Overwhelmed, Close Calls, and Links.

Overwhelmed

I have been overwhelmed to do much blogging. 

• There have been all the hockey playoff results. Too bad Habs!!
• Canada has a federal election.  What is happening?  The NDP of all parties could be opposition!  And maybe even the NDP leader Jack Layton could be Prime Minister as head of a coalition!  Ed Broadbent's dream could be achieved?!?  Or at least I have hear speculation.   It was only last week, I was hearing talk of the Conservatives possibly attaining a majority.  
• There will be a Royal Wedding in England.  Some of the student here have heard about it.  The women expressed  interest in watching the ceremony.  But I doubt the ceremony will be shown live here.  I wish it was.  Royal Pageantry beats October 1st parades in my books.
• I have a demo to prepare for.
• I have had prep to do at school.  Here are two new discussion questions lists on my ESL site:  Work hard or play hard? and Cupboards and Fridges.
• May Day will not be a holiday for me.  I will be doing two days of cooking shows.
• Not that I am complaining.  Busyness is goodness.
• I should say I wore short sleeves for the first time yesterday.

Close Calls

• Wuxi traffic is a good source of blogging material.  Yesterday, I saw a three-wheeled motorcycle/wagon combo blindly scoot across the street.  I flinched to watch the maneuver as a taxi came within feet of hitting the wagon.
• This morning, I was riding the bus to work as it came to a quick stop at a traffic light.  I saw a girl about to get off, have to hang for dear life on a pole -- her legs flew in the air.  I looked at the front of the bus, and saw  the rear end of the van very too close to the bus's windshield.

Links

I have run of K family studio photos to show you.  I still have a week's worth of Tony Kaulins studio photos for you to copy, print, and place on the walls and fridges of your homes.  Here are the latest:

• Tony Kaulins in the studio #21
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #22
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #23
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #24
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #25
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #26
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #27
• Tony Kaulins in the studio #28

Here is some video taken at Long Tou Zhou Park, and at the Niels and Zhang Ying Wedding:

• Andis and Tony on a kayak.
• Tony kicks a soccer ball.
• Dragon Dance.
• Tony and a lot of kids at the wedding. (Quite the collection of children in fact).

Misc.

• Check out the comments on this political entry I made last week -- a hard leftie and rightie go at it?  Two people write around each other?  Abbott and Costello?  Groucho Marx or Karl Marx?  Chesterton versus Bernard Shaw?  Hannity and Colmes?  Canadian Crossfire?  You decide.
• Don't forget about the Wuxi China Expatdom where the WCE Contingent fights the Kraken.
• I'll post this H.L. Mencken quote on 1848:

 "Every day they announced some new and grander scheme to bring in the millennium, and every day they abandoned some busted one.  Meanwhile, the plain people went on looking for jobs, and not finding them….  Its goat was the French taxpayer.  He had to pay, in the end, for all the crazy building of gaudy railway stations, and all that frantic dredging of rivers and digging of canals.  Starting out with the thesis that the Rotten Rich were scoundrels and ought to be squeezed, the Brain Trust proceeded easily to the thesis that any man who had any property whatsoever was a scoundrel, too, and ought to be squeezed equally.  The rich, in the main, managed to escape, but the little fellow could not get away, and squeezed he surely was."*
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.  (Hat tip:  Cafe Hayek)