Jottings from my October Holiday

I wasn't able to access the Internet for four days.  I was forced to write things down in a notebook.  Here is what I wrote:

Day One!

• At the bus station, I see a one-eyed man with his fly down.  And he was looking at me strangely.
• Strange I am.  Of that there can be no doubt.  But am I that strange?
• Tony throws a fit because he doesn't get the front seat of the bus.
• The rest of my jottings for that day are ideas for my Wuxi Expatdom Blog. (Wuxiren can see it here)

Day Two!

• So far, no temper tantrums on my part except when I get annoyed at Tony.
• Bought a DVD, at a local shop, that was full of movies featuring apes.  I didn't bring my glasses so I was thinking the DVD had some old Tarzan movies on it.  But when I got back to my in-laws compound and put on my glasses, I saw that there were no Tarzan movies.  I had instead bought a set of Planet of the Apes movies with some George of the Jungles thrown in.
• Unexpectedly, I got a bottle of Crown Royal from my mother-in-law.  They hadn't touched it since we brought it to them from Canada in June 2010 which was fine by me!  If they didn't want it, I sure did!
• The Crown is my second baby!
• I listened to four podcast episodes of a series featuring Susan Conroy.  She worked with Mother Teresa in India.  Her talk was sweet, kind, and yet didn't verge on the sentimental.  She very much emphasized the cross was the suffering of love -- not at all an electric blanket.
• Chinese television was giving lots of coverage to the Wall Street protesters.  I saw one text-messaging as she held a sign.  Another protester had a nice hairdo.

Day Three! 

• One more day!
• I have listened to 45 podcasts about: Catholicism, Mother Teresa, railroad workers, U.S. politics, Herman Cain, Charles De Gaulle, Nero, Caligula, Claudius, Canadian flags, smart meters, and dog food commercials.
• On Day Two, we went on a pointless trip to Taixing.  We went for something to do.  We ended up a wholesale market full of cheap toys and a four level playground.  Thankfully, Tony didn't get any toys and didn't play in the playground.
• Watched Congo, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle of the Planet of the Apes, Return to the Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and the Fighter on DVD.
• Read long passages from Orwell's 1984 and Marshall's Principles of Economics on the Ipad.
• I had some shoes repaired.
• Tony was unwilling to share potato chips with me.  He made a point of taking a chip, showing it to me, moving it in the direction of my mouth, and then putting it in his.  It was galling because I had bought them for him in the first place.
• The pool hall next to my  in-laws' compound has been turned into a carwash.  Nuts!!!!
• Jenny tells me to listen to a chicken that is in the in-laws' coop.  "That!" she tells me, "is the sound of a chicken laying an egg!"
• "Oh really!" I responded.  "Is that how you sounded when you had Tony?"
• I then had to run for my life.
• I read King Lear.
• I read the Bible.  If all else can't be brung, bring a Bible.  It's got everything in it:  stories, poetry, and some good advice.
• Chinese television seems fixated on those demonstrators in New York City.  I wonder if they gave the Tea Party such coverage.
• Jenny and I don't discuss politics much; so I was surprised when she said that Obama may not win the election next year because he won't have enough votes.
• Tony tells me that a piece of shrimp has been placed in my bowl.  He was imitating his mother.
• We pull apart the cheap train set I had bought Tony.  Primitive, the set is and yet some of the technology in it is less than a hundred years old.
• Everything in the countryside is arranged in piles; whether it be rocks, the harvest, soil, coal, merchandise, tools, and garbage.
• Tony, sitting on my shoulders, has a plastic coke bottle in his hand, as I walk up a paved incline.  Tony drops the bottle of coke.  The contents, agitated, foam so the entire bottle has a light brown color.  The bottle rolls, past us, down the incline.  I eventually catch the bottle with my foot.  Tony is still on my shoulders as I crouch down to pick up the bottle.  Getting up then is straining -- so straining that my exertions cause me a sudden spasm of anger at Tony for having dropped the bottle in the first place.

Day Four!

• Last day!  We're going home!
• Last night, I watched more movies...
• Tony did a strangely interesting thing.  He the Ipad and Mom's touchscreen phone side-by-side.  On both devices, he had the Talking Tom the Cat applications on so he could shout at both of them, and have two Toms repeat what he just said.  (Talking Tom will repeat back things you have said to it.)
• Finished reading King Lear.  Edmund is a bad guy.  My middle name is Edmunds -- close enough to Edmund, drop the "s."  No bad "Andis" in literature that I know of, unless you count my blogging as literature, which of course you don't.