Am I alone in thinking that a giant inflatable banner, sponsored by the News of the World, is going to do very little to save Madeline McCann? Or, perhaps even more cynically, am I alone in believing that, even not so deep down, this is not the News of the World’s intention any longer?
Similarly, was there any genuine benefit in a myriad of local radio stations, including many in the North West, playing, in unison, an old Simple Minds song (“Don’t you forget about me”) on Bank Holiday Monday in order to highlight the case? A possible beneficiary might be Jim Kerr and co I imagine., but it will do little to further spotlight the case of the world’s most famous abductee.
I am not going to go down the route of speculating why this cute four-your old from a decent middle class family has caught the world’s attention in a way that hundreds of other children who have vanished in the meantime have not. That much is self-evident.
What I object to is the cavalcade of self-interested “well-wishers” who are exploiting this case to bask in reflected publicity. Whether they are doing it consciously or not, the media is now jam-packed with bleeding hearts wringing out their fellow feeling for the family by the column inch.
Whether setting up websites (with the legend “Sponsored by Infohost” at the bottom of each page) or publicly setting up the “Richard Branson Virgin Reward for the Return of Little Madeline”, this tragic event is being hijacked by a plethora of media and non-media businesses desperate to cash in on their self-consciously caring credentials.
“Let’s not buy the Sunday People this week,” say the weekend tabloid floaters, “Let’s invest in the News of the World instead– they care more about Little Madeline and have an inflatable banner.”
No doubt those involved in these activities will play the irreproachable get-out-of-jail free card – “We’re just doing our bit” in response to these fulminations, but I’m afraid I don’t believe that.
I find this the most nauseating attempt to cash in on the nation’s public grief since Diana died – although I suspect this August’s tenth anniversary “tissue with every issue” Princes Di why-oh-why chest-beating fest will set new records in this department.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
Tell me true, Mr J, why exactly do you do How-do...?
To say the North West of England was crying out for a new marketing and media web portal would hardly be akin to maintaining that it was crying out for a new guitar-based rock band with big hair and flares or a new city centre canal side café bar. But nor would it be apt to say, in the words of the almighty Tap, that it “filled a much needed gap”.
The truth, as is so often the case, lies rather dullishly in the middle.
Manchester has long been the UK’s second city of advertising and PR and, latterly, I dare say, design, too. It has understandably lagged behind Glasgow and Edinburgh as a broadcast and print centre, but its marketing communications credentials have remained sturdy.
With the advent of a mass enforced move by sundry BBC departments to sunny Salford, Manchester is truly moving to become a media force worth reckoning with in a way it has not been since the sixties. Technology and fashion then led national newspapers out of the city, whilst exactly the same forces, with a smattering of political expedience, have now driven broadcasters in.
Against such a backdrop, the mighty Nick Jaspan has chosen to launch his regional marketing web-portal - www. how-do.co.uk. Nick’s last enterprise was the sadly doomed North West Enquirer, launched and shut, with equal amounts of hyperbole, over the spring and summer of 2006. By comparison, how-do seems a modest enterprise.
The failure of Nick’s attempts to establish the Enquirer last year will see him as damaged goods by many in the cynical “best not to try, rather than risking failing” North West media world (a prevailing attitude that I suggest pre-doomed the Enquirer to a lack of local support in its vital first six months!). However, to others it will have raised Jaspan to a different level of awareness within NW business circles and certainly given him added gravitas as a North West media player (although admittedly a bloodied if unbowed one).
So will it work? As a venture, it’s comparatively low-cost in terms of launch. Most of the traffic will have been driven by Andy Spinoza’s PR campaign for the site, rather than by any off-line advertising. The contributors to the site, I dare say (aside from a sub and web designer) have worked on it as a labour of love.
The launch outlay then (and I’m only guessing here) is modest, but then so too, I guess are the rewards at present. The site carries a few banner ads, but nothing that would cover Mr. Jaspan’s lunch bills let alone provide a major financial foothold for expansion.
So what is behind Mr. Jaspan’s plans? Well, I suppose, there will be some potential revenue from branded training schemes, awards and events. To my mind, recruitment – the only reliable recruitment stream in this market place would be key.
With The Drum now increasingly paying only lip service to the city (both in terms of presence and coverage) and its team of pliable pre-pubescents hardly capable of demonstrating any great insight into the market and its future developments, the way is certainly open for another medium to grab reader attention and the still valuable recruitment market.
At present a would-be recruitment advertiser has three options – the Manchester Evening News, the London-based trade press or The Drum. All three have enormous drawbacks – the MEN is expensive and guarantees any recruitment advertiser in the “sexy” marketing communications and media sectors a score of wannabes and little else in terms of response
The London-centric trade press (Campaiagn, PR Week et al) have prohibitive page rates, an almost exclusively Soho-foccused readership and a subscription price beyond the pocket of target recruitees (account execs, studio managers, junior copywriters etc).
