Gratitude:
I am thankful for two
nice comments
I got this week. In fact, I am usually thankful to get any comments,
even ones
telling
me I suck, but, let's fact it, nice comments are better.
Acknowledgment:
I am physically uncoordinated –
read what happened to me on Saturday.
Request:
I hope for a cool Wuxi summer.
I don't like what I have experienced of it so far.
An
AKIC Glossary
Gratitude:
will always be the first word of the AKIC weekly blog entry -- it is
the key to happiness.
Acknowledgment and
Request: For me Acknowledgment means confession;
and Request means request. GAR [Gratitude,
Acknowledgment, Request] are the simple stages of a prayer
which I came upon following the Jewish World Review site. I
used GAR when delivering my father's eulogy.
Jenny is
my wife.
J: I
will sometimes refer to her that way.
Tony is
my son.
T: I
will sometimes refer to Tony this way.
TKIC:
Tony Kaulins in China. I may be
referring to the TKIC blogs or to Tony when I use TKIC. I am sure
you can figure out which way I am using it from the context.
AKIC:
Andis Kaulins in China. The
same applies to AKIC as applies to TKIC. That is, I may be referring
to the AKIC blogs or to myself.
My
School is HyLite English located on Zhongshan Road in Wuxi,
China.
Casa
Kaulins is what I call the apartment I (really my wife)
owns.
California
Villa: The English name of the apartment complex the Kaulins
family resides. In Chinese pinyin, it is call Jia Zhou Yang Fang.
Train-spotting.
There is a high speed train track running near Casa K. Tony
& I, when we have a chance, love to go there to watch the trains
go by.
Wuxi:
The city where Jenny, Tony & I live. I sometimes call it
the Wux.
Hui
Shan: The district of Wuxi in which we live.
The
Square: The Hui Shan People's
Square is near Casa Kaulins
Yanqiao:
a town of Hui Shan District -- not too far from Casa Kaulins
Jiangyin:
A city or district next to Wuxi.
Meicun:
A suburb of Wuxi city that is
far from the downtown.
Shuo
Feng: Ditto!
Ditto!
Agrees with what has been
previously said.
Z: a
foreign teacher at the school.
Farok
Bagolli: An English teacher. Not from my school.
LECTOR: I
got the idea for Lector, a fictional sparring partner for my blog,
from a Hillaire Belloc book I had read recently.
School
Laptop: I like to make note of
where I make my notes for my weekly blog entry. One of the four
places is my school laptop. The other three are: my home
laptop, my Ipad Mini, and my Ipod Touch.
The
AKIC Week in Brief: Summer
weather came to Wuxi and so I got a sunburn. I tried to skip rope
for the first time in my life. Tony showed a faculty for
dissimulation.
About
Me (Andis):
I
in in China! 我的中文的名字是“Tony爸爸”
在我的旁边的小卖部，这个老板给我这个名字
Politically
I am Conservative! Not that it really matters of course. I
could be a Zoroastrian Marxist for all it is worth -- my opinions
aren't heeded by those who would agree with me and those who won't.
I love Rush Limbaugh, William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, Edmund Burke,
John Derbyshire, Anne Coulter, David Warren, Andrew Briebart, Preston
Manning, Milton Friedman, Marc Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Marc Levin, and
so on. Who's on the dark side? Obama and Justin Trudeau, to name
but a few.
I
am Canadian! What kind of
Canadian things have I done this week? I have been checking the NHL
playoff results daily. I have been listening to some Charles Adler
podcasts. I have been wearing a Winnipeg Jets cap.
I
teach English! That is the
least interesting thing about me.
I
like to Read!
Here
is what I am reading this week:
Don
Colacho's Aphorisms: There are 2,988 of them in this book
that I compiled myself. I read ten aphorisms at a time. I
cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually --
and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)
Ulysses
by James Joyce:
I am following along with Frank
Delaney as
he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read
novel. Delaney figures he will have done his last ReJoyce
Podcast in about 22 years. Now that I have caught up to
Delaney's podcast (he completed episode #152 this week), I am getting
ahead him as far as reading the book. I will be finished
reading it, I figure, in a year.
