Day 82

01/07

First day of July. Had three hours of teaching today. It’s always nice to teach new students. I had some new faces in my two classes for Longwin. Then, I had an English Corner class for some middle school students. In the last two weeks, I’ve only had the two kids in that class. And the class is usually 5pm – 6pm, which on a Sunday afternoon, I have the least energy. This time, since it’s Summer Holidays, a few more kids had come and I found myself having more energy to teach – despite the new kids not wanting to speak. Summer holidays should be a time to relax and let loose, but for Chinese students, there’s not much rest time because they have to prepare for next year’s classes. English classes ramp up. Students will take any extra classes to get ahead of their classmates.

Today, I forgot my keys before I left home – you can’t open the door from the outside without a key. Luckily, I gave some spare keys to my uncle and aunty so that I could collect them in case something like this happened. So, I collected some keys from my aunty’s restaurant, had dinner and decided that I wanted to exercise and shoot some hoops. I usually like to shoot hoops on my own because it’s a bit of ‘me’ time and I want to improve my skills. I should probably start playing with strangers and being more social.

After a sweat session, some mates called me out to Arcano. Rory, a fellow Aussie was also there, and it would be the last time I get to hang out with him before he leaves for Saudi Arabia permanently. We chatted about Melbourne, played some darts and watched Russia upset Spain in penalties. If it couldn’t get any worse, my mate Chris told me that Arcano was about to close in two weeks.

Apparently, management want to rebrand the bar into something more classy (which in business means upping the prices of beers). It wouldn’t make sense for my mate to continue running this bar because most of his business comes from the expat community who are about affordable drinks.

Arcano was like my one constant every week. Quiz night. Footy. Mates. It was something I looked forward to. Now quiz night has officially ended for the summer. It’s about to be shut down. One of my very few mates here is leaving. It’s not the best situation. But then I thought, this is a great chance to get out of my comfort zone and meet new people and hang out at new places. There are a lot of bars that I haven’t been to. In fact, I felt like I could do everything within a 10 minute walk from my place – I got comfortable real early. Hopefully, I can have some new experiences in the future and get off my lazy ass to go to new places.

Day 81

30/06/18

Woke up early yesterday morning so I decided to put on a film. The Dark Knight Rises. One of my favourite films of all time. The narrative. The music. The one-liners. The pit. My favourite scene is at the very end when Batman has to take the nuclear bomb over the bay to save the people and Jim Gordon wants Batman to reveal himself so Gotham knows who its hero is. ‘A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boys shoulders to let him know that the world hadn’t ended.’ And that’s when Jim realises it’s Bruce Wayne. So. Good.

Afterwards, I watched a bit of the footy. My boys Carlton were playing Port. Kade Simpson, a Carlton legend was playing his 300^th, so I had to show him some respect by putting on the TV. Only lasted until about half time before I called it quits on the game. We always have a great first quarter but it goes downhill from there. 

Taught three hours of classes. Back to back. I enjoy teaching public lectures because it’s usually very interactive and people are engaged.

Dinner at a hotpot place with a friend of mine. I was able to get a 20% discount using my long-expired student card, which was a bonus. Caught a Didi in a taxi. Business is rough. Taxi driver got me to download another app so he can earn an extra 2 RMB. It’s a struggle for taxi drivers. Their business is being eaten up by the ride sharing apps. On the way home, it just started bucketing down with rain. I had the World Cup to look forward to. France v Argentina was a cracking game. 4-3. Lots of goals, lots of drama. Had a two hour break after the game until the next one so I started rewatching Suits and realised how good it is. Uruguay vs Portugal. Fell asleep half way through only to wake up 2-1. Messi and Ronaldo both out of the World Cup tonight. Shows that it’s truly a team game and one man can’t do it all.  

Day 77-80

26.06.18 - 30.06.18

I'm unable to recall in detail what happened during these days. I'll give it my best shot.

I had some classes. My Wednesday class - I just chilled with my classmates because we had nothing to cover and they have a test next week that I have 'helped' them prepare for. My Thursday class is declining in numbers every week and this week, my class was all females. The class is at 530pm to 730pm so people tend to be more disengaged and tired. We decided that the book is super uninteresting and instead, I'll show a movie or TV show and we can analyse that for the next class to make it a bit more exciting.

There was a funeral proceeding for Helen two days after I found out. I decided not to attend. It was still too raw for me. I will honour her in my own way when I'm ready. I went to get a haircut in the same area as Helen's place but I couldn't get myself to walk into her neighbourhood.

Some time in between, I started learning how to cook some Chinese cuisine from Baidu. My goal is to be able to cook some decent dishes for when my mum comes down in a few months.

I also went to a popular bookstore called Libraire Avant-Garde on Guangzhou Road near Nanjing University. It's located in an old carpark, and has a pretty cool vibe about it in terms of interior design. Although every book was in Chinese, I couldn't have left this bookstore without buying a book. Luckily, I found the business and economics section and found a book called from 'Made in China to Created in China'. This was a topic that I was deeply interested in. The rebalancing of China's economy from a low-cost manufacturing country to a knowledge-based economy. It might take me a whole year to read this book but I have to start somewhere right?