Another Entry about the Stupidity, the Boorishness, the Selfishness, the Impudence and the Utter Overall Lack of Consideration of Wuxi, China Drivers (This Probably Applies to All Mainland China Drivers)

• Many times I have seen local drivers stop in places where they wouldn't if they possessed consideration for the flow of traffic and for other drivers and for other human beings in general. At the entrance gate to our apartment complex, for example, I have seen drivers stop their cars to wait for something, and thus jam up the traffic trying to enter or exit from the complex. And the drivers seem oblivious to the chaos they are causing! Just yesterday, I drove to the local sports center and saw a man stop his car and get out and look around, while seemingly being unaware that he was blocking the entrance lane to the sports complex. I thought for an instant that maybe his car had broken down because his stopping where he was so egregious that it would have had to have been a more rational explanation. But there is just no accounting for the inexplicable ways in which the locals stop or park their cars in busy areas.

• If there was a road going through my kitchen, a local driver wouldn't surely stop in front of the fridge door. If a Westerner needed to stop his car in a kitchen, he would think to not block people from accessing their fridge, but it surely wouldn't occur to a Chinese driver.

• If a there was a road going through my living room, a Western driver would think not to stop in front of the TV; surely a Chinese driver wouldn't.

• If a road went through a maternity ward, impatient local drivers would honk their horns and swerve, instead of slow down, to avoid hitting mothers with new-borns.

• If a road went through a playground, a fast moving car driven by a local would honk his horn to make the children get out of his way.

• Just today, I drove upon a lineup of two cars trying to exit the apartment complex. The driver of the car in front was discussing something with the person in the booth. I was taking a spot at the end of the exit line when a gold-colored BMW came up from behind, and then surprised me by going to the left of the lineup. I thought for an instant that the driver was going to try to cut in line. I then saw that the driver was instead hoping to pass the lineup by having the guy in the booth lift the gate of the entrance lane for her. And she hoped to accomplish this by honking her horn in an impatient manner. What a bitch! I thought. Happily for me, I saw that the man in the booth was too intent on dealing with the driver of the first car in the lineup that he ignored or didn't hear the impatient honking of the battle-ax in the BMW, and eventually she had to go through the same gate as us more patient drivers. All her horn honking accomplished was to provide me more blogging fodder to advance my case that local drivers are very, very impatient and lacking in consideration. (I will say that I am impressed how these damn locals find a new ways to be more impatient and boorish.)

• I was at gate with my son Tony because I was to drive him downtown. On my drive, I witnessed more examples of local driver impudence, thought not rising to the level of that bitch I saw in the previous entry:

1. First, a guy making a U-turn in the worst possible spot for other drivers. I have written about an uncontrolled T-junction intersection (a side street joining a main road) where the authorities decided to put my barriers so that cars couldn't make left turns. The end result is a junction where one can only make right turns onto the side street or right turns onto the main road from the side street. So, the side road is not accessible to cars driving on the far side of the main road. I think this is a great setup because it is much safer. Local drivers took great risks making left turns at the junction when it didn't have the barriers. However, the setup has resulted in an unforeseen consequence. The main road dead-ends at another T-junction about a kilometer from the first junction. A few drivers who would have made a left turn from the main road onto the side road have started to make U-turns at this other junction. However the road there is only two lanes wide. So, what I have seen are cars having to back up a bit when trying to make the U-turn and thus block other cars trying to turn from the other road. Driving Tony downtown just now, I saw a long u-turning sedan block about ten cars trying to turn. It had to back up, but couldn't because the cars that were behind it weren't giving it space to back up.

2. Second, a driver , talking on his mobile phone, straddling lanes. I was in the left lane. A car in front of me was one-quarter in my lane and three-quarters in the lane to the right. I had to honk my horn to get the car to correct itself. I saw that the driver, a middle-aged local with a born in the countryside look about him, talking on his mobile phone. I honked my horn loud and long at him when he saw what he was doing and it did seem to interrupt his phone conversation.

3. Third, cars parked so-close to me that I had little room to maneuver out. I have seen cars parallel-parked so closely that I wonder how cars stuck between two other cars could get out. I mean I swear the bumpers on both sides were inches apart. Surely, the drivers knew each other and so they could get away with doing that. But when Tony & I came out from his drumming class, I saw two cars, parallel-parked on either side me, had left me with little room to get out. I did get out, but I was tempted to kick the bumper of one of the cars. And it goes to show you that the locals don't care about strangers.

4. Fourth, a car in the middle lane slowing down and unexpectedly making a right turn without turn signals. I was moving on a road that was three lanes wide. I was in the middle lane. The vehicle in front of me, without any warning and no signals, made a right turn. Happens a lot and I would have normally forgotten about it, but the last few days, I had seen far too much bad driving.

• I suppose the lockdown making me more irate has contributed to my wanting to make this entry. The only contact I have had with others during this lockdown has been with my wife, who is angry at me half the time, and with the local drivers in traffic. So, it is hard for me to have a good opinion of Mainland Chinese humanity.

• Am I a good driver? I was. But I have been in Mainland China too long and it has corrupted me. I have adopted the inconsiderate habits of the locals and sometimes I give into the temptation to scare the pants of some local who is going the wrong way but playing chicken with him. I also like to slow the impatient drivers who annoy me.

• The way Mainland Chinese cheat and lack consideration in traffic shows that the rest of the world should have been wary of doing business with them. Maybe, Decoupling is necessary. Maybe, dealing with Mainland China was never a good idea.

Not Too Many Readers; Back to Work; Fudge!!; Riding the Metro Really Sucks Now; Phew!; Minneapolis Rioting; Chinese Like Gorillas?

• May 28^th, was the anniversary of my father's death in 2012. To mark the anniversary, I put a link to a website I have honouring my father. The link drew one visitor. Oh well. I blog because I must.

