alas

I had amusing converse with my friend the scientist today. As usual, he is speaking on about absinthe and almond liqueur and other things. Then I pull out the bottle of Spanish and he is all big-eyed. We are very quiet appreciating the flavour of the thing for fifteen minutes. Then he says, "You know, Barney, this science-teaching thing is all lies."

Astounded is not even me. He is a secret humanitist, I know this, but now what?

He says, "We teach what we think is acceptably true and seldom say how true it is because the students do not need to know."

Suddenly I see he is very angry, but that is when he is softly-speaking and also very broad-smiling. It is his nature.

"What the students should know is that science is the cleverness of the summary, the narrowing of the grand humanities, and not much more than a way to make the vastness less intolerable."

I am not inventing this. He speaks like this all the time. He is made to be a lecturer. But I can see they will not like it. They, of course, you know who are.

nothing is also a report

Today I walked around my new city. There was dirt but no crime. There were prostitutes and cyclists. There were policemen, supercilious but quiet. It was a lot like Los Angeles, but with better weather. There were street hawkers. People had told me there were none, in this corner of East Asia.

My internet friends Darth Sidhe, Anonymous Noises, Findhorn, and Hooded Man had all told me about life below Beijing. This corner of the world is as dark as any other, they said. And more complicated. Why? Because people tell so many lies about it.

And so, because I am of the old Northern tradition, I had to see it for myself. I think that this country will either become Swiss or Suicide. It is so very Swiss, minus the seven hundred years of tradition which keep the Swiss alive. Like the Swiss, they believe in being the biggest army in the region, thus enforcing neutrality. Like the Swiss, they hire out for money. Like the Swiss, they would love to guard the Pope for money. And probably, they would like to be paid to live in Vatican City too.

But it is also like Reykjavik. And maybe Oslo. I will say why when I am clearer about this place.

holidays

Today I discovered that teachers in my new school work very very hard even on holidays. Even when they do not look like they are working. They meet in small groups and great groups and in workrooms and corridors. The school works and works and works even though it is school holidays.

I had lunch with Skipje. Skipje is a lady teacher who is small and bouncy (like a fishball). Of course that is not her real name. When she told me the real story about how teachers are appraised out here in East Asia, I was scared. It sounded very brutal, and not very open. In fact, it sounded like the Russian Mafia deciding which English Football Club would live or die.

I will not say any more. I might be deported.

sound and no-sound

Today I had a bowl of noodles with minced pork and fried onions. There were fish balls in it. I thought the fish balls were very bouncy. I am quite used to some kinds of Asian food. But some kinds run away from me.

I realise that there are many quiet political things to know about my new school. Perhaps it is very good to keep one's mouth shut and not say anything at all. It is a mood that is tacitly supported by many things I have seen. My new friends are happy that I have learned this. I am not so sure I am happy. My mood is a little despondent. So I am listening to those Swedish fritters known as ABBA. They are amusing and always cheer me up.

workscheme

East Asia is full of surprise. It is like that verse in G K Chesterton about texts and aching eyes. I am amazed by the voluble perspicacity of the students. It is they who speak like this. I am only a simple Dane with a degree from a little college in the Western USA.

Today I am having lunch with a science teacher. These are unusual here. They have a lot of Northern European traits. I like talking about life with them. This is maybe because they seem more forward-coming than many of the language teachers. I am in the wrong department, my instinct is telling me.

I look at the scheme of work, full of morning coffee. I think the scheme of work needs more coffee.

new friends

I have new friends. Someone introduced me to a young man named Daryl. He has anonymously noisy friends. It is easy to make friends online, especially Icelandic. They speak Dansk in their own way there too.

Today I woke up feeling cold but warm. It was a funny feeling; in Danmark, one wakes up feeling warm but cold if one has toes outside the blanket. Here it is all grey skies in Asia. It is their winter, mild but naughty, like a cat.

Many people ask me about language. Well, Danish language is like a more Germanic English - since many people think they know something about these two languages, it is easier to explain that way. We were even occupied by Germans in World War II, but they did not enjoy it very much because we kept mocking their lousy Danish. Ha ha, my grandmother told me that story, said that grandfather called them 'Hungarians' (well, Magyars to be exact).

That makes a point. In Europe, we are so mixed up in tiny countries that you can take a few steps and your language is different. I was amazed to see that Romanian looks like Catalan. Same kind of vowels. In Dansk, I think we tried too hard. I think there are 25 consonant sounds and 12 vowels (or more). But it means that the Swedish and the Norwegians and Icelanders and Faroese all can understand if we speak slowly or if we transl(iter)ate in our heads.

When I came to China, I found that it was true too, but China has larger chunks and some Chinese languages are not miscible. It is like in India too. Today I went out with a Hokkien friend who claims he is 62.5% Haekke (or something). He is proud he knows so much about European languages. So I mocked him for not knowing much about Hans Christian Andersson. Turns out he was brought up listening to those like bedtime stories. He has a strange family.

breakfast

I woke up this morning maybe it was about six, and I felt very disoriented. This is a funny thing to say because, of course, I am now in the Orient. Maybe it is because the beds are all too short. Which is also funny, because I have an IKEA bed, and those are made in Sweden (which is not Danmark, but at least people are about the same size).

