Hello!

It's been several months since I've checked Hive out. I've actually been on our StemSocial discord more or less every day making sure it's cruising along thanks to the amazing work of @gentleshaid, @carloserp-2000 and others, and fixing any issues. Special kudos to gent, who has been holding the fort like a legend while we wait for a certain pre-occupied @lemouth makes his return!

So at most, I've been opening various links to check its eligibility for curation, taking action, and then going on my way. It feels like Hive itself is just cruising for some time now. This is fine of course, but I miss the times when things were exciting during the early Steem days. All I seem to see in my brief browsing these days is just people advertising Hive to each other and then usual conspiracy theories. To me this shows that the core issues that have perpetually limited the growth of Hive, have not budged. But I'll have to get back into things further to really know how things are going here.

So why haven't I been here? I figured I'll write a little update for basically myself to read about myself.

Girlfriend

The main reason I stopped, I suppose, is because I got myself a girlfriend. I had been single for much longer than I let on to most people, by choice, while I figured myself out mentally and physically. I made enough mistakes in the past that I didn't want, at 34 years old, to jump into another disaster of a relationship that blows up after 6 months, leads into a 5-year comfort zone of nothingness, or whatever else. This time I had to get it right.

Thankfully, although still only a few months in, I'm pretty confident I got it right this time. I won't go into too much detail, this being an immutable blockchain and all. But it's going supremely well.

So naturally most of my attention has been on her. Prior to her, I was spending most my free hours playing FFXIV, which came to an abrupt halt since. I still miss the game and plan to, at some point, get the storyline complete since it genuinely was quite captivating, but now is not the time for that.

I am at the tail end of my 6 week vacation and although I have essentially gone nowhere or done anything adventurous or extraordinary, I've found for the first time, I'm not begging to get back to work due to immense boredom and depression that I would sit through in previous big vacations where I would actually travel far and wide. Despite being a person full of hobbies, that much free time is just too much of a vacuum to handle by oneself.

Now I'm happy to accomplish nothing with the girlfriend in question and feel like I want it to last forever. Cool.

That being said we are both a bit more ambitious than that, but you get the idea. Budding relationship yadda yadda.

Kitten

Speaking of new things, I made the grand mistake of rescuing a kitten stuck inside somebody's car. Well actually they rescued it by slowly driving the car to a garage to get it removed. But I offered to take it and find a new owner. I couldn't keep it because I already have two and it would be essentially impossible for me to take three cats back to England, and impractical in the small apartment I rent.

3-4 months later, here it is, still bullying my other two cats as kittens are wont to do. It's really hard to find new owners for cats in a city where there's 7 homeless cats on every street corner. In the rescue group I'm in, I see posters being put down daily for months and months, showing far cuter and more handsome cats than my mongrel rescue.

I still haven't thought of a name for him, I guess A) I feel giving a name would imply ownership which I refuse and B) I'm just really bad at names (My two cats are Smash and Chompy, after all).

He is a truly lovely kitty, to be fair. He's just a total nightmare for the other two when he just wants to play and fight. Smash is over 6 years old and Chompy is over 3. They just don't have time for his BS. But he is unrelenting.

Other than that, he's extremely loving and purr-ey, never bites or attacks human flesh, and if I ever manage to get rid of him, I'll miss him a ton for bringing a bit more life to the home!

Herniated Disc

When I was looking under the car trying to shine a light in the hole the kitten was in, I did something to my back. I didn't think much of it at the time and it just ached for a few days and eventually kinda wore off. Then, at the school I worked at, two of my students, both tall, one of them particularly burly, ended up having a huge fight, which I tried to break up for some reason. My spine wasn't even in my mind as the discomfort had subsided days ago.

I didn't really manage to break anything off since they were both younger and stronger than I could ever hope to be, but it ended somehow. It was kinda fun. However, walking back to my office chair, I was like 'ohhhh...shit'.

Suddenly my entire lower back was in agony. Not quite enough that I couldn't hide it, but enough that I couldn't actually sit down without shooting pain up my body. I also couldn't stand. Or lie down. The taxi home (thinking the bus would be uncomfortable) was excruciating.

Lying in bed was a nightmare, there was literally nothing I could do to not be in pain. I took two days off plus the weekend where I eventually gathered the strength to get out of bed and go hospital.

3 slipped discs! The body scan was fun, but a firm reminder of how much fat makes up my very being.

