OK, I realize I have been extremely derelict in writing about my news. I’ve been terribly busy in the past few weeks and have been neglecting communication of all forms, which, I suppose, is all the more reason to write some quick notes here about what’s going on. I didn’t. My bad.

Let me try to fill you in.

• The “great tutoring job” I wrote about before fell through. Long story short: my employer kept changing class times and pay, and was generally clueless and unreasonable regarding her children’s education. We got fed up with each other. Oh well. I made a good amount of money in only one month. I’m glad to have my evenings back, and I hated the job insecurity I always felt when working for her.

• Wayne took over the tutoring job from me. I found out from him that the son had been lying to his mom about me. (He told her I would come teach them drunk, among other things.) Wayne has the benefit of knowing what not to do. He knows not to be strict with the kids, for example, so that they won’t tell lies about him to their mother.

• I got a new tutoring client through my roommate Lenny. She’s a young Taiwanese professional that lives practically across the street, and I can teach her mornings (mostly). I’m much happier with this arrangement.

• My landlord had said she wanted to sell the place, so we (me, SS, Lenny) were doing some apartment hunting, but she changed her mind. We’re all relieved and happy.

• Classes are easy. I do practically nothing for two, and the other one is intellectually demanding, but not demanding work-wise. I really like that teacher, but she is a bit patronizing, and seems to think I understand very little of what happens in class. This really bothers me. It motivates me to study harder, though.

• I renegotiated my contract with Melody and am now doing more work for them (translation and recording, mainly).

• I still haven’t started that web design job I mentioned a while back… waiting on my client for more info.

• The new ayi (maid) is working out great. She’ll get her own post on Sinosplice soon.

• I started teaching English to the Chinese teachers in ECNU’s (my university’s) Chinese department. The pay is pathetic, but I agreed to do it so I could meet all those teachers. (I did it for the guanxi!) Unfortunately, it has the side effect of the teachers (my students) always talking to me in English now, in class as well as out of class. I only use English in class, because I feel that’s what I should do as their English teacher. Yet they — knowing that I am a grad student at ECNU — still seem to think that I can’t possibly know much Chinese. This pisses me off royally. Among my students is the one patronizing teacher that teaches me linguistics. Great…

• Things are great with Song Shen.