thanks for the support SB, but I really feel I do not deserve any "praise". Where I refuse to be humble however is in kowtowing to China and it's bloody stupid visa rules, if I'm going to be arsed about to get a 1 year work visa, then all that arsing about is going to be in a 1st world city/country, not some parochial polluted backwater town or god forbid, Beijing, in China.

I had a email recently from a english guy I knew who was bragging of his TC/farming out to another school job in Beijing. 8,000 rmb is nothing much in Beijing, nor china these days, and I suspected he was in on a recruitment scam. I told him where he could stick his crappy city and crappy job and blocked him off facebook. Sad to say, some foreigners become like the Chinese, or love the culture, or claim that despite me and you being old china hands, can never "understand" the place.

It's fair to say you and CL are prospering more than I!!!!

Merry christmas,
San Migs