Breaking The Shackles

Merry Christmas To You All and a Happy New Year

Well Christmas here in China is about to be over in about 20 minuets, so I thought I'd get a post up before Christmas is officially over. However, by the time I actually submit this post, it might already be over - so we'll see what happens :p

Work last week was brutally tiring for some reason. I felt exhausted by the time the week was over. I came home, helped Doug with the computer for a bit. Since he was using it, and I didn't have anything to do I decided that I'd go lie down for a bit to catch some sleep. I purposely left the light on so I'd annoy me and I'd get up after a bit, which usually works, but it felt like by the time my head hit the pillow I was out. Evidently Kevin called us, and I was asleep, so I'm sorry I missed your call Kevin. I would have liked to talk to you over the phone, and not the internet for once, but I'm more than sure you understand how things are sometimes. Doug told me this morning that he went into my room to turn the light off and tell me that Kevin called, and according to him my eyes were wide open and I was looking right at him. He said it was kind of creepy... Evidently he told me that he just came in my room to turn the light off and that Kevin had called, and he claims all I did was shut my eyes and that was it. I don't remember any of this - so like I said, I must have been really out. I woke up feeling pretty refreshed, but I didn't wake up till around noon or so.

I messed around on the computer for a bit, and like 10 minuets later Doug got up. He cooked some food then we went out and did some shopping for each other. I got him a guitar amp for Christmas, sadly I thought he had a cable and he doesn't so he's going to have to get one in order to use it. One nice thing about being in China is you can haggle when buying things sometimes. I decided to not lowball the guy, but I offer 50 yuan less than what he quoted, and he agreed. So it was a small discount, but still feels better than paying full price. I probably could have gone lower, but I was in a hurry. Doug got me all sorts of neat things... Something to drink tea out of with a built in filter, a bowl for rice or noodles, some slippers (yay!) to keep my feet warm, some blank DVDs, a DVD case binder, a keychain/money clip, a bottle of Tang (yummy!), a web cam and some headphones for the computer too. All in all it was very nice of him - seemed like he put a lot of thought into it. I've always liked that about Doug when it comes to gift giving.

Afterwards, we went to a co-workers apartment, then headed off to the Holiday Inn (with a few stops in-between). Getting there was quite an ordeal - had to take separate taxi's, no one knew where it was so we had to get someone to help, but in the end we finally got there and that's what counts. It was a pretty swank Holiday Inn too... nothing like in America. They have people to open doors for you, the whole bit. We walked inside and there was a massively huge Christmas Tree. We decided to take some pictures of it - here they are:





Very Nice, yes?

We located the elevators, and at first we got into the wrong one, because the restaurant was on the 27th floor, but this elevator only went up to the 24th floor. For some reason it decided to stop on the 16th floor, so we got out and got in the proper elevator, finally reaching our destination. We were greeted by some English speaking Chinese staff (not great English, but decent) and found out that they had a lucky draw going on too. We went to our table and they gave us some gifts, that were actually New Years stuff instead, but it's the thought that counts right. This restaurant was quite impressive I thought. It was one of those revolving restaurants which I'd never been in before. All in all I thought the revolving bit was kind of a novelty, although I'd certainally go there again. They had all kinds of food, Western , Chinese, Ice Creams, Coffees, soups, breads, fruits, sushi, a grill - like I said, all kinds of stuff. I ate about 3 plates full. There was even some live entertainment, I'm not going to spoil what it was because Doug took a video of it, and I think that'll be better. We pretty much stayed there till they closed which was around 10:00.

Whilst we were there, I did notice one of the waitresses would keep looking at me and smiling. I'd waive back at her and she'd get all embarrassed - it was pretty cute actually, and she was too. At the end of the night, some of the staff ended up asking to take pictures with us, which we let them do. After that, the girl asked if she could take a picture with just me, so I gladly let her. She seemed like a nice girl, I didn't get her number or anything though, so I'll probably never see her again haha funny how things work out. So I'm just home now, waiting for some drivers to finish downloading... They keep failing and I have to restart them - it's rather annoying.

Here are some more pictures for you to enjoy:

This is that girl I mentioned up above.

Another shot of her - I felt like a spy haha

This picture I was just feeling artsy on.

Ahh it's 12:08am now - looks like I missed the goal... Oh well...

Anyways, Merry Christmas again, and I hope you have a great day.

Oh one more thing:

Grandma and Grandpa: Thank you for sending the photo's - Doug and I really enjoyed them. Baby looks like a really cute puppy - I hope things go well with him/her (which is it?)

First a quote:

Tom really wants to just go home, I don't think he would deny that. Funny ... I really thought I would be here a while, it all seemed easier with Tom here, he was always part of the plan. Flip the coin over and I see it a different way, if Tom wants to go home I have little right to say anything about it. I really want him to be happy, sometimes I feel like Tom means more to me than anyone. I always used to think that at least we had each other, as shitty as it was growing up from time to time I knew that as long as we stuck together we'd be alright. Well, I guess it will be time for me to go it alone for a while. I think I know what I want to do with my life now, Tom still hasn't found that for himself yet.

Now, my response:

Yea part of me would like to go home. There are specific reasons I decided to come here, and most of those have been thrown out the window.

I wanted to gain international work experience - This has already been done.
I wanted to step away from the "corporate America" work environment, where you're simply a number trying to increase the bottom line - I'm in the same situation here.
I wanted to enjoy my work, and do something more fulfilling and gratifying - Not happening here, it's not real "teaching", it's baby-sitting.
I wanted to not have to worry about daily work related stress, and be able to see part of the world - Not happening here, work takes up too much time, and doesn't allow for traveling very well.

So instead of doing what I wanted, I got more of the same PLUS the frustrations of living in a non-English speaking culture. This by far has been the worst employment I have worked.

I started off saying I was going to be here 5+ years, I'm sure Doug remembers those conversations... But I quickly changed to not even wanting to go, then in the end I decided I'd give it a try. I don't want to stay here a long time... There are things in my life that I need to do, like going to school. Doug says go to school here, but that requires knowing Chinese very well, and that's not something I don't think I'll be able to pick up any time soon. Maybe my eyes have just been opened more, and Doug's are still clouded by the delusions of HAVING to be here to improve life? I don't know.

I've come to realize that I'm simply not a happy person... I wonder if I ever will be. I'm numb to emotions, I'm always in a bad mood, I sleep all the time, I have no wish to do anything different. I'd like to be happy, but I wonder if I even know how anymore. I have spurts of happiness, but it's always short and never lasts very long.

I think Family is very important, and Doug and I have always been very close. It matters to me what he thinks, but I also feel that I don't have the right to "control" his life. I think looking out for yourself is very important too. Would I want to be here alone? Nope, probably not. I like having my brother around, and if I'm to leave while he stays, it's going to be hard. I knew growing up as well, that if we stuck together we'd be alright. We did that. Our life's and vision's were always pretty much the same, or related. However, within recent years, Doug has made some decisions in his life to do things that I don't agree with. This has caused distance between us, and as much as he'd like me to just "accept" it, that is the effect after the cause.

Our visions on what to do in life have now come to a crossing. I tried doing what he wants to do. I thought I'd like it, but I don't. I'm miserable. I'm not the type of person suited for this. Am I to stay here, unhappy and miserable, simply to preserve that vision of two brothers sticking together? Maybe I am, I don't know.

He's right... I'm not sure what I want to do with my life. Well, I'd love to work in the film or video game industry, but those are awfully hard to break into, almost unreasonable to think about. I'd love to work in some technology field, but that requires schooling... Maybe I should just do CAD, or structural engineering. I don't know anymore. Also, how long did it take for him to realize that "this" is what he wanted to do? Personally, I see him on a daily basis, and while at work he looks miserable too. That's just my observation, take it with a grain of salt.

We had a Christmas dinner last night at Giano's. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, broccoli and cheese (w/ mushrooms in it ick!), macaroni and cheese, GRAVY, stuffing, and they made some egg nog... Too bad it was leaded though, so I didn't have any. I was really looking forward to it too... What a shame. I must say that while there I was pretty down. I'm pretty sure people noticed. I see everyone around me having a good time and enjoying themselves, but I simply can't. We had a gift exchange. People were running around trying to figure out who got who what. I got this foot warmer slipper thingy of a Chinese girl. It's cute, and really nice because my feet get real cold here. I think I had two spurts of happiness, one while eating (which I ate too much), and one while walking around w/ the gifts.