• May 28^th was also my first day at work since the lockdown started about four months ago. The return was underwhelming. There were no foreigners with whom to exchange anecdotes. The staff that was there were people with whom I hadn't been on a talking basis. So, I spent most of the day farting around like I was at home. I (not wearing a mask) did talk to one student (who was fully masked) in the evening at the Speaker's Corner. She had gotten back to work in her factory in late February. Because she had been in her hometown, she had to do two weeks of quarantine in Wuxi before she could return to work. Once back at her factory, she had to observe social distancing and other virus protocols. May 28^th she told me was a day off for her. Apparently, her factory's production is stuck in a warehouse, not moving anywhere.

• Sometime on May 28^th, I misplaced my bus card and keys. I discovered they were missing just as I was leaving work: reaching into my bag, I couldn't find the bus pass in the compartment I had expected them to be in. I then checked other bag compartments for them and when I couldn't find them, I had to go back to my desk. For twenty minutes, I searched furiously around my desk, and kept rechecking my bag. I thought of places I had gone to in the school and checked them with no luck. And so I left work hoping that at least I had left my keys at home, but it turned out not to be the case. I discounted the idea that my card and keys had been stolen because I still had my wallet. The most likely scenario I thought was that I had left them on the bus which I had taken to work about eight hours earlier. On the 29^th, I tried to see if the Wuxi Bus System had a lost and found, but I couldn't find any phone number to call. I tried asking a bus driver when I went to work on the 29^th, but he said "meiyou!" when I showed him a Chinese message that my wife Jenny had typed out for me to show him. So it seems, unless something seemingly miraculous happens, I lost the keys for our car, Jenny's office and to the apartment. There was about 45 rmb on the bus card, and the car key will be much more expensive to replace. As well, I lost a keychain from the RCA Museum in Brandon... Damn! Damn! Damn!

• Because of my searching for my bus pass and keys, I missed the last 25 bus (which I had taken earlier in the day) back to Compound Kaulins, and had to take the subway. Going to the platform, I was reprimanded by a security guy for not wearing a mask. On the train, everyone was wearing a mask, and the sight of this made me more depressed than I already was. I then overheard a father next to me tell his little son that they were sitting next to a laowai. I looked straight ahead and thought how the train ride couldn't end soon enough for me. Anyway, I will take the bus as much as I can, and avoid riding the subway. The subway is expensive and you can't avoid seeing others. On the bus, I can sit at the very back, take off my mask, and not be stared at.

• [Later!] Phew! Found the keys and the card. It turned that I had left it at one of the places in school that I had thought to look initially when I discovered they were missing. It was the cleaning lady who found them, during the day, before I went to retrieve them in the evening. It was my wife who told me to ask the cleaning lady if she had found the keys – something I never thought to do. And it turned out that the aiyi had them all the while I was stressing. And my ass was saved!!!!

• Rioting in Minneapolis. As my rare readers may know, my son Tony & I were in Minneapolis in August of last year. And before that, I had grandparents and other relatives living there so I have visited the area on many occasions. One of my best memories was being able to attend a Vikings exhibition game at the old Met Stadium in the 1970s when they played the Miami Dolphins. It saddens me to hear about the rioting because the Minneapolis I went to when I was young was a great place. When I went last year, however, I saw lots of latinos and blacks and somalis there. So, it seemed to me like it was turning into Los Angeles. I also have heard lots of reports that Minneapolis was turning hard left progressive. One bad memory I had of attending the Twins game last year was how I had to listen to intercom announcements telling baseball fans how progressive the Minnesota Twins were. Anyway, there were signs in retrospect that Minneapolis was going down a bad path. And the riots have proven it beyond a doubt. Sad.

• Just a thought: to be a popular laowai in China, you have to be gorilla like.

Eight Years Ago Today My Father Died

Here is page I set up to honor his memory.

Found Something Cool!; Too Much Tony on Screen; Tennis Balls; Out of the Doghouse; Questions; How Much I have Read and Watched:

• Monday Morning, I drove Tony to school and then I decided to drive to the park that is north of Compound Kaulins. I have gone to this park to play ball with Tony and last week, I went to do some morning walking. I went to the park this Monday because I couldn't think of somewhere else I wanted to go. I initially intended to walk the park's circular road, but then I decided to go off on a path. I followed the path till I was under a canopy of trees. At the end of the woods was an fairly steep embankment which had a canal on its other side. I walked along the embankment till I came upon a place where I could ascend it. At the top of the embankment, I came to a path which was amongst trees. I followed it till I found a clearing that looked over the canal. I stood there and saw that there was an old bridge for walkers that spanned the canal. I was ecstatic to see the bridge and immediately wondered how I hadn't see it the previous time I had walked on the embankment. I then realized that the bridge was between where I was at that moment and the other area I was at, last week, on the embankment. Then, I didn't think that there was anything else to see down the path on the embankment but just more canal. Anyway, I went to the bridge and walked upon it. I took photos which you see in my AKIC photoblog. It was a great place to which I will return.

• Tony spends too much time on the screen. I am getting annoyed at him doing it, as he is annoyed with me for telling him.

• I bought tennis balls for Tony. Not so much for his tennis classes, but for his batting. When I told Tony my idea of using tennis balls for batting, he was enthusiastic about it. He told me that he can hit tennis balls a long way with a racquet, and so he thinks he can do similar with a baseball bat. Nothing satisfies him more than getting a good hit with the baseball bat.

• This week, it seems that I am out of the doghouse! Why do I think so? My wife Jenny made me lunch for the first time in two weeks.

• As the day of work restarting approaches, I have but two questions. 1) Will there be students to talk to? 2) What would these students have to say about all that has happened?

• I have read 64 books, and watched 68 movies and series this year.

