<body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d34675359\x26blogName\x3dBreaking+The+Shackles\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLUE\x26layoutType\x3dCLASSIC\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://breaking-shackles.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den_US\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttp://breaking-shackles.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d-4266974621863055181', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

Breaking The Shackles

Tales Of My Adventure Moving Away To Experience Life Abroad.

 

Hope you enjoy these!

Here is a slideshow of some pictures that I've taken with my phone... I didn't have a way to get them off of here until now... If you can't see the slideshow, I've included a link to it at the bottom... Enjoy!



Click Me If You Can't See Anything!

By Thomas
On Thursday, November 30, 2006
At 11/30/2006 10:42:00 PM
Comments :
 
 

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday To Me!

By Thomas
On Friday, November 24, 2006
At 11/24/2006 07:46:00 PM
Comments :
 
 

Shorty

I'm on break so I don't have much time to talk. I added a image of my email address to the side-bar, I haven't got it perfect yet because the image is overlaping the outside of the border. I added this as an image so I don't get spam from auto-bots, so that's what I'm going to do. Linda asked for my email, so there it is.

Any other suggestions for the site - Once I get a digital camera I'll be adding a photoalbum for everyone to see.

Anyways, I've been feeling pretty depressed lately, so I don't have much to say. Yesterday, was really bad for me. I wish I could be there for everyone.

Grandma, I'm not sure where the DVD is, maybe we forgot it in the rush to pack everything up, as we were rushing up till the last moment. I'd like to see it though, so maybe we can work something out.

Quick funny story: One day when work ended we were walking home, and once we got outside the building, a begger was walking with two walking sticks and a can to collect money. He saw us and proceeded to ask us for "kuai" (money), we said no (in chinese) and waived our hand in a no motion, and continued to walk. We noticed that the KUAI sound didn't stop and we looked back to see that he was following us. We started to walk faster and he started to catch up on us (remember he was two canes/crutches/walking sticks too) and we were at a point where we had to cross the road (dangerous), so we did it quickly thankfully. The begger kept chasing us though! So we crossed the 2nd road into a side street to get home, and he's still following us. At this point Doug was like RUN! So we started sprinting - this was difficult for me as my pants no longer fit from loosing so much weight so they were falling off, we stopped and finally he wasn't following us anymore. We continued to laugh about this the entire way home. Thought I'd share!

Another day earlier this month, it was so cold we hung out in our bathroom with the heat lamps on for a couple hours in the wee hours of the night when we should have been sleeping. We were tired for work the next day. Yea that was great!

Anyways, breaks over, I've got to jet - no time to spell check :(

~Tom

By Thomas
On Thursday, November 23, 2006
At 11/23/2006 07:42:00 PM
Comments :
 
 

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone


The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving. ~H.U. Westermayer




 
 

School's out for .... well until tomorrow

That last class was worse than the class earlier in the day... I'm tried, I'm going home.

G'night.

By Thomas
On Saturday, November 18, 2006
At 11/18/2006 09:05:00 PM
Comments :
 
 

Short One here

Just got out of class, and have to go to another class in like 10 minuets. Class went bad, as usual. These young Chinese kids just don't have any real interest in learning (there are few exceptions) English it seems. Some of them "grow" into it with age, but these young classes are just... hard. Next class is even younger, wonder how that's going to go?

I think screen size on a laptop is important. Yes, you can always get something bigger, but if the laptop has say a 17" screen, you're having to lug something pretty big and heavy around, which kind of defeats the purpose. So in that respect, I feel that it is very important.

Doug mentioned being sad (I tried to leave a comment, but evidently it won't allow me to through the proxy - quite annoying), about his tattoo artist dealing with a cocaine addiction, imagine how it feels losing a girlfriend to a cocaine addiction. Not easy, and that experience still goes through my mind. You know the feeling of just wanting someone to be okay, safe, and happy, but not knowing and hearing bad things. Yea, that's the feeling. Yea, I don't know why I'm talking about this, but it crossed my mind.

T-5 minuets and counting. I'm really not looking forward to this. I hope to have something tasty to eat after work, I'm not sure what though. Maybe I'll go get some McDonald's - funny I'd never step foot in that place back home, but here I will.

I'm getting tired of saying the phrase "Sit Down!" or "In your seats!" or "Hey, what are you doing?" or "Okay, EVERYONE sit down!" or "One more time and you're going outside!" It gets old.

Anyways, have to go to class now - time is ticking. Weather is nicer today, still cold but no rain. Didn't sleep well, throat really hurts, trying to stay warm!

Take Care.

 
 

It's getting dusty in here - time to clean.

Ah not just one new post but TWO! It must be a miracle... I guess I should explain that I usually update my blog from the internet cafe that we frequent, however, they've decided to not allow anyone in the cafe to access It just gives you a page cannot be displayed sign. To make matters worse, the Chinese government has blocked blogspot.com sites. So that means no one in China can access a blog site. So I managed to find a way to get around the latter problem, but I haven't been able to get around the former one. You see, I can get logged into blogger, but once I go to post a new post - it doesn't allow me too. It's become very annoying, and that's a problem.

So what's the solution? Well I either pay for a service to allow me to do this, or simply do it from the school, like Doug has been. Here in lies the problem with that, you see Doug gets here early almost everyday, I don't like to be here THAT early, so I never have the extra time to do it. So expect posts even less often now... Although, time permitting, this one should be rather long.

