Bloggy, Bliggy, Bluggies; or should AKIC say Bliggin, Blaggin, Bloggins?

• I am living in the PRC!  You don't know what's it like to live,.... in the PRC!  Wuxi girls really knock me out!  They have no weight problems!  And Taixing girls really knock me out! And Beixing is always on my my my my mind!  Take me to economic development zones way down south!  Show me to your new apartment!  Let me hear your erhos blaring out!
• Welcome to AKIC -- a reactionary commentary on the human comedy as seen in China.
• Imagine success in terms of other people -- and this doesn't mean they die or fail.  Something to be said for this because I have always imagined succeeding as an individual -- and look where that has got me.  But to find a kindred soul -- there's the rub.
• My 2010 excuses for having a lame Christmas.  I would readily assent to the idea that Christmas is really about Christ's birth because it does put me off the hook for not having too much to do with the Santa Christmas.  So, there aren't many Christmas decorations in Casa K.  But at the same time, it doesn't excuse my inactivity for celebrating the birth of Christ.  I have done nothing to broach the topic with my Chinese wife.  I also have an inertia brought on by years and years and years of not doing any Christmas preparations.  Because for the longest time, I was just a bachelor.  With Tony in my life now, I do have to think of actually doing some Christmas preparation.  But Tony is too young and the logistics of decorating Casa Kaulins requires time I don't have.  I spend at least two hours a day riding buses and I don't intend to carry Christmas things with me. And I am in China where they have grasped the commercial and vulgar aspects of the holiday, anyway.
• Mind and action.  I have been of one mind about most things -- however my actions have been inconsistent.  There is a wide gulf between my actions and my beliefs.  Changing the idea of a gulf into the image of a long canyon rift, I say that the sides of the canyon come close together when my beliefs require inaction or avoidance.  Lack of courage to do action keeps the rift so often wide that someone standing on one side of the canyon would have a hard time seeing the other side.  You don't believe in sentimentality?  Knock me over with a cheese stick.
• I can go to a bus stop, and look for the Chinese words for the places I want to go.  I can then take a bus I have never before been on, or even been told of.
• What's wrong with Chinese culture?  Some students said it was perfect.  A few said it was too authoritarian.
• Said Kenneth Clark: "If I had to say which was telling the truth of a society, a speech by the minister of housing, or the actual buildings put up in his time, I should believe the buildings."  With this quote in mind, I asked the students what the current state of architecture in Wuxi said about its state of culture and society.  One student said it showed Wuxi was getting rich.  Another student said it showed that Wuxi wanted to be Western.  Yet another said it shows that Wuxi doesn't know what it wants to be.  And finally, another said "it shows what the government wants!".  Clark when talking about French Classicism said  this: "This is the architecture of a great metropolitan culture; and it expresses an ideal: not an ideal that appeals to me, but an ideal nonetheless -- grandeur achieved through the authoritarian state."