The
Holy Bible King James Version: I am reading a chapter
a day. I am now reading the Acts of the Apostles.
University
Economics: Elements of Inquiry Third Edition by Armen A.
Alchian and William R. Allen: A great Economics
textbook.
The
Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods by A.G.
Sertillanges. Finished. A
book full or practical advice. I should have read it when I was 18.
Oh well. Better late than never.
Hernando
Cortez / Makers of History by John S C Abbott. Finished.
Like the conquest of Peru, the conquest of Mexico is a story in
which no one looks good. You wonder how magnificent empires
could crumble so easily from on the onslaught of just thousands of
Europeans. You feel disgust at the avarice of the conquerors.
You wonder about the role of the Catholic Church in the
conquests. You feel sad for the timidity of the Indians.
The
Hobbit of JR Tolkien. I hadn't read
this book before. I have seen parts of the recent movie based on the
book. But it was reading Father
Schall's praising
of Tolkien that really inspired me
to read the Hobbit. Tolkien, says Schall, is more than just the
creator of the genre of Fantasy fiction.
I
like to take photos
I
publish them in the following blogs: AKIC
wordpress, TKIC
blogspot, and TKIC
wordpress.
I
like to make videos
Here
is my Youtube Channel
and my Youku Channel.
I
like to cut and paste quotations:
I
snatched this from David
Warren's blog: “But
my darling, there is nothing about your little ‘self’ that is
worth expressing.” I
love this expression. It is reactionary and absolutely true in
all cases. It is very anti-Modernist. Conversely, it
calls into question practically all I have done in my blogging and
video-making activity. And yet it can serve as a guiding
principle in all I do from now on. I have to blog for some
higher purpose outside me self.
I
stole these three words from the Taki Mag Blog: hermetically
sealed introvert. How
I wish I could apply these three words to myself.
From
Sertallanges: Such an intelligence grows narrow; instead of
looking at everything from the point of view of the universal, it
falls to the level of a spirit of clique and gossip. [He
talks of the individual who is not creative.]
From
Don Colacho:
2123
For the last two centuries ago they have called a “free thinker”
the man who believes his prejudices are conclusions.
2125
False elegance is preferable to genuine vulgarity. The man who
dwells in an imaginary palace demands more from himself than the man
who is happy with his hovel.
2144
Cynicism, like every dogmatic attitude, is too easy.
2145
Modern man comforts himself by thinking that “everything has a
solution.” As if there were no sinister solutions! [A
middle-of-the-road reader of the blog said that those of his irk had
more tools to solve problems. I'd say he had more ways to fuck
things up. ]
2150
Smiles are divine, laughs human, guffaws bestial. [I
have overheard lots of guffaws in my time. Damn the company I keep
or rather the groups I am marginal to.]
I
like to keep a journal of my daily activities and any
thoughts that occur to me.
Monday
[May 6]
[Ipad]
As
soon as I made a blog entry about it, the police phone to tell me
something on the form was wrong and I was going to have to come back
and get another form. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!
I
have Zorba the Greek movie on my Ipad.
Check
in floceting population: This sign was posted in the Police
Station near Casa K.
请勿吸烟:
Please
no smoking!
Wuxi
a coastal city? That is what was said in
an ABC news report
about the fox, mink, and other rat meat scandal:
Among those arrested were 63 people who allegedly ran an operation in Shanghai and the coastal city of Wuxi that bought fox, mink, rat and other meat that had not been tested for quality and safety, processed it with additives like gelatin and passed it off as lamb.
Among those arrested were 63 people who allegedly ran an operation in Shanghai and the coastal city of Wuxi that bought fox, mink, rat and other meat that had not been tested for quality and safety, processed it with additives like gelatin and passed it off as lamb.
[No
Wuxiren, that I have meet, would say Wuxi was a coastal city.]
Tuesday
[May 7]
[Home
Laptop]
I
wake up feeling lethargic and not at all refreshed. Ugh!
