November 2015 Notes (Part 1)

In this entry, written in the first part of November 2015 (the 1^st to the 15^th actually), I discuss my driving, I complain about the driving of the locals, I actually mention something that was agreeable to me, I notice the brainwashed nature of the locals, I canvass for David Warren fans who happen to be in China, I tell you what a student told me about algae in Lake Taihu, I quote Theodore Dalrymple, I update you on the plan to homeschool Tony, I tell you why Tony must be homeschooled, I confess and note some things about me, I report on how I avoided foreigners, I disclose how I later talked to an actual other Canadian living in Wuxi, I plead guilty to Remembrance Day negligence, and I surprise myself with my brilliance.

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I picked up Tony and school and drove right into the midst of the jam of other parents getting their kids at the school. Jenny had already done this and so I didn't want to seem a wimp.

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Chinese drivers will make right turns without looking, but do they have to make wide two-lane turns when they do so?

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We can't get a card that can be used to open the security gate for cars at our apartment complex and so we have to have the guards open the door for us. We want a card but aren't willing to backpay monthly charges for the card since 2008. We have permission to use a parking space from an owner who doesn't use it, but the apartment complex company wants us to back pay monthly charges (50 rmb a month) for the card since 2008. (By my calculations, they want us to pay 5,000 rmb)

Sometimes, the security guards hassle us about not having a card but Jenny tells them to stuff it and so they back off.

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Walking through the People's Square near Casa Kaulins is agreeable for me. I can see cultural differences that make China seem attractive like the public group dancing and the Tai Chi.

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It is forbidden! When Chinese say this, I feel like I am being admonished by a Red Guard. Something brainwashy about it. Of course, it could also be that those are the only words the Chinese know to express that statement. This expression has often been used by students in my classes during discussions about what can or can't be done in Wuxi.

It really got at my craw though when I was playing with Tony in the pool, sort of horsing around as it were, and some other swimmer came up to me and said something Tony was doing was forbidden. I didn't quite understand what the swimmer meant and I don't deny that we were in the wrong, but his full-eyed expression and his stern manner of saying that expression was creepily big brotherish.

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Am I the only person in China who reads David Warren's blog Essays in Idleness? If you are also in China and read his blog, you can email me at andiskaulins@qq.com.

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"I am marrying a young girl!" said a student in one of my Speaker's Corner. Wrong choice of words I should have told the student. The story I got from him later was that he was 25 years old and he was marrying a girl who was 20. The numbers are unusual in China. I then told the student that his statement sounded to my ears like he was going to marry a 14 year old.

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Jenny scratched the car again. She backed to close to the pillar on the passenger side of our parking spot and scratched the mirror. Damage was cosmetic.

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Student tells me the algae at Lake Taihu was very bad and that the odor could be smelt in the western part of Wuxi.

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Something Theodore Dalrymple noticed: He was a large man, both physically and in personality, with a booming voice, and I dare say some people found him egotistical; certainly he exuded self-confidence and enjoyment of life which, however, I found neither offensive nor excessive, since he was a man of accomplishment. He rose in my estimation when he told me that he did not drive; I have found that men of high intelligence who do not drive are almost always distinguished. Why this should be so I do not know; but it is so.

[Link: http://www.newenglishreview.org/Theodore_Dalrymple/Let_Us_Now_Praise_Famous_Men/]

Here's what I have noticed about drivers: the bigger the vehicle, the more vulgar the driver appears.

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Live Blogging: In early November, the problem with Tony being homeschooled is that we have to find some doctor to sign a note saying that Tony is sick and can't attend school for a year. This note will be fake.

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I hear that Tony falls asleep in Chinese class which explains why he is handing in blank test papers to his teachers.

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I hear that Tony was hit on the hand with a ruler for some bad thing he did in class.

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News from China was a warmup topic for one of my speakers corners. I try to emphasize that I don't mean News in China. Could the students guess what it was? One did: China ends the one-child policy.

I then asked the students if the one-child policy had been a good idea. Most of them said it was because China had too many people. A few of the woman said that the policy was a boon for women because freed them from the drudgery of looking after children. I guffawed mentally when they said this. You need the government to stop you from having children? You are incapable of making your own decisions? Having children is drudgery?

