I fear IKEA

In the words of the cult folk band The Lancashire Hotpots, I fear IKEA. After moving to the apartment last week having spent a fortnight in a hotel, we were faced with the challenge of making an empty shell look slightly more homely. A trip to IKEA was inevitably on the cards. The place is massive, even by IKEA standards. Located one metro stop along line 1 from my new pad, it can clearly be seen from our apartment complex, a large imposing figure of blue and yellow in an otherwise grey and murky wintery scene.

Armed with an oversized yellow and blue plastic bag, I make the mistake of entering the showroom. This myriad of mazes and floor mounted arrows led me through scenes of living rooms, bedrooms and the like, complete with Chinese customers poignantly posing for photographs with the furniture. My only saving grace was the fact that it was mid-week and the store was relatively quiet.

Having successfully found the correct size of bedding, I walk out armed with a duvet protector, duvet, duvet cover, pillows, pillow cases, sheets and the oversized blue nad yellow detailed bag I was charged for taking away with me. You can hear them at IKEA HQ “sell these fools oversized items in an inner city area and they’ll have no choice but to buy our colossal carriers to shift their stuff home via taxi or metro”!

Hey ho, mission completed in a relatively stress-free and short space of time and with a bit of luck, a return visit won’t be required.

The apartment itself has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large living room, open plan kitchen and dining area and balcony. On the 25th floor, we have some decent views of the local area and are ideally situated between the city centre and our schools. The ‘we’ I refer to are my housemates; a totally laid back Aussie guy and quirky little Polish lass who are both teaching with the same company as me. Much fun and frolics to be had I’m sure and all in all, a very good place to call home for the next year at the least.

A xx

Spit & polish

Nose picking and public urinating – two things common to Vietnam; here in China, they go one better: the Vietnamese may spit in public, but the Chinese do it with real gusto.  Whilst exiting a metro station on my journey home some days ago, I passed a young Chinese couple, conversing happily.  No sooner had her partner stopped speaking, than the ‘lady’ did something virtually unheard of in the west.

I’d like to think I have a way with words and can adequately paint perceptive pictures in the minds’ of my readers.  However, I neither want to, or feel I can, do so with this scenario… but here goes.  ‘Hocking’ – a slang term for a sharp intake of breathe, designed to dislodge nasal nuisances, which are then very ‘eloquently’ disposed of with a swift outward breathe through the mouth, landing like paintball fire, hopefully avoiding passersby.

Upon witnessing this, my colleague and I starred first at her, then at each other: aghast and wide eyed, whilst her Romeo continued their conversation seemingly oblivious to Juliet’s public performance.  Numerous friends had warned me about this prior to my arrival here, but I hadn’t anticipated it being so far removed from the ‘hockers’ of the UK and Vietnam.  Luckily, we were outside and I’ve yet to witness anyone repeating such an act indoors.  The city on the whole is very clean and the honour of hosting Expo a couple of years ago seems to have contributed greatly to achieving this.  Hopefully, the Shanghainese will take more pride in their sensational city – which might in turn rub off to their public behaviour.

Whilst walking around People’s Square last Saturday afternoon I noticed a short, stout, scruffy old lady loitering with intent.  Carrying a wooden box she observes passersby, before carefully making her move.  Her aim, to mark your shoes with her cream cleaner, so you have no choice but to let her shine your shoes.  It is at this point I should mention, I noticed her too late, my left foot now appeared white and I found myself sitting on a small wall whilst she buffed my black boots; much to the amusement of my converse-wearing colleague, who was all too eager to catch the moment on camera.  Luckily, my work shoes are suede, so I shouldn’t be approached too many more times!

A xx

Pinyin power!

Last year I was faced with 6 tones, unnatural and unfamiliar consonant clusters and more vowel sounds than Countdown could shake a conundrum at.  Needless to say, my progress learning Vietnamese was slow, my motivation plummeted and lessons came too little too late, moving at a phenomenal speed few could keep up with.