The
wife made pizza last night – it was goooooood.
What
the hell? This
has to be a hoax.
I
work today 1300 to 2100. What fresh horrors await?
[School
Laptop]
This
suffering is sweet I thought to myself as I stood on the bus taking
me on Zhongshan Road. [LECTOR: What are you talking about?]
On
my days off, I was able to produce a program, written in Python, that
could produce sorted standings for a four team round robin. My
next challenge will be to produce code for a sudden death game and
then a sudden death tournament. What I have done so far seems to have
one flaw. If I want to produce standings for larger groupings
of teams or many groups of teams, I may have to make code from
scratch.
A
good way to test my recognition of signs is to take out my Ipod, use
the note app, put on the simplified mandarin keyboard to see if I can
replicate the characters I see.
Wednesday
[May 8]
[School
Laptop]
I
work 1300 to 2100 today. I have an English Corner in the
afternoon (topic: trains), and three classes in the evening.
[Later: 300 PM: I enjoyed talking about trains. I
don't know if the students did, but whatever. The topic brought
back memories:
- I remember the 200 car long trains in Manitoba.
- I remember playing on tracks in Val Belair Quebec and putting my head on the track after a train had passed -- the ringing was quite something.
- Another time in Quebec, I put coins and stones on the track in a morbid bid to derail the train -- nothing happened, thankfully.
- In BC, I remember the excitement of my nephew Kyle as we drove past a long freight train -- I think we stopped the car to let him watch.
- We rode the train from Quebec City to Winnipeg once.
- Another time, with friends, I took the train from Winnipeg to Alberta.
- In Mexico, I rode the train through golden canyon. We were able to stand at the back of the train in the open air.
- In Chilliwack, I remember being overawed by the power of a long diesel train making its way done the tracks of a sub line of a minor railway.
- In China, on my honeymoon, we took the train from Wuxi to Beijing and back. ]
It
is wet and ugly outside. There is enough wind to turn one's
umbrella from a shelter into a propeller.
With
my the first anniversary of my father's death approaching (May 28), I
am working on a tribute entry to be published that day. I
intend this piece to be the most tortured of my blogging career.
Thursday
[May 9th]
[Ipad]
Traffic jam. Is this always the case? Either the rain or an accident is to blame.
Traffic jam. Is this always the case? Either the rain or an accident is to blame.
[School
Laptop]
You
can thank the use of the square brackets to the fact that I am trying
to learn the Python programming language.
I
work 1000-2100 today.
It seems I will have an easy day. I don't have so much
prep to do.
It
is raining for the second day in the road. It isn't a
torrential rain but everyone is carrying an umbrella -- that is,
everyone who thought to take an umbrella; I did see a few people
without.
Looking
at the KFC sign, I saw the first character had been a character I had
been learning in my Flashcard practice - this was a little moment of
the practice paying off for me.[肯德基
（pinyin
kendeji) The character was ken.]
A
thought that came to me: Those of you who think the world has
too many people, why don't you practice what you preach and kill
yourselves? Better yet, why don't you find a room, fill it with
people who agree with you, and you can drink the kool-aid together.
[LECTOR: Andis! You are one of the too many people. Why don't you
join us?]
Another
thought came to me: Those of you who think parenting is a
lifestyle choice, you must think your parents made the wrong
lifestyle choice, and perhaps they did. My father and his
father didn't make lifestyle choices when they had kids -- it was
just something you did if you were a man. [LECTOR: Are priests men?
You approve of that institution. ANDIS: Indeed I do! LECTOR: The
forced celibacy causes them to rape little boys! ANDIS: Homosexuals
shouldn't be priests!]
I
went to a nearby grocery store to buy some Pineapple Beer. It
is in season. I have always wondered if these is any alcohol in
the Pineapple Beer I buy. I think I can say it does for the
cans I bought bear the words "low alcohol Beer."
Friday
(May 10th)
[School
laptop]
I
work 1100-2100. I arrive at school at 905 after having had
breakfast at McDonald's.