I looked at the materials the school colleagues had been sharing with me. They have many things. But sometimes, I am not so clear about the philosophy of education. Some of them look at me and say very gently, as if I am a child, "The philosophy is not so important." It makes me feel disoriented too, like that.

I went downstairs to the koppë thiåm, which is what they call a café around here. They served very sweet, dusky coffee, totally non-acidic and not as aggressive as a French roast or German roast. I had it with some sort of egg jam. Or at least, that is what the container claimed. It was very satisfying.

motherland

I am sorry again for being busy. The school terms starts in six weeks' time and already they have started work. I am terrified by this Ost-Asian industry. They have shown me work prepared for 2007. It is a kind of benign madness.

Anyways, my new friend claims he is English. He has a broad Hokkien nose (he claims he is 25% Hokkien) and those unnerving single-lidded Chinese eyes. I raised my own bushy pale yellow eyebrows at this. He said, "Barney, you're from Denmark. But what makes you different from a Swede or a Norwegian? Is it that you speak Danish?"

Haha. This is an old argument. But I will not fight this guy with words. He is a madman who has better English than I have. Although he cannot properly pronounce 'Bjaerni'.

The odd thing is that the Mother Tongue department teaches only Mandarin, Tamil and Malay. But in the staff room, they speak Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hindi. It is a mystery to me. Then I find out from my other friend the big friendly Math teacher more about the language problem here. It seems the government decided all Chinese speak Mandarin, all Indians speak Tamil. And all East Asians speak English. My response is, "??!!??!!"

Then I realise that everyone else thinks that Swedish, Norwegian and Dansk are all the same thing. Except my friend the science teacher. Sigh.

första dagen

This is my first day at work really. I am treated well. I find that there are many Cantonese-speakers here. My Hokkien friends warn me about these people, and say they are quite cunning. I wonder if that is another word-play which I cannot quite understand, like my blogger name.

Teachers here are quite professional. But I am surprised that they speak English so well, and yet so strangely. They have an English department here, not just a Modern Languages department. A nice Hokkien man explains to me why the languages are taught in this way in this country. Ah, it is political again.

I find it funny that the English teachers speak English with Hokkien structures. I find it funnier that the Math teachers speak English with formal English structures. Maybe they think in linguistic formulae. I speak to the Humanities teachers. There are people who appreciate I come from a Nord-European country and what this means. But is funny of all funny things that I find a science teacher who says, "Tycho Brahe! Niels Bohr! Anders Hejlsberg!" (My eyes open wide at this one.) He asks me if I play chess. As I am reeling at this onslaught, he says, "Bent Larsen, Peter Schmeichel and Søren Kierkegaard too!"

You know, what impresses me most is that he has not mentioned any Norwegians or Swedes. He is right, they are all Danes. I find myself warming to this strange fellow.

settling in

Iö! Iö! Well, that is how it sounds when people here are lamenting something. And it is how I feel when I have to buy all that IKEA furniture, which is Swedish and not Danish.

I have been put up in a big flat in the urban land. People say it is small and laugh at it, but we do not have such big apartments in Danmark, and not even in Los Angeles. Not at affordable cost anyways.

So I am sorry I have not kept my promise to blog (in English, for my American and British -oops- English/Welsh/Scottish friends, and my Irish friends) everyday. But my head hurts to see many kinds of Asian assembling Swedish furniture in a strange concrete box for me.

I said something in Hokkien to one of them, and he was most surprised. Then we had interesting converse. Haha. He thinks my new workplace is a very good school. So I was right. It has national reputation. Especially among the Hokkien people.

a feeling of malaise

I must confess, it is not the first time I have been in this country. My very good friend has many relatives, and we meet in LA and in London and places like that. I even met some at a Manchester United football match. I was there to watch Peter Schmeichel, and I was a teenager then.

So I have been talking a lot with all these Asians, some are Ost-Asians, some are Sonder-Asians, some are Mal-Asians. When I heard that in a public drinking house in Dublin, I asked, "Why do you call yourselves Mal-Asians?" This very tall Chinese guy named Lim (who taught me Hokkien later) laughed and smirked at the same time, while not letting it ruffle his Guinness. He said, "That's because we are from Mal-Asia. Haha. But I am not, I am from Eapoe."

I found out that he was joking in many ways. Ipoh is a place in Malaysia but his family acts as if it is their own amt. Other people told me that 'Lim-peh' rules a lot of Ipoh. Then they laughed some more. I never got the joke till six years had passed.

I found out that Malaysia is like Danmark. It has an eastern section too, like Sjaelland, and the main part is a peninsula, like Jylland upside down. But Malaysia is more spread-out. [We have bridges connecting our 400 (or so) islands. It is a pity that the Swedes get in the way of Bornholm.] Like Malaysia, we used to be a nation of pirates that everyone was afraid of. Now we are a peace-loving people.

