Covid Travel Restrictions Mean I Am Stuck in China; Monkeys on Campus; Pray for Dave Warren; I Know Someone Who Has Had Covid!; No Circle in China

Got a notice from the Canadian Consulate telling me about what would happen if I currently traveled back to Canada:  I would need to take covid tests, stay in a hotel for three days at my expense, and then undergo two weeks of quarantine.  All very inconvenient.   So basically, I am stuck in China till the restrictions are removed.  Bastards!!!  I haven't seen my mother in nearly two years and pray I can see her in 2022.

I have to battle despair on account of this.  The lockdown has reduced my options for finding ways to earn more income.

Monkeys hanging out on Campus at a University in Suzhou.  A student at the school was telling me about this.  The monkeys are a source of mischief, stealing mobile phones and food and entering classes and dormitories.  The monkeys which aren't native to Suzhou, are escaped from a nearby zoo.  The authorities are trying to catch them but it is hard.  I told the student that they could tell stories about this the rest of their lives.

My favorite blogger, David Warren, who writes the Essays in Idleness blog, has recently undergone heart surgery.  I pray for his recovery and his return to blogging.

After nearly 400 days of Covid being a thing, I finally know of people who have got it.  A friend in Winnipeg, who I saw on my last visit to Canada, caught it.  A niece who lives in BC has also caught it.  Both of them have said that it was like having a bad cold or flu.  I also have a friend in Canada who has to take a vaccine against the Shingles.  But that is another story.

No one in my small circle of acquaintances in China has caught it.

It just occurred to me that I spend more time on social media talking to people I knew in Canada than to people I know of in China.  I am kind of isolated here.

This talk that a vaccine is needed to get out of this Covid Crisis is nonsense.  The virus will take its course and become as harmless as the Spanish Flu virus that is still around.

It seems no one is reading this blog.  I haven't been cancelled.  And I am certainly un-woke.

Lent; Limbaugh; Moving; My 2021 Spring Festival; So Not Busy;

It's Lent.  I hope to observe.  But it won't be easy.  I'm am submitting myself to a personal discipline, which I gather from the daily decade podcast that I have been listening to, is not enough.  I need some Catholic authority assistance in my life.

When something happens in the news that I find interesting, I find I am very interested in the reactions to the event.  However, with the Limbaugh death, I read the reactions and they were predictable.  From a normie conservative viewpoint, he was a hero; from a dissident conservative viewpoint, he was flawed but maybe okay or maybe not okay; from a white liberal viewpoint, he was evil incarnate.

Casa Kaulins will be moving.  My wife Jenny is buying an apartment in a complex near the Hui Shan Sports Center.  If you have ever visited my photo blog, you may have seen photos of the sports center which runs near the #1 Wuxi Metro Line.  We'll be closer to the Metro and have a place to exercise nearby which Tony may like.

My Spring Festival was dull.  It felt a lot like being in lockdown.  We didn't go out much and felt restricted as to where to go.  Apparently, there were 700,000 more people in Wuxi than normal Spring Festivals on account on Covid travel restrictions, and thus some of the local tourist spots and parks were overwhelmed.  I did go out once for pizza night at my Canadian friend's apartment.  He is bullish on China's prospects.  I find myself feeling dismal about them and wondering where I should spend my final days:  in China or somewhere else in Canada.

Oh God!  Foreign Teachers are said to be in great demand currently, but I am so not busy.  I do nothing but a few kid's classes and speakers corners.  And the kid's classes are becoming less and less.  I should change schools but it isn't easy.  I hope I can get a job at Tony's current school.

What am I doing in my spare time?  I study languages.  I read a lot.  I do this blog.  I pace and fret.  I pray.  I should be writing more and looking for ways to make more money.

I am going to have a lot of free time in the next few months.  If you need a correspondent, I'm your man.  If you need a butler, I'm your man.  If you need someone to write or transcribe, I'm your man.  If you need someone with whom to converse in English, I'm your man.  If you need a kindred soul, perhaps I'm your man.

Rush Limbaugh R.I.P.

Sad News.

In my life, I can say my view of things has been radically changed twice.  The second time, which I will mention first, was recently with the election of Trump, the reactions to it have opened my eyes to a lot of things, a lot of what I assumed has been shown to be not what I thought it was.  The first time in my life was listening to Rush Limbaugh.

I heard that he was awful, an idiot and evil.  In the spirit of seeing what the other side had to think, I listened to Rush.  I realized that the people who had forewarned about listening to Rush, were lying.  I quickly became a fan.

600 Million Vaccines for Three Hundred Americans; They Act Like They Stole It; Podcasts or Music?; Better to be a Nutjob; Complaints; Chinese New Year's Eve Drunkedness and Abortions; And so on...

