Jianglong Hotel Dongguan

... fuera la primera vez que llegaba a China. Andaba totalmente desorientado sin saber que había más allá pero estaba muy contento y con ganas de empezar una nueva vida sin miedo a la adaptación con la cultura a pesar de toda la incertidumbre del nuevo trabajo y la preocupación de no tener un lugar propio donde vivir.

Disfruté el trayecto desde el aeropuerto hasta la dirección que Pedro le había dado al taxista. El skyline era increíble con todos esos ...

... la verdad que me vendría muy bien para dar las ultimas puntadas a los ejercicios y presentarme con más seguridad.

- Si, Julio, vamos hacerlo el ¿Jueves? Yo la mañana, no puedo pero por la tarde me viene bien.

Maldita sea, jueves me venía fatal, tenía a las seis de la tarde el de estadística.

- No Pilar, el jueves no puedo, prefiero el viernes a la mañana, aunque me marcho para Madrid por la tarde ya que el sábado cojo el avión, pero prefiero ...

... where I’m coming from or going to.

Dammit... I meant to get a Hong Kong flag, I just remembered... I’m currently sitting on a train that’s tilting sideways. And I’m back in mainland China. Oh, yaayy...

I wanted to see a proper electronics shop in Hong Kong, so I went to a Fortress branch in Times Square (which is a building, not a patch of ground). Good news for my wallet: I’m all caught up on the latest 'leccies. Ew, I ...

... because a group of primary schools, one in particular called Hon Lok Yuen, didn’t have a high school to send their graduates to. They’d previously sent them somewhere but this was no longer an option. Consequently they’d lost a significant amount of enrollments. In the meantime they’d kept kids at primary school with primary teachers trying to teach High School subjects, the year 10’s (all four of them) are going into IGCSE with ...

... made me feel like apologizing for not sharing his enthusiasm. It wasn’t his fault, how could he know how the over fifties feel. I grew up in the cold war and am programmed to see through propaganda. The other presenter was a young, pregnant, American teacher, very ‘now’ and with it, totally at odds to everything that old dear. She was a teacher and wanted ‘to share’ with us how she used this total bollocks in the classroom. ‘Youbook ...

These lovely pictures are of the South China Normal University in Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province. Guangzhou is 1.5 hours by bus from my town Qingyuan. It is a very large city of about 15 million people, but I have yet to feel overwhelmed or crowded by the people. It is very easy to travel around even with very weak Chinese as almost all public signs are in both English and Chinese and most young people speak at least a little English. I ...

... good and this place seemed to be Punjabi which is a good sign. This stuff sounded good and looked okay but it was obviously out of a tin and the naan had hair in it.

I didn’t feel that it would be right to stay in two days running, the manager would really start to get suspicious, so I decided to walk to the Tai Po Waterfront Park. Being on the water front threw up images of cool air. Sunday was the worst day for humidity since I’ve been here, you ...

... washed away. Our friend Steve lives in a neighboring town and he wasn't able to get back to his wife and 15 month old baby because of the flooded roads. Their apartment building was surrounded by 8 feet of water. Another problem that we quickly realized was that if you can't get out, no one can get in, and that includes fuel trucks. Mikes car was almost empty and we had to go ...

This place is weird - at least that was my first impression yesterday when I travelled from Hong Kong to Dongguan on the bus. It's continuous high rise buildings from Hong Kong to where I am now in Dongguan, which, given the distance, is pretty phenomenal. I learned later that as you travel further out to Guangzhou you hit fields and countryside, but at the time it looked like a huge, never-ending ...

... though it's one of the less admirable traits. The truth is probably that the demands, time constraints, and nature of the job I'm doing insulates me from some of the things I came to see and do. Conversely, the job is giving me insights into doing business with Chinese people, managing a nebulous group of staff with diverse personal agendas and little natural interest in shared goals, and it's a ...