Back to Work on the 28th; Finished Watching the Last Dance; Barriers; Not Wearing a Mask; What I'm Going to Miss about the Lockout?; Not in the Doghouse, Hopefully;

• Back to work on the 28^th, I am. But it will be a whimper. I can't see myself being overwhelmed with classes to start, and on the day I go to work, I will be the lone foreigner on the premises. So, no grand exchanges of experiences. This is probably just as well. I don't have much to say for myself.

• Tony & I finished watching the Last Dance documentary series about the 1990s Michael Jordan lead Chicago Bulls. It was an interesting series but I could tell it was doing some narrative constructing. If another documentary had done a series about the dynasty, it would have focused on different aspects of the story. The best thing about watching the series was how Tony impressed me with his knowledge of basketball history. When the Bulls were down by three points in the last minute of the decisive sixth game of the 1998 final, as was being shown in the documentary, Tony told me what had happened so that Jordan could get the game winning shot. What didn't impress me was Obama's appearance in the final episode and what he had to say about Jordan's legacy. What Obama said was like what he said earlier in the series: just utter pablum. It was along the gist of Jordan did a great thing for the advancement of black people. To which I could only respond Huh? In the construction of a narrative, the observer should be aware of things that are left out. In this documentary series, I found it interesting that the documentary makers obviously wanted Obama to seem to be part of the Chicago scene in the 90s, but they didn't actually say what Obama was doing in Chicago in the 90s.

• More barriers in the area. Because of the lockdown, there are more barriers in the area to free movement. In the complex, that containeth Compound Kaulins (see previous entry for explanation of this new terminology), one of two car entrance gate has been closed. At my wife's office building, an entrance linking her office building and an underground parking lot has been closed. At the local Sports Center and Football Ground, gates through which people could walk onto the grounds were closed. (On the ground as well, they inexplicably put barriers to stairways.) But the most interesting case of barrier erection I have seen has taken place on a stretch of road that runs in front of my wife's office building. On one side of this road is my wife's office building, a shopping mall and a complex containing banks. On the other side of the road is a government canteen, a public square, a library, another office building and another shopping complex. The road is about six lanes wide and in the center is a wide boulevard that requires extensive landscaping maintenance, and it is about a kilometer long. There are about four places where pedestrians can cross on this stretch of road. The problem is that these crossings are not well situated, and so there are four or five other places where pedestrians do cross instead. They wear paths into the grounds that disfigure the boulevard landscaping. So, to try to get people to only use the designated crossings, the authorities tried a campaign of fining people who were using the informal crossings. From what I could see, once the campaign stopped, people went back to using the undesignated crossings. So, what the authorities have done, is refurbish the boulevards and put fences on them. (I shall publish a photo of this, when I take one, in my photoblog.) You have to wonder about the idiocy of planners when they try to design paths for pedestrians. How often have I seen paths worn into the ground because the planners never anticipated people would want to get to a place more directly.

• I am not wearing a mask. I said this in my last entry but I want to say it again. I am against the spirit of the idiots of this time. (Written in an urge to say something even though I really didn't have anything to say.)

• Even the most stupid and evil things, like this lockdown, can have their good points. For example, one good thing about Stalin's great terror was that it killed a lot of the people who were responsible for the Bolshevik rise to power. That revolutions eat their own is a good thing. What I am going to miss about this lockdown is the not having to see people who I hadn't missed seeing during the lockdown.

• Hopefully, this weekend doesn't result in me being in another doghouse on account of my wife Jenny getting mad at me for something that she decided she wanted to be angry about.

Inspection Friday; Photos; My Chinese Is Crappy After All These Years; AKCIC Blog?; How About a Real Pandemic?; Praying for Eleven; Catholic Misanthropy?; Evelyn Waugh; Another Reason to not be a China Expert;

• The powers that be, the ones that decide whether our school can open, are inspecting it on Friday. Or so I have been told. What exactly they are inspecting the school for is beyond me. Are they looking for the virus? Bribes? I will not be very happy if I get word that the school still can't open. (And I won't be elated if the place does open. I will never give up the resentment I have felt on account of the further-furloughing that happened to the school in the middle of the month.)

• Now just mostly thoughts. (I have published photos from my Friday morning walk here.)

• As my wife Jenny pointed out to me just recently, it is embarrassing that my Chinese is so crappy. So why is it so crappy? Do I not have a faculty for languages? Perhaps. Have I been lazy about studying Chinese? Yes and No. Everyday, without fail, I do practice Chinese in an app and I spend a few minutes reading Chinese characters in a Chinese textbook. However, I never practice speaking it with any locals. And it doesn't help that the locals don't speak the textbook mandarin that I look at everyday. Am I an expatriate who lives in an expatriate compound and never talks to the locals? Yes and No. I don't live in an expatriate compound and haven't since 2008 and maybe earlier. I live in the Andis Kaulins Compound.

• Perhaps, I should change the name of this blog to the Andis Kaulins Compound in China blog. (Too much work! I will instead refer to the apartment I live in as Compound Kaulins instead of Casa Kaulins. Better yet, maybe I should call it Cell Block Kaulins. This latter name will better convey the smallness of the apartment, and how trapped I feel...)

• The previous thoughts come to me on account of a WeChat moment I just saw. Over a year ago, I was collecting WeChat contacts and though nothing has ever came of them, I haven't deleted them. So, I will see these expat moments postings on the popular mainland China social app. What I saw today was of a photo of a group of about 30 expatriates who had gotten together to do some sort of thing in the evening at a park. I had run into a few of the people in the photo over the years, but most I didn't know and don't want to: just a bunch of millennials. And I haven't been face-to-face with a foreigner for at least a month.

• Better to be stared down by a Chinese mob than to have my wife cross with me. I did have the former experience, for reasons I can't yet get into, so what I say I truly mean.

