Blog 2It's hard to tell how long I've been in Chongqing (a nicer night picture here, where you can't see the murky colour of the River Jialing) - my notes tell me it's only been under 48 hours but the breakfasts alone seem to have been going on for years. Nothing wrong with dumplings, spicy noodles, rice porridge and a boiled egg, is there?. Just the thing to get you going at 07:15... "You mustn't go to work on an empty stomach", that's what my um used to say.
I mean eggs, how different can they be. They're in a shell so the effect of hard boiling them shouldn't be too great, surely, no matter how you do it? And yet, yes, they are different. Perhaps it's what the chicken are fed on which makes the difference. I had a Ukrainian step-father at one point and he seemed to swear by the milk from Safeways. Told me it was the absolute best for making yogurt. Other brands and other country's milk just didn't measure up, and he should know. He would spend days with milk in various containers letting it grow in myriad ways, as an alchemist of yore would with buckets of urine trying to discover the secret of gold, to find the secret of good yogurt. He believed it was all about the grass the cows ate. A noble quest, no mistake, but one which had the associated problem of smell. Rather like those alchemists of old, again. Anyway, the point being perhaps the chickens' diet has some extreme effect on the flavour of the eggs. I would only be logical, wouldn't it? Those with an agricultural background reading this, be sure to send your comments / ideas.
The photo to the right shows the party I'm travelling with (l-r: Nick, Piao, Winnie, Ellen and Nick). Winnie is the organisational genius behind the trip and manages to co-ordinate everything, her intelligence and capabilities seeming to be in inverse proportion to her size, with both her and Piao attaining a joint mass similar to that of your average western 'Joe'. We'd all be quite lost without them as they have the money and the language ability. They're also jolly friendly and nice. Although I did manage to go to the local shop and buy a vegetable-based snack yesterday - I thought I'd done something wrong by the way the little old woman was shouting at me, but it just turns out that I was being asked if I needed any help. Just can't tell, really, can you? But I'm fortunate to be with trainers who've been out here for longer than me and have a better idea about what's going on. They all look very pleasant, don't they?
But it's not all sightseeing and buying of vegetable-based snacks. There's work to be done and somebody needs to do it. Yesterday we popped into the training college at the 
university to just make sure everything was set up for today's sessions. It seemed that all the copying had been done as requested and the rooms had computers and projectors as arranged. They worked as well. However, upon closer inspection, the copies, of which not all were present, were arranged in the wrong order. Just a simple collating error, really. So it just meant re-sorting them. All 11,500 pieces. As Blur famously sang, "Bang there goes another day, where it went I cannot say", only I can say - it went sorting paper. Luckily, our band of roving trainers were able to enlist four local students to assist. Without them, I would've reached for the JD long before I finally did. So the picture here shows one of five stacks of paper which was to be sorted and stapled. Oh how the simplest of instructions can go wrong.
And as for power point and computers, I'll just say that after five minutes of being switched on I had a technician in the room for the rest of the session replacing the whole computer. Let's all be thankful for chalk and a chalkboard, eh? Been years since I've used one. And handouts, well, maybe next time... Next blog I hope to tell you about the hotel. Bet you can't wait!
university to just make sure everything was set up for today's sessions. It seemed that all the copying had been done as requested and the rooms had computers and projectors as arranged. They worked as well. However, upon closer inspection, the copies, of which not all were present, were arranged in the wrong order. Just a simple collating error, really. So it just meant re-sorting them. All 11,500 pieces. As Blur famously sang, "Bang there goes another day, where it went I cannot say", only I can say - it went sorting paper. Luckily, our band of roving trainers were able to enlist four local students to assist. Without them, I would've reached for the JD long before I finally did. So the picture here shows one of five stacks of paper which was to be sorted and stapled. Oh how the simplest of instructions can go wrong.