This has rather left The Drum to have the market to itself – the untimely demise of Adline (of which more in the near future), left outside of London recruitment an easy target for the Glasgow-based Carnyx Group (publishers of The Drum), but with their typical foresightedness, they managed two coups:
1) Firstly a push for subs (meaning that in most companies nobody now receives a copy and in the few that do it is only the chief exec and the head of new business that – neither prime targets for the likes of Suits, Orchard or even, god bless him, Peter Leonard)
2) Secondly they managed to alienate former Adline MD, Debbie Brown, (probably the person with the single best grasp of the highly fragmented regional recruitment market) to the extent that she stomped out of the Carnyx boardroom last year. Good move Gordon and Diane Young, the Statler and Waldorf of marketing publishing!
But I digress; I somehow suspect that even the lucrative recruitment market is not the key to Jaspan’s plans.
I think the clue may lie in the “how-do” name he has chosen for his new venture. Other commentators have commented on its Northern quaintness, but few have picked up on its flexibility in terms of extension into other markets (legal, financial, surveying, property etc – in fact anything in the business-to-business arena.)
“How-do” combines Northern-ness, networking and insider info (“How do I…? etc). I somehow suspect that a lack of support from the advertising and media community sank Nick’s last venture. By surreptitiously getting those same people on board very early in this embryonic new endeavor, he maybe heading them off at the pass and ensuring future support in other more lucrative markets…
But then, howdthefuckidknow.(co.uk) anyway?
(Well, even if I'm wrong, Mr J - it's not a bad plan now, is it?)
The truth, as is so often the case, lies rather dullishly in the middle.
Manchester has long been the UK’s second city of advertising and PR and, latterly, I dare say, design, too. It has understandably lagged behind Glasgow and Edinburgh as a broadcast and print centre, but its marketing communications credentials have remained sturdy.
With the advent of a mass enforced move by sundry BBC departments to sunny Salford, Manchester is truly moving to become a media force worth reckoning with in a way it has not been since the sixties. Technology and fashion then led national newspapers out of the city, whilst exactly the same forces, with a smattering of political expedience, have now driven broadcasters in.
Against such a backdrop, the mighty Nick Jaspan has chosen to launch his regional marketing web-portal - www. how-do.co.uk. Nick’s last enterprise was the sadly doomed North West Enquirer, launched and shut, with equal amounts of hyperbole, over the spring and summer of 2006. By comparison, how-do seems a modest enterprise.
The failure of Nick’s attempts to establish the Enquirer last year will see him as damaged goods by many in the cynical “best not to try, rather than risking failing” North West media world (a prevailing attitude that I suggest pre-doomed the Enquirer to a lack of local support in its vital first six months!). However, to others it will have raised Jaspan to a different level of awareness within NW business circles and certainly given him added gravitas as a North West media player (although admittedly a bloodied if unbowed one).
So will it work? As a venture, it’s comparatively low-cost in terms of launch. Most of the traffic will have been driven by Andy Spinoza’s PR campaign for the site, rather than by any off-line advertising. The contributors to the site, I dare say (aside from a sub and web designer) have worked on it as a labour of love.
The launch outlay then (and I’m only guessing here) is modest, but then so too, I guess are the rewards at present. The site carries a few banner ads, but nothing that would cover Mr. Jaspan’s lunch bills let alone provide a major financial foothold for expansion.
So what is behind Mr. Jaspan’s plans? Well, I suppose, there will be some potential revenue from branded training schemes, awards and events. To my mind, recruitment – the only reliable recruitment stream in this market place would be key.
With The Drum now increasingly paying only lip service to the city (both in terms of presence and coverage) and its team of pliable pre-pubescents hardly capable of demonstrating any great insight into the market and its future developments, the way is certainly open for another medium to grab reader attention and the still valuable recruitment market.
At present a would-be recruitment advertiser has three options – the Manchester Evening News, the London-based trade press or The Drum. All three have enormous drawbacks – the MEN is expensive and guarantees any recruitment advertiser in the “sexy” marketing communications and media sectors a score of wannabes and little else in terms of response
The London-centric trade press (Campaiagn, PR Week et al) have prohibitive page rates, an almost exclusively Soho-foccused readership and a subscription price beyond the pocket of target recruitees (account execs, studio managers, junior copywriters etc).