(Note:  The first batch of thoughts and observations were posted before the Spring Festival Holiday)

I granted the possibility that tales of Biden's cognitive decline were exaggerated by the "right."  But after seeing Biden try to explain what was going on with the vaccines, I could see that if anything, the talk has been understated.  How the hell could so many have voted for Biden?  And I say this not counting the many fraudulent votes Biden got in the supposed fair election of November, 2020.

Was the election stolen?  Given the way the people who deny the election are acting, you have to conclude it was.  They have acted hysterically and exposed their guilt.

To listen to podcasts or music?  That is the question I have as I go to and fro work.  Right now, I am listening to Rammstein and New Order a lot.

Better to be a nutjob and beyond the pale, that go along with what is mainstream:  the COVID panic is necessary and Biden is a refreshing change from Trump.

It is really hard to deal with people who think that COVID is more of thing than it really is.

SoTD:  five-time winner of the Miss Bum Bum Pageant.

SoTD:  Chuck Norris was known as Schmuck Norris until he started to listen regularly to SoTD.

What is SoTD?  Someone posts a Song of the Day on WeChat.  I make comments on the postings like the ones above.

There is a holiday atmosphere of sorts in Wuxi.  But I may not be picking up on it.  I only notice stuff when I walk streets.

Are we living in more evil than usual times?  Yes.  I am talking about the evil that is being done by man, and it is huge.

They get rowdy here on the eve the Spring Festival aka Chinese New Year, if a student at my Speakers Corner is to be believed.  The student told me that a doctor acquaintance told her that hospitals are busy on the eve because of drunk people getting into accidents.  And then two weeks later, a lot of young women go to hospitals to get abortions....

Give up the suffering to God.  That's way to endure classes with annoying students.  Better to give it up to God than to lash out at them.

And boy did I have a class of annoying students!  Couldn't get them to get away from their phones. Told them not to, but they wouldn't listen.  Not much I can do.  I am not allowed to get mad.  Nothing I could do but run the clock out.

(The following were written during Spring Festival Week)

My Spring Festival has basically been like a lockdown.  The three of us (that be, Jenny, Tony & I) have stayed in the apartment.  We haven't eaten out once.  

I did take Tony to the complex basketball court.  I beat Tony 21-15 in a game of Twenty-One.  Tony was disappointing not competitive.  I had to force him to finish the game.

Tony is expressing resentment at my seeing what's he up to in his room.  I have a feeling that his teenage years are going to be hard for him and for his parents.

Hey Dad, Where Did You Get That?; Quarantine if I leave Wuxi, China; Agree? Disagree?; Biden is a Moderate?; Smartphones are Evil; Lineups at Local Hospitals; Quarantine if I go to Canada; A Leaf between Two Prison Bars;

I must be cool somehow if my son Tony asks where I acquired a piece of clothing I was wearing. 

What was I wearing?  A great hoodie bearing an "H" crest and the words "Hawaii Warriors".  Tony is not the first to tell me they like the hoodie nor the first to ask me where I got it.

I wonder, however, if I should want my thirteen-year-old son to like what I am wearing, to the point where he thinks it is cool.

I have been told that if I choose to go to Jenny's hometown for Spring Festival, I would have to be quarantined when I came back to Wuxi.  I see a loophole in this.  If Jenny chooses for us to go to her hometown, I could say I didn't choose, my Chinese wife did and I had no choice.

Subject of a Speaker's Corner:  "Agree? Disagree?".  I discovered the audience disagreed with me about most things, except for the statement "Parenting style makes no difference." where some students said that families with many children have children who are all different.

Someone told me that Biden got the nomination of the Democrat Party because he was seen as a moderate.  Really?????

One needs a tracking code to get on the Wuxi subway.  I had to swear to get on the subway.  I saw an old couple visibly angry at the requirement.

I couldn't have bought pizza at Dominos because I didn't have the proper payment method set up on my phone.  I had to put my foot down to get served.

The old ladies at my Speakers Corners can't seem to understand why I am suspicious of Communist China's embrace of using the Smartphone for shopping and other activities that normally involve cards and documents.  They cite its convenience.  They don't seem to understand the totalitarian uses that this convenience can sucker them into.

The going seems most convenient just before one comes upon the waterfall.

There are longer lineups of cars waiting to park at the two hospitals that are near our school.  I learned from the students at my Speakers Corner that people had to get COVID tests done if they wanted to go to other cities and districts during the upcoming Spring Festival.

I am stuck in Wuxi, China on account of the doings of the Chinese Communist government and the Canadian Communist government.  If by chance I did go back to Canada, I would currently have to shell out an additional two thousand dollars to stay in a quarantine hotel.

David Warren, my favorite blogger, had it right.  The current Canadian flag is a shriveled dying red leaf between two red prison bars.