Snippets of Life

Donkey Meat

These were my words the other day when Rob asked “What are you eating?”. Ruth, one of the students we bbq with, bought us some donkey meat to try awhile back and I finally tried it. I must admit that I was hesitating because... well, it's not usually in my meat group. It came in a vacuum pack and had been stewed so was very tender. It actually didn't taste bad, sort of like Spam. Don thinks it tastes a bit like corned beef. Shake a bit of Tabasco on it, put in on some bread and you have a rather tasty snack.

La La La

Now that my singing voice has been unleashed, I’m preparing for my next performance. NOT! As many of you have advised, I won't be quitting my day job. I am however trying to learn Chinese by singing along with some popular songs. I advise my students all the time that this is a great method for them to study English so why not practice what I preach.

In order to pronounce the lyrics though, I have had to learn pinyin. It’s a method of writing Chinese with the Roman alphabet. I have to study pinyin though because the letters are not pronounced like they are in English, e. g. the “x” is pronounced like the “sh” in “sheet”. In addition to the pinyin, the lyrics sometimes have the Chinese characters and the English translation. The English is handy in case I want to understand what I’m trying to say.

The students have recommended a couple of artists for me. Carole has been kind enough to share her music with me. As we were standing there talking about one song, she asked if I had my cell phone and the next thing I know, she’s using Bluetooth to transfer the song to me. You gotta love technology! So now, I’ve “discovered” Wang Leehom, an American-born Chinese artist that has fused Western and Eastern styles of music. Imagine hip-hop and R&B sounds with Beijing Opera. I have the one song I'm concentrating on in the background right now and it's on repeat. I wonder how many times I can listen to it. Good thing Don has just left for his afternoon class.

Happy Birthday Alf

Last week, the school invited us to a birthday party for one of the other foreign teachers, Alf. He is a Danish teacher here sharing his expertise in the automotive department.

There was a 24 course banquet in his honour. We were sat at the table according to much ritual. The dean of the department sat Alf at a particular spot and then sat the rest of us at our places according to age, sex and I'm not sure what else. Dinner was followed by a birthday cake which we ate with our chopsticks. Now before you scoff, it was actually quite efficient. Oh by the way, everyone has been impressed by Don's prowess with the chopsticks. His skills have been honed at my parents' home. It was either that or starve.

Throughout the dinner, the dean generously demonstrated things like what to do with a package on the table at the start of the meal. It turned out to be a moist warm towel to clean our hands and face. Later he showed us how to eat certain dishes when it was not obvious (shavings of bitter melon on ice that we had to dip in one of two sauces, an orange sauce and a honey sauce & Peking Duck which we found out from our hosts that originated in Jinan… or at least in their opinion).

Here is proof of how fresh the ingredients were.