This has rather left The Drum to have the market to itself – the untimely demise of Adline (of which more in the near future), left outside of London recruitment an easy target for the Glasgow-based Carnyx Group (publishers of The Drum), but with their typical foresightedness, they managed two coups:
1) Firstly a push for subs (meaning that in most companies nobody now receives a copy and in the few that do it is only the chief exec and the head of new business that – neither prime targets for the likes of Suits, Orchard or even, god bless him, Peter Leonard)
2) Secondly they managed to alienate former Adline MD, Debbie Brown, (probably the person with the single best grasp of the highly fragmented regional recruitment market) to the extent that she stomped out of the Carnyx boardroom last year. Good move Gordon and Diane Young, the Statler and Waldorf of marketing publishing!
But I digress; I somehow suspect that even the lucrative recruitment market is not the key to Jaspan’s plans.
I think the clue may lie in the “how-do” name he has chosen for his new venture. Other commentators have commented on its Northern quaintness, but few have picked up on its flexibility in terms of extension into other markets (legal, financial, surveying, property etc – in fact anything in the business-to-business arena.)
“How-do” combines Northern-ness, networking and insider info (“How do I…? etc). I somehow suspect that a lack of support from the advertising and media community sank Nick’s last venture. By surreptitiously getting those same people on board very early in this embryonic new endeavor, he maybe heading them off at the pass and ensuring future support in other more lucrative markets…
But then, howdthefuckidknow.(co.uk) anyway?
(Well, even if I'm wrong, Mr J - it's not a bad plan now, is it?)
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
The Day The Music Di-ed
One of the many benefits of living in the PRC is the ubiquitous cheap DVDs and the almost complete disregard that even major stores demonstrate towards even a passing towards international copyright protocols.
This gives us benighted exiles, trapped with only one English language TV station, CCTV 9 (typical nightly viewing - "101 reasons why all the Japanese are evil and smell of fish" and "ok look, it's snowing in the UK and all their public transport is in the shit, still that's what you get for not living in a one-party communist country..."), something to watch.
Today's little foray into central Beijing (about 35 minutes on the subway), netted "The Last King of Scotland", "V for Vendetta", "The Prestige", "Night in the Museum","The Queen"and an 8 disk set of the whole four seasons of the BBC's Messiah (think gory evisceration and not Handel).
Now admittedly "Night in the Museum" is entirely in Russian (so has been swiftly filed with the 7 copies of "Batman Begins" that I bought before getting an English copy) but the whole lot only cost a grand total of 130 RMB (about eight pounds 70!).
"The Queen" was purchased at the request of Sandy, my Chinese girlfriend and provided tonight's viewing. And pretty enjoyable it was too, although I did marvel a little at the incredibly supportive portrayal of Mr Blair and some heavy-handed bollocks about a stag roaming the Highlands, pursued by a gun-toting but still grieving Harry and Wills which seem to become a symbol of Diana for the Queen.
Watching it took me back to 1997 and gave me a vague pre-shudder of the renewed Di-mania that, much to the glee of florists in the capital, will sweep across the UK this August.
I clearly remember coming downstairs, dreadfully hungover on that day in August and sitting with a mug of coffee (or perhaps a hair of the dog) and watching Sky News - which consisted mainly of sombre music and flowers outside some royal palace or other.
I took me a while to suss just which royal personage we were collectively mourning for. Obviously the Queen Mum ("The nation's favourite granny" (c) News International) was in pole position, with the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the Queen herself bringing up the rear.
The realisation that it was "Di what Died" sent me scurrying upstairs to tell my soon to be ex-wife the awesome news. And it was truly awesome, even to an ardent Di cynic like me - witness:
"Goodbye, enormous jeans,
that you would have had to wear,
If you hadn't had bulimia
And thrown up everywhere"
(copyright Me and Reg Dwight 1997).
Back in those days I was the editor of Birmingham-based advertising and media magazine (Adline) and purely by chance had to make a rare visit to London the next day.
I was going for two reasons:
a) To spend the day at the headquarters of Capital Radio
b) Because I fancied the arse of the admittedly off-puttingly hirsute boss of Capital Radio's Manchester sales house.
Admittedly, it was largely (b) to be honest but it was interesting to spend the day at the heart of a major London media owner at a time of such a national outpouring.
The interesting thing that I quickly noticed was that none of the music being played was produced later than 1982. Apparently this was because, like many of other radio groups, Capital had an approved list of chart hits that had been vetted as appropriate for times of national crisis. Obviously "Another one bites the dust" (particularly as it was by Queen) would not have been deemed appropriate listening for the tail-end of the Summer of 1997.
Unfortunately, no-one had got round to updating this list since the early eighties, leaving the grieving denizens of the capital to mourn along to to the likes of Hall and Oates and the Human League...
