Communication and Mistakes

Since my last blog post!

As I ended my last blog post with reference to waiting on information as to when I began working again, on the Thursday morning I was about to go out of the school when the assistant for the foreign teachers was coming in, she then informed me that I had three classes that afternoon. Had I not seen her at that time I did wonder how little advance notice I would have had otherwise. As I have said before, communication or relaying of important information is often overlooked and mistakes are then made.

After going to the schools office a short time later, to find the text books and schedule were not yet ready, I was reminded of my three classes for that afternoon and one on Friday afternoon from 2.00 until 2.40. As I had planned to go back to Jiangxi for the weekend, once my classes were finished I made my way to the train station to buy the necessary train tickets for the journeys on Friday evening and Sunday night. The next afternoon at 2.40 as I was about to leave after completing my one class, I was informed of a mistake in the information given to me the previous day, I did in fact have two classes on Friday afternoons and not one as told previously. I said that it was too late to inform me of changes now, I had a train to catch, it was their mistake, so their problem. I left to enjoy my weekend.

In the past I have not had Friday afternoon classes, giving me a longer weekend, for some reason this year that has all changed. The school has spread my classes out across the week giving me in effect less free time, I asked if they could change the Friday afternoon classes, they put one onto the morning, and left me the later one.

This morning (Monday) I returned from my weekend and decided to buy my train tickets for next weekend then, instead of waiting until later in the week and risk them being all sold out. I went to the local train station where I often have problems in communicating and today was no exception. First, there was nobody selling tickets, three or four people sitting around doing nothing, but none of them capable of selling me a ticket, eventually I was informed the person would be along in a few minutes.

Eventually he arrived, I showed him my written instructions (in Chinese) the first train he understood, no problem, the second he managed to get right. The third and fourth trains were return journeys of the first two, so obviously the same start and end points just in the opposite direction. The fourth one he got right, the third he just couldn’t get right. Instead of Yingtan to Wuchang, he kept putting in Wenzhou to Yingtan. Then when he finally understood Yingtan to Wuchang he had deleted all the other information and told me there were no tickets available for that day, this two minute job was taking close to 40 minutes. I had to return to the school for a class. The assistant I mentioned previously, I asked her to write out in detail my instructions for each ticket, after my class I returned to the ticket office and this time it took just a few minutes. Frustrating was not the word for it.

On my weekend trips back to Yingtan, I go to see my wife and son, and the happiness in his face when he wakes up on the Saturday morning and sees me for the first time since the previous weekend. I also go back because I have been offered some weekend work, this last weekend was to go over ideas together and plan a recruitment drive for the next weekend. Hopefully the weekend after that I begin working and earning some much needed extra money. If all goes to plan, I will go back every weekend, eventually working there full time. Until that time, lots of buying train tickets and travelling on the trains are ahead of me.