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Chinese Visa Office
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11th Annual Dalian International Walking Festival
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Soggy day
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‘Famous French and
English Bands’ at the Chateau du Vin Bordeaux
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Beatles concerts
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And so much more
Actually this is more
than a weekend memory of what-we-did as Thursday and Friday is just as much of
this extended weekend at least in my memory as Saturday and Sunday is. Of
course Thursday and Friday were work days. With my job as technology
coordinator however I am always on the job as I read technology and educational
blogs and updates whether I am at school or on the shopping bus, sitting on the
loo or waiting in a dentist’s office. Saturday whilst Narda
was in the dentist chair for more than an hour I took enough notes from what I
had found to be potentially useful stuff for possible integration or to-try at
school that I will be spending days engaging with it. There are so many
blogging-filming apps now that I am looking forward to what I can do with my
classes next year that are specializing in multimedia, and film specifically.
This is an exciting time to be developing a film program in a school. Helping
students to become always-journalist will be one of the most important lessons
for them. Journalism has not changed but the delivery and sharing has. When I
was doing my journalism degree at the start of the 1990s I concentrated on
radio-broadcasting, helping to start the community radio station E-FM
(Encounter FM) in Victor Harbor, South Australia. My part of the radio station
needless to say was news and children’s radio (CAR = Children’s Australian
Radio – my little contribution to Australian community radio) where my children
managed to star on.
I am teaching
broadcast journalism along with filming. Merging these with social sites
and story development and sharing more than ‘we had pizza last night’ will
greatly assist students. I am having them blogging using their phones as well
as filming and bringing it into the classroom for editing. Next year I will
collaborate with the English department (write the story), music department for
backing tracks as well as my classes for filming and editing.
The next big shift in
schools is from integrating technology to integrating film in every department.
Students are already doing this in their life outside of school putting clips
onto whatever site is their favorite at the moment. Students are self-branding
all the time and assisting as well as providing time and space to do this will
improve their self-image i.e. self-brand. We have been putting a lot of
emphasis on student portfolios lately but social sites are there real
portfolios and I feel that is the area we need to develop. Employers are
looking at social sites as part of their investigations of potential new hires
and if the social site has wonderfully crafted video-blogs and short films this
becomes a living-portfolio. This area has not been very well addressed and it
is an area I will be working on next year so students will have their
shared-online-lives crafted to look like mini-film-festival. ‘The Festival of
Me’ – it sounds so Leo and having five planets in Leo I feel qualified for such
a category of instruction or for at least me. In my middle school publication
class I have students making a magazine in InDesign titled ‘About Me’ where
they create a whole newsletter/e-zine about themselves. Their initial reaction
is that writing more than fifty words about themselves is impossible becomes
more engaging when they write about their favorite video game or movie and get
to insert photos (Creative Commons only of course) and interview each other and
write up a commercial and on and on.
We have been
corresponding with a school in India to do a collaborative on-line real-time
film project and we have the assistance of a film producer in Los Angeles who
recently had her film accepted into the Sundance film festival in Utah. Our
class has been Skypping her and we have been
discussing their individual projects for this quarter as she ‘looks over our
shoulders’. My neighbor, Frank, and his wife are moving to Yangon, Myanmar to
teach at an international school next year. We have been putting together a
plan to do a collaborative film project which in my little world is quite
exciting. I am thinking of his and my students writing a script together – back
and forth then having our individual classes create and edit the script and
have them playing side by side as one film with two interpretations of the same
story. His students are mostly Myanmar citizens and mine are a collection from
around the planet which would make this a very global endeavor.
To emphasize my
integration of film in the student’s life where most of their daily short clips
are posted to social sites from their smartphones..
An Australian
filmmaker has won first prize at the Sundance London Film and Music Festival
with a short film shot entirely on a Nokia Lumia 920
smartphone. The film explores the influence of hip hop, which started in the
Bronx, on the indigenous communities in regional Australia and how it helped
youth reconnect with tribal elders and tell stories using this style of music.
see it on youtube at http://youtu.be/W8Lewbdm8lg
Last Thursday it was Narda’s elementary student concert, ‘All you need is
love’ that put us into a Beatles mood. She has been doing a lot of
work on this for the past months and I have been filming little segments as
commercials for our school’s video-news show, DAISlive.
