Some cool china machining China services images:
NSA (1971) … NSA reveals its OWN embarrassing secrets (14 June 2013) …item 2.. New York Times – VENONA AND THE COLD WAR (1999)
Image by marsmet472
The agency ran the the VENONA project – a long-running secret collaboration betwqeen the U.S and the U.K involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union.
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………*****All images are copyrighted by their respective authors ………
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… marsmet473a photo … Wired !! …item 2.. Radiohead – OK Computer (Full Album) — Electioneering …item 3.. FSU News – Life advice from the outside looking in (Oct. 27, 2013) — Work with what you’ve got. …
www.flickr.com/photos/104178037@N08/10069702514/in/photos…
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… marsmet473a photostream … Page 1
www.flickr.com/photos/104178037@N08/?details=1
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… marsmet473a photostream … Page 2
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…..item 1)…. NSA reveals its OWN embarrassing secrets: Fascinating archive photos show how spy agency held ‘Miss NSA’ pageants and committed shocking crimes against fashion (just don’t tell Edward Snowden).
… Mail Online – Daily Mail … www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ …
… Predecessor of the NSA was the Armed Forces Security Agency
… NSA was established on Nov. 4 1952 by then-President Harry Truman
… Creation allowed Defense Department to co-ordinate cryptologic information
… Agency began occupying buildings at Fort Meade in the late 1950s
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 05:20 EST, 14 June 2013 | UPDATED: 08:41 EST, 14 June 2013
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341569/Fascinating-pict…
At the National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Mead Maryland, a memorial carved into a plaque reads: ‘They Served in Silence.’
The motto is in stark contrast to this week’s revelations by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who has now become the most infamous agency employee in recent years.
But a candid NSA archive reveals the thousands of staffers who been quietly working on America’s most sensitive secrets for over six decades.
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img code photo … Strike a pose .. Think .. NO ADMITTANCE
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Strike a pose: The US Army Signal Intelligence Service posed in front of their vault in 1935
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img code photo … Early days
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Early days: Cryptologists in Korea in the 1950s. The Army Security Agency (ASA) was responsible for supplying the Army’s codes and ciphers
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img code photo … Working around the clock
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Working around the clock: Cryptologists hard at work during the Second World War
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img code photo … Determined
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Determined: Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) in Hawaii working on JN-25, the principal Japanese Navy encryption system in 1945
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The series of photos document the significant changes the agency has gone through since it was established on Nov. 4 1952 by then-President Harry Truman.
The predecessor to the NSA was the Armed Forces Security Agency which was set up in 1949.
More…
… Britain issues global warning to airlines not to let CIA leaker Edward Snowden board a flight to the UK
… Whistleblower Edward Snowden smuggled out secrets with an everyday thumb drive banned from NSA offices
… Feds vow to hunt down NSA leaker as they fear he is attempting to defect to China with America’s most sensitive secrets
But that agency did not have much power and lacked a central control centre.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Walter Bedell Smith sent a memo to James S. Lay, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council in 1951 that spurred the creation of the NSA.
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img code photo … Mission
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Mission: U.S. Army Engineers conduct diving operations to recover Nazi cryptologic records from Lake Schlersee in Southern Germany at the end of the Second World War
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img code photo … Intelligence
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Intelligence: NSA’s SIGSALY, a secure speech system used in World War Two for the highest-level Allied communications
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img code photo … A UNIVAC 9300 Peripheral Processor, 1966
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Equipment: A UNIVAC 9300 Peripheral Processor, left, a punch card computing data center from 1966, and a KY-8 Cryptologic Device, right
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img code photo … KY-8 Cryptologic Device
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Equipment: A UNIVAC 9300 Peripheral Processor, left, a punch card computing data center from 1966, and a KY-8 Cryptologic Device, right
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img code photo … M-138
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Intelligence gathering: M-138, a strip cipher device that allowed the use of multiple alphabets to encipher messages
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img code photo … Tour
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Tour: GEN Eisenhower visits Arlington Hall, William Friedman is standing on the far left
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img code photo … Beauty queens
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Beauty queens: Contestants in the Miss NSA Pageant held annually in the 1950s and early 1960s
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img code photo … Hunting …
MRBM Launch Site 1 .. San Cristobal, Cuba .. 23 October 1962
Nuclear Warhead Bunker Under Construction .. San Cristobal Site 1
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Hunting: Soviet strategic missile sites under construction in Cuba pictured in 1962
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img code photo … Moving forward
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Moving forward: A UNIVAC system purchased by NSA in 1963
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img code photo … Watching
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Watching: The direct communication link between Washington and Moscow at the Pentagon Building, as monitored by the NSA
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He observed recommended a survey of communications intelligence activities after observing ‘control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective.’
