We do what we must, because we can.

It's been a big week.

In the world of academia, I'm having to plan for final exams. Of course, the school has this kind of "see what happens" attitude about everything, so it's all on me pretty much. This is fine for my oral classes (The plan: we sit down and talk for five minutes. WHA-BAM!). For my culture class, its more of an issue. It would be fine, but a coworker of mine got the crazy idea into his head that he should have a firm grasp on the actual content of this test, and everyone assumes I also feel this way. Let me be clear: I know about as much as my students do about the structure of the British Government. Nobody told me i would be TEACHING about the british government before I came. I do not feel particularly bad being ill prepared to teach about England, Scotland, Ireland, nor Australia, being neither English, Irish, Scottish, or Australian. All i have are a group of half-baked stereotypes and one-word descriptions. I learned more about Guy Fawkes day from V for Vendetta than... any real academic source. I might of even spelled it wrong.

So, I don't really care about the culture class. I'd rather be teaching Oral English because its what I signed on for. If they want to make the final examination "write down your name" and thats the only question, hip-hop hooray for that. But now there's this idea that i'm all INVESTED in a post i drew from crappy luck. So the school might want me to stick around for like 3 weeks of my break to grade tests. I'd prefer they give me the tests, i do it in an afternoon, hand it off, and hop on a plane laughing like a madman. If they ask me to actually stay for two weeks, well, its easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Speaking of flying: my chinese tutor Zhu Ting was able to do in an afternoon what the school has not been able to do in a month. This should not come as a big freakin' surprise to anyone by now. The good news is, I can go to Georgia! I get my 3 weeks or a month, depending on budgetary constrictions. Right now it's looking like the 3 week plan is the more likely one, but I really need to sit down with excel and figure out how much money i can throw at this particular project. Details pending.

Last night I had Dinner with another english teacher who calls himself Jospeh (The Carpenter). No, really. That's what he told me. This guy has his finger on the pulse of peihua, according to him. The current school president is about 30, and Joseph is closer to 50, and he claims he taught the school president english way back when. He assures me, if there is ANY trouble, i should come to him. He can help me with it. This is something which he will assure me of repeatedly, and any chance he gets. Anyways, Friday night i was wondering what to do to break up the monotony when he calls and says he can meet me in front of the school gate in 20 minutes for a VERY fancy dinner. We'll go dutch, he says. I say "how fancy?"

So, we meet up, and we go to the Days Inn hotel buffet. And, for 69 yuan, i admit it was pretty dang nice. Most of the food reminded me of the Pitzer dining hall but they had this kinda raw salmon with wasabi thing going on that was mad delicious. I think i ate my weight in sushi. Also: rad deserts. Also: the beer was included. So, I was happy. Joseph regaled me with stories of his other very important foreign friends, and spared no detail in informing me that we were eating at a very good restaurant. One of the problems is, every time i'd go to drink some beer, he'd declare "CHEERS!" and then consume approximately 1 electron of beer. So, I think I drank about 3 and a half big (BIG) bottles of beer to his 1 half, and I'm pretty sure he was more drunk than me.

The most interesting thing that came of this was his desire to start a business with me. I proposed that we build a bar at peihua, because the students have nothing to do on the weekends but have sex, and they need some place with dim lights and alchohol to make bad decisions. He thought this was genius. So now i'm an entrepreneur. Or a philanthropist.

Of course, he called me again today to let me know how he slept in like a rock star, and to invite me to dinner AGAIN with a bunch of his businesspeople buddies. I told him I had to meet with my chinese tutor for dinner because at the time it was true and I'd had just about as much of joseph as I could handle for one weekend. I tried to get grant to come along but he was slowly dying of "fuckin' huge tonsilitis" so that was no go.

So, tonight, devoid of any dinner plans, I headed into the city. Where I wandered around looking for the jazz bar i heard about and tryinig to get the end credits song from portal unstuck from my head. Then, at starbucks, i found a copy of ChinaGrooves.

Let me make it clear: Chinagrooves is kind of a terrible magazine. But I love them, for two reasons. One: there appears to be no other actual source for information or shows around Xi'an. Why, then, would i say they are terrible? Because they are publishing my completely awful article about the XiaoZhai markets in their january edition. Still, this means I am a published travel author. Technically. Much in the same way that I am a professor of English. Still, when one day a judge looks down at me, he can't just say "Daniel Phipps, you are found guilty of crazy grammatical and spelling errors.", he has to say "Daniel Phipps, published travel author and international playboy, you are found guilty of crazy grammatical and spelling errors."

If you believe them hard enough, the small fictions that make up your ego become truth.

Anyways, the DECEMBER issue of Chinagrooves was incredibly useful because it told me that at the exact mmoment i was drinking overpriced coffee in an obnoxious coffee shop, there was a punk rock show going on. And there would be tommorow, as well! So i grabbed my coat and found the place, paid 30 yuan, and saw some perfectly acceptable punk rock. I watched the opening band and left, but i plan to come back tommorow with A) a lighter coat so I don't actually bust into flames down there and B) so I can not have a bellyfull of coffee and kebabs to jump up and down with.

Then i came home and found the sheet music for the Portal song that i've had stuck in my head. I can play the right hand part okay, but not at the same time as the left hand part. I figure if I can get this down it will make me a hit at lan parties, which is the only party more destructive to the sense of self than alchoholism. So forget that. But its still fun.

I'll let you know how the main act is (was?) in our next installment.