6:30 AM View

 No hurry this morning so I take another view photo.

I’ll leave eventually.

Milestones:  1789 Day Duolingo Streak and over 2,600,000 views on my YouTube channel.

5:00 AM View

 I’m in the midst of making a greetings video: a Thursday morning greetings video.

Changed my routine again:  go to bed without showering, showering in the morning.

Trudeau really screwed up this time.  That’s what I am gleaming off the inter web.  Just resign already!

4:33 PM View

 Looks like I forgot to take a lunchtime view photo. I did go here for lunch.  Here is not home.

Slow day for me.

6:35 AM View

 I left the JJ apartment a little later this morning.  So I took this photo of the dawn before I left to go to school.

4:58 AM View

 Went out last night to a 2024 Jiangyin Overseas Experts New Year Celebration Event, so didn’t take an evening view.  The event was a lot of fun.  We ate good food and drank beer.  I meet people from Egypt, Venezuela, Kurdistan and PEI.

Thankfully I don’t start as early today as my colleagues are.

After all the fun, we got suitcases full of goodies.

11:23 AM View

 Plans changed.  I won’t be going to the Jiangyin Friendship thing.

I will sitting around watching rehearsals till 16:00.

I started reading the Odyssey because I’m trying to figure out Jame Joyce’s novel Ulysses’s relation to it.

4:50 AM View

 When I woke up this morning, I asked Siri what time it was.  She told me 3:00.  An hour to snuggle I had.

Today’s schedule:  two classes, listening tests, a class or a rehearsal, and some Friendship event run by Jiangyin.  I tempted to skip the latter.  I’m going to be late for it.

I uploaded a good night video to YouTube:

5:03 PM View

 Still light out.

How many foreigners did I talk to today?  One.

Played the music video Jump by Van Halen.  I asked the students what the name of the song was.  They said a sound that started with J but it wasn’t Jump.

Tomorrow, I am supposed to be at the front door of the Jiangyin Grand Theatre at 14:00.  My class ends at 14:10.  I’ll be late.  I’ll go if someone is late with me.  Otherwise, I’ll pass.

Here are some videos I made this morning:

12:01 PM View

 I’ve always found 12:01 PM to be confusing.  It appears to be more midnight than lunchtimish.

When it’s 11:56 AM, I feel I’m more on solid ground.

4:52 AM View

 Monday morning.  Might be a busier week for me.  I got some speaking tests to administer and some social affairs to attend on Wednesday and Friday

Right now, I’m feeling disembodied from everything.  Going through the motions seems wearying.  But what do I want instead?  Don’t know.

1:51 & 3:04 PM Views

 

Just drive from the WJ apartment to the JJ apartment.  There was one female driver in a red BMW that we both Tony & I gave the one finger salute to on account T of her cutting us off without even using turn signals…

We had lunch at the Wanda Plaza where I saw this sight:

The glare is obscuring the bit in red lettering that I hope you can see.

Here’s a closeup:

“The Constitution of New Socialist Countryside.

8:58 AM View

 Phoned Canada.

Did some reading.

Ate breakfast my wife ordered from KFC.

Made a greetings video in Chinese.

My Chinese is atonal!

Jon Ottenson’s Obituary

 

5:56 AM View

 I went to sleep around 11:00 PM last night.  So up a little later this Sunday morning.

Plans:  phone Canada, drink coffee, do daily reading, pray, maintain Duolingo streak, make greetings video, drink coffee, blog, past the time, listen to podcasts, nap, buy bread, drive to JJ and make a video for YouTube.

6:30 PM View

 Had to take a photo of this view at night.

Listening to this podcast:

Formerly known as Weedslut.

4:49 PM View

 There is some kind of building project going on in front of the right hand side buildings.

I was hoping to go to the Red Lion tonight.  Tony initially promised to go but changed his mind.  I asked three others but they were busy.  So, I’ll be spending the evening and night at the Wuxi Ivy Park apartment.  It is probably just as well that I don’t go because I can’t naturally enjoy or not enjoy these outings.  I have to fight existential despair — what a pretentious way of putting it — and not be able to find a way to just have a good time.  No matter how much experience should prepare me for nothing-will-happen, I find myself full of resentment.  (resentment at what?)

I prayed the rosary this afternoon.  Doing this prayer as often as I do, I believe the devil is real.  I often find, when my mind wanders, these dark thoughts coming into my mind where either I imagine my resentments acted out or some evil act depicted in a movie,

11:01 AM View

 Now in WJ.

9:52 AM View

 Soon, we leave.

8:59 AM View

 Another blog entry to pass the time as I wait for my son to get ready so we can drive to WJ.  I told him we’re leaving at ten and he seems hellbent on leaving at a little past ten.

Something interesting I came upon on the Interweb.  From my favorite blogger:

One of the most encouraging aspects of contemporary life is the sudden drop in university enrolments. This is unambiguously an improvement in human affairs, at least in the United States.

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/12/13/getting-schooled/

8:20 AM View

 Sun rising over the left hand apartment block.  Nice!

