AKIC's April 2015 Notes, Observations and Thoughts.

• I didn't realize it was April Fool's Day till it was too late. I was working that day and I could have used it as a subject of conversation at school. I suppose that I was the fool.
• At the beginning of April, I was following closely the Winnipeg Jets results as they were attempting to make the playoffs. As it was, they had the final playoff spot but only barely.
• Temperatures shot up to the thirties (that's in Celsius) on the first Thursday of April.
• I finished reading a Jeeves and Wooster novel.
• I caught what I liked to call the 8:05 637 and was surprised to see the bus fill to SRO. The majority of times I have taken the 637, I have been the only passenger.
• I get these emails updates from a blogger named Lloyd Lofthouse who writes about China. It seems he really hates America more than he loves China and that he is an apologist for the Chicom regime. In one entry, he suggested that the CIA had stirred up the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989....
• I was bragging to a student that I always got a seat when taking the bus, and so she asked me if this was because people were yielding them to me on account of my being old. Ignoring the insult, which I took in very good stride actually, I told her that I always gave myself plenty of time to wait for a bus with available seats, even letting several buses I could take pass by because they had no seats.
• Reading on the bus was a great thing, I said, and the student agreed. You can't read in a car if you are driving.
• The day after we had a high of 31 degrees Celsius, the temperature plummeted to a high of sixteen.
• The Kaulins family may soon be getting a new e-bike. The e-bike we have had since 2008 has so fallen apart – it's plastic body has been held together with cheap tape – that Jenny has finally bowed to my demands that we get a new one. The final straw was the breaking of the latch on the seat. The seat covers a storage area where we keep the charger and extension cord. The latch became out of whack over the years so that locking the seat required us to slam it down. This slamming eventually caused the latch to break in April. No longer latched in place the seat was sliding forward so that the hinge on the other end cracked and the seat now is out of place and very uncomfortable to sit upon. It isn't worth it to fix it, the repairman told Jenny. [We will get the new e-bike after we come back from our June trip to Canada.]
• “What did you do this morning?” I asked a student. She told me she forgot.
• I published a picture of a braying donkey on my WeChat App. It was very symbolic. My way of responding to an outrage. I don't know if anyone made the connection. Probably not.
• All I can do in China is try to improve the level of English. I can't do much about its civilization because the one I come from gets more and more not worth mentioning or defending.
• As the train was approaching Nanchang Temple station one morning, I got up from my seat and stood next to the door so I could ready myself to exit. And as I was looking out the window, I felt something brush against my knee. I looked down to see that a little toddler had cut in front of me. Perhaps the Chinese are born that way, I thought to myself. The child was accompanied by a man who I presume was his grandparent. Following the child, the old man got up from his seat and stood beside me and laughed sheepishly as I raised my glance upward from his grandchild, who was eager for the door to open, to him.
• Do I hate Gays? To answer this question I would first have to say that I object to the use of the word gay in the question. Let's try to use that word in the old way. So instead of the word gay in the question, let's use the word homosexual. Now I will answer the properly formed question: Do I hate homosexuals? No. I hate their sin. And to say I hate them would be to say I hate myself because I am a sinner as well. I sin in different ways. And much as I disappoint myself because of this, I don't hate myself.
• To disapprove does not mean to cast stones. That is, disapproving is not stone throwing.
• Walking home one evening, I saw some sights that would seem strange in Canada. I first saw a man, wearing a housecoat and walking his dog. I then saw that a couple of men had set a fire on a street corner. I have seen the locals wear pajamas on public streets, so the housecoat wasn't a complete surprise although it was a first because it was a housecoat. The fire on the street corner was not a first either, but seemed to fall into the pattern I have noticed of things happening in pairs for me.
• The last student I taught before the Easter/Qing Ming Weekend was mopey. She was determined to tell me that she didn't like anything and all that she wanted to do on the Qing Ming weekend was sit in a chair and be miserable. So, I attempted to teach her the word “mope.”
