The never ending adventures of a Canadian who lives in Wuxi and Jiangyin, China with his Chinese wife Jenny and their son Anthony aka Tony
I did a demo class for a Wuxi school where I would like to get a new job. They told me they would make me an offer.
I have cousins in Minneapolis. I exchanged messages with one of them; and she told me that she lived about a mile from where the George Floyd killing took place.
At least one person in Canada that I have talked to said that the Covid restrictions there made them wonder if they were now living in a Communist country. A few times I have said in response to news about the restrictions that I thought I was the one living in a communist country.
The election of Trump has changed where I am politically. Now, I am still very anti-left and very anti-progressive, but I find that I am now also against many who claim to be on the right and claim to be conservative. I now find myself loathe to admit that I ever supported the presidency of the second Bush. I now shudder when I hear the words libertarian.
I have come to accept the argument that many so-called conservatives haven't conserved anything and serve the sole purpose of being foils to the left.
I see that I need to purge so much of my political thought that is based on some stupid assumption of the Left. For example, there is this assumption that racism is a thing or even a bad thing or even a thing that we should concern ourselves with.
I am watching the Ken Burns documentary of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway like to write sparse prose that got to the point of writing a piece of prose quickly. I have always thought about this dictum when writing and how easy it should be --using only the necessary words -- for me thus to become a writer. But Hemingway lived a life and had a lot of material upon which to draw. I don't. My life has been safe and full of self-indulgence. (I'm also watching the following series: Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) and Too Old to Die Young.)
Later: the offer from the school more than I could have imagined. My pay could double. But instead of being elated, I felt butterflies and a pit of worry in my stomach. I have to get through the process of getting documents authenticated and I have to make the break with the place I am working currently, a place that I have been with since 2004. I feel the nerved inspite of knowing that I have good reason to leave the school I am at and that I would be dumb not to. Change is hard.
The process for getting the documents I need to change schools is nerve-wracking. I need to get my degree authenticated (after being in China since 2004) and have a legalized criminal records check done (the process involves going to the RCMP, going to a notary public and then going to the Chinese embassy in Canada). I was stressed for a few hours when I was told that besides my passport, I needed a second valid, unexpired, government-issued identification for my application for a criminal records check. I was told of the requirement while I was at work and had to wait till I got home that evening to see if I had something. Thankfully, I was able to find an old BC healthcare card and my forty year old SIN card when I got home.
But the stress I felt which was brought on by government bureaucratic requirements and strictures, was a small taste of the stress that must be experienced by the people suffering from the Covid strictures being imposed in the West. I can believe that the stress, that I experienced for a few hours, could kill if endured for months on end. There are reports that suicide rates have gone through the roof the past few years.
I keep thinking that they have run out of ways to refer to the mediocrity that is Joe Biden, but I have added eight more entries to my list. They have been marked with an asterisk (*) except the 46* where the asterisk is permanent.
Alleged Catholic Biden
Alleged President Biden
Apparition Joe
Bedpan Biden
Biden as President
Blinken Biden
Blundering Biden
Boring-snoring Joe*
Bubble Biden
Bumbling Joe
Cadaver Joe
Chairman Xiden
China Joe
Cigar Store Biden
Crazy Joe
Creepy Uncle Joe
Dementia Joe
Diaper Joe
Disaster in Chief *
Doddery Joe
EO Joe
Forgetful Joe
Fraudulent Joe
Green Screen Joe
Gropey Dopey
Gropin' Joe
Grumps Joe
Idiot Joe
Joe B, the revenant in the White House
Joe Biden, America's first idiocracy President
Joe Blow, Father of Hunter
Joe Buy Dung
Joeloco
Joe Chi Minh™
Joe Braindead
Joe "sanctuary city" Biden
Joe Stolin
Joey Cabbage
Joey Cringworthy*
Joey No-Pulse
Joltin' Joe
Mumbly Joe
non compos mentis
OBiden
Ol' White Joe
Old Bedpan Bidet
Old Joe
Old Senile Joe
Our Totally Legitimate (P)resident Biden
Our Totally Legitimate, not in anyway fraudelent "president."
Pedophile Muppet Biden
Pevertacus
PINO: President in Name Only
Potato Joe
POTATUS: President of the After Trump U.S.
