Canada in 18th place at the Olympics

The dream of a no-medal Olympics for Canada has been shattered. The country I come from is now 18th place in the overall country medals count - a quick turn-around from a two days ago when they had not won any. If they can maintain the pace of these last two days, they could end up in the top ten - but, I doubt that happening.

I bought a Dr. Seuss book for Tony at Xinhua book store in downtown Wuxi, China. The edition is Chinese but the English text is included. In fact, the English is more prominent than the Chinese. I got such a kick out of reading one of the books to Tony that I decided to buy it and risk my wife's wrath. Tony is too young to understand Dr. Seuss but I can tell that he enjoys listening to me talking in rhythm.

When you make a purchase at a Department Store in Wuxi, you first have a sales clerk write out a receipt that you must take to a cashier somewhere else in store. Once you pay the cashier, you can take the receipt back to the department and pick up your goods. When I first had to do this, I thought it was crazy and bureaucratic but I got used to it.

But I was thrown for a loop, as the expression goes, when this happened to me at the Dairy Queen in downtown Wuxi. I ordered a large blizzard and brought out cash to pay like I would do in McDonalds and KFC when they surprised me with the department store procedure.

I took Tony over to the King of Wuxi's house tonight. Tony likes to go to the King's son Tommy's room because he knows it is full of toys. Tonight, we laughed because Tony went into Tommy's room, opened a clothes drawer and started to throw Tommy's clothes on the floor one-by-one.

The three of us, that be the Kaulins family, went to Carrefour tonight. My wifep icked up some vegtables and joined a 20 person long queue waiting to have their veggies weighed and tagged. While my wife did this, I went over to the dairy section to get some cheese and margarine. I suddenly looked over to the lineup my wife was in, and I saw her in a shouting and shoving match with another woman. I ran over with Tony to break it up. The woman's husband was there and I took the tact that we had to stop our wives from fighting. I had no idea what the dispute was about but I figured it wasn't worth the hassle. My wife told me that the women called her bitch and I told her to forget about it. A silent calm ensued as my wife weighed and tagged her vegtables. As we left, the man, who I assumed was the women's husband, said sorry to me. My wife later told me that the woman had tried to queue-jump. My wife then proceeded to kick the woman who swore and hit back at my wife.

Queue-jumping is one of the distressing aspects of living in China. It is done so brazenly and often. Some people who do it just seem to be so unaware as they do it. I blame it on the huge population and the legacy of Chairman Mao shortages. It is good to see my wife fighting back against it.

The King of Wuxi who owns a car tells me that queue-jumping happens at gas stations.

I am having a difficult time get teachers to respond to the ads I have put on the Internet for English Teachers at our school. If you are interested in teaching English in China, you can contact me at akaulins@gmail.com. You can find more information about the position available at my school in Wuxi, China but looking at a previous entry.

A Russian is not to be trusted. Russia has never acknowledged the criminal nature of the Soviet Union. To say a country like that is a fully responsible member of the world community and has peacekeepers in Georgia is painting it on a bit thick if you ask me. It was telling that the countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland came to support the leader of Georgia. This countries can't afford to have the illusions of Western pacifists who hate their side so much that they would make excuses for real war-mongers.