• I never know how to take students who get in that I-don't-like-anything mood. Other then to run out the clock with them and at least get them to converse in English, there isn't much that I think can do. People who are determined to mope, are very imperious to reason and any attempt I would make to cheer them up.
• This particular student was one whom I wrote about in a previous monthly entry. I mentioned that in a previous class, she told me that she wanted to be a doctor, following in the foot steps of her father. She then didn't know any of the vocabulary for that class's topic which was about going to the doctor's, and so I had to make her repeat the class. Despite her dourness in the Easter weekend class, I didn't fail her because, unlike the previous class, she knew the required vocabulary.
• To make students happy is not my priority. My job is to make them improve their English.
• One student was mopey; another I had to deal with was fidgety.
• In a class about movies, I had one of the students say I was old because I told them I loved westerns and musicals. I then read Taki, in a recent article, say that he had his son cover his ears when he tried to play a Fred Astaire recording for him. Better to be on the same page with Taki than with anyone under the age of 35.
• I went in early to the Hui Shan Wanda Starbucks one morning. There was no one there, I had a coupon for a free coffee and the worker told me that my son was very cute. I thought this was wonderful.
• On Easter weekend, I stayed in the apartment. The weather was horrible: rain, sometimes heavy.
• News that one of my aunts was moving and selling her old house in Winnipeg so she could move to an apartment near her daughter in Flin Flon (an eight hour drive away) depressed me. Back in the 1970s, Winnipeg seemed like such an attractive place to me because there were so many relatives there. Now, they are dying off and their children have moved to more interesting climes.
• Tony told me that he wanted to do some trainspotting on a weekend – something we hadn't done in a while. I was glad to hear him voice this desire because it sure beat hearing him beg to play with the Ipad.
• Scientism: the belief in the redemption of man through science. Hat tip to David Warren.
• I saw this old woman, hobbling very slowly down the bike path alongside Zhongshan Road. She was walking with the aid of a cane – the kind with four short legs on the bottom – in one hand and a hip-high crutch in the other. She moved so pathetically slow that I had to wonder if she had any relatives to help her, and then I suddenly felt shame as I thought of my mother living by herself in Brandon, Canada. The old woman was going to cross Zhongshan Road at a crossing, near my school, that I was about to take myself. I got to the crossing just a little ahead of her and crossed very quickly and continued on my way to school, all the while wondering how the woman was going to be able to cross the road. In China, cars won't yield to pedestrians unless the pedestrians can get to the open space first, and so it a contest to see who can get through the intersection first. An old woman walking a snail's pace will have a hard time trying to cross a road where drivers are hell bent on not slowing down. I hurriedly entered my school and climbed the stairs to get to the reception area where I could then go to a nearby window to watch the old woman negotiate the crossing. I quickly realized that she wasn't so helpless and was actually a veteran at judging when to cross the street. I saw that she let some cars pass and then proceeded to cross the road seamlessly. A few cars swerved around her and I thought what bastards the drivers were for not yielding. But as she proceeded, cars and buses did come to a stop and she crossed safely.
• I watched two movie musicals during the Easter weekend: South Pacific and Kismet. I enjoyed them both but alas, I had nobody I can talk about them. Are there some possible rare readers who may have similar tastes to me? No one in Wuxi whether among the teachers, the students or my family would appreciate my love for these kind of movies. If there is anyone, please email me!
• I remember that, when I was a child and people owned vinyl records, my father had the soundtrack record album for South Pacific. I understand why people of his generation would have enjoyed these movies. What can be better than humming or singing a tune from a movie you just watched? What I don't understand now is why people in this day and age, with rare exceptions, don't enjoy it.
• The other musical I watched, Kismet portrayed Muslims in a friendly light. While the overlords in Arabia are cruel, the simple folk have a genuine piety. Perhaps that is the way Muslims are today. It seems that it is the ones with the means to travel who cause the trouble. Anyway, Howard Keel, who was the star of the movie, was a genuine movie star. How is it that I hadn't heard of him before?
