Dumbest Answer Ever; Social Justice? Give me a Break!; Bank Bureaucracy; Nowhere to Play Baseball; Three Foreigners left at the School; Chinese Friends?; A Massive Juxtaposition

• I haven't published something in this blog for a bit of an interim. I became a little busier and hadn't the time to sit and type some thoughts.

• Have you ever broken a bone? I asked a male student, whose English name was Harry, and who studies at Meicun High School. (All the students from there are a pain to have to be with in a classroom because they come across as dopey and lazy and unimaginative.) Harry told me he couldn't remember. When I pointed out to him that this was a very stupid answer, he mumbled in a dopey way. I told some others about this, including some old teachers who happen to be Chinese, and they said that he maybe didn't understand the question to which I said if he didn't, he wouldn't have said something about not remembering. Anyway, I should have asked him, as a rejoinder, if he could remember having suffered a major brain injury. (The next class I had with this Harry, I mentioned to him how he had given me the dumbest answer in my 16 years of being in China, and it didn't seem to register with him.)

• Tony is going to go to an international school this fall. It is expensive and we had to open a new bank account to make payment. The bank in question was across the street from my school and I thought I could quickly go over and get the process done during my workday. And I was under the impression that it would only take twenty minutes. After 90 minutes of signing and signing and signing more paperwork and signature machines, I got really irate and started swearing. My annoyance must have made a splash, because I had to go back the next day and someone who could speak English shadowed me the whole time.

• I heard that the NHL had resumed play. I went to visit the NHL site, and I saw these headlines: Players, coaches unite for Social Justice; and Players, coaches unite in fight against racism prior to exhibition games. Dammit! Why this nonsense?1? Arrrgghhh!

• Try to lob some balls at Tony so he could try swinging his new baseball bat. The park we went to the ground was still sodden from all the rain we had been having and the grass hadn't been cut. As well, the mosquitoes were finding this to be a nice place to breed and hang out. So, after twenty minutes of sweating and being eaten alive, we gave up.

• There are but three foreign trainers left at my school. One recently left and no plans were made to replace him. Two days a week, I am the only foreigner at the school. This means that in my life currently, I only see a foreigner three days a week. Lonely I'd be if I didn't keep myself busy and if I didn't have Tony.

• You , rare reader, could ask me: How having Chinese friends? To which I reply: Nah!! I wouldn't want to be Chinese for all the tea in China. Furthermore, I wouldn't want to be Chinese if somehow, they became the center of the Earth again. Biologically, they must have dullness DNA.

• August 1^st, helmets became mandatory for all e-bike riders in Wuxi. August 2^nd, while walking in my district of Wuxi, I saw a lot of e-bikers still not wearing helmets. I suppose they never got the memo. (To be fair, I only heard about on a WeChat social network, otherwise it would have been news to me.) On the morning of August 3^rd, I drove Jenny & Tony to activities and I saw a whole lot of cops enforcing the helmet laws. At an intersection near the Wanda Shopping Mall, I saw at least 25 uniformed personnel. At very intersection, I was making a right turn at the intersection while having a green left signal, and I had to avoid an e-biker that was trying to go straight through the intersection. At a subsequent intersection, I saw four e-bikers ignoring traffic signals. Talk about a strange juxtaposition! I saw massive enforcement of traffic rules combined with a massive flaunting of them.