• If this was truly a pandemic, it would have been nice to have had the satisfaction of having our upstair fourth floor neighbors, who aren't above the level of savages, suffer or die from it. Hatred of these people is something on which Jenny & I do agree. They're always making strange noises at all hours and mistreat their child worse than Jenny ever does to Tony. Jenny has referred to them as country bumpkins.

• I pray for Xi Jing Ping. That's what I will tell the students, if I ever get a chance to talk to them again.

• How about I call this blog A Catholic Misanthrope in China? Misanthropy and Catholicism are the only viable ideas (ideologies) in this world at the moment. But I really to have to work on my Catholicism.

• Evelyn Waugh is a role model for me. He was Catholic and a Misanthrope and had a great sense of humour. I think about this because my son Tony loves comedy. When I see Tony laugh, I think he gots great potential to be a paid member of an audience for a sitcom or a comedian performance. Tony laughs earty laughs at the Three Stooges, the Naked Gun Movies, the Marx Brothers, About and Costello, John Candy and recently Chris Farley.

• I came across a blog entry about what is going on in Hong Kong written by an expatriate who is very knowledgeable about China and mandarin Chinese. The gist of the entry was that Hong-Kongers are so bad that they should be subsumed by the Chinese Communists. The blogger's hatred of Hong-Kongers was even more rabid than my hatred of the local mainlanders. This blogger also came across as having a high regard for his China expertise and his Chinese language skills. In the blog entries there was pushback against his dismissal of Hong Kong. I had to agree with one commenter who pointed out that mainlanders are crude. (the blogger responded to the pushback with insults) I didn't bother making a comment, but if I did, I would have asked if the Hungarians, the Czechs, and the Latvians were so bad that they should have be subsumed by the Soviet Communists. Anyway, I don't know anything about Mainland China except what I have seen.

• My email address: andiskaulins@protonmail.com.

I Didn't Lose My Temper (Visibly); Parking Spot Follies I & II; A Week in the Doghouse; Do I Care?; Not Wearing a Mask;

• I went to pick up Tony. On the way, I went to a bakery to buy bread. I was in a bit of a hurry because I parked where I shouldn't have, hoping I would be in and out in an instant. But it wasn't to be. I walked in and saw a lineup at the counter. The people ahead of me, in line, seemed to be slow. One of them was a woman who was with child and she was asking the clerks questions. Then a fellow behind me in line asked the clerk to help him and he was able to pay for his purchases. When I saw the guy get away with this, I was of course annoyed. But I held it in. This society has no soul or sense of charity. It really is everyone for themselves.

• I get to Tony's school early so as to get a parking spot. When I am looking for a parking spot, I try to not to have cars following me. The drivers, either being impatient or stupid or both, won't give you room to back up. They will honk their horn as soon as you slow down or stop. And e-bikers will swerve behind cars that are backing into a parking spot.

• No one in China can wait for anything. When I am parked (I park perpendicular to the curve because the locals have no compunction against double parking) and there is a space beside me, I will observe again and again a driver think about parking next to me, come to a stop and then immediately have a vehicle behind honk their horn and then stop right behind the backing up car. Sometimes the driver trying to park will give up trying to back into my space, perhaps because the horn has intimidated him or her, or the car behind won't give space by reversing. If the vehicle does try to back up, e-bikes coming upon the vehicle will never stop but swerve around the vehicle's back end. A few times, the e-bker after swerving to avoid the backing up car will have to quickly swerve again to not hit the front end of an already parked car. It must be my Western mind, but I have to wonder why no one ever stops and gives the guy space and time to back up. Surely, they know it is that time of the day and the chances are that cars are going to slow down and park their cars. But it always seems like a big surprise (or maybe it is a big annoyance) to all nearby vehicles that a car is going to park at school at pick-up time.

• This week has been the epic for being the dog house vis-a-vis my wife Jenny. She got angry at me on Sunday evening because I didn't tiger-father Tony when it was just he-and-I together on the weekend. She was working (the first time since the virus crisis started) and she assumed we had a fun weekend. Really, Tony & I spent the weekend, feeling trapped in the apartment because of the humid temperatures and were dreading the time when she was to come home because when she is tired, she is always unendearingly miserable, which is basically every weekend she works. The epic nature of her anger this week can be also be attributed to the lockdown. She is always miserable on a Sunday evening of her work weekends. But because of the lockdown, I have no work to escape to during the weekdays so I am stuck in the apartment during the day. My presence just makes her all the angrier (not that I am trying to provoke her, I stay mute, but our apartment is too small to hide in.) So for three days in a row, there is a person in the apartment I dare not try to talk to, and I am being made to feel like a non-person. And every week night, I have to listen to her scream-tutor Tony for two hours.

• I did talk to her once on the phone once during this week, and it was just long enough time for her to get snarky at me, and ask sarcastically if I cared. Well. I would like to. But it's hard to care when someone is making you a non-person. And just before the short phone conversation, I was wondering if perhaps I was being selfish and just not tender enough. After the call, I will still readily confess guilty to the charge of being selfish, but tenderness is not something I have ever been able to employ as a stratagem to get on her good side. She really has a bad temper which paralyses one into inaction.

• I have gone places without bothering to wear a mask. I went into the bakery without a mask. I didn't bother to wear a mask when I went to meet Tony at school pickup time. I didn't bother wearing a mask when I went for my Thursday Morning Walk. A lot of the locals are doing the same.

