Post by burlives on Mar 14, 2005 19:34:54 GMT 7
This is going to be a morose missive, poorly edited. (Why does the 'h' always stick in a net bar?)
I always have hope. I cling to it, but not as a faith, more like a wet rag of desperate assurance that the next corner will walk me into the sunlight. It has worked well for an unusually long time. But I have a job now where demons walk in foreign officer form. Like all demons, they are mild mannered and polite. They dash hope against regulation like baby brains against rock.
(Someone help that poor man! He seems to be choking, some kind of paper-tearing hawk meant to rip phlegm from his striken throat! He was here last night too.)
I came to this school knowing there was no computer on offer. Irrationally I hoped that negotiation would prevail. I thought needed to settle a job before I took off for the CELTA in Bangkok. But negotiation didn't prevail. So I opted out. I secured a job at a different school. Same city. It used to be military. It's richer and far better connected than my stinking Xi Wai. I saw the computer they would have let me have. I saw the washing machine. I made the deal. On Monday morning their waiban called Xi Wai. No more deal.
See, that school doesn't strictly need a teacher for another two weeks. They have time. So if they poach me, they make bad blood they don't need. My school, lesser, but nonetheless local, a neighbour, my hole away from ome. XiDian, the other school, have time. Kissing me off doesn't hurt them.
(Who IS that man?! Is he following me?)
So I'm still here. Today I was in the foreign affairs office, listening to a two hour intercession on my behalf by a girl I've known for a long time. She'll be leaving here later this week. Today she got me all that could have been had. I can buy my own washing machine, use the computers in the English department, and after six months my international flight to Xi'an will be reimbursed to the tune of a flight from Ningbo to Xi'an.
(Somebody get him a glass of water! Please!)
Forced to be a beggar by a series of mistake I made on my own, she did well. I made appointments with the FAO last week to go get a residence permit but I never showed, and was instead cooking my other deal. She told me I should have dealt directly with the foreign office, telling them I was dissatisfied. Instead I smiled, acted dumb, and tried to get out.
(Is he gone? Maybe he's dead?)
Offered everything but what I wanted, I told the foreign affairs officer to m'kay off and left the office. No slammed doors, no stomping feet, just an exit. I walked twenty feet. I wasn't really angry, I think, just humiliated and distressed. What does a man like me do without the cold hard grey pseudo-contact of a computer, his writing tool, his friend, his teddy bear in hard times? I don't even know why it it is some close to me. It just is there, burrowed deep into my sense of things. I don't know what to do.
The anger passed quickly. In the office my friend was talking fast. I returned to interrupt and apologise. I said I had acted badly just now.
(He is dead.)
I almost did it again, but we left in time, in theory to go and check on the computers in the English department.
(Nope. He's back.)
I thought I was out, y'know? I thought today was a day for taking wing, getting the m'kay out, getting on with the job. I was supposed to go and teach teachers. Now I'm not. I've been teaching here for a week now and inexplicably they've paid me for a month.
Earlier on in the meeting I asked one of my few questions. I asked why the school wanted to keep an unhappy teacher. FAO, vice, had said it was he who warned XiDian off me. He now said they wanted me because they thought I was good.
My friend will be my wife one day, if she can get over finally seeing this other side of me. She thinks the school is planning some kind of pay back.
(That man survived. Or maybe he left. His phlegm didn't seem to have an exit strategy.)
I always have hope. I cling to it, but not as a faith, more like a wet rag of desperate assurance that the next corner will walk me into the sunlight. It has worked well for an unusually long time. But I have a job now where demons walk in foreign officer form. Like all demons, they are mild mannered and polite. They dash hope against regulation like baby brains against rock.
(Someone help that poor man! He seems to be choking, some kind of paper-tearing hawk meant to rip phlegm from his striken throat! He was here last night too.)
I came to this school knowing there was no computer on offer. Irrationally I hoped that negotiation would prevail. I thought needed to settle a job before I took off for the CELTA in Bangkok. But negotiation didn't prevail. So I opted out. I secured a job at a different school. Same city. It used to be military. It's richer and far better connected than my stinking Xi Wai. I saw the computer they would have let me have. I saw the washing machine. I made the deal. On Monday morning their waiban called Xi Wai. No more deal.
See, that school doesn't strictly need a teacher for another two weeks. They have time. So if they poach me, they make bad blood they don't need. My school, lesser, but nonetheless local, a neighbour, my hole away from ome. XiDian, the other school, have time. Kissing me off doesn't hurt them.
(Who IS that man?! Is he following me?)
So I'm still here. Today I was in the foreign affairs office, listening to a two hour intercession on my behalf by a girl I've known for a long time. She'll be leaving here later this week. Today she got me all that could have been had. I can buy my own washing machine, use the computers in the English department, and after six months my international flight to Xi'an will be reimbursed to the tune of a flight from Ningbo to Xi'an.
(Somebody get him a glass of water! Please!)
Forced to be a beggar by a series of mistake I made on my own, she did well. I made appointments with the FAO last week to go get a residence permit but I never showed, and was instead cooking my other deal. She told me I should have dealt directly with the foreign office, telling them I was dissatisfied. Instead I smiled, acted dumb, and tried to get out.
(Is he gone? Maybe he's dead?)
Offered everything but what I wanted, I told the foreign affairs officer to m'kay off and left the office. No slammed doors, no stomping feet, just an exit. I walked twenty feet. I wasn't really angry, I think, just humiliated and distressed. What does a man like me do without the cold hard grey pseudo-contact of a computer, his writing tool, his friend, his teddy bear in hard times? I don't even know why it it is some close to me. It just is there, burrowed deep into my sense of things. I don't know what to do.
The anger passed quickly. In the office my friend was talking fast. I returned to interrupt and apologise. I said I had acted badly just now.
(He is dead.)
I almost did it again, but we left in time, in theory to go and check on the computers in the English department.
(Nope. He's back.)
I thought I was out, y'know? I thought today was a day for taking wing, getting the m'kay out, getting on with the job. I was supposed to go and teach teachers. Now I'm not. I've been teaching here for a week now and inexplicably they've paid me for a month.
Earlier on in the meeting I asked one of my few questions. I asked why the school wanted to keep an unhappy teacher. FAO, vice, had said it was he who warned XiDian off me. He now said they wanted me because they thought I was good.
My friend will be my wife one day, if she can get over finally seeing this other side of me. She thinks the school is planning some kind of pay back.
(That man survived. Or maybe he left. His phlegm didn't seem to have an exit strategy.)
What!! My tab is paying for your floozies?
I must've read that wrong.
