Baoji is finally OVER!

I've been in Baoji for the last month, doing things like promotion classes, flyering, scheduling, unscheduling, rescheduling & signing up tons of new students for the new term. This is the gist of my job.

I'm basically the harbinger of doom, the enforcer & the company hitman if need be.

If I come to a school, it basically means something got seriously fucked up. Not everytime, but most of the time. Case in point, Baoji. The former manager managed to single-handedly fire just about the entire english speaking staff. The two that were either too nervous to say anything, or just didn't speak English, survived the mass cuts. That same manager has since then been demoted back to Teacher, and eventually fired from that role as well. Hence I enter the scene.

My job this time had me assume the role of manager, get the staff back, get the students back & rebuild the school's reputation with both current students & their parents as well as new students & parents. The Chinese manager, Erin Lv (sounds like Lu) when I first got here, was back in her hometown getting things ready for her marriage. The rest of the staff was basically back with the firing of the former manager, so that was easy. The hard part came with trying to convince them that not all foreign managers are ready to can the Chinese at the drop of a qipao. Fortunately the staff here are excellent, hard workers who honestly want the school to succeed, and Erin's a smart person who knows what it takes to get this place whipped back into shape. That made convincing the parents & students all the more easier.

We hit every local school with thousands of flyers, organized promotion classes to get the people in the door, collected some old debts from other schools & basically pulled people off the streets and threw them right through the 2nd floor window to get them into the promo class.

The hard work is starting to pay off. Numbers are up, the promo classes are filling, and best of all, the new foreign manager is here now, and THAT means I can finally get back to Grace & Shanghai once again.

By the way, THIS is a qipao. Imagine your girl wearing (or dropping) this!

Censorship Part Two

Just an addendum to a previous story I posted awhile back on China Censorship. The new Google China supposedly has some chilling differences in its display of searches for the Chinese market. From the weblog of Tim Self (Self-Centered in 中国):

Google.CN

Everyone else's Google

Some of this is actually blocked here in china. If you can't get to the sites, try www.anonymouse.org.

More on Kathy Rapp and the Gay Marriage thing

My recent news article on www.warrenpa.us regarding Rep. Kathy Rapp may have sounded a bit harsh to Rep. Kathy Rapp. I fully support what I wrote, though perhaps it was more for here & not the front page of Warren's biggest website (so I like to think anyways...)

As a disclaimer, I'm hardly against Rapp. For the most part, she does good for Warren, and I'd like to think she has Warren's best intentions in mind. But to further what I wrote in that article, I do believe legislation such as what she's proposing slowly rips our sort of democracy apart, piece by piece. The more rights we take away from people we may see as different, the more rights will be taken away from us by people who think we're different.

If it was your own son or daughter, would you sign any legislation to limit their rights as individuals? Or how about one of your co-workers who may not be telling you the whole story about themselves? Perhaps it's the couple gentlemen or ladies sitting at the next table over at Perkins having a nice chat about the Google Censorship issue in China. Who's rights are you willing to take away merely by signing a petition?

Perhaps a friendly reminder to those who think American Democracy is the best thing after sliced bread, the Greeks are famed for coming up with the concept of democracy. For the most part, if the Ancient Greek society were here today, we'd probably label them a country full of gay pedophiles.