little things

Just to add a bit to the other story, the home of qu yuan and his tomb are now submerged by the three gorges dam. And that bit of irony will keep me smiling for a long time into the future. What a country.

dragon boat

Yesterday was the chinese dragon boat festival. For those of you not in the know I will explain the origins and you can tell me if it sounds resonable for a day of celebration. There was once a poet in china his name was qu yuan. He was alligned with one group during a turbulent part of chinas history. Now the people he was not alligned with invaded the land of those he was. Instead of joining the army and fighting (one source says he tried but failed to quialify for the army) he went to a river and drowned himself. How exactly this helped his cause I am not certain. It isnt as if he had state secrets that the others were going to torture him to reveal. He just killed himself. Now as if that isnt a strange enough reason, then the people from his town near the river, went and threw rice into the river to stop the fish from eating his body. This part I can somewhat understand, however any fish with a taste for flesh may not be so keen on rice. And anyways did the villagers plan to keep feeding the fish forever, or did they think the fish only ate once a year. So in the end china has a holiday that takes its traditional beginings from a cowardly poet and some shortsighted villagers. I always thought the easter bunny was just about the worst thing to base a holiday around but when a country has 5000 years of history, leave it to them to have that rabbit beat in spades. Anyway happy boating.

taxi

As I biked home from my other job today I had to stop at a red light. No big deal right. Well leave it to me to find something in a red light. I was waiting , minding my own business when a cab starts blasting his horn right next to me. Now I was in no way blocking the street or out of my bike lane, I was just waiting for the light to change, but this guy had to cut the corner and thus I was there. Of course it was my fault for being there and thus my job to move. I refused to move and motioned for him to go around like all the other cars that were turning. He got irate and inched closer to my bike at which point I used some of the chinese that I know, nothing polite, and not anything fit for children, that didnt really help my cause but got the other bikers to laugh at him and smile at me and bought me enough time for the light to change and away I went. The joy of life. To know just enough of a language to narrowly avoid getting run down by a pissed off cabby.

this is the end

my friend. Today was the last real class I had to teach for the next four months. I have to be physically present for the next two weeks but after that it is splitsville for me. Dont worry though I will keep you all up to date as i meander through the wrold. In fact I purchased online a shiny new toy to take with me and help me keep connected. I will tell you what it is when i get my hands on it. I also learned today that contrary to ten plus years of studying english many of the students are unable to write any sort of reasonable sentences. I had assigned one of my classes a research paper and the vast majority of the totally bombed it, verb tense agreement, sentences with objects, the works. Just a stark reminder what I will be in for next term as I will be one of the writing teachers for the english majors. It will be an uphill battle but at least there is loads of room for improvemnet.

presumption of knowledge

So while exercising today I decided that I needed some new music. I had heard about a file sharing site that had a lot of music so I thought I would give it a try. I downloaded to program and set up an account. I searched for some albums and found them and was downloading. Now to be clear I have no music on this laptop, but to be an honest theif I set the account so that anything I downloaded could be downloaded from me to others. Now I am downloading and whoever I was getting one album from decided to ban me from their files. Now I can only think of two possible reasons. One they looked at my shared files and thought that I wasnt sharing and presumed that I was Staeling their hard stolen music without recompense and decide to kick me out of their little stolen CD club, or two they are complete and utterly worthless and just dont like me. Now one would hope that it is the latter as that at least is a defensable position. If they just thought they new the story and did kicked me out without actually understanding the reason for the lack of music in my folders, well sucks to them. I mean really a file sharing website that people have ethics about allowable theft. Come on it isnt like that person made the record, hell I will go dollars to doughnuts they didnt even buy it. So i found it from another person on the website and now am proudly sharing it. Whoever it was that banned me I hope you are happy in your world full of knowledge, however limited and wrong that knowedge is. Must be nice to be so ignorant, the world msut be black and white, just like a dogs world.