I didn't get wet.

• I took the electric bike home tonight and I didn't get wet. I, thankfully, did not have to ride in the rain and the raincoat, I have for such an eventuality, is still in mint condition. It has been off-and-on raining all this week in Wuxi. I took the bike to school in a wind storm which was followed by a torrential downpour which I thankfully just missed. I then had to leave the bike at work for three days as I feared getting caught in a rain and having to navigate through flooded streets. Drainage leaves something to be desired here in Wuxi.
• I can use bullets in this entry because I am not in the HTML view. Dummy.
• My 11 month old son Tony can now make sounds like ma ma and yah.
• In my company class, I gave the students a list of definitions of leadership which included a quote, correct me if I am wrong, from General Patton which goes to the effect of "I don't want my men to love me. I want them to fight for me." Other definitions were more modern and mentioned things like interpersonal relations and passion. Half the students choose the General Patton definition as the best. As did I.
• I am rereading, for the umpteenth time, With Charity toward none: a fond look at Misanthropy by Florence King. I have just finished a passage where she discusses Coriolanus, a character in a Shakespeare play who was based on a figure in Plutarch's lives. Coriolanus, made the seemingly inexplicable decision to commit treason against Rome because (my phrasing) the Roman Mobs pissed him off. He suffered from a bout of, what author King labelled, Tourette's Misanthropy: rather than lower himself, he compromised himself. I find it a stirring passage.
• I just heard that Obama does not give his children Birthday or Christmas presents. He wants to teach them limits or something. But it is a harbinger, I think, of things he wants others to suffer if he becomes President of the USA. Lenin, I have read somewhere, would close the blinds personally at the Kremlin every night: An austerity on his part while he ordered the murder of millions.
• The school will be closed early next Friday so all can watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.