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12月28日 Things Will Get Better and Better: from SJETI to EFSChanging jobs in China has been exceptionally stressful. I, along with all the other foreign teachers, left the Shanghai Jazz English Training Institute ("NewBeat") after very bad experiences with the school, including dishonest and abusive management. For an evaluation of Jazz as a a place to work, click here: EVALUATION. Carolyn has kept reassuring me by saying, "Don't worry, things will get better and better". Here is a list of steps we've had to take so far:
1. Update my resume
2. Apply to various schools, including EFS (The French School of Shanghai)
3. Attend job interviews, including EFS
4. Teach a demonstration class for EFS
5. Accept an employment offer from EFS
6. Find a new apartment close to one of the shuttle bus stops of busses going to EFS
Snags: When I waited for the bus the first day of work, it didn't show up. I had to take a taxi to Qingpu District (far away) and saw my ex-girlfriend waiting to cross the street (ouch!). I asked the bus coordinator. He said the bus leaves on the other side of the street but that this bus was full. I tried anyway the next day. Luckily there are still a couple of seats available.
7. Pay three months' rent plus a damage deposit equal to one-months' rent and sign a one-year contract for the new apartment
8. Move into the new apartment
9. Fix up some things
Buy new washing machine, fix the water heater, uninstall extra bar in closet, install new shower-head, install bars on which to hang laundry, and install ADSL.
10. Jump through all the hoops my previous school (Shanghai Jazz English Training Institute or SJETI) asked of me in order to obtain a letter of reference from them (EFS requires it in order to get me a new work permit).
This included: finishing out the three-months' notice they required for voiding the contract, teaching classes to the best of my ability, filling out classes taught and observed sheets and statistical reports, completing evaluation forms for the classes taught at Ke Ji Kindergarten (where I was contracted out), write a summary of the semester, write tips for the new teacher replacing me, return all books, graphics, and CDs to the school, organize my desk for the new teacher, return the keys of my apartment to them (they rented our old apartment for me), and give them my passport so they could cancel my work visa and residence permit in exchange for a tourist visa.
11. Make peace with the managers of the SJETI
I was informed that the managers were "very upset" that I was leaving. It's ironic because, in China, if employers like you, they want to keep you and, therefore, won't recommend you to others if you leave. I wrote a nice letter for the supervisor and gave her a gift. I wrote a card for the manager thanking him for everything and inviting him for dinner. He didn't take me up on the offer but I saw him the last day of work and we shook hands.
12. Get my last months' salary from SJETI, Passport back with tourist visa, and recommendation letter
They would not give me my last month's salary until I jumped through all the hoops mentioned above. They deducted the cost of the tourist visa and some money for repairs and bills from the old apartment. Fortunately it didn't turn out to be too much money. I asked for a two-month tourist visa to give time for my new school to process my new work permit. But I received only a one-month (actually it's more like 3-weeks) tourist visa which expires Jan. 14th. The recommendation letter was pretty good and they made some positive comments about me.
We're out of the thick of it. The steps still needed to take are as follows:
1. Visit the local police station to obtain a letter certifying my living in the new apartment (the new school needs this in order to get me a new residence permit).
2. Extend my tourist visa (expiring one-week after I commence work again after the holidays doesn't allow my new school enough time to get my residence permit to replace the tourist visa. Either they have to extend it or us).
3. Sign the contract for working at the new school. (As it's a French school, the contract is in that language. I noticed that I am referred to as Madame (so &so) in the contract. Madame, in French means Mrs., so I have to get them to change that before I'm gonna sign it!)
4. Obtain a police certificate from Canada. (The new school requires a document stating that I have no criminal record. I will have to figure out how to get one of these).
That's it! Once those steps are taken, and I hopefully get a new work permit from China, it's just a matter of settling in to my new life. I also have to brush up on my French. I took French from Grades 6 to 12 but, in those days, in Vancouver, it was just learning grammar and verb conjugations; I can't really speak the language and even the French I learned in school is pretty rusty as it's been years. The French school is concerned but I assured them I would work hard to improve it. I will write about EFS and my new job later. 12月25日 Quote for the Festive Season"Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of oppression. Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a home for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body of mankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge, a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility."
—Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings, CXXX
Canadian Jazz Legend Oscar Peterson Dead at 82Mon Dec 24, 4:55 PM
By Jeffrey Jones
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Oscar Peterson, who sat atop the world of jazz piano for decades with his driving two-handed swing, technical wizardry and rapid-fire solos, has died, a friend of the musician said on Monday. He was 82.