Then-president President Harry S. Truman authorized the agency’s creation in June 1952 – he understood the importance of a central spy body as America had become a dominant power on a global stage, facing global responsibilities and threats.
U.S. efforts had led to breaking German and Japanese codes in the Second World War, success against the German U-Boat threat in the North Atlantic, and victory in the Battle of Midway in the Pacific.
As war raged in Korea, the creation of NSA allowed the Defense Department to consolidate cryptologic support to military operations, and to meet challenges that the nation would face in the Cold War.
The agency ran the the VENONA project – a long-running secret collaboration betwqeen the U.S and the U.K involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union.
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img code photo … Technology evolving
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Technology evolving: Staffers chat as they stand next to the NSA supercomputers in the 1970s
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img code photo … America’s sensitive secrets
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
America’s sensitive secrets: An NSA staffer at work in 1971 using a console at the agency
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img code photo … Demonstration
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Demonstration: VADM Inman and Ms. Ann Caracristi listen to Hall of Honor Cryptologist Frank B. Rowlett describe the ENIGMA machine
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img code photo … Growing agency
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Growing agency: The NSA continued to expand into the 1980s, as seen in this aerial headquarters of its headquarters
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In 1953, the VENONA project exposed a massive Soviet espionage effort that threatened national security.
The NSA moved to Ft. Meade in 1957- one reason the site was selected was because it was deemed far enough away from the capital in case of a nuclear strike.
In 1960 the agency was rocked after two employees William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, defected to the Soviet Union.
The alarming revelation prompted tighter personnel security measures.
The agency’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) played a critical role in 1962 in defusing the Cuban Missle Criris, a saga which had the world’s nations nervously holding their breath.
In the 1970s, Dr. Tordella was an early advocate of the use of computers in cryptology.
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img code photo … Safe line
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Safe line: President H. W. Bush confers in confidence using a STU III device
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img code photo … Gen Eisenhower visits Arlington Hall
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Tour: Gen Eisenhower visits Arlington Hall, William Friedman is standing on the far left
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img code photo … VIP visit
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
VIP visit: President and Mrs. Reagan tour the new OPS2A and 2B Buildings with LTG Odom and Mrs. Odom on 26 September 1986
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img code photo … Through the years
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Through the years: George Bush and Dick Cheney at the NSA offices in 2008
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img code photo … President George W. Bush
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Terror attacks: President George W. Bush speaking on the phone following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001
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img code photo … Memories .. They Served In Silence
National Security Agency .. United States Of America
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Memories: NSA’s Cryptologic Memorial Wall honors those ‘who served in silence’ since the Second World War
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img code photo … Modern day
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/06/14/article-2341569-1A4F89…
Modern day: A view of the National Security Operations Center Floor last year
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The 1980s saw former NSA employee Ronald Pelton convicted of spying for and selling secrets to the Soviet Union.
He reportedly has a photographic memory as he passed no documents to the Soviets.
Petty Hohn Anthony Walker, Jr., a United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist was also convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1985.
In the late 1980s President Reagan attended the dedication of the Operations 2A and 2B buildings.
In the 1990s the NSA provided key information for the Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Storm.
In 2001, the 9/11 terror attacks that killed 2,977 people reinforced the need for the NSA as America became a clear Al-Qaeda target.
In 2011, the NSA played a key role in the Special Forces – IC Team responsible for tracking down Osama bin Laden.