Anyway, Lim made another bad joke. I will not repeat it here because I hear that East Asian countries have very strict race laws. He made clever use of the French(?) word 'malaise'. As usual, I did not get the joke till later. Why is it that people make these silly jokes with words? Ah, I will tell you more about this tall Lim person in future postings. He claims drinking is his surname.

excited about the country

I arrived on SK973 from Copenhagen (København) via Bangkok. I am in a country smaller than Danmark, I thought to myself, but the airport is bigger than Iceland. Then my good friend said, like all women can say in such a pitying way, "You are thinking this is a country smaller than Denmark. Well I have news for you, most countries are smaller than Denmark."

I was about to say, hey that is not true, and nyah nyah you did not catch my thought about how big the airport is. But my good friend, with that uncanning way of thinking that women have, said, "You think that's not true? You forgot Greenland! And yes, it is a nice airport, isn't it?"

Oh God, I said to myself, forgive me, I forgot about Greenland. I guess most people do. Danmark is very small. But Greenland is 2 million square kilometres of ice, and it is the 13th largest state on earth. It is a crown colony of Danmark, like the Faeroes (best known for their football team that appears only in Euro qualifiers) and I guess that makes it Danmark too.

So yes, I am in a country much smaller than tiny Danmark-if-you-leave-out-Greenland-and-the-Faeroe-Islands. And I must say to all my Hokkien friends, this country you have is really a Green Land.

politic

I learned in English that politics is a noun and politic is a adjective. Or an adjective. It means that if you do it once, it is descriptive but if you do it more than once, it is prescriptive. Because that is what adjectives are, they describe things, and that is what nouns are, they are things themselves and happy to let you know it.

So I will be politic. And maybe even polite, when I say that the education systems of East Asia are truly amazing. My so-called liberal Nordeuropean mind has suffered big wrenching and turning to realise that down here, governments actually mean what they say when they say the state is more important than the individual. It is very feudal, but it is also true, provided the individual keeps his importance. And here, it is so.

What I am saying is that here, a government says, "Every kid will get computer access and be able to do a research paper by the time it is eighteen." And then it becomes true. I am in awe. The main problem I see is that 50 kidders can do it, but only three can understand why it is a good thing. Over the years, it may become more, like maybe 30 of those 50. It is a transitional time, and made harder when I see my colleagues some of them have forgotten how to write such things. But they try very hard. I only see such workethic in Scandinavia and Germany, and nowadays, not even so much.

My boss proudly told me that the school I am teaching in has won every award. So I did some investigation. I think the school is able to make a big profit out of a little investment. They have very clever people here.

cresting a wave

So I am thinking, this place I am going to work at, it is a bit like a Danmark Seamen's Mission. It is a place for Christian missionaries to take in those who are adrift and give them some compass direction for a life. It is a kind of East-West compass though. I am talking about the things my new colleagues say about the school. Some say it is a school for future businessmen, and some say it is a school for future churchmen, and some say it is a school for entrepreneur scientists.

The head of life sciences is a jolly lady who thinks the future is in gene manipulation. Maybe she should go proselytize her jolly viewpoint in jolly northern Europe. Then we could have Clone Wars like in the United States. The head of my department is a strange lady. She is obviously Asian (maybe they do not trust us barbarians here to be heads, but I reserve my judgements respectfully like a true Hokkien-to-be) with a big heart. And big everything else. She can be very blunt but somehow shy at the same time. Or maybe it is the other way around. I will try very hard to enjoy my life here.

They also have a head of a department of gifted education. This department, it is very different from the ones I have known from my time in København and also in Los Angeles. For a start, I still do not know how they choose the pupils and the teachers. I am sure this country did not become so successful by exporting oil, but the mechanism has much grease in it.

Enough for now I think. I have much thinking to be doing, and I do not want to lose my new job before I am starting. But maybe, maybe maybe, they will think I am Swedish instead. And this post should also maybe be called 'waving a crest'.

excited about my boss

I am so excited. I have spoke to many of my Hokkien friends about my new boss. Wow he is a really European person, in that he is always using internationalist catchphrases to drive his agenda. They say that if you observe him closely, he can say anything to anyone and persuade anybody to believe anything. But I can work with such bosses. They are easy to work with. They have ambitions and feelings, you try to support those ambitions and feelings. It is the done thing. Even my Hokkien friends say so. They say he is a 'king' Hokkien 'låang', which I think it means he is a really powerful and cunning Hokkien person.

i am...

...now here. Or at least that is what I thought I heard when I was talking to my Hokkien friends. They kept saying to me, "Cunning now here." At first I thought, what great things do they expect from their tall barbarian friend? Then one day my girlfriend told me that it was a Hokkien profanity. It has opened my eyes.

The Hokkien fraternity is very friendly. They seem to say this thing to everyone they meet. I went to East Asia to work, and that's where I hear it the most. Now I teach in a Christian school, and I hear it there too! Friendly people, and everywhere, these Hokkien people.