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I am reading this book about the Four Cardinal Virtues authored by Josef Pieper. The highest on the hierachy of the four is Prudence, followed by Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. I would assume, and what I could gather from Pieper, that Prudence allows us to do the proper thing, without overdoing it for the other three.
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I did a very imprudent thing. It all started, innocently enough, on a Saturday morning. I was up and going through my morning routine, in a relaxed fashion, when my wife Jenny asked me to pick up a delivery for her. This meant I had to get dressed, get in the car and drive to her office tbuilding o get the packages. I had been stopping on the main road in front of the building, putting on my four-ways and rushing into the building. But because I had been picking up so many parcels at one time and taking a lot of time, I was getting worried about getting a ticket. So, what I have been doing now is parking in a lot that is down the street from Jenny's office building. If I get done fast enough, I don't have to pay for parking. The only problem with this lot is that it is always nearly full and parking is tight because the locals, parking as they do, will often park their cars where I wouldn't dare. So, I drove to the office, parked the family car at the lot and walked to the building. I picked up the parcels and returned to the car. To my consternation, an armored car had parked in front of my car and looked like it was going to be stopped for a while. I immediately got into I-hate-the-local-drivers mode. I loaded the packages into the car, sat in the driver's seat when the armored car driver noticed me. I gave him a stare. He shrugged his shoulders. I should have left it at that and waited, but being in the prickly mood I was in, I gave the driver the middle finger salute. He put his shoulders back in response, and got very annoyed at me. And then the guards, with submachine guns, walked up to me, and one asked if I spoke English. The mood I was in then was strange. I felt a weird exhilaration combined with immediate remorse at my imprudence. I felt like laughing and was shrugging my shoulders while feeling self-defensive. I said something about them having seen them and thus they shouldn't have blocked me. The armored car driver backed up to let me out. I said thank you, and then sorry, and I hand-punched one of the armed guards. I drove off and was shaken by the incident the rest of the morning. (Further, reading Pieper's book, I saw that my action was also intemperate.)
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I haven't been very good with Lent either. I have been doing readings but not doing any sort of penance.
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I watched season two of the Netflix series Narcos Mexico. It prompted me to look for more books and documentaries about Narcos. I found this book entitled Narco-nomics, written from an economist's perspective. The book was informative, but the author's being a proponent for the legalization of drugs left me cold. He didn't factor in the health effects and the destruction of society caused by drugs when making his case. While he was correct in saying that the drug problem is a demand problem, he should have also taken into account that it was a moral and institutional problem. People should not be taking drugs and the institutions of a moral society should be doing everything in their power to get people to realize how stupid taking recreational drugs is. And as Peter Hitchens has been saying over and over again, the institutions of his country and other western countries have not really seriously seen drugs as a moral problem and haven't really fought the drug war seriously.
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My son Tony doesn't have any friends. (Like father, like son.) That doesn't seem to be a problem for him. I have never ever heard him complain about being lonely. He spends his spare time on computers and the smart phone. He is happy to play games and watch his favorite shows. He doesn't seem to need other people. When I ask him if he misses his teachers, he tells me he doesn't. When I ask him if he misses his classmates, he says the same. (I should mention that Tony is taking classes online. It's my job to get him up in the morning, and set up the Apple TV so he can watch them.)
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On a Sunday, I drove Tony to downtown Wuxi for a drumming class. After this, we drove to a Carrefour to do a bit of shopping. I was hoping to buy some particular brand of cheese and butter, but had no luck. We did get a six pack of Corona Beer, some drinks for Tony, some bacon and two packages of spreadable cream cheese. We went to pay for the stuff and immediately saw lineups of at least ten carts at every register, whether manned or self-checkout. I am not sure how many minutes we waited, but I was able to pass the time by praying the rosary. We then returned to the Hui Shan district with a plan to go to the Wanda Plaza and buy some McDonald's, but there was a very long lineup of cars trying to get into the parking garage and so we decided to go home. The lineup was due to it being Sunday and the virus security procedures. I ended up walking to the mall from Casa K to get McDonald's and pick some up delivery packages for Jenny at her office building. I came upon another long lineup, this time of pedestrians waiting to enter into the Mall, being held up by virus security procedures. I was tempted to again not bother going to McDonald's but I resisted. Tony was awfully hungry at this point. At the McD's, customers were not allowed to enter the restaurant, but to order and pickup food at the entrance. There was a QR code on a table to allow customers to make orders on a app, but I got a girl to give me a menu. She took my order and then took my phone inside so I could pay via Alipay. I got the food and then walked to Jenny's office building to pick up a bunch of delivery packages. From there, I walked back to Casa K with my hands fully loaded.
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I hate to return to the scene of my crimes, but during the Virus Crisis, I have no choice but to go back to that parking lot because my wife Jenny is always ordering things that have to be picked up at her office building. Monday afternoon, I did the mule thing and drove to the parking lot. It was as crowded as I had ever seen it. The parking spots which were perpendicular to the lot's roadway were all taken; the spots where local drivers will parallel park (but a westerner wouldn't) were all taken; and one side of the lot's roadway, cars were parallelparked, and thus double parked, in front of perpendicularly parked cars. (I wonder if some kind of coordination between drivers was necessary for so many cars to be blatantly parallel parked as they were, but in China, you can never know for sure. I have seen a lot of very inconsiderate parking here.) I drove through the lot roadway, which was then a narrow gauntlet, and didn't bother trying to park as I didn't want to risk losing my temper again. So, I drove to the underground lot of Jenny's office complex, (which required going through security) parked at the end of the garage that was close to the entrance of her office building, ran past the parking lot attendant booths, and then ran up a ramp to get to street level and to the entrance to Jenny's office building. Before going up the ramp, I did try to find some secret way to get to where the parcel lockers were, but one elevator I found lead to the back of some business and not to a corridor containing package lockers. I also saw a lot of padlocked doors including the doorway leading to the package lockers from the parking garage. (That door was never locked before the Virus Crisis). I did pick up the four parcels Jenny had been expecting, and proceeded to return to my parked vehicle. As I did so, I worried that someone would stop me from going down into the parking garage, but I had no problems, and a security guy, who I thought would have stopped me, did nothing. I loaded the packages in the car and drove back to Casa K.
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