The station also had to vet all of its ads - especially as (allegedly) another station the group had followed its early morning news broadcast ("And now seven hours later, Princess Diana is still dead" etc) directly with an ad that said "And now that's enough bad news, here's the good news -its 15 per cent of sofas only today at all our stores...")
My own favourite was perpetrated by Sky One which, like most other TV broadcasters had pulled all its ads and merely showed some flowers outside the palace superimposed on a picture of Di and then accompanied by some sombre music during its ad breaks.
Unfortunately, after one one suitably dour commercial break, the announcer rather spoiled it with: "And now...back to the Simpsons..."
This gives us benighted exiles, trapped with only one English language TV station, CCTV 9 (typical nightly viewing - "101 reasons why all the Japanese are evil and smell of fish" and "ok look, it's snowing in the UK and all their public transport is in the shit, still that's what you get for not living in a one-party communist country..."), something to watch.
Today's little foray into central Beijing (about 35 minutes on the subway), netted "The Last King of Scotland", "V for Vendetta", "The Prestige", "Night in the Museum","The Queen"and an 8 disk set of the whole four seasons of the BBC's Messiah (think gory evisceration and not Handel).
Now admittedly "Night in the Museum" is entirely in Russian (so has been swiftly filed with the 7 copies of "Batman Begins" that I bought before getting an English copy) but the whole lot only cost a grand total of 130 RMB (about eight pounds 70!).
"The Queen" was purchased at the request of Sandy, my Chinese girlfriend and provided tonight's viewing. And pretty enjoyable it was too, although I did marvel a little at the incredibly supportive portrayal of Mr Blair and some heavy-handed bollocks about a stag roaming the Highlands, pursued by a gun-toting but still grieving Harry and Wills which seem to become a symbol of Diana for the Queen.
Watching it took me back to 1997 and gave me a vague pre-shudder of the renewed Di-mania that, much to the glee of florists in the capital, will sweep across the UK this August.
I clearly remember coming downstairs, dreadfully hungover on that day in August and sitting with a mug of coffee (or perhaps a hair of the dog) and watching Sky News - which consisted mainly of sombre music and flowers outside some royal palace or other.
I took me a while to suss just which royal personage we were collectively mourning for. Obviously the Queen Mum ("The nation's favourite granny" (c) News International) was in pole position, with the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the Queen herself bringing up the rear.
The realisation that it was "Di what Died" sent me scurrying upstairs to tell my soon to be ex-wife the awesome news. And it was truly awesome, even to an ardent Di cynic like me - witness:
"Goodbye, enormous jeans,
that you would have had to wear,
If you hadn't had bulimia
And thrown up everywhere"
(copyright Me and Reg Dwight 1997).
Back in those days I was the editor of Birmingham-based advertising and media magazine (Adline) and purely by chance had to make a rare visit to London the next day.
I was going for two reasons:
a) To spend the day at the headquarters of Capital Radio
b) Because I fancied the arse of the admittedly off-puttingly hirsute boss of Capital Radio's Manchester sales house.
Admittedly, it was largely (b) to be honest but it was interesting to spend the day at the heart of a major London media owner at a time of such a national outpouring.
The interesting thing that I quickly noticed was that none of the music being played was produced later than 1982. Apparently this was because, like many of other radio groups, Capital had an approved list of chart hits that had been vetted as appropriate for times of national crisis. Obviously "Another one bites the dust" (particularly as it was by Queen) would not have been deemed appropriate listening for the tail-end of the Summer of 1997.
Unfortunately, no-one had got round to updating this list since the early eighties, leaving the grieving denizens of the capital to mourn along to to the likes of Hall and Oates and the Human League...
The station also had to vet all of its ads - especially as (allegedly) another station the group had followed its early morning news broadcast ("And now seven hours later, Princess Diana is still dead" etc) directly with an ad that said "And now that's enough bad news, here's the good news -its 15 per cent of sofas only today at all our stores...")
My own favourite was perpetrated by Sky One which, like most other TV broadcasters had pulled all its ads and merely showed some flowers outside the palace superimposed on a picture of Di and then accompanied by some sombre music during its ad breaks.
Unfortunately, after one one suitably dour commercial break, the announcer rather spoiled it with: "And now...back to the Simpsons..."
Sunday, 28 January 2007
I once went to a Latvian Velodrome...
Perhaps unsurprisingly when you have a group of disparate nationalities in far eastern exile, a lot of time is spent talking absolute shite. This is partly because a group of people ranging in age from 22 to 43 and of national extraction embracing Canadian, American, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, English and New Zealandish don't actually have that much common ground.
