The Great 2018 Wuxi, China Fog

Riding The Wuxi Metro #2

Riding The Wuxi Metro #1

Parent Teacher Meeting at Tony's Primary School

Every parent teacher meeting at any of my son Tony's schools has been attended solely by my wife Jenny till this November 2018.  I have usually been working when they have these things and would try to find a way of weaseling out of these things if I was somehow available. 

This time, I was able to attend a meeting because of a confluence of circumstances.  One, Jenny was sick.  Two, I didn't have any classes to teach at my school.  Three, we decided it would save Jenny the hassle of having to drive to school because I could go to school via the subway, attend the meeting and then take Tony with me.

The meeting wasn't quite what I imagined a Parent Teacher meeting to be.  I had expected to have individual meetings with the teachers about Tony.  Instead, I had to sit in a classroom for three hours watching a class demonstration and then enduring two hours of speeches from the teachers.

The class demo featured the teacher giving the students some fairly complicated arithmetic problems to solve like 1.25 X 4.8 and then soliciting answers.  I amused myself by trying to do the problems in my head and listening to see if I could understand the answers which were in Chinese.  As this was happening Tony sat near me.

When the math demo ended, the pupils left and their parents had to stay.  A teacher talked for a hour.  I could only make out little snatches here and there of what she was saying.  I instead tried to read what few Chinese characters I could recognize on what was on the accompanying PPT.  From that and using some Chinese apps on my Iphone, I read of good study methods and I guessed that the teacher was telling the parents how to get their children to study better.

Jenny told me that this meeting was to end at 15:00.  When the teacher finished at ten minutes past, I thought the thing was done with.  Instead, another teacher entered the class to speak.  Annoyed, I messaged Jenny and she told me to "stop bitching" because she had to sit through many of these things.

There was then another speaker and the meeting ended at 16:00.  As the third speaker spoke, I abandoned all pretense of paying attention and I looked at some books I had loaded on my Iphone including a volume of the poems of Francis Thompson.  

To make the experience more annoying was my being stared at by all these kids because I was a laowai/foreigner.  Walking into the classroom I tried to focus on Tony and ignore them.  Later about 15:40 because I was sitting by a window, I had to try to ignore all these kids standing right up against the window so they could stare at me.  Finally, it dawned on me to close the curtains.

What was  interesting to me about the experience was the passivity of all the other parents attending this meeting.  They were all silent.  No one said a word to question what the teacher was saying or to ask for clarifications.  One teacher spoke at a low volume and no one told her to raise her voice.  Some of the parents had the look in their eyes of boredom.  Some parents were tapping on their phones engaged in WeChat conversations.  There was no muttering from anyone of what complete b.s. this meeting was.  The parents endured like they were sheep.

[Later, asking my students at my school about this, I was told that the parents were told that they could ask questions afterwards.  And that the good students and the bad students in the class were mentioned during the speeches.]

View from Wuxi, China Lian Yuanjie Primary School

What Wuxi, China Locals Will Do to Not Pay for Parking

Federal Republic of Germany or the German Democratic Republic?

I pose this question after having had a class with a student who told me about a business trip he recently made to Germany.

His most interesting anecdote concerned what he witnessed when he attended a speech made by a German executive.  The executive brought out a little Donald Trump doll and proceeded to denounce the US president.  He then asked the Chinese in the audience to work with the Germans in order to combat Trump.

I knew of the German hatred for Trump, but this desire to coddle up with companies from the People's Republic in order to battle the USA nauseated me.  

Didn't America win the cold war?  Didn't West Germany absorb East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall?  It was my recollection of that time that the answers to these questions was yes.  Perhaps it was all a dream....

A Whole Slew of Accidents

In mid-October there was a stretch of days when I would see traffic accident after traffic accident.

Saturday afternoon, I saw the aftermath of a fast car having hit a pedestrian.  I was at work and a student, who had seen the scene earlier, told me that an ambulance had taken the pedestrian away.

Saturday evening, I saw there was a crowd of people standing on a road and I then drove past a woman e-biker clutching in agony after having been hit by a car.

Sunday afternoon, Tony & I walk past an accident scene.  Car had hit an e-biker.  The e-biker's bike was down but the e-biker was sitting up and in place, possibly to block the car from driving off.

Monday evening, Tony & I were standing at a street corner waiting for a green pedestrian signal when two e-bikes collided in front of us.  One e-biker said something to the other e-biker and drove away.  The other e-biker was knocked to the ground.   I then alternated between watching, in front of me, the latter struggle to pick up his stuff and get his e-bike upright; and looking over my shoulder to see the former scoot off in the distance.

I can't remember the collision that I saw the aftermath of on Tuesday.

Wednesday morning, I was driving back home after having dropped off Tony at school, when I saw the aftermath of a collision between a pedestrian and a white sedan.  The pedestrian was clutching at his forehead, white paper in his hand, while the driver was squatting near him, talking on his mobile.

Wednesday evening, I was walking on Zhongshan Road and I saw that a BMW SUV had hit an e-bike.  The funny thing about the accident scene was that the e-bike was leaning against the BMW.  I couldn't tell who had been on the e-bike.

And then for four days, nothing.  I then saw an e-bike had been hit by a car and the all the e-biker's eggs were smashed on the pavement.

Stupid Me. Un-PC Tony

One morning, I went to find the shoes that I had worn the night before on my way home.  I was startled to see that there was one blue Kalenji brand sneaker (right foot) and one black Kalenji brand sneaker (left foot) by the apartment door.  My hopes of finding the other blue and black shoes of the pairs were quickly dashed.

What were my hopes?  Why was I hoping?  I had hoped that I hadn't worn this mis-matched pair of shoes on my way home from work.  I had been hoping that this Laowei hadn't been a ridiculous looking sight as I sat on the crowded subway.  

How is it that I was wearing mis-matched shoes?  At work, I wear dress shoes when I teach my classes.  At the end of my shift, I take the dress shoes off and change into my sneakers.  I leave the dress shoes at work because I don't want to expose them to the wear and tear of my long commute home which includes a twenty minute walk.  I also have a pair of blue sneakers that i keep at work and wear during my children's classes.  So the night before, I had hurriedly changed shoes and not paid attention to their colours.  And I didn't notice the mismatch on the entire forty minute commute back home. *

A funny thing really.

The next morning, reading the Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa I came upon a passage where he wrote about great mathematicians making mistakes doing small sums.  Good to now that smart people can do stupid things too, I thought.  Nice to come upon this passage after my evening of humiliation, I further pondered.

*I didn't feel the sneakers were different because they were the same model of shoe but different colour.  There is only one model of shoe that I can get in Wuxi in my size (47).

* * * *

I downloaded the film Expendables 2 for Tony to watch on my computer.  He had read that Chuck Norris was in the film and so he wanted to see it.

He didn't know that the film had many other action film stars in it like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When he saw Schwarzenegger, Tony asked me who it was.

"That's Arnold Schwarzenegger." I said.

"Arnold Schwarzen*gger?" he responded. (the "*" replaces and "i")

"Jesus no, Tony! Schwarzenegger!  SCHWARZENEGGER!!"

Tony then put on a mishcievious smile and said "Schwarzen*gger!"

Oh well.  Kids will be kids.

Tony learned the n* word from watching Blazing Saddles.

Ling Shan Buddha: the Tourist Trap from Hell

It was my misfortune to go to the Ling Shan Big Buddha during the October holiday.  It wasn't my idea.  It was either my wife's or my in-laws.  A week before, I learned from my wife that we were to go and so I was able to become resigned to my fate, as much as I could.

The Ling Shan Buddha was built in the 1990s.  It is about as authentically placed as a giant Hindu statue park in the Inter Lake region of Manitoba, Canada.  The Buddha was clearly built to bring in Tourists.  And judging by the signs of the crowds I saw on my latest visit to it, it is a still successful racket.

I can thank God (or the Buddha) that my in-laws are early risers.  We were able to avoid traffic jams going to the park.  When we left the park later the roads we had gone down had become so packed that I could no longer recognize them.

There wasn't much to do at the park but look at Buddhist iconography and statues, observe typical Chinese tourists, jostle among crowds and look at the all hawkers selling food and trinkets.

