Diary: May 27 to June 2, 2014

Highlights

• The second anniversary of the death of Arnis Kaulins, Andis's father and Tony's grandfather.
• This week's question: Can tell you tell some memories of your father?
• Andis makes the case that the New York Yankees have an offensive nickname.
• Andis arouses the curiosity of an old man when taking the bus home one evening.
• Andis takes the taxi downtown from his apartment in the Hui Shan district.
• Tony has a modeling job.
• Andis's nephew has a chance to work in Australia.
• Andis saws large lineups of locals picking up free subway tickets.
• Andis watches some NHL playoff games.
• Andis phones his mother, his sister, and his brother in Canada.
• Andis spends Saturday Night at home by himself.
• Andis watches the Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart.
• Andis watches the end of two classic BBC documentary series.
• Tony & Jenny go to Changzhou.

Tuesday [May 27]

[Home Laptop]

• I have just published the May 20 to May 26^th diary entry. I looked it over, made a few corrections, and hope that it reads right.
• Last evening, I took Tony out of Casa Kaulins. We went to the Wanda Plaza and then the square near the Hui Shan White House Wuxi Metro station.
• The arcade in Wanda wouldn't give me ten rmb worth of tokens. I understood them to be telling them me that I could only ask for a minimum of twenty. I said fuck it and not give them my business.
• Here's a thought about the word Yankees. Foreigners who say they hate the Yanks are displaying an appalling lack of knowledge of American history. Yankees were on the Northern side of the American Civil War. And anti-Americanism being what it is: a hatred of a certain type of American, the foreigners are saying that they hate the kind of Americans who they do like. Usually, anti-Americans hate the southern rebel types who fought the Yankees in the civil war.
• Here's another thought about the word Yankees. The New York Yankees should change their name. Having the Yankees nickname is displaying a sense of triumphalism that is offensive to Americans who are from the Southern states.
• What have I done this morning besides publish my weekly diary and write this daily entry? I have taken Tony to his school pick up spot. I have gotten Jenny's e-bike from its charging spot and taken it to our apartment entrance. I have hung the laundry. I have showered and done my weekly grooming duties. I have packed my backpack. I have published an entry to the Wuxi China Expatdom Blog. I have read blog posts from David Warren and Taki's Magazine. I have listened to two episodes of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast. I have taken out garbage. I have ironed today's work clothes. I have taken and uploaded photos to the Wuxi Tony and the Casa Kaulins blogs.
• Phew! And I have to do some reading and synch my Ipad still.

[School Laptop]

• This week's schedule of shifts. Tuesday 13:00 to 21:00, Wednesday 13:00 to 21:00, Thursday 10:00 to 21:00, Friday 11:00 to 21:00, Saturday 10:00 to 18:00, and Sunday 10:00 to 18:00. I work a extra shift this week.
• It is hot today. Women are using their umbrellas for shade.
• Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my father's death. It happened, as rare readers may know, when I visited Canada and was so well-timed I feel shame.... This gives me an idea for my the question I will try to answer through the week.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Of course. The first memory I will mention is how my father reacted when he got the news, two years ago, that he only had a few days to live. He took it very bravely. He said that it was his time and that he wanted it mentioned on his gravestone that he was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Later, in his last lucid moments, he told me a memory he had of carrying me on his shoulders. I had got caught in the trees and was crying, and Dad told me the sadness he felt at not knowing for a brief instance why I was complaining. The story was a metaphor. You don't know if what you are doing for your child is the right thing. I had a similar thing happen once when I was carrying Tony on my shoulders around our apartment complex.

Wednesday [May 28]

[Home Laptop]

• I have so far spent the morning publishing blog entries to mark the second anniversary of my father's death. I would appreciate it if you could visit the page I have dedicated to my father and sign the guest book.
• I have been getting a lot of emails from North America this week. I want to thank Ron Busch from Detroit for sending me an email about my father.
• Last evening, I got my usual seat in the back corner of the 635 bus, the bus that takes me home at night. This old man sat next to me and was so fascinated by the hairiness of my arms that he grabbed one and felt the hair. It was a rather strange thing but the man then played with his phone the rest of the journey or watched what I was watching on my Ipad. I didn't feel a need to flee. China owes me a grope, though I don't plan on ever settling that debt no matter how attractive some Chinese girls can be.
• On my Ipad, I finished watching Godzilla 1954. On the bus, I watched the end of the fifth episode of the Search for the Trojan War series and the first half of the 12^th episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: The Fallacies of Hope.
• A foreigner can feel lonely on a crowded bus in China. A rare reader mentioned this to me. I have to say that I don't suffer from loneliness these days because I got Jenny and Tony and my Ipad. I have to fight feelings of misanthropy....
• Last night, I had two hours of no-shows and a one person 8:00 class. A very unfulfilling evening.

