I had a complaint comment made this morning that my so called Blog wasn't a Blog because I didn't write anything apart from annotations to my photos and videos. Well, that comment is justified to some degree because you'll never get found by search engines if you don't have any relevant text. And no-one knows what you are thinking either, which in my case might not be a bad thing.

So just to redress the balance a bit, here are a few thoughts from one week down in China.

First of all, if you are coming here to work, it is a really good idea to arrive a day or to early to get your head in the right place. The people and culture are so different to our Western ways that it takes a while to adjust.

I had the fortune of only having a three day week followed by a three day weekend, and that break really saved my sanity (and of those unfortunate enough to be near me).

The weekend brought a flurry of photo and video blogging, but above all I got a chance to explore and really get a feel for the people. There is this strange sense of calm here that I haven't experienced elsewhere. The Hangzhou town is busy but somehow you don't feel your energy sapping like you might in a city like London or Delhi. I have never seen a hint of aggression or anti-social behaviour since I have been here (apart from some raised voices at immigration, but that's understandable)

There's some much crazy stuff happening on the streets. It might be normal to the Chinese, but to my Western biased eyes it all seems like sensory overload. I have seen street dancing (videoed here), women dancing the Jive together in the park, hairdressers on the street having some kind of motivational pep talk, and spoken to some really genuinely nice people. And of course, the really enigmatic T Shirt slogans for which China is so well known.

Now starting the second week of teaching here at the Water College, (on a Sunday because of the public holiday on Thursday) I feel more at ease, and I am enjoying getting to know the students. It's hard to teach because of the language issues, but at least with programming we have a universal language to converse in. Debugging C# programs in Chinese Visual Studio is not for the faint-hearted though!

If you are coming here from a western culture for a while, there's a few things that I would recommend bringing:

Coffee and Tea. If you need these, then they are hard to come by.

For kiwis, Vegemite, Marmite. Spreads are not that commonplace. Dairy produce in particular is a bit of a luxury item, and you really have to go to a bigger shop to find milk. You certainly won't find milk in the corner shop.

The bread is pretty average, most food seems to have too much sugar in it for my tastes. Watch what you eat at the street stalls. I am usually pretty adventurous in this department, but I am now convinced that the "meat" I started knawing into yesterday used to be something's tail. Eeww yuck. I had to "protect circumstance, begin with me" and dispose in the bin.

Books and DVDs. Give yourself time to zone out. There's nothing on telly that I could find anyway.

If you don't like hard beds, then a sleeping mat is useful. Mind you, I was happy with my hard bed.

At this time of year, you don't need a lot of warm clothes. It is warm and humid, so you have to pace yourself. Today, for example, is over 30 degrees, and humid. No one is moving very fast. 

The internet here is a saviour. Being able to Skype from my apartment is great, and I get a chance to talk to the dog and the cat too. Yes I really am that sad.

In my first session, I showed lots of photos of New Zealand and my family. The students loved the dog and cat pictures especially. They also liked the New Zealand "lollies" (sweets) that I handed around. Makes you more human I think.

We still have three weeks here. I am looking forward to seeing some of the older China if there's any of it left here. Gavin, my assistant here, told me that Hangzhou used to be the capital of China many centuries ago, so there must be some hidden treasures out there.