• I am reading this book Sapiens, a history of homo sapiens. An interesting book that both David Warren and Jonah Goldberg mentioned this very month. The author asserts that the agricultural revolution was a big mistake. Instead of bringing humans civilization, the revolution instead, says the author, brought drudgery, disease, rapid population increases, and genocide and torture for many other species. Instead of making us free, agriculture enslaved many. The ideal life for humans, suggested the author, was that of the forager who in fact had shorter work hours and more leisure time.
• Recently, I have eschewed taking the shuttle bus when I go home from work in the evenings. I have discovered that taking the shuttle bus only gets me home five minutes faster than if I walk. So I might as well save a little money and get some exercise. But walking home in the evening, I do feel the tyranny of the motor car. With so many Chinese now owning cars, I find there is little space along the path I take home for pedestrians.
• Pedestrians are the most human of people on the pathways and roadways of modern civilization. Pedestrians truly have the human perspective on things. And as a proud pedestrian, I have to say that the world created by technology is inhuman. Freedom is an open plain, not a pathway overloaded with parked automobiles.
• No one can accuse me of heaping praise on Chinese drivers. But if they tried, it would be to accuse me of lying, for Chinese drivers don't deserve praise.
• One sunny morning, I looked out my apartment bedroom window at the road below and saw a car being passed by two cars, one on its driver's side and one on its passenger side. The road that I can see from our third floor apartment is a two laner. That is, it has a lane for traffic going one way and a lane for traffic going the other. The road also has a width of space for bicycles between the lanes and the sidewalk. This bicycle path is often used as a passing lane by automobiles. The car I saw passing on the passenger side by using the bicycle lane was probably doing about 70 km/h. The vehicle passing on the more conventional driver side was doing about the same speed but was about half a car length ahead of the passenger side vehicle. Traffic coming from the other way forced the driver side passing vehicle to accelerate to get back into the proper lane. The vehicle passing on the passenger side merged in behind it, but just barely.
• I propose to revolutionize eating. I say we eat lunch in the mornings, dinner at lunchtime and have a nice breakfast for our evening meal. And instead of sticking food in our mouths, I say we eat it by trying to stick it in other places in our bodies.
• One Friday afternoon, I took the train from school to a Burger King. Not having a seat, I had to read my Ipad standing up (a minor point, probably not even worth mentioning). One stop prior to when I was to get off, the train doors open, I heard some shouting and thought some people were arguing on the platform. But at the next stop I got off and made my way to the stairs when I saw that the shouting I had heard had come from on the train. There was a middle aged woman arguing with an elderly couple. I saw the woman, who stayed on the train, hiss and swear (shus-a-shus-something) at the old couple as they were getting off. The couple stood on the platform close to the door screaming some epithets at the lady while pointing their fingers at her. (Locals point their fingers in a stabbing gesture at people they are quarreling with) The closing of the train doors did not stop the mutual glaring and the couple only turned their attention away from the woman when the train pulled away. I wondered what they were fighting about.
• And what was the swear word the woman was using? I have heard my wife say it when someone angered her. The girls at work don't understand my attempt at imitating the sound I heard the woman make. The locals can't even to begin to imagine to guess what I am getting at unless I sound a word exactly in the proper tone. The proper syllable said with the wrong tone will not be comprehended so there doesn't seem to be any hope for trying to approximate a syllable even if I try to tell them the context in which I heard it.
• One Friday night, I decided to walk home in the dark from the metro station. Along the way, I saw a man practicing Tai Chi on a bike path. A little later, I saw a young man standing by himself near a fence blocking access to an apartment community. Before I could wonder what he was doing, I saw him perform a handstand and lean his up-stretched legs against the fence.
• A taxi driver says that the Wuxi City government is bankrupt to the tune of twenty billion yuan. The reasons? Corruption and the subway system.