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00.

• The wife and I took a taxi downtown. A taxi trip downtown does take less time than a bus. However, to me it seems that the bus trip is shorter because when I take the taxi I am not looking at my Ipad. I'd rather take the bus with an Ipad than take the taxi. The taxi trip that I had just now seemed so long.
• I also noticed how brown and dusty Wuxi is.
• One of Tony's teachers got free tickets to take a preview ride of the subway train. She complained that the train stopped every three minutes and that the hour long trip between the northern most station of the #1 line and the southern most station was boring.

Thursday [May 29]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00. Last night, my 19:00 class was a no-show and my 20:00 class was canceled so I was able to go home at 19:30. I took the 25 bus home. Along the way, I saw the Wuxi Metro train carrying passengers – perhaps they had gotten some of the over one million free tickets that are being distributed over Wuxi.
• When I arrived home, Jenny & Tony were out. I thought they perhaps had gone to the local public square so Tony could do some running around. I phoned Jenny to find out where she was and she told me that she & Tony were at the Mr. PIZZA in the Wanda Plaza. They were celebrating Tony's actually having gotten a job modeling and posing in clothes for a company photo shoot. Jenny said that the photographers were impressed by Tony's looks and his behavior. Tony didn't fret and fidget, and did what he was asked to do.
• I then phoned my Mom in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada to mark the second anniversary of Dad's death. She had placed flowers on his grave the day before. Mom told me about having moles in her backyard. They were living under the snow and in the old tree stumps in the back yard. Her cat Smooch had caught one of them.
• I then phoned my sister Benita who lives in Sardis, British Columbia and works as a prison guard for the federal government. It was the first time I ever actually phoned her home from China. Usually, my habit had been to talk to her when she was visiting Mom. I had been told that her schedule was haywire and that if I tried to phone her, I would have a difficult time getting an answer, but I was able to hear her voice on the second try. She told me that her son Kyle, aka my nephew, has a chance to go to Australia. Kyle works for a manufacturing company and is doing such a good job that the company may get him to help in a project that they plan to undertake in Australia. How can such a young fellow as Kyle – he is nineteen – get the expert status he would need to get a work visa in Australia? He is a good worker. Perhaps his industrious traits were inherited from his mother. He also doesn't do drugs in a place where the culture is such that someone who doesn't do drugs is an oddity. In order to get an Australian work visa, workers have to pass drug tests. Many British Columbians wouldn't pass these tests.
• My sister & I talked and talked, and before I knew it it was well past midnight and I had to go to bed.
• I started reading the play Coriolanus yesterday. I had finished the Comedy of Errors.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Since I neglected to mention any memories yesterday, I will have to tell you of two today. 1) Dad was in the army and often went away for months on training exercises. I remember the joy that I and my sister felt when he came back from these exercises with extra ration packs. 2)Dad's decision to retire in Brandon, Manitoba at first seemed to be a good decision. Having lived on military bases all my life, moving to Brandon was a step up for it had a junior hockey team and a McDonald's and other kinds of shopping. It seemed that I was living in a city for the first time. But after finishing High School, something went wrong. I wasted a lot of years not liking what I was doing and not having any clue of what to do with my life. So I decided to move to Winnipeg, and getting bored of that I moved to British Columbia, and then I moved to China. I never understood my father's reasons for wanting to settle in Brandon at the time, but now that I have seen a bit of the world and some of the people who inhabit it, I can see why Dad would want to live in an isolated small city in a neglected part of the North American continent. For I have inherited Dad's misanthropic streak.
• I can watch the Kings – Black Hawks game live on my computer here at school. The score is four – four early in the third period. [Later: The Black Hawks won in double OT. Oh, how I wish they or the Kings could have won the game sooner!!]
• From 10:00 to 13:30 (now), I have more or less sat at my desk and studied Chinese. After my three o'clock class, I will get something to eat somewhere.