I openly oppose the one child policy in class by saying that I love the Chinese people and would like to see more of them.

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One Monday morning in November, I was in line with five other cars waiting at a set of lights, when I saw a Red Audi come from behind the lineup and pass, on the left, all the cars, including mine, in order to make a left turn. The Audi then, at the interesection, forced the oncoming car, which had just started off on the green, to stop. The Audi, continuing on with its left turn, then had to skirt around pedestrians and e-bikes who also had started off on the green. I was completely aghast, especially since I was waiting in the lineup to make a left turn myself. With resorting to using bad language, I would say the driver of the Audi was overly aggressive and deserved an admonishment that was verbal and physical.

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Will there ever be a day when driving in China doesn't make me angry? That such maneuvers, as the Audi driver did, are done in China only serves to prove what a corrupt country it is. It was breathtakingly brazen, but the driver has probably been getting away with all his life.

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5,000 years of civilization and that is how the Chinese drive? [This gushing admiration of China based on it having a long history. Bah. 5,000 years of being human. China has had its moments of greatness. But what ever came of the Classical Greeks? Look at Greece now. And for that matter, look at China.]

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Lunch Money Day is the tenth of each month. On November 10^th, I was going to go to a foreign-operated restaurant that is down a back alley near our school and the #2 Hospital. I was all set in walk in and order a bowl of their perogies when I saw an unshaven foreigner on the patio talking to other unshaven foreigners... I kept on walking, and decided that I was going to eat at Burger King instead. I am so unaccustomed to meeting white foreigners except at work that when I see them, I turn shy.

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Jenny told me that "Tony was number one in his class's English Test," while holding up her small finger. "Well isn't that nice!" I said not immediately detecting her sarcasm. Tony in fact was #55 out of 55 students in the English test, a most embarrassing result.

How could this be?

1) Tony doesn't seem to care at all about school. Proof of this is that he didn't seem to care that he had the worst result in his class.

2) Speaking English at home will not equip one to pass an English test in a Chinese school. It may well be an hindrance. There have been times when students have justified their English mistakes by saying that their English teacher at school (a Chinese person) told them it was so. This poses a dilemma for them when writing English tests: write the correct answer or write the answer that will pass the test.

3)I have been negligent about his reading. I am going to have to start teaching him English phonics because his reading is atrocious as I discovered when I spent some time with him, the night Jenny told me of his last place test result.

4)Tony may not be all that bright. While he doesn't care about his school, he didn't seem to understand that he was the worst student in his class.

5)Tony may well be stuck in an impossibly stupid and inhuman school system which is the product of a very dysfunctional society. [More about point 5 anon.]

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I want my Tony to be a Saint, not a success.

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Would taking Tony to Canada to be schooled a solution? From what I have heard, the school system in Canada has vices of its own which are the product of insane progressivisim that has taken over Western education systems. While going to Canada can rid Tony of the enormous workload and long school days that make him want only to play the Ipad as an escape, it is incapable of giving Tony the discipline and challenges that the Chinese system does give its students. But on the other hand, the problems with the Chinese system are that it robs children of their childhoods, controls them too much so that even leisure time is depressingly drab, and destroys their souls so that even the successful children are unimaginative and lacking in spiritual depth. I would homeschool Tony forever if I could.

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Jenny has found some doctor who can make a note to allow us to take Tony out of school. Hurray!!

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I meet a Canadian in Wuxi. I haven't spoken to one in the flesh since I was in Canada in June.

He lives in Wuxi, has a Chinese wife and a child who is being educated in Wuxi. He hates the Chinese education system, wouldn't put his child in it and has the child in an international school (This is not an option for Jenny & I with Tony because we can't afford it). Like me, he thinks the Chinese system insanely overdoes it making primary school students go through a tough regimen at so young an age. He didn't however share my concerns about the vices I see the Canadian education system having. In response to my concerns, he immediately cited surveys he had heard that said that Canadians were the happiest and most satisfied people in the world. They must not have asked all the people I knew in Canada in these surveys. People are miserable everywhere. Some are just doing a better job of fooling themselves than others.