• Out of the blue, Tony told me that he wanted to take the train to Shanghai to go to the train museum which we had gone to one or two years previously.  It was a great idea.  Unfortunately, it was not something that we could have done on an impulse.  I did try to take Tony to the Wuxi East Railway Station but it only served to raise his hopes so much that when I told him that we didn't have tickets to go to Shanghai, he got really upset.

• So upset was he that I wanted to placate him by buying him a toy that would have raised budgetary concerns from Jenny, but Tony had his mind so set on going to the Shanghai Train Museum that even going to a toy store, with the possibility of buying a toy he wanted , could not raise his spirits.  He said "no!" to toy after toy after that I wanted to buy him.
• It turned out that the toy he wanted to buy, a Takara Tomy Plarail train, could not be found in Wuxi Stores.  A few years ago, it looked like Tomy Plarail (a Japanese brand) had abandoned the Chinese market.  The range of products available in the stores became limited and it was no longer possible to find accessories in the stores.  They can be found on Taobao, the popular Chinese Internet site, and so Tony has his mind set on always visiting Taobao and looking for the trains he is now in the mood to buy.
• The Wuxi East Railway Station had a White Elephant look about it.  The people whose idea it was to build the place hoped that they could create an area surrounding the station that was as busy as the squares around the central train stations of Wuxi, Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing.  Instead, they seem to have added to Wuxi's glut of shopping malls.
• The one interesting aspect of the station -- besides its vast emptiness -- was a building of glass and stairs that was meant to be an observation deck.  I wish all train stations had such buildings.
• Monday is my day off.  When I am in Casa Kaulins during the daytime, it is quiet and Tony is at school.  One Monday morning, I was tidying up his toys which he is always leaving on the floor in the living room.  Bending down to put the toys in order (he had his toy fire and emergency vehicles parked almost in a neat row), I became emotional.  In the past, there was a moment when I had my toys in a house.  Lord knows what became of the toys or of the house.  But that was a moment in time, a fleeting one.  This moment with Tony's toys and this time when is Tony is a young boy full of innocent desires and amusements will be gone too I reflected.  This is a moment I would like to freeze.  
• And I harken back to a moment that I can remember in December 1971.  My family was living in a PMQ in Valcartier, Quebec.  I was looking out the window at the snow in the courtyard of the apartment complex in which we were living and I said to myself to not forget this moment.  That moment has stuck with me.  I have tried to get other moments in time to stick in me but maybe because that was the original one – that is the first time I thought to freeze a moment in time, – that it has stuck.  In the mid 1970s, I would write the day's date on a piece of paper and thought to save them forever.  The scraps were discarded.  
• I find it hard to believe that the time in which I was living was longer ago than the events which had formed my consciousness were from when I was young.  [Hitler died 19 years before my birth.  The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series over twenty years ago!]
• I saw a guy who looked like Deng Xiao Ping.  He was short and wore Deng style clothes.  Sights like this are why I came to China.
• At the Hui Shan Wanda Cinema, I saw a film in the 3D IMAX format for the first time. The movie, Fast and Furious Seven, was silly though full of great technical effects. There were cars flying in the air at great heights, cars on parachutes just happening to land on roads instead of in nearby forests, and cars rolling down mountain slopes without injuring their occupants seriously. The format for viewing the film didn't redeem it in my eyes. The 3D was annoying. The IMAX screen on which I watched the film was not as big as I had expected.
• There weren't any characters in the F&F movie who were old. Kurt Russell, the oldest actor in the movie was acting young wearing an expensive suit, his hair greased back.
• The Winnipeg Jets made the NHL playoffs. Hurrah!!!
• Waiting for the 637 Shuttle Bus one morning, I saw a car weaving and swerving in traffic, driving very aggressively. I wouldn't have mentioned this but for the fact that the driver's car had mouth with sharp teeth decals on its doors. The decals certainly reflected his driving style.