Eleven is Beautiful?; Morning Walks; Can't Look Them in the Eyes; Wednesday Morning Walk; Traffic Anecdote; End the Lockdown!;

• I have been doing a few online classes for my school. I had been given a choice of topics (from a list) for which I could choose to teach (although really, for which I could talk about), but the list I submitted was never adhered to, and the topic I was most loathe to talk about from the topic list, cosmetic surgery, was on the list of the six classes I had to do with this student. It turned out that the sixth and last class was the Cosmetic Surgery, which I hate because is an impossible topic to talk about for an hour with any student. I try to pad the class out by asking questions about beauty, but the problem is that most Chinese students don't see a distinction between male beauty and female beauty. So when I asked the student who was the most beautiful student in China, he said Xi Jing Ping. This answer was wrong on so many levels, but I corrected the student on a sole point: I told him he should say Xi Jing Ping was handsome (I didn't tell him he looked like a fat cartoon bear!).

• The week in which THE SCHOOL WAS SUPPOSED TO REOPEN (I hope this conveys my anger), I have decided to take a fairly long walk in the morning to battle the despair I feel (which is compounded by my wife Jenny for the umpteenth time telling me she wants a divorce. I am publishing photos in my photoblog. I am trying to take photos that convey how ugly and depressing the area where I live has become...

• I can't even look the locals in the eye, when I walk pass them. I instead make a point of lowering my eyes.

• On the walk I took on Wednesday, I took a load of what I thought were interesting photos of interesting sights and details. The most jarring sight I saw was this Chinese Communist Party symbol that was in prominent view at the entrance of an apartment complex I had walked past. (It wasn't as quite a jarring photo because I felt I had to serendipitously take a photo of it.) A lot of photos showed a big newly constructed apartment complex and its surrounding grounds. The empty land around the apartments looks incongruous and weedy as you would see if you looked at the photos.

• Strange how a day can make all the difference with traffic my area. On a Tuesday, I drove to pick up Tony and was stuck for twenty minutes on this stretch of road that the next day, I went through in one minute. The difference in the amount of traffic was ten thousand percent.

• The world should end the lockdown now! I don't understand why some people want to extend them.

Consequences?

• I wonder if my fits of pique will somehow have consequences for me. These fits include these blog entries and my reactions to local driver habits. Will they result in me being deported or being stuck in a prison? Friday morning, after a bout of middle-fingering (that I wrote about in my previous entry), I came to the entrance of the Casa Kaulins apartment complex. I had to make a right turn to get to the entrance gate. A habit that the locals have that really annoys me is how they "prematurely lead" their left turns. That is they will impatiently turn in the way of oncoming traffic, instead of sticking to their proper lane and then actually turning when they, by all reason, should. This Friday, as I was making a right turn, a driver exiting the apartment complex made one of these premature left turns so that he was encroaching on my right turn space. This raised my ire and so I made a point of blocking him. I then slowly turned in front of him getting close enough to hopefully annoy him even more. My ire had already been raised by having been cut off three times earlier, I stared directly at his face. I saw that he was middle-aged, wore glasses and looked like a management type. He was probably a real piece of work – the kind that exists in a corrupt society. He seemed to be glaring at me. I mouthed something about why he didn't he learn how to drive. I wonder if he will remember me. (I am sure that there are numerous locals who probably have an anecdote they tell their "friends" about this foreigner who was "rude" to them. That foreigner being me.)

• Later in the day, the incident slips my mind. I watch and read and do other stuff.

• Tony is telling me he hates Trump and that he thinks that Trump wants to invade China. Who is telling you this crap? I ask him. Everybody else in China. I instruct Tony to be skeptical of everything he hears and to keep an open mind. And why would you support the guys who don't want you to have your Youtube? I ask him.

• I don't want to talk to any Chinese and I don't want to talk to most foreigners. I am so angry at the world right now.

• No prominent world leader has has looked good during this "crisis." The one I had placed my hopes on: Trump has been disappointing, but still he has been the best of the bunch, which is not saying much. Particularly bad have been the Michigan governor, the mayor of New York City, the governor of California, Boris Johnson, and every other Western leader, save the Swedes. Who have been the good guys in this? The ones that pop to my mind have been Peter Hitchens and my favorite blogger David Warren. (Trump seems to one of the few leaders who think it is time to get this lockdown nonsense done with.) These two offer some needed perspective.

• I write this blog entry on Monday, May 18^th. About a week ago, I was anticipating that this was the week that I would be going back to work. That hope was cruelly destroyed by an email I got on evening of the 11^th. Since then, I have had to be battling rage. So, I have withdrawn from the society of others as much as I can. (I still have to be brave appearing with my son Tony and quiet around my wife Jenny.) The fact that the e-mail is a week old has not diminished the rage I feel. The fact that this should have been the day we were starting work again has made the pain sharp again. And the pain is numbing as well because time seems to be dragging. Two weeks till the next potential day of return to work....

• Saturday, I took Tony to play catch and I got really annoyed at him for some errant throws which required spending too much time looking for the baseball in bushes and undergrowth. I was so annoyed that I started swearing at him and I didn't care if there were parents with young kids around as I said the f-word (which I am sure the locals understand) over and over again. A voice in my head then made me realize that I was full of rage and that Tony's bad throws and the sight of all these Chinese people around me was making me very angry. I decided immediately that I was going to have to leave the playground and find a place to play catch with Tony where there were fewer onlookers. As I walked with Tony to the car in order to drive to a park, I felt sheepish about the tantrum I just had but my a vow to not give into the dejection I was feeling. I apologized to him later.

• At the apartment complex playground, I saw something that was so astoundingly stupid to my Western mind, that I took photos of it and published it in my photo blog. The basketball court, as I have blogged before, has a broken backboard that has not been repaired for at least a year. (Maybe they don't have the money, said my wife. To which I respond, well why doesn't someone take it upon himself to fix it? (Thanks to my wife, I can't. She would think me a fool for trying to do something for the community.) Anyway, that the board is never fixed says something about the society of this so-called community.) But then someone thought it was a good idea to install these cigarette-butt receptacles beside benches on the basketball court-side. (This installation was done very recently.) And besides the broken basketball backboard, the surface of the basket ball court could do with a resurfacing.. I could only shake my head and wonder wonder what the hell?

