November 19 to November 25 Blog Entry

This is the week I decided to become a reactionary for I discovered the aphorisms of Don Colacho.  I am now under their sway.

Gratitude  Thank God, there are people in this world who are not part of it.  I don't know what they would do without them.  It is these people who aren't part of the world, who keep me in it.

Acknowledgement  I am not so high and mighty, and yet, I too often I think I am.

Request  I wish the Palestinians would stop being victims.  If they weren't so closed-minded, they would realize that there is a lot that they could emulate in the people who they think are oppressing them. 

My Current Reading

The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton (Finished.  An interesting read.  At times, I found it to be obscure and so I think it will deserve a re-reading.)

The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (stopped reading it.  I couldn't keep track of all the different peoples mentioned in the narrative.  I ended up reading an account of the war in Creasey's 15 major battles of history)

Spiritual Provocations by Kierkeergaard

Economic Sophisms by Federic Bastiat

Pensees by Blaise Pascal

PSmith in the City by P.G. Wodehouse

Canada Ain't Cool

This is my lame weekly attempt to ingratiate myself with Canadians by taking a reactionary's view of its virtues.  

The Grey Cup, awarded to the winner of the Canadian Football League's annual championship game, is jokingly said to be named after Canada's national color.  The game takes place on Sunday evening in Canada, Monday morning in China.

The Wuxi Corrupt Officials

They are the official NFL fantasy football team of Real He-Man and She-Woman Wuxi Expats.

The Corrupts were crushed, in this week's match-up, 104 -46.  Their record is now 6-4.  They are still first in their division but now tied with another team.

Quotes of the week

George Jonas (a Canadian Journalist) said this in his column about Remembrance Day:  "My feeling, by the way, has always been that nations supporting the arts will be successful importers of artists, and nations supporting the armed forces will be successful exporters of art."  That explains why American culture has a more powerful hold on the Canadian imagination than does its own Canadian culture.  If you want strong expressions of Canadian culture -- I would recommend reading the books written by Canadians and are available on Project Gutenberg -- these books were written before Canada made the very provincial decision to try and subsidize its art.

David Warren (an AKIC favorite) about the U.S. election results and what the Republicans should have done:  "In retrospect, the Republicans' only hope was to ignore ethnicity & go large: to go in the direction indicated by Santorum & Ryan (conservative Catholics), & communicate the home truths. They could have lost with such a message — "We have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, & sweat" — but they would have lost honourably & been left with something on which to build."  RINOs would say that Warren is a zealot who should be ignored.  But RINOs are asking is that a part of its party don't talk about what they believe in.  RINOs are asking to engage in a debate with opponents in which the debate is on the opponents terms and is of course narrow and dishonest.

Monday (the 19th)

• I don't work.
• Tony stays home because of a black eye he got at the restaurant on Sunday.  Jenny says he looks too ugly to appear at school.  I have to race to get my weekly blog entry done before he gets up.
• If you love something, you have to be willing to sacrifice for it and put up with inconveniences.
• I took Tony to KFC for lunch.  He loves the spicy chicken wings there.  Afterwards, on the K family E-bike, we rode around the area.  I took some photos and video.
• You may see the video if I can ever get my VPN to work.
• One of the places we went to was the Wu Culture Park.
• I saw someone was repainting the monument to a Bill Clinton Postcard.  I could only think of two words:  pervert and rapist.
• It is cold in the apartment.  My Chinese wife is opening the windows to air the place out.
• At the pond at the Wu Culture Park, I was able on one of my throws, to make a stone skip eight times,

Tuesday (the 20th)

• I don't work.
• Tony goes to school.
• Dang nab it!  I can't get my VPN to work on my laptop.  So, I can't upload any videos to Youtube.
• I will spend the morning on the computer typing entries for the Wuxi China Expatdom Blog.
• Talked to my Mom on the phone.  She is living in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada where the temperature is minus two degrees Celsius and there is snow on the ground.  We talked about current events.  In the part of Manitoba she is living in, an oil company wants to set up shop.  Like nearby North Dakota, there is oil to be fracked for underground.  
• My mother told me about a controversial monument that had been erected in Bauska, Latvia -- the place of her birth.  The monument commemorates a battle fought by Latvians against invading Soviets in 1944.  My grandfather, her father, fought in the battle.  Though, the Latvians ultimately lost, they delayed the Soviet occupation for a long enough time  that my mother (she was the youngest sibling in a family of five children) and her family could flee to Germany.  This was fortunate for me because I may not have been born had the Soviets been able to capture my grandfather.  Now the monument is controversial because the Latvians were fighting with the Germans (the Nazis) against the Soviets.  Russians in Latvia are protesting against the monument, as are Jews.   The Russians are calling the Latvians Nazis.  There can be no doubt that there were Latvians who probably reveled in being able to help the Germans in carrying out the holocaust.  I can only hope that the Latvians who wanted that monument erected don't try to diminish their guilt on that account.
• When I was growing up, the Latvian dilemma from World War Two as I saw it, was a choice between two monsters:  Stalin & Hitler -- ultimately two kinds of Socialism.  Did Latvians have a third choice?  My mother tells me that there were no Americans or Canadians or Brits that we could have allied with for help.  I suppose we could have made a moral stand and extinguished ourselves...
• Alas, WW2 was a horrible time.  While good prevailed in some circumstances during that war, a lot of darkness descended on the world -- some of was extinguished in 1989, but unfortunately it most circumstances it morphed into other forms or came back to life.
• This is why I have problems with people who label themselves as middle-of-the-road politically.  For the Latvians, what was the middle road between Stalin & Hitler? There wasn't any.  You couldn't be defined by either of these people.  You had to make a moral stand or think of other ways not at all on the table.
• Alas, I am not happy with having to make excuses...
• I also learned that Mom was watching Doctor Zhivago -- it was the sixth time she told me.  My favorite David Lean movie is Lawrence of Arabia.  I haven't watched Doctor Zhivago all the way through  -- I am too busy with blogging and epubs and Tony.
• In the afternoon, I walked to Tesco to buy bread, pineapple beer, and microwave popcorn.  To get to the Hui Shan Tesco from Casa Kaulins, I passed through the local people's square and saw a man sleeping on the lawn of the grounds.  I took a photo of this as well as a photo of the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza still under construction.
• I watched the first two hours of Doctor Zhivago on my Ipod touch, despite constant buffering problems or stall-outs as I call them.  From what I have seen, the movie is not as good as Lawrence of Arabia, but it is a good movie nonetheless. (I haven't as of this typing, watched the movie's second half.)

