Monday Morning AKIC Jottings

Gordon  The big Canadian news lately has been about the trial of some high-ranking military officer who went from participating in pantie raids, to committing acts of rape, and then to murdering and torturing women.  There isn't much I can add to the disgust everyone feels about the story except this:  Interesting it was that someone from Australia was asking me about the gruesome story.  And I have seen people trying to make political points about it.  Someone on the Internet had to say that 99.99 percent of Canadian military people were not like this Gordon -- I wonder why that had to even been said.  All this sad episode tells us is that we are fallen creatures and some of us are capable of great evil -- there is no political creed, institution - no matter how noble,  or  political party that can change this.  The Gordon story has nothing new to tell us about human nature.  All we can do is pray for the victims and families.

Chinese Teacher  For the second time ever, I had someone on the bus help me with my Chinese study.  I was reading over Chinese characters in my Elementary Chinese Reader (volume 2) when the passenger next to me spoke to me.  I was listening to a podcast and so I had to quickly turn off my MP3 player -- only problem was, I couldn't remember where I put it on my person -- it took me much longer than it should have to find it.  The girl, maybe because she saw I was reading Chinese writing, though I could speak good Chinese, and so she spoke to me very fast.  I had to quickly say "ting-bu-dong!"  I understood was she was trying to ask me but damn, I couldn't find the words I needed to say.  Eventually after awkward moments of misunderstandings, she helped me read the Chinese characters.  I realized how really, really, really awful my pronunciation was and vowed to stick to learning the writing.  I also reflected that I should also learn how to be nice to strangers who are nice to me.

My Viewer Stats  Ever since I had an all-time high one month, my blog viewer numbers have been declining.  Was it something I said?  Or is it the case that I am not out there in the Wuxi Expat community anymore?  Probably a bit of both.

Everyone!  All the students in my conversation class told me that they were bloggers.

Red Guards are winning!  After Sunday's NFL games, the Wuxi Red Guards, Wuxi Expatdom's official NFL fantasy football team, are winning their match up.  If everything goes well in the Monday Night Match up, the Red Guards record will be 4-3.