• What I would like to see more of on cars would be decals of pricks with arrows pointing toward the driver's seat.
• Questioner: “How are you doing, Andis?” Andis: “Oh. I am still a boring white guy Canadian.”
• I am getting old. I feel sore in the joints at times. As well, I feel chest pains.
• I couldn't go back to Canada and do my old jobs because of my declining physical state.
• I have to confess that I actually worked in Canada.
• Three times I heard about a foreigner who peed on a bus somewhere in China. First it was from my wife, then from a student, and then from a teacher who read about it on the Internet. We all had to wonder if we knew the foreigner personally. Many foreigners who come to China are barbaric yahoos. And so every foreigner knew a possible suspect who could have been the subject of the story that was widely circulated in China.
• A student tells me she doesn't like her job.
• Another student tells me she doesn't like her female boss. “She is fifty and she is in the time of her life where she isn't happy,” said the student.
• I asked a student to tell me which country he thought was China's best friend in the world. He told me Pakistan and I was initially surprised. But thinking about it, I realized there could be a case for it. China and Pakistan have never had a war against each other. And during China's war with India, Pakistan was a Chinese ally. (The student mentioned Pakistan because there had been news of President Xi paying the country a visit and giving them money.)
• For the second straight weekend, I took Tony to a toy store and then left it without having bought him a toy. He had his heart set on TOMY Plarail trains which are no longer available in stores in China.
• I was able to get the four leaked episodes (numbers one to four) of the fifth season of Game of Thrones. One student said she envied me when I mentioned this to her. But I told it was easy for me to get them.
• Jenny is going to re-watch the first four seasons of Game of Thrones because she wants to keep the plot lines straight and she wants to better understand what the characters with their strangely accented English are saying.
• I also watched the entire second season of Broadchurch. Jenny wondered, as I did, how there could be a second season. Didn't they find the killer in the first season? Turned out that the case had to go to trial...
• Was it worth it for the makers of Broadchurch to have made the second season? I will say yes if only because the first season was so good that we wanted to be with the characters some more.
• I watched the Serpico. Serpico should have been called Serpicool.
• I just found out that the Ducks beat the Jets in OT. Shite!!
• Tuesday morning, about 10 o'clock, I was standing at the 637 shuttle bus stop that is near Casa Kaulins. I saw, at vehicle entrance lane to, what I assume is, the Hui Shan District Police Station compound, a man staging a sit-in protest. Vehicles attempting to enter the District compound ended up backing up and entering the compound through the exit lane. The security guards were talking to the man, obviously wanting him to move, but the man then defiantly put his hands behind his head and laid down on the pavement. He was obviously aggrieved by something.
• It was not the first time for me to see a protest at one of the many government buildings near Casa Kaulins. This Tuesday morning, I stood close enough to have taken a photo but was shy to openly do so. When the security guards looked the other way, I did try and quickly pointed my phone camera at the scene but that photo didn't turn out so well.
• Later, after having seen the sit-in protester and then having made my way to downtown, I was crossing Zhongshan Road at the crosswalk near our school. I was able to get one vehicle to yield to me but another car, silver in colour, didn't and because it came so close to me, I got riled and decided to pound its back trunk with my fist. It was enough to startle the driver and I saw him slow down for an instance after he had passed me. “What the heck was that noise?” he must have thought.
• I did a Speaker's Corner about old age. I got a good laugh whenever students prefaced their answers to my questions using "Depends." None of them knew that Depends was the brand name for adult diapers in North America: neither did many of my non North American colleagues.
• The light turning green at a busy intersection leads to a competition for space between cars moving in opposite directions. I have seen not one, but two or more cars try to turn quickly in front of approaching cars and then narrowly dodge pedestrians (like me) who are trying to get through the intersection as well.