Friday [May 30]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• When at school, I don't do much journalizing after 14:00.
• I go to the City Hall today for a lunchtime SPC. Hopefully, some government workers come. Many can't come, they tell me, because they have to have lunch.
• Another hot day. Yesterday, the high was 36 degrees C.
• At the police station entrance gate that is near Casa Kaulins and is across from the local mom & pop store, I saw a lot of security guards and civilians standing about. I ask the proprietress of the mom & pop why there were so many people and she answered that it was something to do about money.
• I caught the end of the Rangers – Canadiens game on the computer just now. The Rangers are going to the Stanley Cup Final. The last time they went to the final was 1994 when I was living in Winnipeg and working at Winners.
• The Rangers could play the Black Hawks or the Kings in the final. If you like uniforms, you would have to hope the Black Hawks win. I suppose the NHL would love to see a New York – Los Angeles final. They just might get this because the Kings are leading their series against the Hawks three games to two.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? My father was a gardener and I can definitely saying that gardening was his hobby. He spent a lot of time on his 2121 Queens Avenue garden in Brandon. When we were living in Oromocto, New Brunswick (the second time), my father rented a plot of land from a farmer who lived on the outskirts of that town, and many a weekend was spent there. I wasn't much interested in the garden but I did like wandering the area which was close to a river and woods. In the woods, we saw frogs that were as big as one's hands. In some bushes we stumbled upon a wasp's nest and my kid brother Ron got stung. Dad organized the garden with military precision. His plants arranged in low straight rows. The only problem with the land Dad rented was that it was filled with rocks which kept coming up no mater how much Dad tried to throw them away. Still he grew a lot of vegetables of which we ate lots and lots at our meals.
• Lots of bratty kids at the McDonald's this morning. Maybe, they had a holiday from school today. Although Tony didn't. Anyway, several kids were grabbing the counter's edge and jumping up and down like rabid monkeys. One boy took eight straws from the dispenser and put them all in his mouth. Those sights and the general din caused by the kids made me take my breakfast to school.
• [Later] I have gone to the City Hall. I had been wondering how comfortable the big open area that we have the English Corner in was going to be. A lot of electricity would be needed to keep the big interior cool I figured. When I walked into the City Hall, the first floor was cool, but when I arrived at the place on the fifth floor where the SPC was to be, the air was muggy and oppressive just as I figured it would be.

Saturday [May 31]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 18:00. My final class ends at 17:00.
• This morning, Jenny & Tony were getting ready to go to the Changzhou Dinosaur Park. Jenny's friend Ling Ling was coming to pick them up. They were to drive to where it was that they were going. [Last sentence construction was deliberate.]
• Tony & Jenny & friends will be staying at hotel tonight which means I will be by myself on Saturday evening.
• I, on the other hand [said like an economist which I claim to have studied in university], will be at school teaching today and tomorrow. Sunday's shift will be overtime for me.
• What will I be doing tonight? I will be treat myself to something at some restaurant. Perhaps, I will pick up a large pepperoni pizza from the Hut. If there was a Burger King on the way home, I would go to have a Whopper. Alas, there is none that I know of, possibly because there are none. After some food, I will watch some movies and/or do some blogging. Blogivating?
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Politically, Dad was a Socialist. Those who read me closely know I am not. I would like to think that Dad's Leftism was earnest in that he was a patriot who loved his country, who hated the Soviets, and wanted to see the poor and disadvantaged get a break. On my second last time to visit him in 2010, I remember he took us to an aboriginal event in Brandon and was eager for me to sign a petition for some aboriginal cause. I demurred. Be that as it may, Dad was an earnest Socialist, and was never cool enough to be part of the cynical, ironic, and crude wave of Leftism that rose in the time of the Bush the younger presidency.
• Tony told me that he really liked Dinosaur movies, whether they be from the Jurassic series or Godzilla.
• Oh yes! Long weekend in China. Monday is a holiday. The dragon boat festival. I will have Monday and Tuesday off!
• I took the 25 bus to the downtown this morning. I eschewed breakfast at McDonald's. I like teaching on an empty stomach.
• In the morning at Casa Kaulins, I as monitoring the progress of my podcast downloads on my Ipod Touch. I listened to Radio Derb, Father Z, and Mad Dogs and Englishmen on my way to work.
• I got five strikes on a row on an Ipad bowling game!
• UKIP is good! Why? Because it has a K in it!!! [Lector: What about the KKK?]
• On the computer, I could watch game Six of the NHL Western Conference Final between the Kings and the Black Hawks. The game is being played in Los Angeles and the Kings are leading three games to two.
• Verbose and self-indulgent?
• On the bus ride home last night, I finished watching the last episode of the Search for the Trojan war and begin watching the final episode of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series.

