html

Next thing we know Salmond will  employ someone to throw a rotten haggis at him.  I suppose he expected everyone to know who he is and bow down accordingly. Now Alex, repeat after me “Sic transit gloria mundi” and then go and find someone to explain it to you.

Hi All,

I know that many of you on here also have one eye on MyT, and many, maybe all, have originated from there.

This is just to let you know that I am leaving MyT for good. I will delete my account today.
I have been observing how the different people react and have seen that it is no longer a place for me.
Over the last few days I decided to have a real go at Helpmaboab, one of the most ignorant,  and try to show him how it feels to be continually hounded the way he does it to others, but instead he just lapped it up. He actually thrives on disgusting comments and insolence. There is a group of likeminded people who dive immediately to his defence regardless of what he writes. All the sniping leaves me feeling rather cold.

Despite these comments I think that I am also a great part of the problem. I react very strongly to insults and bad behaviour, rather than ignoring it. My reaction is often seen as being just as bad as they are. I am quite ashamed at the comments I have written recently, trying to persuade them to act properly. It is strange, but I have never once had a negative discussion on the Chariot.You all act and speak similarly to the way I was brought up.

Is it simply because here you are all more civilised? I guess so. (I hope so)

So, I will stay with the Chariot, for as long as you will have me.

Why am I telling you all of this? Ask me something simpler.