This is Nice

 This gate is usually closed during the day.  When it is open, I have a shorter walk from my apartment to my classroom.

Traffic Jam

 Look at all the e-bikes in line.

Heng Long Shopping Center

 Not to be mixed up with the Hen Long Center in Wuxi.

Lanzhou Noodles

 

AKIC in His Jiangyin Apartment

 

Dull Weekend

 I have a lot of prepping and grading to do this weekend.  So I don’t have  much to report.  

I haven’t been getting hat tricks lately in Wordle.  Here’s my latest result:

As you can see, I got no letters on my first guess.  It did give me an idea about what vowels were in the word.

What do the Chinese think of the Ukraine war?  I don’t know.  My students are very shy, alas.

Wordle 616: Bad Luck

 Sometimes you guess yourself into a pattern where there are endless possibilities.

Jiangyin Weekend

 I’m in Jiangyin this weekend.

Why?

Wordle 614: Finally!

 My fourth two-guesser of 2023.

It is hopefully the end of a Wordle dry spell I’ve been having.

Busy at work, I am.

Lunch

 

Trying to Smile

 

Wordle 610: Par?

 Been a few days without a hat trick.

In Wuxi for a Weekend

 

I’m in Wuxi this weekend.

Eventful it has been, in a way.

I managed to get a local driver annoyed.  He had cut me off.  So I cut him off.  He then then one of those maneuvers done by a driver with road rage… towards me.  Interesting.  Very interesting.

My son and I went to a downtown shopping mall around lunch time.  The Hen Long Mall parking garage was full.  It took us forever to find a parking spot.  When we did, we spent an even longer time waiting for an elevator to take us to the surface.  There had to be stairs, I said to my son.  And there was.  As we were in the stairwell, I encountered a foreigner, and complained to him that we had spent ten minutes waiting for a lift.  He shared my exasperation.

We went to the mall so we could go to this place that sells pizza by the slice.  It’s not in the mall, but a couple blocks away.  We both had a slice of pepperoni pizza and a slice of chicken jalapeño pizza.  Another foreigner came in the place and I overheard him say that the one city he wanted to go in the world was Rome, for it was the center of the world.

Just as we left the restaurant, we encountered yet another foreigner.  He looked to be walking down the street and he seemed to be wondering about the place we had just left.  I said to him that the pizza in this place was good.  He said to me: “I’ll give her a try, mate!”

No Electricity

 I was sitting on the toilet.  It was about 5:45 AM. The electricity went out.

I went to the circuit box and found that a switch was stuck, melted stuck,  Not much I could do then but put on my 5G and send my landlord a text message.

An electrician came.  I showed him the problem.  He took the switch out:

It was fried.  Was it because it was old or because I had too many things on?

Wordle 605

 Happy Valentines Day!

Carrot Eating Egg!

 

Parking Drama

The photo above shows a car stopped without a driver such that it is blocking the lane.  What you can’t see is that it is stopped at the entrance to an underground parking garage.  The security guard is on the phone.

A moment after the photo was taken, the driver returned to the scene and had loud words with the security guard. The driver then got into his car and drove it toward ahead a bit so that it was closer to the entrance gate of the underground parking and not blocking the lane.

The entrance gate has a device that can read license plates.  The driver maybe hasn’t paid his parking fees; or maybe has paid his fees and is wondering WTF.

Some Sunday excitement.

Building a Better Future

 Politicians use this phrase all the time.  It implies that there is more than one future.  So how many futures are there?  At least two if you can compare futures.  Since politicians screw things up inevitably, there has to be a worse future which makes three.

But if there are three futures, why not use a superlative?  Talk about making the best future!

So It is confusing to know how many futures, politicians think there are.  If the future is a range of possibilities, why have politicians seemingly narrowed the possibilities to two: the future they aren’t building and the better future that they say they are?

Wordle 603: Done in the Early Morning!

 I’m back on track!  My 17th Hat trick of 2023!

Good Morning!

 

Mid February Randoms

The longest conversation I’ve had with a local in English since I been in Jiangyin has been with a taxi driver.  It certainly hasn’t been with a student.

The driver, who was not a Jiangyin local, told me that he found Jiangyin people to be stuck-up snobs.

Don’t care who wins the Super Bowl.

Coulter said the Canadian idea is to be boring and to have a nincompoop prime minister.  She’s mostly right.  And it’s better to be boring than bored.  Although, I can help but think that 2023 Canada is a country of bored people.  It stopped being boring around 1967 when it decided it was bored.  Look up Chesterton to see the difference between bored and boring.

Could it be that I’m too lazy to have friends?  Either that or misdirected energy.  Or I am not a person anyone should be friends with.

I see a grey-haired man with a ponytail.  And he’s younger than me.

If I make it, I will have done five cycles of the Chinese zodiac.  

The didi (Chinese Uber) driver, that took me home from Monte Carlo’s Bistro, drove with his two hands gripping the steering wheel.  I drive with one hand lightly on the steering wheel.