Canadians are a laid back people, my fellow Canadian continued. I had never thought to describe Canadians that way. In fact, I think this joke from National Lampoon best exemplifies the Canadian spirit: What is the difference between a boring white guy and a Canadian? The Canadian is wearing a parka. Canada, before Trudeau came along, was a boring place but didn't seem to be in self-denial about it. After Trudeau, there came along this sort of "I am Canadian" nationalism that didn't much change the fact that Canadians were dull, and didn't make Americans or Chinese (as I have learned in my over ten years in China) any more than passingly aware of Canada's existence.

Finding out he drove a car in Wuxi, I had to discuss Chinese driving with him. His philosophy for going on the roads in China was just to drive fast. I haven't formulated my philosophy. I can't decide whether to drive slowly or quickly or aggressively only when a victim of some other driver's rudeness. The Canadian gave me a anecdote which I will tell every student whenever I talk about driving. There was foreigner who lived in China for 14 years and loved China very much. He then got a car. Driving in China caused him to leave the land he thought he loved. Road rage was making him hate the Chinese as well as what it was doing to his personality.

One of the reasons I was happy to not have a car in China because I imagined the driving in China would make me hate the Chinese more.

[One thing does bug me about this anecdote. How could this foreigner have lived in China for so long and not noticed what rude and inconsiderate drivers the Chinese were?]

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[LIVE BLOGGING] Tomorrow, (Friday, November 13^th) Tony, if all goes to plan, will attend his stupid primary school for the last time till September 2016 and hopefully longer. Jenny says that a lot of other parents are watching her. "They'll all laugh at me if Tony does not do well!" she told me last night. I said something to her along the lines of: Who gives credence to what a bunch of fools have to say?

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November 11^th, I didn't shop on the Internet for bargains and I didn't post a poppy on my website. I didn't do the latter because I was lazy and had read Peter Hitchens discuss how he felt a contrarian urge to not wear a poppy because of the intent of doing so has probably taken on a phony modern sentimental posing.

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About me: I have bouts of dourness and silliness. I tend to be both Jeevish and Woosterish. I want to be a staunch reactionary Catholic and a complete rebel against everything that Canadians take for granted.

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About me: In the ways of the world, I am pathetic. I was embarrassed to say that I had worked at the same school for over ten years when I talked to that Canadian. Later, I got depressed when I thought about other embarrassing aspects of my life story like how I spent seven years in university like a career student (But at least, I did pay off my student loans though unlike some English teachers in China who I learned hadn't.) and was working in a fast food restaurant in my thirties (At least I was working unlike the types I saw sleeping in the streets of Vancouver saying they were doing so because they couldn't work for corporations.). I sometimes hug Tony and think I should be pathetic for being his father. And yet strangely, I have been blessed in this life because I do feel shame and embarrassment.

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[LIVE BLOGGING]

1)Today, (Friday November 13) will be the last day Tony goes to a public school this year. Jenny is angry at the school's English teacher who told her or insinuated to her that Tony is dumb. I was curious how good this English teacher's English actually was. Jenny said I would have to talk to her.

2)Last night, I worked through a phonics textbook with Tony. He needs to learn to read by sounding out the words, not knowing them by sight. We then read a Star Wars Rebels comic book. Funny, how some things he knows dead-on like the names of all the characters in the show while my grasp of them is fuzzy.

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I have got to be more mischievous in this Blog. [Jenny worked in Pubs selling Chivas Whiskey. She was Miss Chivas girl. I want to be a Mischievous Blogger.]

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Friday night, I had gotten off the train at Yanqiao Station. One of the exit gates had a big red "X" on it, meaning it was not working. I went to the next one over which had five people waiting to get through and went to the back of the line. As I stood in that lineup, I saw a woman approach the gate with the red "X" on it. When she saw it wasn't working, she shuffled over to the next gate and basically cut in front of all the people who were lined up, including me. It was just so mainland Chinese.

[To those who say, that this was a unconscious blunder on the part of the woman, and not a trait that I can attribute to the mainland Chinese, I say that I have witnessed so many examples of a selfish mainland Chinese person lacking situational awareness whether they be on roads (mainland Chinese drivers who park their cars so as to cause traffic jams, mainland Chinese drivers not sure where they are blocking two lanes of traffic and so on), on escalators (how many times I have had mainland Chinese blocking me by standing in front of escalators at both the top and bottom), at elevators (a mainland Chinese person who will wait for people to get off elevators before getting on is a rare person indeed), and in queues (cutting in queues is so bad that even some locals comment on it).]

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At my apartment complex, I took a photo of this sign featuring a photo of Xi Jing Ping (known affectionately as Xi Da Da). This sign which was full of patriotic slogans had previously had a photo of two young students, dressed like young pioneers, striking a patriotic pose. I took a photo of this sign because it has been my experience that images of Chinese Chairmans being posted in public are very rare in China. I have only ever seen one photo of "the Great Reformer" Deng in public, a few photos of Hu Jiantao when he was the Chairman, on a billboard, and now this photo of Xi Da Da on a sign at the security gate of the Casa Kaulins apartment complex. I wonder if Xi Da Da is trying very hard to make himself the figurehead of a Chinese patriotic movement and if perhaps I will see a lot of photos of him posted in public places.

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I heard the news of the Paris Attacks just five minutes before I was to start a class. It made it hard for me to teach. Thankfully, in the second class in the next hour, the student wanted to talk about it.

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On the 15th of November, I couldn't even get out of the parking garage without having another driver annoy me. I am always careful getting out of our parking garage and turning onto the lane because you can't see vehicles coming from either way, and there has been a serious accident there in which a car hit an e-bike. As I was pulling up to the entrance, I had a driver come from behind me, pass me and cut me off as I was trying to get out. I blared my horn at the white BMW in an angry manner.

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Another reason to homeschool Tony. I don't have to deal with the zoo that picking him up at the end of the school day is. Jenny tells me that I would be swearing at other parents every day like the one I swore at in October.

October 2015 Notes (Part 2)

In this entry, the second one from October 2015, I will blog about my driving in Wuxi, the Baoli Carrefour, Jenny's driving, Canada's New Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (JT), JT's father the Antichrist, interesting sights, some Chinese female opinions of our new Prime Minister's looks, scratches done to the family Citroën, possible nicknames for the new Canadian Prime Minister, my being a mover, English names of some Gissing company students, the ratio 1-4-4-1 as it applies to students and Wuxi expatriates, driving in the countryside of Wuxi, a Wuxi girl who went to London, my ninth wedding anniversary and when I celebrate it, homeschooling Tony, what I think of Chinese complaints about Japan, and a spanking.

• I shouldn't talk about driving.  I shouldn't talk about driving!  I AM going to talk about driving!
• LIVE BLOGGING:  I have driven the Citroën to work for the first time on Saturday, October 17.  From the school, I have gotten a parking pass that is good for four hours at a parking complex underneath the school.  But I need nine hours of parking for work today.  What am I to do?  Jenny tells me to leave the parking lot for a short time and come back.
• LIVE BLOGGING LATER:  It turned out that I was able to park the car at the school building without paying.  At lunch, I took the car to the Baoli Carrefour and did some shopping. I returned to the parking lot with no problems.
• The Carrefour was surprisingly empty.  I had heard rumors that the Carrefour Baoli will soon close.  If it is Saturdays are that slow, it may well be.  This is too bad because I like how easy it was to find parking there.
• Jenny & I went back to the Citroën dealership (which is not far from the Wuxi Ikea) to have a camera installed in her Citroën that will record "incidents."  There are kamikaze bikers and pedestrians it is said who love to be hit by cars in order to extract monetary compensation from car owners.  And there are just so many idiots who don't know how to drive.
• Jenny, when she picks up Tony, does something with the Citroën that I wouldn't dare do on my own initiative.  She will drive the car close to the school and deal with all the e-bikes and cars that are there.
• Came into work on Tuesday, October 20, and immediately got onto the Internet to find out the results of the Canadian federal election.  I wasn't pleased.  The result I feared had actually happened.  Justin, the son of Pierre Trudeau is now our Prime Minister   The father was such friends with Fidel Castro that the dictator was a pall-bearer at his funeral.  Oh!  God help us all!
• Pierre Trudeau was the Antichrist, the devil in the flesh.  Canadian history since the late 1960s was as follows:  Trudeau was Prime Minister from 1968 to 1984 more or less.  Trudeau did such a terrible job that succeeding Prime Ministers like Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper had to spend a lot of their administrations cleaning up the damage he had caused.  And some of this damage hasn't been repaired.
• This begs the question why Trudeau's son could be elected PM on the basis of having his father's last name.  The answer is very easy.  A majority of Canadians are idiots, or left-wingers.  I say this despite the fact Trudeau's party actually only got 39 percent of the popular vote in the election, meaning 61 percent of Canadians didn't vote for them.  But of that 61 percent, a little over half were conservative.  A big chunk of the rest of the vote was for the NDP which is a very socialist party.  NDP and the Liberals (who are socialist as well when it is the glamorous thing to be.) together got a majority of the popular vote in the election.
• I remember the first Trudeau saying that deep down he really was a NDPer.  His son probably is as well.
• Rather then getting upset about what is happening in Canada, I will have just have to think about my life in China and hope my relatives in Canada are doing well.
• I saw seven old men, thin and weather-skinned and looking to be of peasant stock, piling in the back of an old-fashioned e-bike pickup while all around people were most driving solo in their much bigger automobiles.
• I visit Facebook occasionally when I can get my VPN to work.  The day after the Canadian election, I visited the site and had to look at a bunch of postings celebrating Justin Trudeau's victory.  One proclaimed that change was good, to which I could say change is good except when it isn't.
• I have shown a couple of the girls a picture of Canada's new Prime Minister to get their opinions.  Crystal said Justin was handsome, but young and not to her liking.  The second girl I asked, whose name I can't recall, said he was young and handsome but a little fat.  Justin reminds her of North Korea's Kim Jung Un?  It seems that they were very struck but Justin's being so young.  And their comments on his good looks could be translated into them saying he was a pretty boy.
• How should I refer to our new PM?  JT?  PM Trudeau II?  Son of PET?  Trulander?  Son of the Antichrist?  Jethro?  Justhro?  Justru? [These are a reference to the Beverley Hillbillies]  JT Un?
• Jenny made mention to me of JT's being elected.  Jenny and I never discuss politics; and I never mentioned anything about the election to her.  She got the news of it on WeChat from an acquaintance who was living in Canada.   "Canada has a new president!" Jenny said.  "He wants to legalize prostitution!"
• Jenny scratched the mirror on the Citroën   She did this when she was trying so hard to find a parking spot that didn't require her walking so far.  When she told me, I felt pangs even though I had actually been thinking the day before I learned of the scratch that the car was destined to be dented or scratched, and that I would just have to resign myself to it.
• Tony is not doing well at school.  Jenny says he is humiliated by his teacher giving him back his work later than the good students.  The idea of home-schooling him was aired but never acted upon.
• I am not a traveller.  I am not a tourist.  I am a mover.  I can say that I have lived in many places in my life:  eight or nine towns, two countries that are thousands of km from each other, four provinces in Canada which are the equivalent of four large countries in Europe.  The number of addresses I have lived at, I am sure, is over 25.  But while I was at these many addresses, I didn't tour or travel much.  I stayed close to home.  When I was in Winnipeg, I rarely got outside of the perimeter of the city.  [Thoughts come to me after I read a David Warren blog entry deriding the Universal tourist.  The type who travels with the modern comforts like Internet and vehicles, and doesn't really suffer enough to actually experience the lands where they travel.]
• On Friday evening, October 23, I went to Gissing company in the Dong Bei District of Wuxi where I did two hours of speaker's corners with about 14 students.  Some of the students gave themselves interesting English names:  Tandy, Jersey, Roy and Raul.
• Saturday, I took the Citroën to work.  On the way back home in the evening, I got onto a faster road with a speed limit of 80 km/h.  I was riding in the left lane of this road when I saw a young boy jump over the barrier fence (that separates the lanes going in opposite directions).  I easily avoided him but got close enough to see that he had a stricken look on his face.  My first thought was that he was mad at his parents for some reason and was running away.  But what did I know?  He could easily have been lost.  Being in a car, there was no way I could have stopped and tried to help him.  It would have endangered me, the boy and other drivers.  The road is set up so that cars just can go-go, go-go, go.  This anecdote shows how cars and the infrastructure to supports them are so dehumanizing.
• As a driver, you have to wonder about the locals who take their e-bikes on these roads; and even more you have to wonder about the people who walk on these roads.
• Around the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza, drivers will park where ever they can to avoid having to pay for parking in the mall's basement levels where it is said to be expensive.  One of the places they will park is this road that runs along the nearby People's Square which is across the road from Wanda.  The road is narrow:  about three car widths wide.  Local drivers will park in any nook they can and so they park on both sides of this road leaving a narrow lane in the middle for cars to move.  I hate having to park there but Jenny insists.  I have already hit a mirror on another vehicle because some other idiot parked his van so that his back-end was sticking a couple of feet out into the already narrow enough lane.  
• Another problem with the road, that is about 500 meters long, is that it only has three points of exit and entry: two at the ends and one in the middle.  Sometimes, you can end up in a stand off if you have cars approaching each other like I did on Saturday night.  What happened that night was that I had parked near the entry point that was farthest from the Wanda Plaza.  I find that as you get closer to the Plaza, the cars are packed much tighter together:  too tight for me.  When I parked the Citroën  I thought I would be able to back up a bit and exit from the entry point.  But when I returned, I was chagrined to see that all around where I had parked, the area had filled up with more parked cars and that were more cars looking for parking space.  Parked cars and moving cars behind where I was parked left me no choice but to try to go forward and try to exit from the middle entry point.  But after I had driven forward about 50 meters, a car approached me and wouldn't back off.  There was a car behind me and I thought that being in the majority the car facing us would back off.  But the car behind me backed up.   So I was forced to back up, ending up by the parking spot I had just left.  Needless to say, I was cheesed off at all the drivers of China.
• Being in a foul mood, I decided to blare my horn at every person who cut me off or didn't put on his turn signals when changing lane.
• The next day, Sunday, Jenny parked the Citroën on that road.  She did a good job actually when I walked past to see how she did.  Continuing on, I met Jenny at Wanda for lunch.  Afterwards she stayed at the Wanda and I took Tony with me to the Citroën so we could go for a Sunday drive in the countryside of Wuxi and Jiangying.  When we got to the Citroën, I was stricken to see that someone had scratched the driver side front corner of the car.  The damage was strictly cosmetic thankfully, and once I cleaned the dust, I saw that the scratches didn't stand out so much.  I was upset, but I was struck by how I wasn't so upset.  I had had premonitions that this was going to happen.  
• I can say that the accident happened because we were parked on a road where its sheer narrowness of space between the two sides of parking increases the odds of being hit.  Parking on the road was asking for it.  But was the Citroën hit by a car, a three-wheel wagon or an e-bike?  Was whatever hit us trying to avoid something?  Was whatever hit us trying to park?  Was whatever hit us trying to get out of a parking spot?  That I will wonder about for a while.
• The scratches didn't stop me from carrying on with my plan to go for a Sunday drive to explore the areas where previously Tony & I had gone on e-bike and then to go to areas that were just a little beyond.  
• What struck me was how in the countryside areas, you have to drive among e-bikes.  Poorer areas, more e-bikes.  And then there was an idiot do 80 km/h on the road.  He seemed to be from the city, looking for a place to throttle up his sporty Honda festooned with spoilers.  As I approached him, I thought he would have slowed down since the road was narrow but he just kept driving at that speed.
• How I love the poorer areas.  They seem authentically Chinese.
• 1-4-4-1.  These numbers, if I am reading David Warren's blog entry right, are the distribution of humanity in the following categories: exemplary, okay, not okay, should be hung.  His classification was people he would trust his life with, people he would trust his luggage with, people he would not trust his luggage with, and people who should be hung.  When I think of the students I have meet, that distribution would seen about right.  That is, one in ten are really nice people.  
• When I think of the distribution of expatriates I have met, the distribution would be as follows:  .01-2-2-5.99.  [Ha ha ha. Controversial I hope.]  
• Who am I to judge? you ask.  Well, I would ask:  who are you to judge?  You are welcome to disagree.
• Anyway, I will say that I don't think I 'm not part of the first "1" or the first "4" of 1-4-4-1.  I hope it is not a false modesty, borne of a deep-sown sense of righteousness, when I say this.  I hope I am just being honest.  And I think that I can say, without boasting that I am probably part of the second "4" of 1-4-4-1 or the second "2" of my expatriate distribution.  
• I am as self-serving and as unable to live up to my high ideals as the next guy, I am sure.  But I am not Stalin or Hitler or Pervert actively trying to rationalize his bad ways.  I am aware that I have bad tendencies that I have to battle, and I should be thankful that I have Jenny and Tony to take up my time.
• Is parking talking about driving?  I ask this because my thoughts are full of driving and I want this blog to be more observing than complaining.  Driving and complaining do go together like a horse and carriage.  
• So, how about I talk about my cursing?  That is more confessional than complaining. Here is the story.  Monday afternoon, I accompanied Jenny as she drove to pick up Tony.  Unlike I would have done, she parked on the road by the school, drove into a parking spot (instead of backing in).  She can back out of the spot into the jammed street, unlike I who can't do it calmly...  But anyway, that is the not point of this anecdote.  It is about why I used foul language.   In way of explanation first, I will say that some Chinese drivers don't parallel park properly.  They no scruples about driving into a parking spot and having the back end of their car stick out into traffic.  I remember how, on that road near the Wanda Plaza, one parked van with its rear-end sticking out caused me to hit a mirror of a car I was trying to pass...  But there was no parallel parking in the anecdote.  But the point of my general observation was more broadly that many locals have no consideration when they park.  And it was proven by a driver who parked sort of alongside where Jenny had parked the Citroën but more so that he was blocking us.  It seems he saw a open space beside us but hadn't taken into consideration that there were e-bikes parked along the curve.  So he quickly decided to stop and park at an angle so that his back end was sticking out into traffic and so that that his car was blocking our car and the e-bikes that were parked along the curb.  He left his car running and ran so that we presumed that he was quickly going to get his child and return.  Since the time was about 16:05, we thought he would be back before 16:10 when we would pick up our Tony.  But  at 16:10 when Tony was with us and we were ready to leave, the guy hadn't returned and his black VW Sedan was still blocking us.  And then one of the e-bikers parked beside us, a woman who had just picked up her child, came on the scene.  I stood in the narrow path between the Citroën and the VW to stop her from trying to get through it because she would have most certainly scratched our car.  The e-biker and Jenny ended up commiserating in only the way strangers who have been inconvenienced can.  And then at about 16:15, the driver of the VW finally came with his child.  Jenny said something to him and I swore at him so that he winced.  I guess he knew what English word I was using.  I suppose I should have been merciful but really I think he deserved to admonished.  It wouldn't have surprised me if the guy kept his car running as a way of stopping us from telling him to move his car in the first place.  Nothing has happened in China to spare me from being cynical about how people operate.  [But if a Martian came to my planet and admonished me for something, how would I react?  [As I the guy got back into his car, I looked around and noticed some guys in a police car having a laugh at me.]]
• One of the new students in one of my company classes is a girl who spent a year or so at a university in London, England (not London, Canada) studying marketing.  It was quite the experience for her getting to go to pubs in England and seeing all sorts of live bands.  How I would have longed to do such a thing back in the day.  As it is, I don't go anymore because it was a desultory life.
• It was my ninth wedding anniversary this month.  Jenny & I agree that our official wedding anniversary is the day we got our wedding license in Nanjing.  I would rather forget the actual wedding party.
• In a previous entry, I discussed homeschooling Tony, and I said that it appealed to me in so many ways.  And I may have mentioned that it was Jenny's idea that we do this.  That talk came to nothing.  We just carried on with our routine of sending Tony to school and having Jenny make him do his homework while I would try to help Tony when I could.  It turned out that I didn't much help Tony, and that now, Jenny tells me that Tony has made no progress in school, and is in fact handing in blank test papers to his teachers because he just doesn't understand them.  His constant refrain now is that he doesn't want to go to school.  Jenny further tells me that Tony's desk mate is being really hostile to him.  So, something has to be done.  
• Tony is wasting his time by going to school because his teachers can't or won't help him.  I suspect it is probably a case of can't because there are 39 other students they have to teach as well.  So what to do?  Jenny again talks of wanting to homeschool him and to find ways in which he can get more of the help he needs.  And I think she is serious about it.  But there will be problems.  Jenny & I will have different ideas about how to help him.  I like to think that I would be more open-minded and willing to give Tony some freedom, as well as give myself some freedom of approach when teaching him.  
• I take my ideas of educating Tony from David Warren who is a traditionalist Catholic with a heavy distrust of public schooling and the modernist tendency to over-coddle children.  Warren's parenting style is neo-medieval.   Jenny would be more stern in her approach, and she has a bad temper and a woman's emotional temperament.  She worries about "face" and lacks my alienness to not give a darn. She criticizes me for my lack of sternness and I will readily admit that those criticisms are valid.  And there is  the problem of Tony himself.  Maybe, he is just not that smart.  Maybe, he is addicted to the Ipad.  Maybe, he has got me for a father.  He doesn't seem be interested in much but playing GTA.  He doesn't seem open to other things.  He can't be reasoned with. [I can say he got that from his mother.  Pardon, my moment of comic levity.]
• Tony sees me working on this blog entry.  He looked at all the writing and said "You wrote all that!"
• After the evening in which Jenny talked about homeschooling Tony, I wanted to talk to Tony.  My opportunity in the morning is when I walk Tony to the spot where he gets picked up to go to school.  I wanted to ask Tony about school and try to get his thoughts on being homeschooled.  But as soon as we closed the door of our apartment, Tony spoke first  and said he loved me because I let him play the Ipad.  Mom must have broached the idea of homeschooling to him in Chinese beforehand.  And all Tony could say about it was that it sounded like a great opportunity for him to play more Ipad....
• I want to homeschool Tony.
• Talking geopolitics about the USA, China, Japan and the Middle East with a student can get me worked up.  I find that I have to defend Bush and his ultimate sincerity about what he wanted to do in the Middle East.  America's problem was it went into Iraq wearing idealistic blinders.  Trying to instill democracy in Iraq was a dumb idea; toppling Saddam Hussien wasn't however.
• The Chinese Communists should really be thanking the Japanese militarists.  For one thing, during WW2, the Japanese militarists by fighting the KMT softened them so the Communists could beat them in the ensuing civil war.  Secondly, the grievous behavior of the Japanese during the war makes them the perfect subjects for "two minute hates" which the Chicoms can fan when it suits them such as times when they don't want the Chinese population hating them.
• Strange things to be witnessed every day in China.  The last Friday of October, I was heading to the 85 Bakery to buy a coffee and a loaf of bread, when I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a young slightly chubby man, who was drawing up the hood on his jacket, deliberately and menacingly approaching a young woman from behind.  A thought flashed through my mind that he was going to pull out a knife and stab the woman who was attractively wearing tight blue jeans and a leather jacket.  He instead, when he got close enough, bent down and  proceeded to spank her bottom with one hand.  The woman, who was slim and pretty, immediately turned around and I will never forget her facial expression: her mouth was formed into a big "oh!"  The man, wearing sweat pants and sneakers, quickly turned around and ran right past me.  I stared at him the whole time he made his escape.  He had a strange look of amusement on his face.
• Now, I would mention my thoughts about the spanker.  I thought it fortuitous for my blogging that I was able to witness the incident from start to finish.  How often, is it that you see the tail end of the incident and not be able to watch it from buildup to climax?  I wonder what the man's motivations were.  Did he know the girl and was playing a prank on her?  Or was he a strange person who had this urge to spank women's bottoms?  I wonder also if I should have done anything.   If this guy had done this to Jenny, I would hopefully have chased him down and given him some admonishment.  As it was, it was slightly amusing and I imagine that it would have in olden times be dealt with with a slap in the face with no need to bring in the constabulary.