Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Eleven is Beautiful?; Morning Walks; Can't Look Them in the Eyes; Wednesday Morning Walk; Traffic Anecdote; End the Lockdown!;


  • I have been doing a few online classes for my school. I had been given a choice of topics (from a list) for which I could choose to teach (although really, for which I could talk about), but the list I submitted was never adhered to, and the topic I was most loathe to talk about from the topic list, cosmetic surgery, was on the list of the six classes I had to do with this student. It turned out that the sixth and last class was the Cosmetic Surgery, which I hate because is an impossible topic to talk about for an hour with any student. I try to pad the class out by asking questions about beauty, but the problem is that most Chinese students don't see a distinction between male beauty and female beauty. So when I asked the student who was the most beautiful student in China, he said Xi Jing Ping. This answer was wrong on so many levels, but I corrected the student on a sole point: I told him he should say Xi Jing Ping was handsome (I didn't tell him he looked like a fat cartoon bear!).

  • The week in which THE SCHOOL WAS SUPPOSED TO REOPEN (I hope this conveys my anger), I have decided to take a fairly long walk in the morning to battle the despair I feel (which is compounded by my wife Jenny for the umpteenth time telling me she wants a divorce. I am publishing photos in my photoblog. I am trying to take photos that convey how ugly and depressing the area where I live has become...

  • I can't even look the locals in the eye, when I walk pass them. I instead make a point of lowering my eyes.

  • On the walk I took on Wednesday, I took a load of what I thought were interesting photos of interesting sights and details. The most jarring sight I saw was this Chinese Communist Party symbol that was in prominent view at the entrance of an apartment complex I had walked past. (It wasn't as quite a jarring photo because I felt I had to serendipitously take a photo of it.) A lot of photos showed a big newly constructed apartment complex and its surrounding grounds. The empty land around the apartments looks incongruous and weedy as you would see if you looked at the photos.

  • Strange how a day can make all the difference with traffic my area. On a Tuesday, I drove to pick up Tony and was stuck for twenty minutes on this stretch of road that the next day, I went through in one minute. The difference in the amount of traffic was ten thousand percent.

  • The world should end the lockdown now! I don't understand why some people want to extend them.


No comments: