October 15-21 2012 Blog Entry

It was just another week.

Gratitude  Thank God, I have Tony and Jenny.  It is nice to wake them up in the morning with kisses.

Acknowledgement I need to do things that are tactile.  I was such a moron, one time in my twenties,  to sneer at carpentry as a career -- such a moron that I can't try to minimize the fact that I did so.  I was so stupid.!

Request  Don't vote for Obama.  He doesn't deserve to be re-elected.  His followers need their comeuppance.  (I admit that Romney is no great shakes.  But he is a decent man who deserves all the success he had achieved in his life.  And I like Romney's gosh-golly-gee-ness.  It beats the progressive-liberal moral preening that Obama has a talent for doing so well.)

Canada ain't cool

Who cares who are Prime Minister is?  Not many outside of Canada.  Which is a good thing.  Canada has a good thing going without the burden of responsibility that the Americans have.  Our best Prime Ministers have been those that haven't been cool.  Our coolest Prime Minister, Trudeau, was a disaster.

Reading

On Wednesday, I finished reading Dostoevsky's The Devils (or The Possessed).  It was great, f**ing great!  One got so angry at the killing of the character Shatov.

On Thursday, I hadn't quite decided what I was going to read next.  Perhaps, I should read Shakespeare's Henry V, I thought.

I later think that I will read The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.  But not till I had read a Shakespeare Play.

Sunday evening, I started reading a book about political economy by Canadian Stephen Leacock.  I knew he was a humorist but I had no idea he was a professor of political economy.

Having finished Leacocks's The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice, I then started reading one of his books of humor -- Nonsense Novels --and I think I have found my hero -- a Canadian with an interest in politics and economics who loves to write completely absurd works of fiction.  Now, I can justify my  Wuxi China Expatdom Blog.

Links of the week

An editorial by Camille Paglia -- one of my favorite female writers.

A thousand miles wide and two inches thick

What should children read?

Romney v. Obama Was a Nauseating Draw, and Both Deserve to Lose  Romney's biggest plus is that he isn't Obama.  You can only justify some of the things Romney said in the debate however by saying he was appealing to the middle.

John Derbyshire says he can't be bothered to vote  I knew he wouldn't be impressed by the debate, but he didn't think he would give up.

Podcast 

I have discovered another one:  The History of Byzantium

The Wuxi Corrupt Officials

The Corrupts are 5-0.  They didn't deserve to win getting the 11th most points out of 12 teams, but the Corrupts were fortunate enough to be matched up with the team that got the 12th most points.

I worry the Corrupts will have a season like last season's Green Bay Packers.  The 15-1 Packers didn't get to the Super Bowl.

Monday

• My day off.
• I proofread my October 7-14 entry forty times.  I couldn't stop  finding errors.  But, I had to give up and get on with my life.
• I got a video 93% uploaded before it stopped, and I haven't been to finish the upload even with the VPN working.
• Tournament Eight:  Team G, despite losing its final game of the group stage, won group two for the third time.  Team G is the only team to have gone through a tournament without losing a game.  It did this feat in Tournament Two when it had a record of ten wins, no losses, and one tie, good for a group title, a league championship, and a tournament championship.
• Good timing continues...  (from Sunday) The kindergarten van arrives just as Tony & I arrive at the meeting point.  The bus arrives just as Jenny & I arrive at the bus stop.
• So much rubble do I see as I take the bus downtown!  At least it isn't the result of the war.
• Pain in my right hip, right ankle and right knee.  It subsides as time, but there are times I can't stand up.  Is this Arthritis?
• What do I like about Catholicism?  It takes a step back from the day and the age.  It adopts a pose that suits my temperament and my life-time experience as a loner.
• The effect of the Internet on my life -- something I should write about.  Loner that I am and have been, I have to say that the Internet has ameliorated and exacerbated my solitude.  The Internet gives me a platform to talk to the world.  The Internet has allowed me to contact people who I wouldn't never have contacted before the Internet came into existence.  It has also stopped me from having any close relationships with anyone because it has made easier for me not to.  I have a blog so I don't need anyone to confide in.  I have a blog so I don't need to conspire.
• The 93% video was eventually uploaded.  You can watch it here.

Island Disputes

Say what you might about all those island controversies involving Japan, but people of good will,  of common human decency, with common sense, and of normal sexual habits must surely all agree that Hans Island belongs to Canada.

Tuesday

• My day off.
• I go to work in the evening.  Damn!  I agreed to do it!  Still!
• Steamed Buns for breakfast.  Too bad, I didn't take a photo!
• While riding the bus, I saw a taxi driver and another car driver having an argument on Zhongshan Road near the entrance to Chongan Market.  The taxi driver was gesticulating  wildly and making rude gestures to the other driver who had returned to his car and was putting on his seat belt.  I assume that they had had a collision.  As the bus, I was in, then pulled away, I saw the driver of the car get out of his car and rush toward the taxi driver.  Whether they came to blows, I couldn't tell as the bus pulled out of the view of the fight.
• Japan and China likely to go to war.  A perky girl of university student age made the sentence using the phrase "to be likely," and then told me she hoped it would happen.   The Japanese were bad she said....  I thought young women were pacifists!  Ah!  The power of nationalism.
  