Wednesday (the 21st)

• I work 1300-2100.
• For the first time in months, I will have a Wednesday where I don't have a company class to go to, so five classes at the school.
• It is raining out.  It is one of those kinds of rains that looks like it will stick around for a while.
• I listened to the Chinese History Podcast episode 104.  Laszlo Montgomery, the host, was doing his fourth podcast on the history of Hong Kong.  As always, for Sinophiles and Chinese History Buffs like myself, it was very interesting.  And if you listen to the episode #104 all the way through, Laslzo does a shout-out to yours truly for which I thank him.  But I would recommend, if you haven't listened to any, start at episode #1 and listen all the way through.
• Next door, the girl is watching a video of someone doing the Gagnum style dance.

Thursday (the 22nd)

• I work 1000-2100.
• At 645 in the morning, I was in the bathroom getting ready for work when  heard knocking on our front door.  I thought that perhaps a neighbor was going to complain about something.  I was naked and so I tried to get dressed, but the knocking also woke up my wife who ran to the door to see who was knocking.  It was the meter reader.  In Chinese, my wife told the man that it was f***ing early!  I don't think such a thing would happen in Canada.  I wondered if perhaps the man was trying to scope our apartments for the purpose of breaking into them.  Either that or he thought that if he came in the mid-morning, no one would be home.
• November 22nd is forever etched into my mind as the date of the JFK assassination.  One of my goals in life, which I was able to realize, was to visit Dealey Plaza in Dallas where the assassination occurred.  I can't remember the exact year I went there.  It was probably in the late 1980s or early 1990s.  Here is a photo:

I am leaning against the pedestal where Zapruder stood and took his famous film.  Behind me is the road on which JFK's limo was moving when the shots were fired.

• As I was sitting on the bus that was taking me to work, I saw a shirtless man doing a handstand on a black fence-like barrier.  I brought out my camera to take a photo of this, but I was only able to get one grainy image before the man came down.
• A student made this sentence for me:  "People enjoy taking baths in bathrooms."  The grammar was fine, however I had to groan because the sentence said nothing -- I would have been embarrassed to put such a sentence even in my blog.

Friday (the 23rd)

• I work 1100-2100.
• It is cool and damp and depressing.  It is raining for a third consecutive day.  I have put on long underwear for the first time this fall and winter.  
• My Ikea umbrella is not going to survive many more of these gusts of wind.
• One of my shoes has a hole in the heel.  I suppose it was time it happened to these shoes.  I have bought them in Chilliwack, B.C., over two years ago.  I hate to have to throw away shoes in Wuxi.  I am a size 47 and shoes don't come any bigger than size 44 in all the stores here.
• A student makes the following sentence using the word "smart:"  My son is smart.  Why do you say you say your son is smart?  I asked the student.  She then said "smart 什么 名字？"  (shenme mingzi) to her classmate.  She didn't really have a good idea what the word meant but she made a sentence with the word anyway.
• A good crowd at my evening SPC.

Saturday (the 24th)

• I work 1000-1800.
• It is sunny but nippy.  I wear my toque (knit cap) to work.
• I am working on putting all of Don Colacho's Aphorisms into a document file and eventually into an e-pub that I can put into my Ipod.  Here is one of his aphorisms:  A prolonged childhood—permitted by industrial society's current prosperity—redounds merely in a growing number of infantilized adults.
• So far, I have about 30 pages of his aphorisms in my document.
• In the evening I read on my Ipod Touch.  Besides me, Tony watches Ultraman on the Ipad.  I like these moments.
• A student tells me that she has milk delivered to her home every day.  What do you know about that? I said.  I think they stopped doing milk delivery in Canada in the late 1970s or 1980s.  I remember having it when growing up, but there came a point when we started buying the milk at the supermarket.

Sunday (the 25th)

• I work 1000-1800
• Rainy.
• To take a step back and not be high faluting about it -- a goal to be greatly desired.
• Tony had a terrible tantrum in the evening.  He didn't agree with being told that it was time to stop playing with the train simulator software on my computer.  I had to wrestle him away from the computer and he walloped me in the face a few times -- I had no choice but to be a punching bag because his fury was something to behold.  It took twenty minutes to calm him down.  I now have no choice now but to take the train software off my computer.   Tony needs to be taught about gratitude and other things.  His parents, Daddy especially, have to stop spoiling him.

Blog Entry for the Week of November 12- 18, 2012.

Gratitude  谢谢 中国！你 给 我 我的 太太！

Acknowledgement  我 每天 是 不好的 人。在 公共汽车，我 不 给 老人 坐位。

Request  我 想 你们 给 我 很多 钱！

Currently Reading

(Like General Patraeus, I am a voracious reader.)

The Everlasting Man by Chesterton

Economic Sophisms by Federic Bastiat

The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Finished.  Great read!)

Spiritual Provocations by Soren Kierkeergard

The Peloponnesian War by Thucycides

Canada ain't Cool

One of Canada's greatest writers was Stephen Leacock.  He wrote an essay about the woman question that wouldn't be considered cool today.  

Canada was a great place before it became cool, alas.

Try as I might to convince myself otherwise, I think Canada is a cool.

Links of the Week

Quo Vadis - O Bishops?  This link is the source of my first two quotes of the week.

Quotes of the Week

"To start with, forget about being nice. It doesn’t work. Be gentlemen. Be kind."

"Be prepared to suffer for the Faith."

The rest of this week's quotes are from Don Colacho:

"Intelligence isolates.  Stupidity brings together." (How this sentence so justifies my staying in the office or house, and only going out when necessity requires.)

"In solitude man recovers strength to live."

"The common man lives among phantasms; only the recluse moves among realities."

"Solitude teaches us to be more intellectually honest, but it induces us to be less intellectually courteous."

The Wuxi Corrupt Officials

The Corrupts, as they are affectionately known, are the official NFL fantasy football team of true-blue Wuxi Expats.

If you are a true-blue Wuxi Expat and not a carpetbagger who abandons Wuxi in the summer, you are welcome in to share in the joy of the results of the Corrupts week 9 performance.  The Corrupts ended their three game losing streak with a smashing 138-73 victory.  They improved their record to 6-3, good for first place in their division and the best record in their league.  By another metric, the Corrupts are also the best team in their league having scored the most points in nine week.

