Blog Entry for July 30 to August 5

Gratitude

Thank God for Project Gutenberg and Podcasts.  They keep me occupied with plenty of free things to read and listen to and ponder about.

Acknowledgement

I don't do enough for Tony and Jenny.  Don't ask me to get into specifics because I don't want to and it is just a feeling I have in my gut.  (*I also have run out of ideas for this G-A-R feature after two weeks!)

Request

Visit this page of my baby and youth pictures and make lots and lots of critical comments.  Fire away!

Naked Boy by a downtown fountain

On Zhongshan Road there is a fountain on a street corner.  Zhongshan Road, to use Canadian English, is the main drag of Wuxi.

One evening while riding the bus, I saw a naked boy standing by the fountain.  Was he taking a bath or a swim in the fountain?

With the temperatures so high, nothing would surprise me!

Tony likes to look at diggers

On a Sunday evening, I took Tony to a nearby industrial park so he could look at Diggers or back-hoes or excavators.  You will soon photos of Tony and the diggers at one of his two websites soon.

Milton Friedman's 100th Birthday

Friedman was a happy warrior in the war of Economic ideas, unlike say a Paul Krugman who is probably the world's current most famous economist.

Reading Friedman's Free to Choose changed my view on so many economic and political issues.  (That and listening to Rush Limbaugh)  

If only I could be a happy warrior too!  But meeting nothing but leftists is such a drag!

Adam Carolla Podcast

Listening to his podcast, even though it is chalk full of crude language, gives me ideas for things to talk about during my English Corner.  For instance, I got the students to opine on whether it was okay to eat left over pizza from other tables in a pizza restaurant.  All of them said it was inappropriate even when I told them that it couldn't be thought of stealing and the pizza was essentially unwanted.

Next SPC, I will ask the students WTF is up with people coughing during moments of silence.

Later:  Whatever life philosophy, Adam Carolla is espousing, it is apparently being influenced by Dennis Prager, of all people.  Carolla and Prager are doing some sort of Chesterton - Bernard Shaw shtick together.  Knowing this, Carolla seems to me to be a Libertine turning Libertarian.  It is an improvement of sorts.  But, he has got to clean up his act and language, and talk about things that don't seem so navel-gazing in nature.

Still, he has a nice well-paid  gig.  He can talk about whatever he wants to talk about whether it is spiders on his ceiling or gun control.

Love Letters

The students really got off on adding sentences to a love letter:  "I have been away from you a long time: one second.  One second away from you seems a century!  I miss you very much.  I am burning.  You are my air.  I eat you when I eat a bowl of rice.  Let's go to a hotel......."

Who is Mitt Romney?

In a class of twenty five, three students told me they knew who Mitt Romney was.  I told them all that Romney might be the next president and they should remember I told them about him and that I also told them he had nice hair.

Real Men?

Michael Jackson and Bill Gates?  I obviously wasn't explaining well my idea of manhood and manliness to the students if one of them told me her idea of  who real men were Bill Gates and Michael Jackson.

What is that lump on the side walk I saw as I walked home one evening?

A man sleeping.

bù dǎ pì gǔ!   不 打 屁 股!

Thursday evening, Dad was walking around the house naked and so Mom decided to spank him with a plastic coat hanger.

Dad then said to son Tony:  help!

Tony ran up to Mom, grabbed the hanger away from her, and then sternly pointed at his mother and said:  bù dǎ pì gǔ!   不 打 屁 股! (translation: don't hit bum!)

Processes

I was asked by a student, what processes I liked.  (I was doing a class about processes)  I told her that I liked the writing process [sic].  It was an off-the-top-of-my-head answer.  I then realized what process I truly enjoyed:  watching my son Tony grow up.

Olympics

A lot of the students are, in fact, watching the Olympics.  I have been getting my updates from them.

Chow Mian Pian on Saturday Night

Due to Tony's whims**, it ended up that on Saturday night I was at Casa K while Jenny & Tony were downtown, putting us an hour apart by bus.  They were eating when I phoned them and learned of our separation, and so I was on my own for supper.

I decided to go to the Muslim Restaurant in our apartment complex and have chow mian pian -- a dish consisting of broad-cut noodles fried with veggies and some meat in a savory sauce.  I hadn't had it a while and so I quite enjoyed it.  It was made fresh and piping hot for me.  I then recalled why it was I had come to China in the first place.

Coincidence?

In my previous weekly entry, I mentioned that I was reading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens (on my Ipod Touch) and that I was quite taken with  a character Rokesmith who talks the Boffins into giving him a job and thereby created a position for himself that the Boffins had never knew they needed.  I then wished I could have the cheek to do something like that.

About two days after publishing the entry, I received this spam-like email asking me if I wanted to be someone's personal secretary for 500 USD a week.  I didn't reply because it didn't mention my having said I wanted that short of job in my blog.

Was that email sent me on account of some spam bot?

**Tony and Jenny were riding the #81 bus, Wuxi's double-deckered bus route.  Tony was very adamant that he and his mom get off at a stop far, far away from Casa K.