Here at last!!!

Yes i know i've been slack and i havent updated for a long while, no real excuses except the lack of internet in my house. But who am i kidding, i could have written before im just a lazy ho-bo.

So i finally got paid, after a month of teaching... So weird the way time has passed, it feels like a week ago i was saying my farewells and having my bag searched for explosives. Before i know it ill be on a plane home getting sloshed courtesy of qantas and landing to meet my loved ones.

So yes, i got paid... All 5500RMB of it, but not without a fight. You see when i landed my school was under the impression i was working for a year, whereas i had stubbornly insisted to my recruitment officer time and time again i was only staying for six months. On signing the contract, i haggled them down and they agreed to a six monther. They didnt retype the contract or anything, just changed the dates and i signed. As it turns out they thought it fair that as i signed a smaller contract certain things would be left out. Certain things included my 500RMB a month living allowance and 3 days a month sick leave with pay. So when my (considerably light) paycheck was handed to me i was pretty angry. Stood my ground though and got it all back. Theyre so stupid, they didnt even change the contract, if i wanted to i could claim a 2 week holiday, as well as a return fare home, all perfectly legal as its in the contract. But they are good people, good for chinese at least, so i will do the right thing.

So after winning my pay i decided to celebrate. Celebration to me involved a trip or two to the beer gardens (My payday, the spring holiday and the opening of beer gardens across the city convieniently fell on the same friday afternoon) and then off to the local club 'Blues'. Blues is great, good atmosphere, good, well not good but better music than most places that tend to play the cheesiest techno/dance/pop/crap ever heard. If you hate the crazy frog song you will kill yourself after three minutes in a club here. But yeah back to the point blues, good place free entry but unfortunatly it has a considerable percentage of Russians who are itching to bash some Americans (as they assume all westerners here to be) ala cold wall iron curtain. The wall fell, deal with it!! I've been quite lucky, the only run in i had was with a russian woman, who kept bumping me on the dance floor and eventually went crazy and had to be held back by her 'comrades'.
Then on the same night another russian girl (what is it with them wanting to bash me?) started abusing me outside, most of it incoherent except for the occasional english curse. I told her to go back to the motherland, amongst other insults i dont care to mention here. I don't even know why she hated me, maybe its what i stand for, my capitolist ideals and whatnot.
Haha oh i almost forgot, last night we befriended a bouncer at blues and he had tazer/stunner with more volts than you can poke a stick at. So drunk, we asked him to zap us.... It was crazy like nothing i ever felt. I have two scortch marks where it got me, nick went like 4 times. Lucas fell to the ground, but dont think less of him it was bloody insane. All the chinese were in awe of our reckless behaviour as you can imagine haha.

So yes, i've been to blues the last four nights in a row which isnt healthy... i just love it there and you meet so many cool foreigners, this one guy Nicknamed Skins from canada, is a champ, and we met a bunch of south africans the other night who were cool as. Then theres john from ipswich. How to describe John from Ipswich... Lets just say one of the first conversations we had was about him 'making sure my boss knew not to F*** me over or else'. A complete and utter deadbeat but good for a laugh. And jim, a kiwi who i have a sneaky suspicion is gay, but it may just be he's very friendly.

I bought a dreamcast, for those of you way past the gaming generation (or who simply have better things to do than play video games...) a dreamcast is a game console that came out a bit before the playstation II and xbox. Its good because it was the console for most arcade games, so all the classics like virtua cop, virtua tennis, sega rally, house of the dead and sonic can be found and enjoyed at your leisure.
Cost a grand total of $45 dollars AUS including the gun to play shootem games, about 8 games and two controllers. Games are about 50c each which is brilliant.

Some other purchases were a m16 bb gun tha would make any cat hunter/arty hunter salivate... hurts like hell. Also a pair of high top cons for a whopping $9 AUS. Few cool shirts and lachy's old jeans which passed to lucas and then on to me, quite the town bicycle.

Boyde and nick have been living with me, great having them here and having some company at my place, they both came and watched a lesson today at my school and hopefully picked up some things... i know when i first began i didnt have a clue, no observing or anything i was dropped in fresh and green. They have both had lessons since they arived and they like it a lot.

The weather has turned very pleasant, from blistering cold to a gentle 15 degrees average in the day, still a bit nippy at night but its just like an aussie winter as i rememeber it. Green has began to pop its head through the desolation of winters deathgrip, trees are blossoming with lovely white flowers of a variety unknown to me and the grass begins to be green again.

Well i think i've somewhat rectified my slackness with the impressive size of this text, no doubt its taken at leats two cups of tea and maybe even a bikky or two to get through. Hope all is well back home, I'm really quite happy here now. I've had a job offer for teaching Uni students, 10 classes at 2000RMB which is about $40 an hour but that was a couple of weeks back and i didnt feel confident enough... It was a one off thing apparantly but if it comes up again it will be sweet.

Hello to bonnie gray, and betty and mel (you silent cyber renegade mel, your more computer literate than me!!!) I hope you are all healthy and well. Missing Bonnies Chooky dinner IMMENSLY!!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!!