Monday (the 12th)

• I don't work. 
• I have a million ideas for my WCE Blog.  So guess what I spent the morning doing!  Here are is some of my work:  Kiddie Porn, Chinese Obama Election Celebration, Breakfast Hot Dog, Choking on Condoms, Panegyrics for a Double Bacon Burger, and Who Goes With Fergus?
• Tournament Eight is down to its last eight teams.  As I type this, I am playing games in the Final Tournament's second group stage.  That is, there are two four team groups playing single round robins.  The top teams in each group will earn a berth in the tournament championship semifinal.  The second and third placed teams will play off for the other two semifinal berths.  The winners of the semifinals will play in the tournament championship game on November 17.  Currently, the sensation of the tournament is team W, which after losing its first game has gone on a ten unbeaten streak during which they have won a league championship, a wildcard berth in the championship tournament, and its first three match-ups of the championship tournament.
• I walked to the local Tesco grocery store to buy some pineapple beer, bread, and ham.  On the way, I see three locals on the grass of the local people's square.  One was sleeping, one was contemplating the passing scene, and another was squatting.
• A:  What did you do this afternoon?  B:  Oh! I had a nap on the lawn of the people's square.
• I then took the family e-bike and rode around the area.  I took video for a future Scenes from My Life in Wuxi, China as well as photos that you can see here, here, here, here, here and here.
• There is a lot of construction going on in Yanqiao.  The road to Yanqiao from my apartment is having several tall buildings erected by it.
• There are some temples, near Jia Zhou Yang Fang, that are built on a hill.  The hill has a steep rock face on one side. The rock face, about two years ago, overlooked a pit in which there was a grove of trees near which ran a stream -- it was a pretty scene -- as pretty as you can find in the modern overbuilding China.  Now, the trees have been torn down.  The grove is now a field for subsistence farming.  The stream no longer runs between the rock face and the grove. because of earth-moving, has become a big pile of dirt that now overlooks the pit from the other side.  What a shame!

Tuesday (the 13th)

• I don't work.
• I will go downtown and get a haircut if my wife ever gets up.  She told me she would get up at 900.  It is 947!
• She got up at 1030.
• So we did go downtown by bus, but by a bus route that I hadn't taken before but will take again if the opportunity arrives.  This bus takes me past what is known as European street.
• I went downtown to get a haircut and buy underwear.  I am feeling almost civilized.   Here is the before and the after of my trip to the salon!
• I have my Chinese underwear and my Western underwear.  My Chinese underwear is brief and tight.  My western underwear is larger and warmer, but very holy and sagging.
• I let Tony play Microsoft Train Simulator on the computer.  Big mistake.  Tony became whiny because the program was crashing and wasn't doing the things he wanted it to do.  He left me with no choice but to turn off the computer. I did this about 730 p.m.  Tony complained about this the rest of the evening till he went to sleep at eleven.  I chided him for his ingratitude but I don't know if he understood me or not.
• To try to placate Tony, I engage in a bout of play fighting or, your could call it, play wrestling with him.  I felt sore and late middle-aged when we were done.

Wednesday (the 14th)

• I work 1300-2100.  The question, as I go to work, is whether I will teach at Sempelkamp this evening.  They keep cancelling on me. (I don't!)
• I am still sore from my wrestling bout with Tony.  I shouldn't have let him kick me ten times in a row.
• Tournament Eight.  The Championship Tournament playoff match-ups have been determined.  Team K will play Team E; Team ZZ will play Team T.  The winner of the first match will play Team W in a one semifinal; the winner of the second match will play Team G in the other.  Of the six teams left in tournament Eight, three have previously won tournament championships (E,G,K) and one has made it to the championship game (T which has three previous tournament championship final four appearances)
• I listened a podcast called the Fifth Column.  People from foreign cultures in England, said the podcast, have it right when dealing with elderly relatives -- they don't put them in Care Homes like selfish Westerners do.  This podcast struck home with me because of the death of my father this year, who spent the last month of his life in a Care Home.  I will never get over the guilt I feel because I was in China during his dying days.  I was hoping that marrying Jenny and having Tony would grant me some redemption for this shame of mine.
• With the company class cancelled, I instead teach a student named Glinda.  I lasted but twenty minutes before bringing up the Wizard of Oz movie.  I then had a student named Song.  I tried to explain to him the difference between Parliamentary systems like Canada's and America's Republican System.
• The 18th National Congress is finished I learned.  Xi Jing Ping is the President.  Li Ke Shang or something is the Premier.
• 我 是 加拿大人。 我 太太 是 中国人。  我们的 孩子 是 五 岁。 他的 名字 是 Tony.  I can make some simple Chinese sentences.
• 我 很 喜欢 和 啤酒。

Thursday (the 15th)

• I work 1000-2100.  我 有 五 个 课。
• 1000 class.  I have an indifferent student, more interested in going to the gym than going to class.  This is the kind of student you can only entertain while despising all the while.
• On the bus trip to work, I stand and so I listen to a learn Chinese podcast.  I understand a few words here and there, but there were stages where I understood nothing.  All the work I have done and I still can't understand any conversations.
• Weather: Sunny.  Mood: Ah! (I take a deep breath!)  I would say it is prideful.  That is, I feel some adrenalin and in my mind I am going to something big.... 
• I have a lot of free time.  I will spend a hour studying Chinese flashcards.  
• Lunchtime, I went for a walk around Nanchang Temple.  I need some exercise I told myself.  I looked around for books about Ultraman or trains for my son Tony.  I didn't find anything satisfying.  I did buy a truck driver simulator game on DVD for him.  All the while as I wandered, I listened to a podcast about Glen Gould -- his was interesting for his eccentricity -- to bad he had to become hooked on drugs by the end of his life.  A great Canadian nonetheless.
• Tournament Eight.  Team K defeats Team E 7-4.  Team K will play Team W in a Championship semifinal game.  It is Team K's second final four appearance.  Team K won the Tournament Six championship.
• Tournament Eight.  Team ZZ defeats Team T 10-2.  Team ZZ will play Team G in a Championship semifinal game.  It is Team ZZ's first ever trip to the final four.

Friday (the 16th)

• I work 1100-2100
• It is an overcast day.
• Change in my podcast listening habits.  I don't listen so much to political podcasts.  I am a stranger in strange land both in China and the West.
• Tournament Eight Championship Semifinals:  Team ZZ defeats Team G 4-1; Team W defeats Team K 3-2.  They will meet in Saturday's Tournament Championship Game.  I had been hoping for Team G and Team K to win.  Oh well.
• It cold & damp outside.  I am staying in my office.
• I didn't get home till 2300!  Normally, I am home at 1015 when I work on a weeknight.  On Wednesday & Thursday, I had just been getting to a stop on time to catch a #635 that would take me home - to get to this #635 stop, I have to catch another bus near my school.  Tonight (Friday), the timing was all wrong.  At the first stop, I had to wait a longer-than-usual amount of time for my first bus.  I knew I then that I was not going to catch the early #635 -- when I got to the #635 stop, I waited for about forty minutes.  So there I was at ten o'clock, still downtown.  The #635 I was hoping to catch was already near my Casa Kaulins..