Planes of perception.  Every once in a while, I am doing something and my perception changes.  I give an example of what I mean.  My earliest memory of this happening was when I was playing pee wee hockey in Quebec.  I was on the ice playing and then all of a sudden, there was a snap, and in my body, things went away from me and I said to myself:  here I am, I am playing hockey.  At the moment, the fact that I had been immersed in my life like I was a character in a movie or novel or play seemed incredible to me.  My existence seemed a curious thing and I wasn’t a fly on the wall..

6:04 AM View

 Today, we’ll drive to Wuxi.  I hope I can get Tony ready in time so we can meet Mom for lunch.

Friday evening (last night), I stayed at the apartment.  I read Milosz while watching laundry.  Retired early and then I was asked if I wanted to go out. I had just seen this video where the woman asserted that anyone who went out past 7:00 PM was taking cocaine.  I showed this video to my acquaintance.

4:20 PM View

 Friday.  The plan is to go to Wuxi tomorrow.

It’s cold enough to wear a toque outside.

How many foreigners did I talk to in person today?  None, nada, nill.  What would we have had to talk about?

Listened to Viva Frei and made up Jeopardy questions today.

Bedtime tonight? 8:00 PM.

11:36 AM View

 Interesting light in this view photo.  Clouds and Sun.

I left my apartment keys here for the cleaning lady to pick up.

What to make of the fall of Assad in Syria?  I don’t know.

What to make of that assassination of the Health Care CEO?  I don’t know.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Viva Frei podcasts.

4:49 AM View

 For some inexplicable reason, I decided to do a greetings video while still in bed after having just awoken.

4:18 PM View

 

Am I having a Thrilling Thursday?  Not really; I feel annoyed. Maybe, watching this is video I made will cheer me up.

As I post it, it has three views on YouTube and over three hundred on Weixin.

11:48 AM View

 I drove the car to school.

I drove it back.  I found a good parking spot.

Had time to make notes this morning:

Fly on the Wall?

Fly on the fly on the wall?

Observing life is more interesting than living it?

Coming back later last evening, I couldn’t find a parking spot near the apartment.  I had to park outside the community at these spots in front of the mostly unoccupied shopping plaza that is across the street from the school.

I got to work at 8:00.  Late for me, though I was still up at 4:30 AM.

I will do some greetings video in my atonal Chinese.  I want to see what reaction I’ll get.

I get, good for me, numbers for some of my greetings videos on Commietube.

Milosz was not a fan of the American poet Frost.  M said F was great, but not authentic.  M said F had to put on a aw-schucks air to earn his fame.  I found F to be of middling rank, not a poet to get my fandom.

Had a cigarette buzz this morning.  I should quit after this pack.  I really should.

6:49 AM View

 I’m doing things differently today.  Because I’ll have to move the car, I will get to work after 7:20 AM.  Not that it matters much.  Teaching is light today…

4:12 PM & 5:08 AM Views

 So I drove to and from Wuxi yesterday.  When I arrived in JJ last night, I forgot to take a view photo.

If you think I let the blog and the team down, well… Screw you!  You smell!  You stink!  Your mother wears army boots!

Moving things from one apartment to another was what I did in Wuxi.

11:13 AM View

The plan this afternoon is to do my class and drive to Wuxi to help my wife with moving.  As soon as whatever she wants me to do is done, I’ll drive back to JJ, crossing my fingers that I’ll find a place to park.

This morning, I did my prayers.  I have a lot of time on my hands.  The need to do something about going to Canada is not yet urgent.

I read a useful essay about modern poetry by Milosz.  I’ll need to reread to truly absorb what it had to say.  What I did understand was how modern poetry is description, and how it is subject over object.  The latter because the poet now is an outsider and is even expected to play that role.  This is because of the decline of religion as part of people’s lives.

I was able to get registered on the work permit app.  It finally recognized my face.  I don’t have to shave off my beard! 

4:58 AM View

 I’ll be going to Wuxi this afternoon.  My wife needs me to do something.

What do I have to look forward to?  Trying to register on that stupid app and some annoying students.

3:40. PM View

 It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.  He forgot to put on the roof so now he’s soaking.

The working permit card for foreigners is now an app.  Fuddle that!  The registration process for me is always fraught with difficulties.

I can’t register.  It won’t recognize my face.  It won’t recognize my phone number.  How my name is ordered in their database is problematic.  Do I enter my name in all uppercase letters?  Farging ice holes!

11:22 AM View

 A cold dull day.  The students were sleepy or asleep,  A colleague then told me that it was a day where you could stay indoors and watch movies.

4:53 AM View

 

Started making coffee and then took this photo.

Prayed the Rosary with the beads last night.

No service for Jon.  The new way.

The kids and their device addiction.  Ai ya!

4:28 PM View

 Back at the JJ apartment.

11:47 AM View

 I’m home for coffee and a sandwich.

Tony’s here.  He had me call him in sick this morning.

4:30 AM View

 It’s zero degrees C now I saw on my Weather app.  Good thing I turned on all the heaters.

3:03 PM View

 I forgot to take a departing view when I left the WJ apartment.  I suppose I was too busy living my life to take a picture.  It happens.  Rarely, but it happens.

A milestone has been achieved.

The distance from WJ to JJ is a star running back and star hockey forward combined.