• What to do about these screwed-up countries flooding their neighbors with their refugees? How about, colonizing them? If these people from screwed-up countries want to go to places that are administered by Americans or Europeans, wouldn't it be better, for them and for the established residents of the countries they want to move to, if the administrators – that is colonial administrators came to fix up the countries that are screwed up and fixed them? Places like Mexico, Libya, Haiti and Cuba maybe need to be looked after by people who know what they are doing.
• Some of the goals I have seen scored in the current NHL playoffs are not very scintillating. Frequently they are the result of pucks, shot from the point, that manage to find their way in the net because of a broken stick or a freakish deflection off a body in front of the net. These goals not are the result of any great offensive initiative from the players involving great passing or buildups that allow the fans to anticipate the goal.
• I had a student who had it in his head that sadness or disappointment were synonymous with boredom. Moments when you are very sad, elated, very angry, very disappointed are not boring. In fact, they may be too exciting.
• I had a student who didn't know what fruit was, who should have.
• I had a student whom I had trouble trying to explain vegetarianism. (Or should I say “ a student whom I was trying to explain a word to” or “a student to whom I was trying to explain a word”?) I wanted to have a discussion with her about vegetarianism. Not thinking she knew what the word meant, I explained to her what vegetarianism was before asking her to give me her opinion of vegetarianism. To this she said she didn't know vegetarianism was. And so I told her a second time that a vegetarian was someone who didn't eat meat and asked her if she would like to be one and she told me she had forgotten what the word “vegetarian” meant. I became exasperated but persisted. I told her I had already told her twice what the word was. And so I then told her a third time and she finally understood. I've got to tell the students to stop translating in their heads, and start listening and thinking.
• I watched a video of a debate between the atheist Richard Dawkins and John Lennox. Dawkins is not a good evangelist for Atheism. While he seems comfortable on the doubters turf about religion, he doesn't have much to offer as a replacement for it.
• I keep to myself as much as I can because I hate having to deal with stupidity. I have enough on my plate with my own stupidity, I will admit; and this stupidity of mine makes it hard for me to deal intelligently with others when they are being stupid. All I can think to do is say “oh” or say nothing at all. Try as I might, I overhear things that are said by people who are trying to be clever or even sound authoritative. One instance this month, I had chance to hear someone sound progressive about English grammar and forms...
• A student attending a middle school which shares the grounds with Tony's primary school tells me that Tony is well-known, almost a minor celebrity, at the middle school. Many girls at the middle-school think Tony is very cute and like to take pictures of him. The student told me he had seen lots of photos of Tony.
• At the end of April, I got hit with a bad cold.
• A student Tom tells me that Hu Jiantao was something of a figure head leader. So, in fact the previous Chinese leader Jiang Zemin , despite giving up his position, kept his power. Hu was unable to dislodge Min supporters from the Chinese government apparatus. Current president Xi is trying to battle them, having recently arrested two generals from the Min camp for corruption.
• At the end of April or near abouts, the Jets played in the playoffs and lost their series in four straight.
• At 8:00 PM on the last Tuesday in April, I taught in the classroom of my school that had a great view of Zhongshan Road and downtown Wuxi. Unfortunately, it wasn't so great to see that scene that Tuesday evening because I see could a storm was brewing. It was all I could to do to hope for the storm to come quickly and pass through as quickly as possible. But instead the storm scene built up rather slowly and the heavy rain started falling at 8:45 just as I was about to go outside and make my way to the subway station and go home.
• A fool can be someone who is living retarded on purpose.
• A fool can be someone who has rationale for acting retarded.
• I tried to watch a Yankees Mets game played in the year 2015 but found I couldn't stand the look of it. The players looked like boys, not men. The uniform pants they wore were cuffed (instead of stirruped)which I thought was abominably ugly. The Mets starting pitcher had a mop for a hairdo. The Yankees starting pitcher had a look of pot-induced insouciance and couldn't wear his cap straight. And the new Yankee Stadium looked like a shopping mall. I gave up watching after barely one inning.