One of jazz's most recorded musicians, both as leader and accompanist, Peterson rose from working-class beginnings in Montreal -- where his father let him pursue music only if he promised to be "the best" -- to become a major influence on generations of top-flight musicians.
"He was very shy, very down to earth. You didn't know you were with a world musician by any means," said Hazel McCallion, a friend and the mayor of Mississauga, Ontario, a Toronto suburb where Peterson lived.
McCallion said that Peterson died late on Sunday and that she was informed by Peterson's family. CBC Television said he died at home of kidney failure.
Since blasting onto the world stage with a famous appearance at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1949, the beefy high school dropout amassed armfuls of honorary degrees and awards, including a 1997 Grammy for Lifetime Achievement and an International Jazz Hall of Fame Award.
Canada made him a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor, as well as the first living Canadian to be depicted on a stamp.
Peterson kept an exhaustive touring schedule throughout his career with groups featuring such players as bassist and longtime collaborator Ray Brown, drummer Ed Thigpen and guitarist Herb Ellis.
Peterson took a break from performing in the early 1990s after a stroke that weakened his left hand, but resumed some performances after two years. Even with a weak left hand, critics said he outshone many pianists with two good ones.
'I HAD GREAT BELIEF'
Peterson was born on August 15, 1925, the fourth of five children of a Canadian Pacific Railway porter who played piano. The family lived in Little Burgundy, a black enclave in Montreal, where Peterson's elder sister, Daisy, gave her siblings their first piano lessons.
Musicians Teddy Wilson and Nat "King" Cole were among early influences. When Peterson was a teenager his father played him a recording of Art Tatum -- the lightning-fast pianist to whom Peterson would later be compared -- which intimidated him so much he stayed away from the piano for a month.
At 14, he began performing for radio and played in a school band that included trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.
His career on the rise, Peterson asked his father if he could drop out of school. The elder Peterson said he would not "let him leave high school to be a jazz piano player. You have to be the best, there is no second best."
He took it to heart.
"When I started I had great belief, and there were quite a few bruises and disappointments along the way, but I never lost the belief," he told Reuters in 1999.
Peterson famously got his big break in the late 1940s when impresario and record producer Norman Granz was in a taxi en route to the Montreal airport, with the radio tuned to a live show featuring Peterson's trio. Granz demanded the cabbie make a beeline to the nightclub, where he met Peterson.
Soon afterward Granz brought him to New York for one of his "Jazz at the Philharmonic" concerts, a showcase for such stars as Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. Peterson stepped into the big time with a duet with bassist Brown.
"His career just accelerated from that point (1949) on," said jazz pianist and composer Joe Sealy. "He'll be probably most remembered as just an absolutely exquisite and amazing jazz piano player."
TECHNIQUE VERSUS EMOTION
He became a regular session player in the 1950s for Granz's Verve Records while leading trios, first with bass and guitar, and later with drummers such as Thigpen, Louis Hayes, Bobby Durham and Martin Drew.
Accolades followed him everywhere, but Peterson always had to fend off some critics who believed his technical prowess outweighed his ability to express emotion on the keyboard.
"Technique is something you use to make your ideas listenable," he once told jazz writer Len Lyons. "You learn to play the instrument so you have a musical vocabulary, and you practice to get your technique to the point you need to express yourself, depending on how heavy your ideas are."
Among his many recordings, he once cited his 1962 album "Night Train," with Brown and Thigpen, and a 1964 ode to his native land, "Canadiana Suite," as his favorites.
Peterson could also be a social activist. In the 1980s, he spearheaded a campaign to convince Canadian advertisers to make television commercials that better represented minorities.
(Additional reporting by Natalie Armstrong)
Reuters/Nielsen 12月21日 CRIA Certification AwardsWhen a recording album, whether in vinyl, cassette, or CD format, sells 50,000 units in Canada, The Canadian Recording Industry Association, or CRIA, awards it with "Gold" certification. When it sells 100,000 units, it is awarded "Platinum" certification. And when it sells 1 million units, it is awarded "Diamond" certification.
The awards began in the year 1975. Since then, 96 albums have attained "Diamond" status, 21 of which are albums by Canadian artists. And, since 1975, 10 albums have attained "2 X Diamond" status (selling at least 2 million copies in Canada).
