Monday, October 27, 2008

Scheduled Power Outage a day late.

The Power outage happened on Monday and not Sunday as I had be lead to believe. So it was a surprise to us when it happened today. My wife's reacted by ordering us to abandon the house for the afternoon and go to downtown Wuxi.

My wife drove the electric bike downtown while I took Tony on the bus. That was her idea and I readily assented. On the bus, someone gave up their seat for me because I had Tony. But it wasn't someone able-bodied, it was an older woman. She found a place she could sit (a spot where the rear wheel well rises) so I didn't feel so bad. But it was strange nonetheless. My wife has had no one yield a seat to her when she had Tony. But as this forum on Wuxilife shows, Wuxi people can act strangely and rudely and wonderfully.

Downtown, we spent the afternoon at a Haoweijia Steak House on JiaFeng Road. We had steak and lamb chops served on a grill plate with noodles and egg. I didn't mind it one bit, though many Wuxi Expats have not had good things to say about this style of cooking meat. We then stayed for the afternoon coffee special. Two cups of the Brazil coffee and I was wired. Tony was wondering about the restaurant. There was an instance where he ran towards a step scaring the hell out of me because he was going to fall flat on his face. I ran to catch him but was too late and so he fell on his face but didn't hurt himself as he in fact landed on his arms. Tony is refining his having a fit technique so well that I fear one day he will give himself a concussion - he likes to sprawl on the ground from a standing position, bucking his head backwards. I was able to get some reading in when the wife took Tony for a walk. I didn't read anything too profound, just a couple short stories from a Louis L'amour book my parents sent me. I am in my Western novel stage of my reading life. I stop reading Science Fiction when I was twenty five.

Back to the WuxiLife forum, I just linked. An expat from Beijing did a blanket condemnation of Wuxi locals. In an tiff, I could do blanket condemnations of every place I have ever lived in the world. For example, I could say that the beauty of British Columbia is inversely proportional to the manners of British Columbians and Manitobans are as flat personality wise as their landscape, but I have a feeling you would find rudeness wherever you go and within whatever community you have contact with. I have meet some rude Expats from all over the world. And I say this not from the holier-than-thou perspective, but from the perspective of a crank and bore and egomaniac.

After leaving the steakhouse, yours truly got a haircut. He no longer looks like a long-haired, pot-smoking Obama voter but a clean-cut, respectable, wildcard-hating, conservative, hard-working, no-nonsense reactionary and Sinatra fan.

Timken makes ball-bearings that are 1.2 meters wide. Wow!!

I set my all time monthly visitor record today. Thank you rare readers!

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