The Last AKIC Weekend of the Year of the Ox or Cow or Bull

Yesterday, I snapped

I took pictures and videos yesterday, like a mad man.

 

Or did I?  Chesterton, if I remember correctly, said something about mad men being super-sane on one point to the neglect of all other points -- that is, mad men acted on a single point out of proportion to all other points and thus they were imbalanced.  He said that was what the problem with the modern world was with its belief in pacifism and no spanking and gay marriage and in being healthy in body.  But that is a digression.  On the question of whether or not I was mad yesterday when I took all the photos, I would have to say I wasn't because I thought at the time I was overdoing it.  But there was a little madness in it when I took photos over and over again of the same thing.

 

Could uncertainty be a sign of madness?  To be discriminating is something I have always had trouble doing.  I have always felt this mad need to show every photo taken because I have never discerned properly which photos are necessary to show.

 

Yesterday, I took 108 photos and video of Tony, and other things around Wuxi.  Prepare to be inflicted.

 

A little English

Every once in a while, I will meet a local who can take a  limited English vocabulary and get tons of mileage out of it.  Case in point, yesterday evening on the bus.

 

An older man, wearing a Timken hat, got on the bus, and said "hello!" to me.

 

"You Foreigner!", he said.

 

"That's right!", I replied.

 

"Where are you from?", he asked.

 

I told him.

 

"You Friend!", he said.

 

"Ah, yes!", I said.

 

He then asked a few question of Tony, in English.  He was proud of the phrases he knew and seemed pleased for the chance to use them.  Many of the students at my school, could learn from him.  His English was pidginy but he never betrayed a lack of fluency -- he didn't place limits on himself as the students often seem to do.

More Tigers, More Tony, and More of Tony's Parents

Action Packed Spring Festival?

AKIC CNY Plans starting to fall in place

Andis will have a week off from February 13th to 19th.  From the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth, he, Jenny, and Tony will go to Beixing -- J's hometown.

 

The AKIC Weekend before the CNY

This will be spent, it seems, prepping for the CNY.  The wife, Tuesday afternoon, will get her hair done.  Tony and his father will get their hair cut.

 

Letter of Invitation

This local person wanted Andis to write him a letter of invitation for a Visa to go to Canada.  The local was going to Toronto, he said, for a visit.  Looking into the invitation letter process, Andis saw that the inviter would have to provide a copy of  an i.d., proof of income in Canada, an address with a list of occupants, and a Canadian phone number.  The problem with this for Andis was that he currently didn't have an address or phone number of his own in Canada,.  He could, in theory, ask his sister, but he didn't want to drag her into it because it inconvenience her to no end.  And Andis wasn't comfortable with having to lie.  As well, Andis had never been to Toronto.  Andis tried to steer the local to doing the process correctly, giving links with the relevant information to the local and encouraging him to get his so-called Toronto friend to write the letter of invitation. 

 

After doing this, the local phoned Andis back to say that his friend couldn't send him a letter of invitation because some document this friend had, had expired.  Whatever the document was, the local's explanation didn't make any sense.  And the local persisted in his desire to have Andis or one of Andis's relatives write the letter of invitation.  Andis suspected that all along, the local didn't have a friend to invite him to Toronto, so he told him to go away.

 

Andis felt remorseful after telling the local to get stuffed, but it seemed that he had no choice.  The local seemed all-of-a-sudden to be very dodgy.

 

Monday's Teaching

Andis thought to himself that It would be nice if you could separate your work-self from the family-self from the self-that-just-encountered-a-dodgy-person-and-so-feel-very-angry self, but Andis had always found this compartmentalization hard to pull off.

 

Right after telling the local to get  stuffed, Andis went to do an English Corner, and feeling irked because of the local,  Andis noticed that all the students in the corner seemed to take  on the aspect of lying and cheating hyenas.  Not one student, Andis noticed, seemed to actually be interested in speaking in English -- they were looking to be entertained.  One student was sitting at a table with his back to Andis which struck Andis, at that moment, as being particularly rude.  Andis, stood silently for a two minutes, to see if the students took notice of him.  Funny how it was that as soon as some students realized it was time to shut-up, other students would start to talk.  Andis further noticed the students who seemed to reluctant to use English and the ones who wouldn't listen to an explanation of what a word meant before consulting their electronic dictionaries.

 

Andis was having a hard time, compartmentalizing.  But he did at least realize it.  He was, at least, stepping back from his moody self in his mind.

 

It was a half-hour before the storm, in the mind of Andis, passed.  Andis got annoyed at the answers he was getting.  One girl told him Chairman Mao was a saint -- Andis got onto the topic after mentioning the Super Bowl, which maybe one student knew about (but only after some prodding).  Dropping the saint line-of-questioning, very quickly, Andis went onto the topic of mysteries.  He had a hard time getting students to tell him was the mystery of a thing they said was mysterious was.  "What was the mystery of ghosts?", Andis asked a student who said that ghosts were a mystery.  Andis thought the English Corner would never end.