Quite a lot time is spend talking about DVDs (Heroes, 24 and Will and Grace feature frequently at present), other time is spent planning putative trips to the Great Wall or the Lama Temple. There is also occasional discussion of the fiendish, inscrutable schemes of the Chinese Government.
The latest manifestation of this took place before Christmas - a small earthquake off the coast of Taiwan resulted in 95 per cent of China mainland Internet traffic grinding to a halt or stopping all together - it seems that all east-west on-line communication goes through one small tectonically vulnerable pipe in-between China and its territorially vulnerable neighbour.
Domestic traffic was unaffected and so the on-line forum pages of That's Beijing ( a sort of Time Out for Beijing, but with more ads for cute but financially challenged Chinese girls seeking well-off Western sugar daddies and less for lesbian pottery evenings) became home to Conspiracy Central - a hotbed of of our colonial cousin's theories as to the Real Reason why they couldn't access MSN.
The theories seemed to centre around the belief that the Chinese government somehow had something Big and Sneaky planned for the early part of 2007 but to achieve their wicked moustache-twirling aspirations it was vital that any 22-year old TEFL teacher from Ohio should be unable to upload pictorial cultural juxtapositions of themselves and less well-off Chinese folk on to their blogs.
Normal Service has now been restored, no doubt leaving the fuming inner circle of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) sat around slamming their firsts onto their boardroom table and exclaiming: "Drat and we would have got away with it all if that backpacker from Ottawa hadn't been able to email his mates humorous details of English language mis-spellings on the menu of a restaurant immediately adjacent to his YMCA!"
Actually, some of the mis-spellings are reasonably humorous (although admittedly insufficiently so to topple a single-party state with a highly entrenched power base). One of the common mistakes is the confusion between "crab" and "crap" with "Fried crap meat" on the menu often providing endless amusement for incomers.
The crap/crab one is so common that it can only be down to one of two things:
a) Mischievous and under-paid menu translators sneaking a crafty one past their unsuspecting (and unlikely to pay) employers.
b) An uncommon commitment to honesty by a cusinally-challenged restauranter.
Quite a lot time is spend talking about DVDs (Heroes, 24 and Will and Grace feature frequently at present), other time is spent planning putative trips to the Great Wall or the Lama Temple. There is also occasional discussion of the fiendish, inscrutable schemes of the Chinese Government.
The latest manifestation of this took place before Christmas - a small earthquake off the coast of Taiwan resulted in 95 per cent of China mainland Internet traffic grinding to a halt or stopping all together - it seems that all east-west on-line communication goes through one small tectonically vulnerable pipe in-between China and its territorially vulnerable neighbour.
Domestic traffic was unaffected and so the on-line forum pages of That's Beijing ( a sort of Time Out for Beijing, but with more ads for cute but financially challenged Chinese girls seeking well-off Western sugar daddies and less for lesbian pottery evenings) became home to Conspiracy Central - a hotbed of of our colonial cousin's theories as to the Real Reason why they couldn't access MSN.
The theories seemed to centre around the belief that the Chinese government somehow had something Big and Sneaky planned for the early part of 2007 but to achieve their wicked moustache-twirling aspirations it was vital that any 22-year old TEFL teacher from Ohio should be unable to upload pictorial cultural juxtapositions of themselves and less well-off Chinese folk on to their blogs.
Normal Service has now been restored, no doubt leaving the fuming inner circle of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) sat around slamming their firsts onto their boardroom table and exclaiming: "Drat and we would have got away with it all if that backpacker from Ottawa hadn't been able to email his mates humorous details of English language mis-spellings on the menu of a restaurant immediately adjacent to his YMCA!"
Actually, some of the mis-spellings are reasonably humorous (although admittedly insufficiently so to topple a single-party state with a highly entrenched power base). One of the common mistakes is the confusion between "crab" and "crap" with "Fried crap meat" on the menu often providing endless amusement for incomers.
The crap/crab one is so common that it can only be down to one of two things:
a) Mischievous and under-paid menu translators sneaking a crafty one past their unsuspecting (and unlikely to pay) employers.
b) An uncommon commitment to honesty by a cusinally-challenged restauranter.
Friday, 22 December 2006
Beijingle Bells All The Way...
And so the gathering excitement gathers as our plucky band of scholars look forward to their one day’s unpaid day's holiday on the 25th. But Lord what larks we have before that and indeed, what larks we have pre-larked already.
Take yesterday, which, for those of you timezonally challenged, was a Thursday, all be it a rather earlier one than most of yours. Now Christmas is not a big deal here in the Middle Kingdom. Unless you're 6.