• When my wife says she doesn't want to talk to me, it really means that she wants to scream/yell at me. Oh! If I got paid for every time, my wife says she wants a divorce, I would have enough money to make her happy (and stop her from working which part of the problem with our marriage.)

Still Reeling from the Further Furloughing; Hate Laws are Against the Law; Tony's Musical Tastes Branch out; The Last Dance; Jesus Is Actually Barabbas; A Local Going About His Day Confusingly; Can't Stop Myself Middle-Fingering; Am I Stuck among Pharisee

• With my return to work on hold to some indefinite date in the time beyond the before times, I have been peevish and irritable. As in my practice, unless something provokes me, I am not acting out on these emotions. I am letting them stew. I am not bothering to seek council (or is it counsel) from anyone in this area. I pray for strength to get through this and find someone I could confidently take council from.

• Hate laws, if you take the time to think about it, are in violation of hate laws. If it is illegal to hate something, then it is even illegal to hate something that is illegal. I mean what are laws basically but ways of legislating against things we hate. So maybe laws are against hate laws.

• My son Tony has expressed an interest in music from the fifties. He was asking me about Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Dean Martin. He found it surprising to learn that Martin was a singer. Good for Tony to branch out into types of music that I didn't think he liked which it would be good if he did.

• Smarter and better bloggers than me say they have lost their interest in Sports-ball. I would have too, and I would have blogged that I wasn't missing it during this Shamdemic were it not for Tony who really is in to Sports-ball, and who am I to deny a child innocent pleasures? Alas, if they were actually innocent! I say this because Tony & I are watching the Last Dance Documentary series about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls. It is interesting but it is depicting the Chicago Bulls dynasty in a very soap-operaish manner. It also doesn't help that the makers of the documentary felt it necessary to have presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama appear in the documentary. Bill Clinton got to make an appearance because Scottie Pippen played college ball in Arkansas. Barack Obama made an appearance because he lived in Chicago, though at the time of the Bulls Dynasty, no one would have heard of him. Obama also appeared because the ESPN types consider him to be Jesus. In the fifth part of the series, Michael Jordan was criticized because he didn't offer public support to some black guy who was running against Jesse Helms for a North Carolina senate seat. And the comment he made that Republicans buy sneakers too was portrayed as being crass. Jordan defended himself to the extent that he said that he was focused on a being a basketball player, but had to then insist that he had given money to the campaign of the black guy running for the Senate seat. Obama then made an appearance and said something to the effect that when black people like Oprah, Jordan and he become famous, it is so hard for them because they are black. It was utter Obama pablum. I was screaming at my computer (on which I was watching the series) for Obama to just shut up. I heard about how bad ESPN has come but they are really taking the pleasure out of enjoying sports. Sports are supposed to be a diversion from the stupidity of life, especially politics. ESPN had forgotten this. Damn them!

• Ha! It turns out that Jesus – oops! I mean Obama – is actually a Barabbas. I knew that in 2009 when his appearance on the world stage looked to me like Jonestown on a big scale. The Obama fans aka Barabbisians will be still be denial despite the amount of evidence that has now come to light.

• The only interactions that I have with Chinese these days – excepting my wife Jenny, of course – is when I am driving. It is impossible to have a good opinion of them after driving, as I have said in the blog, ad nauseam. All I can say is that they do have an ability to raise the level of stupidity and impudence every week. I mean there has to be something special about them as drivers when every week, I find myself saying to myself that I had thought I had seen it all. This week, I saw a driver who looked to have put drapes on the windows of his car. The only places where there weren't drapes were on the front windshield and the front halves of the front seat side windows where he would see his side mirrors. I assume that he did this draping to shade the interior. (If you looked closer the drapes were actually those shade covers you usually see put up when the car is stopped but not when it is being driven). This moron driver with drapes nearly cut me as he tried to get in the left lane before then deciding to make a right turn.

• I was in a double wide turning lane, in the left lane, when a van tried to sneak in front of me from the right. The driver didn't make a turn signal and so he earned my ire and I didn't yield to him. When it was time to turn he managed to get in front of me and have his van come to a dead stop. I saw that he was trying to turn around and was confused about what to do. A Chinese person will go through their way without consideration with others around them. A Chinese person confused about the way they are supposed to be going is even more of a menace and a nuisance.

• I prayed two mysteries of the Rosary but it couldn't stop me from raging as I drove. Three instances of being cut off and I started making the middle-finger salute. As I was the road that went beside my apartment complex, I held on to my steering wheel with my arms while making middle-finger salutes with both hands. I wasn't doing this to anyone in particular. I was doing this for the local driving environment altogether.

• Jesus had enemies. I believe they were called the Pharisees. Can that explain the problem I am having with the sorts I see everyday now? You have to love your enemies without weakening yourself to a point that you try to deny they are enemies.

Thoughts about Being Further Furloughed, and other random thoughts.

• One of my first thoughts upon receiving word that I was to be further furloughed, after the initial urge to swear and scream, was to have a staff meeting with management, in order to basically vent, ask questions and air thoughts. My request was granted but others didn't think it was a good idea, so I decided to withdraw it. I still have thoughts about it, so I will compose them here:

• Why were our school and its competitors further furloughed (FF) by the authorities? Could it be that they want to squeeze out the English teaching industry? The way this FF was announced to us couldn't, if it had been done with planned spite, have been a better way to get ESL teachers to want to leave China. (I did hear on a podcast, an expatriate living in China, say that Xi Jing Ping's approach to teaching Chinese English has been to say that the Chinese don't need foreign help anymore.) Could it be that my school don't have guanxi? It seems arbitrary the way some businesses have been allowed to operate and others have not. For instance, the morning after getting the FF email, I read that Shanghai Disneyland was to re-open. (And I have already commented on how I have witnessed Starbucks seemingly back to normal operation.)

