Soaperwoman and other short stories

The red shop is where I buy dried fruit. The green shop sells nice tea.

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 In China they have not gone health-and-safety crazy. This big hole in the ground does not need a disco-circus around it to warn people against their impending doom should they fall into it. No, the Chinese give their people more credit than that. They assume that they will have enough smarts not to walk straight into the hole. Younger kids may not be so wise, but they are kept under a close watch by their parents or grandparents anyway.

Big hole in the ground

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Many people in China, or maybe I should say most people in China, still hold Mao in high reverence. Here is a picture of him dangling on this dude's rear-view mirror.

Chairman Mao

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So, my math skills are so rusty, I am quite ashamed. A person who once got an A in A-level Further Maths was put to shame by a bunch of 10-years olds. Here's what happened.

I decided to start my lesson off slightly differently. I'd had enough of the standard lesson introductions 'How are you?', 'I'm fine', bla bla bla bla bla. So instead I put a simple maths sum, something like 25/5. They got that easily so I put 225/5. To my shame I calculated this wrong, I thought it was 25, but the kids said 45 right away. Luckily they said it in Chinese, so by the time they figured out the English I was able to correct my mistake. So although they never knew how mathematically incompetent their English teacher had become, I knew. Oh the shame. But to their credit, they are lightening-fast at mental math. Something kids in England aren't usually that sharp on.

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A funny thing happened to me in a class this week. A boy who is very intelligent, I think he's 13, was talking to the boy behind him. I got confused because this boy is usually quiet and engaged in the lesson. 'Stop talking', I said.

I turns out that the boy got his index finger well and truly wedged into the circular back rest of his chair, and he was trying not to draw attention to himself. Of all the reasons why he was talking, this one hadn't crossed my mind.

I tried to ease his finger out, but it seemed to have swelled up inside. No fear, Soaperwoman is here, I knew just what to do.

I remembered when I was younger, my gran would ease rings off my fingers using soap. I ran to the bathroom and made my hands slimey with soap. I ran back to the kid and applied the soap to his finger. It took a little focus but finally, his finger came out. It felt so good to have reacted so instinctively and quickly to this boy's issue.

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On a different subject, I have found a way to bypass my cravings of sweet, fatty foods. My uncle Aiman once said to me, 'You can't quit smoking if you have no cigarettes in the house' (quite sound wisdom, except from the caveat that he has never completely quit smoking before).

So what I have done is put a plate of very sweet cream in my fridge. Just knowing it is there is enough for me. I don't want to eat it, nor do I want to eat any other sickly sweet foods, it's just comforting to know that I could if I wanted to.

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I love these orange-dressed cleaning men. They are usually very short, but they have the kindest, sweetest faces. They'll carry a portable radio at their waist and a whining woman will sing traditional Chinese songs.

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Popcorn Paradise

I left the house very happy, wielding my camera attached to a tree branch. I filled the elevator door opening and closing and began to notice ordinary things that I had never paid any attention to. As I recall what I saw, I can't believe that I actually saw the beauty in a piece of dog turd on the sidewalk, it spiralled up to a perfect point! Maybe I should carry this camera around at all times, I thought to myself, if it means I get more enjoyment out of my daily life.

As I was waiting for the bus to take me to Daming lake to do some filming, I found myself thinking, I have never seen such interesting looking people before. It was bizarre that standing at this bus stop I would see to Chinese 'thugs' (you never see macho Chinese men but these looked like they'd just dropped out of the streets of Naples) and a Chinese hippy with long hair and colorful pants. I kicked myself for not filming them but I was a little scared of the thuggish-looking ones.

But something I noticed is that I'm not embarrassed to film people when I have a branch attached to my camera. The practical use of this branch, if there was one, is to give me something to hold onto besides the camera. I had intended it to be like an extended arm so that I could walk around with the camera and it wouldn't be too jumpy, but for that to work I need a counterweight, which I don't have. But I feel that although I don't look professional with my tree-branch-camera, I don't look like a creepy person filming people for creepy reasons. At least that's how I've worked it out in my head, so it's all good.