I saw some Monks at the pseudo-shrines and the manner of at least one of them lead me to question their authenticity or sanctity.  One young monk definitely looked like he had shaved his head for an October holiday gig.  He sat with the posture of a bored store clerk as he clutched his smartphone.  

The tourists were for the most part dressed casually in jeans, shorts and t-shirts. (For whatever reason, a young man wearing a t-shirt saying "I'm just t-shirt" stuck in my mind).  Their children ate confections like they were at an amusement park.  When the tourists weren't walking, they were sitting about, looking at their smart phones.  A few did do some prostrations at various shrines but lord knows for what they were praying.  Money, a bigger house and a nicer car, perhaps?

The most annoying aspect of the day was entering the area below the pavilion where one could touch the feet of the Big Buddha.  One came upon a room that was crowded as possibly could be.  Looking at it, my first instinct was to turn around and seek another way to get to the Buddha's feet.  I even told my wife Jenny that I didn't recall (this was my fourth or fifth visit to the Buddha park) having to go this way to get to it.  But she insisted that we had to go through this room to get to an elevator that would take us to the pavilion.  Because the room we had to get through was so crowded and I was so clueless, the way the people were standing in the room seemed so inexplicable to me:  they were facing every possible direction.  I even thought that some of the people in the room were trying to get out but were prevented by the rush of people trying to enter.  But then the crowd was able to advance forward and I saw that the room contained these queuing barriers that required people to wind through a back-and-forth maze to get through the room.  Twenty minutes after we entered this room, we were at the base of the Buddha looking at his feet.  Having, as I said, been there before, we spent three minutes looking around before deciding to go back down.  Big whoop-de-do!

To exit the park, one has to go through a kilometer path lined with hawkers trying to sell souvenirs.  If this wasn't blatantly tourist-trappy, then I wouldn't know what would be.

A spiritual experience, not.

Sitting on the Wuxi Metro, Watching a Video of Eleven

Sitting on the Wuxi Metro, I was, on my way home from my place of employ.

It is my current habit, as I sit on the train going home, to listen to a podcast on my now eight year old Ipod and look at the people around me.  Sometimes, something on the Train's video screens catch my eye.

One such thing was a video of Chairman Xi (Eleven) visiting/inspecting a factory full of groups of enthusiastic workers, clapping in unison (like delegates at a party conference) eager to get a glimspe of him or to shake his hand.  At the end of the adulation, Xi was shown to be speaking to the assembled groups, telling them some wisdom that only he, as Chairman presumably, possessed.  Looking around the train, I had the feeling I was the only one watching the video.  The other passengers were looking at their smartphones.

It was such crude, typical, unimaginative Communist propoganda, that one could understand why no one was watching it. But yet, that one could be lead to believe Eleven did fashion himself as being as "great" a Chairman as Mao.

Tony at the Ling Shan Big Buddha

Wuxi, China Ants #1

Ling Shan Big Buddha

A tourist trap if there ever was one.

It wasn't my idea to go here.

Nanjing Massacre Museumn

One should never discount the anguish of the Chinese for what happened at Nanjing in 1937.  But I can't feel cynical whenever I go to the Nanjing Massacre Museum.  For there have been other massacres perpetuated on the Chinese people since 1937 that don't, as yet (hopefully), have monuments or museums for tourists to visit.  Of course, these massacres were perpetuated by the powers that currently be, so one cannot expect any memorials to the victims until a new dynasty comes to reign in China.

I have been to the Massacre Museum three times; most recently last month (August 2018).  On the second and third visit, I had an impression of the museum always changing in tone.  During my latest visit, I was thinking that the place was getting more maudlin.  Of course, it could be my memory playing tricks on me or the fact that I went to the Museum in the high tourist time of August and never got a good look at any exhibits because the place so impossibly crowded that I immediately wanted to leave.

Walking into the museum last month, I had to pass these maudlin sculptures/statues that may have been added since my last visit.  Maybe what the words said to have been uttered by the victims being depicted in the sculptures sounded right in Chinese but the Chinglish translations of the words were pathetic and undignified.  

On my previous visit to the museum, I recalled that the path through the museum ended with a reconcilation display showing Japanese and Chicom leaders (like Chairman Mao and Chairman Deng) meeting, shaking hands and embracing as friends.  I didn't see that this time.  Instead, I saw a big, super-sharp photo of Chairman Xi making an important speech (that I remembered seeing the reports of) at the museum to mark the massacre's 70th anniversary.

The last thing I remember seeing before leaving the museum was a big fifty foot tall monument to "peace."  Being in the PRC so long, I could only wonder what the idea of peace, of the powers who decided to erect the peace monument, was.  I would have much preferred to see a momument to consideration for others.  Peace in the PRC, seems to me, to mean not putting up a fuss about others' bad behavior.

Wuxi Metro Train Seen from the Grandstand of the Hui Shan District Sport...

View of the Huaxi Long Wish Hotel from a Citroen C3-XR

Tony & Andis Driving in China #7

No Vacation Plans

Two things to avoid:  boring people and crowds.  The second thing is making it hard for me to decide what the Kaulins Family China will do for the week off that we will have at the end of August.  Crowds consisting of tourists make many places in China not worth visiting in Summer.  They also result in places that cater to them that I like to call tourist traps that must be avoided.

Now the obvious solution would be to go to places in China that are off the beaten path and thus avoided by the typical Chinese tourist who is a herd animal of the worst kind.  But my wife is Chinese and my son is a member in good standing of the computer-game-stay-at-home generation.  To please my son I would like to go to Beijing and the People's Liberation Army museum.  Tony is keen to do this.  However, my wife grimaces and moans when I mention the idea; and insists that if we do go to Beijing, we should pay a mandatory visit to the Great Wall which I think of as the Great Tourist Trap, especially the portion near Beijing that we would go to if we went to Beijing.

My wife hasn't any alternate suggestions for what we should do....

Wuxi Humidity. I Hate It.

I was curious to listen to Scott Adams's account of his visit with Donald Trump.  One detail, from his podcast where he talked of the visit, that resonated with me personally was his talking of the humidity of a Washington DC summer.  Adams wore a suit, that he had bought for the occaision, and by the time he arrived in the West Wing of the White House he was soaked, as he said, like he had been in a rain storm.  That is an experience I have all the time in Wuxi.  One time, walking into a shop, soaked with sweat from a long evening walk, I was asked by the proprietors if it had been raining outside.

The genius of the American founding fathers in placing the national capital at a location with such summer humidity was that it prevented the legislators, for at least three months of the year, from doing more damage to the country.  But thanks, or no thanks, to air-conditioning, you can now carry on and think to live and try to do things in a place like Washington DC or Wuxi, China which have high humidity in summer.

You think to, but really you can't.  The humidity is killer.  The thought of doing anything, going anywhere in Wuxi in summer is disheartening.  All there is to do is find a cool place, read a book and drink a nice cold beverage.  Recently, I had a few days off where the rest of the K Family China also had no commitments.  I discovered that I could not think of anything to do that didn't involve sweating or going to an air-conditioned shopping mall.

A Family Can't Have a Vacation this Summer

Before I get into the material of my lessons with students, I will start with some chit-chat about whatever may seem to be topical.  So during the Summer, I will ask the students if they have gone on vacation trips.

One student, an older woman, told me her family would not be able to go on a trip this summer.  I asked her why and she told me that her son had been assigned too much summer homework by his school.  If they went on a trip, he wouldn't get it all done.

I then asked her what grade her son was going to enter in the autumn.  The parent told me grade five!  Hearing this filled me with rage.  My son Tony is going into the fifth grade as well.  I want my son to be a normal human being, not a constantly-schooled cypher that this culture is producing.

Only problem is that my only other option is the Canadian public school system which is all wrong for the opposite reasons.  The school days in Canada are excessively short.  The subject matter taught is not at all substantial and stupidly faddish.  And there is the problem of kids getting into drugs.

So, I see myself stuck in a sort of Latvian World War Two dilemna.  Nazism or Communism?  Facism or Cult-Marxism?  Chinese or Western school systems?

Wuxi, China: View of the Yanqiao Métro Station from the 617 Bus

I was on the way to work as I took this video.  The bus route I was on passes this subway station.  I learned quite by accident that if I took this bus past the Yanqiao station I could get off right at the stairs to the next subway station.  Till then, I had been walking 200 meters from a stop this section of the route to get to the area shown in this video.

