Pregnancy

So yesterday one of my students pointed at my belly and asked; "Will you have a baby?"

The Dark Tower - Spoiler warning

I finally finished reading my Dark Tower now and like it was King's tower I feel like it was my own too in some ways. After following the gunslinger through his adventure I was a little bit disappointed at the ending, but not surprised, but like King says himself, if you only read it for the end you are a fool and if you enjoyed the story you would do better to stop reading (listening) here. It really was a wheel, or I would rather call it a pendulum, the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, was in my opinion the best one - it is from there I got the idea to do a well known story out of context, Wolves of the Calla is after all a the John Sturges' Magnificent Seven out of context and the Magnificent Seven is itself Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai out of context - after that the characters seems to be leaving in the same order he drew them, even though Eddie actually dies first he doesn't leave the story until Roland comes back to his world, and I also want to argue that Patric is Jake so like he was drawn twice he also leaves twice. And of course when the pendulum is down it starts swinging up again, forever.

I also want to argue that The Dark Tower could be Stephen King himself, as an author, the world of 19 is his conscious, the world of 99 is subconscious (and that is why it is so different from the real world), and all the other levels of the tower is his imagination. At the point where he is almost killed the tower is about to fall but he is saved and the tower and the beams start healing, I guess the tear down on the beams is his own abuse of his body, drinking, smoking and not being healthy. Is abuse is the breakers.

Now the Harry Potter series are up, I feel like I'm not really up to date with the world when people start talking about Harry Potter, and I do like the movies so I'll give it a chance.

A story, which story? part 1 - the journey

The young mans life changed drastically when his godparents died in an attempt of the government to cover up one of it's mistakes. Both his parents had died when he was very young and he lived with is godparents and worked for them in the furthest reaches of the kingdom, by mere chance he was not home when the couple was brutally murdered and from then he was on his own and incidentally carrying the secret his godparents were murdered for.

Not knowing exactly what he is carrying he runs into an old hermit who turns out to be more than he looks and they embark on a journey that will take them through the worlds and lets them soar the heavens. They hire a lonely pirate to take them to a place where they are promised to find help, but when they arrive they find only ruins and soon they find themselves trapped in a fortress of doom where the evil dark wizard rules.

While attempting to escape the fortress they discover that the beautiful princess it held captive there and while the old hermit, whose name is for obvious reasons unpronounceable, meets his fate facing the dark wizard, for the hermit is also a wizard, the young man convinces the lonely pirate to help him free the beautiful princess. And as they finally leave the fortress behind them the young man sees his new friend and mentor die at the hands of the dark wizard.

Papa John's

Papa John's is an American pizza restaurant chain that just opened a restaurant here in Chengdu. So since the opening day was today Li Min, Aaron and I (Kelly was supposed to come too but she was apparently feeling sick, and a few other friends of Aaron's should have been there too but they went earlier) went there for dinner, a late dinner as it turned out.

In the afternoon Li Min tried to call them to reserve a table for the (at that time) four of us, but they were very reluctant to take any reservation for us but told her they would call her back, but of course they never did that so when we arrived at 7.30pm the places was already packed and we had to wait for 27 tables before we could get in. I had deliberately starved my self to the occasion and both Aaron and Li Min were really hungry too so we went next door to wait, in McDonald's.

We didn't eat very much, at least I didn't but Li Min managed to get full and I think Aaron had a bit too much too actually, and we spent a too long time there, too long being surprisingly short but I think most of the tables ahead of us had just given up because it didn't take much more than 30 minutes before we had nearly missed our chance to get a table, Li Min managed to argue us in though.

Once inside started the real problems; not so much trouble at first actually, mostly it was Li Min trying to get the most out of everything, which we eventually did and totally too. First was the issues about ordering; they had some special offer that day that we finally managed to order, like a half/half thing where you order two pizzas in one but they only had the discount for a mix of Hawaii and BBQ Chicken, then there was some special deal you could get for their special where they offered a free dessert to it, so we got that too but that on had mushrooms and black olives which we had to ask them to remove (you know I'm picky about that), which surprisingly turned out to be no problem since everything else was.

Then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally got our pizza, but no drinks (I had ordered Coke,Li Min Sprite and Aaron nothing, please take not).

So we finished the rather tiny 9" Hawaii-BBQ Chicken pizza and had to wait again, at this point we were rather thirsty though so we started asking for our drinks and at least I got my Coke rather quickly after that, but Li Min's Sprite seemed to linger somewhere so we kept asking for it. Suddenly there started showing up classes of water on our table and after some minor commotion and misunderstanding we managed to get a class of Sprite for Li Min, then we got another class of Sprite for Li Min that Aaron took and a few more glasses of water, that I got because my Coke was nearly out already by then.

