The positives...and the negatives

Hi Guys, me again. First off, I want to say thanks for all the comments. I really appreciate all of them and its great to hear from you guys. Its now just under a month until I finish at the Uni and my time has just flown by. Hard to believe where its all gone.

I've got exams in 3 weeks time, and you'll be pleased to know that I've been spending most of my waking hours in the library (apart from my daily hours of Sopranos of course).

I took part in a fashion show on Sunday night, which was part of the Uni's arts show. The whole thing was a comedy of errors!! To give you guys an idea, there were loads of badly choreographed dances, and Chinese people singing English songs very poorly. As for the fashion show, there were missed cues - inevitable I suppose, seeing as we had been briefed only about half an hour beforehand. The finale was everyone singing We Are the World - a very amusing/cringeworthy night from a spectator's point of view!!


As you would expect with exam time, everything is quietening down... However, I do have two anecdotes to tell you.


I went to the bank on Friday (Bank of China). For those of you who don't know the background, I lost my wallet a couple of months back. Since then, I haven't had a debit card, and hence I opened a Bank of China account. Now transferring funds should be a simple process, with the introduction of internet banking and all. However, there is one rule for the rest of the world and another for China.
The process involves phoning HSBC, giving a Swift Code number for my Chinese account (China doesn't believe in Sort Codes and Account Numbers). Anyway, the money takes 6 days to transfer but once it has transferred, I have to go to the bank to convert the money (which arrives in dollars) to RMB.

Now unlike most Chinese institutions, the banks have quite a sensible system. They require you to take a numbered ticket and wait until your number is called.
Being a Friday, there were about 200 people in the queue in front of us. So we took a ticket and went for a nice leisurely lunch, anticipating that there would be only about 30 people in front of us when we returned.

We got back about 2 hours later and were shocked to see that there was still 150 people in front of us.
At this point we kicked up a fuss, and the Chinese worker (in typical style) nodded, raised his hands and talked nonsensical English. I was worried that we were going to be at the bank until the next week.
So I was shocked to see this worker return two minutes later, and demand to see our passports.
We showed them to him, and were promptly taken to a "VIP window".
So simply by having a British passport, we were able to pull rank on over 150 Chinese people waiting in the queue.
Fair? Hardly.. but it shows the power of having a British passport, and I wasn't complaining.






This time last week, I told you about hayfever being my arch-enemy. I retract that statement because I have discovered a more formidable foe........ mosquitoes!
These little pests have descended on Ningbo in the past week in their millions.
Its not so much the biting that I mind, because us Asians don't tend to get bitten that much.
They do, however, have the most annoying habit of buzzing right in your ear.

And they don't do it at regular intervals: they wait just until you're falling asleep and then come and make that really sinister buzzing sound. Some nights I haven't got to sleep until 5am because of this irritating tendency of theirs.

This was driving me insane, and on several occassions, I was contemplating giving up my non-violent principles and taking a flip-flop to these mosquitoes.

However, I stayed true to my principles and yesterday, I bought some incense and decided to smoke them out of my roome instead!!

So far, this tactic has worked and hopefully it will continue.


Anyways, time to sign off now. Just want to wish everyone lots of luck for the exams.


Take care,

and I'll be home sooner than you think,



Nihal

Back with a Vengeance

First of all, I have to apologise profusely for the absence of my blog over the past three weeks. There is no excuse for it whatsoever, other than that my exams are coming up in a few weeks, and also that Summer has started in Ningbo, and I have better things to do than stay cooped up over a computer screen (and yes, I do know that these two statements contradict each other).





Along with the arrival of Summer and the 30+ degree heat, my arch-enemy has also returned - Hayfever! Today, I recorded 7 sneezes in a row, and I have a feeling its only going to get worse!





I'm sure that you've heard enough about my health issues! Anyway these past two weeks have been pretty uneventful, but I'll give you a brief synopsis of what I've done.

• We've had one barbecue, when we were moved twice by security, and then it poured with rain. An unadultarated success!

• In the one of the campus restaurants, I discovered an aubergine dish that I actually like. For those of you who don't know, aubergine is one of my most detested dishes but this Chinese aubergine was divine.

• There has been another couple of visits to the Chinese whisky bar - always good for a laugh.

• Another visit to both the Lebanese and Indian restaurants, the former being very satisfying, the latter less so.

• I witnessed Arsenal give Man Utd the Premier League title in a distinctly average match against Chelsea.

• Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov shared the Player of the Month trophy!!

• Sopranos continues to improve and improve - just when I thought it couldn't get any better!

• I have been roped into doing a fashion show this Sunday, dressed in Chinese clothes. If you bribe me with enough money, I may upload some photos!!

• Basketball and football have both come to a grinding halt - due to the iminent arrival of exams and essay deadlines.

• This Saturday, I will be making an excursion to Siming mountain - should be fun!

Sorry about the tedium of this blog, but I have a treat for you. I recently wrote an article for one of Nottingham Uni's many student magazines. Bear in mind that this is one of the Uni's more low-brow publications, so my piece was short, and sweet.

“You’re studying Management and What??” was normally the response that I received, when telling people that I had chosen to study a language spoken by over 1 billion people. Anyway, that was almost two years ago now; and this semester, I have enjoyed the quirks of studying Chinese by being able to come and study at Nottingham’s new Ningbo Campus.

The first thing I realised, upon entering the country, was how little Mandarin I actually knew. My numerous absences from my 9am Mandarin class in the First Year had meant that I now lacked the ability to tell the taxi drivers left or right. China is a country where English has not yet had a major influence, and the result is that a “Hello” and a grin is all you will get from most Chinese people.

Ningbo is a city in the south of China, about 3 hours from Shanghai, and it is supposedly one of the country’s smaller cities, despite having around 40 KFCs and a population of several million people. I am staying in the International Halls of the University of Nottingham’s Ningbo Campus, with around 10 other students that have come out from our uni, and other people from around the world.

Despite sharing a name, the University of Nottingham Ningbo is a far cry from the Campus in the UK. At present, this campus has less than 1500 students, is only 18 months old and only offers a handful of courses. A normally quiet campus turns into a ghost town at 11 pm, when the curfew for Chinese students comes into play.

Being international students though, we take full advantage of the lack of curfew, and one of our favourite clubs is the local Chinese whisky bar. Here, you buy bottles of whisky and green tea, and then play a strange drinking game with dice, all the while surrounded by green lasers, Chinese techno music and drunken Chinese business men, trying to practise their English. It’s a unique place.

Aside from this, I have experienced some culture shocks, such as the fact that the Chinese have no aversion to staring at you – even when you know they’re doing so; Chinese people also have no inhibitions about spitting anywhere, be it on the street, in a shop or a restaurant.

All in all, I think that despite all its differences, China is a country that I have fallen in love with, and that I would definitely love to come back to. I can also say that my grasp of the Chinese language has improved greatly and that I am now as good as the Karate Kid with my chopsticks (although I haven’t tried catching a fly yet).

I know that this article barely scratches the surface of such a major country, but staying in China is an experience that I would recommend to anyone.

Revision is calling, so I'd better sign off now. But look forward to images of me dressed in Chinese clothing, and on my excursion to the mountain.

Miss you all lots, not long until I'm home now.

Nihal