Sunday [June 1]

[School Laptop]

• After work, I took the bus to Wanda Plaza where I picked up a pizza at Pizza Hut. While the pizza was being made, I went to the Grocery Store in the basement to buy some beer (a three pack of Budweiser), ham, and a bottle of Coke.
• At home, I had my supper, published Ask a Wuxi Expat #2 on my computer, watched the movie the Shop Around the Corner starring James Stewart, watched the fourth episode of the first season of House of Cards, and did some video processing and downloading on the home laptop. I unsuccessfully tried to find the song that was played at the end of the latest episode of the Radio Free Delingpole podcast that was entitled the Gold Diggers. It was a very catchy song that I so much desperately wanted to put on my Ipod.
• I had trouble sleeping and was up at two o'clock in the morning.
• Jenny was sending me photos of Tony through the evening. This morning, she phoned me from the hotel. The Changzhou dinosaur park was crowded. One ride had to be shut down to more riders at two thirty in the afternoon. The number of people queued made for a three and a half hour wait.
• The Shop Around the Corner was a good movie, featured some great screen presences, and hit home with me on several fronts. It starred James Stewart and the man who played the wizard in the Wizard of Oz. Stewart played the retail shop's senior employee. The actor from the Wizard of Oz played the retail shop's owner. Five other actors made up the store's staff. They are all involved in some personal dramas. The Stewart character is the midst of a romance being done by correspondence. The Stewart character is having a troublesome relationship with the the owner. The manager thinks that his wife is cheating on him. A new girl is hired who has a troublesome relationship with the Stewart character. Eventually, the Stewart character is fired by the owner. The owner nearly commits suicide. The new girl tells the Stewart character off. But by the end of the movie everything works out. What struck home with me was the fact that Stewart was the senior employee and was expected to set examples for the rest of the staff. The Stewart character also had these conversations with other staff members where they tried to deal with their personal relationships. I don't have these sort of conversations at my job and I wouldn't want to if it was possible. I also don't set much of an example as a senior employee.
• I gave the students the following options: friend, beautiful women, handsome man, or talking animal; and asked them with whom they would like to have an adventure. One of the boys said handsome man. What he meant was that he would like to have a man like Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger as a partner....
• It rains heavily. I wonder if Jenny & Tony got caught in the rain. They were planning to go to the Zoo.