Saturday (the 17th)

• I work 1000-1800.
• The weather: sunny & cool.
• My mood:  I had an adrenalin high in the morning and I was determined to find my depressive urges.
• Tournament Eight.  Team W beat Team ZZ 4-2 to win the Tournament Eight Championship.  Team W took a 3-0 lead before Team ZZ cut it to one point.  But an insurance point and no more scoring by Team ZZ saw Team W put the crowning touch on a remarkable tournament performance -- Team W finished with a record of 12-1-1 and also won its league's championship -- the first team to accomplish this tournament feat since team G won its league and then the tourney championship in Tournament Two.  Team ZZ, made it to the tournament championship game despite having a 5-4-1 record.  
• We were having a nice dinner at a restaurant in the Hui Shan Century Times Plaza until Tony hurt himself and got a black eye.  He and another boy were playing Ultraman.  Tony foolishly decided to do a kung fu kick in the direction of the boy.  Jenny & I scolded him for doing this, but he then retreated and tripped so that his face went smack dab into a chair's corner edge.  We went to the hospital. despite my and Tony's insistence that it wasn't necessary.  The doctor told Jenny to put ice on the bruise --something I had told her do when we were back the restaurant.
• The whole incident served me right.  I was going to make a point of how the Chinese tolerate children in restaurant.  Under the circumstances, that plan had to be abandoned. Which was just as well as I was not so much trying to show the Chinese in a good light, as to score a point in a personal argument I am having.
• Be that as it may, after Tony's accident, the other patrons were all quite concerned, and several came to our assistance.  The little boy, who had been play-fighting with Tony, made a nice little gesture of coming over to Tony and expressing his concern.  Thinking he might have been apologizing, I told him there was nothing for him to worry about -- it wasn't his fault.  This seemed to please the nearby patrons as well.
• One thing was annoying however.  The restaurant had no ice.

Sunday (the 18th)

• I work 1000-1800.
• It is bring Tony to work day -- Jenny has come to the school to attend a lecture.  This imposes on my routine and makes it hard for me to concentrate.
• A lot of people asked me about how Tony got his black eye.  He looked like Sylvester Stallone at the end of the first Rocky movie.
• The students are not at all excited by their country's change of leadership.
• Why is it that the same day, I tell myself to not lose my temper, I lost my temper.  All I can say is that I never tell myself to not lose my temper with Tony and so I don't lose my temper with Tony except when it is that I do.  Capeche?
• Tournament Eight fallout:  Who had the greater tournament performance?  Team W in tourney eight with its 12-1-1 record or Team G in tourney two with its 10-0-1 record?  Team G won its group, its league and the tournament championship, and didn't lose a game.  Team W lost a game and didn't win its group; but it went on a 13 game unbeaten streak after losing its first game, and had an 11 game winning streak after having had a draw in its third game.
• Tony got a haircut in the evening.  I didn't like it, not even one bit.  I think it was uglier than his black eye.
• I can't get my VPN to work on either of my laptops.  Damn the Chicoms!

Blog Entry for November 5 to November 11, 2012

The U.S. Election happened this week.  I was disappointed with the result and felt some despondency.  However, if the election had gone the other way, I don't think I would have felt complete exhilaration.  Thinking about the result during the week, I realized the election was the victory of sheer nasty awfulness and vulgarity over Millard Filmore Mediocrity.  Americans are going to have to suffer in a terrible way before they realize the errors of their ways.  That is the only thing Conservatives have to look forward to for the immediate oncoming future.

Please read this entry all the way through, and see if you can detect the dishonesty.  If you can detect any, please kindly (or unkindly -- I appreciate all comments) tell me about them.

Gratitude  I am thankful for things to take solace in that are not of this world.

Acknowledgment  I can only stay in a snit for so long.  I just can't be consistent.  And another thing:  Memories from the past of some terrible things I have done suddenly strike me.  This is a good thing.  And that is the point of this feature of my weekly entry.

Requests  1) Rare readers!  More criticism!  It seems I only have one critic.  I need more to be persuaded that I am more wrong than I concede I already am!  2) Chicoms!  Stop f**ing blocking the Internet.

The Wuxi Corrupt Officials

Here is the logo of Wuxi China's official NFL fantasy team:

Oh no!  They have lost their third game in a row.  The Corrupts record is 5-3, but they are still in first place in their division.  Four teams in the twelve team record have 5-3 records.

Reading

Thucydides

The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton

The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat

Provocations: an anthology of writings by Soren Kierkergaard

Maybe Canada is Cool!

Despite my attempts to suck up to Canada by giving it the backhanded compliment of saying it isn't cool, I hear that Canadians would have supported Obama more than Americans did.  Mon dieu!  Cool is the victory of Style over substance.

Links of the Week

Some of my favorite reactions to the election:

A letter to Barack Obama from Joseph Goebbels.

A Catholic Bishop's Take on the election result

Democracy is a Joke(?)

Bring back the Monarchy!

A Louse versus A Flea

The first link praises Obama's campaign tactics.  The second link laments the unseriousness of the American electorate.  The third link says the election was proof that democracy is a joke.  The fourth link advocates a hereditary monarchy -- the problem with democracy being that it attracts a certain sort of politician who shouldn't be leader because he is willing to do what it takes to win elections.  The fifth link, from Peter Hitchens, says American presidential elections are a joke for they are almost always battles between mediocrities.

Of all the five links, I would have to say I am in most sympathy with the last two.  The institution of the Monarchy in Canada and England has a genius to it that I hadn't really appreciated till I matured -- having a figure who is only there by accident of birth instead of political considerations is a wonderful thing.  Also, Democracy seems to have evolved in Canada and the United States to a situation where ideas don't seem to be seriously discussed in elections -- instead leaders are chosen for superficial reasons.  It would seem the time is right for a return of hereditary monarchs as head of governments -- the people are too dumb for democracy and people who want to have power are not to be trusted. 

I remember watching a documentary on the eve of the 1988 presidential election in which George Bush ran against Michael Dukakis.  The summation of the careers of the two candidates leading up the election had me wondering how such a great country as America could have such mediocre candidates for their presidency -- and at that time, I was a left-leaning fool.  This recollection combined with Peter Hitchen's further observation of the mediocrity of the Romney - Obama matchup, got me thinking.  So many mediocrities have earned the presidential nomination -- there was McCain, Kerrey, Algore, Dole, Clinton, and the most unaccomplished of them:  Obama.  Other than the color of his skin, Obama really didn't have any executive accomplishments to boost of -- he was the beneficiary of a promotion and publicity machine that was able to sucker in millions.

