10:58 AM View

 Update:  It turns out that there will be a few more views from the Jiangyin apartment.  I’ll explain 

The Chinese , they say, ain’t religious, but they sure is superstitious.  We can’t move into the new apartment till the 24th. Why?  It would be bad luck, according to my wife Jenny, to do otherwise.  That didn’t sink into my cranium till just now.  I could go to the old apartment in Wuxi — the Jiazhou apartment — today,  but I don’t want to deal with the hassle of packing and unpacking stuff twice.  So, we’ll go to Wuxi and move directly to the new apartment on the 24th: an auspicious day.

A buddy of mine in Wuxi is feeling stresses on account of having to renew his passport.  He tried to phone the Canadian consulate in Shanghai but could only get a message saying to visit the consulate.  So he visited the consulate and they told him he had to make an appointment.  He was able to talk someone about the process.  He learned that there had been staff cuts.  And there was also sone detail about needing a Canadian credit card to pay for the new passport.  Like me, he hadn’t had a Canadian credit card for many years.  He had to find a contact in China who did, to pay for him.  To add to his stress, his visa also expires the day his passport expires.  He needs the consulate to quickly renew his passport.  Good luck with that.  He told me he hated the Canadian government.. 

Jerry Seinfeld said that in  following Sportsball, one is cheering for laundry.  An apt observation.  And the laundry that many major league sportsbsll teams are wearing these days is hideous.  Is the concept of beauty a white idea that must be crushed at all costs?  Case in point is  the Detroit Lions.  The fact that this team is experiencing a little success is ruined for me by the sight of their wearing pajama style uniforms.  Dark tops and dark pants makes them look like a high school team…

Meanwhile, the Buffalos had another tragic loss on account of a missed field goal,