U.S. Border Crisis as Seen from China; Two New Things for AKIC to Contemplate; More Bad Behavior from Tony; Paperwork Requirement

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.