I
work up feeling like I had a head cold. I was all stuffed up
and the idea of doing any intellectual activity made me wince.
[LECTOR: When do you engage in intellectual acitivity.]
I
ran into Farok Bagolli last night. I was walking to my bus
stop, listening to a podcast about U.S. President Pierce when I did
hear some sound like "Andis!" I though nothing of the
noise when I heard it again. Farok was screaming at me.
"What's the matter? We are not friends anymore?"
"Yes!" I thought as I pretended to be friendly but
hopefully not doing a good job of it. [Lector: That encounter should
be passed over in silence. Why mention it? You are pushing your
luck.]
When
all else fails, you can, by seeming to take the high road, admit that
you fucked up. [LECTOR: That is definitely your motto, and I am sure
that you have lived by it on many instances.]
Lunch
Money Day. One month, we get about 150 rmb or so -- lunch
money. I take the money and buy Tony a toy. I wanted to
buy him these Ultraman figurines but when I went to the shop, these
figurines looked to be of poor quality and over-priced; and they
weren't the exact figures I was looking for. I ended up buying
him a
truck towing a digger on a trailer.
Tomorrow,
the school will go on a Field Trip! I will bring Tony with me!
We will be going to some sort of Agricultural museum.
Apparently,
Little Sheep Hot Pot place is one of the restaurants in Wuxi that
bought the rat, fox, and mink meat. I heard a person complain that
he really resented having to pay lamb prices for rat, fox, and mink
meat.
Ask
him a question and he will vomit out an answer.
People
age at the same rate but sometimes mature in different directions.
In
Python, I have written a program that can give me the following:
Team
W L T PF PA Diff Pts
Edmonton
10 6 0 102 62 40 30
British
Columbia 8 7 1 69 80 -11 25
Saskatchewan
8 8 0 94 95 -1 24
Winnipeg
7 9 0 95 102 -7 21
Calgary
6 9 1 66 87 -21 19
The
standings were based on random generated results. I find it
enchanting that I can do this, but I don't know where to go from
here. Writing the programs take time and I have to think how I
want to use the brief time I have for learning Python wisely.
I
first heard that the economist John Maynard Keynes was gay when I was
studying Economics at the University of Winnipeg. It
was an item of brief interest, and I have to admit that it escaped my
mind until I caught wind of the controversy caused by things said by
Niall Ferguson. Does Keynes' homosexuality play a role in his
Economic thought? It depends what you think Economics is. Is
it scientific? I don't see how someone's sexual orientation
would matter much if one was a physicist -- physics is a hard science
where the observations can't lie. But what if Economics is not
so much a science as a study of the philosophy of morals? It may
matter then. [LECTOR: Homophobe!]
Saturday
(May 11th)
[Home
Laptop]
I
didn't teach classes today. The school had a field trip to park in
the fringes of the city beyond Meicun and Shuo Feng.
Tony
came with me on the trip. He had said through the week that he
wanted to come, but then this morning, he insisted that he didn't
want to and would rather stay in bed. I couldn't convince him to
come on the field trip but Jenny did. She has powers of persuading
Tony to do things that amaze me. I can't fathom how she can convince
him to do things that he would rather not do. With me, Tony will
only do what he wants to do – I can't get him to do things against
his wishes.
The
park we went to had nothing in it that I hadn't seen in other Wuxi
parks. It had a
lake, piers,
and pathways. Upon closer inspection, one could see that much it was
falling apart and that the water was stagnant and icky. [LECTOR:
Icky: what a nice choice of words.]
I
had bought Tony a
new toy the previous day. It gave him incentive to come with me
today. I used funds from my Tony Toy Kitty fund to pay for it. Tony
loved the toy and played with it all the while we were at the park,
till he got a water gun.
Part
of the activities of the field trip were these games... I don't
really want to go into much detail about them, other then to say they
were cheesy in the manner of milk and cookie party games.