President Alzheimer*
President Bonehead*
President Potatohead
(P)resident Deepfake
Racist Joe
Resident Joe
Rutabaga Joe
Senility Joe
Sleepy Creepy Biden
Sloppy Joe
Slo Groppy Joe
Slo Joe
Slow Joe
Sniffing Joe
Sniffer Joe
Sniffy Joe
Stairmaster Joe
Stumbling Joe
Temporary President Biden *
The asterisk president
The great pretender
The invalid in the White House*
Traitor Joe
Trippy Joe
Vegetable Joe
Wheelchair Joe
Zhou Bai Den
Zombie Joe
46*
Riding the bus to work, I saw an old man wearing a khaki green Mao jacket, khaki green pants and a khaki green cap with a red star. Would have been a great picture tohave taken and to have sent back to Canada.
As it was, I did send some videos of things I could see taking the train to work the day previous. One of the video viewers was impressed by the monolithic look of the huge apartment buildings. It was the look I was hoping to capture when I took the video.
One of the students agreed with my assessment that officer Chauvin was thrown under the bus by the powers that be in Minneapolis.
My son Tony thought that Patrick Marleau breaking Gordie Howe's record was a big deal. (Tony pronounced "Howe" as "Howie" till I corrected him.)
Tony choose a poem written by Walt Whiteman (Whitman -- I had to correct him.) for World Book Day. Unfortunately, he didn't have any literary character that he wanted to dress as because, as he admitted, he wasn't literarily inclined. I told him not to worry about, but the day before he was told there would be consequences if he didn't dress up literarily. So, we had to scramble the night before to think up a literary character. I gave him a few choices: Harry Potter, Haulden Caulfeld from the Catcher in Rye and Roy Hobbs from the Natural. Tony told me he hated Harry Potter, didn't know who this Caulfeld character was, and so decided on Roy Hobbs because he at least had seen the start of the movie, starring Robert Redford, that the novel was based on.
I saw a passenger on the Wuxi Metro subway use his face muzzle like a sleeping mask. Instead of having the mask cover his nose, mouth and chin and Adam's Apple, he had the mask over his eyes while still covering his nose and mouth. I suppose this manner of wearing the muzzle would have been kosher with the authorities.
I decided to do a recon of a school I was applying to. It turned out to be the same distance from an end-of-the-line subway stop that Casa Kaulins is from another end-of-the-line subway stop. (And then it turned out that there was a closer subway stop to the school. Big relief!)
It is a shame that Prince Philip had to die in this age. Even in the immediate beforetimes, a Prince Philip funeral would have contained some innovation bowing to the Cult Marx stupidity of our times, and it would have been hard to watch without consternation. But in this age of Covid which is Cult Marx Totalitarian stupidity at ludicrous speed, I was reluctant to even watch even highlights. The funeral I heard was full of Covid protocols and the Queen was forced to wear a mask while observing social distancing. Nothing but obscene language comes to mind even imagining, if only briefly, this pathetic scene in my mind.
Some people I know in Canada, have gotten the jab; some people I know in Canada, haven't and are waiting and seeing what happens to those who do. I am with the latter. I will only get jabbed if forced to and only if I can't find an excuse to not get it. It has always been my belief that the vaccines are just a way for the powers that decided the lockdowns were necessary to try and get out of this situation without having to admit that they made a serious error. Politicians don't like to admit they made mistakes and will do everything to avoid having to do so. And I don't see the need for the vaccine. Did vaccines end the Spanish Flu epidemic or the other similar, less-publicized flus that struck humanity since then?
A student at my Tuesday evening Speakers Corner told me that the Chauvin verdict was soon coming. I learned it was "guilty" the next Wednesday morning. I was outraged and felt a little foolish to have thought that there was a chance that the show trial verdict would be other then it turned out to be.
I was then scouring the internet for reactions. I was disgusted to learn about Biden's, Harris's and Obama's reactions to the verdict. I was dismayed to hear that Biden had even hoped for the guilty verdict and then phoned the family of George Floyd.
The verdict was a gross injustice. The person mainly responsible for George Floyd's death was George Floyd. He made three decisions that got himself killed. He took a lot of drugs, he decided to use counterfeit money to buy things at a convenience store, and he decided to resist arrest. Because of this decisions, four cops who were just doing their jobs will be victims of mob justice. The persons also responsible for his death were the members of his family. What did they do to stop this man from his self-destructive ways? Nothing, it would appear. And for their negligence, they have gotten 27 million dollars from the city, and a sympathetic phone call from the President of the United States of America. George Floyd's family have gotten a windfall and are probably much better off with George Floyd dead than alive.