My tree-branch-camera

 Waiting for the bus, my enthusiasm dropped, I noticed that I was peckish. Behind me was a dried fruit and nut store. I knew what I wanted to eat. They sell these irresistible corn chip things. To me they taste like the superior cousin of pop corn.

So I buy a small amount of these and usually finish them before I get home (the walk home takes 10-minutes). But now, they've started selling only huge bags of the stuff, new store-wide protocol or something, but I've surprisingly managed to keep this bag for a number of hours. I'll eat them later when I watch 'The Mask'.

So, I buy the pop corn and I take large handfuls and throw them into my mouth. I don't like people watching me eat, in fact I'd usually rather people never looked at me, but today things were different. I think it was because I had the tree-branch-camera in my hand and the fact that I realised how ridiculous I looked, that I stopped caring for a while whether people stared at me or not. I was filming them after all so they should be fully entitled to stare at me if they wished.

On the bus I continued to shovel the pop corn into my mouth. The trouble with them is they are so irresistible, but once you hit a certain point of popcorn-consumption, your mouth begins to taste horrible and you want to eat anything else. Happily, I had not yet reached this popcorn-ceiling, but a thought did occur to me. Why was no one else eating on the bus? And why had I never seen anyone shovel food into their mouths in China? Was I obliviously committing a serious cultural faux-pas? Would they become so infuriated with my ugly eating method that they would all unite and wrestle me to the floor until I gave up the offending action? My thoughts went off into serious tangents when the man in front of me did one thing that abruptly stopped my worrying. He spat a nice big spit right by his foot, on the bus. I had seen people spitting everywhere in the streets, there were even spit-boxes in the swimming pool, but on the bus? This was new. This, in my books was a new level of gross.

So, if this man can sit on the bus, I can shovel food down my gob. And shovel I did.

My first film

To start on a positive note, I've regained the will to live. Yay! For a while there I was wondering if there really was any point to it all and then I finally found my 'point' (or at least the latest in a long series of various 'points' I have aggravated my friends and family with from becoming a civil engineer to joining the US army and becoming a doctor).

This latest idea is not a new one. I had it towards the end of my third year at uni. During that year I was meditating everyday and I had a pretty good handle on what I should pursue to make me happy, as well as what my natural skills were most suited towards. This idea ladies and gentlemen was to become a documentary film-maker.

After I finished uni, I meditated less because I was no longer as miserable and I had for some reason thought that I only need to meditate when I am miserable, as a coping method. But without meditation I lost touch of what I wanted most of all, or what would make me happiest and so because I knew nothing about making documentaries, because I knew no one in the field who could help me, because I didn't have any decent film-making equipment, and because my friends scoffed at the idea, I shelved that idea along with the others.

Here in China I toyed with going for a PhD in Anthropology, then Sociology. Then I stopped toying with any kind of future and tried to live in the 'present'. But because I wasn't meditating, this was pretty difficult to do. Eventually, I was inspired to start meditating again by a little comment I read on a Hindu chanting video that was posted on YouTube. 'No one can hurt you if your mind is trained'. I started remembering other reasons, besides getting you out of misery, that meditation could be useful and the fact that it strengthens the mind and allows you to become the master of yourself, was enough to get me back into it.

So, I was doing a few days of meditation when the idea to make documentary films resurfaced. This time, I didn't let the fact that I do not have very good equipment stop me. I found a stick that I picked up from under a tree (originally intended for unclogging my Chinese toilet when the poo just got too much) attached it to my little point-and-shoot (but indestructible - this thing can survive deserts, snow, water, being thrown off tall buildings...) camera with a number of elastic bands, and off I went. I was going to make a short documentary film, but I didn't know what it would be about. All I knew is that I would film interesting things and worry about putting it together later.