I
do want to mention that in one of the games, there was a relay race
involving rope skipping. I found myself in line, actually last in
line, and I realized that I was going to look really foolish because
I had never skipped rope in my life, and the age of 48 with a lame
right leg, I was about to hold onto a skipping rope for the first
time in my life in a situation demanding me to do something I had
never done before, as quickly as possible in a competitive race. As
soon as it was my turn, I got tangled up in the rope, of course, and
the skipper from the other team raced far ahead of me to the finish
line thereby clinching a victory for her side. I didn't bother
finishing the race.
Why
is it, I was asked, that I had never before skipped rope? I just
didn't and if anything, it was something girls did, I said.
Thinking about it now, it was probably also the case that being the
solitary shunned type with no friends, I never had a chance to skip
rope in my school days. [LECTOR: I can only laugh at your
incompetence!]
After
the skipping debacle, there was a barbecue – typical Chinese fare:
meat, tofu, fish and mushrooms served on sticks. I ate a little;
Tony ate nothing but he was more interested in playing with his new
toy truck and trailer.
After
the barbecue, I took Tony, as I had promised him earlier because of
his bickering, to the park's lake (or was it pond?) to ride a
pedal boat. That was fun enough though my right leg really
wasn't up to providing pedal power for the boat. The leg didn't
bother me so much however, when I saw two boats of girls from our
school group and decided to ram them!
Just
as we returned to dock, some of the passengers on the other boats had
water guns and were having water fights with each other. I tried to
avoid them. Tony saw the water fights and was quite amused. As we
got off the boat, he saw the water guns on sale by the dock and he
insisted that I buy him one. I didn't have the energy to fight him
and it was a day to indulge him; and so I had to spend the rest of
the time we had at the park accompanying him round the lake as he
sprayed water all over the place. At one pier, he engaged in a
water fight with a
boat where a boy, probably of similar age, had a water gun. Tony
sprayed the boy and the adult passengers of the boat with water.
Eventually, Tony got soaked himself and became distressed as a
result, but I told him it had coming.
A
chartered bus took our group back to downtown
Wuxi. Tony & I walked through the downtown to get to our bus
stop, stopping at a KFC so Tony could eat wings, and stopping at any
pools or fountains we
came upon so Tony could use his water gun.
Tony
seemed reluctant to talk to Jenny on the phone after I told her about
his water gun antics. He suspected Jenny did not approve of my
buying him, what I learned was, his third water gun. But a little
later, suddenly, while on the bus, he told me he wanted to talk to
Mom. When I gave him the phone he told her that it was my idea to
buy the water gun. This was a blatant lie that even Jenny, who
favours Tony to me in our all-male disputes, was not going to
believe. Finding that Mom didn't believe him, Tony gave the phone to
me and again refused to talk to his mother on the phone. But then a
few minutes later, he asked me to phone Mom again. This time, he
told her that I had bought him the toy truck and trailer – this I
think he did because he wanted Mom to get mad at me for buying the
toy and so forget about the water gun. This only served to get both
of us in trouble with Jenny. And then just as we were getting close
to home, Tony asked to phone Mom for a third time. I told him we
were getting close to home and so there was no point, but Tony
insisted. He told Jenny that he was going to take a bath with the
water gun. I guessed he figured this would make Mom happy.
Pineapple
Beer is in season! And
I have confirmed that it does contain alcohol! [LECTOR: it
probably contains but one or two percent to satisfy wimps like you?]
Benghazi
hearings. John
Derbyshire is
right. The whole episode is proof of Obama's incompetence as an
administrator. The three woman, who Obama leaned on in in dealing
with Libya, one of whom was Hilary Clinton, should be imprisoned for
the rest of their lives for the four people that were killed because
of their liberal interventionist incompetence. Be that as it may,
Derb says he can't get worked up about the hearings currently taking
place. I can get worked up, however, because the whole Benghazi
affair just reeks like Ted Kennedy never having made to really suffer
for Chappaquiddick, Bill Clinton never resigning for the Monica
Lewinsky affair, Bill Clinton getting away with Rape, and Barack
Obama never truly having had to answer for his relationship with the
vile reverend Jeremiah Wright.