• My position here in the PRC is becoming more and more tenuous. By law, I am not allowed to pursue any other ways of earning income except by working for my school. The isolation I had from the expatriate community, while not having actually been made worse by the furlough (because it was almost absolute before the furlough), has now become irrevocable. Besides Tony & my wife Jenny (when she is not talking divorce), I have no one in Wuxi that I can deal for whom I feel nothing but suspicion. There is no way I could be friends with any locals. I don't have any thing in common with any of them. My life has been one when I realized too late the importance of social bonds. I am stuck in my own world.

• When and if I do teach at my school, it may be hard for me to do so without an undercurrent of rage. While there are a few locals I like, there are far too many who bore me and I would find it hard to be grateful to see them again for more than five minutes.

• Chinese driving habits are more a menace to the lives of people than is this virus. Driving to Tony to school the day after receiving the FF notice, I witnessed a driver cutting off a car on its left by making a left turn from the right lane. Brilliant stuff

• Returning to work will be a mixed-blessing. I feel I am going to have a lot of unpleasant classes and that the sensation of wanting the classes to be done as soon as possible will be hard for me to suppress, no matter how much Christian love I can summon up before I do encounter some students.

• The FF email was so disheartening that I have decided to stop posting on WeChat. No more jokes, no more comments, no more memes. This may not be such a bad thing if I can find better ways to focus my energy. I really am going to have to look into other ways of earning income.

• It was the morning after the FF notice. I was sitting in the car, which was at its parking spot, and I had just dropped off Tony at school, I wondered what I would do for the rest of the day. The things I had been doing to occupy my time seemed so hollow and pointless. Only prayer and a sense of a duty to my son are keep me going now. I finished off praying the rosary. I then went straight back to the apartment. I didn't bother going for a walk as I would have done if I had been in better spirits. I was feeling so glum that I didn't see the point of finding someone I could complain to on social media. I couldn't see them being able to cheer me up. The only thing to fall back on is Christ and his Mother.

• My day currently consists of getting up to get Tony to school and then sitting around the apartment till the late afternoon when it is time for me to pick up Tony from school. I sit in the car at Tony's school for a while because I get there early to get a good parking spot. When Tony & I get home, I sit around the apartment till it is time for us to go to bed.

• "Haters got to hate!" say the hate-haters.

• Whose side are you: the haters or the hate-haters? I am with the haters because the very concept of being a hate-hater is illogical and dishonest.

Lockdown Skeptical; Ashamed of the West I am; a World of Airport Security; Michigan Has a Bad Person as Governor; Mother's Day and the Virgin Mary; BAD NEWS;

• About two months ago, it became apparent to me that the lockdown was unnecessary. The locals, with their genius for not obeying rules, quickly got in the habit of not obeying the lockdown rules. And to be frank, the rules imposed were never as chickenshit as they were in America and Canada and England. The social distancing thing was never practiced even when the lockdown was full Nazi slash Commie. People soon got in the habit of not wearing masks. The security guards were leaving me alone. So for at least two months, I have been in a state of wondering (accompanied by slow simmering anger) when I could go back to work because basically everything has gotten back to normal with lots of other people going to work and shops open as normal.

• So why are there so many people insistent on the lockdown being necessary in the West? The virus numbers I see don't seem to justify it. Why are there so many would-be communists and dictators in the West? What has happened to my "people"? I have never been so ashamed and disgusted.

• I don't want to live in a world where everywhere is as annoying as an airport security check, but this is the world it appears we are going to be living in. More people who would ago bout their day, minding their own business, are going to have explain to some state enforcer what they are doing.

• I really have a hate-on for the governor from Michigan. She is one of the worst Western persons in the world. Probably as bad as the Canadian and New Zealand Prime Ministers.

• I didn't do anything for Mother's Day. I did so because I had a notion that it was a commercial holiday anyway. Reading my favorite blogger (David Warren of Essays in Idleness) about the Day, I saw I was half right. Warren wrote that he didn't observe the day and instead did something for the Virgin Mary. I slapped myself for not having posted on WeChat about her. I read Warren's blog entry the day after so it was too late for me to do that. Damn those time zone differences!

• I wrote the five points early on May 11^th. It is my practice to never publish a blog entry till I have given it time to sit and then be looked at and edited from a different perspective. Whether mentioning this is relevant to what I am going to write now, I don't know, but this last bullit-point I will make with this blog entry is a doozy. And it was composed much later than the five first bullit-points. I just got an email from school management saying that we won't be re-opening in May, and that there is a 70 percent chance that we will re-open on June 1^st, and a 90 percent chance that we will re-open on July 1^st. Needless to say, I was very angry on the receipt of the email. If Tony wasn't beside me when I read it, I would have swore aloud and thrown things. I had been expecting the email to tell me my work schedule for the next week , and so it was a vicious shock to learn that instead we would be further furloughed with no definitive word about when this stupidity would come to an end.

• Comments? Email me at andiskaulins@hotmail.com.

Scary World We Live In; Was He Yelling at Me?; Return to the Scene of My(?) Crime; Back to Work (Sort of); Tenuousness; Praying Habits

• More and more it is becoming obvious to me that the lockdown in the West is insane I am sitting here in China and when talking to an Australian friend of mine about the current lockdown procedures being followed in his country(or enforced, I should say?), I had to remark that it was more Communist than what I was experiencing in the People's Republic of China.