Monday [June 2]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• Dragon Boat Festival today. Perhaps Jenny will prepare the Zhongzhi, traditionally eaten on this day, that the school has provided us.
• Yesterday was Children's Day.
• After work yesterday, I walked to Sunning Plaza and meet Jenny & Tony at the Grandma's restaurant where we had supper with Jenny friend's Ling Ling and Ling Ling's son Jerry. We had to wait a hour or so for seats but we passed that time agreeably enough playing on our electronic devices.
• And the meal we had at the Grandma's made the wait worth it. We had the chicken broiled in a pot, the fabulous garlic fried potatoes chunks, shrimp grilled in garlic butter, and green beans cooked in peppers.
• After supper, we took the taxi home where we all had an early bed time.
• This morning, I am watching the seventh game of the Black Hawks – Kings series. The Hawks are leading four-three midway through the third period. I was watching the game on the laptop but now have the game playing on my Ipad mini. A good setup that lets me blog.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Dad, being a Canadian, loved hockey. His favorite team was the Maple Leafs. He tried to make me a Leafs fan in 1973 by buying me a lever-controlled hockey game for Maple Leafs fans. I enjoyed the game but became a Canadiens fan because of Cournoyer and Ken Dryden. When Lanny McDonald scored the goal in 1979 that beat the Islanders, I remember being in the basement of our PMQ in Oromocto, New Brunswick, and hearing Dad scream with delight upstairs where he was watching the game. Dad didn't much care for the Canadiens. I remember I had to escape Dad's wrath when Yvon Lambert, later in those same playoffs, scored that famous seventh game overtime goal that eliminated the Bruins. Dad did cheer for the Canadiens in that Christmas Eve 1975 game between the Canadiens and the Red Army. He was seething when the game ended in a tie when the Canadiens should have won 7-1 based on the edge of play. [Hawks and Kings tied at four] Dad was the hockey parent with me and my brother Ron. He drove Ron and me all over Quebec, Manitoba, and New Brunswick to get us to games. He got up early on many a Saturday morning to drive us to ice cold rinks where the only way to keep warm was to be playing the game. A few years, he even volunteered to manage the league. Dad took great pride in the fact that his native country Latvia played hockey. He was proud that Helmut Balderis could play with the Soviet National Team. He followed the exploits of Arturs Irbe very closely. Sandis Ozoliņš playing on the a Stanley Cup winning team made him happy as well. Dad died during the 2012 Stanley Cup Final. On his death bed, he asked how the series between the Kings and Devils was going...
• I was trying to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones (s4e8) but it contained a virus. I have had to use another torrent.
• Kings win! So a Kings – Rangers Stanley Cup Final. A fluttering shot from the point goes over the goaler's shoulder.

Diary: May 20 to May 26, 2014

Highlights

• This week's question: Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list?
• Andis sees an impatiently done driving maneuver get punished.
• Andis rants about the current uniform styles of Major League Baseball.
• Andis reflects on his father.
• The weather gets hot in Wuxi.
• Andis listens to some podcasts.
• Andis reflects after reading an article on loneliness.
• Andis says Coriolanus is his favorite Shakespeare play.
• Andis has theory about Wuxi's bad drivers.
• Andis watches a 1953 Alec Guinness movie.
• Andis talks to a student about the JFK assassination and Lin Biao.
• Andis takes Tony downtown on Sunday.
• Andis is called Mr. Wuxi.
• Andis actually meets a rare reader of his blog and is put on the spot for something he wrote.
• Andis & Tony see a monkey.
• Andis visits the newly opened Mr. PIZZA in the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza.
• Andis like Chairman Mao is seventy percent right.

Tuesday [May 20]

[Home Laptop]

• I have downloaded and watched half of the latest episode (s437) of Game of Thrones.
• I have just published last week's entry. Editing the entry, I saw that I had nothing to say and that I wasn't saying it very well.
• Sometime on the weekend, I was watching some highlights from MLB and I became disgusted by the uniforms being worn. The Angels wore these caps that look to have been designed by a graffiti vandal. And the bottom of the uniform pants for most of the teams are being being allowed to flare out, which seems ugly as sin to me.
• Tony can take showers by himself.
• This morning, Tony came up to me and gave me a hug and said “I love you Daddy!” I wondered why. What was his ulterior motive?
• Watching the Rangers and Canadiens live on my Ipad.

[School Laptop]

• This week's shifts: Tuesday, 13:00-21:00; Wednesday, 13:00-21:00; Thursday, 10:00-21:00; Friday, 11:00 to 21:00; and Saturday 10:00 to 18:00.
• Construction is annoying on the stretch of Zhongshan Road near our school. Sidewalk and road is being torn up everywhere making for piles of rubble and sand.
• I will determine this week's question, now. Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I want to go through life without ever having considered gotten a tattoo. I don't want attend a rap or hip-hop concert.