The
Cleveland Kidnappings. There are sick people among us. I wonder
about the people I know and have dealings with. How sick are some of
them? I bet they are real sick mothers.
Sunday
[May 12]
[Ipod]
I don't work today.
I got sunburned on my arms and legs yesterday. It is summer hot already in the Wux.
Tony wanted to go to the square this morning to play with his water gun.
At the square now, I sit I in the shade that I can find.
Later: Just a little later, I sit in the KFC as Tony eats his favorite fried chicken wings. The KFC is doing steady business. (Or should I say "brisk?"
AKIC: Can I have a chicken wing? TKIC: No! (To be fair, it should be pointed out that TKIC offered AKIC some chips.)
With temperatures around 30 degrees C today, we had the square to ourselves. The square crowds form in the evening.
Tony slowly gnaws his way through each wing. He is Chinese that way. Westerner that I am, I need at least ten wings in a serving before I think it is substantial -- one wing is nothing; I eat it and spit it out like it is a sunflower seed. Each wing to Tony is like a whole chicken to me.
[Ipod]
I don't work today.
I got sunburned on my arms and legs yesterday. It is summer hot already in the Wux.
Tony wanted to go to the square this morning to play with his water gun.
At the square now, I sit I in the shade that I can find.
Later: Just a little later, I sit in the KFC as Tony eats his favorite fried chicken wings. The KFC is doing steady business. (Or should I say "brisk?"
AKIC: Can I have a chicken wing? TKIC: No! (To be fair, it should be pointed out that TKIC offered AKIC some chips.)
With temperatures around 30 degrees C today, we had the square to ourselves. The square crowds form in the evening.
Tony slowly gnaws his way through each wing. He is Chinese that way. Westerner that I am, I need at least ten wings in a serving before I think it is substantial -- one wing is nothing; I eat it and spit it out like it is a sunflower seed. Each wing to Tony is like a whole chicken to me.
[Ipad]
After KFC, Tony wants to go to an indoor playground. We go. I first take Tony home to pick up the admission card we have for the playground. I also pick up my Ipad. [Lector: Exciting?]
As Tony plays, I have read Schall, the Catechism, the Acts of the Apostles, the Intellectual Life, the Hobbit, Ulysses, Don Colacho, and will now give a brief glance at my Python computer language book. [LECTOR: That's a lot of looking but have you done any real reading?]
I would rather take Tony on bike rides to the countryside than hang out at this playground. There are just too many others. (Other kids, other parents, and so on....). But Tony needs to be able to play and talk to other kids, I suppose. I have always been too much of a solitary and a loner to think much of these things. My instinct is to keep him as far away from others as possible, but that would imposing something of me on him that I shouldn't.
After KFC, Tony wants to go to an indoor playground. We go. I first take Tony home to pick up the admission card we have for the playground. I also pick up my Ipad. [Lector: Exciting?]
As Tony plays, I have read Schall, the Catechism, the Acts of the Apostles, the Intellectual Life, the Hobbit, Ulysses, Don Colacho, and will now give a brief glance at my Python computer language book. [LECTOR: That's a lot of looking but have you done any real reading?]
I would rather take Tony on bike rides to the countryside than hang out at this playground. There are just too many others. (Other kids, other parents, and so on....). But Tony needs to be able to play and talk to other kids, I suppose. I have always been too much of a solitary and a loner to think much of these things. My instinct is to keep him as far away from others as possible, but that would imposing something of me on him that I shouldn't.
[Home
Laptop]
I
was able to pull Tony from that playground. I
bought him some ice cream. We then went for a ride in the area.
We rode our e-bike and stopped at two bridges. One
was a pedestrian overpass built to connect an industrial park and
a hotel – otherwise I couldn't see what the
point of having it there was. The
other was an freeway overpass. This overpass has stairs for
pedestrians and a ramp for cyclists to pull up their bikes. I
didn't see any pedestrians or cyclists using the stairs. We also
came upon a pit near some newly constructed buildings – a
stark sight that I had to take a photo of.
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