Monday

• I don't work and I don't sleep in.  I have to be up at 700 a.m. to help Tony go off to school.
• In the morning, I finish and publish my weekly AKIC blog entry as well as do some other blogging.
• The cold has walloped me.  I have a headache.  I feel a pain in my chest.  I have no urge to do anything.
• Strangely, I still have to blog.  The urge allows me to overcome the pain and numbness I feel.
• I watched Asphalt Jungle with my Ipod Touch on the Youku site.  I watched this old movie because I had just listened to a podcast about Film Noir on WGN Extension 720.  AJ is a good movie with a good story but its claim to fame is that had Marilyn Monroe make her first screen appearance.
• I then did my reading.  I read parts of five books!
• I also started to slap together Scenes from My Life in Wuxi, China #32.  (Thanks to Chicom Party Congress, it can't upload it to Youtube.)
• In the evening, I connected the laptop to the big screen television so Tony could watch Ultraman videos.  At one point he drifted around the room in order to imitate the flying maneuvers of the super hero characters.  Something that people who have viewed Scenes from My Life in Wuxi, China #32 may be familiar with.
• At bedtime, heavy eyelids stop me from reading and tell me it is time to go to bed.

Tuesday

• I don't work and I don't sleep in.  As I did yesterday, I helped send Tony off to school.
• I wear three layers of clothes outside.
• The sudden onset of cool and cold weather has caused my wife Jenny & I to have colds.  I feel stuffed up.  Jenny has a cough.
• It is U.S. election day.  However because of time differences, I won't learn the results till Wednesday Morning.  This is what I hoped would happen. 

Wednesday

• I work 1300-2100, more or less.  I have an afternoon SPC and then I do a company class.
• I start following the election results at  1000 a.m.  At lunchtime, Real Clear Politics shows Romney leading, but I think Obama will end up winning in the end.
• The election has me feeling giddy.  That is, I can't concentrate on the task at hand.
• Obama wins!  Concentrate on work -- I tell myself!  What's done is done!  So much for Hope!
• At least I was smart enough to not make any predictions.
• I am too numb to be upset!  
• The wilderness, politically speaking, is where it seems I am.  Unlike the other zealots, I am planning on throwing any real bombs, just barbs.
• On the bright side, I have discovered the voice control feature on my Ipod Touch.  It is novelty, I don't know if it is useful in any way.
• Funny how all the psychic energy I had devoted to hoping for a Romney victory has dissipated.  As David Warren mentions, Verily: our Kingdom is not of this world.
• I talk to Tony on the phone.  We are still working at having phone conversations.  He tells me that he wants me to buy him a Toby Train -- a character from Thomas & Friends.  I tell him to wait till Christmas.

Thursday

• I work 1000-2100.  I have a company English Corner this afternoon.  The topic?  Advertising & Marketing.
• On the way to school and on the bus, I saw a man practicing cross-country skiing on a sidewalk's pavement near the Baoli Shopping Center.  He had two poles and no skis.  What he was doing was making the motions of skiing, swinging the poles like he was putting them into snow and stepping like he had skis on his feet.  
• It is the day after the terrible election results.  I have read that a few conservatives have given up on the political process while some are vowing to bravely fight on.
• I walked to Nanchang Temple Market at lunchtime.  I was waiting for a phone call that I never received.  I wandered through the Nanchang Book Market.  It seemed a forlorn place.  I wondered how the magazine merchants could make money these days.  While I was there, I looked for something to buy for Tony but there was nothing with a Train theme.  There were Ultraman books but Tony already had some.  Just as I was leaving the market, it started to rain and I had not brought my umbrella.  Thankfully, it didn't rain heavily enough that I got drenched.
• I did the class on advertising and marketing.  I had an exercise in which I showed advertisements to the students and asked them to guess what products were for sale.  One ad showed a sad looking mailman.  In the corner of the photo was a blue pill.  The students didn't notice the blue pill so they had no idea what the ad was trying to promote.  They guessed express delivery services  ties and bicycles   I told them  the blue pill was Viagra  but one student, who had been to Australia for a few years, understood.  He told the other students what the ad was for in Chinese, and they all said ah!!!!  (Should I have done this?  It was a display of vulgarity after all.  I try to amuse as I educate. That is my defence.)

Friday

• My parting words to Tony, as I send him off to school, are that he be a good boy -- beating up only those who try to beat him up, and kicking their ass in this process.  This morning, I said this to him and he said okay in response.  Now, whether he meant or it not, I just don't know.  The little bugger is passive around other children and lets them bully him.
• On the bus, I see a three minute long infomercial about my school.  I made a very brief appearance in it, but I did see my work place.  What a strange thing, to be greeted by video of your work place just as you take your seat on the bus.
• I work 1100-2100.  I have an English corner at 1900.  The topic:  Mobile Phones.
• I am starting to get Tony to anticipate Christmas.  It is less than two months away I tell him.
• Chinese students have their heads full of the knowledge that they need to pass tests.  Unfortunately, they have the imaginations of soda cans.  When they answer questions, they say what they think they have to say and seem to forget that the purpose of an English class is to increase their English-speaking abilities and not treat each question asked them as if it was a test question to be quickly gotten through. 
• Election result thoughts:  I should try to be defiant but I don't have the heart now.  I should take solace from the fact that the Soviet Union fell and the Chinese gave up on full-blown Communism, and that maybe more such sterling moments will happen in my life time.  But, alas, these things aren't going to happen in the near future or before I die.  I am afraid I won't live to see them.  (I suppose many Leftists who try to promote themselves as anti-Communist download '89 because it happened during a Republican Presidency.)
• I spend an hour typing this WCE Blog Entry

Saturday

• I work 1000-1800.
• The others have the pub.  I have my wife and son.  So there!
• Tomorrow will be Remembrance Day.  I have many things planned on my blogs to commemorate:  here, here, and here.
• Meanwhile, tomorrow in China will be singles day because of of the date with all the ones -- 11/11.  I can't go along with this local tradition since it would involve have to denigrate a more solemn one.  The freedoms that the Chinese do have today can be attributed, not so much to their leaders, as to the sacrifices made by soldiers from Canada, England, Australia and America.
• I bought Tony some more stuff for his train set.    I went to the toy store and found a book of suggested train track layouts for Takara Tomy.  I snatched a couple and Tony was studying them at his bed time.

Sunday

• I work 1000-1800.
• It is cold today.  I may need to put on a sweater.
• No VPN all week.  How, I curse the Chicom powers that be...
• I took a video of Tony acting. That is, he said something very clever and show-manlike for the camera. I had seen him do a interesting thing and so I asked him to do it again in a video and he gladly obliged.  (Don't worry, I didn't ask him to run around the restaurant.  In fact, I have heeded the advice of a rare reader, and locked him in a dungeon so that he never goes in public again during his childhood.  He he he....)

Lest We Forget

Why I Hope Romney Wins

I should have started writing out this essay a week ago.  The idea to so so only came to me after I saw other such essays on the Internet.