It would take at least 8 weeks to recover, which isn't the best thing when you literally just found yourself a perfect girlfriend who might expect a little more than you just lying in bed unable to function in any way for months.

Honestly, It's still here, long after the healing date. I generally don't feel it or think about it, but on several occasions where I've lifted something more than the weight of a feather, or did some gardening, it comes right back.

I believe this is due to lack of exercise. I always lacked it but since lying in bed for weeks and refusing to do anything physical whatsoever, even more so. Though it generally feels like I've just strained my sloth-like, wet-tissue muscles, which is undoubtedly partly true, there's also a feeling of dread that I'm also opening up the wound every time. After all, this is now a lifelong ailment. The disc heals up, but scarred - a weakened state, more prone to happen again in the future.

Interestingly, this is not an OLD PERSON ailment. After you hit 50, it becomes significantly unlikely to get herniated discs, as your bones and joints tend to dry up and there's simply not enough of the 'jelly' between your joints to slip or burst out. People in their 80's almost never get them. Their bones just shatter. No, this is a condition for those in the 30's-50's who are exceedingly unfit like myself.

Now I cannot do many exercises, at least to start off. No sit-ups/crunches, and to be honest, it's hard to think of many exercises for any part of the body that doesn't require some kind of lower back strain. There's some I've looked up and will be working with to bring back some muscle which should offer some protection for my future, but I'm still lazy at heart so... we'll see.

Speaking of gardening...

Gardening

I figured gardening would be a nice activity to do with a weakened spine. I was very wrong, but that's beside the point. It's fun.

I used to garden a lot. My old apartment had no space for it, just a window with some washing lines outside I would extremely precarious balance a bunch of pots and cut-open gallon bottles of water with various crops in, and got amazing results; more peppers, beans and tomatoes than I could possibly do anything with, cucumbers, sunflowers and more.

The next time I tried, when I was new to this current apartment, there was a heatwave that took the city by... storm? at over 42C every day which just baked my attempts at any garden on my rooftop. So I just gave up on the idea.

This time I decided to do it on my balcony, which apparently doesn't give enough sunlight. So, lesson learnt I guess?

It's not been very successful at all so far, but I truly feel the journey is the fun part. After all, I have little intention of actually eating the crops, I just like to see things grow. It's not like I could ever grow enough to replace my groceries.

The previous time, I learnt a ton about parasites and fungi, drainage, soil types, tilling and more. I learnt them through practice, and lost a lot of plant life from these problems.

This time, I was kinda lazy to start off with. I wasn't that excited about it so I just dumped a bunch of random soil into boxes and threw a bunch of seeds in.

Needless to say, when combined with the lack of sunlight, I've ended up with skinny-ass tomato plants that don't flower, tiny pepper plants stuck in juvenile stage, and two cucumber plants that have yet to grow taller than a 30 centimetres for months.

HOWEVER, now I'm legitimately into it, I'm going full into this hobby once again and taking it through the winter. I've bought some sunlight lamps, a cover to protect from cats, and have been researching how to grow certain crops outside and inside.

Turns out this was the perfect time to plant carrots! So I put 15-20 in my box outside. Later, in winter, I'll start with peas which thrive great in the cold to start off, so they can be very early season. Inside, I'll take some seeds from bell peppers and try and grow them, along with lavender and peppermint.

The tomatoes and stuff outside can die whenever they please, I'll keep an eye on them, as well as that blasted nocturnal caterpillar that has so far singlehandedly destroyed 3 plants while I sleep. Again, it's a fun journey!

Pandemic

Y'all probably know there's a pandemic going on. Well, not so much here in China. It's been basically absent in Shanghai since March 2020, so life has been pretty normal since the beginning.

We still have to wear masks in some places like every metro system, some malls etc., and almost everywhere requires you to have a green QR code ready which shows you haven't been to any 'orange' or 'red' zoned lately. I just show them a screenshot. But since I haven't left shanghai for about 19 months now, it doesn't really matter either way.

The last few weeks, however, the Indian virus 'delta' has gatecrashed the party and lockdowns, city-wide testing etc. have come back in force across the country. Although there's been a few cases in Shanghai, so far nothing has been implemented that I've noticed. All I've really noticed is everybody outside is wearing masks (by choice! Amazing isn't it, US conspiracy theorists?).

That being said, it's early days, and I'm fully expecting some kind of 2-week lockdown to happen. Hopefully right about when I'm due to start work again next week =D.