• Female Bus Driver stops bus on side of road and dashes across the road to get to a service station's bathroom.  That was a first for me to see such a thing.  Now, to think of it, I wonder why I haven't seen it happen more often.

The Second Presidential Debate

• I listened to the debate feed on my Ipod.  I'd score it a draw.  Romney didn't blow it.  Obama seemed stilted at times.
• A lot of hot air came from both candidates who at times didn't answer the  question from an audience member.  This was to be expected I suppose.  Some of the questions were silly anyway.  One person basically ask the candidates to give him a job.
• A lot of time was spent by the debaters saying what the other said wasn't true.
• Obama's best moment was when he said his investment portfolio was smaller than Romney's.
• Romney's best moment was his referral to the Reagan recovery.

Wednesday

• I work 1300 to 2100.
• Tony is already a better printer than his father.  He also speaks better Chinese.
• English Corner Topic:  Heaven.
• My mobile phone message tone is the opening keystrokes of Glen Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. The ring tone is Hong Kong Garden by Soiuxsee and the Banshees.  I put a lot of thought into these things even though the only person who calls me on my mobile is my wife.

Thursday

• I work 1000 to 2100.
• Taking the bus down this one stretch of road, I count forty guys in black uniforms watching traffic.  What they were trying to do to get it move along quickly I couldn't tell.  A lot of them looked to be just standing around.
• A student I had in a morning class was clearly pregnant.  When she told me she was due at the end of November, I had to ask if she was having twins because her tummy was so big that she looked like she was about to burst.  She told me she was.  I asked if she knew the sex of the babies.  She said she was going to have a boy and a girl.  She told me the chances of that are four in a hundred.  
• Wow!  I said.
• Last night, a student said something about the US election.  She even mentioned polling reports she had heard about.  The first student to ever be so informed.  Usually, the students know nothing about American politics.
• Students with an opinion on the U.S. election tell me they want Obama to win.  They can't tell me why though.
• What is an enzyme?  The question came up because I had students, from a company called Gemeco, who I lo work with such things.  I looked up enzymes on the Internet and I became only a little more informed. 
• With a purpose or for a purpose?  Networking is an activity done with a commercial purpose.  Networking is an activity done for a commercial purpose.  A student asked me which sentence was better. I said they were both okay.  But then I thought of the many instances when with and for couldn't be substitutes, I was stumped as to why it could be so in my Networking example.

Friday

• I work 1100 to 2100.
• No School for Tony today.  The pipes at his school are being repaired.  This explains why my wife was tiger-mothering him last evening.  She had him doing his homework till 1130 pm!
• I made my first ever mobile tweet from work.  Very historical!  Niel-who-was-it stepped on what?  The Moon?!?
• A student told me that he had gone to see a speech at his child's primary school.    Two thousand children and adults attended this speech that was held at school's sports field.  The speaker was quite famous, I was lead to understand.  The speaker told the students that they should love their country, respect their teachers,  be thankful to their parents, and love themselves.  The leader was approved by the government and was quite nationalistic.  Despite China's development, other countries like Japan and the Philippines were cheating them, he said.
• The student was quite taken with speaker's performance.  It brought the crowd to tears, it was loud and powerful,  and  lasted 2.5 hours.....  Sounded like Commie Agitprop to me.
  

Saturday

• I work 1000-1800.
• No breakfast at McDonald's this morning.  I had coffee from  the 85 Degrees Bakery instead.
• I wanted to take a photo, but couldn't, of these workers who were cutting and planting roadside shrubbery.  If I go through the road tomorrow, I would see those workers still hard at it.  They must work seven days a week.
• I got annoyed at my students during a Show & Tell I was teaching.   I had six of them, all of whom were middle-school aged.  They were, to be fair, all  tired and inattentive after a long week at school.  Two of them had their heads done.  Another pair was playing with their I-phones (one girl had an I-phone and and I-pad!).  I wasn't in a mood to get angry but I did chide them.  I rung them out like I had done many times before when I had lost my patience, but this time, I felt an eerie sense of calm when I did so -- there I was going through the motions of being annoyed, hoping the clock would run our faster.
• Who is your hero?  I asked my Friday Evening English Corner.  One student said Chairman Mao, and I could have sworn I heard guffaws from the other students.

Sunday

• I work 1000-1800.  So, no church.
• Saturday Evening:  The Group Stage of Tournament Eight was complete.  The group winners were Teams A, G, I, O,T, X, Z, and ZZ.  Teams G & Z meet in the Tournament 2 championship game.  Teams D, H, L, P, V, AA, and XX finished in last place in their groups and thus were eliminated from further playoff competition.  Team D had won its league championship in Tournaments 5 & 6.  Team P lost the Tournament 7 championship game.
• The last game of the group stage was won by Team T.  It came down to a coin toss to decide if team T would win its fifth group title in six tournaments.  The toss was a head, and Team T thus won the group after having lost its opening game.
  
• Thought:  What is the point of craving sensation?  Its blissfulness is temporary.  You can't pass it on.  If you try, you either annoy or pass on craving and emptiness.  It's a mug's game.
• For supper, I had fried dumplings and bite-sized pork cutlets.  I didn't pursue it.  It found me which was better.
• Tony went to school today.  By the time I got home, he had finished his homework and was quite excited, jumping up and down like he had won a lottery.  He was so proud of himself that he showed me his notebook in which he had finished the day's printing practice.