In my Speaker's Corner, I will teach the students the following vocabulary: Mob Justice, Show Trial, and Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.
It was my Mom's (my son Tony's Grandma's) birthday on April 14. She was born in 1938. She still lives in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, in a house that we moved into in 1981. All I could do for her birthday was send her birthday wishes, and get Tony to send her greetings as well via his email address. The retired teachers at my Speakers Corner when I told them it was my Mom's birthday, graciously sent her greetings via a short video I recorded and then sent to her.
I maybe changing schools. Why? Lots of reasons, but it is basically a case of the writing being on the wall. They are paying me a lot of money to sit around in an office most of the shift and not do much teaching. Best to go to a place where I'm busy. The problem will really be the paperwork. I have to get my degree legalized and I have to have a criminal records check done. I had the latter done in 2004, but I am not sure if it is still of any use. I had an agent quote a price for the documentation that is half of one month's salary.
Systemic Racism they say is a problem. So, if the system is the problem, why this desire to see Derrick Chauvin suffer for it? He never created the system. The ones who did were directing him and so they should be held responsible, if you accept the logic of "Systemic" Racism. What is actually happening is the people responsible for the system are throwing him under the bus because they can benefit from it and escape responsibility of a black guy appearing to be murdered.
Is someone is 113 to 119 years of age, are they considered a teenager?
Some people like to set their snooze buttons for ten minutes. I like to set mine for 24 hours.
The retired teacher told me that the lineup to get to second jab of the vaccine was much shorter than the lineup to get the first vaccine. I wondered if that was because the first jab had killed a lot of people.
A friend told me that his 13 year old daughter liked Asian boys. (He is of French extraction) This surprised me because while Western men like Asian girls, it is very rare for Western girls to hook up with Asian men. I mentioned this to my friend and he said that his daughter like Korean and Japanese pop music. To which I replied it was a good thing that she didn't like rap or hip-hop music.
The Conservative leader in Canada is named O'Toole which of course, rhymes with Fool. Prime Minister O'Toole sounds like something that could never happen. And apparently this fellow really is a fool, which means he is not a conservative and has no business being the leader of the Canadian Conservative Party.
Alleged Catholic Biden
Alleged President Biden
Apparation Joe
Bedpan Biden
Biden as President
Blinken Biden
Blundering Biden
Bubble Biden
Bumbling Joe
Cadaver Joe
Chairman Xiden
China Joe
Cigar Store Biden
Crazy Joe
Creepy Uncle Joe
Dementia Joe
Diaper Joe
Doddery Joe
EO Joe
Forgetful Joe
Fraudulent Joe
Green Screen Joe
Gropey Dopey
Gropin' Joe
Grumps Joe
Idiot Joe
Joe B, the revenant in the White House
Joe Biden, America's first idiocracy President
Joe Blow, Father of Hunter
Joe Buy Dung
Joeloco
Joe Chi Minh™
Joe Braindead
Joe "sanctuary city" Biden
Joe Stolin
Joey Cabbage
Joey Lettuce
Joey No-Pulse
Joltin' Joe
Mumbly Joe
non compos mentis
OBiden
Old Bedpan Bidet
Old Joe
Old Senile Joe
Our Totally Legitimate (P)resident Biden
Our Totally Legitimate, not in anyway fraudelent "president."
Pedophile Muppet Biden
Pevertacus
PINO: President in Name Only
Potato Joe
POTATUS: President of the After Trump U.S.
President Potatohead
(P)resident Deepfake
Racist Joe
Resident Joe
Rutabaga Joe
Senility Joe
Sleepy Creepy Biden
Sloppy Joe
Slo Groppy Joe
Slo Joe
Slow Joe
Sniffing Joe
Sniffer Joe
Sniffy Joe
Stairmaster Joe
Stumbling Joe
The asterisk president
The first potato
The great pretender
Traitor Joe
Trippy Joe
Vegetable Joe
Wheelchair Joe
Zhou Bai Den
Zombie Joe
I drove my son Tony to his boarding on a Sunday evening. A forty minute drive. When we arrived, Tony realized that he had forgotten to put his laptop in his backpack, and that he had left it at home. I wasn't upset with him because I actually wanted to experience driving to his school during morning rush hour...
