Gratitude: Thank God, I am a reactionary, and I am not a Communist, not a socialist, not a progressive, not a person who defines himself as middle-of-the-road, not a Liberal, not a NDPer, not an atheist, not a Democrat, not a pervert, not a bachelor, not a drug-taker, not a talker, not a comic book reader, and that I am slightly out of stop when passes as contemporary and modern.
Acknowledgement: I have faults some which I may still be blind to, despite knowing that injunction about knowing thyself.
Requests: It is lonely in Akicistan. Being a reactionary and all in a profession prone to be filled with Leftists, I have a hard time finding good conversation and even overhearing someone having intelligent to say. I know I should debate and engage more but I don't like the one against the world feeling that engenders. After all, Life is full of pinpricks that make one wince even if the fact of them is proof you are right and they are wrong. So, I request two things. Correspondence with those of a similar disposition to mine and those, of good will, who disagree with me. I can be reached at akaulins@qq.com.
Notice: This will be the last issue of the Andis Kaulins in China Weekly, a.k.a. The AKIC Weekly. In December, I will publish Dispatches form Akicistan #1. Akicistan #1 will have the same sort of content as the AKIC Weekly. However, it will evolve and it will be published on an irregular basis. Calling this blog entry a Weekly does impose limitations. I have decided that I want to publish this magazine at a time that is more convenient for me.
I will still be publishing the diary as well and this too may begin to be published on an irregular basis.
The AKIC Week in Brief: Yet another dull week in Akicistan. I kept myself busy best I could. I wore more clothes to work as the temperatures lowered.
About AKIC: If you want to learn what Andis & AKIC are all about, you can visit here.
If there are things about AKIC you don't know about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can go here to find out what they are all about.
AKIC Weekly Features:
I in in China! 我很喜欢中国菜。但是，我觉得无锡菜是很烫的。
再一个月是圣诞节。我现在要买我的孩子Tony很多玩具。但是，Tony 现在有很多的玩具。
I am Canadian! I continue to hope that Rob Ford doesn't resign. It would seem that there isn't anyone else in Toronto who is fit to be its mayor. The other likely candidates are socialists.
I am Latvian (sort of)! It was with pride that I read of the resistance efforts of Latvians who were imprisoned in the Gulag. With sadness, I heard of the supermarket collapse in Riga.
Wuxi Peach Maoists Update: Visit here to find out how if your Peach Maoists (1-9-1) can win a second game.
Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary! I would like to feel pleasure at the failure of Obamacare and the final once-and-for-all demonstration of the mendaciousness of President Obama and all who were stupid enough to support him. However, there are still 37 percent who approve of the job he is doing which means if you run into a random room of people, these idiots will be among them. And Obamacare will not be repealed anytime soon. The damage that the law will do to healthcare in the America, and the world (which like a parasite depends on America medical breakthroughs to keep their socialist systems going) will be tragic in a manner comparable to the Holocaust, the Gulag, North Korea, and the Cultural Revolution – all man-made disasters.
I teach English! Chinese students seem so lacking in imagination. I can help students who won't speak!
I am not a freak! Actually, I might be. I am in a profession where common sense is an aberration.
I like to Read! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:
Don Colacho's (Nicolas Gomez Davilla) Aphorisms. There are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled for myself. I try to read at least one aphorism a day. I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually -- and I put them in the AKIC Weekly. (See below)
The Niomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Now that I have finished the Catechism, I will read this and then begin to read the Summa.
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 the whole novel covered in about 22 years. Delaney completed episode #180a this week and is working his way through the chapter that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far as reading the book. I will be finished my reading of it, I figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies. It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it, and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with it
The Holy Bible (RSV-C2E version, aka the Ignatius Bible, and Douay-Rheims version). I will read the two versions in conjunction. Last week, I was reading the Book of Genesis.
Gulag by Anne Applebaum. Finished. A good read, fascinating and depressing. Having heard tales of the Gulag already and having read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag book, Applebaum's history provided me with more details. I was especially struck by the bureaucratic nature of the Gulag. The people writing the reports and the regulations seemed so far removed from the reality of the prison camps where often barbaric and illiterate human beings were given charge of innocent people.
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. A collection of short stories by a Catholic writer. Violent and grotesque are these stories, but unlike modern horror stories which are done for the sake of violence and gore, O'Connor's stories are religious and about the issues of our souls.
I like to take photos
I publish them in the following blogs: AKIC wordpress , TKIC blogspot, TKIC wordpress, Views of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot and Views of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress. It is my habit to take a least one photo of Tony a day and publish it in TKIC wordpress. I also try to capture interesting things that pass by the Casa Kaulins apartment, either on video on still image, and publish them in Views of China from Casa Kaulins.
I like to make videos
Here is my Youtube Channel and my Youku Channel.
I like to cut, paste, and sometimes give my take on quotations:
Nicholas Gomez Davilla:
530 The soul is man's task. [I rarely meet people who know this.]
531 Every man is capable, at each moment, of possessing those truths which matter.
In the future await the subordinate truths.
532 One being alone can suffice for you. But let it never be Man. [This appeals to the misanthrope in me.]
537 In every age a minority lives today's problems and a majority yesterday's. [The Left today persists in fighting racism.]
539 From the sum of all points of view does not emerge the object in relief, but confusion. [That's Democracy for you...]
540 Man unleashes catastrophes when he insists on making coherent the contradictory pieces of evidence among which he lives. [Discard taboos against having children out of wedlock because it doesn't seem to be humane, and look at the results.]
547 History might only come from insignificant actions. [There is something to be said for that.]
549 Upon each person depends whether his soul, deprived of its many pretensions by the years, is revealed as bitter spite or humble resignation. [I have to admit that I teeter between bitter spite and humble resignation. Knowing I teeter, I keep quiet. Quiet breeds humility? I wonder.]
David Warren:
I have noticed that everyone is "conservative" in a subject he knows something about. Steve Temple, for instance, is wonderfully conservative about books, as all the other serious booksellers I know. And I have known, for instance, a shrieking Marxist who was intensely conservative about the standards of engraving on the postage stamps he collected. That was because he knew something about stamps. I could provide several million more items of anecdotal evidence. …
Conversely, people tend to be "liberal" in subjects they know nothing about — such as public affairs and elementary economics in the case of most booksellers. And indeed, as I have several times tried to explain to them, journalists tend to be very liberal, right across the board. This is because they know nothing about anything. [I have always suspected that most journalists were ignorant about most things.]
Saint Thomas More:
"For in man reason ought to reign like a king, and it does reign when it makes itself loyally subject to the faith, and serves God."
AKIC's Top Ten Favorite Writers
Evelyn Waugh [So funny.]
Florence King [I like southern American writers. This one says she is Atheist.]
Flannery O'Connor [I like southern American writers. This one is Catholic.]
GK Chesterton [GKC is a writer for all of time.]
William Shakespeare [What more can I say?]
David Warren [He might be the only living writer on this list. Is FK still alive?]
Arthur Conan Doyle [There is more to him than the Sherlock Holmes stories.]
Stephen Leacock [Canada had great writers before Turdeau.]
WH Mallock [I discovered this Victorian writer this year.]
George Orwell [The only Leftie on the list. Because of his honesty, I find myself forgetting that he was a daft Socialist.]
I forgot, on Monday, to decide on a topic of a top list. So, this list has been hastily made. I am sure I have made some grave oversights.
I fashion myself to be a 21st Century Pepys
Here is my diary entry for November 18 to November 24, 2013.
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