Chinese Students and the Use of "Too"

"I want to have too much money!" is a sentence the students will often say to me.  And so I have constantly had to correct the students on their use of the word "too."

Recently, I choose to talk about Germany in one of my speaker's corners.  During the class, a student said this about the Germans:  "they killed too many Jews."  I had to quickly admonish her and tease her for having saying that.  "Do you mean to say that was a proper amount of Jews the Germans should have killed?"

Wuxi, China Trainspotters 2018

Tony & Andis Driving in China #6

Road Block

A big intersection near Casa Kaulins is often the site for police roadblocks.  There, I have seen the police pulling over e-bikers, mini-vans and commercial trucks.  The e-bikers usually get pulled over for having passengers, and the other vehicles for inspection.

One fine morning, I was approaching the intersection, trailing a three-wheel pick up, when I saw one of the cops gesturing to the pick-up to pull over for inspection or on account of some violation.  The driver wasn't interested and made a u-turn, passing by me as I was slowing to a stop for a red light at the intersection.  Coming to a halt, I saw the cop gesture for a few more seconds at the pick-up to come back before giving up and gazing at the pick-up going off into the distance.  What was so surreal about the incident was how slowly the driver made his u-turn (his max speed no more that 25 kmh), how little perturbed the cop was and how none of the other twelve uniformed cops at the intersection seemed interested in chasing the pick-up.

When the light turned green, I was proceeding through the intersection and looked into my rearview mirror to see the pick-up still driving away.

Watching World Cup 2018 in Wuxi

I wasn't happy with the end of the World Cup.  When France, aka The French Legion, took a 3-1 lead in the final, I shut off the TV and went to bed (It was just past midnight local time.) I had been following it closely for the month till that moment.

Here are some personal anecdotes about following the WC in Wuxi:

• The matches took place late in the evening and early morning local time.  I watched them on my mobile phone or on television (CCTV5.

• Tony was interested in the results of the matches; not so much in the watching of them.  His rooting interests were Australia, England and any other team that played against France.  For some reason, he really hated France.  When France defeated Australia, he cried.  When the games being played late night and early morning local time, he was content to watch five and six minute highlight packages of them the next morning.  I would queue these packages up for him so he wouldn't know the results of the games  beforehand.  

• My rooting loyalities went to England and Poland.  Alas the Poles stank.  I watched England's last game against Croatia even though it was played from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM local time.  I rooted strongly against France, Brazil and Germany.  The best moment of the tournament for me was South Korea scoring late goals to eliminate Germany which though being my country of birth, I had become sour upon because of German Hillary.  Neymar's crybaby antics solidified my desire to see Brazil lose.  And the antics of a French person on WeChat along with memories of encountering rude Frenchmen in Wuxi during the 2010 WC made me loathe to see les bleues win.

• The WC was a boon for my classes because it gave me something to talk about with the students.  And what did they have to say?  Some of them said that the German team was the most handsome.  And a rare local Japanophile, after their tough loss to Belgium, told me that at least the Japanese team was all Japanese.  She added that they wouldn't, unlike the French and the Belguimers, stack their teams with foreign looking players.  

• This race question raised its head after France's victory in the final.  On a Wuxi WeChat foreigner group, jokes about the French team appearing mostly African got under a Frenchman's skin.

• I got commentary on the matches from podcasts and articles coming from England and the USA.  The American political podcasts lambasted the tournament and the game for its lack of scoring.  While I accepted their points, I had to disagree and keep following the tournament.  A better argument against kickball was made by Peter Hitchens, an actual Englishman. Hitchens cited the lack of scoring in Modern kickball, but made a more pointed observation when he contasted seeing male Germans marching on the streets of London to protest seating arrangements (that were made for them at a match where the club kickball team they supported was visiting an English side), with their seeming inaction when their women were being raped on their streets, the streets of Germany, by Syrians. This obsession with football was an escape from the responsibility of real life.

What Wuxi, China Locals Know about Canada

It was Dominion Day's eve.

What do you know about Canada? I asked some students. One student, who was the most articulate of the group, admitted he knew nothing. So you never heard of the place till now? I jokingly asked the student. The others said things about Canada having kangaroos and it being the largest country in the world.

Famous Canadians? The group couldn't think of any. I had to remind them of Norman Bethune (oh yes, that guy, they said, after I explained who he was.), Justin Bieber and Celine Dion (students in the past when asked this question mentioned these two).

Who's the Canadian leader? No one knew. Showing them a picture of the PM with Xi Jing Ping, they remarked how young Justin Trudeau was.

What do Canadians like to do? Most said they didn't know. One Student said ski and drink beer. The second half of that answer was a result of my giving the student leading questions. One other student said Canadians liked ice ball, which is the literal translation of the Mandarin word for Ice Hockey. In all my years of querying students about their knowledge of Canada, this was the first time a student mentioned hockey.

What are Canadians like? Most couldn't say. One student did say awesome. (But one learns to discount compliments from Chinese. ) No one said polite or boring. (One student did call me boring the day before but they should have said bored. Boredom is something one must fight when spending time with the locals.)

Finally, one word to describe Canada? Beautiful and cold. That much they knew.

andiskaulins@hotmail.com or andiskaulins@qq.com

Are World Cup Football/Soccer/Kickball Players All a Bunch of Snowflakes?

Some say Football, some say Soccer, I say Kickball.

My son Tony & I are following the World Cup; though to be honest I am watching much more of it than him.  I have also been listening to American Conservative commentators who have been mocking the World Cup.  I wince as they do so because I, as I said in a previous entry, I have been watching the WC since 1974.  There are some good things to be said about the game of Kickball, like how it takes less than two hours to play a normal match and how, unlike Ice Hockey, most of the goals do have a build up to them.  But the cricitisms of Kickball that the conservative commentators have made, about its lack of scoring, the power of its referees to influence games by awarding or not awarding penalty kicks, and the annoying habit of the players to act melodramtically after collisions, are valid.

The latter criticism is particularly valid because the melodramatics ruin the flow of a Kickball game in the manner that constant commercials ruin the flow of NFL games.  But at least in the NFL where players are being hit directly with greater force, you never ever see or even begin to suspect that an injured NFL player is faking it.  In fact, the players in the NFL who suffer concussions never flop around after doing so.  An NFL player will also get up after a collision and get in position for the next play without the need to do the funky chicken.  [NFL players usually only flop around after their score touchdowns.] Kickball players need only to be tapped by an opponent and they begin to become very aggrieved.  It is enough to make one think that most Kickball players are snowflakes, and that Americans of the progressive political persuasion see Kickball players as their kind of people.

So it is out of habit and an unfailing Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy-with-the-football optimism, I watch the World Cup.  Often I find, like during that Brazil-Italy WC final played in Pasadena, myself cheering for someone -- it doesn't matter from which team -- to score a goal because I want the game and the tournament to be better than it actually is.

andiskaulins@hotmail.com

andiskaulins@qq.com

Oh My! I Better Get Out of this Intersection!

In a book I read recently entitled "What's Wrong with China" [The 100 year old version, not the one that has been recently published], Rodney Gilbert wrote how a Chinese person would go about his day oblivious to those around them.  What Gilbert observed over a hundred years ago, is still true today, as any foreigner who has driven, ridden or walked in Modern China would testify.

This selfish tendency on the part of Chinese is such that it behooves me to even write about it anymore because I don't want to sound like a broken record.  And yet I will see a local take the obliviousness to a level that I just have to record it in this blog.  

Late June 2018, early morning, it's rush hour, I am driving Tony to school, I am stopped at an intersection and the light is about to change to green.  Just before it does so, I see a male pedestrian, middle-aged, walking in the center of the intersection.  The light then turning green causes car engines to rev and car horns to blare which in turn causes the pedestrian to look around and notice that two lanes of cars are coming toward him from his left and right, and to think that he'd better pick up his pace and get out of the intersection.

I could only shake my head as I swerved to avoid hitting him.

andiskaulins@qq.com

andiskaulins@hotmail.com

Tony is Happy that England Beat Tunisia

I followed the recent NHL playoffs by watching these four to six minute long recap videos, of recently-played games, that were available on the NHL app.  With the actual games taking over two hours to play and my having better things to do with my time, the recap videos were a godsend.  They showed the best part of the games and saved me from having to sit through the much more numerous boring parts.

These similar sort of highlight videos are available for matches currently taking place in the World Cup.  However, they are not easy for me to find on Youku, the Chinese version of Youtube.  I have to scroll through video upon video of selected game moment highlights before I can find the proper recap video.  These videos , once found, have been about four to five minutes in length.  You can see all that was interesting in the match without having to see all that wasn't, like the player collisions that resulted in melodramatics from hurt players, the wildly optimistic shots at goal that veered a mile off target, and the passing of the ball about in midfield.

I showed one of these short videos for Tony of the match between England and Tunisia.  His rooting interest was with England, and so I didn't tell him the score was and just let him watch.  When he saw the game winning goal scored by England, he was very excited like any Kickball fan would be when a goal was scored by his team.  

Tony & Andis Driving in China #5

Tony & Andis Driving in China #4

Tony's Interested in the World Cup!

I knew the World Cup was coming and so I put a World Cup app on my phone.

My son Tony then told me that he was interested in the tournament and that he wanted to watch some of the matches.  And so I put the World Cup app on his phone.  This interest of his seemingly came out of the blue.  I hadn't planned on even mentioning to him that the tournament was taking place.  Where this interest came from I can only conjecture. Was it his classmates?  A teacher at school or at his numerous after-school places?

When I was Tony's age, I remember watching the coverage on the 1974 World Cup.  1974 was the second year that I was into sports.  This interest was the result, I recall, from my father buying me a Toronto Maple Leafs table hockey game for Christmas in 1972.  It was his attempt to turn me into a Leafs fan.  It quickly failed because I instead became enamoured with the Montreal Canadiens.  I watched a lot of their 1973 Stanley Cup run although I have distinct memories of being forced to go to bed early on the night they clinched the cup.  Anyway, the point of that digression is that on my own, I developed my own sports interests.  And Tony has done the same, though I wonder if actually watching a Kickball* match would bore him.

In the World Cup, I will be cheering for Poland; the Poland that I imagine is reactionary and Catholic.  You can click here to see for whom Tony will be cheering.

*It is from David Warren that I call that sport, being played in the World Cup, Kickball.  I don't like calling it soccer because that word is gay, and I don't call it football because the Americans already have a sport called Football.  I wouldn't want to argue with some Football players about the semantics or syntax of their calling their sport Football because most of them are two or three times as big as Kickball players.

Wuxi China Metro Train Crossing the Xi Bei Canal #2

Extracting Ourselves from a Traffic Jam

Every once in a while, when I take Tony to school, the traffic lights at two major intersections near Tony's school stop working.  At the intersections, there are three lanes going left, right and straight.  The local drivers, being selfish and not knowing how to act in uncontrolled intersections, cause traffic trying to get through to grind to halt.  The only ones who can get through are perhaps the ones making right turns.

This latest morning of having to deal with this was particularly annoying for me because I had to be at work early.  So in a fit of impatience, I impulsively thought that I could finesse my way through the first intersection, but I quickly regretted it because a truck making a right turn from my right hand side was trapped and blocking my way.  However, I was lucky because I could back out and do what I should have done in the first place: which was make a right turn and try my luck at the other intersection.  

But heading toward it, I saw the lights were out there as well.  There, I thought first to make a left turn, thinking again I could finesse my way through, but again there was a truck trying to get through the intersection that was trapped by cars trying to go in three other directions.  Anyway, it was a situation that a few policeman would be needed to fix, and there were none in sight.  So, my only choice was to make Tony get out of the car and have him walk a block to his school.  He readily agreed to do this and I was, after making a four point back-up and turn-around that confused the drivers surrounding me, able to make a right turn in a direction toward a road with no traffic and get myself home and then to work on time.

Wuxi China Metro Train Crossing the Xi Bei Canal #3

Tony & Andis Driving in China #3

Tony & Andis Driving in China #1

If We Get Tony a Drum Set, Where Would We Put It?

My wife Jenny told me that Tony is playing air drums in his math class, and that he really wants a drum set.

He would like to put in in the empty space we have in our living room.  But that would of course cause conflict with all our neighbors.  Jenny also has an office that she rents, but that wouldn't do either for putting a drum set because her office in is a mixed residential commercial building.  Someone would get annoyed.

Darn. The Jets Game Was in the Afternoon.

Game five of the Winnipeg Jets' Stanley Cup Semifinal series against the Vegas Knights was played on a Sunday afternoon, Winnipeg time.

I found this out when early Monday morning, Wuxi time, the NHL app on my iPhone told me that the Jets has lost game five and thus the series to the Knights.  I had been expecting to follow the game on the app later Monday morning.  [Following the Jets on the NHL app is like watching the numbers go and down on an elevator's panel.  All I see on the app screen for an ongoing game are three numbers:  the two teams's scores and the time remaining ticking down.]  

In Wuxi, I can never follow live a game played Sunday afternoon in Winnipeg.  I just can't keep my eyes open at that time. [And I know, because I have tried to follow big football matches early in the AM.  It can't be done even if the game is compelling.]

Learning of the Jets' demise was a sort of bang mixed with a whimper.  It was a sudden disappointment to learn that the Jets had been eliminated because I hadn't expected the game to have already been played.  But I was able to quickly process the result because the Jets losing was not unexpected to me.  The latter aspect of the reaction may have been a result of age and my physical distance from the continent where the Jets were playing combined with the fact of my following the Jets being a solitary experience:  I wasn't caught up in a frenzy about it as I would have been if there was even another Jets follower I could talk to.

I suppose the Jets were doomed to lose to the Knights as the 116-36 Seattle Mariners were doomed to lose a playoff series to the 2001 New York Yankees who represented a city dealing with the 9/11 disaster.  The Knights began to play days after the Las Vegas massacre.

Learning the result of game five the way I did also leads me to recall how I learned that the 1978 Red Sox had lost that famous pennant race to the Yankees.  I was in Oromocto, New Brunswick and I had been playing a hockey game.  In the locker room afterward, I remember expressing hope that the Red Sox could beat the Yankees in the one-game playoff, only to be told that the game had been played and the Red Sox had lost.

Still, I am glad for the Jets and Winnipeg to have gone through their playoff run.  If they can keep the team together, there will be a Stanley Cup in the future!

Five Things

1)  After after having dropped Tony off at school, I was proceeding in line going towards a traffic light when I got cut off by a small truck.  This annoyed me so much that I kept my car beside the truck, rolled down my driver window and knocked on the passenger window of the truck so the driver could see me flip him the bird.  The driver, who appeared to be of the peasant class and may have not been sophisticated enough to know what the gesture meant, just kind of raised his hand at me.  When the light turned green we drove off without further incident though I did stick my hand out the window with a parting middle finger salute.

2) A young student told me she had no idea who Li Xiao Long (Bruce Lee) was.  When I showed her a picture, she said that he was probably someone of whom her parents knew.  I was astounded.  Li Xiao Long, as I told the student, is probably the most popular Chinese person in the West.  It leads me to wonder of what else the younger generation of Chinese is unaware.

3) A colleague and I were walking from our school to Sanyang Plaza.  Sanyang Plaza, located in the center of Wuxi city, is a series of underground tunnels running from a hub that is underneath the intersection of Zhongshan and Renmin Roads.  The tunnels lead to various downtown shopping malls and the tunnels are lined with many businesses including restaurants.  It was one of these restaurants that my colleague and I witnessed receiving a food shipment.  Shipments to Sanyang Plaza, evidently, have to be taken down flights of stairs.  Three flights, in fact.  The restaurant was receiving what looked like either frozen meat or fish.  The frozen product was packed into plastic bags and was solid enough that it was in slab form.  For whatever reason, these slabs of food were laying on the sidewalk at the top of a stairwell entrance to Sanyang Plaza.  I saw one of the workers pick up the slabs and fling them one-by-one down the stairs.  The frozen food slabs would bounce on the stairs three or four times before coming to a rest at the bottom where another of the workers would pick them up and put them on a push cart.  The reaction of all the workers involved was of a great amusement which leads me to conclude that the worker flinging the slabs of food had had the package containing the packages break on him.  The reaction of some of the passerbys, like this foreigner, was aghastment.  I wonder what the locals witnessing this thought.  

4) Chinese drivers are very impatient.  It is not unusual for them to honk their horns as soon as a traffic light turns green because they want the cars in front of them "to get a move on!"  Another driving tic they have is to instinctively want to swerve around anything slowing down ahead of them.  One time I was arriving at the entrance to Complex Casa K and had chance to face, head on, one of these impatient drivers.  The entrance area to our apartment complex, which is a T-junction, is begging for an accident to happen because the views of drivers exiting the complex are blocked by all these cars that are parked on the side of the road leading to the entrance.   A cautious exiting driver cannot see traffic on the road unless he creeps out slowly onto the road to get beyond the blind spot caused by the parked vehicles.  It is hazardous but it can be made all the more hazardous if there happens to be an impatient driver following. The impatient driver will try some manuever involving rapid turning of the steering wheel because he wants to pass the cautious driver whom he thinks is taking the turn too slow and not throwing caution to the wind.  So, there I was approaching the entrance this one time when a cautious driver was slowly trying to make a left turn out of the complex.  I was able to make my right turn into the entrance but this turned out to be a major inconvenience for the impatient driver who was following the cautious driver.  He had cranked his steering wheel and was hopeing to pass the cautious driver by turning into the area that I had taken (rightly, I might add).  And so my arrival made him rapidly change his course back to following the cautious driver.   The scowl of impatience on this middle-aged man's face owing to a slight delay and the exertion that he was putting in to turning the steering wheel of his long black sedan were a joy for me to behold.  Any opportunity I get from now, to relate this anecdote, I will have a grand time acting out this man's exertions and corresponding facial gestures because in any future conversation I have about the peculiar local driving habits,

 this anecdote will be a staple.

5) I discovered that both Latvia, my country of ancestry, and China, my current country of domicile, both have teams in the KHL.  The KHL is hockey league spanning Europe and Asia.  It is a truly international league with teams in Latvia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and China.  The Lativan team is based in Riga.  The Chinese team is based in Beijing.   Beijing and Riga have played each other at least once.  Sad to say, for me, Beijing won the one match I know of 3-1.

Walking on a Wuxi China Overpass over the G2 Highway

"Way to Go Winnipeg Jets!" from Wuxi, China

In Wuxi, I was able to watch Game 7 of the Jets-Predators series Friday morning on my CCTV App on My Ipad.  It was the first time I had seen anything besides highlights of this year's playoffs.  I had been following the playoffs with the NHL app on my Iphone.  Annoyingly, I discovered there was a one minute delay on the CCTV broadcast because the App would alert me to goals before I would see them on the CCTV broadcast.

Watching it the game with Chinese commentators, it did not seem so stirring.  They were talking over the muted feed of a North American broadcast.  How I wish I could have had a Canadian feed!  

Be that as it may, the result had me walking on the air and punching the air like a mental defective the rest of Friday! 

My memories of the Jets go way back.  I saw the WHA Jets play.  I attended a few Jets playoff games in the old Winnipeg arena, being part of the Whiteout.  I can also claim to have attend a game of the only playoff series the Jets 1.0 ever won.

I'll be wearing my Jets 2.0 cap through their series with the K-nites and hopefully during the Stanley Cup final!

The Second Day of My May Day Holiday

April 30th was sort of a holiday for me.  It was the second of three days of the May Day Holiday in China.  My wife Jenny was working and so I did have a few duties of chauffeuring that I had to do with my son Tony. I first had to take him to his drumming class in the downtown of Wuxi. I later had to take him to his after-suppertime swimming class which was closer to our home.

The plan for the day was to first go downtown, wander about and look at some places before going to the drumming class. For lunch we were going to go to a pub called the Red Lion. From the Red Lion we were to go to Tony's drumming class.

Because I was to drink beer at the pub, I decided it was best if Tony & I took the bus and then the subway downtown. But walking to the bus stop, we discovered it was very humid. This was to be the first of many annoyances we would experience that day.

On the train downtown, some fool played his music loudly using his smartphone.  I stared at him and I saw eyes raised among the other passengers, but none of us did anything.

The third annoyance was to see that the Red Lion was closed. I had assumed it would be open on the afternoon of a holiday. My being wrong could have been enough for me to have a swearing fit because we had walked a bit of a ways in the suffocating humidity to get to pub and I didn't have a plan B. I had been so much looking forward to having a beer and sharing a pizza with Tony.  I didn't swear however because I had to stop Tony from whining.  We instead, after some indecision, went to this Italian set-up (but no longer run by, it seemed) restaurant named Ciao Italiano. I wouldn't have minded it so much if its tables were not so small and its beer was served cold on tap in a cold mug.  Beer was instead served in bottles.

Finishing our meal at the restaurant we had time to burn before Tony's drum class started. The restaurant we were at was on Wuxi Nanchang Jie bar street, so we walked the street. I couldn't get over the fact that all the nice little shops and businesses were in the midst of construction and and that there was trash everywhere.

Owing to the humidity we took a taxi to the Tony's drum class. Arriving, we still had time to burn so I got to have the experience of buying and then consuming a can of beer in a Family Mart convenience store.  After the drum class I was to experience annoyances of the day number four and five.  Both of these were the results of cars that swerved around pedestrians instead of yielding to them. I got revenge on them both by pounding my fist on their trunks.

Then there was annoyance number six.  The car-pounding I did happened on the way to the subway which we were to take home so we could get to Tony's swimming class. The train turned out to be crowded and so we were not able to easily get a seat as we had become accustomed.  (Which was almost an annoyance till we got to the next stop and seats became available.)  Now, most of the time the locals on the train pay me no never-mind or no heed, and that's just the way I like it.  But it was a holiday and so there were types on the train that I normally wouldn't encounter, like these two brats, one female and one male, who sat besides us and gave off a bad vibe.  The boy stared directly at my iPhone screen and said something to his companion involving the word Laowai, making me very uncomfortable and perturbed. This staring made me put my phone down and instead try to concentrate on what Tony was doing on my IPad. But the bad vibes from the annoying pair sitting beside me wouldn't go away. The boy then decided to stand up and and to swing from the center pole of the train car used by standing passengers to keep their balance. Glancing at the boy, it seemed to me that he had the face and the ears of a chimpanzee. I then told Tony to never act like that boy because his behavior was that of a monkey.  His girl companion heard this and understood.  It would have been the end of it but as luck would have it, they had to get off the train at the same stop that we were getting off and they would even be waiting at the same bus stop to which we went. I suspected, and Tony confirmed, that they were still talking about us. So Tony and I gave them some choice English curses.

I am not proud of myself for this incident. I really should've just ignored them. And you would think that after 14 years of being with these people that I would've gotten used to it and stop letting them get under my skin!  Be that as it may, the locals are a rude bunch.  I don't think it's just a case of the sheer numbers of them producing enough bad apples to lead me to falsely conclude they have great tendencies to boorishness.  I have been in crowds of North Americans and have never experienced the revulsion at the manners displayed as I have in Wuxi.  I did like how Tony told them off, however. It is good to know that the flesh of my flesh can be an ally.

After that the day went swimmingly. While Tony was swimming, I got my exercise by walking in the area around the pool.  The area is getting built up and I like to walk about to see what has been done.  The amount of building does seem quite impressive.  There are so many tall buildings and bridges and parks in the area that I have no end of things to look out.  However, by walking I see that China is simply not something you want to look at too closely. Up close, you see the buildings and infrastructure are mostly empty, under-utilised and already suffering from neglect.  This 400 meter overpass I walked on had great views and was nicely set up for pedestrians.  But I was the only pedestrian on the overpass, the overpass tiles were cracked and strewn about, and the area under the overpass was virtually a garbage dump.  Whoever designed the overpass didn't take into account how it would fit in with its surroundings.  The locals had decided that the area under the overpass was a good place to abandon rubbish.

A Smoggy Day in Nanjing

It was very smoggy in Nanjing a student told me. And so she wore a mask.

Going through the entrance gate at the Nanjing Train Station to board her train back to Wuxi, she still wore her mask; having forgotten, as she told me, to remove it. A camera at the gate equipped with facial recognition software then wouldn't let her enter.

Once she took off her mask, the computer recognized her face as being okay and she was able to go on her way.

Teaching Kindergarten

With the demand among Chinese adults for English training drying up, my school is doing more and more kiddie classes. I do some these of classes on Saturday, and now on Tuesdays, I am now doing classes at a kindergarten near our school location.

Kindergartens in Wuxi are located inside or very near to apartment communites. The one I am going to is in a community off Xueqian Road. Dongling Kindergarten is in a three storey complex built around a playground slash courtyard. Its entrance is gated and a security guard had to let me and my handlers inside. The hallways of the kindergarten are filled with toys. There was a room full of kiddie-sized beds for the students to take a mass afternoon nap. Besides teaching staff, there is custodial and kitchen staff. The kids spend the day at the place.

I teach two classes in what is either a music or activity room. The students, in groups of forty, are brought from their homeroom classes. The classes are twenty minutes long. For a warm-up, I get the kids to stand up, touch body parts and do whatever silly movements I can think of  like getting them to spin their arms quickly or slowly. I try to clown it up to get them to laugh. I then teach or, maybe better to say, test their knowledge of the lesson vocabulary which is presented via flash cards. I continue to try to do activities that I think will amuse them based on the words with which I have to work. If the words are say "push" and "pull," I will get the student to come up, one at a time, and try to push and pull me. I add a twist by flying across the classroom when the girls push me but not moving an inch when the boys try.

With the classes being twenty minutes long, and the activities being very physical, time flies. When the class ends, I will sometimes get mobbed by the kids. Some of them just want to high five me and some of them just want to be naughty and hit or spank the teacher. Each of the classes I teach do have their own personality. A well-behaved class is a joy to teach. An unruly class will have me, depending on the mood I am in, wanting to kick or mentally punish them.

What AKIC Has Read in 2018, So Far.

For whatever reason, for the last four years,  I have been keeping track of the books I have read and annually publishing, in January, the list of them for the past year.  This year, I will publish the list of what I have read so far during the year.  So here is what I've read so far in 2018:

The Joke by Milan Kundura

Four Quartets by TS Eliot

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs

Righteous Indignation by Andrew Breitbart

Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality Edited by Raymond Arroyo

Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors by James Delingpole

American Pravda by James O'Keefe

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson

Bad Thoughts by Jamie Whyte

With the World's Great Travelers, Volume 2 by Various. Edited by Charles Morris & Oliver H.G. Leigh

Poems by Christina Rossetti

A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman

What's Wrong with China by Rodney Gilbert

Philip Larkin Poems Selected by Martin Amis

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Village Life in China: A Study in Sociology by Arthur H. Smith

On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Hombre by Elmore Leonard

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

The Liturgical Year Volume 3: Christmas by Abbot Prosper Gueranger

The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 by Jacob Gould Schurman

Gems of Chinese Verse by W.J.B. Fletcher

Angel's Flight by Michael Connelly

Selected Poems of Lord Byron edited by Matthew Arnold

The Liturgical Year Volume 6: Passiontide and Holy Week by Abbot Prosper Gueranger

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan

The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

Poorly Made in China by Paul Midler

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Currently, I am reading  Collected Poems of John Donne, Aphorisms of  Nicolás Gómez Dávila and a biography:  Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilsation.

I Should Have Taken Photos

I am writing another one of these "trouble comes in three" entries. This time, I can complain mostly about bad timing, though number three of my troubles is a complaint about the locals which I will try to demonstrate has geo-political implications for the world.

First, I was walking on the second level of my local shopping center towards a spot that overlooks an open area where there is a often a stage set up for performances and promotions.  I came upon the sight of four slim twenty-something girls wearing red costumes that went down to their upper thighs. They were dancing and thanks to the red, their legs stood out from a mile away and I immediately thought to pull out my phone to take a photo of them. It was just my luck that they finished their performance before the camera app became fully operational.

Secondly, I was at school in its second-floor office when I heard chanting coming from street level. I walked over to a classroom and looked down and saw about twenty delivery drivers, all in uniform, standing in formation (ranks as they said when I was in the militia) listening to some supervisor.  I decided to take a photo. Only problem was my phone was in the office. By the time I came back, the group had broken up and all the drivers were getting on their special delivery e-bikes to embark on a day of restaurant food deliveries.

Finally, I was driving Tony to school and was stopped at a traffic light along the way.  I was in the right-most car lane, a barrier separating my vehicle from the bike lane, when I saw a white Kia Sportage in the bike lane stopped behind a bunch of e-bikers and cyclists. I had become familiar with this particular SUV and its driver because it was the third time in a week that I had seen the vehicle blatantly being driven in a bike lane that was barriered-off from cars. Its driver was male, probably in his thirties, and he wore aviator sun glasses. His hair was short, his face was square, and his mouth was wide with a very visible smirk. His countenance, his getup, and his driving habits indicated to me that he was a thug accustomed to getting away with things. This third time to watch him, I was close enough to get a good look at him as his SUV was stopped just a little in front of me. I had the perfect photo to put on my AKIC photo blog, but alas because of my fumbling and the camera app of my Apple Hitler Phone not setting up in time, I was again just a little late.  Just as the camera was ready to take photos, the light turned green and the SUV quickly sped off.   It went straight ahead, merging into the car lane.  What the driver had done was to get into the bike lane so he could get around all the other cars that were lined up in the proper lanes for the red light. [A fucking prick maneuver! Pardon my French!] Proceeding through the intersection myself, I was not far behind the SUV as I witnessed it turn into the barriered-off bike lane again so the driver could again get around cars stopped at the next traffic light. He continued on the route I was taking to school, where it turned out he was dropping off his son as well.  Just the previous week, it was at that service opening in the boulevard between the bike and car lanes that the driver had first entered my consciousness because then and there, I had almost rear-ended him because he had unexpectedly and recklessly slowed down his SUV quite suddenly to make the illegal and immoral turn. I only pray that I will have another opportunity to record with a camera his maneuvers. Of course, it would be much better if he stopped doing this, but being an adult male it might be too late to for him to change his ways.

As I was continually encountering this driver, I was following news of Trump's putting tariffs on Chinese products. Now, many places on the Internet say that Trump is starting the trade war. They have got it backwards. The Chinese started it years ago by having been cheating on trade and Trump is the first US president with the balls to do something about it.  How do the Chinese cheat?  In many ways.  A large portion of them arrogantly proceed through their days, like the SUV driver I witnessed above, as if the rules don't apply to them. The SUV driver's particular maneuvers mentioned above are not an anomaly.  I have been tiresome in this blog about the lack of consideration Chinese have for others as they go about in public. I have related many an anecdote of Chinese drivers selfishness and trickery in traffic.  One can only imagine the lack of consideration that goes on in their business dealings, especially with foreign devils. So.  Go get them Trump!

Tony Questions My Sanity

It was Saturday evening.  Tony & I were walking away from Burger King, heading to our car so we could drive to his 1830-2000 swim class.  Tony is not very enthusiastic about swimming classes but has to go because his mother insists and because she has paid for a year of them.  So, Tony was in a griping mood and blurted out the following:  "China is so boring!  I want to go to Canada!" to which I told him I heard and understood.

Tony then asked me a question that put me on the spot:  "Why did you decide to move to China?"  He asked this question in a tone that suggested I was crazy for having decided to come.  I answered him by saying that I came to China for the sake of travel.  I then told him that if I hadn't come to China, he wouldn't never have been born.

Really, he should have asked why I was still in China and why I was so crazy as to have not gone back to Canada.  I would have answered that there were a number of reasons:  going back to Canada would be hard; his mother wants to stay in China; and despite the dullness of our life in China, we were doing fairly well with a car and a paid-off apartment.  And yet, I feel like I am at the end of my string in China and that Tony needs to experience something other than the mindless and soul-killing Chinese Schooling System.

Wuxi, China #25 Bus

Thirty Seconds of Wuxi, China Traffic #56

My Patience Gets Tested

I constantly make vows to not lost my temper at the locals because of their selfish, uncouth habits and it seems that the only way I can keep these vows is to not have them tested.  For as soon as I go into public some minor impertinence on the part of some local has me swearing or doing something impertinent in response.

I made my latest vow as I was listening to a Mother Angelica Classic EWTN Podcast during which she suggested that her listeners smile more as they went through their day and keep their patience.  She even talked about traffic behavior and how we shouldn't use our horns.  Mother Angelica was a great speaker, her strong Catholic faith put her leagues above normal inspirational speakers, and she didn't sugarcoat what she was saying.  Saints, she said, were flawed and were always battling their flaws.  Yet, I made the mistake of going away from her podcast with my feet in clouds thinking this time I would once and for all conquer myself.  This vow was broken the next Tuesday as my patience got tested three times.

