Three nights in Nanjing this week. Students say wife should come home. There is a Gorilla at the Wuxi Zoo. The King of Wuxi: apologist for the regime?

I will be spending three nights in Nanjing this week because I will be catching a train there after work Tuesday night.  I will probably catch a train Friday morning back to Wuxi.  So do the math and you may figure out that I will in fact spend three days in Nanjing.

I went to the Renmin road ticket office at Monday at noon and could not timed it worse.  I arrived at 1133 to see a sign, saying 1130 - 1200 and  probably saying, in Chinese, that they were gone for lunch, in the ticket window.  I went to a nearby McDonalds for something to eat and returned to the train ticket office at 1158 to see a lineup of 20 people waiting to buy tickets.  And so at about 1220, I was finally able to get my ticket.

While waiting I noticed this one man who seemed to be either watching people buy tickets or was hoping to bud in line.  For ten minutes he was standing near to the ticket window practically crowding out the person whose turn it was to buy a ticket..  He then went to sit down for five minutes before returning to his position beside the ticket window.  For some reason, seeing me in line caused him to want to get even closer to the ticket window.  As it became my turn to buy a ticket, I had my elbows ready to shove him out of the way.

The wife is complaining about swelling in her ankles.  Quick research on the Internet revealed that this is a normal symptom of pregnancy in the third trimester. 

The wife's friend is letting Jenny stay at her home in Nanjing made a strange request.  She wants a stick of underarm deodorant.  She had never seen it used before till last week.  The wife has told me to give her friend a stick from my personal stash.

At a Speaker's Corner, I polled the students on the question of whether my wife should return to Wuxi for the rest of her pregnancy.  Two thirds of the students said my wife should return.  Most of them said that the wife and I need to be together for the rest of the pregnancy.  The ones saying she should not return to Wuxi said that the water was going to be bad over the summer.  One man said I should wait four months.  I think I will side with the minority.  The majority can be wrong and is often wrong (for example, the majority don't support the war in Iraq).  The Chinese are still too trusting of the government it would seem to me.

During the Wuxi water crisis, the King of Wuxi has been an apologist for the regime.  He is saying my wife should come back to Wuxi.  He thinks the powers here that be would be crazy to let the people be poisoned.  But then how does he explain the Cultural Revolution, a period that the students say was a time when the country just went insane?

There is a gorilla at the Wuxi zoo.  That is for certain.  The story I was told about Wen Jaibao coming to  Wuxi has been heard by other students but most of the students at the Speakers' Corner said it was a rumor.  One student said lots of rumors were circulating about Wuxi water including 100 times the safe level of toxicity.

If Barak Obama does not become President it will be because America is racist.   Everyone knows this.  He will also not win because the dumb Americans won't vote for a man with a Arab sounding name (how many Arabs or Muslims have been beheaded by Americans since 9/11?  None, but don't let facts get in the way of a prejudice.  America actually went out of its way to say anything bad about Arab-Americans after 9/11 like a battered wife not wanting to press charges against her husband.  America hopefully never elects a Socialist regardless of the color of his or her skin.  Hello!!!  America is not racist.  It is racialist and mostly on the left democratic party side.)