It's a bigger deal still if your're six and your Chinese teacher has wound you up to a (yellow) fever pitch about the impending arrival of a busload of foreigners bearing gifts and you're very first chance to meet Santa Claus (in this case a very bemused 19-year old from Prestbury who arrived at school expecting a job interview and get bundled into the red, white and beardy role due to a general shortage of free white faces and a specific unwillingness to look a complete cock by the rest of the foreign teachers.)
Well we rolled up to a scene that I can only describe as reminiscent of how Francis Ford Coppola would have staged the helicopter arrival of the mini-skirted go-go girls to meet the sex-starved GIs in Apocalypse Now - if he had only a knackered bus and a crowd of umpalumpas in the budget. Well that was Thursday.
Friday has been a quiet day spent thinking euphemisms for "abalone and shark's fin" as I attempt to finish off subbing the 2007 Shanghais Tatler Best Restaurant Guide - which is full of establishments that we humble toilers in the field could ne'er afford to frequent.
Tomorrow is a half day teaching day and then we have the joy that will be Sunday.We has a veritable smorgasboard (whatever spellcheck it yourself I can't be arsed!) of delights. After a token bit of teaching, we have the final of our "Rising Star" English Speaking competition.
This involves nearly a 1000 Chinese people squeezing into a school gymnasium, whilst various school classes do long dances involving chinese flags and talk about their allegiance to "Beijing's Green Olympics".
Straight after the competition we, well all the school staff, decamp for our annual Christmas party, where we will no doubt be joined by representatives of the local young communist party (average age 53). Now last year, this was a jolly occasion with all the foreign teachers being mates and genuinely being pally. This year, thanks largely to the antics of our colonial cousins (oh and me a bit-ish) and sundry visa problems, all is not so cozy.
Take Adam, our 30-year old Canadian, who somehow has got it into his head that he is "more than just a teacher" and also believes that he can tell the future. Unfortunately, one of senior teachers went out for a drink with him and told him he was a silly cunt. Now, he wants to leave. Now, admittedly it was me who said it, but I can only say in mitigation, that well, he is a silly cunt.
Our other problem is Adu, our Ghanian teacher, whose passport has been missing for six weeks after a "friend" of the school promised he could get her a visa, even though the Chinese government (despite last months 3 days of official celebration of African-Chinese friendship) won't give black people visas.
Now, her visa-less passport has gone walkabouts, her identity has been probably been cloned and she will probably face a cavity search wherever she travels - but does she see the funny side? Does she bollocks. It will take more than Sunday's Secret Santa to cheer her up methinks - unless someone has got her a visa as a surprise.
Ah, well, merry gentlemen and women of a similar ilk, it is time to God rest Me.
Have a Cool Yule Dude as our Soon to be Departed North American Brethren Might Say If He Was Speaking To Me
Take yesterday, which, for those of you timezonally challenged, was a Thursday, all be it a rather earlier one than most of yours. Now Christmas is not a big deal here in the Middle Kingdom. Unless you're 6.
It's a bigger deal still if your're six and your Chinese teacher has wound you up to a (yellow) fever pitch about the impending arrival of a busload of foreigners bearing gifts and you're very first chance to meet Santa Claus (in this case a very bemused 19-year old from Prestbury who arrived at school expecting a job interview and get bundled into the red, white and beardy role due to a general shortage of free white faces and a specific unwillingness to look a complete cock by the rest of the foreign teachers.)
Well we rolled up to a scene that I can only describe as reminiscent of how Francis Ford Coppola would have staged the helicopter arrival of the mini-skirted go-go girls to meet the sex-starved GIs in Apocalypse Now - if he had only a knackered bus and a crowd of umpalumpas in the budget. Well that was Thursday.
Friday has been a quiet day spent thinking euphemisms for "abalone and shark's fin" as I attempt to finish off subbing the 2007 Shanghais Tatler Best Restaurant Guide - which is full of establishments that we humble toilers in the field could ne'er afford to frequent.
Tomorrow is a half day teaching day and then we have the joy that will be Sunday.We has a veritable smorgasboard (whatever spellcheck it yourself I can't be arsed!) of delights. After a token bit of teaching, we have the final of our "Rising Star" English Speaking competition.
This involves nearly a 1000 Chinese people squeezing into a school gymnasium, whilst various school classes do long dances involving chinese flags and talk about their allegiance to "Beijing's Green Olympics".
Straight after the competition we, well all the school staff, decamp for our annual Christmas party, where we will no doubt be joined by representatives of the local young communist party (average age 53). Now last year, this was a jolly occasion with all the foreign teachers being mates and genuinely being pally. This year, thanks largely to the antics of our colonial cousins (oh and me a bit-ish) and sundry visa problems, all is not so cozy.
