Was in mainland China last week for our annual programme retreat. Stayed at quite a nice hotel complete with puny private beach.

Always bizarre and predictable but not entirely unpleasant, this annual 'get together' is basically an entire day's worth of meetings which could have taken place in any old crappy room with big table and thirty chairs. Yet, when under the guise of 'retreat', results in an out of town experience that only the clinically insane would agree is not a complete waste of taxpayers' money.

I said not entirely unpleasant, because people are trapped and therefore forced to socialize with one another. With the aid of copious amounts of overpriced plonk, it is actually one of the few occasions where you get to see the other side of people whom I normally imagine to be boring freaks. One guy kept quoting from "that famous book" called "Seven habits of highly effective people". A bunch of females kept daring one another to go up the stage to sing. When there was actually a band ALREADY doing the singing. At the top right corner of the dark Italian restaurant, an M Phil student was getting her much needed meeting with her supervisor (aka "the dodger"). And yes, her thesis is due in a month.

And this morning I taught Sunday School for the first time. I was told that my voice was too loud. Bloody right it was.

Dear God, why are other people's children always such useless brats?