More Thinkings from AKIC

On the Waterfront 2010  Terry Malloy's new lament:  You don't understand. I coulda been a victim. I coulda had a government job.  I coulda been looked after for the rest of my life, instead of a working person in the private sector, which is what I am...

Google Update  I receive Google Update emails daily about "wuxi expat".  Today, I got an update about some piece I had written in my blog nearly a year ago -- the entry was about an abdication or something.

To Do List  Having lots of down time at school, I have a to do list of things to keep me occupied.  I remind myself to visit certain sites; to do my Latvian and Chinese study; to read Aquinas, Teresa, and Bishop; to make blog entries; to keep in contact with certain people, download podcasts; and to review my blog and article writings.  (Now, I can scratch off or mark "blog ideas" on the list.)  The to do list keeps my head spinning like I having a real busy day with real responsibility.

My Compaq Presario laptop still works well after seven years.

Excerpt from a proposed article:  Does Living in Wuxi change an Expat in ways that say living in Shanghai, Shanxi, or Shaanxi wouldn't?  Writing in a Wuxi Expat magazine, I would like to think so.  And I have lived in Wuxi for six years so I think I am entitled to have a say of sorts, though I fully acknowledge that I haven't spent all that much time in Shanghai, Shanxi, or Shaanxi to know what those places can do to an Expat. Still,  Six years in a place and it will grow on you; and you even start to think to you have a feel for its people and have become like them in some way.  But then again, six years being a long time in a person's life,  it is natural that one does change and one has the hope or presumption that one has picked up some wisdom in that stretch of time.  And when one does contemplate life's changes and tries to ascertain where and how the changes came about, one has to separate the changes that can be attributed to time and the changes that can be attributed to the place or circumstances one is in (as well as to one's own personal  idiosyncrasies). Also, once one has identified the changes that can be attributable to a place, one must separate them into physical and  metaphysical changes....

 

Why I choose a seat on the bus.  John Derbyshire choose a seat on the commuter train because he "was looking for a seat on a train, for crying out loud, not a best friend for life."  

John Edgar Wideman when he found a seat on a commuter train thought the very pleasing moment of anticipation cast(ed) a shadow, because (he couldn't) accept the bounty of an extra seat without remembering why (it was) empty …   Wideman is black so he figures the extra seat is there because people don't want to sit next to him, a black man. 

 I choose a seat on the bus, in Wuxi, where I hope there is little chance of an old person, or a woman with child shaming me into yielding their seat to them, and so I sit at the back of the bus.  I have noticed that my appearance on the bus causes stirs among other passengers because they don't often see foreigners on the bus, but I am too focused on my reading and podcast-listening to care.  I have seen some passengers choose not to sit next to me because I am either a foreigner, or the prospect of getting around my long legs is not so tantalizing.  But if the bus becomes very crowded, someone does sit beside me.  Either way, I am happy to have a seat and love being allowed to listen to my podcast or read my book in peace.  In a crowded country in China, one is thankful for the space or seat however one happens to get it.

Russia  The students know next-to-nothing about Russia I found out in a recent English Corner.  Still I was impressed to know that one student had read the Chinese translation of War and Peace.  And the Chinese pronunciations of Russian names (like Yakushev and Kunetski) must be something to behear!

No knockhead:  I saw a sign, worded this way, placed over a low opening in a restaurant in Hui Shan.

Beware of landslide:  In the same restaurant, I saw another sign, worded this way, at the bottom of a set of steep stairs.  The proprietors of the restaurant choose this sign  and its particular wording, because it had a picture of a falling person.

Paris Review Interviews  This site full of interviews with such literary luminaries as Evelyn Waugh, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop, and TS Eliot keeps me occupied -- it is an important option on my to do list.