The Ten "2 X Diamond" albums (in chronological order of award date) are as follows:
Michael Jackson's Thriller (1984)
The Eagles Greatest Hits 1971-75 (1987)
Fleetwood Mac's Rumors (1995)
Led Zeppelin IV (1995)
Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell (1995)
Pink Floyd The Wall (1995)
Shania Twain The Woman In Me (1999)
Shania Twain Come On Over (2000)
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon (2003)
Shania Twain Up (2004)
As you can see, three of them are from one Canadian artist—Shania Twain. The 21 albums from Canadian artists certified Diamond in Canada are as follows:
Bryan Adams Reckless (1985)
Corey Hart Boy In The Box (1986)
Alannah Myles Alannah Myles (1990)
Bryan Adams Waking Up The Neighbours (1992)
Celine Dion The Colour Of My Love (1994)
Tom Cochrane Mad Mad World (1995)
Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill (1996)
Various Artists Oh What A Feeling (1996)
Celine Dion Falling Into You (1996)
Celine Dion Let's Talk About Love (1997)
Celine Dion Celine Dion (1998)
Sarah Mclachlan Surfacing (1998)
The Tragically Hip Up To Here (1999)
Shania Twain The Woman In Me (1999) (2 X Diamond)
Shania Twain Come On Over (2000) (2 X Diamond)
Amanda Marshall Amanda Marshall (2000)
Barenaked Ladies Gordon (2000)
Our Lady Peace Clumsy (2001)
Avril Lavigne Let Go (2003)
Shania Twain Up (2004) (2 X Diamond)
The Tragically Hip Fully Completely (2007)
Here's a bit of trivia. The first album to obtain Diamond Certification in Canada was Fleetwood Mac's Rumors in 1978. The first album by a Canadian artist to go Diamond in Canada was Bryan Adams' Reckless in 1985. The first album in Canada to go 2 X Diamond was Michael Jackson's Thriller in 1984. The first album by a Canadian artist to go 2 X Diamond in Canada was Shania Twain's The Woman in Me in 1999.
For more information about the CRIA, visit their site: http://www.cria.ca/index.php.
For certification awards information: http://www.cria.ca/cert.php.
For a searchable database of awards: http://www.cria.ca/cert_db_search.php. 12月18日 Chinese Holidays DebateChina debates new holiday schedule By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
Wed Nov 21, 12:13 PM ET
BEIJING - Stuck in a crowd of about 200 other tourists, Zhong Jian and her friends waited for an hour to buy tickets for a boat cruise down the scenic Li River before giving up. Their problem: scheduling their trip during the May national holidays.
"Every place we went, we saw so many people," said Zhong, a 24-year-old travel agent. Finally, they got the ride by soliciting help from a local driver, who used his connections. "It was chaos."
As China becomes more prosperous, its people are traveling more on their vacations — and overwhelming the facilities. The resulting public backlash is prompting the government to rethink its tightly regulated national holiday policy.
Most Chinese cannot take a break when they want. Rather, the government has set three weeks a year as national holidays. Factories and offices shut down — giving many workers time off they might otherwise never get.
But putting so many of the country's 1.3 billion people on the move at one time is causing a huge national headache.
Under a proposal issued earlier this month, the government suggested paring the weeklong May break to one day and making three new one-day holidays out of traditional celebrations including grave-sweeping day, the dragon boat festival and the mid-autumn festival.
The plan has set off a lively debate in the state-run media. Some hail the changes as a boost for traditional culture and others say the change isn't enough. They call for the system to be scrapped completely in favor of letting people choose their own holidays.
The holiday reform debate "indicates that China's becoming a more normal country. They don't have to micromanage everyone's vacations," said Arthur Kroeber, director of Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economics research firm.
Changes in holidays are another measure of how the country's economic modernization is remaking Chinese society. After coming to power, communist China's founders eliminated many traditional festivals in an attempt to engineer a break with what they considered the feudal past.
In 1999, with the economy limping and ordinary Chinese hoarding their earnings in banks, the government decided that longer vacations would encourage people to spend money. The Lunar New Year, Labor Day (May 1) and National Day (Oct. 1) breaks were lengthened to full weeks called "Golden Weeks."
Travel spending hit 14 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) during that year's October break, according to government figures. In 2007, tourists spent 64.2 billion yuan ($8.6 billion) in the same period, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The surge translates into jammed planes, trains and buses, overbooked hotels and damage to historic and natural sites. Travelers overrun popular destinations such as the Great Wall, Beijing's Forbidden City and sacred Mount Tai in eastern China.
Fed up, many middle-class Chinese are traveling abroad over the three Golden Weeks to avoid the hordes at home.
Meanwhile, a growing number of companies are staggering breaks, even though the law requires them to pay employees three times their daily salaries to work during holidays to eliminate production shutdowns.
Economists have cheered the new government plan as a good first step toward alleviating congestion and pushing tourism companies to improve service.
"The Chinese people are beginning to respect Chinese traditions again," said Wang Qiyan, director of the Research Center of China's Leisure Economy at Beijing's Renmin University.
