Breaking The Shackles

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