Rain! Rain! Rain!

• Rainy season in Wuxi they tell me.  They have been telling me this for many years but it hasn't yet registered in my brain to expect it.
• Friday evening, it came down like dogs and cats, or cats and dogs, as I told the students that it was okay to say. 
• Saturday morning, as well, the rain came down heavily.  I saw huge puddles on many roads and at many intersections.  Near my apartment, I saw street drains overflowing with water.
• The sidewalks in my area, as I mentioned before, have been torn up, and currently are in the process of being resurfaced with bricks.  Bricks and sand have been placed for the workers to do the resurfacing.  Now the heavy rain is making for a quagmire.  I have to wonder whose brilliant idea it was to tear up a sidewalk just around Wuxi's rainy season.  When I asked the locals why the sidewalks were being resurfaced.  I was told that someone had a lot of money to spend.
• Extra cops are at intersections are promoting harmony.  To even see them in my part of Wuxi is strange; and I have heard that downtown some intersections have been monitored by eight people or more. (In fact, I counted nine at the intersection of Xueqian and Zhongshan Road)
• I have been following the news from Vancouver about the riots.  Having lived in the area before I came to China, I saw video and recognized that the types of people involved in the riots.  These people did lots of drugs, loved to party, and were barbaric to the core -- white trash or white trash like.  They have always had a presence in the lower mainland.  I saw them always driving in their cars with blaring bass.  I saw them wearing hockey jerseys.  I saw them driving down the highways like yahoos.  They were the ones who broke into the parking garage of my apartment to steal cars and taking them on joy rides.   They were the ones who made my visits to Vancouver's downtown eerie.  They complained that the only jobs they could get are in McDonald's.  They had a sense of entitlement which I found offensive.   They were one of the reasons, I wanted to get out of B.C.  Game Seven of the Stanley Cup Final featuring the Canucks was their Woodstock.
• Friday morning, I saw thirty blue-shirted security guards or police standing before a ladder which was leaning against a second floor window.  Perhaps, they were trying to evict someone from an apartment.
• Being in China for as long as I have, I have thoughts of going back.  Seeing so many police here, I think I want to get out of this authoritarian state.  But then I see the riots in Vancouver, and I think of far too many barbarians that there are in Canada.  Some of them come to teach English in China, and think that the Chinese are nerdish and should be having more sex.