Rare readers should know that I use the labels conservative and libertarian to describe my political views.  Thus it should come as no surprise that I don't want Obama to win.  But that doesn't mean I would necessarily support Romney.  Back when the pre-primary stage of the presidential election started, Romney was not my first choice to be the Republican candidate or even my second or third or fourth.  Romney was more acceptable than Ron Paul (supported by dope smokers and isolationists), Donald Trump, and Jon Huntsman (self-described moderate and loathsome RINO -- what a joke he was!), but that was about it.

However, Romney won the Republican nomination in the end, so I will have to rationalize my supporting him.  He is a Mormon which makes him, more than likely, to be a good person.  The Mormons I have meet have really impressed me.  And as a demographic group, they have been one of the more successful groups in America, right up there with Jews and Asians.  Romney is a successful businessman which means the Left hates him -- anything the Left hates is usually good. (Well what about Hitler?  The only thing the Left hates about Hitler, for instance, was his forcing the establishment of the state of Israel -- they really had no problem with his Socialism)  Romney has executive experience up the ying-yang -- both in business and as a the governor of Massachusetts.  In the third debate, he looked very Presidential.  And his running mate Paul Ryan is alright.

However, Romney has said some things that trouble me as a conservative and as a libertarian.  During the second presidential debate on economics, he said many distressing things and sounded like a big government Republican.  He went a little too far with his China-bashing. One has to hope that his running mate Paul Ryan can stop these spending excesses, like Chou En Lai was said to have checked Chairman Mao's excesses.

But, to paraphrase Marc Levin, an orange pop can is more worthy of any person's vote than President Obama.  I don't know where to start with why Obama doesn't deserve to be re-elected.  So, I will list my grievances -- the ones I can think of -- in bullet form:

• Obama's election to the Presidency in 2008 was like watching a cult grow before one's eyes.  It was Jonestown kool-aid drinking.  Never has a person said so many meaningless platitudes and been thought of as being profound.  Never have supporters of a political candidate sounded so deluded and foolish (for instance:  I felt a tingle up my leg!)
• Obama, in his Jesus-like posture, promised to transcend petty party differences and bring a new idealism.  I knew full well at the time that this was baloney.  Still, I was surprised how he became a more divisive figure than Bush or Clinton.  And his supporters became more and more narcissistic and self-righteous, all out of keeping with this idealist and tolerant pose they were supposed to have adopted like their dear leader.   To see them moan and suffer if their Messiah is not re-elected would be a joy to watch.  Of course, they will become more shrill during a Romney Presidency, but I will have to train myself to enjoy their suffering and pray that they see the errors of their ways.
• Despite all the talk of the genius of his '08 campaign, Obama was very lucky to have won.  The financial crisis's timing ensured his election.  At the time, he was trailing McCain in the polls.
• Obama's election was false grace.  Some Americans just wanted to elect the first black guy president.
• Obama's election was the worst case of affirmative action I ever saw.  (grammatical mistake intentionally)  How else to explain how a two year junior Senator could become President?
• Obama continued Bush's war against Terrorism, but in an evil way.  Bush, being a decent man, captured the terrorists and put them in Gitmo.  Thinking of all the grief Bush got for Gitmo, one wondered why the Americans just didn't kill the terrorists as soon as they captured them and saved the trouble.  But that would have been inhumane and cruel, and ultimately bad strategy.  Use the terrorists to help find the other terrorists and save innocent lives was the decent thing to do.  Obama didn't do this.  He employed drones to wipe out the terrorists and caused lots of collateral innocent casualties.  Now tell me who is more deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize?  The U.S. President -- there is something about being the U.S. President that makes one eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize -- who fought a war in a humane way as possible, or the one who using remote controlled missiles indiscriminately?
• Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East was proven a failure by the Benghazi incident where his efforts to liberate Libya were rewarded by the murder of a U.S. ambassador.  The subsequent cover-up has been shameless.
• Speaking of shameless, was the lack of interest by most of the media in his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright astounding to behold?  Obama's speech on race during the 2008 campaign actually defended Reverend Wright.  The speech was meet with great acclaim, but little attention was then paid to the fact that a week later, Wright made public statements that resulted in an embarrassed Obama having to leave Wright's church -- throwing him under the bus, as it were.
• In the speech, Obama said one of his white relatives was racist because she felt intimidated by young blacks in hoods.  That was absurd.
• But these are minor quibbles compared to the actual economic record of Obama in his time as president.
• Obama has made every possible bone-headed decision possible to have prevented a full recovery from the 2008 recession possible.  Instead of dealing with America's deficit problem, Obama choose to try to socialize the American healthcare sector.  So bad is Obamacare, that one must assume it is a stealth plan to bring a single payer socialized healthcare to America.
• Obama had provided no leadership on the deficit and debt issue.  Instead, he has tried to employ class envy demagoguery and to talk of jobs plans to revive the economy -- non-starters if he wants to get any of his opponents to agree with him.
• Obama's party has not passed a budget for three years.
• Obama saving General Motors from bankruptcy was a sop to his union supporters.  Bankruptcy would have actually given GM a chance to organize itself in an rational fashion.  Instead, there has been the Chevy Volt and the U.S. Treasury is stuck with a 27 percent share of GM stock that it can't unload without incurring a huge loss.
• Solyndra.  Obama's plan to revive the U.S. economy with green jobs is a joke.
• His blaming the ATM for job losses was one of his most egregious display of his economic ignorance.
• Studies of his background have shown him to be influenced by crackpot ideas.
• He has lowered the behavioral standards for the U.S. presidency -- quite a feat considering the fact that the pervert and rapist Bill Clinton put the presidency in the gutter.  Obama said his bowling was Special Olympian.  Obama has appeared on shows with comedians.  His bayonet and horses statement in the third debate showed him to be a narcissistic and self-righteous -- all that is wrong with Liberalism that he may represent in his more temperate moments.

Anyway, I end the list there I'll stop my complaining about Obama for now.  I cross my fingers that he will not be re-elected and I can go on to complain about Romney's Milquetoastism for the next four years.

October 29 to November 4, 2012 Blog Entry

This was the last full week before we learned of the results of the U.S. presidential election -- this is assuming the Democrats don't go to court if they don't like the result.  I stopped paying full time attention to it on Wednesday  I have seen a frenzy of coverage about it on my RSS Reader and I don't want to be overwhelmed by it.

For me, personally, the week has been one of highs and lows.  Tony just seems to do something new every day that fills me with pride and astonishment.  People who sneer at others who have children are idiots.  (And while I am at it, and since I am in China, I will tell you that the one-child policy is evil.  It means abortion and the murder of so many innocents -- more have been murdered by the one-child policy than were killed by Chairman Mao.)  My duty to Jenny and Tony keeps me going.

