Ikea. Burger King. Fixed my bag quickly.

• I did an English Corner.  Its topic was Parenting.  I asked the students what, for the parent, was the best age of the child.  Many of the students told me the teenage years.  I told them that it would be hard to find a Western Parent who would think this.  I suppose this difference comes about because teenagers in China are mostly doing homework and so have little time for Western teenage angst.
• My wife has gone to the recently-opened Wuxi Ikea twice.  "Li Jia" is what the students call it, more or less, in Chinese. And she wants to go again!
• The new  Burger King in Wuxi feels like it is in a dungeon.  It is in the basement of the Parkson's Store at the corner of Renmin and Zhongshan Roads, and so it has short ceilings and no natural light.  42 rmb for a Double Whopper is more expensive than anything in McDonald's.  Still, I have come to like the flame-broiled taste.
• I did a conversation class.  Its topic was history.  I ask the students what were some great historical events.  One student said it was great when the Americans dropped Nukes on Japan.  I then asked the students to tell me an historical event they would like to change and a few mentioned that they would have loved to have gone back to 1966 and stopped Chairman Mao from starting the Cultural Revolution.
• The bus, I was taking to work, did a very hard stop and my backpack flew off my back and fell on the floor.  The force of the sudden and hard stop was enough to tear one of the straps.  Of course, the strap was probably already torn anyway from my having used the backpack to carry my laptop.  But here was the dandy thing:  I got off the bus, walked down the street and found  a repairman who fixed my bag for 2 yuan!  This sort of thing couldn't happen in Canada.  For one thing, the man didn't have a permit.  For another, he was taking a space of street.  He would probably have been harassed by police if he was in Canada for not conforming to regulation.  How nice to do a transaction without the stinking hand of government involved!!
• I have fixed my computer at Buy Now on Wu Ai Road.  I had the tech put in an English version of Windows 7.  I did this on Saturday Afternoon and spent all of Saturday Evening downloading needed software from the Internet.