Afterwards, I spoke w/ some co-workers about my concerns here at work, and was advised that I should get out because it's only going to get worse. I decided I would read some stuff about EF online to see what people were saying, and it turns out that most of my concerns have been going on for years with the EF brand. So it's simply not going to get any better...But probably worse when Summer comes around. I've pretty much decided that I'll be relinquishing my position. So what will happen with me afterwards?

Only time will tell...

Had a lot of vivid dreams last night, almost like they were real. I guess dad would call those the "Big Dreams."

One was of the good times with Brandy... It was really nice feeling, but I felt really sad when I realised that it was a dream. Oh well, what are you going to do.

The other one that I remember had Dad in it, and somehow he managed to buy Doug and I plane tickets back home for $100. I kept asking him how, but the only thing he would say was that he was good at that kind of stuff. There were others, but I can't recall them that well.

Linda: As much as I want the Nintendo Wii, I think I'd be upset if you spent that much on me. I'm surprised you've seen them for sale somewhere, everything I've read (which has been a lot) shows that it's pretty much sold out everywhere. Although I usually don't put much stock into that when thinking about the valley so who knows.

Had a really ruff week, I can't stand being at work sometimes. Right before my last class, I was starting to feel better because the end of the day, and work week, was approaching, when all of a sudden my boss asks me to go to his office. When this happens, you're always a little off guard, because it could be a good thing, or a bad thing. Usually the latter I've determined. So he takes me in there, tells me again that he's seen improvement, but then today there was a complaint. He goes on to say that it's not unnormal for teachers to get complaints, but that this complaint was posted to the website, instead of being told in-school. So it's more severe because anyone can read it (although you'd have to be able to read chinese characters). He tells me what the jist of it is, which is, that I don't give the student enough opportunity to speak in class, and that there is more writting. To this I dissagreed and told htem that I give them plenty of opportunities to speak, they just don't take advantage of it. I did tell him that I do ask them to write stuff out but I always have them speak what it is they have written. It so happened that last week one of the chinese staff observed my class, and she evidentally told my boss that it was good. So he brought her in the office, and she transalted the complaint, and then he put her on the spot. So basically the result of this is that the Director of the school, and the owner of the school will probably see this, and who knows what will happen. If they do want to fire me, I just hope that they will provide airfare home. I could work somewhere else, but I'm not sure. Enough about that, I'm sure you're all sick of reading about how much I hate my job, and how miserable I am when at work. It's funny, during my days off, I'm like a completly different person Doug says.

I told Dad that I thought it was a mistake for me to come here, to which he responded that it's never a mistake to travel and experience different countries. To this I would respond by saying, traveling to a country to visit, and traveling to a country to work are two completly different things. If I were here simply to visit the country, I think I'd be having a grand 'ol time. There is a lot to see and experience in this country, but with the daily pressures and stress of a job mixed with the frustrations of the language barrier, and the other things that Chinese people do it becomes not the same experience. Okay, enough of this topic too. Moving on...

I need to recommend some movies to watch. First up is a movie with Adam Sandler called Click. One of his more serious roles, and a great movie all together. Doug and I saw it back home before we came here, and I just bought it on DVD and watched it again. I always get really emotional after watching it - very deep and meaningful movie. I recommend you see it ASAP. I think it may have just come out, or is about to come out, on DVD back in America.

The second movie I'd like to recomment is called 'A Scanner Darkly' - this movie is very different. Hard to describe, you've just got to see it. I'm watching it right now as I type this out. Great looking too...

Oh, Doug and I went to the grocery store today, and you know how they always play music over the speakers a lot of the time while people are shopping in the store. Well they do that here too, but it's all asian types of music. We were going around picking out stuff, and then this song started playing, and I found myself humming the song without even realising it... Then it clicked - it was a song from a game series that I play a lot called Final Fantasy. I was so shocked that a song from a video game was playing in side a grocery store. I kept going on and on about it.

Doug thinks it's amazing that I can not look at this laptop keyboard and type on it really fast... I think it's pretty cool too, although I still make a lot of mistakes. It's weird because the keys have japanese on them - for example the number 8 should have the * sign on it too, but it doesn't - however, if I shift press 8 I still get that same sign. It gets confusing with some of the other keys, but you get used to it I guess.

I was hoping some of you could take some pictures of your Christmas decorations and send them to me, either by email, or someo online photo album. I'd like to see what your tree looks like and stuff like that. My email address is listed on this site to the right if you'd prefer to do it that way.

