2021 Off to a Bad Start; No Hash Browns at McDonalds; Are Shopping Bags Thinner?; Wuxi: a Barbarian City?; Will Something Happen on January 6th in D.C.?; Stuck in China; Well-Read and Well-Watched?; Eleven, Potato and Nine

2021 at home was okay to start.  But when I went out for the first time on January 2nd, the world seemed to have only gotten more annoying.  I saw more security guards everywhere in Wuxi, whether on the street corners or in the Metro stations.  When I went shopping at the Supermarket, the plastic bag I had to buy was made of thinner material.  afterward, I didn't feel comfortable carrying the groceries I bought home without having my hand on the bottom of the bag.  At McDonald's, where I had come to really like their breakfasts and had then come to have a ritual of buying my son hash browns on a Sunday morning, I was very annoyed to see that I could not buy hash browns there on the first Sunday of 2021.  As far as I could determine from the staff, this removal of hash browns of the menu was a permanent thing initiated at the start of 2021 and not a temporary supply chain issue.  Unless, of course it was a more long-term supply chain issue...  I wondered what other bureaucratic changes whether from government or corporations were on offer for 2021.

I learned from a few students that Wuxi recently lost its civilized city status from the central government.  My first reaction was to ask if Wuxi was now a Barbarian city.  I also thought to myself (and now to rare readers) if this also meant that in Wuxi, men could adopt a cave man attitude about women, and just grab a girl that took their fancy by the hair and take her back to his cave.   Another student told me that the status had been lost because an official doing the inspection of Wuxi was attacked by a stray dog.  Local officials beating the dog to death were to no avail, and the civilized status of their jurisdiction was lost.

I have seen groups of stray dogs wandering the city.  I have heard many jokes about these dogs eventually being captured for food.  I have never feared being attacked by these dogs.  I suppose these dogs can sense that I am not a bureaucrat and not worth the bother.

I have read and heard that something may go down in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, and I have also come across speculation that maybe nothing much will go down on January 6th other than people standing around hoping for something to happen.  What do I hope will happen?  A restoration of the Republic with Trump as president, brought about by a nice short civil war where shitlibs get their ass kicked and maybe get their brains adjusted.

I happened to read an email from the Canadian Consulate in Shanghai.  It stated that if I went back to Canada in the next little while, I would be subject, on the penalty of law, to a two-week quarantine.  What this essentially means, is that I can't plan my biennial trip to Canada which, in a sane world, would be happening this year.  What would be three weeks would have to be seven weeks, because I would be quarantined at both ends of a trip.

Silly thought:  If you read a wide and extensive range of literature, you are said to be well-read.  If you watch a wide and extensive range of TV series and Cinema, are you said to be well-watched?

Here are some riddles.  Who am I talking about? 

If Nine meets Potato, Potato better not dress up as a little girl.  (But Potato may not have to dress up.  Being half the age of Nine, Potato may look like a little girl to Nine already.)

If Nine meets Eleven, will Eleven pay him in cash or by mobile phone?

So, who are nine, eleven, and potato?

Note:  I will be publishing these entries in both my blogger and wordpress blog sites.  It seems that my blogger site has been labelled dangerous.