Wednesday [May 21]

[Home Laptop]

• What can I say for myself?
• I don't have much to say for myself about being China. I spend most of my time, consuming media on my PC and Ipad and Ipod.
• Yesterday, I finished watching the latest episode of Game of Thrones (s4e7) and the 11^th episode of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation. GoT is keeping my interest though the last scene of s4e7 was predictable. You just knew minutes before that that lady would be pushed. The Worship of Nature episode put me off by Clark's stating at the beginning of the episode that in 1725 the Christian religion suddenly declined in England and was replaced by the worship of nature. Well, if that was the truth, what of it? That it should be so is a sad thing but not a disapproval of the Christian Religion.
• I spend the morning causing trouble with my WCE blog.
• HM's birthday tomorrow.
• The anniversary of my Father's death is a week away. I was just doing a Google search to see what images came up when I typed his name and the word death. One photo that popped up was a old photo of Dad giving a medal to the captain of a championship team in a minor hockey league that he volunteered to run in the 1970s. My Dad had many flaws, but his volunteering spirit showed him at his best. I remember with bitterness how when things didn't work out, the people who didn't volunteer would criticize him. I observe now with bitterness that Wuxi people are far more likely to cut pedestrians with their cars (while talking on their mobile phones) or cheat in business deals than volunteer to help the community or others.

[School Laptop]

• Attempting to cross the intersection on my way to the Casa Kaulins bus stop, a dickhead Wuxi driver didn't fail to surprise me by cutting me off. He was attempting to make a left turn and couldn't wait for me to cross the street. I told him to fuck off with hope that he heard me. I then gave him the middle finger gesture with hope that he saw me. What the fuck is wrong with Wuxi drivers? Has Chicomism made them selfish dicks? Or are they at a lower stage of civilization?
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to drive a car in China. [What I would like to do is drive a tank and run cars, preferably with Wuxi drivers therein, over.]
• There are efforts afoot to form an American football team in Wuxi. From what I have seen their efforts at designing a name and logo have been pathetic. First off, they are wearing these shirts with the number 88 on them. 88 is Neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler! They are also going to give their team a nickname having to do with devils. I can think of four or five nicknames that reflect the fact that they are in Wuxi. 1)The Wuxi Peach Kings 2) The Wuxi Bad Drivers 3) The Wuxi White Elephants 4)The Wuxi Sweet 5)The Wuxi Tin Kings.

Thursday [May 22]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 21:00.
• It is hard for me to have talks with Tony. For four days a week, I can only talk to him in the morning when he is mostly inattentive on account of having just got up very early to go to school. I can't even get a yes-no answer out of him when I am taking him to be picked up and taken to school.
• While waiting for the car that was to pick up Tony this morning, I saw a car get stuck when trying to back up. This car, the backing up car I will call it, came to a stop in the lane by a parking space (which was perpendicular to the lane). The backing up car had hesitated and so all the other cars behind it drove around it. That was about eight cars in total. And there was another car, the impatiently driven car I will call it, that also had to wait for the eight cars to pass as well, before it could proceed. What the driver of the impatiently driven car had done was impatiently try to drive around a car, on the passenger side, that had stopped because of the backing up car. This quick maneuver resulted in the impatiently driven car being blocked by the backing up car. Both these cars had to wait for the other eight cars to pass before they could go on their way. It was nice to see ass-hat Wuxi driver impatience get punished.
• I am listening to the Tyranny of Cliches audio book, written and read by Jonah Goldberg. It is a sequel to Liberal Fascism. So far, I find I am preferring the sequel. This could be because Goldberg is more fun to listen to for long stretches than read. I read Liberal Fascism. For me, Tyranny of Cliches is essentially an Amen book chronicling the stupidity of Liberalism.
• The construction on Zhongshan Road is creating these islands of torn up pavement that cars and buses have to swerve to avoid. I very much hate it in the evening because after school, when I am trying to get to my preferred 635 bus stop, the first bus I have to take will get stuck in a traffic jam and screw up the timing so necessary for me to ensure that I get a seat on my long bus ride back home.
• I could be watching the third period the second game of the Black Hawks – Kings series but I will be teaching a class.
• Dean!!! I just had a student named Dean in a class. He hadn't heard of Dean Martin and the Rat Pack. But why would I have expected him to? He told me that he had gone to Singapore to meet some girl he was having an Internet romance with but it didn't work out. The girl lost interest in him. Heartbreaking I can imagine but what can you do?
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to be divorced. I don't want to be an adulterer. I don't want to drive any expensive sports cars. I don't want to go under water diving. I don't want to go to Hawaii. I don't want to go surfing.