First, I was driving Tony to school and was stuck in the usual long line of cars waiting to drop off children.  I was stopped behind a white SUV which suddenly decided to go into reverse.  At first I didn't want to believe that someone would do that in that traffic situation, but they did.  I honked at the car loudly and when I was finally able to get around the car, I gave the driver the middle finger.

Secondly, I was in the Subway station and going through the process of getting to the platform. I had put my bag on the X-ray machine belt when some man came from behind and put their bag in front of mine.  I was miffed and thinking of a vow I had made, after some other local had done the same thing, I grabbed the man's bag and put it behind mine.  The guy looked at me and seem startled as I swore at him.  I went on my way.

The adage of trouble coming in threes was later proved to me at checkout line in a Carrefour Supermarket.  The male clerk operating the checkout wasn't very efficient and while I wasn't so impatient, the woman in line behind me was.  She was practically standing up against me, waiting for the shopper in front of us to be done and for the register counter to be cleared of items.  The woman's hovering so close compelled me to put my basket on the counter to stop her from encroaching any closer to my space.  I had a feeling that she would have cut in front of me if she could (the locals always give me that feeling).  When the shopper being served finally loaded her stuff into her bag, thus clearing the counter, the woman behind me lifted up her basket and tried to push mine ahead.  I used some impertinent language indicating to her that she should be more patient.

So, three times I failed to keep to my cool.  I should have smiled but I didn't.

Local Driver Being Very Unpredictable in Yet Another Way

You'd think I would have seen everything and that I would have come to to the end of my litany of complaints about local drivers and pedestrians and cyclists, but some local doofus found a new way to be selfish on the road.

One morning, I was returning to Casa K after having dropped my son off at school and I came to a red light where ahead of me, in the left of two straight-ahead lanes, was a three-wheeled motorized vehicle and ahead of it was a long black sedan.  As I came to a stop, I noticed that the sedan's driver had turned on the four-way blinkers.  I wasn't sure what was going on and when the lights turned green, the car didn't move.  This caused a cacophony of horn-blowing from the drivers behind me, all of whom quickly -- much more quickly than me -- changed into the right-hand lane to get around the sedan.  When I was finally able to get in the right lane, the light had turned red.  I was then beside the black sedan and I eagerly looked at the driver to see if it was a male or female, if it showed the obvious facial and skull features of a mental incompetent,  and what he or she was doing.  I saw a forty-ish looking man talking on his cell phone.  He obviously figured that putting on his four-ways took the curse of what was a very inconsiderate act.   I honked at the moron and gave him the finger.  He continuing looking inscrutable.

Another anecdote to add to the hundreds I have and thousands that other expatriates in China have about the supreme lack of consideration the locals have for others as they go about their way during the day.

A Typical Day in the Life of AKIC

• I get up at 5:50 AM, I grab my phone which is, of course, by my bedside, and head for the toilet.

• On the toilet, I do a lesson of either French, German or Spanish on the Duolingo App.

• I prepare hot tea for Tony & Jenny while I wait for them to get up. I also prepare noodles that Tony can take to school and eat for lunch.  Finally, I prepare toast for Tony & Jenny to eat for breakfast.

• At 6:20 AM I tell Jenny it is time for her & Tony to get up.

• I try to finish three lessons on the Duolingo App so I can collect rewards for having completed my daily goals and kept my daily streak going. If time, I will then do a lesson on the Basic Chinese Skills app. I will also check out my Feedly App for updates from all my favorite websites and the Wechat App (the popular Chinese social app) to see if anything interesting is happening with people in my social network. Usually nothing happens on WeChat but, fool that I am, I look at it compulsively.

• At 6:50 AM or so, Tony & I leave the apartment. We walk to the car which is parked in an underground garage in the building that is across the lane from our apartment building. I start the drive by telling myself to not lose my temper at the locals I will encounter who have barbaric driving habits. Anything I do that is not cricket, I justify to myself by thinking of what they say about behaving in Rome...

• On the drive, I listen to music on the car stereo; either "my" music (usually the Kinks) or "Tony's" (Bon Jovi or Guns & Roses). I let Tony play games on my mobile phone.

• When I drop Tony off at school, there is always a traffic jam with impatient drivers trying to change lanes by cutting in, or muscling in, to the other lanes without warning and without turning on their turn signals. If they do this close to me, I don't yield to them and even try to block them. I'll stop on the road near a crosswalk where there is a traffic attendant.  Tony will get out. I continue down the road, having a easy right turn to make at the next intersection because traffic going in the three other directions is always clogged while somehow always leaving daylight for me to go right. But then on the road I have turned onto, I always have to wait at least two lights before I can proceed on my way home. While waiting I get annoyed at seeing the drivers who cheat either by trying to cut into the lineup stuck at the lights or by driving in the lane reserved for cyclists.

• 7:30 AM or so, I am backing up the car in our apartment parking space. If I am lucky the BMW isn't parked in the spot beside. As I have said in the blog, I back up beside a pillar that is on the passenger side.

• Back in the apartment, I either continue on with my language study or do my daily reading which includes devotional passages, Catholic prayers in various languages, poetry, Nicolás Gómez Dávila aphorisms, and whatever other non-fiction or fiction book I am in the midst of reading.

• Sometimes during the morning, I post a Dávila aphorism, in English and Spanish, to WeChat.

• I shower, shave, and hang the load of laundry that Jenny put in the washing machine before she went back to sleep. While doing these duties, I try to listen to a podcast, usually the Andrew Klavan podcast or whatever other politics/culture podcast strikes my fancy at the moment.

• My breakfast will consist of tea and toast.

• I leave the apartment about 11:00 AM to go to work. I walk to the bus stop. Along the way, I stop at my local small shop and buy water, gum and throat lozenges. I wait for the first bus that comes along that can get me a subway station. If the 25 bus comes, I take it to the Xi Zhuang station. If the 602 bus comes I take it to the Xi Bei Canal Station. If the 650 or 617 bus comes, I can take them to the Yanqiao Station. Usually, I catch the 25 bus.

• On the bus I listen to a podcast. Walking to the station and waiting on the platform, I listen to a podcast. Boarding the train, which I usually do at the front of the train because that's where the seats are usually unoccupied, I pull out my Ipad and read.

• I get off at the Nanchang Temple station. I take the stairs to go up instead of the escalator which all the locals will inevitably take. I walk to the 85 Degree Bakery and ask for "一大杯美式咖啡，热的." This translates to a large cup of hot American Coffee. Along with the coffee, I get some bread for our morning toast. If the lineup at the 85 is long, I will just purchase the bread  and instead buy my coffee at the Family Mart convenience store which is by our school's entrance.

• My shift starts at 1:00 PM and I am usually at school at least thirty minutes before that time. I first spend the time pulling out binders for the lessons and printing out what materials I may need for them.

• Depending on how many classes I have (five is the maximum), I may have a lot of time or a little time to continue on with my language study which involves playing with the language learning apps I mentioned earlier or practicing my Chinese character reading by typing text on the computer using a pinyin typing app that I have installed on at my work computer. I may also do more language study with the Duolingo app. I work through a lesson and enter new words and sentences into a notebook. And if I remember, I enter something into my blogging file. It is my habit now to edit and edit and edit the blog file before I dare publish it.

• I have many options for my dinner which I will have at 4:00 PM : I can have noodles at the nearby Muslim noodle house, fried dumplings from another nearby local restaurant, foreign fare at a restaurant called BMC (that was established by an Australian), a hamburger at the McDonald's near Nanchang Market, or a sandwich from the Subway restaurant at Sanyang Plaza.

• Whenever my classes have all been taught, I can go home. If I am finished before 8:00 PM, my preference is to take the 25 bus. If I finish at 9:00 PM, I have to take the subway. If on the bus, I read or listen to a podcast. When I get off the bus, I can walk home in five minutes, which is why I prefer taking it to the train in the evening. If taking the train, I will just listen to podcasts or music (on the Netease app). I will get off at the Yanqiao station which is the terminal stop of Line #1 of the Wuxi Metro System. I will then have a twenty minute walk home. I sometimes take a three-wheel pedicab taxi for a fare of five RMB home is the weather is bad or I am not feeling energetic.  If I do walk, I can take various routes. One route is along the main drag and I have to skirt e-bikes that may pass; another route I take through a apartment complex where I have to skirt around many parked cars until I get to a street lined with shops, restaurants and service places.

