September 3 to September 9 Blog Entry

This week:

• I signed on for another year with my school.
• The Wuxi weather started to cool.
• Tony, I noticed, was sitting on the toilet to take his poos.  He puts a stool in front of the toilet (the stool you sit on!  Not s*** out!) and rests on it while he does his business.
• The NFL season started.  My (your or Wuxi's) official NFL fantasy football team is called the Wuxi Corrupt Officials.

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Now for my regular weekly features:

Gratitude  I should be thankful that the locals haven't run me out of their country.

Acknowledgement  I am no leader.  I hate having to make people do things they are reluctant to do, and I shirk having to do it where the opportunity arises.

Request  To the power that is:  I hope Tony learns his lessons well, and that his father has the patience to help him.

Canada ain't cool.  It has triumphed via substance!

Here is another attempt on my part to get in the good books of Canadians, but on my terms.

I hate to say it but I can't think of ten Canadian bands that I am really like.  You would think that if I like x number of British Bands, I should like 1/2x number Canadian bands, but I don't.  I might like 1/10x.

But then rock being about coolness and the triumph of style over substance, this lack of famous Canadian Rock Bands is probably a good thing.

There was a provincial election in Quebec.  The separatist Parti Quebecois were elected.  This is the third time for the PQ to form the provincial government.  They may try to hold a another referendum on whether their province should leave confederation, but not having a majority in their legislature, they may not get the chance.  

Listening to Canadian podcasts, I detected sadness about this election result.  From my vantage point in China, it is kind of ridiculous.  Quebec Separatists are the strangest secessionist in the world. 

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Below, are the other things I thought to put in this entry as the week of the 3rd to the 9th passed.  Really, a series of tweets.

Itunes U

I am listening to lectures on the American Civil War and Ancient Greece.  The professor lecturing on the American Civil War is no conservative so one has to wait for him to quit his sermonizing and get back to the narrative.  The lectures done by Donald Kagan on Ancient Greece are excellent.  But he shows the deficiency of the University lecture method.  Lectures can be great to sit through like movies but they don't really help you learn much.  Good education involves having coaches and disciplinarians.

Can I think of ten American Rock Bands I like?

The Brits are great at producing Rock Bands.  The American are just okay in comparison and so I wonder if there are ten American bands that I can say I really like...

Here it goes:  Velvet Underground, R.E.M., Dead Kennedys, Van Halen, Husker Du, the Replacements, 

What is currently in the News?

I asked the question in one class.  They are fighting over islands, the Chinese and the Japanese, said one student in a class in which there were six Chinese students and one Japanese student.   As the Chinese student said her bit about the dispute, the Japanese student laughed embarrassingly.  The Chinese student asked me my opinion on the matter but I declined to offer it because I really wasn't aware of the details of the dispute, which was true. 

I should have said they belong to Canada.

I later had a lower level student try to make a sentence with the word "represent" in which he said he wanted to go to the islands and represent China in the fight.

Thursday entries entered into my Ipod as I stood on the bus
A T-shirt, I see, says:  Where is life there is hope!

The Democratic Convention. 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre.  Democrats drop support for Israel on their policy platform.  Can we say that the terrorists of Black September have prevailed?

Traffic on Hui Shan Da Dao, the road to Casa K from Downtown, is heavier than it has ever been.

Put 100 rmb on the bus card which I use to ride the bus.  

I ask a student to make a sentence with the word "young."   She then says:  Some children are young?

Friday entries entered into Ipod, while I was on the bus, and later edited
Woman brings  four  heavy bags onto bus.  It takes her a few minutes to load them on the bus.  

First, she throws the piece of wood that she uses to carry the bags, coolie style, on the bus.   Then, she lugs the four canvas bags  on the bus steps.  They rest at the very front of the bus, blocking the entrance, and so one by one, she then carries them to the back of the bus. 

Links of the week:  anger & Munich.

Tony begins printing letters & numbers.

Quebec has an election.  PQ wins minority.

I get a seat!

Bus sits in traffic at the railway underpass.

Traffic cop waves traffic to turn.  I wonder if it is necessary for him to do this.

Saturday entries entered into the Ipod as I stood on the bus
John Kerrey says America can't afford to outsource the presidency.  Really?!?

To be fair,  he is right but not how he thinks.  He made an argument for not electing Obama which I am sure is not what he meant.  Obama is loved by anti-Americans.

Students always say:  I am so boring!

Students also say things like this:  My mother.  He is short. (They aren't used to feminine and male pronouns.)

And students also say things like this:  I have a travel this weekend.

Narcissist? Moi?  I write a blog so I must be halfway there.  Except for the fact that I just wrote this.  But then, maybe, I am being one of those really cynical narcissists who are well aware of the idea of narcissism, but can lie to oneself and think he isn't a narcissist when he is and knows, but is too proud to admit it.

Saturday night
The name of your fantasy NFL team?  The Wuxi Corrupt Officials.  

My NFL fantasy league draft has taken place.  

My starting quarterback is someone I had never heard of.

Sunday night

The teachers, at my school, went to two bar on the Nanchang Jie Bar Street.  I drank eight beers.  My 2012 alcoholic consumption record.  Usually, I drink one beer per sitting.  I only drink more when I make a video.

Obama or Romney?  Who's gonna win?

I hope Romney wins.  But that is predictable coming from someone who is perceived to be a far-right Republican nut-job.  Be that as it is, Obama is just so wrong, especially on matters economic, that Romney, really a Rino-Squish, looks wonderful by comparison.

(Speaking of the election in China.  One student, when I asked if any students were following the U.S. presidential election, said that Romney was a rich guy, which told me all I needed to know about how the election was being covered in China.)

But back to the question of who is going to win.  I hesitate to make predictions.  People who don't have said that Romney will win in a landslide, Romney will win in a squeaker, Obama will win in a squeaker, and Obama will win in a landslide.  They have good reasons to make these predictions, I am sure.  But I am not so sure, having made so many wrong predictions about what would happen in elections past.  

One person in Wuxi confidently predicted that Obama would win.  But then I remember, hearing a person, in Wuxi, confidently predicting a Kerry landslide in 2004.  Perhaps, this is a good sign.