[I'd like to interrupt this riveting read with a small observation. When I have food ready to eat, I NEVER do anything that doesn't involve me directly eating said food. The fact that I am here on this computer, typing this blog post shows a marked change in my character of late. I have noticed that the intensity of my obsession with food is positively correlated with how miserable I am, so this lessening of food-obsession is happy days indeed.]

A woman selling dried flowers for making tea

I am on the far left, dressed in a red coat and green trousers (not Santa Claus). Reminded me of standing in Times Square and being filmed on the big screen.

My travels took me to the 2 main areas in Jinan, Quancheng Square and Daming Lake. I got a few clips, strung them together in Windows Movie Maker, added the theme song from the Office and voilà. My second film was born (the first one I made when I lived in Egypt for 8 months. But sadly I think I lost that one. It's particularly sad because it had footage of my grandmother who passed away in February).

My friend. Yes some people do actually want to spend time with me. (Just kidding! I paid this guy to stand for the photo.)

Mi amigo

I often feel like the Universe gives me what I need when I most need it. Folks, life for me here in China gets pretty damn lonely. Most of the time when I am not at work, I have no idea what to do with myself. This is really abnormal for someone who used to thrive on a jam-packed daily schedule.

Anyway, at one of my lowest points, I met the Chinese friend I mentioned in an earlier post. I met up with him yesterday to see if he could help me find someone who wants to buy my three big textbooks.  These bad boys gave me endless back pain when I was lugging them around Thailand, so I'm not prepared to continue with this self-inflicted torture when I go to les Etats-Unis.

 So, this Chinese boy was really like the answer to my prayers. His English is amazing, he's very intelligent and an excellent listener. And he appreciates my crazy ideas and life plans due to his open-mindedness. He's like the perfect prescription to what I was suffering from. I think I came in handy for him too, he could practise his English and he's found University life pretty lonely too.

Above is a picture of the colourful water containers that the University students fill up and take with them to their dorms.

I'm off to buy the ingredients for Koshari now. It's ridiculous how much I miss Egyptian food. People, family, I can live without, but it's eating the food with the people/family that drives me insane. Today, I saw a woman carrying two large yellow fruits. My heart skipped for joy when I thought she was holding two golden guavas, and memories of guava-filled Egyptian summers danced around my head, but alas she was holding two Chinese pears (in my opinion these shouldn't even be brushed with the same namesake as other more superior pears. These are all water and no juice. Very disappointing indeed).

My favourite class

 

Some of my classes are a pain in the neck. But I don't blame them, why should they be forced into a classroom to memorise pointless sentence fragments that they will never be able to use anyway. Why should they spend the best, most innocent, most care-free years of their life forced to follow the teacher's orders. If I ever had kids, I think I would follow the Sudbery Valley School (Massachusetts) model, where the kids are left to follow their own curiosity and learn according to what they find a need for, not force fed information as I have to do at the school I work at here in China.

 

These students don't seem to mind being in a class, they are always so happy and cheerful, it's a pleasure to be in their company.

 But I think it has a lot to do with their Chinese English teacher. All of my classes with her, have a quality lacking in the other classes I teach. I think she injects so much love into her classes that her students are happy and secure. In other classes, the students are restless and agitated and I can tell that they don't have as strong an emotional connection with their teacher. This Chinese teacher is always giving out stamps, stickers and toys to her students and during the 10-minute breaks between lessons there is always a cluster of students surrounding her.

Another observation I made recently, was how some intelligent, promising students who impressed me when I first started teaching them, have drifted into the background and make fewer contributions and don't try as hard. After searching for an answer I came to an idea that it was because I don't give them any special attention. As best as I can, I never show who is my favourite, and I give every student an equal chance to contribute. This may have had a negative effect on the most talented students, who may have felt frustrated at not being able to contribute as much as they felt they needed to.

