Term has finally started again ... and with it comes TONS of work (damn, I hate being a fourth year) and a less-than-pleased response by quite a few of us to the module choices available. While in China I chose to do a couple of modules on Chinese culture, which a) interested me, b) I thought I could do quite well at and c) I could bring something to the table. Then the lecturer fucked off to the USA and we were given a load of crap choices - by that I mean there were very few Chinese culture modules available and those that were left were either shit (Chinese Film and Cinema) or the credit weighting was too heavy to make a proper split (there are rules about these things at my uni, blahhhh).

Long story short, I'm now taking beginner's Japanese with advanced Chinese both semesters, and in semester one I have a Politics module (which I think I will enjoy a lot) and in semester two a module on Chinese Nations and Nationalism (which should be okay). But, beginner's Japanese is rocksolid. It makes little to no sense at all! I'm struggling bigtime, but I need to do well in it, and it's STARTING to make a bit more sense than it did last week (when it made less than no sense ) but I honestly think going from Japanese to Chinese would be a lot easier ... shame I don't really have that choice!

I leave you with two Japanese cartoons from youtube which I think are quite useful / cute / funny

[link]

[link]

The second one was played to us in class no less

i see my gf for the first time in 4 months tomorrow

*happy*

This probably hasnt made major news yet (it made the Guardian in the UK, a widely read paper, but probably only because they happened to have someone in Urumqi write to them at the time) - yes there were riots and severe clashes with police in Urumqi last night. Yes I was in the city, about a mile from the action; from 21 floors up in our hotel room we saw many official vehicles travelling to and from the site of the turmoil (ambulances, police, unmarked cars with lights flashing, fire engines and a troop truck).

This morning, after almost 11 months in China, 10 of which I spent in Urumqi with no civil upset whatsoever until last night, I left the city. We saw the remains of a smashed up coach outside our dining room at breakfast, which made for interesting scenery ... I am now in Beijing, uninjured, and heading to the UK tomorrow. Assuming they havent a vendetta against British Airways and are preparing a SAM surprise for when we pass back over Xinjiang, I should be home Tuesday afternoon (BST).

So, people, not that you were before, but don't worry!

That's Marta's favourite thing to say, "they are all cheaters, they have no honour" ... and to be honest in a lot of cases, she's probably right. Taxi drivers will try to rip you off if they think they can get away with it (I had one guy, driving out of the airport with a meter running oddly, I had to actually shout at him and tell him if he didnt switch it the fuck on we would be getting out, before he did anything, and you know his reaction? "Ahhh, you are too good!" with a big grin, yeah let's have a laugh because the stupid foreigner isn't). When you go shopping it's all about haggling, which is just annoying, choose a fair price and give it to me, don't say 100 because I have white skin (or 50 if you have Chinese skin) when the item is only worth 10 and we're going to argue over it and end up paying 20 anyway, gits.

So why does it surprise me to find that two institutions have cheated me? Mainly because of their reactions (well one anyway), read on.

1) The lesser of the two is the water machine company. We have a water machine because you can't drink the crap out of the tap and this is quite convenient, cheaper than buying bottles all the time each. We pay 10rmb a week (or however often we get through one of those giant bottles (18.9L?), usually one a week), and this bloke comes round usually within the hour, we swap empty for full and that's that. No problem. We put down a 300rmb deposit on this machine, and they said they could take it back off us when we left. Dandy. Except now it transpires there's no deposit. There's no refund and no collection. We just got ripped 300rmb. Cheers, you fuckers.

2) The more serious one is China Telecom. When we moved in, getting the internet up and running was important, but Marta's Chinese was really shit and mine was ... well, less shit, it was by no means brilliant. So I got the job of setting it all up, and what a palaver that turned out to be. Still, it was done in the end, and we were paid up for a year - I'd given the man in the shop (a sort of unofficial looking fellow, but the assistants told me it was okay to pay him, he was working for the company) a year's worth of cash, plus 300rmb deposit on the wireless router, in total around 1800rmb. The internet stopped working the other day, so of course I went to the office to see what was up, but it was too hard to understand what to do. Luckily my Chinese friend Bruce (who gets a massive thumbs up from me for everything he's done this last year!) was meeting me to go to the hospital (see previous entries), so he popped along. And just as well he did, what a rollercoaster ...