• I picked up my son Tony from school on the sixth of May. I was driving him home when I came to this corner where I have to make a right turn. The way it is set up is that the right turn lane is to the right of the straight head lanes. That is it is not a case of a straight-ahead lane being designated a turn lane; it is a lane that appears on one's right as one approaches the corner. So I went into the turn lane, passed through the whole lane and started to make my right turn. But you can't make a quick turn because you do have to be wary of e-bikers who are going straight through the intersection (the bike lane is to the right of the right turn lane, and so it leads to encounters between turning cars and bikes trying to go straight ahead.) I instinctually looked for this and saw this e-biker right beside me, maybe closer than I was used to. So I slowed down and I saw that the man riding the e-bike was very upset. I let him go on his way and then I made my turn. I observed him turning around and screaming. And I thought perhaps he was screaming at me. I do recall that I went into the turn lane rather quickly, but I don't see how I could have cut him off because I stuck to the turning lane and didn't lead into the bike lane until I had to make my turn. But the sight of him bothered me all that evening. I still wasn't sure that it was my bad, and suspected that the man was mad because I got in his way even though he wasn't obeying the rules. Still, the first rule of China is not to hit anyone, even if they are breaking the rules, so I told myself that I just have to be on much more of a lookout for e-bikers when turning.

• The next morning, after dropping off Tony, I turned at the same corner. I observed a car ahead of me turning right causing an e-biker to slow down. This particular e-biker wasn't upset by being cut off, but cut-off she was, all the same. And I had a good idea what had happened the evening before. I got too close to this e-biker. My bad? Up to a point.

• Maybe I will be going back to work on the 18^th. It all depends, I have been told, on our school passing some government inspection on the 15^th. What this inspection will involve, I have no idea. And if we do get back to work, we won't be working full-time, just half-time till the school can adjust to the post-lockdown situation. Everything that had been going on before has been obliterated beyond recognition.

• I can't help by think that my position in China is becoming more and more tenuous. I can see the demand for the services I provide drying up very quickly. The Decoupling which others had foreseen coming seems to be coming.

• I pray the rosary every day. I then go through the fourteen stations of the cross. I feel it gives me strength to get through my life, though without improving it. I think it is presumptuous to ask God for favors, and the best we can ask for is strength for whatever he, life and our actions ends up giving us. I should also pray more than just in the mornings. I neglect to pray before meals, in the evenings, and before bedtime. I neglect to offer thanks for the small favors life does grant me: like for only being yelled at for having a near collision.

Lots of Uniforms and Signs; Coding with Python; Don't Go Anywhere During a Chinese Public Holiday!; Chinese Restaurant; Photos;

• Thursday, the last day of May, I walked to my Wife Jenny's office building to get some packages which had been left in lockers for pickup. Along, the way I had to get through a couple of intersections. At the first one, which is near the entrance to the Casa Kaulins apartment complex, I took photos that could convey the chaos that takes place at intersections when turning cars don't yield to oncoming traffic. At the next intersection, I would have loved to have taken photos of what I saw but didn't because I didn't think it would be a good idea. I saw these guys with signs. At first I thought they were for a store doing a promotion. But when I came back to the intersection, after having picked up the packages for my wife, I saw that each intersection was manned by a person in security uniform holding a sign. I wasn't sure what the signs said but it looked like the government trying to tell the motorists something. As well, I saw about six of the yellow traffic storm troopers looking to pull over motorists and e-bikers and crappy-looking commercial vehicles.

• I have gotten back into Python coding. I want to try to get Tony to learn it. I learned Python a few years go for something to do. For some reason, I gave it up it. Recently I got the idea (I can't remember how now) to try to teach it to Tony. My work was on file so I was able to bring it back and get it to work. Now, for fun, I have been working on making the old code better. I had made programs that could create sports style standings for 4 team leagues and 5 team leagues. Just in the past week, I coded so I could create standings for 6 and 8 team leagues. I found it very absorbing to get the bugs out of the code. It is sort of detective and tester work.

• May 1^st, my wife had this idea to go to some park in Wuxi (in the Li Hu area if you care.). When she told me the idea, my first reaction was that I hoped the place wasn't crowded. Jenny then put pressure on me to not be so negative, so I said I wanted to go, even I couldn't hide my misgivings very well. And went we did. And the place was crowded as I expected. When we saw all these people and a traffic jam of cars, we decided immediately to go back home. And on the way back home, we had to get through three traffic jams. We should have just stayed home. So despite knowing better, I went out on a Chinese public holiday. And I have to wonder about all the Chinese people who were out on a holiday. Why didn't they know better? Mass stupidity.

• May 2^nd (or was it the 3^rd?), we went to this restaurant in the Dong Ting area of Wuxi. It was the first time we had been in a sit down Chinese-style restaurant since before the Spring Festival. We were invited by some friends of Jenny. They all spoke Chinese. I basically sat mute. Sadly, I haven't learned to speak much Chinese after all these years. Anytime I do try, I am not understood by the locals because of my bad tones, my bad pronunciation or the locals inability to believe that foreigners can speak Chinese; and so I give up and I go mute. I try to listen to what is being said, but I can only pick up the stock phrases I have learned from my Chinese study (which I do do daily) but everything else is goobly-gook. At the restaurant we went to, we were in a private room with a round table with a rotating pedestal in the center. I noticed that every dish placed in the pedestal came with these serving chopsticks, which I later confirmed had been placed there on account of the virus. I used them every time when I took food from the pedestal dishes though I noticed that most of the others, especially the kids, weren't following the protocol. So, there were kids at the dinner and they were all playing games on an electronic device. The male adults all smoked and I was given about six cigarettes which made me ill when I tried to smoke them. (I am not a quitter when it comes to smoking but I think I will be now. The cigarettes really disgusted me.)

• Tony was back to school on May 6^th. That morning, after driving him there, I went for a walk and took a lot of photos which I have published in my photo blog.