While I was working and living in China, I had a number of experiences that were – for me – tricky to deal with. I had all manner of work related experiences and life experiences.
One such work experience was the way we worked in the school I was employed in (Western Academy Beijing – better known as WAB) . As I have said we worked a hell of a lot of hours, much like the Roundhouse Theatre. We worked from about 7 o’clock to about 11 o’clock every day, starting from the Early Learners Centre and working until about 11 o’clock in the evening with a rock show, and in between we had films, and other entertainments. So basically it was non-stop all day long. Sometimes we had a relaxed day, which we celebrated!!!
But generally we worked all the hours that we were sent.
Normally we worked from about 10 until about 6 in the evening. With exceptions!
When we had Pop Concerts, we worked until they were finished (obviously), quite often they were added to by other International Schools in Beijing which was fun. I drew upon my professional experience a lot for these concerts – shades of my Roundhouse days – in was much the same. It was a mix of groups, a Heavy Metal group or a folk group, following on from each other, a real mix of groups! In my Roundhouse days we never mixed them up in that way, we tended to have a “type” of group, so Heavy Metal with Heavy Metal and such like….. Ah Doctor John!
We worked on these which was one thing we did, but otherwise we worked on kids talking or another thing…. We were really impressed by the kids presenting themselves…. They were so professional. Striding around the stage as if they possessed it.
We used to have demonstrations of the lights, in which we had the kids standing around the stage and shone different coloured lights on them. Which was intriguing. We discovered that blue gels in spotlights had a really weird effect. If we shone blue, simply blue lights on the kids, they were hard to focus and the weird thing was that they sort of were hard to see clearly. Odd effect.
So we worked all the hours that God sent, and generally functioned as serious professional roadies, which was entertaining, so the long hours really didn’t matter.
OZTHOUGHTS 