What is Racism?; All Lives Matter versus Black Lives Matter; I Try Not to Wear a Mask; A Trip to An Expat Bar; Scan-codes are Barbarous!; Prospects for Playing Baseball with Tony this Summer; Wuxi is Having Its Wettest Month Ever

• I did an evening Speaker's Corner on Racism. I asked the group assembled what they thought Racism was. An older lady said Racism was like when white people hated black people. I told her she just gave me the strict BLM definition of racism and then asked her if that was what she meant and she answered that her definition was not so strict.

• I asked my Chinese audience if they preferred say Black Lives Matter or All Lives Matter. They all said the latter.

• I try not to wear a Covid face mask if I can help it. The only time I do wear one is when it is required like getting on the bus and the subway, or entering a store that has this requirement. Otherwise, I don't. In fact when I am on the bus, I pull the thing down onto my Adam's apple as soon as I have passed the bus driver. When I get off the bus, I make a point of immediately taking the mask off and putting it away in my bag with a hope that people notice me doing so.

• I went to the local Wuxi Expat Bar. I took Tony there to celebrate the end of his school year with pizza, fries and beer (just for me). I didn't really talk to the Expats who were there. I did know and recognize some of them through social media and through long ago personal encounters.. I could only observe that some things never change. As luck would have it, I talked to someone just as I was leaving. He noticed my Minnesota Wild t-shirt and we got to talking about the coming NHL playoffs which I learned from him are going to take place in August. I also learned that he was married to a Chinese woman and had a young child. I warmed him of the transformation of his wife when the child becomes of school age.

• I had thought to put swearing in the title for this bullit (or is it bullet?), but then thought better of it. Tony & I went to the Ikea to buy hot dogs. We walked to the cashier and they told us we had to use our phones to scan a code and make an order. I went through the process but it didn't work, and so Tony & I decided to heck with it, and not bother. I hope this costs Ikea business. (That and it has probably gone BLMish and cowardly, anyway!) I just want to be served by humans and tell them to hold the vegetables in the hot dogs! (For some reason, unfathomable to me, the Wuxi Ikea puts vegetables in the hot dogs, and it is a pain to try to get them not to do this.)

• On a Sunday, the temperature was in the mid-thirties centigrade in Wuxi. And it was very humid. Not the kind of weather to play baseball in, I thought. And then, apropos of nothing, Tony told he was hankering for a session of catch and trying to hit the ball with a baseball bat. And then we went to a sporting goods store where they do sell baseball bats. Tony asked for and get a new baseball bat. And the next day it rained. And he really wanted to go out and try hitting balls with it.

• It has been the wettest summer on record, someone at school said.