Take Adam, our 30-year old Canadian, who somehow has got it into his head that he is "more than just a teacher" and also believes that he can tell the future. Unfortunately, one of senior teachers went out for a drink with him and told him he was a silly cunt. Now, he wants to leave. Now, admittedly it was me who said it, but I can only say in mitigation, that well, he is a silly cunt.
Our other problem is Adu, our Ghanian teacher, whose passport has been missing for six weeks after a "friend" of the school promised he could get her a visa, even though the Chinese government (despite last months 3 days of official celebration of African-Chinese friendship) won't give black people visas.
Now, her visa-less passport has gone walkabouts, her identity has been probably been cloned and she will probably face a cavity search wherever she travels - but does she see the funny side? Does she bollocks. It will take more than Sunday's Secret Santa to cheer her up methinks - unless someone has got her a visa as a surprise.
Ah, well, merry gentlemen and women of a similar ilk, it is time to God rest Me.
Have a Cool Yule Dude as our Soon to be Departed North American Brethren Might Say If He Was Speaking To Me
Thursday, 30 November 2006
Teenage Mutant Whinger TEFLs...
Thursday night in Beijing is fading gently into Friday morning here, coaxed by a surpisingly decent bottle of Great Wall Red Wine (40 RMB or around 2 pound 75 to you occidental types).
Christmas, old hat for you with its traditional late September UK kick-off, is starting to loom here as we FTs (foreign teachers as opposed to CTs( supposedly Chinese teachers, but better put as Cute Teachers) huddle together and wonder how to spend our one day off (Dec 25th).
Traditional revelry will revolve around me playing my now traditional (well I did it last year) role of Father Christmas at the school's huge Xmas party/speech competition. Last year it featured the twin spectacles of me being obliged to reclaim colouring books from teary 6-year-old Chinese kids that I'd over distributed, after being under briefed, followed me being marrooned on stage and waving farewell and shuffiling in a sheepish (?) crab-style manner off to stage right. Ah, happy days.
Being indistinuishable foreign types, we are obliged to pretend to celebrate every possible Western festival here for the benefit of our kids and, more importantly, their fee-paying parents - including Halloween, Christmas, April Fool's Day, two lots of Thanksgiving (US and Canadian), St Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day and the newly founded Thank-Fuck I'm Not North American weekly event that I've co-founded with the Scotiish, Irish and New Zealand teachers here.
It's stunning, quite frankly, that these buggers - Americans and Canadians - have ever achieved anything as nations (okay, admittedly, lumber and crap songstresses aside, Canada hasn't), but the amount of self-rightous clockwatching and whinging we suffer from our colonial cousins is astonishing.
Frankly it's a wonder the Mayflower ever arrived Stateside as definitely no-one would have agreed to row on their day off, no matter how becalmed the vessel was and woe betide the captain if he tried to serve sea biscuits and rum instead of burgers and Budweiser. Cultural adaptation is not a great strength of Transatlantic TEFL teachers. They're a bit like daleks, only with less charisma, a greater degree of cultural imperialism and a desire to have multiple days off whilst all the other daleks have to do their exterminating for them.
Christmas, old hat for you with its traditional late September UK kick-off, is starting to loom here as we FTs (foreign teachers as opposed to CTs( supposedly Chinese teachers, but better put as Cute Teachers) huddle together and wonder how to spend our one day off (Dec 25th).
Traditional revelry will revolve around me playing my now traditional (well I did it last year) role of Father Christmas at the school's huge Xmas party/speech competition. Last year it featured the twin spectacles of me being obliged to reclaim colouring books from teary 6-year-old Chinese kids that I'd over distributed, after being under briefed, followed me being marrooned on stage and waving farewell and shuffiling in a sheepish (?) crab-style manner off to stage right. Ah, happy days.
Being indistinuishable foreign types, we are obliged to pretend to celebrate every possible Western festival here for the benefit of our kids and, more importantly, their fee-paying parents - including Halloween, Christmas, April Fool's Day, two lots of Thanksgiving (US and Canadian), St Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day and the newly founded Thank-Fuck I'm Not North American weekly event that I've co-founded with the Scotiish, Irish and New Zealand teachers here.
It's stunning, quite frankly, that these buggers - Americans and Canadians - have ever achieved anything as nations (okay, admittedly, lumber and crap songstresses aside, Canada hasn't), but the amount of self-rightous clockwatching and whinging we suffer from our colonial cousins is astonishing.
Frankly it's a wonder the Mayflower ever arrived Stateside as definitely no-one would have agreed to row on their day off, no matter how becalmed the vessel was and woe betide the captain if he tried to serve sea biscuits and rum instead of burgers and Budweiser. Cultural adaptation is not a great strength of Transatlantic TEFL teachers. They're a bit like daleks, only with less charisma, a greater degree of cultural imperialism and a desire to have multiple days off whilst all the other daleks have to do their exterminating for them.