• Back home, I talk to Tony, take a shower, go to bed with Tony until he falls asleep. I then read, talk to Jenny or watch video on my computer.

• I put everything down at about 11:30 PM and go to sleep.

Noisy Neighbours

The neighbors who are above us, on the fourth floor, are noisy and annoying.  My wife has had a few run-ins with them because they trying to cheat their water meter.  I don't know how this cheating process exactly works but it takes place overnight and involves dripping water which makes a noise that gets on Jenny's nerves: and trust me you don't want to get on Jenny's nerves!  As well, these neighbors always seem to be pushing things about during waking hours, if they are not squabbling as married couples will do.  Jenny says they are from the countryside and that there are seven of them living in an apartment that is barely big enough for three.

On a recent Saturday night, we were lying in bed and heard louder than usual noises coming from the fourth floor.  I was expecting Jenny to get annoyed, but she figured, correctly as it turned out, that the husband of the apartment was trying to get in the house but his wife was fast asleep and not hearing his knocks.  The husband was locked out not because he didn't have a key, but because of the way the doors in our apartment complex can be locked.  One can lock or unlock the deadbolt of these doors using a key from the inside or the outside.  One can also lock the door by manually turning a latch bolt from the inside.  So, there are two strange scenarios that can result from this arrangement.  First, one can actually be locked inside the apartment if one doesn't have a key and if the door's deadbolt was last locked using a key from the outside.  Secondly, one can be locked out, even if they have a key, if someone inside the apartment has locked the door using the latch bolt.  The latter scenario is what took place on the Saturday evening.  So, for about thirty minutes, we heard the husband knocking.  There was also screaming that we first heard from the stairwell, but then from street level below our window as the husband tried to get his wife's attention by screaming at their bedroom which is directly above ours.

My 2018 Spring Festival

This Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year, we didn't go to my wife Jenny's hometown. We instead stayed in Wuxi. Here is what I have to report and opine about it:

• We spent New Year's Eve and Day at a five star hotel in the area of the Ling Shan Buddha. We had a buffet dinner and then a buffet breakfast. Buffets are okay but the novelty of them has diminished for me. At the dinner buffet, I was able to drink a lot of beer without worry of having to drive, so I discovered my limit is about four bottles. Our room were comfortably furnished and heated. Unfortunately, though the beds we were sleeping on were nice and soft, we didn't sleep well because of the heat. The hotel's setting was nice and you can look at photos on my photo blog to see this. However, it had to rain in the evening and I wasn't able to go for a stroll outside. And there was nowhere I could go to buy some snacks and drinks. So, I was happy we didn't spend two nights there.

• Chinese New Year's day was going fine until we checked out of the hotel. In the lobby, I was pulling the one big suitcase we had brought when one of the concierges took it from me.  It is a sort of service that they have in a five star hotel. I asked Jenny if we should tip the guy. She told me I should and asked if I had change. From what she said, I presumed that 100 rmb would have been too much. I saw a fiver in my wallet and thought to give him that. That was to prove to be a mistake. The guy took the luggage to our car and I gave him the fiver after we had loaded it in the trunk. This was not enough, in Jenny's eye, and she chased the guy down and gave him a hundred note. My cheapskate way had made Jenny lose face, she told me and I was in the doghouse for the next 24 hours. It was a shame because the scenic drive we had around Lake Taihu was ruined. There was nothing for me to do but go home, battle despair and wait for Jenny to get out of her bad mood.

• The roads to the Livat Shopping Mall were empty and I experienced what I like to call dream traffic. But it seemed that the few cars I had seen on the road were all heading to Livat. The parking there was nightmare and when wandering around Ikea, we were constantly bumping into people or being slowed down by the flow of people going through the store.

• I did a lot of reading during the Festival. I started reading Crime and Punishment, I finished a collection of poems by Christina Rossetti (great!) and I kept up my daily devotional reading. I read a lot of articles on the Internet, including a book review by John Derbyshire of a recently published book entitled What's Wrong with China? In the review, the Derb mentioned a book he had on his bookshelf with a similar title that was written in the 1930s. This lead me to look for copies of these books on the Internet. I was able to find a copy of the earlier book at the archive.org site. The book was well-written and I couldn't put it down or, because it was an e-book, pull myself away from it. The author's attitude to the Chinese wouldn't pass muster with PC types today. In the book, he scoffed at the notion that China's long history gave the Chinese some mature wisdom that Occidentals didn't have. The Chinese, he said, were like children, precocious children, but children all the same. Their attitude to foreigners, and here I am paraphrasing was of a solipsistic child: they were superior to all foreigners. Looking at them this way, explained the author, we could explain a lot of their culture and explain what is wrong with them.  [There are times when I am inclined to agree with him.]

Thoughts on Appearing on a Wuxi TV Show

[This took place in the week before my seven day Spring Festival Holiday.]

One of the girls at the school asked if I could bring my son Tony to work so he & I could appear on a TV spot together. I thought at first that Tony & I would be doing some commercial for the school; the idea being that the public and potential student customers could see that a trainer at the school had a commitment to the community. It turned out that we had to go to the Wuxi TV studio and together be interviewed on an hour long TV show: something to do with foreigners living in Wuxi and what they were going to do for the Spring Festival.

My attitude to it was that it would be a fun lark and a good experience for Tony. But Tony was very reluctant to do it. He had done TV appearances before and had hated them. It seemed that he didn't like demanding adults telling him to perform. He also mentioned that one time he did an experience with some other children and that they were quite mean to him.

So with our conflicting attitudes, Tony & I went to the studio and did the show. [There are some pictures of it at my photo blog: here and here.]

I’d be lying if appearing on a TV show didn’t appeal to my vanity but at the end of the experience I do feel diminished. For one thing, looking at photos of it, my posture was bad and I didn’t seem relaxed. For another, there were so many things I should have said but only thought to say after the fact. And for another, I felt embarrassed that my Chinese language skills aren’t very good. It is not that I haven’t spent the time on improving them. I have. But I have done it in a comfortable way. I need the courage to make a fool of myself, speak to the locals in Chinese, and learn from my mistakes.

As for Tony, he did okay. He lacked poise, mumbled and when he was put on the spot, he was awkward; but he had some good moments that I could proudly point out to him. Tony got over his initial reluctance to be on a TV show and he seemed to enjoy himself like I told him he should.

Are You Dancing?

"Are you dancing?" I asked a female student who I knew was into a sort of street dancing and was a member of a street dance group.

"No!" she told me, and when I asked her why, she told me her mother didn't allow it.

"What are you doing instead?" I asked.

"Sleeping" she replied.

What's with Chinese parents? Why not let your one child pursue some interests? She is getting exercise and she is with friends, after all.

Misplaced My Phone in My Pocket

[I have decided to publish my blog entries in a different way. Instead of putting my various thoughts and reports together in a monthly entry, I am going to publish these thoughts and reports individually and periodically; in smaller chunks, you could say. These entries won't be daily and they won't be published until I have carefully edited them. I have come to realize that I don't have the ability to rattle off a longish blog entry instantaneously without errors in grammar, phrasing or wording.

Below, is my first entry done in the new way.]

I walked all the way to the Bus Stop from my home and I all of a sudden wondered where I had put my phone. I checked the pockets of my parka and the inside of my backpack without success. So, I decided to walk back home, thinking I had left the phone on my nightstand.

Five minutes later, I was standing at the apartment entrance. I asked my son Tony to go to the nightstand to retrieve my phone and he said it wasn't there. So, I checked my person again with no luck; and I thought to ask my wife Jenny to phone my phone. Much to my surprise, I heard my phone's familiar ringtone come from around my person. I checked my backpack yet again and then I determined the phone was in one of the pockets of my clothing. I checked the pockets I had checked at the bus stop and then realized that I hadn't checked the front hand-warming pocket of the hoodie I was wearing under my parka.

The phone had been on my person the whole time!