SHANGHAI

OK, so after quite a lot of inactivity on the blog means that I have alot to post now, both out of a sense of guilt at my recent form as well as a number of things worthy of update!

So as planned (well, kind of) I find myself in Shanghai back with some old (in comparitive terms) friends I met in Vietnam discussing my options over Sushi and overlooking the eye melting neon fest that is downtown Shanghai.

Initial conclusions suggest that I should look for a teaching post given China's desperation to match it's linguistic skills in line with it's economic growth. All of my soon to be friends (at that point) were of the same opinion, with most saying that finding a teaching job here "a piece of p*ss" and would take "no time".

3 weeks after this clarevoyant advice I was still an unemployed layabout and was beignning to question the wisdom of these new found people as well as my prospects as an employable member of society!

Just as things were starting to look bleak and become an issue, with othe jobs such as stuntman, movie extra and organ donor looking a more likely option I got a reply to one of my applications from a company called 'Let's Goal Oxford English' for a teaching position. Lesson 1 I thought would be to to get a company name atht actually MAKES SENSE in English if you're supposed to be teaching it!

After a couple of meetings and convincing them (?!) that my lack of experience wasn''t a problem with a demo lesson I signed my life away to a teahcing contract and all was looking good on the woork front! Nice.

All I had to do now was figure out what you're supposed to do with a textbook that looks like it was deisgned by the students rather than for them, and how to handle a classroom of 30 Chinese 7 year olds!

My successful acquisition of a job actually led me briefly back to my job search. This was in the same way that when you go shopping and buy something you always look at the windows of other stores to see if your pair of shoes / trousers / handcuffs / whatever was the bargain you hoped it was and not 5 quid cheaper down the road!

Whilst I was quite pleased with myself at the lack of anything significantly better I was just about to close my internet window when I noticed a little button named 'control panel'.

As I was a signed up, logged in member of this website (it had been the my main area of looking given the fact it was in English!) I thought I'd have a look and see what benefits I get for handing all my details over to these people.
The 'control panel' itself was quite interesting, with all sorts of helpful things (that I'd obviously ingored) like saving searches, looking for specific employers etc, which I thought was all very nice until I saw another small button on the left called 'Inbox (12)'.

Any kind of inbox was news to me as when signing up I gave them my personal e-mail address, understanding that any communications would be handled that way.
Not the case, as my discovery found several more than useful job leads and interview requests, all of which would have been useful 3 weeks ago!
These initial friendly inviting e-mails had then been followed up by "please get in touch with us" messages, although am sure the undertone was more fo a "why are you ignoring us, don't you need a job!!??"

SBE #4,713. Enough said.

So after further confirmation that I would have been better off bringing a brain with me when leaving the UK rather than a backpack, I could at least say that I was not quite the unemployable, gambling, beer swilling layabout I thought...well not as far as prospective employers are concerned anyway!

Right, so now I've actually got myself some employment I will be elaborating on what you're actually supposed to do when teaching out here, as well as what I actually do!

Pics to come soon as always!