As Narda’s biggest fan the past twelve years I would
say this was up there with her best work. Of course it is not the same as when
she did a Beatles tribute at Albany Academy in upstate New York a decade ago
but that was with high school and there was dance involved as Albany Academy
for Girls has a strong dance program. Being in a Beatles mood we are off to see
the Beijing
Beatles next weekend who are playing in Dalian. Carolyn, Narda’s sister and her husband are visiting from Australia
then so they can too see what China has to offer to
the musical past. One of the Beijing Beatles is from Australia so they couldn’t
be that bad. The name of the show is We do like to be beside the seaside – tour to Dalian.
Friday we needed to
collect our passports so we could go to the U.S. Consulate in
Shenyang this coming Tuesday. Narda has to sort out
some stuff with the Yanks and I have to go along being the Yank of a sponsor.
As always these things are so complicated; whether to keep a Green Card –
problem is being out of the States for the past two years, surrendering it is
an issue and becoming a citizen is another kettle of fish. We just hope to be
able to sort it out in one trip. With less than four weeks before we leave for
the States she is now in no-man’s land. They won’t give her a visitor’s visa
without tossing the Green Card and she may not be unable to renew the Green
Card and now with the recent Boston problems the Yanks are all the more tighter
about stuff. When we first went to the States in 2002, shortly after 9-11, we
had a terrible time. According to many phone calls we had everything in order.
When we arrived in Sydney – with our flight booked for the next day to New
York, not only were they very rude to us but they said in the photos of Narda her ear was not showing enough and we would have to
re-do the photo and come back in a week. At the time we were homeless, having
sold Narda’s home in Adelaide, and storing away all
our belongings we were left to cancel our flight with no idea when we would be
able to get Narda with a visia.
We were not going for a usual visit, we were moving there. I had been out of
the country for 20-years so they said something about not having domicile and
as a sponsor of Narda who, like me, had jobs in the
States; she was at Albany Academy for Girls and me at the State University of
New York at Albany, and my father was 97 years old waiting to see me before he
left the planet. After three days of abuse by the wankers at the US consulate
in Sydney I contacted my cousin Fredrick Miller who knew Congressman Sweeney
and Sweeney sent a congressional letter to the consulate in Sydney. All of a
sudden they were nice to me, and said I could come in right away and we could
fly out in the evening. There was a period we thought we would never get in to
the States. Now after living there for more than a decade, owning three homes
and Narda having a son living in the States married
to a Yank (I started the trend in her family of marrying non-Dutch people).
Before I came bopping along Narda and her three
sisters and all their relatives had only ever married Dutch people, having
migrated to Australia from the Netherlands in the 1950s. Since me one son has
married a Yank and lives in Atlanta, Georgia and another son has married a POM
– prisoner of Mother England, and her third son now in India, has a pommie girlfriend too so I changed their directions. They
had all been staying in the Dutch genetic pool for five-hundred plus years; so
they must be thankful to me. To make a too long story short about going to New
York my father hung around for another five years and we were happy that
Sweeney was able to get us in. Fortunately for us this was before Sweeney got
into a bit of trouble: In September 2006, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
released its ‘The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress’ and Sweeney was one of
the 20.
Our visit to the
Chinese visa issuing place was much different than the one to Sydney. We had
one of those Chinese moments where everything takes longer and goes slow
compared to what us Westerns want but after a couple of hours, chatting about
stuff like the price of wine in Australia and how many children we had and lots
of smiles and interpretations we got our passports with our official work-visa
to July 31st 2014. Being past 65 this is a big deal
for me as in most provinces the work-visa limit is 60. I believe from our
conversation at the visa office that Chinese retirement is 60 then I think they
get a pension which puts away the thought that china does not look after their
people.