I likened it to a flower that is not watered enough. Some flowers, need more water than others to thrive, and perhaps these students need more water to bring out their best.

The Always Christmas Party

 What did the 'Always Christmas Party' involve? On my part, it involved getting paid for standing in the corner of the room, clutching my bottle of water for dear life and saying 'Merry Christmas' every now and then. For the kids, it involved either pinning the moustache on Santa's face, getting across the classroom back-to-back, without decapitating themselves (each pair of kids had their head inside a square of sharp paper, so that if they pulled too far from the person they were leaning their back on, they would probably have cut their necks pretty seriously) and a third game which I fail to remember.

 Now, for some reason whist I was standing in one of the corners of one of the rooms, looking like quite the spare part, I almost burst into tears. Playing, was Katy Perry's Fireworks song and in front of me were around 30 little kids, or bursting with happiness. The joy that they emanated was so real and so pure and the song being played was talking about the special something inside everyone of us, that it was almost too much for me. I couldn't help welling up at the thought of how the World we live in successfully manages to take this joy that we have when we are young, and turn it into disillusionment, anger and hate.

Is it possible to hold onto that childhood joy forever?

A machine for stretching, when will it end?

The damn stretching machine

It was a few months ago when I re-read Aldous Huxley's 'A Brave New World'. It is a dystopian novel about a future where babies are hatched in 'Hatcheries', not born, where people worship Henry Ford, the Father or Consumerism and where people consume - a lot. For any sport to be given approval by whatever ministries that were set up, it had to require a serious amount of manufacturing. Gone were the days when a ball would be enough to keep children entertained for hours, now they needed expensive, complicated gadgets. And all this to keep the economy ticking over nicely.

I remembered this story when I was at the gym yesterday. I decided to use my free personal training session that I had been given when I first joined the gym. Truth be told I was a little apprehensive. I'd seen personal training sessions before at this gym, and what I gathered was that at some point or another the personal trainer ends up lying on top of the trainee. Now whether this was a requirement or every training session or not, I did not know, but I had never seen it before in any English gym I'd frequented.

The first piece of kit the very handsome Chinese trainer took me to was a stretching machine. I don't know about you, but I'd always thought that stretching was a pretty standard practice that simply required the human being and a piece of floor. It seems though, that the great forces of capitalism have convinced unsuspecting folk that they now need to buy a machine to stretch on.

The Stretching Machine - consumerism gone mental

In the picture above I demonstrate doing a calf stretch. But the thing is, stretching my calf whilst standing on the floor, rather than sitting on this bloody machine is a million times more effective. I almost went crazy. I read in Charles Eisenstein's book 'Sacred Economics', that the way our economy grows is by taking something that was once free, and making us pay for it. Stretching was once free, now people have to supposedly pay for it. What?

After this, the personal trainer took me to a number of other machines. One was the standard 'Pull-the-bar-to-your-chest' contraption, and I've used such machines a lot in the past, so I thought I had it down. Wrong! The PT began alternating between pulling at the skin between my shoulder blades and forcing my shoulders together painfully. I really couldn't understand what he wanted from me but finally I had to tell him to stop because it was getting painful.

It was by the time of the fourth machine when I had had enough of machines. 'I hate machines!' I screamed. The PT laughed, 'No, machines are good'. I couldn't help shaking the thought that there was a time that we didn't need artificial machines in an artificial environment to keep fit. We would be fit by the work we did, or by the sports we played with our friends. Now that our society has become so fragmented and disconnected from itself, most people go to work in an office where they sit on chairs all day, facing a computer screen. From this, they get money but lose health. They then take this money and give it to gyms and doctors to get their health back. Or how our disconnected consumer lifestyle leaves us empty of something fundamentally human - human connections and love - that we fill this hole with food, drugs or other destructive things. What is going on?

So, I refused to use another machine and I continued my personal training using just a mat on the floor.