Friday [May 23]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• I was listening to the Radio Free Delingpole podcast this morning, and a line came up which I must repeat to my rare readers because it is all so true. The demand of the Left for White Racists far outstrips supply.
• The weather today is warm. Yesterday, two students talked about the warm spring weather making them sleepy.
• Last salon I conducted a salon class about Global Warming. It isn't my favorite topic but this class actually had some students say some interesting things. One student said that much of the pollution in China is a result of foreign companies coming here to pollute. Whether this is true or not, I cannot rightly say. The first reaction to the statement made by the student that I can think of is that it takes two to tango. China wants the foreign companies here. The second reaction that comes to mind is that it is hard to believe that Chinese companies really care about doing something about pollution.
• The next podcast I listened to this morning made mention of the Cultural Revolution. Said Mona Charen: it was a very horrible and depraved thing. I had a few students, when I first came here, tell me that it was a time of madness. My wife tells me how it splits people still in her village. There are people she won't associate with from her hometown because of it.
• I have the feed of the third game of Rangers—Canadiens series on my computer. I have to decide if I should study Chinese or watch the game. Not feeling comfortable with choosing either, I will try to do both.
• I wonder if the cultural revolution can explain why Wuxi people are such bad drivers.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I have to be careful when I answer this question. I want to say things that could possibly be on other people's bucket lists. So! I don't want to visit Jim Morrison's grave. I don't want to drive an expensive sports car. I don't want to own a Rolex.

Saturday [May 24]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 18:00.
• I was annoyed at Tony last night. It has crossed my mind but last night it became very apparent that Tony doesn't talk much to me, and that we don't have real conversations. He will talk to his mother in Chinese and will often ask her what I had been trying to say to him.
• There was an interesting article, that was became aware of thanks to a email update, in the American Spectator on loneliness. The modern mores have made Americans by and large a group of lonely individuals. Being Canadian, I am affected by the same winds of culture that Americans are; and living a life that has been plagued by loneliness, it would seem nice for me to blame my loneliness and isolation on the culture, and it would seem nice for me to say to if only the culture or the people I do run into were somehow better, I wouldn't be so lonely. But I do have a misanthropic streak in me that I think I would have had any age I would have lived. (though I could say that in a more enlightened age I would have more readily become aware of monasteries). Anyway, articles on loneliness draw my attention in spite of a somewhat spiteful desire on my part to embrace solitariness. [Should I have used spite in two ways in that sentence?] And there was a factoid in the article that really hit home with me. It said that the longer one's commute to work, the more one felt lonely or socially isolated. That is so true in my situation where I ride the bus for two hours a day to get to work and back.
• No dinner yesterday. I decided about lunchtime that I would fast till I got home.
• I also decided to make a point of sitting down at my seat for as long as possible, only getting up to go to classes. I remember reading Florence King extolling the discipline necessary to be able to sit for long times in one place without fidgeting or giving into an urge to get up and chat.
• Coriolanus. That has to be my favorite Shakespeare play. I don't fashion myself to be a Coriolanus. Though he hated the mob and was no middle-of-the-roader trying to appeal to them, he earned his contempt for them through getting scars and exhibiting tremendous physical courage. I am fearful of confrontation and wouldn't definitely shirk from any physical threat to my person. I have to admire Coriolanus and envy his being able to adopt the attitude that he did toward them. The mob is full of meatheads and he was right to despise it. Are politicians who talk of the mob as if it was full of simple well-meaning folk who don't get high all the time or don't brag of debaucheries, speaking truthfully or cowardly kow-towing? I suspect the latter. Coriolanus is a play that tells us what is so wrong with the modern world.
• I can see some Obamacolytes saying that Obama is like Coriolanus. Obama is the man of virtue having to deal with a mob of bigots and conservatives and homophobes and so on. I of course wouldn't agree with this depiction. I would say Obama does have an element of Coriolanus's despising of the mob, but what he really despises is the country he thinks he is serving so honorably. He despises America. As well a comparison between Coriolanus and Obama also breaks down on the fact that Coriolanus before confronting the mob, had performed acts of extraordinary physical. That couldn't be said about Obama who was elected on false hopes of what he could be. Furthermore, Coriolanus told the mob to stuff it and joined his sworn enemies. Is there any chance that Obama will quit the presidency of the country he despises and move to France or somewhere else in the European Union, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba,or North Korea? If he did, I would gladly said he was like Coriolanus for giving up a cushy life, is as much as that would be an act of courage that we can expect in this modern world.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to see the Xian Warriors. I feel that place is probably a vulgar tourist spot. I don't want to go skiing in the Swiss Alps. I don't want to go golfing in Augusta.
• I am almost finished watching this 1953 Alec Guinness move the Captain's Paradise. Great performance of Guinness who I am thinking I will honor by making him the King of the Wuxi China Expatdom. The perfect life says the Captain character played by Guinness in the movie? Two women of complimentary temperaments and the intellectual company of men. Says the Captain: The women who can bring home the groceries, can't bring home the milk. I am not exactly sure what is meant by that line but it seems funny and clever nonetheless. My life would be a one in three to the captain. But in the end it seems that the life that the Captain created that had those elements of perfection has broken down.
• I will spend the day here, when not in a class, working on my blog thingies. I feel I have fulfilled my Chinese study requirement for the week and day.
• I just spent an hour talking about the JFK assassination and Lin Biao with a student. The student mentioned some interesting factors in the mystery of Biao's plane crash. Biao had a wife who was ambitious and impatient, said the student, who forced Biao to reluctantly make a plan to bomb Mao's train. And Chou En Lai had the power over the use of air planes. The student said that Chou approved Biao using the plane but told Mao that Biao was escaping so that Mao would make the decision to shot the plane down.
• I have had that humid feeling in class today. Summer is here.