I still haven't been vaccinated myself, even though all my friends have. Not that I'm anti-vaxx by any means, but it's a little different when your only option are the Chinese vaccines which so far are demonstrating an efficacy equal to that of injecting water into your bloodstream.

That's not entirely fair, it seems to have some miniscule effect, maybe. The reliable results are still pending. But almost all countries who have their population covered by Chinese vaccines are going through huge outbreaks and lockdowns, so it remains to be seen. I was hoping for either a new china vaccine proven more effective after over a year of development now, which has so far not even been hinted at, or the option to get one of the western vaccines, which again, is not even hinted at yet.

I will ultimately have to take the plunge it seems, when places start inevitably banning me from entry unless I am vaccinated, including my job probably. We'll see. I'm not scared of it, or needles, or anything, I was just hoping to be a bit more efficient and effective with my choice. Would be pretty annoying if I get vaccinated only to go and get myself infected and die.

Work

Since things are basically normal here, school has been like a normal school, except it's my school so an entirely corrupt and incompetent school with untrained and uncaring staff. But, a school nonetheless.

The last year, for me, was fantastic. 7 hours of teaching a week. I came to work every day a little after 8am. I had nothing to do until I taught fun subjects - Guitar and choir - for 90 minutes, then from 1:40 until home time I did nothing again. Every day.

FOR A YEAR

Granted I had various other things to do. Teaching is absolutely not just about teaching a class. You have meetings and clubs and events, competitions, all kinds of things to organise, paperwork to plan and format every day and so on.

But, I had a severe amount of free time for sure. I brought my own pillow to work so I could go back to sleep every morning until about, Oh I dunno, 10:30 or something?

Although I did waste most of my time browsing online, I did try to use the time constructively through improving my musical abilities on piano, guitar, viola, shakuhachi, drums, etc. but there's only so long you can spend that much free time doing 'stuff' before you run out of steam.

I will never get a year like that again with a full time salary! And although I will miss it, I'm also kind of relieved. It'll be nice to feel a bit busy again. This coming school year I will teach those classes, but the guitar will be split into two levels, and I will also be teaching AP (advanced placement) music, as well as Theory 101. Each of the latter two classes are twice the duration of the guitar and choir, and AP music requires a lot more attention than simply waltzing into the class and having fun with your kids, so my workload has now exploded to the other end of the spectrum which might be too much (I'm technically exceeding my contracted hours, overtime will be paid!)

It should all pay off though. I'm now - against my will - the HOD (head of department) for 3 departments; music, art and PE. This, along with the standard salary increase for working here another year, combined with my negotiating it a little higher, COMBINED with getting myself qualified to teach AP over this vacation, I'm ultimately getting paid a ton more than I was last year; I think a little under $1,000/month more. Cool!

Work II

It sounds like I have extreme job satisfaction, but that's not entirely true. Although I'm essentially doing exactly what I love, It's in a company, a private international school, which just feels morally wrong to support and be a part of. Every single day I hear from students how unsatisfied they are, how they're not learning anything because the teachers are barely graduated, underpaid fools who are just staying here to get something on their resume before quitting and getting a better job.

Every time I walk past every classroom, nothing is going on. Students playing games on their computers, teachers sitting on their phones in the corner. Even the teachers who seem to care, and try to teach, seem to be underqualified and fall for the most rudimentary teaching mistakes like calling on the same 2 students to answer questions because the others aren't willing to be called upon, or simply lecturing at the room for 90 minutes without interacting with students in any way, then just fudging the exam scores when they don't meet their expected quota. Or giving 3 assignments over an entire semester.

It's infuriating. I feel like my passion for teaching and music could be better spent elsewhere, but at the same time I just love having a lazy-ass job where I don't need to constantly be on my feet. What a pickle for such a fortunate scenario.

But seriously, it breaks my heart to see such amazingly talented and intelligent kids waste away. Some from last year excelled, with GPA's hitting 4.0 and beyond, only to succumb to the 'what's the point in this school?' mindset, give up attending, and the following year, I see their GPA drop to 2, 1, even 0.2 in one student's case. Perfectly wonderful, studious, eager kids. Destroyed by the system.

I just hate being a part of that. I'm going to make a separate post on what my future alternatives are.

Other

Well, there's actually little else to update. I still live and work in the same place. Still do my usual stuff. Still me. Still trying to find the right direction. But, y'know. S'all good =)

My second update post will be more about the following:

• Why England? Why China?
• Where to next? What's next?
• Political climate
• Property buying

Until then, Ciao!