What we are finding is that a lot of stuff we
have been told in the Western media is quite different than the China we see on
a day-to-day basis. People; whether authorities or folks in the street are
really quite friendly. They stop and stare like we are from another galaxy but
with five planets in Leo it does not bother me. They are generally a very
curious lot and want to know about Westerns. We are curious too; and of
course I am very curious about their fascination with all things French as I
will show in a moment.
Saturday was the big
11th Annual Dalian International Walking Festival.
We signed up before realizing we had a dentist appointment at 11 AM. We figured
we would walk for an hour then catch a cab into town. As things would have it,
in a town that does not see much rain fall, all day Saturday it rained. I put
on my waterproof ‘Tommy Hilfiger’ trendy coat (even old people like to look
stylish) and we took the school van in a dozen or so other ‘walkers’ from
school.
Tommy Hilfiger’ rain coat
There were a lot of
people, like many thousands, all with their umbrellas up headed out on the 5 –
30 kilometer walk going along the Coastal Road, “Bin Hai
Road”. We had intended to do just the first five. Actually we did the first few
blocks then disappeared up a side street and caught a cab to the dentist.
At the start of the
race is Dalian Castle Hotel, a 6-star hotel (300 rooms) due to open December 1,
2013.
Dalian Castle Hotel
It overlooks Xinghai Bay, 星海广场 and of course a million or so walkers in May, rain or shine.
Of course it is the
statue in front that I find even more interesting than a walled castle being
constructed in the midst of a city;
Definitely my kind of
hotel if I could afford a six-star hotel, I did not even know they had such a
ranking.
After the dentist we
took the light rail (轻轨, qing
gui) to Kaifaqu.
Normally we take the shopping bus and get our groceries but we missed the bus.
Harbor Deli is one of our stops as it is near the Kaifaqu
qing gui
station which is the Five Colour City stop and they
have Western crap; cheese, cereal and that which we cannot otherwise find. Of
course the rain was ever present as we took a bus (for one RMB = 15 cents US)
instead of walking to the green-door – not the name of the place but we have no
idea what the sign says – and loaded ourselves down for the week.
We figured we would
take a cab home but after a couple of cabbies said no and another said
two-hundred RMB (30 bucks) we realized the only way home for us was to call
Jack – our regular driver who came and collected us and took us for 70 RMB –
about 1/3 the cost of a taxi. Of course it was not Jack himself but one of his
mates – we call them all Jack. If this was Australia we would just add an o to
the end as Australian’s do and call him Jacko but we
don’t and we won’t.
We were so exhausted
by the time Jack came as will as wet we were ready to go to sleep on the
sidewalk. This is one of the most difficult things with living at Campus
Village; the transportation is almost too difficult. This is the second
time we spent an exhausting Saturday and got ourselves stuck. If there is a
lesson we are not learning it except that we should stop shopping anywhere but
our local Long Shan Village.
We received the
invite; ‘Famous French and English Bands’ at the Chateau du Vin Bordeaux in our
school email. Chateau du Vin Bordeaux, which was
called, last year, Chateau De Bourdeux, across the
street from us – I can see it from my balcony. (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTioCA7Ct44&feature=share&list=UUzGrI_yggI56Gpp2ZyNQAXw,
a year ago) has been another castle dreaming of France but this one you can
live at as they are The Dalian Haichang Group
is building 400 luxury villas in this style. We toured the place last year and
when we asked why they had not sold any we were told because they were too
expensive, like a million dollars plus. The Haichang
Group have been purchasing lots of chateauxs
in France – see The Chinese Chateaux In Bordeaux for the
down-and-dirty. Of course we are hoping this will mean cheap French wine
locally.
Some of my images for
this afternoon visit to almost France – China style.
The first one is a
view of our apartment from the local million dollars plus flat.
Chateau De Bourdeux
Chateau De Bourdeux
china likes putting these kinds of ships around the place - this is a
view from Chateau De Bourdeux
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