After being confused for a while we finally got our second pizza and when we had almost finished that we got our second pizza again. Even though they were small it was kind of hard to finish the second pizza twice so I got half of it back with me home now. By this time my Coke was really finished so I turned to my water for refreshment but my water turned out to be another glass of Sprite, this really chocked me because Li Min had actually tried it and confirmed it was only water, MAGIC!

Now we only had two issues left: What happened to our dessert and will we have to pay twice for the pizza we got twice (actually we didn't get the same pizza twice but we have no idea which one was the right pizza and why we had gotten an extra). Li Min had worked really hard to get us some chicken wings for dessert; a while lot of issues about needing a commercial flyer for their promotion to get it, and she had managed to convince our waitress (who was really pretty by the way) to find one for us. So we had to ask for that a few times and then wait for it for a long while too, even though none of us really wanted it but she had so much fun doing that so we just let her at it.

Finally we actually didn't have to pay for the extra pizza, during all the commotion there I think no one knew about it, except the couple sitting next to us who saw us hiding the extra tablet we had gotten, this is also funny because when I got back home and was going to walk into my building I hear a loud grasp to my far left and when I turned I recognized the girl and realized it was the couple from the restaurant (I live about 10km from the restaurant). We finally got the chicken wings too and Li Min took them with her home, fighting with Aaron about who would not have them (I got away from that one since I had claimed the pizza already).

A forbidden topic

A whole lot is going on in Chengdu now, in all of China actually, but I think it can be felt here more than many other places. Let's just say that due to current events there is a heightened threat level and therefore a police presence that is not normal here in Chengdu; heavily armed police guard the main areas and there are not many places you can go without spotting a patrol car or two. My friend has also been told to be careful, there has actually been a murder just outside his school. Scary things, this is all I will say.

About time

I'm sorry that I haven't written in such a long time, to be honest there just wasn't anything going on at first and then I was really busy, and it is boring to write about nothing. Well the first two-three weeks after I came back I really didn't do much, work didn't begin until February 29th and until then I mostly slept, worked on my Procrastination game and chatted with friends back home (since I slept all day and was up all night I was suddenly on the same time schedule as Sweden, close to it at least). I did apply for some jobs but got really frustrated after a while since most schools and companies tended to ask where I was from and then never bothered to call back after I told them Sweden. I know I'm not a native speaker but I also know that most native speakers can't tell until I tell them or they really spend a lot of time with me.

I went out clubbing a few times too during this time but not many since I'm lacking the money needed to go out, mostly I just went out for dinner (breakfast that is) at McDonald's around 8 or 9 pm and had some snacks around midnight, the few times I did go out clubbing though was quite fun, mostly with Kevin. I did more things the first week I was back, Li Min's birthday for once and I also met and cooked with friends a few times, I baked bread two more times of which one was a total failure with dead baked bread and the other got a little burnt but was still decent, the last week I was basically home alone all the time though, slightly frustrated about work, bored of not doing anything and a little bit homesick.

But finally on Friday last week I started working, and it was a bliss despite how bothersome and annoying some of the kids are and can be. I have been trying to avoid working too much in kindergarten but since almost every serious school turns me down for being a non-native speaker I have to fall back on that, and I decided to help Starpoint (my old company) out until they find more full time teachers so this week my schedule was really full. I'm still getting paid by the hour though so more classes mean more money but I ended up with some gastric problems on Monday, which is of course and unfortunately my longest and therefor most prosperous day, and couldn't work that day. I still managed to get as much as 16 hours and approximately 2000kuai, which basically doubles last semesters salary.

Starpoint has found their full time teacher now so all those classes where only a one time deal, but I am still getting a lot of classes from Starpoint, still getting the long Mondays for example, Ivy,my "boss" at Starpoint, have some private deals with some schools also and I'm working for her with those, paying a bit better actually, I'm also working for another company which has contract with a kindergarten no more than 5 minutes walk from my home and finally a training school that is a bit far from my home but gives me enough classes with enough concentration in time to be worth it, all in all I will get eight or nine thousand per month this semester, but my free time is severely compromised because of this, and of course I'm still working too much with kindergartens.

The good thing about Jordan, the training school, is that it's quite close to Li Min's (Jane's) school, so I usually meet her for dinner, lunch or both the days I work there and hang out after, and twice now, both days I've been working there, have we ended up taking a late night massage when I have seen her. Last week we went to a place for a Thai massage, which ended up hurting like hell but they say it's good for you, and this week we went to the same place and had a Chinese foot massage, which was much nicer I think. The Thai massage covers more of the upper body though and I had a lot off aching muscles after my travelling (the backpacks were a little heavy) and this week I had strangely aching thighs and calves, so well right now I'm feeling really OK.

New week is coming up and I hope I can manage all these hours, it is more now that it was last semester but it is also more motivating when I get more money for the work, and that it is totally proportional, also I'm not going outside Chengdu as often and never as far as Da Yi and De Yang (like 1-2 hours transport one way).