Well, I guess I should start off by saying that it's become cold in Wuhan. In our apartment at night with the windows closed in the living room, it's 19°C which is about 66°F... That's with the window CLOSED! Yikes! I do like the cold weather, however I've gotten ill w/ a cold and it's taking it's toll on me. I feel horrible right now, my throat is raw, my head is stuffed up, and all sorts of other ickiness. Well I hope to be feeling better soon.

I have a really really really big decision to make very soon, and it's something that's been on my mind every free moment. That is if I'm going to go home or not. You see, we're on our probation period right now which lasts for 3 months. So September 3rd - December 3rd. During this time period, one only needs to provide a seven days notice in order to leave, instead of a thirty-day notice after the probational period. Have things gotten better here? Nope, not really. We had a meeting w/ the Director of the "school" who he himself said it was a business (something I kept saying) after all, and the main pursuit is to make money. So that there confirmed my suspicions. So I feel as though I'm simply wasting my time WORKING here. Being in China is pretty cool, albeit frustrating at times due to the huge language barriers. Yea, I've brought this up before in previous articles, but it's still on my mind. Everyone has thrown their 2 cents in on what they think I should do, but it's still a problem. Enough on this topic, as I think I've give it way too much attention already.

Ola, the girl Doug is into, has been bringing over her friends lately, and it appears that they have interests in me. One of them is very shy, the other appears to be pretty talkative. I feel as though I could enter a relation ship with one of them, but if I'm to be leaving soon, I don't want to do that to them. So this has caused a conflict which adds more to my plate already.

A week or so ago I went to a traditional Tea house, and met with one of Stoerm's friends. She knew of my dissatisfaction with the job and wanted to offer another avenue. So I met with them, and I don't think I'll be doing it. There are several reasons for this, but I think that's the best decision in the end. It's another teaching job, and I really don't want to teach anymore.

I fell asleep last night with all my clothes on (including socks), and I woke up with them still all on. I didn't sleep very well last night, and I even took Robitussin, of course I don't know if it's a night or day formula as it's all in Chinese, but the first ingredient is DXM. Doug came in the middle of the night and turned my light off and shut my door, that was nice of him to do. But I had to walk to work today, and it's raining, and we don't have any umbrella's so now I'm wet too. Not a good combination. I'm expecting to wake up even sicker tomorrow.

I've been looking at laptops, and I'm having a hard time finding what I want. I want a 15.4" Screen, I want a Core 2 Duo processor w/ the 4MB of cache not the 2MB, and I want a 3d graphics board in it. I also want it to have decent battery life, and not weight a ton. Last, and it certainly doesn't really matter that much, I'd like it to be aesthetically pleasing. I've got a few candidates though, the first one being an alienware. Alienware has always been a prestigious company known for their high-end "gaming" platforms, but they were recently purchased by dell. So they've started to offer lower-end computers, and I don't know how the quality has been. I've read mixed opinions on The second option I thought of would be a power notebook - Stoerm has one and he loves it. A smaller company, but they don't look the best - although looks are the least important. Finally I was thinking about a mac book (non-pro) yea it's 13", yea it has on board video, but it can run both operating systems! The other option is I could move up to a 17" screen and then I have many options. But I just think that 17" on a laptop is just too big. They're even starting to make 19" laptops now, and I don't quite see the point. That's just me though, perhaps I'm in the minority. Although all that doesn't matter for awhile if I'm to be breaking the contract, as I'll have to pay some fees back, and maybe even buy my own plane ticket.

It saddens me that I will not be able to attend Thanksgiving dinner. I really liked this dinner, and it didn't hit me as to how much I liked it until recently. My birthday is coming up, and I'm not even looking forward to it.

So as you can see, nothing has changed with me, I'm still the same 'ol Tom.

By Thomas
On Friday, November 17, 2006
At 11/17/2006 03:00:00 PM
Comments :
 
 

Ugh....

Dear Readers,

Please do not post comments directed towards someone else within my blog. I find this extremely disrespectful of "MY" space, rude, and discourteous. If someone turns off comments, they've done it for a reason, that does not give you permission to post something towards that person on my blog site hoping they would "accidentally" run into it. If this was done as a joke or not, I couldn't tell, but I hope that it doesn't happen again in the future. Note, this does not apply to a simple message for someone else contained in a comment to me - for an example I mean something like this:

Well Doug ... you implied you often read Tom's blog, so you goofed since I CAN post to Tom's blog and you may "accidentally" read it ... ha ha ... so there. If I try to post to your blog, um ... will comments go into the "phantom cyberzone"? will my babbling just drift in non-nothingness until protons decay? Will they pop out on a blog in a perpendicular universe? Any help here will be briefly appreciated.

---- you very much

Patrick


This is not acceptable, and will not be tolerated from this point forward. That's all I have to say about this topic, and hope to never bring it up again.

That is all

 
 

Trenching through the jungles....

Very short post, I\'m super tired right now, it\'s like 5:40am too. I have a lot on my mind to say, but just need to refine it and be able to post it...

Anyways, just wanted to say that I finally watched a movie that Dad would never let me watch as a child - Platoon. Thought it was really good, and I can see why he didn\'t want me seeing it then.

Also watched some of A Clockwork Orange...

Anyways, I\'m sleepy - heading to bed. Thanks for all the comments, sorry I don\'t update more.

By Thomas
On Monday, November 06, 2006
At 11/06/2006 05:40:00 AM
Comments :