The students at the school, to a lesser extent, keep me going too.  Some of them are very nice people.  Not all of them, of course.  Some are lazy or under the sway of their portable electronic devices, and need a kick in the ass and to be slapped on either one or both sides of the head.

Gratitude  I should be thankful to have some readers.  My stats tell me about that maybe twenty or so will read this entry.  Now, whether they read this entry to the end is another story.  (My stats for my WCE Blog indicate, people take one quick look and close the blog window).

Acknowledgement   I am a moral coward.  I don't stand up for what is right.

Request  America!  Vote for Mitt Romney!  The alternative is much, much worse.

The Wuxi Corrupt Officials

The Corrupts lost a tough one 120-118 to the River Rats.  The Corrupts record fell to 5-2 but they are still in first place in their division.

Canada Ain't Cool -- Thank God!

The most well-known Koreans, Chinese, and Russians are dictators.  So, I suspect the reason there are no famous Canadian leaders is that none of them, even the evil Pierre Turdeau*, was a dictator.  Best to be obscure and uncool!

Links of the Week

American Fez  A funny and clever site.   Look under Caxton's Children and you will see a link to my blog.

If ever America becomes post-racial, it won't be because of the Obama Presidency.

Quotes of the Week

"The majority of people are not only afraid of holding a wrong opinion, they are afraid of holding an opinion alone." Kierkegaard

 "If Obama loses, expect the question of how such a moody, low-energy loner became president to be immediately shoved down the national memory hole of that-which-we-shall-never-mention-again."  Steve Sailer

1)"So that one does not live depressed among so many foolish opinions, it behooves one to remember at every moment that things obviously are what they are, no matter what the world's opinion is."

2) "My convictions are the same as those of an old woman praying in the corner of a church."

These two quotes come from Don Colacho courtesy David Warren.

Reading

• Finished Shakespeare's Henry V.  
• Finished A trip to Manitoba by Mary Fitzgibbon.  She traveled to the province in the late 1870s. It wasn't easy to get there at that time-- there were no highways and the train line was just being built.  She experienced the worst that Manitoba can throw at one's person -- bugs, rain, mud, swamp, cold and snow.
• Finished Stephen Leacock's Beyond the Beyond.
• Started The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.
• Started The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  I heard a Doyle expert say that the stories of Brigadier Gerard were better than the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Monday

• I don't work.  I act the role of the homebody.  I do a lot of blogging.
• I have an idea to increase readership.  I will have to patronize other blogs.  Not to say that I don't read any.  I do read a few, but I should make comments and send my praise. (As of Sunday, I haven't started doing this.)
• I finished reading Henry V.  I had seen the movie so some parts of the play were familiar to me.
• Tony printed out "10" for his homework.
• I had lunch at the local Casa K Muslim Restaurant.  I had a wonderful repast consisting of potatoes, noodles and broth.
• I finished editing and uploading Scenes from My Life in Wuxi, China #31.  In the video, I made my Internet singing debut.
• It stills amazes me that I can see these peasant types wearing their wide rice paddy hats as they sweep the streets.
• On the local t.v. news, a story about people growing vegetables in parks amazed my wife.  I told her that I had seen this sort of thing happening at a park near Tony's kindergarten.  My wife then told me it was the bigness of the garden that surprised her.
• The word is that Obama has lost it.  I mention this because this is a journal and this is the first time I think that I have read a critical mass of this talk to believe it might really be true.  God!  How I hope it is true.
• The San Francisco Giants won the World Series, sweeping the Detroit Tigers.  The Tigers had the seventh best record in the American League.  The Giants had the third best record in the National League.  They both happened to have played a good stretch of ball at the end of the season.  Were they the two best teams of the year?  Not really.  God!  How I hate the wildcard.

Tuesday

• I don't work.  It is raining.  I don't want to be a homebody again.  Though I read a lot of books yesterday, I had the uncomfortable feeling one gets when one has indulged too much in some activity that is not very physical.  That is, I felt physically like I had wasted the day by playing computer games.
• I will have to make a point of it to go for a walk this afternoon.
• Gagnam Style.  Or is it Gagnum style?  Anyway, there is some South Korean pop video that has been very popular the last two months.  I had never heard of it, but the students had, so when a student mentioned the song during a class last week, the students were amused when I asked what it was.  Tony and Jenny had heard of it, and so Jenny was stunned when I told her I didn't know anything about this Gagnam Style.  What do you do on the Internet?  she asked me.  You are always on it and never heard of Gagnam Style?  I wonder if she knows about the U.S. election -- we never talk about it.
• So, I watched Gagnam Style video.  It shows a quick succession of images of people dancing at a maddeningly quick pace.
• Jenny said that the fellow who is the star of the Gagnam Style video is the most famous South Korean of all time.  She could be right.  Thinking about the topic of famous Koreans, the first ones to pop to my mind are the North Korean Dictators.  The only South Korean I can think of is one who might by the Secretary General of the U.N. -- Moon Bat Yack or something-is-his name.
• Anyway, Gagnam Style will go the way of the Macarana.  A fad that people will ashamed to admit that they got caught up in.   I would only wish that fate on the North Koreans.
• If your country needs to have the U.N. secretary-generalship thrust on it in order to give one of its citizens a high profile in the world, that says only two things:  Either your country deserves obscurity because it is a crappy insignificant place or it a place that doesn't make the news because interesting things that make the news don't happen there.  South Korea is the latter kind of country.  As are places like Denmark and Canada.
• I changed, or rather updated, my profile photo on Facebook.  This is something that should not be worthy of mention, even in this blog, but I got a lot of feedback saying I was frowning and looked angry.  I had actually liked the photo because it was well lit and it didn't seem to show the other imperfections about my face that I had seen in all the other photos that I had taken of myself recently.  I even thought the photo showed a quiet, if somewhat dour, amusement with my situation.  So, I wondered what the heck these people were talking about.  But then I looked at the photo and saw that the frown was practically V-shaped -- the corners of my lips were half an inch below its top center.  I can blame this on this two things.  Firstly, the baggy facial features I have -- this runs in the family -- that making smiling seem such an arduous task to me.  If you look at photos of me smiling, you will see that the smiles are strained and forced.  It is hard work to life my jowls up to force a smile.  Secondly -- and this is the part that I get defensive about -- I can blame the frown on a grim determination I have.  There are things in life that I could easily use as an excuse to really be angry.  Anyone can rationalize their emotions.  But this determination to improve myself, to accept some hard facts about my imperfections and the imperfections of others, is inducing a dourness to my outward appearance.  That it looks like anger and glumness to others is something I hadn't been aware of.  I will have to change the profile photo.
• I must be proof of the George Orwell quote:  At 50, everyone has the face deserves.
• I went to the local Taiwanese restaurant for lunch.  It wasn't so good today.  The service was slow.  They brought my meal to me ten minutes after my wife had almost finished hers.
• I then went for a walk in the area around Casa Kaulins.  It was like going to the third world.  I saw subsistence agriculture.  I saw trash.  I saw shanty living conditions.  It was quite the contrast to my apartment complex where some of the residents have Audi or Porsche sports cars.
• The emperor is scheduled to arrive at 430 pm.  Who is the emperor?  you ask....    Come on!!!  You must know!
• Tony practices printing elevens.