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…..item 2)…. Venona Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
… New York Times on the Web … www.nytimes.com/books/ …
By JOHN EARL HAYNES and HARVEY KLEHR
Yale University Press
www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html
VENONA AND THE COLD WAR
The Venona Project began because Carter Clarke did not trust Joseph Stalin. Colonel Clarke was chief of the U.S. Army’s Special Branch, part of the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division, and in 1943 its officers heard vague rumors of secret German-Soviet peace negotiations. With the vivid example of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact in mind, Clarke feared that a separate peace between Moscow and Berlin would allow Nazi Germany to concentrate its formidable war machine against the United States and Great Britain. Clarke thought he had a way to find out whether such negotiations were under way.
Clarke’s Special Branch supervised the Signal Intelligence Service, the Army’s elite group of code-breakers and the predecessor of the National Security Agency. In February 1943 Clarke ordered the service to establish a small program to examine ciphered Soviet diplomatic cablegrams. Since the beginning of World War II in 1939, the federal government had collected copies of international cables leaving and entering the United States. If the cipher used in the Soviet cables could be broken, Clarke believed, the private exchanges between Soviet diplomats in the United States and their superiors in Moscow would show whether Stalin was seriously pursuing a separate peace.
The coded Soviet cables, however, proved to be far more difficult to read than Clarke had expected. American code-breakers discovered that the Soviet Union was using a complex two-part ciphering system involving a “one-time pad” code that in theory was unbreakable. The Venona code-breakers, however, combined acute intellectual analysis with painstaking examination of thousands of coded telegraphic cables to spot a Soviet procedural error that opened the cipher to attack. But by the time they had rendered the first messages into readable text in 1946, the war was over and Clarke’s initial goal was moot. Nor did the messages show evidence of a Soviet quest for a separate peace. What they did demonstrate, however, stunned American officials. Messages thought to be between Soviet diplomats at the Soviet consulate in New York and the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Moscow turned out to be cables between professional intelligence field officers and Gen. Pavel Fitin, head of the foreign intelligence directorate of the KGB in Moscow. Espionage, not diplomacy, was the subject of these cables. One of the first cables rendered into coherent text was a 1944 message from KGB officers in New York showing that the Soviet Union had infiltrated America’s most secret enterprise, the atomic bomb project.
By 1948 the accumulating evidence from other decoded Venona cables showed that the Soviets had recruited spies in virtually every major American government agency of military or diplomatic importance. American authorities learned that since 1942 the United States had been the target of a Soviet espionage onslaught involving dozens of professional Soviet intelligence officers and hundreds of Americans, many of whom were members of the American Communist party (CPUSA). The deciphered cables of the Venona Project identify 349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies (see appendix A). Further, American cryptanalysts in the Venona Project deciphered only a fraction of the Soviet intelligence traffic, so it was only logical to conclude that many additional agents were discussed in the thousands of unread messages. Some were identified from other sources, such as defectors’ testimony and the confessions of Soviet spies (see appendix B).
The deciphered Venona messages also showed that a disturbing number of high-ranking U.S. government officials consciously maintained a clandestine relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies and had passed extraordinarily sensitive information to the Soviet Union that had seriously damaged American interests. Harry White–the second most powerful official in the U.S. Treasury Department, one of the most influential officials in the government, and part of the American delegation at the founding of the United Nations–had advised the KGB about how American diplomatic strategy could be frustrated. A trusted personal assistant to President Franklin Roosevelt, Lauchlin Currie, warned the KGB that the FBI had started an investigation of one of the Soviets’ key American agents, Gregory Silvermaster. This warning allowed Silvermaster, who headed a highly productive espionage ring, to escape detection and continue spying. Maurice Halperin, the head of a research section of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), then America’s chief intelligence arm, turned over hundreds of pages of secret American diplomatic cables to the KGB. William Perl, a brilliant young government aeronautical scientist, provided the Soviets with the results of the highly secret tests and design experiments for American jet engines and jet aircraft. His betrayal assisted the Soviet Union in quickly overcoming the American technological lead in the development of jets. In the Korean War, U.S. military leaders expected the Air Force to dominate the skies, on the assumption that the Soviet aircraft used by North Korea and Communist China would be no match for American aircraft. They were shocked when Soviet MiG-15 jet fighters not only flew rings around U.S. propeller-driven aircraft but were conspicuously superior to the first generation of American jets as well. Only the hurried deployment of America’s newest jet fighter, the F-86 Saber, allowed the United States to match the technological capabilities of the MiG-15. The Air Force prevailed, owing more to the skill of American pilots than to the design of American aircraft.
