Gratitude:
Thank God for holidays!
Acknowledgement:
I don't think I am good for
much of anything.
Requests:
Email me at
andiskaulins@qq.com.
The
AKIC Week in Brief: It was a
week of incidents such as running into people. Some people just
happened know me from before. Some knew me from my blog or from bus
television. It was also a week of being in holiday mood as I took
Thursday off for the Mid-Autumn Festival and began to look forward to
a five day stretch of days off for the Chinese National Day holiday.
There was a change in my routine, as I took a different bus route to
work.
About
AKIC: If you want to learn
what Andis & AKIC are
all about, you
can visit here.
If
there are things about AKIC you don't know
about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can
go here to
find out what they are all about.
AKIC
Weekly Features:
I
in in China!
我祝你们中秋节！
祝你国庆节？我不知道！
I
am Canadian!
我是加拿大人！I
hear it was cold in Brandon, Manitoba;
and the water in Winnipeg was brown. From the Wuxi Water Crisis to
the Winnipeg Water Crisis! Ha!
I
am Latvian (sort of)! I can
barely speak ten words of Latvian.
Wuxi
Peach Maoists Update: Visit here
to find out how Your Peach Maoists did in week two.
Politically
I am Conservative/Reactionary!
In certain contexts, I wouldn't want to be a conservative. For
example, being conservative now in China means wanting to keep the
Chicoms in power. I am not for that. I would love to see China
become a constitutional monarchy. I prefer calling myself a
reactionary because I believe human nature never changes and humans
never progress toward anything in their earthly existence. I believe
in the Nicene Creed and that the only poverty that can be fought in
our live is a spiritual poverty.
I
teach English! If only the
students would prepare
before they came to class, I could actually teach them something.
I
am not a freak! I just like to
act like I am one! Mind you, it isn't easy to be a freak in this day
and age. Non-conformity is really conformity these days and true
eccentricity is not tolerated.
I
like to Read! Here
is what I had been working my way through the past week:
Don
Colacho's Aphorisms. There are 2,988 of them in this book
that I compiled for myself. I read ten aphorisms at a time.
I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually --
and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)
Ulysses
by James Joyce. I am following along with Frank
Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through
Joyce's hard-to-read novel. Delaney figures he will have the
whole novel covered in about 22 years. Delaney completed
episode #171 this week and is working his way through the chapter
that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far
as reading the book. I will be finished my reading of it, I
figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies.
It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it,
and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with
it
The
Holy Bible King James Version. I am reading a
chapter, or more, a day of the greatest book of all-time. I have
finished the the General Epistle of James and the First Epistle
General of Peter, and am now reading the Second.
Columns
by Father Schall. I have been
able to take all
his archived writings and place them on the Dotdotdot app.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Like Father Schall's writings, I have been able to place its contents
on the Dotdotdot app.
The
Limits of Pure Democracy by WH Mallock. Oligarchy
is man's natural state. Attempts to have it otherwise are illogical.
The
Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. A good book, but
certainly not an authoritative book about China. One gets the
impression that China is so big that it is hard for an historian to
write a clearly focused book about it.
Mao
Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi. A Hagiography given to me
by a local.
I
like to take photos
I
publish them in the following blogs: AKIC
wordpress , TKIC
blogspot,
TKIC
wordpress, Views
of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot and Views
of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress.
I
like to make videos
Here
is my
Youtube Channel and my
Youku Channel.
I
like to cut and paste quotations:
200
We should not conclude that everything is permitted, if God does
not exist, but that nothing matters.
202
Do they preach the truths in which they believe, or the truths in
which they believe they ought to believe? [Good Question!]
210
The individual today rebels against immutable human nature so that
he might refrain from amending his own correctable nature.
217
Societal salvation is near when each person admits that he can
save only himself. Society is saved when its supposed saviors
despair. [A despairing Obama is a good thing indeed.]
218
When today they tell us that someone lacks personality, we
know they are speaking of a simple, trustworthy, upright being.
[I have taken the expression to mean they find the person boring.
But then boring, trustworthy and upright beings don't stand a chance
in this day and age.]
228
The intelligent man's unjust judgements tend to be truths wrapped
up in a bad mood.
229
The people have never been feted except at the expense of another
social class.
230
Modern man already knows that
political solutions
are ludicrous and suspects that economic solutions are too. [It
is certainly true to say that politics and economics don't mix like
oil and water. Oil and water are useful things however. Is it
better to say the politics and economics are like jealousy and
materialism because both don't solve man's real problems?]
240
I envy those who do not feel
that they own only their stupidities. [These
people are saintly.]
WH
Mallock:
It
is, however, one thing for a man to accept a principle as such, and
quite another to be satisfied with its particular application to
himself. [That is the test of
anyone who is conservative or
reactionary. They would have to accept a lower position in life if
that is what their talents consign themselves to. However, I suspect
many are conservative because of a need to feel superior to
socialists.]
David
Warren:
The
apes are specialized, each species for its niche; men, to the
contrary, were generalists from our beginning. It is to be regretted
that the modern university is, for the most part, graduating apes,
not men.
A
hideous, ape-like, destructive force has been at large in our world
for generations, & through the hierarchy of our Church for at
least the last two.
Literalism,
reductionism, point-scoring, prioritizing, are marks of the poorly
educated mind. [Thinking
of point-scoring. I think how lefties always like to bring up the
unfortunate hunting accident of U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Contrariwise, I think of how those on the right like to bring up the
many verbal gaffes of President Obama and Vice-President Biden –
this is done in response to the lefties trying to score points of
George W. Bush's gaffes. Thinking of Literalism, I have run into a
few ignorant Ape-like Wuxi Expats (most Wuxi Expats are Apes to be
honest) who love to engage in this activity of taking something
someone said too literally. I remember a few times having something
I said, just for the sake of making conversation, taken literally and
used to mock me for being trite. Thank God, I don't associate with
these people. When I think of prioritizing, I think of the idea of
being cool (Cool people are too cool to do common things); I think of
the man who is all business all the time; I think of the man who even
makes his leisure time a serious business; and I think of the people
who compartmentalize. The latter remind me of SS concentration camp
commanders who would go home to their wife and children after a hard
day of work.]
Theodore
Dalrymple:
My
philosopher companion said that I should take pleasure in the good
buildings of the square and disregard the bad for, after all, the
good buildings were as good as they ever had been.
But,
I said, the square was not just a lot of individual buildings, it was
a Gestalt, more than the sum of its parts. The one atrocity destroyed
it all.
The
philosopher at first denied this, so I thought of an analogy. Suppose
you are in a restaurant and your meal is delicious. Suddenly the
diner at the next table vomits copiously. Do you continue to eat with
the same delectation as before, just because the food on your plate
remains unchanged?
[It
is so hard to find a Gestalt in Wuxi that is beautiful. At best,
Wuxi is a diner where the food at one table is delicious, and there
is copious vomiting at every other table. For example, I have seen
five star hotels located next to lots of rubble in China.]
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