To Show Them That It Can Be Done

A lot of students ask me how they can improve their oral English. Maybe they are looking for a miracle fix, but as we all know, there isn’t one! I say that they should practise English outside the classroom. They say they have no way to do so. I say try English corner. They say not enough foreigners go there. I say that they don’t necessarily need foreigners in order to improve their English, I say they could spend 10 minutes a day practising English with each other. They say they have no time. I say they could do it at lunch time. They say it is too strange to speak English with another Chinese person. Excuses, excuses, excuses! I say they need to get over it and just speak to each other.

They find this hard to grasp.

Today, I rang an Irish person I know, who is on her exchange year in Dalian. She is studying Chinese in Edinburgh. Guess what, we did start off speaking in English but it turned out that we used Chinese for maybe 90 percent of the whole conversation. Granted, it did feel a bit odd to speak Chinese with an Irish person where clearly we could have communicated better in English, but it was good practise for our oral Chinese and next time it won’t feel so strange! So, I guess I now have the proof that it can be done, so the students have no excuse for avoiding practising their English with each other!!

The Gig

The University’s guitar club put on its second guitar concert last Friday. This time they made posters and had the Irish contingent (Philip Dunne and myself) as a selling point!

The line-up this time differed slightly from the first gig. Last time they had a lot of classical and folk guitarists alongside the pop and rock college bands. This time it seemed to consist mostly of college bands. We were the third act to perform. I’d only half learned the words for Sweet Home Alabama that week, so the main thing that concerned me was that I might mess up some of the words. Well, in the end it worked out fine. Phil went out first and sang his uncensored version of Revolution by The Beatles. The whole of one of Phil’s engineering classes turned up to watch, and were cheering him on, shouting 菲利普加油 (fei-li-pu jia-you), or "come on Philip"!! Excellent!



I came on-stage and jibbered some shite in Chinese and we went into Sweet Home Alabama, which came off well. Most of them probably didn’t know the song, but since it was in the movie Forrest Gump, some of them might know it, since that movie was big in China. I did the ever-popular Country Roads by myself after that. I know some of them were singing along!


We finished off with Slide Away by Oasis. One of our favourites, although prob none of the students knew it! I think we got away with the whole thing without messing it up, so we were happy.

I think the highlight of the gig had to be a Chinese dude who was literally making his guitar sing. He wasn’t a student and I think he is famous in Dalian. I haven’t seen anyone that good up close before! His fingers moved so fast that they were a blur! Gave Jimi Hendrix a run for his money! Here's a vid of the guy in question:



I think the rest of the bands may have been college bands, but I had to leave early. If they give me a VCD like last time, I will slap it up on my YouTube site.

Moving House

The universlty has moved all the foreign teachers to a newly refurbished building. I moved today. Well, I am still in my old flat using the internet since the new one doesn’t have ADSL yet.

The speed at which the moving company operated was blinding. They had 3 or 4 removal guys and also some students to help out. In around 3 minutes, everything was gone from my apartment! The thing that struck me most was the way they transported the fridge! One guy lifted it onto another guy’s back and he carried it down the stairs like a tortoise with a big shell on his back:



Maybe it wasn’t so bad when moving my fridge. just 1 flight of stairs from my old apartment to the ground floor and my new apartment is on the ground floor so no climbing. I do know that 2 teachers moved from the 6th floor in the old building to the 6th floor in the new one! They removal guy must have been wrecked!

Anyway, the new apartments are quite nice. There is also a restaurant on the ground floor, which looks quite good. It has tablecloths, which puts it above the places I usually eat in!

Second DMU Guitar Gig

The university's guitar club will host another gig this Friday. This time the amount of foreign performers has doubled: i.e. there are 2 of us! Fellow Dubliner Philip Dunne will perform with me. We are going to do some tunes together and some solo. Decided on Slide Away (cos it’s noisy) and Sweet Home Alabama (cos maybe they might know it) together. Should be fun. I have decided not to do that soppy old Chinese song. I really should learn a cool Chinese song, but I don’t really know any!

That gig was good skit last time, so hopefully this time will be more fun and maybe my mic won’t get brewer’s droop this time!

Home For Christmas

Some good news: I hadn’t planned it but now I’m doing it! I’ll be heading back to Ireland for Christmas.

I wasn’t home last Christmas, and it would mean a lot to my family if I came home for Christmas this year, so I bought a ticket yesterday. I got it online on the KLM website. Nifty website guys! All of my family haven’t had Christmas together since 2003! My sister was in Australia in 2004 and I was in Taiwan last Christmas! So, it will be nice to get all the family together again!

At first it seemed a strange idea to go home after such a short time (I came back to China in August). I like my life here in Dalian and am quite happy, but it will be nice to go back for Christmas. Also, I can work on my beer gut again!! I’ll be able to drink decent Guinness and have all my old favourites: rashers and sausages, Supermac’s, curried chips, ham sandwiches, nice milk, (and the list goes on!)

On another totally unrelated note, the school are moving us into new apartments soon. I got a big one on the ground floor. The apartments are newly renovated. Some good things: newer, quieter, warmer apartment and handier for classes in the East Hill. Some bad things: not as convenient for the bus, classes in the West Hill and restaurants/shops. Lets see how it works out.

Thanks, But No Thanks!

Da Shan can breathe a sign of relief cos I ain’t doing that TV thing. When thy guys came to the university to recruit foreigners, they said they wanted us to maybe perform in some way (sing, dance, tell a joke, …) and talk about life in Dalian. That seemed fine to me. I know the song I can sing (The Moon Represents My Heart) is totally cliché, but at the moment, I don’t know any others!

Anyway, I went to a meeting about the show last night. The guy insisted on me coming at 5:30, which was impossible since I had class. I arrived after 6 and we were then made to wait over an hour while they talked about some other show. It then transpired that what they originally told us was not what the show was actually going to be! Now it was an infantile talk show themed around the ocean where they would ask us stupid questions and expected canned responses. Pretty much, they expected us to act like idiots for the pleasure of the host and audience! No thanks!

Not to worry, there might be another show in December, which would involve some singing!

By the way, after reading the comments made on the last post, I want to clear something up. I never had any intentions of being more famous than Da Shan. I was exaggerating. I don’t even want to be famous! I am not a fan of Da Shan but I admire his Chinese language skills and I hear he is adept in Chinese cross-talk humour. That indeed is a great achievement.

Watch Out Da Shan!

My mission to take over Da Shan’s throne has progressed to a new level. Two guys from the Dalian TV station were in our university the other day and they want me to go on TV to sing and speak Chinese!

I am not totally sure what the TV show is, but I heard that it will be on national TV (CCTV 4) as well as on the Dalian TV station.

Well, since I haven’t learned any more Chinese songs, I will have to sing the well-worn 月亮代表我的心 aka The Moon Represents My Heart. Hopefully I won’t mess the whole thing up and get tongue-tied, but if they keep their Chinese simple and clear I should be grand.

If I get the video of the performance, I will post it up on my YouTube site.