First, we explain the problem. Our WIRELESS (yes, that's right, thickos, not with a special card or dongle, for the fifth time, it has an antenna and NO FUCKING WIRES MORONS) router was working this morning, but ceased in the afternoon, what's up? They don't know, so we go into an office. The whole inside is completely different to when I was last in there 10 months ago as well, it's completely changed and looks much more professional. So we sit with this assistant and try to look up my details (without my original passport they were reluctant to fix the problem - which you'll see in a minute - even after they used the passport number and I confirmed my address without seeing the screen, muppets). And here's the story:

* our monthly bill had been paid each month into a different location, but on time and in full

* this payment ceased two months ago, and we were indeed cut off that afternoon

* when trying to track down this bloke who had our money, there was no joy. I only had his name and number, and a scrappy receipt he'd handwritten for me last year

* phoning other depts revealed he WAS in the company until (surprise surprise) two months ago. at which point he'd resigned. great.

So, the thieving bastard took 2 months of our internet money (our monthly bill was less than he said it would be as well, so he really made off with quite a lot more in all) and the 300rmb deposit. Oh yes, the deposit, which ... yeah you've guessed it ... wasn't. There's no deposit for this kind of thing in China, says Bruce and the lady. Fuuuckk. Another 300rmb stolen. Thieving fucking Chinese bastards. I hope they ARENT the next world business power if this is how they do things the miserable gets.

To add insult to injury, Marta and I were made to pay not just the money he had stolen from the last two months, but also for the coming month that we would still want to use the internet. So we've paid for it twice and then some. And at no point did they offer to help us file a police report or claim or in any other way track this bastard down. When I asked why the assistants who observed me and this guy making a deal let him get away with all his fleecing prices, he said "oh the guy was probably a manager, and they didnt want to lose their jobs" ... one word to describe China on all levels - CORRUPT.

So thanks, China Telecom, for your truly useless and underhand service.

Following on from my brief, updatey journal, (Lari pay attention, this is important), in which I outlined some of the recent happenings here, I move to expanding on the subject of exams in my university (yes yes, all in good time Treaks).

Well, there isn't much to say; they were a shambles. For all of the exams (except speaking) the teachers were telling us either what passages to revise, or what specifically would be on the papers. Speaking was a very similar format to last semester and basically if you knew the texts to revise for the listening part, chances are you'd get one of them to read out for speaking. Then answer some basic questions. So, in a nutshell, the teachers made sure we could at least all *pass* the exams, if not do well. A pass here is 60 I think, because its a raw mark out of 100, rather than the odd scale system we have back in the UK (where a pass is 40, but IMHO if you're hovering there you shouldnt be wasting 3k a year on tuition). I missed the reading class where the teacher went through the opening questions, and I only halfheartedly prepared for the grammar exam's essay question, but at least I did them pretty much off my own bat, and without any help.

Here's the REALLY bad bit - despite the teachers' "assistance", the other members of my class (bar one, my friend Tanya) STILL felt the need to cheat! In the grammar exam they were whispering to each other, or had their books, or in the case of Gulaga (the class retard) just plain shouting out. Did the invigilators do anything? Did they fuck ... see, the uni desperately wants to hold onto foreign investment and it will do this to the point of ignoring the behaviour and caliber of the foreign students and making sure they can pass and pass well in order to look good on paper. Twats. Listening wasn't much better, Gulaga managed to be quiet all through the exam and then as soon as it was over, rather than sitting still and waiting for scripts to be collected, he and others got up and ran round trying to look at other peoples' answers (the listening exam was PISS EASY, not just because we knew what texts to revise but because on the tape the actors spoke at snail's pace - so to see people trying to cheat answers was more than sad, it was just tragic). Reading, well, Tanya and I didnt know any of the first answers because we missed that class, so we finished reasonably quickly and handed in our papers. The teacher was upset ("You've got some wrong") but really what did she expect, it's a fucking EXAM. I thought she was a good teacher all year but seeing her standing there in a class full of blatantly cheating people (dictionaries, books, notes, etc) and just saying "Please don't use your books" made me lose all respect for her.

I know I passed Listening, Speaking and Grammar (ha, the grammar teacher apparently felt I did a bit badly and gave me more points for attendance, which is funny because my attendance has been shit ... that's another thing, there's no anonymity at all, which is a bit stupid), but I havent got my results for Reading yet. Even if I did badly, at least I did it without cheating, that's the point of an exam ... but what do you expect from a country where people routinely buy their qualifications (high school papers, degree certificates, having someone else sit your driving theory exam, etc) and don't mind talking about it?