Some Biden Moments; D.C. January 6th; Stuck in the City;

Where are the bathrooms in Wuxi Metro stations?  Sometimes, you have to enter through the admission gate to get to them; sometimes, they are outside the admission gates. (One of the stations, the bathroom was actually on the platform, but that was another story.)  Recently, I went through the admission gate, only to realize that the bathroom was outside the gate and that I would have to exit the platform-slash-admitted area to get to them.  I had a Biden moment.  This cost me a bit of money on my transit card and also required me to again go through the security area where the staff recognized me from an instant before.  One of them thought that I was a stupid laowai who didn't know that I had to go upstairs to get to the subway platform, and so made these go-upstairs-you-dummy! gestures.  I tried to say the words for bathroom in Chinese, but they didn't understand me and so I had no choice but go up to the subway platform knowing the truth of the matter, which was that I had made a mistake that was understandable but not stupid ....

Then another day, I had trouble trying to top up my transit card.  The booth I normally went to, to get my card topped off, was lacking a staff person.  So I went to another booth trying to top off my card.  I was holding cash along with my transit card so the staff could see what I wanted.  The staff member who tried to help me unfortunately confused me as to where I should go, and so I went back and forth three times before I was finally able to find a staff member who could actually top up my card.

I told the attendees of my Speaker's Corners that something might go down on the January 6th in Washington, D.C.; and indeed it did.  So much happening, it is hard to have coherent thoughts.

I haven't left Wuxi since the Spring Festival.  If I do, I would have to get a Covid test, I have learned.