The drive was what I expected. Traffic at certain times ground to a stop. The one thing I didn't expect was how long the lineup at a turnoff I needed to use to get off the freeway near Tony''s school was to be. I passed the end of the lineup and was forced to do what I loathed seeing other Chinese drivers do: cut into line by doing a maneuver where I had to sneak into a gap caused by the stopping and going of the lineup.
Between the Wanda Shopping Mall and Casa Kaulins, there are two intersections which are manned by personnel trying to ensure civilized behavior by pedestrians and cyclists. On a Monday morning, I saw an e-biker, not wearing a helmet, drive away from a crossing guard who couldn't be bothered to chase after her. At the next intersection, I saw a few e-bikers chided for riding their bikes on the main road, which was for cars, instead of the cycling lane.
I am going to talk to the Old ladies about Prince Philip and Pastor Artur Powlawski. The latter is the best Canadian to make a splash on the international stage since Jordan Peterson. Powlawski's resistance to the Calgary cops has made him a hero to lock-down skeptics world-wide. I first learned about his telling off the cops who were trying to break up his Passover service on a podcast originating from northern England, and then hear him interviewed on podcasts originating from South Carolina and California.
I learned of the death of Prince Philip from my son Tony. That might have been the first time, he ever passed on news to me. That he found it interesting enough to pass on was also a milestone and something I could find of interesting significance as well.
I will report on their reaction of the retired teachers below:
The retired teachers were aware of Prince Philip's death, his relation to the Queen, and that he died at 100. They all seemed to like a photo I found on the Internet of him and the Queen at the Great Wall of China in 1986.
They weren't aware of the significance of Pastor Artur.
At a Chit-Chat Speaker's Corner, the students, all of whom were retired, wanted to talk about what was happening at the U.S. southern border. They had heard the horror stories that the American right had been reporting. The teachers expressed horrors and wondered how it could happen. I told them it was stupid Liberalism as well as cynical human greed that were the causes.
I reading this book, on the recommendation of the Z-Man about Democracy and Monarchy. Monarch was the private ownership of government; Republics and Democracies were the public ownership of government. If private is good and public is bad then you can make an economic argument for the superiority of Monarchy over Democracy. For me, it was a new way of looking at things. However, I am not completely on board because Monarchies aren't perfect either.
Second, I send a request for a prayer intention to the Daily Decades Podcast. I got a quick reply. While, they didn't have any practical advice for how to satisfy my Catholic urges in China; they did tell me to bear a cross for Christ all the same. It is scary advice but I wasn't expecting my worldly problems to be solved. (Later, my intention was mentioned in a podcast! Brought tears to my eyes and also made me realize the hard is the "jump" I have to make to embrace Christ fully.)
For the second week in a row, I had a Friday phone call from school about something my 13 year old son Tony had done on the Thursday before. This time, he was swearing at people who say that he was playing computer games in class. His excuse was that he was reading some emails I sent him, which I can say he was doing because he sent me reply emails at the time of the incident. However, he was doing this email reading in class when he should have been doing other things. And five witnesses swear that he was playing computer games. I have seen Tony clandestinely playing computer games at home so I suspect the charges against him are true. So, he has two behavioral problems at least. One, he swears a lot; two, he is addicted to computer games.
In a recent blog entry, I reported about the drive to and fro this company where we had to do some oral tests. These oral tests were five minutes long.
About three weeks later, I was asked to submit some written comments about each student. I balked because, even with my notes, there was no way that I could remember any student and say something specific about his English ability. I had given them all a score out of 100 which was a grade on a curve.
We replaced a ceiling light fixture in our living room. It had been installed in 2008. It had five ring "bulbs" that were a pain in the ass to replace. You would have to use a screwdriver to remove the bulb, if you were able to find a replacement bulb in the first place, because the bulbs were not standard and could be found in some out of the way home decoration place. The Result was that after all these years, there was only one of the five bulbs still in operation. Finally, we got around to just replacing the whole setup.
What was interesting to me about this was what happened to the old light fixture. I first asked the installation guy if perhaps he wanted the old fixture so as to cannibalized its parts maybe. He didn't. So, I took the fixture out to the trash area of our apartment complex. I wondered how long it would be before someone would take the fixture out of the trash. For I had noticed this phenomenon before of fixtures being thrown out and then being quickly grabbed by someone else. It first happened with a TV stand that we didn't need which was gone five minutes after I put in the trash area. So, I put the light fixture in the trash. Half an hour later, I returned to see that the fixture was gone and that all its old light bulbs had been thrown in the trash.
My premonition was correct!
The intersection neared by corner is still manned by personnel, with shiny jackets, monitoring whether pedestrians and cyclists are behaving in a civilised fashion by obeying traffic signals and standing in proper areas when waiting. Many locals ignore them or are too busy going about their day to notice the crossing guards.
One day, I saw a woman cross an intersection against a red light. Two crossing guards didn't notice this. Perhaps they were looking at the laowei! And so, I had the splendid view of a citizen breaking a rule beside two oblivious guards.
An instant later, they decided to act when they saw pedestrian walking on the roadway for cars instead on the sidewalk. I saw the pedestrian make a gesture indicating where she was concentrated on going towards.
My 13 year old son Tony, at the time of this typing, is going to move dorm rooms at the international school that he is attending this year. He and a roommate, who moved into Tony's room after the winter break, aren't getting along. The roommate is making Tony's evening phone calls with his parents torturous because they make it hard for Tony and his parents to hear each other. On a Tuesday evening, the kid even took to swearing as Tony was trying to talk to Jenny. Tony has sworn at the kid, even calling him a "prick." (How he learned that word, I had to ask, and he told me he got it from a movie or a YouTube video.)
Tony says the roommate is racist to him. Being a self-declared, anti -anti-racist, I hate to hear my son declaring himself to be a victim of it. The roommate is rude to Tony because of cultural differences. Be that as it may, Tony has a hard situation to deal with. He does feel like he is one against the world. I try to tell him he is not, but at his age it is not much solace. I try to tell him to be strong, but that is much not solace. So, I will try to get family and sympathetic types to help him.
(Tony's first night in his new room seemed fine. I hope that he can get off on the right foot with these new guys and that no animosities develop down the road.)
One of my students has gotten the vaccine. She first told me that she was informed that she must take the vaccine. Just say I was told to take the vaccine, I corrected her. She was in lineup for over two hours to get the jab with a bunch of other seniors to get the jab. I have since be declaring her to be suffering side-effects for it.
James Delingpole, who has been a saint on the Covid overreaction, says if one must take the vaccine, one might as well take the Russian or Chinese ones for they are real vaccines unlike the western ones.
Apparently, there is some plan afoot for expatriates to get the vaccine in China.
I went to a company to do some testing of their oral English. On the drive out there, Wuxi looked dreary. The sky was gray and I saw nothing but concrete apartment blocks and freeways. It made my office seem like a paradise.
I had a class at 8:20 on a Saturday morning. It was nice to get up early and beat the morning rush to get to school. However, as soon as I got to school, I had a premonition that the students would show up late, if they didn't show up at all. This class was a IELTS speaking class. The students attend these classes because their parents make them, and so most of them don't want to be there. It is hard for teachers, foreign or Chinese, to get them to even pay attention. And for the foreign classes, the students even more don't want to be there. Why I am not sure. I suspect they are scared of having to speak in English or they find foreigners much more boring than their Chinese teachers.
This Saturday morning, one student came half an hour late. When he saw that he was the only one to attend. He sighed and looked to me like he felt that he was the schmuck who showed up. For me, it could have been worse. Students like these are better individually than as a group. If they are constantly busy, they will not look at their smart phones. So this student was forced to talk to me and he did have some things to say like how his school, Meicun High School was a horrible school to attend.
Just as it seemed that Tony's roommate troubles were at an end, and we could deal with improving his academic performance and baseball skills among other things, Tony had to have an incident with some classmates. There was shoving, kicking of shins and swearing. The way Tony told it to my wife Jenny & I was that he was set up by these kids who had been picking on him; what a teacher told me, the next morning, was that people witnessing the incident reported that Tony overreacted to some kid bumping into him and that the incident flared from there.
That he has a quick temper, I can believe because his mother has one and I have one too. I have gotten in trouble because of my temper, and the teacher intimated that Tony could too. This phase of Tony's life will pass, but I am going to have to be much more strict with him about the behavior of his that I have witnessed. A big problem is that Tony's mother is spitting fire about the incident and taking Tony's side to the maximum. Tony is behaving badly because he thinks that he is a victim. He has to realize that his situation is hard because of things beyond his control; however he has to learn to rise above the situation, not feel sorry for himself and not be angry at the world.