Grandma: A white poodle... wow. You've never had a white poodle before have you? What did you name it? Is it a boy or girl? Any pictures of it? What does Grandpa think about it? How does it feel having another animal?

I've been thinking about a lot of things that I want to, a lot of them invole internet sites. I've been thinking about doing some podcasts or netcasts. I've run the idea by Ruben, and he seemed interested as well. Maybe we'll be able to work something out and put something together, I don't really know. Just one of those things.

I took some pictures of the xmas trees but for some reason they turned out way too blurry. My camera phone is horrible anyways, so hard to get any good pictures out of that thing.

We're having a Christmas gift exchange at work. Had to dip into my savings becuase this wasn't something I was taking into account during my spendings for the month. I ended up getting my person a stuffed animal of this pig. Chinese people are obsessed with pigs, but this one is cute. I hope the girl will like it - I had no idea what to get a chinese girl, so I tried to go for the cute factor. And who doesn't like stuffed animals???

We're also having a Chinese type of dinner mayber that we're going to be paying for, and allowing some of these Chinese staff to attend. They don't get paid as much as we do, so that's why we're paying for them. Wish I would have known about these things at the beginning of the month so I didn't have to dip into my savings, but I guess it'll all work out in the end. Besides it'll probably be worth it to have some sort of Christmas event.

Well I think this entry has become long enough. I hope everything is going well for everyone back home.

Take care,
Tom

An oldie but a goodie!

I must start this off by saying I'm not expecting anything this Christmas season, I know everyone is tight on money (myself includded), and being over 6,000 miles away doesn't help anything either. Regardless, I still enjoy listing things "I wish I could have." So without further adue:

Gears Of War for Xbox 360
Viva Pinata for Xbox 360
Okami for Playstation 2
Final Fantasy XII for Playstation 2
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for Nintendo DS
Phantasy Star Universe for Xbox 360
Xbox 360 Quick Charge Kit
Xbox 360 Play & Charge Kit
Nintendo Wii Yea right, they're sold out everywhere!
One plane ticket home :)

I'll be adding to this post as I think of more things. I've got some work to do right now though so I'm going to end it short.

Lindsay Lights - Look at their site, they do some amazing things - here are some of their videos:

The Lindsay Lights, a house lit up with amazing lights for charity

Some 2006 footage - nothing official yet:






2005 Court Camera


2004 Full Show Edited


2003 Full display


PS: There are some new posts below this one too ;)

Thought this band was really amazing and innovative - here are two songs for you to enjoy:

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - The Lost Christmas Eve


and

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Nights In Blue


Anyways, hope you enjoy those. I sure do!

So some people at a university figured out a way to have an "unheard" ring tone. It's a really high frequency that they say adults over the age of 40 are unable to hear. So here it is, I want you to leave a comment telling me if you were able to hear it or not. I can hear it.

Merry Christmas Everyone, Enjoy it!

Well the other day we received the DVD that grandma and grandpa sent us, and it arrived intact! woohoo! So here we are watching it, and let me tell you life was so much easier back then I think. We all seemed happier, and in good spirits.

Kind of funny, in the 1986 Thanksgiving video, while spinning the bar chair I started to twist my hair, which is something I still do to this day. Then in the birthday video of Doug ('86 too I think) Doug started to bite his nails, which is something he still does to this day too... Some things never change do they.

We've had to pause it for now, while we clean up the place a little bit, but I think we will probably finish it today.

On a side note, Our DOS has decided to organize another meeting with the director, he wasn't in the best of moods the other day... I'm not looking forward to this, as I don't really think anything good will come of it.

Slept a lot last night, with my clothes on none the less.

Doug just took his socks off, and I think I'm going to hurl... It smells like a rotting corpse with some rotting cheese... It's disgusting!

I've got to get out of here... That's just gross! Maybe another update later.

Not a whole lot to say that you don't already know right now. I'm really tired, and we're watching Kung Fu Hustle right now. I saw it in the theater, but I thought it was a pretty good movie...

Got an email from the Church today... That was unexpected. Well Doug had to forward it to me, but it was addressed to both of us, so yea.

Classes were exceptionally bad today. It seems that once you start nearing the end of the course, the kids just don't want to pay attention any longer. I find it difficult to do anything productive, but that could also be a bi-product of my hatred towards the job right now too... I was looking at plane tickets back home today, they sure are pricey. The site I checked quoted the cheapest one being right around $1500 usd. Ouch! I'd come home broke if I did that... basically all the money I earned while over here would be spent on that. Guess that's life huh?

The school put up some Christmas trees, but just like with Halloween, they've gone and messed up the colors. They've but a lot of purple and blue tensol on the tree, so it looks more like a New Years tree, than an actual Christmas tree... I'll see if I can remember to take a picture of it so you can see how it looks. They are doing these things called Wish Cards, where the students get to write a wish on the card and hang it on the tree. Some kids end up writting what they want for their birthday instead. *shrug* I don't think I'll ever really be able to figure out what goes on in their mind.

I really wish that I could have a whataburger right now... That sounds delicious.

Using this notebook is so frustrating, sometimes it just decides not to respond. I want to destroy it.

On a sad note, one of the people I used to watch on TechTV (a tv channel) died after he had gone missing. From what I've read he and his family were driving back from Portland, OR to San Francisco, CA after Thanksgiving when they hit a snowstorm, a white out they called it. Something happened with the car and it ended up off road. They remained in the car (James, his wife, and their 2 childred (one is 4 years old, the other 4 months I think)) where the wife breast fed the children. James decided to go off to try and find help with his snow shoes, and left his wife and children behind in the car. They used all the remaining gas to keep warm, and had to resort to burning the tires. They were eventually found. Just recently, James was found dead. It's really a shame, he was a kind and family oriented man. Whenever they did anything media related on the show I used to watch, he was always showing the devices off with pictures of his children. Very sad. CNet where he used to work posted a tribute video.

Click Me

For some reason the link hasn't been showing up... I've edited the post several times, so I wonder if this is going to fix it.

Well it's getting really late so Im going to go to sleep now.

Update: Fixed the link

After speaking with Stoerm, he brought up a good point. If I go back to the United States, I need to avoid working there, so that I may be able to qualify for financial aid (other than student loans) based on low income. This is a huge advantage when trying to get money for college, so that means if I went back, I'd be trying to live unemployed until September...

Well I received a talking to last night, after class right before the place closed. The short version is this:

When we first got here, we signed the contract. The contract had a probation period of 30 days. This probation period started the day we began work (9/4/06) and was due to end 30 days later (12/3/06). According to the DOS, the probation period per contract only has one difference to the teacher, and that is that you cannot take any paid leave during your probation period. However, he went on to explain that in practice, the probation period is used as a way for the management team to decide if they want to keep the teacher for the duration of the contract, which is usually 12 months.

So what they're telling me (us) is that the management team has been unable to come to a decision if they would like to keep us or not, and have decided to extend the probation period by 1 month, taking us to 1/3/07. They citied that the "resign rate percentage" is lower than they would like it to be. What that basically means, is that the students in the class have either decided not to sign up for another course, have decided to sign up but requested a different teacher, or have not made up their mind yet. Now you can take this at face value (sheepish if you ask me), and run with it... Or you can try to read between the lines, because if you ask me, Management never tells it "how it is."

So here is what I think... I think the decision has already been made to not keep me (us) employed at this time. However, most of my classes still have 4 weeks to go, which means that it would have placed me past the initial probation period of 30 days. So what do they do? They decide to extend the probation period by one month, which allows me to finish the classes that I'm already teaching, because they don't have anyone free that would be able to take over the classes for those 4 weeks, and then when January rolls around, they cut me loose. So why would they feed me some "story" then you ask? Simple, they don't want to completely kill the morale, because there still is work left to do. For example, if someone told you "Hey, in a month you're out of a job!" How well, if even, would yo perform your job during those next 4 weeks? I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that not very well... I know I wouldn't. So anyways, that's what I think... Of course, some would say that I'm being pessimistic, but I've seen things like this coming before in the past at other jobs, and have been right. So I guess we'll have to wait and see.

No one seems to be able to give you any help when it comes to what to do. They just answer your questions with other questions, or say what you've already heard before. I'm once again stuck not knowing what to think... I'm also again feeling the "I Hate My Job!" attitude and hate getting up everyday knowing that I have to come in. Well, some say good things come in ugly packages, so who knows what will happen after this adventure is complete?

Anyways, I've got a class coming up, so I've got to go. I've got some more pictures that I can make another slide show out of.

~Thomas Lane