Wednesday

• I work 1300-2100.  An easy day for me.  I do an English Corner (Topic: Halloween; and I will then play the Jeopardy game).  I then do a Company class (Sempelkamp).  I will give the students a test -- a long test!
• I feel a chill in the air.  I put on a jacket.
• Halloween: the students don't care.  They find my costume discussions a little amusing.  I give them great ideas for costumes:  President Obama, President Hu, the deep fried dough sticks called Youtiao, a tooth brush, and a hair brush.
• Lunch time:  I eat in a restaurant that is on a side street off Zhongshan Road, in the area of my school.  We had pork, eel, beef and potatoes, corn and potatoes.
• Books and Sex and good deeds performed by my son.  That is all I need to be happy.
• My wife offers me something.  My first reaction is to say "no!  no!  no!" but I then correct myself:  "Thank you Honey!"
• Monkey monkey:  I called some of the students that during classes.  "Monkeys can give better answers than that!" I tell them.
• While the company students were writing test, I was reading Leacock's Behind the Beyond on my Ipod Touch.   At a particularly funny point in the book, I laughed aloud and startled the students.
• I do a Jeopardy style quiz with the students.  I have a category asking questions about Scary Things.  One of the answers is Naked or Nude.  The students think it particularly amusing.

Thursday

• I work 1000-2100.  My long day.
• Sunny but foggy in the morning.  Fall has definitely come to the Wux.
• I have breakfast at McDonald's.  I order a double sausage and cheese breakfast sandwich.  The clerk tells that it isn't available but that I could order the sausage and cheese breakfast sandwich -- that is, I can have one less sausage patty.  Did I happen to order the last sausage patty they had?
• My first class of the day will be with a Japanese student.
• Why do some bald-headed people insist on wearing mustaches?  I ask this after having seen a fellow walk down the street.
• I am thinking I will stop following politics so closely after the U.S. election is completed.  I will concentrate on fiction and Chinese and history and getting ahead.  Politics seems like such a waste of time.  Politicians will do what they think the populace wants.  And the populace doesn't want to be lead as much as to be served by  politicians.  Result:  the sad state of finances in Europe and the U.S. is what the population has wanted.  I suppose the population would in theory want balanced budgets and no unemployment, but they also want things that are irreconcilable with this goal.
• I must be physically weak.  I sit in the office all day.  Seven days a week, I sit in front of the computer.

Friday

• I work 1100-2100. I arrive at the school at 945.  I ate the big breakfast at McDonald's.
• I saw a foreigner at McDonald's.  I thought I looked bad!  He was in his forties or fifties and looked like he hadn't slept in three days.  If what Orwell says is true (see Tuesday), I wonder what the hell he did in his life
• In my case, it is what the hell didn't I do.
• How I wish I could just sit in a vehicle all day and just watch the passing scene.  I don't like having to be in a small spot all the time when I am not reading a book -- an activity that I will stand still for.
• My habit of getting up from my desk and wandering nervously around the school has been often been commented upon by others.
• I am struck by how heavily Wuxi people have started to dress in the last two days.  It got cold all-of-a-sudden.  I am wearing a long sleeve shirt with a t-shirt underneath.  The locals have put on sweaters and wool jackets.
• Tony, like me, was not into dressing so heavily.  He and his Mom had a big disagreement about this.  So much so that when I took Tony to the kindergarten van, he was crying.  When I put him in the van, he kept crying.  And he was still crying when the van pulled away.  It annoys me that Tony won't tell me what is wrong.  He tells his displeasure to him Mom in Chinese.  His English protest vocabulary is limited.

Saturday

• I work 1000-1800.  No breakfast.  I bought an American Coffee at 85.
• I stand on the bus trip to work.  I notice that this girl has dandruff.  In China, every one takes a shower before they go to bed.  I take my shower in the morning.
• I took a picture of Chefs standing in ranks. 
• To go or not to go?  I won't.
• The Economist has endorsed Barack Obama.  I stopped reading the Economist years ago.  I detected a leftward drift in it.  So this endorsement doesn't surprise.  Anyway, another reason not to vote for Barack Obama or in my case, to not hope for his victory in the Tuesday election.

Sunday

• I work 1000-1800.  I feel like I have a cold or a flu coming on, so I am not operating at one hundred percent.  My stomach felt weird last night and I had to sit on the toilet for fifteen minutes last night.
• Tony knows his grandfather died. [get link!]
• I go to the Italian restaurant.  "Oh!  Let me guess!  You are having the same pizza you always order!"  I am contemplating never going there again.
• I compose an article endorsing Mitt Romney for President.
• Overheard:  "So I was sitting there and it was just like Oh My God!  I was just staring like!  Aaaghhh!"  What kind of way is that for a teacher to talk?
• Gruesome sight:  I just saw a man carrying in his arms, a child who had a very bloody head.  The child was whimpering.   I assumed the man and the boy were headed to the nearby #2 People's Hospital.  They looked like they had come from the Dico's Restaurant.  Perhaps, the child had hurt his head on at their playground.  There was a lot of blood on the boy's head.  The momentary glimpse of it was enough to stop me in my tracks.  Regaining my breath, I made a quick prayer for the child.
• Had dinner in a restaurant in Ba Bai Ban.
• The three K's:  Jenny, Tony & Andis then walked through Chong An Si to get to their bus stop.  Along the way, they saw, across the street from the Moresky 360 Building, a building under construction that was taller the Moresky.
• Tournament Eight:  My coin-tossing tournament is down to its final 12 teams -- it started out with 32.  These 12 teams will play in a final tournament to determine the overall Tournament Champion.  Eight teams qualify for the tournament by finishing first  a single round robin of their four team group.  The 16 second and third place finishers play off for the four remaining final tournament spots.  The four teams that qualified for the final tourney, this past week, were Team E,  Team K, Team W, and Team HH.  The opening round of the tourney will consist of four three-team groups playing a single round-robin.  The top two teams in each group will advance to the next round.  The game, that these two teams in the opening round, will count towards the standings in the second round, where there will be two four-team groups playing a single round robin.  The top three teams in each four-team group will qualify for the playoffs that will determine the tournament champion.  The first place teams in each group will earn a bye to the tournament championship semifinals.  The second and third place teams will play off to determine to the other two semifinalists.

*Spelling mistake was intentional