 

But the storm, like all storms preceding it, passed.  The last twenty minutes, Andis was in the zone he wanted to be in.  He found the students who wanted to talked and had intelligent things to say.

 

 

Wuxi Tony Update #525: Where is Tony?

Tony has found a new place to play in Casa Kaulins.

Tigers, and Tony, and Tony's Parents.

Pa

Thank God It's Frimonday!

Two Whole Days Off

Whoopie!!  But I have to get through this day first. 

 

Useful Idiots

From Spiegel Online.

 

Nice Reading!  Ha!

What can you do?  You tell the students to make a presentation, a speech; and they get up and read something they copied from the Internet  that they obviously don't understand.  Big words don't trump sincerity. 

 

Super Bowl in Wuxi

Because of the time zone differences, the Super Bowl takes place early Monday morning in Wuxi.  In my early Wuxi years, I made the effort to get up and watch it.  Now, I can't be bothered.

 

I do hope the Saints win the game.  Professional Football has been unkind to Catholicism.  The Cardinals and Saints, as I type this, have yet to win the big game.

 

 

 

Wuxi Tony Update #527: Been Shopping

Finally, after ten tries, I have uploaded this video to Youtube. It was taken in a square after Tony and I had gone shopping at the new Tesco near our apartment.

To the Amazon we went...

Someone's pregnant

I won't name names.  Suffice to say, it is not Jenny.

 

A playground afternoon

Saturday afternoon was a playground afternoon for Tony.  Jenny and he went to a playground on Zhongshan Road -- the building that contains Watson's, Papa John's, DQ, and Moshi Moshi. 

 

Tony didn't want to leave when it was supper time.

 

The Amazon Buffet

Afterwards, we went to a nearby Amazon Buffet Restaurant.  We had our fill and Tony learned how to get Pepsi from a fountain machine.  Without assistance, he can reach to the machine and fill his glass.

 

If there is a strategy to getting maximum benefit from a buffet restaurant, I don't know what it is.  Yesterday evening, I may have made the mistake of not reconnoitring all food on offer before I dug in.  But simply, it is best to eat as much as you can till your stomach can't take anymore.

 

Channeling into a military reference, I should say that with our things at the table, the eating was like the Berlin Airlift. That is, we always had a person, in the air, getting food, while the other was acting as a sentry at the table.

 

Someone's feelings are hurt, maybe

One of the students may have hurt feelings.  Independent of my asking, he brought up some "issue".

 

Vomit on the bus

The fact that the #25 bus runs later into the evening meant we could go to the Amazon.  Catching the bus near Ba Bai Ban, we were able to get seats.

 

But just as I sat down, Jenny said "watch out!  I looked down and saw that someone had vomited on the bus floor.  And this someone vomited right at the front of the bus so that everyone boarding would inadvertently step in it.

 

But it still won't top the time that I saw  lady spill cooking oil on the bus.  Half a bus at rush hour was rendered unstand-on-able.

 

Tony cuddles up to Dad

Saturday was a cold, dank day with vomit, indifferent students, and the hassle of carrying Tony around.  But at bedtime, Tony cuddled up beside Dad, and Dad thought that all was right with the world -- for that moment anyway.

 

It is Saturday for you; it is Wednesday for me.

Early Risings

This work week, I have been getting up at six a.m. which means I haven't been lingering in bed as is most often times my habit.  I have been getting up early in hopes of being able to upload a video to Youtube.  Unfortunately, I have had no success.

I even was up early this morning, despite having gone to bed late last night.  What happened was that a student invited some trainers to her apartment for a late supper.  We were reluctant to go, not because we didn't want to, but because we were asked on very short notice.  I went because I got myself talked into by my wife and the student.  I don't regret going because the food was excellent.  The student has a European boy friend, so I was able to eat some food I hadn't had in a while like dill gherkins, which were a sort of like a mini dill pickle.  I haven't had dill pickles since I left Canada five years ago.  I also had some Chinese cuisine from other parts of China that I had never before eaten -- very good as well.  My only regret was that I was against it for time because I needed to leave before the last bus of the evening going towards Yanqiao and home (and my wife and son).

Leaving the apartment, I noticed that one can become quite disorientated in these huge apartment complexes.  In the dark, everything looks the same.  Thankfully, I chose the right path to get to the main entrance.

Once home, I read this short story by Flannery O'Connor called "Everything That Rises Must Converge."  Such a wonderful story.  Here is the link for it.  A simple story, well-resented, and yet so profound on many levels.

Wuxi Tony Update #526: Tony dances and sings

Playing with punctuation and other things.

You really like China!

I love my wife Jenny who is from Beixing.  Not that one that isn't.

You really like China?

Someone has suggested that I think my wife is half-heathen.  It is nice to get comments on my blog.

It is nice to get comments on your blog? you ask.  Of course.

Of course?

Of course!  Of course.

The Joys of Yiddish

I pulled that book, which I brought with me from Canada five years ago, off my shelf and am re-reading it.  It is a wonderful lexicon of the Yiddish language and its' influence on English.  I like in inflict some of its' contents on my students.

Be warned!  I like to imitate the last book I have read.

My son: he is a regular genius, at least.

Tony has figured out that putting a lid on his toy bucket, stops the toys from spilling as he carries them down from the upper bunk in our bedroom.

Get lost! Not!

I love my readers.  The critical ones especially.

Teaching the Chinese Yiddish

I asked the students to tell me what these expressions meant:

1. Get Lost!
2. I need it like a hole in the head.
3. From that he makes a living?
4. He's a regular genius.
5. Go hit your head against the wall.
6. You want it should sing too?
7. On him, it looks good.

The students, with some clues, figured them all out.  The better students found them amusing and strange.  At first, many of the students thought #1 meant the person was telling everyone he was lost.  For #2, a few students had to be told that a hole in a head wasn't a good thing.  The students all figured out #4 very easily, as well as #5.

 

I had a hard time explaining what Jews were to the students.  The people of the book and the old testament didn't mean anything to the students.

 

Have your feelings been hurt?

None of the students said their feelings had been hurt recently.  I asked because earlier in the day, I had read this piece by John Derbyshire (scroll down to "hurting a nation's feelings.")

 

Tony and Andis

I am having VPN troubles. It is so difficult to upload video from behind the Great Firewall. So in lieu of the many Wuxi Tony Updates I can't upload, here is a recent photo of Tony and I.

Do we look alike? Many say we don't. Which is all to the good for Tony. What an ugly bastard his father is!

Back to Work in early February 2010

Tony and Andis go to Hui Shan's new Tesco Supermarket

Andis, until Wednesday afternoon this week, thought that he had experienced all that was worth experiencing in life.  But the first visit of his life to a Tesco changed his mind, shifted his paradigms, and shook all his life-time assumptions to the core.  

 

His trip to the new Hui Shan Tesco was the second Road to Damascus experience of his life (the first being his listening to Rush Limbaugh).  Said Andis:"Who thought a trip to a supermarket could be so wonderful!".

Actually, it wasn't that big a deal.

The Hui Shan Tesco was remarkable in its' absolute ordinariness.  If it wasn't for the fact that it sold guacamole, Hui Shan Tesco would have been completely one hundred percent typically and unremarkably ordinary like every other supermarket in Wuxi.

 

Andis was disappointed that the Tesco didn't sell Pineapple Beer.  Its' vegetable market was skimpy, and its bakery seemed to have no rare treasures.

 

Andis can't decide if the Tesco is bigger than the Carrefour in Baoli.  Andis's wife Jenny insists that the Tesco is bigger.  Andis is not so certain.  What is for certain, is that the Tesco layout resembles that of many other supermarkets in Wuxi: mini mall on the main floor; a floor of hardware, electronics, and clothes; and a floor with a grocery store.

 

There is no point in Wuxi Expats, other than Andis, going to this supermarket.

 

AKIC grade: C-minus.

Fish Jumping into Shopping Cart poses Ethical Dilemma

Unhistorical and dull as Andis's trip to the Tesco was.  He did have another first-time-in-the-life experience on Wednesday, other than being in a Tesco.  When in the meat section, he parked his shopping cart beside a tank of live fish (to the Chinese, fresh fish means live fish) for the benefit of satisfying his son Tony's natural curiosity about fish.  These fish, Andis noticed, made for a lively bunch, some sticking up their mouths for a breath of air.  Shortly thereafter, one of the fish jumped out of the tank into Andis's shopping cart.

Andis's first reaction was to move his purchases and things in the cart away from that fish .  He hoped that some employee would quickly come to his aid.  But none did, so he grabbed a net that was in the tank, but the net had fish in it already -- Andis decided he couldn't use the net and so put it back in the tank.  He then grabbed the fish with his hand hoping to throw it back in the tank, but the fish slipped out of his hand on to the floor.  It was then that another shopper gave Andis a bag with which he could handle the fish.  Using the bag, Andis grabbed the fish on the floor and threw it back to the tank with its' brothers.

Andis wondered if he had done the right thing.  Clearly, the fish yearned for freedom.  And Andis supposedly being sympathetic to those desiring freedom, maybe should have smuggled the fish out of the store and thrown it into a nearby canal.  And there was the question of contamination from having thrown the fish back into the tank...

A Thought

Question:  Who is more likely to suffer a concussion: a person wearing a football helmet (that be NFL football!), or someone not wearing a football helmet?

Answer:  The person wearing the football helmet because he is more likely to be playing football.