And then there were the atomic spies. From within the Manhattan Project two physicists, Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall, and one technician, David Greenglass, transmitted the complex formula for extracting bomb-grade uranium from ordinary uranium, the technical plans for production facilities, and the engineering principles for the “implosion” technique. The latter process made possible an atomic bomb using plutonium, a substance much easier to manufacture than bomb-grade uranium.
The betrayal of American atomic secrets to the Soviets allowed the Soviet Union to develop atomic weapons several years sooner and at a substantially lower cost than it otherwise would have. Joseph Stalin’s knowledge that espionage assured the Soviet Union of quickly breaking the American atomic monopoly emboldened his diplomatic strategy in his early Cold War clashes with the United States. It is doubtful that Stalin, rarely a risk-taker, would have supplied the military wherewithal and authorized North Korea to invade South Korea in 1950 had the Soviet Union not exploded an atomic bomb in 1949. Otherwise Stalin might have feared that President Harry Truman would stanch any North Korean invasion by threatening to use atomic weapons. After all, as soon as the atomic bomb had been developed, Truman had not hesitated to use it twice to end the war with Japan. But in 1950, with Stalin in possession of the atomic bomb, Truman was deterred from using atomic weapons in Korea, even in the late summer when initially unprepared American forces were driven back into the tip of Korea and in danger of being pushed into the sea, and then again in the winter when Communist Chinese forces entered the war in massive numbers. The killing and maiming of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the war in Korea might have been averted had the Soviets not been able to parry the American atomic threat.
Early Soviet possession of the atomic bomb had an important psychological consequence. When the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear device in 1949, ordinary Americans as well as the nation’s leaders realized that a cruel despot, Joseph Stalin, had just gained the power to destroy cities at will. This perception colored the early Cold War with the hues of apocalypse. Though the Cold War never lost the potential of becoming a civilization-destroying conflict, Stalin’s death in March 1953 noticeably relaxed Soviet-American tensions. With less successful espionage, the Soviet Union might not have developed the bomb until after Stalin’s death, and the early Cold War might have proceeded on a far less frightening path.
Venona decryptions identified most of the Soviet spies uncovered by American counterintelligence between 1948 and the mid-1950s. The skill and perseverance of the Venona code-breakers led the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and British counterintelligence (MI5) to the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. Venona documents unmistakably identified Julius Rosenberg as the head of a Soviet spy ring and David Greenglass, his brother-in-law, as a Soviet source at the secret atomic bomb facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Leads from decrypted telegrams exposed the senior British diplomat Donald Maclean as a major spy in the British embassy in Washington and precipitated his flight to the Soviet Union, along with his fellow diplomat and spy Guy Burgess. The arrest and prosecution of such spies as Judith Coplon, Robert Soblen, and Jack Soble was possible because American intelligence was able to read Soviet reports about their activities. The charges by the former Soviet spy Elizabeth Bentley that several dozen mid-level government officials, mostly secret Communists, had assisted Soviet intelligence were corroborated in Venona documents and assured American authorities of her veracity.
(C) 1999 Yale University All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-300-07771-8
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Chinese Rock, Paper, Scissor
Image by Wootang01
15.5.09
We’re driving towards the orphanage. The highway is lonely, save for a few languid trucks ambling along. It is damp too, and a thick fog covers the countryside: a single light here or there provides the only hint of civilization amidst the interminable verdure. Inside the van, the smoke of cigarettes past wafts in the air, lingering like a lost soul. I inhale, and quickly cough. I subsequently open the window to the enveloping darkness outside, so slightly as to not disturb my companions in the back. The roar of the road echoes in my ears.