This year, however, Mandarin offers 2 fewer tones (all of which I can not only recognise, but can also accurately mimic), more natural sound sequences and pinyin.  This is the written form of Mandarin that uses our ABC’s to create phonetic versions of words: a saving grace in a world of unfamiliar and often very intricate Chinese characters.

My Mandarin experience started over 18 months ago, when I took a few lessons on the off chance I accepted work over here.  Writing the words in pinyin aided language learning, assisting my ability to retain my growing, but still limited repertoire.  Needless to say, after a year of ‘Trời ơi !’ in Vietnam, most of the Mandarin was forgotten.

This year, I have more motivation and incentive to learn.  Few Chinese people speak English and I was keen to learn the basics before arriving here.  Cue the mandarin lessons on my iPod, which I listened to repeatedly during workdays in the UK.  And to top it all: Chinese people understand when I speak Mandarin! I was very impressed I didn't have to repeat myself when asking a taxi driver if he could give me a receipt in what was only my second day in the city.  This is going to be a far easier language to get to grips with.

A xx

Medical matters

What now seems to be an annual event – the obligatory medical examination: something that somehow escaped my blog last year.  Foreign hospitals are not the places you want to be at the best of times; Asian hospitals especially so.  Prodded, poked and jabbed in all sorts of places, by all sorts of people, for all manner of reasons.  You are not a person, you are a lab rat on a conveyor belt, pushed from pillar to post until every blank box on your health form has been completed with figures and stamps.

Memories of the 2+ hours spent in a sweltering Saigon hospital last year didn’t fill me with enthusiasm when the Chinese medical was mentioned.  However, after 20 minutes I came out unscathed following a blood pressure check, eye test, ECG, chest x-ray, ultrasound and blood test.  Hoorah for the Chinese, why the heck isn’t it that straight forward in Saigon… oh wait, because it’s Vietnam!

A xx

Sky Mall has it all

My current school is situated at the end of a metro line, inside a modern mall.  Alongside Starbucks, H&M, Marks & Spencer and Zara (to name but a few), EF Minhang Zhongsheng is wonderful.  Working alongside 8 other foreign (native English speaking) teachers and 4 local teachers, makes a refreshing change.  A personal and welcoming space, which is in stark contrast to the sea of 90+ teachers I worked alongside in my previous school.

My Director of Studies, a typically laidback Sydneysider, couldn’t be nicer; breaking the ice in true Aussie fashion by taking me to a local bar moments after meeting!  It’s a high tech school, with interactive whiteboards in every classroom and courses specifically designed by the company to incorporate lots of PowerPoint presentations, videos and audio to lessons.  The students love it and I’m sure I will too, once I get the hang of which buttons to press! More tall tales from school to come I’m sure…

A xx

Hi from the 'Hai

So here I am again, full of vigour and brimming with enthusiasm.  A new country, different company (in more ways than one) and cooler climate; I find myself in Shanghai.  I’m feeling surprisingly spritely after a long flight, which incidentally reminded me of an amusing story that, until now, has escaped my blog…

During my flight from Vietnam, I spent 4 hours between Istanbul and Manchester watching my eastern European neighbour.  Perched next to me, he persisted in pressing his TV screen in the hope of watching a movie, oblivious to the remote control neatly stored in the armrest of his chair, which controlled the device.  Occasionally, he would get a little excited when his repeated stubby finger stabs coincided with the screensaver moving, alas to no avail.  Having watched a couple of movies and mediocre American drama series on my equivalent device, I sat quietly chuckling at his technophobic ways.  Wrong of me, maybe – but after a year of offering help, advice and directions to western damsels in distress in Saigon, I needed a rest!  Anyway, I digress…

Shanghai: cooler, cleaner and more cosmopolitan than Saigon, or indeed anywhere in Vietnam.  I can already tell I’m going to love it here.  After a year living in a developing country, this seems like heaven.  So far I've signed the usual paperwork, had a tour of Head Office, a welcome lunch with our recruiters, been introduced to a local bar by my new boss (who is a very easy going Aussie guy), had a tour of my school, met my colleagues and successfully navigated the metro (which is far cleaner than the London, Paris or New York equivalents) whilst sightseeing.

Happy days. More to come…
A xx