Ultimately, some experts argue, the government should stop ordering people when to take a break and instead mandate a paid-vacation system, as many other countries have.
"The current plan is not an ideal one yet," Wang said.
The changes could be put into place next year, state media has said. Authorities have said that they will incorporate suggestions from businesses and the public in the final plan.
One newspaper, the aggressive Southern Metropolis Daily, criticized the government for maintaining undue sway over how people spend their leisure time. It called for a paid-vacation system and blamed today's problems on policy-making "without discussion and communication."
"The Golden Weeks were the result of a decision of merely the government, instead of the agreement of the public," the paper said in an editorial.
But not everyone supports the proposed changes.
At least 21 media outlets have sent a letter to the State Council, China's cabinet, to protest the proposal, saying that employees need all three weeklong holidays to get proper rest from work.
Zhong, the travel agent, said staggered holidays would make traveling harder to coordinate with friends or family, because now everyone has the same days off. She predicted crowds would balloon further during the two remaining one-week holidays.
"All three holidays are already so crowded," she said. "If they remove one, it'll be even worse," she said.
___
Associated Press Writer Xi Yue contributed to this report. 12月15日 The New Pad IICarolyn and I were unsatisfied with several things about our new apartment and arranged changes.
1. The washing machine had a poor spin cycle leaving the clothes drenched when finished the wash. Carolyn and I went to the shop "Best Buy" in Xu Jia Hui to choose a new washing machine. We found the Whirlpool brand and picked one up for around RMB 1,500.
2. The closet in the main bedroom was in a strange way. There were three bars installed for hanging clothes. If clothes were hung from the top bar, their dangling free would be interrupted by the middle bar, pinching the clothes halfway. If hung from the middle bar, the bottom bar would interfere. We called the landlord and he had a handyman remove the middle bar.
3. There was nowhere to hang clothes to dry. As electricity costs an arm and a leg in the city, most people don't bother buying clothes dryers. When we moved in, we took our bed with us that we'd bought prior to the wedding. The landlord disassembled the apartment bed and crammed it into the cubbyhole off the kitchen meaning that we couldn't hang our clothes there. We had him install some bars onto the ceiling of the nook off the living room.
4. The hot water wasn't working properly, so we had the landlord get someone to repair it. He also installed a new showerhead.
5. We got the phone company to set up an ADSL internet connection.
12月5日 The New Pad II thought I'd introduce my new apartment in a more practical / detailed way for those interested in learning about what kind of living conditions and lifestyle exist here. Here are some interesting facts about residences here:
1. Chinese citizens are not allowed to purchase or own land. All land belongs to the state.
2. The vast majority of homes in Shanghai are apartments, not houses.
3. Apartment buildings are not owned by property firms who rent out the various suites in the building; rather, each suite is owned by an individual landlord. Rent is therefore paid not to the building but to the landlord of the individual suite.
4. Most suites for rent are furnished.
5. The vast majority of residences are not insulated, and there is no central heating in them in cities south of the Yangtze River.
6. Hot water is produced by gas heaters. As the water flows through, the water is heated. Most stoves are gas, not electric.
7. When Chinese buy a place, it is usually unfinished. They like to finish it themselves (e.g. pick out and install the floor boards, lights, counters, etc.)
There are three photos below. One is of a typical wall-mounted air-conditioner, one is of an upright air-conditioner (to the right of the TV), and one is of the gas water heater.
12月2日 Miss China and Miss World - Zhang Zi Lin (张梓琳)Zhang Zi Lin or 张梓琳 was tired of playing the classic board game Monopoly and getting a mere $10 for winning second prize in a beauty contest. She decided to go for something a bit more illustrious. She became Miss China and now has won the Miss World pageant. Personally, I think she's not bad looking, but Carolyn would take the cake.
12月1日 Changing JobsFour years and nine months of working for the same outfit - with a lot more downs than ups - has come to an end. They will not give me my salary for the month of November until I give them my passport so they can cancel my residence permit and give me a tourist visa at MY expense. The drama is not over yet. Cancelling my work visa is not enough for them. Additionally, only two days before I left, they emailed me a long list of things I need to do as well, including reports and evaluations of classes. Only after I do those things will they give me my salary for November (minus the cost of the tourist visa). And if they decide that my former apartment has not been left in good condition (very subjective), they will decide how much additional money to deduct from my salary.
I will be commencing work at the new (international) school on Monday. And for the first week I do not have to teach classes, as I with fellow colleagues will undergo a week of training. The following week is the last day of classes before the three-week paid Christmas break. So I just have to teach classes one week for the month of December and get paid a full months' salary, which is more money than most Chinese make in a year. |
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