Some Friday thoughts and whatnots

• September 1 is back to school day which means that Monday to Friday, the school has few students during the day.  It also means that I have to take Tony to the kindergarten van pick-up spot every morning.
• There is direct flight between Wuxi and Taiwan. This started in late August.
• Monday, I read my first entire novel on the Ipad:  The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells.  A good read, and easy, it would seem, to make into a movie.
• Is Wuxi boring?  Are Wuxi people boring?  Some will tell you that.  I would say their interests differ from ours.  And let's face it, the world of computer games is often more fascinating that one they do inhabit.
• I had a student tell he admires Chairman Mao.  He wasn't the first and he won't be the last.  When students tell me this, I quickly move on.  I can't be bothered to ask them why they say this.  They obviously figure this is what they have to say.
• I have a female student who is married and older than her husband.  I have never encountered this before in my seven years of teaching in China
• I saw a senior citizen wearing undershirt and flannel pants on bus.  He had a dignified bearing despite the way he dressed.
• I can't win sometimes.  Tuesday, after teaching a company class, I waited forty minutes for a taxi.  Usually, there would be a taxi waiting for me.  But for whatever reason, Tuesday was a bad night to catch a taxi in the New District of Wuxi.  
• Thursday evening, after teaching at the same company, I caught a taxi right away -- the security guards had one waiting for me.  I had the taxi take me to a bus stop downtown from where I can make my way home.  It seemed everything was tickety-boo as I got out of the taxi and went to the bus stop.  It was 840; and the bus would arrive shortly.  But then I waited and waited and waited.  At 900, I fantasized about punching the driver and asking him what had taken him so long.  At 905, I realized that I was at a point where I had waited as long as I had on Tuesday; and that having a taxi pick up me, right after my class was finished, was yielding no benefit.  I, in what I thought was an irrational move, went to look at the posted bus listings to see how long I could expect to wait for a 635 bus.  I then saw a sign that indicating, that the as of Thursday's date, the 635 didn't come to this stop.  I pointed this out to some others waiting for a bus.  I then accompanied some them as they walked to other bus stops looking to see if the 635 stopped there.  Eventually, we found a 635 stop.  But 45 minutes of my life, which I can never get back, was taken from me.
• Tony has three trains.  Jenny bought him a couple cheap trains from the Internet because he was asking to get another engine that he had seen in the Toys-R-Us catalogue.(Links if you can)
• Twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union.  An event that made for a better world.  Though Russia is far from a wonderful place, it is still an improvement.  As a person of Latvian ancestry, I hope that all who want, or wanted, the Soviet Union to exist would rot in hell.
• Speaking of Hell and the Soviet Union, catching a taxi at 530 pm in Wuxi is an ordeal.  Two times, I have had people aggressively try to take a taxi from me at this time of the day.  They will run in front of me to grab the taxi.  The first time it happened, I gave the people a rude gesture.  The second time, last night, I had to resist the urge to give someone an elbow in the face.  This woman, who came on the scene after I did, nearly swiped me as she rushed in front to get to a taxi.  Funny thing was I prevailed in the end.  The taxi driver, who was ending his shift, asked both of us where we were going.  I told him the New District.  He then took me and the woman, I nearly elbowed, into the taxi.  The woman and the driver argued, and after a block the driver kicked the woman out.
• Photos taken near my school:  Ba Bai Ban, Bus Stop, Primary School, and the Wuxi Protestant Church.