An unexpected wrench was thrown into our travel plans today. The trip began expediently enough as the bus on which Candy and I rode reached the Shenzhen airport with hours to spare; however, the unscheduled hiccups soon followed. We received an announcement over the public address system notifying us of a flight delay, due to a mysterious military maneuver, we deduced, high in the Shenzhen skies. Several more sonorous reminders came in punctual succession over the next six hours. It seemed as though we would be stuck, stranded really, at the airport forever, or for the day at least. Thankfully, after the police arrested some of the more aggrieved passengers, we finally boarded the plane and took off for central China. We were blessed to be on our way at last, none of us having blown a gasket during the afternoon tedium.
One more pitch black road awaited, down a single lonely lane lined with swarthy trees, standing as though sentries, and at length we arrived at the orphanage. The car stopped in a clearing, and we stepped out, onto a cement lot with soft puddles spread silently beneath our feet. We squinted into the twilight, our eyes trying to make sense of the surroundings. Our bags were unloaded, we made our way to the rooms, and soon enough fell asleep. I think we all enjoyed the repose, rendered especially comfortable by the new guest rooms in which we were staying.
16.5.09
We have only been here for barely 24 hours, yet it feels as though we have been here for much longer, as if time at some point in our journey decided to slow itself to a crawl. Maybe it was because of the litany of activities that we packed into the span of several hours, or perhaps it was the lack of worldly distractions, allowing us to focus solely on our mission, that caused us to suspend the hands of that imaginary clock in our mind. Whatever the case, we’ve enjoyed every minute at the orphanage; it is time definitely well spent in service!
Morning call was at 6:20; and after a prayer meeting we went down to finally visit the kids. They were playing on the vast driveway of the orphanage, savoring their moment of freedom before breakfast. To see so many friendly faces, in spite of their precarious physical and filial circumstance was definitely encouraging. I made a multitude of new friends; and did my best throughout the day to impact those kids with joy, honesty and patience. It is a powerful cocktail which brings love immediately to many.
The food at the orphanage is without processing, as natural as victuals can be in these days of impersonal industrial production. Large chunks of mantou, steaming bowls of soupy congee, and salty vegetables with slivers of meat have characterized our meals. It is the kind of humble stuff that lengthens life spans, and disciplines the palate.
We presented a wide range of activities – structured and unstructured; whole class and small group – to the kids, in the hope that we would manage them as much as amuse. In the morning, as though breaking the ice once were not enough, we ran through a series of dizzying, if not at times totally incoherent, activities designed to familiarize our dispositions to each other. Later, we established a makeshift fun fair, at which we ushered the children to rooms filled with (board) games, and puzzles, and other, more colorful activities such as face painting and balloon making. The kids couldn’t at length contain their enthusiasm, busting into and out of rooms with impunity, soaking in the rapturous atmosphere. In the afternoon, our team attempted to tire them out: running topped the agenda, and by leaps and bounds, the activities, whether straightforward relays or schoolyard classics like duck duck goose and red light, green light, indeed began to tucker our charges out. We, too, were pretty beat by the time night began to creep over the horizon!
17.5.09
Yesterday evening, we surprised the students with a musical performance, followed by forty minutes of bubble-blowing madness; to be sure, the students could not appreciate our somewhat accurate rendition of Amazing Grace so much as the innocent madness of dipping one’s hands in a solution of dish detergent and corn syrup and then whispering a bubble to life; and indeed, the moment the Disney branded bubble-making machines churned the first batch of bubbles into the air, with much rapidity weaving their frenetic pattern of fun, chaos erupted in the room. The students stormed the soap basin, and almost overwhelmed my teammates who valiantly held the Snitch and Pooh high above the heads of the clamoring kids.
During the evening’s festivities, I grew progressively ill, until at last I dashed out of the room to sneeze. Outside, in the cool of the night, under a cloud of stars beaming so far away in the deep of space, I exploded in a rancor of sneezing. The fit lasted for five minutes, an inexorable depression in my system which sent both my body and my esteem tumbling down. I felt bad, not only for my exceedingly rickety health, but for my teammates and the children who may have been exposed to my sickness as it incubated within me; furthermore, everyone in the classroom was saying goodbye and all I could do was rid myself of a sniffle here and there, in between rounds of bursting from nostrils and sinuses. I was impotent, as though one of my insignificant droplets on the floor!
18.5.09
We are in a car heading towards a famous historical site in Henan. The driver’s drawl slips slowly from his mouth, and what he says resonates intelligibly in our ears. Candy, Tanya and the driver are discussing Chinese mythology, and history, which, for better or for worse seem to be inextricably intertwined. We narrowly just now missed hitting an idle biker in the middle of the road; in dodging our human obstacle, the car swerved into the oncoming traffic, sending us flying inside the cabin. Reciting a verse from a worship song calmed our frazzled nerves.
How to describe the children? Many of them smiled freely, and were so polite when greeted that undoubtedly they had been trained well at some point in the tumult of their life education. Precociousness was also a common characteristic shared by the kids, whose stunted bodies belied the mature, perspicacious thoughts hiding just underneath the skin. Of course, in our time together we were more merry than serious, that quality being best left for the adults working silently in their rooms; and to that effect, the kids brought out their funny bones and jangled them in the air to stir up the excitement and to destroy by a jocular clamor any hint of a dull moment – we really laughed a lot. At last, although not all of them seemed interested in our staged activities – rather than feign enthusiasm and eagerness, some skipped our events altogether – those who did participate, most of them in fact, enjoyed themselves with abandon, helping to create that delightful atmosphere where the many sounds of elation reign.
Of the students whom I had the opportunity to know personally, several still stick out in my mind, not the least for my having christened a few of them with English names! David was bold, and courageous, willing to soothe crying babes as much as reprimand them when their capricious actions led them astray; he had a caring heart not unlike a shepherd who tends to his young charges. Edward, who at 13 was the same age as David, definitely grew emotionally, not to mention physically attached to me. He was by my side for much of the weekend, grabbing onto my hand and not letting go, to the point where I in my arrogance would detach my fingers within his, ever so slightly, as if to suggest that a second more would lead to a clean break – I know now that with the cruel hands of time motoring away during the mission, I shouldn’t have lapsed into such an independent, selfish state; he should have been my son. Another child who became so attached to the team as to intimate annoyance was the boy we deemed John’s son, because the boy, it seemed, had handcuffed himself to our teammate, and would only free himself to cause insidious mischief, which would invariably result in an explosion of hysterics, his eyes bursting with tears and his mouth, as wide as canyon, unleashing a sonorous wail when something went wrong. On the other hand, Alice remained in the distance, content to smile and shyly wave her hand at our team while hiding behind her sisters. And last but not least, of our precious goonies, Sunny undoubtedly was the photographer extraordinaire, always in charge of the school’s camera, snapping away liberally, never allowing any passing moment to escape his shot.
That I learned on this trip so much about my teammates verily surprised me, as I thought the relationships that we had established were already mature, not hiding any new bump, any sharp edge to surprise us from our friendly stupor. So, consider myself delightfully amazed at how a few slight changes in the personality mix can bring out the best, the most creative and the strangest in the group dynamic: admittedly, Candy and Tanya were the ideal foils for John, they eliciting the most humorous observations and reactions from my house church leader, they expertly constructing a depth of character that even last week, in the wake of the Guangdong biking trip, I never knew existed! Most of all, I’m glad to have been a part of such a harmonious fellowship, for the fact that we could prayer together as one, and encourage each other too, and all the more as we saw the day approaching.
i want to find another
Image by the measure of mike
a conversation space where expats and local service providers can be studied in full. maids, drivers, tutors, dog walkers… all for hire. pick a service and make a service. human capital is cheap and plenty. ideas are welcome.
in the age of the social network the bulletin board still manages to provide functionality the FB and ren ren don’t seem to touch.