It’s Saturday night and I’m in bed by 9:30 PM.  That’s late for me.

I like tweeting about the blog posts I’ve read, the podcasts I’ve listened to, the blog entries I’ve made, the good Wordle results I’ve had, and the videos I’ve posted on YouTube.

Monte Carlo’s Bistro, Jiangyin, China

 

A quiet, pleasant evening by himself.  Listening to non-Chinese  tongues is alright.

Silly Thoughts about Sex and Gender

People use the words Gender and Sex interchangeably a lot these days. But do you notice that people who were always talking about “having sex” before and now, are not talking about “having gender” now?

Maybe they should. People should use Gender and Sex interchangeably.  Here are some examples of my proposed new usage.

Come to my house and let’s have gender!

The gender we had last night was wonderful!

The gender was consensual.

There should be genederal intercourse.

Gender this! Gender that! Gender the gendering person!

Gender Biden!  

Gender Trudeau!

Wordle 602: The End

 End of the streak of three or less guesses,

Hill and Sphere

 

Invigilator Andis

 

Wordle 601 Marks My Greatest Week of Wordling Ever

 This week, it took me twenty guesses, in total, to find seven words.  That six hat tricks and a deuce!

The 1111th Day

 

The Building Where I Am Teaching

 I took this photo while invigilating.

In amongst the roofs and apartment buildings (in the background) is the building where my classroom happens to be.

The Building Where I Am Invigilating

 

The exam rooms are on the top floor and the building has no elevator.

Tree in Silhouette

 

Wordle 600

 

The sixth day in a row!

Moat or Canal?

 That’s a photo of the body of water on the edge of my school campus.

Wind Powered Solar Panel

 

Three Days of Invigorating Invigilating

What is invigilating?  The supervising of candidates during exams.

What is invigorating?  I don’t know anymore.

Three days of invigilating exams is what I am in the midst of doing.  It is easy enough as long as everything is prepared properly.  If it isn’t, you could be scrambling.

Wordle 599

 Do I have a life beyond Wordle? Recently, you wouldn’t think so.

Anyway, I am on a Wordle  roll.  The last five I got’er done in three or two guesses.

Two Bridges, Two Photos, One Canal

After work, I took a roundabout wsy to get to a destination.  I crossed two bridges going over a canal, taking photos as I did so:

 

Wordle 598

 What can I say?  I’m on a bit of a roll.  Only two guesses.  My first deuce of 2023.

Meanwhile in real life, I have one more day of prepping students for their postponed end of term exams,

Wordle 597

 

My third hat trick a row.  I’m on a roll!  I got the ‘trick even though I made a mistake in my choice of word on the second guess.  But that brain fog maneuver did provide me with information I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten, which just goes to show you.

My thirteenth of 2023.

BTW, this isn’t turning into a Wordle blog.  I got a nine day in a row stretch of work to endure.

Wordle 596

 Two days in a row!

Wordle 595

 

Could have been a deuce.  As it was, it’s my 11th hat trick of 2023.

Back to Work

 Let’s see how it goes!

Teppanyaki

 

我爱江阴

 

Thoughts about Sasquatch

I watched this documentary about Sasquatch.  It was entitled A Flash of Beauty — Bigfoot Revealed.  Why watch did I watch it?  Because I wish Sasquatch existed.  The thing is of course, that it becomes harder to believe in its existence, as it is hard to believe that all these people with phone cameras cannot replicate that 1967 Bluff Creek film.  Be that as it may, all the people interviewed in the documentary talked about Bigfoot like it was as true as the nose on your face.  They just have to endure the scoffers, they say.

Because of the scoffers, the film says that many people who see a Bigfoot, don’t want to talk about it with anyone for fear of being thought crazy.

If this is true, there could be advantages to be had from dressing like Bigfoot.  You could go to a shop and take something without paying.  The clerk won’t want to tell anyone she saw a Bigfoot.  You could throw a bottle at a window.  No one will want to tell police they saw a Bigfoot being rowdy.  You could stare at a pretty girl all day.  She dare not tell anyone a Bigfoot was ogling her.  If you don’t want anyone to know you’re an alcoholic, wear a Bigfoot suit.  No one at work will tell your supervisor they saw a Bigfoot drinking on the floor.  Don’t want anyone to know you don’t believe in the current thing?  Wear a Bigfoot suit and flout the current conventions.  No snitch is going to tell the authorities that they saw an unmasked, unvaccinated Bigfoot contributing to Climate Change and misgendering people….

Anyway, just a thought.  If anyone wants to try this, I would love to hear your experiences.  Email me at andiskaulins@protonmail.com or andiskaulins@hotmail.com or DM me at @wuxiandis on Twitter. 

Wordle 593

 

My tenth hat trick of 2023.

Another Walk in My Jiangyin Neighborhood

 I like the fact that there’s hills about.

Here’s the video I took: