Electric Bike Blues.

• I took the Electric bike to work and back today, and each trip was annoying.
• In the morning, the wife had me take a pram to downtown Wuxi. While the pram is foldable, it is still long in its folded form. The only way I can carry the pram while scootering is to lay it down in the space between the bike's steering column and seat. Doing this increases the width of the bike making it more difficult in maneuver in heavy traffic. I also had trouble stopping because I had to put my feet back from their normal and comfortable position and so stopping was awkward. So, I had two mishaps. One caused by a pothole which made me scrape against the curve. Another caused by a woman making a Chinese left turn into traffic (a Chinese turn into traffic involves doing so blindly without looking).
• In the evening, I rode the scooter in the rain for the first time. I wore the raincoat, that was supplied when I bought the scooter and designed to be worn when scootering in the rain. The raincoat has a transparent part that is placed over the dash and allows you to see the gauges. It was an unenjoyable experience to wear the raincoat because the hood was threatening to slip over my face the whole of my journey back and water was pooling above my lap.
• I rode about a mile in darkness as a power failure resulted in a block's street lamps not working. You can rarely find complete darkness in China.
• David Warren on the Georgia Russia War. Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia and the Ukraine should be very scared. South Ossetia was a pretext for the fact that the Russians wanted to teach Georgia a lesson for wanting to be part of NATO. Why do some people think the Russians have the right to teach their neighbors anything? Pacifists: the best friends a tyrant ever had; not so good for democracies.
• I haven't watched the Olympics in three days. Maybe, I will on the weekend.
• In the previous entry, I placed an ad for a teacher. We will hire the suitable candidate right away. In September, we will have just six trainers, one below the normal group of seven. The ad I place in Dave's ESL Cafe has garnered three responses.
• I went to Legris company tonight. A former employee of our school who now works at that company, Shadow, was talking about some controversy about the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Shadow told that me that a part of the ceremony, which I didn't see, was said by the Americans to have been faked. Apparently, the effect of 29 steps was created by fireworks. Shadow said the fireworks that created the effect were real and that the Americans were doubting their authenticity because they were jealous of the quality of the Opening Ceremony. I will have to see some video of that and judge for myself. The 29 steps took place before the big drum show which was happening when I arrived home from work that Friday evening.
• I asked students if they ever visit the foreign news site that are not blocked on the Internet and that supply alternative views about China. They said they didn't.
• I asked a high school student how his parents first meet. He told me that they meet at work. The next student, also a high school student, then said "me too!". Jumping all over that student for his inarticulate and short answer, I exclaimed "you meet your wife at work!" to the giggles of all the other students. There is nothing I like better than to trick the students who give short answers. A favorite of mine is to ask the female students if they have one boyfriend and when they respond with the one-word answer "No!", I immediately ask them how many boyfriends they do have.
• I always insist on the students answering my questions fully giving as much information as they heard in the question in their answer. Too often, the students like to say the shortest answer as possible leaving me to doubt whether they understood the question or not.
• Say what you like about Dennis Prager, an American conservative talk-show host, but he does provide me with interesting topics for Speaker's Corner. Soon, I will ask the students if they want there to be a heaven and a hell.
• Children everywhere. I thought there was a one-child policy here.
• Tony draws crowds of students whenever he comes to school.
• A double bed is not big enough for my son Tony. He needs a quadruple bed, for safety, as the amount of rolling and squirming he does makes the double bed unsafe. In the last week, he has rolled off the bed twice.