Thursday, 16 March 2006
The Brookside Factor
Spring has come at last to Beijing. Last Tuesday to be exact. We are now firmly established in Summer. Beijing only has two seasons really - summer or, in the vernacular Foo Khing Boi Lin and Winter or Free Zhbollox Orph as it is known locally.
And with the arrival of the new season, comes the new foreign teachers - every one, normally, with a more complicated back story than the average new family in Brookside Close.
First up is Hannah, our one venture in breaking our long observed No North Americans policy which was our school's one token nod in the vague direction of sanity. It took us three goes to pick up Hannah on concurrent 6ams at Beijing airport - the first involved a miscaluation involving the international date line and the 16 hour (maybe 16 year) time difference between here and the States and the second was due to inclement weather in the Texas area.
Hannah, it must be said, is a big lass. In a country where most women have no arses to speak of, you really stand out when each of your bum cheeks requires a seperate postal code. In fact, on one of her first days here, I ventured out to lunch with her at one of the local restaurants and the look on the face of the guys whose table joined couldn't have been more astonished if she'd arrived fully dressed for an extended space walk.
The second arrival was Mat( the Chinese staff somehow resisted my suggestion he was met at the airport with a placard saying "Welcome Mat"). Mat is from New Zealand, but has proved no Kiwi Fruit, in that he has remorselessly pursued at least two of the Chinese teachers and had a prostitute back at his aprtment in the week that he has been here. He has also managed to ususrp may long standing claim to be the Worst English Teacher in China. Within days he had proved an inabilty to teach teenagers and than matched it with a similar aptitude with kindegarten kids.
And then only last night (after being specially briefed by the Chinese headmistress Chen Xi, that his debut adult class featured a number of her friends and some senior members of the local communist party) he managed to "accidentally" fail to teach the last 25 minutes of his two hour class. The smart money is on the order of the Wellington (geddit?) Boot before too long.
Our third arrival was Jacqui from Dublin, who has so far appeared breathtakingly normal, popular with the Chinese staff and even able to teach. I think I hate her the most.
This seeming normality can only be down to one of two factors:
a) A much deeper and darker secret lurking in her past which has yet to emerger, but, when it does, will probably involve covens, machetes or alien abduction. Maybe all three.
b) A complete failure of the scrupulous vetting procedure normally adopted by our Foreign Manager which normally ensures (with one obvious exception, ahem) only total dipshits get through.
And with the arrival of the new season, comes the new foreign teachers - every one, normally, with a more complicated back story than the average new family in Brookside Close.
First up is Hannah, our one venture in breaking our long observed No North Americans policy which was our school's one token nod in the vague direction of sanity. It took us three goes to pick up Hannah on concurrent 6ams at Beijing airport - the first involved a miscaluation involving the international date line and the 16 hour (maybe 16 year) time difference between here and the States and the second was due to inclement weather in the Texas area.
Hannah, it must be said, is a big lass. In a country where most women have no arses to speak of, you really stand out when each of your bum cheeks requires a seperate postal code. In fact, on one of her first days here, I ventured out to lunch with her at one of the local restaurants and the look on the face of the guys whose table joined couldn't have been more astonished if she'd arrived fully dressed for an extended space walk.
The second arrival was Mat( the Chinese staff somehow resisted my suggestion he was met at the airport with a placard saying "Welcome Mat"). Mat is from New Zealand, but has proved no Kiwi Fruit, in that he has remorselessly pursued at least two of the Chinese teachers and had a prostitute back at his aprtment in the week that he has been here. He has also managed to ususrp may long standing claim to be the Worst English Teacher in China. Within days he had proved an inabilty to teach teenagers and than matched it with a similar aptitude with kindegarten kids.
And then only last night (after being specially briefed by the Chinese headmistress Chen Xi, that his debut adult class featured a number of her friends and some senior members of the local communist party) he managed to "accidentally" fail to teach the last 25 minutes of his two hour class. The smart money is on the order of the Wellington (geddit?) Boot before too long.
Our third arrival was Jacqui from Dublin, who has so far appeared breathtakingly normal, popular with the Chinese staff and even able to teach. I think I hate her the most.
This seeming normality can only be down to one of two factors:
a) A much deeper and darker secret lurking in her past which has yet to emerger, but, when it does, will probably involve covens, machetes or alien abduction. Maybe all three.
b) A complete failure of the scrupulous vetting procedure normally adopted by our Foreign Manager which normally ensures (with one obvious exception, ahem) only total dipshits get through.
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