British Election Results; Old Student; Bring Back the British Empire; The Horror of IELTS Prep Classes; Mistake; What to do about Tony's Education; Accident Scene; I Had Bread for Lunch

• I will never forget seeing two "esteemed" colleagues high-fiving it after Obama won the 2008 election. Never have I seen grown adults act so stupidly. So with this is mind, I will say that the UK election results on the surface look satisfying but are nothing to get over-exuberant about. Sure, the labourites were given a well-deserved kick in the ass, but I am not sure if the result will mean a truly satisfactory, which means total, break from the EU. We will just have to see.

• There I was on the train, minding my own business, when a student from many years ago said hello to me. He told me he had good memories of his time at our school and that he had gotten very good at English. I was taken aback because I was full of sour feelings about my time teaching English in China.

• Here's an idea. Britain was better as the ruler of an empire than it is as a province of an European empire, so maybe it should try to become an empire again. Thus, I advocate for the formation of a B.E.U., a British Empire Union, a Commonwealth with a hands-off administrative approach to its extended dominions. Countries, nations are welcome to join, but the BEU won't recruit them. Let's face it! A British Empire in continental Europe would be an massive improvement on the E.U.

• All these courses with the intent purpose of having Chinese students get good scores on the IELTS test are a scam. I haven't had much to do with them till recently, and for that I should thank God; but now that I have been doing them, my view of the Chinese has also become even more sour. I always knew that these courses would be hell to teach but having known so hasn't stopped the expected annoyance from stinging less. The sight of Chinese students is enough to make one want to hang myself. Never can two hours seem so dragging long. How it is that I haven't had the urge to slap and punch them all is beyond me. My guardian angel must be keeping me in check. I have to try to teach students who resent it when I interrupt the conversations they are having in class with other students. The students are turning their back on me. These scam classes are being perpetuated by the schools. Teachers like me are asked to do the impossible. Better off trying to teach Orangutans play piano.

• I made the mistake of taking a half completed blog entry with me from work to home and adding to it and then not bringing it back to work. So, this entry will be longer than the normal six bullet points.

• What to do about Tony's education? I got to change my wife's way of thinking about it otherwise he's fucked. She is tormenting him and depriving him of a childhood and in turn of depriving me of my sanity. Her thinking is Chinese Tiger Mother. Her reasoning as far as I can tell is that by working him so hard, he will have a better future. What would be better about this future I can't imagine, because I think it would still involve some children down the line getting deprived of their childhood as well; and though it may well result in him maybe getting a good job, he will still be living a life devoid of higher purpose: the only purpose being to get his child to get high marks and so on. And the Canadian school system is satanic as well, I have heard tell. Tony has to be home-schooled.

• I walked past an accident scene where the positions of the vehicles involved made it hard to figure out what had happened. The vehicles were not at an intersection, they were a long way from any. in fact. The road they were on was four lanes wide; two lanes going either way with a double solid yellow line down the middle. The vehicles were almost at a ninety degree angle to each other; with one vehicle sitting at a perpendicular angle to the lanes, stopped on the double yellow line; while the other vehicle was faced parallel to the lanes, but stopped so that it was on the wrong side of the double yellow line, looking like it was headed in the wrong direction. Passing the strange scene, I fantasized about jeering at the drivers and telling them what idiot drivers the Chinese were. I then saw the vehicle that was perpendicular to the road lanes make a u-turn, while the other vehicle got back on the proper side of the road and continued on its way; and was able to piece together what had happened. One of the drivers had been trying to make a u-turn, and being Chinese they did it in an inappropriate spot and without looking to see if there were any vehicles about. The other driver had been following, and being Chinese, he was impatient and instead of slowing down, he tried to make an illegal passing maneuver, crossing over the double yellow line and thus running into the u-turning vehicle. Both of these drivers deserved to be jeered at!!!

• Me: What did you have for lunch, Chinese person? CP: I had rice. Not very informative but all the locals answer in this annoying way. So this is what I answer when I am asked by Chinese people what I had for lunch: I had bread and beef and vegetables at McDonalds!