Sunday [May 25]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• It is humid. I went for a walk and now I am all in a sweat.
• Last night and this morning, I watched Magnum Force, a classic Dirty Harry movie. The film had a great look and feel and sound. Clint Eastwood was the epitome of cool. The film ended rather improbably however even if it did allow a great shot of Clint saying that a man had to know his limitations.
• I watched the highlights of the Champions League Final. Having watched a lot of Stanley Cup playoff highlights, I can say that football or soccer does allow a spectator time to see the buildup to a goal as well it being scored. Too often in hockey, the goal is scored and you have to watch the replay to see what happened.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to attend the NFL draft. I don't want to meet the President of the United States. I don't want to attend a major tennis event. I don't want to attend an Olympic event. I don't want to say I have cooked a gourmet meal. I don't want to go to the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I don't want to see the lady boys in Thailand. I don't want to smoke Cuban cigars.
• [Later] In the afternoon, I took Tony downtown so I could buy myself something from Burger King and buy Tony a toy. We took the 25 bus and it got stuck in traffic downtown. It gave me time to think about an email I got from Arielle. Once Tony & I were off the bus, we walked through the Nanchang Temple Market area, browsing at toy shops along the way, to get to the Nanchang Jie Burger King or Han Bao Wang as the locals would call it. I ordered an Italian Triple Stacker with fries and two drinks. I ate the sandwich, Tony refusing my offers to try it, and shared the fries with Tony.
• Leaving Burger King I ran into a couple of Americans who are teaching English at a program or school that is on the campus of Jiangnan University. One of the teachers insisted that I was mister Wuxi. I denied it and now wish I could have said something about my 49 year old body being a long way from some Adonis like muscularity it may have had in my early twenties. And I said that if I was famous, I would rather have money; the fame having not earned me any benefits. The other teacher said he was a regular reader of my blog, and had seen videos of Tony on the bridge deck during a session of trainspotting. He mentioned my having written something about not liking to talk to foreigners. I scoffed in response and talked about how I hated to see other foreigners in my territory of Wuxi. Of course, the truth of the matter is that I write things in a spiteful mood and don't have the good sense to not publish these spiteful things. The only thing I can truly say in my defense is that my reactionary posture and misanthropy is a mental pose or delusion that is almost always instantly disarmed by friendliness on the part of others. [If you are reading this, Andy, please make a comment or send me an email.]
• The two gentlemen taught writing and what they told me about it was just as I imagined from the few times I have students ask me to edit some piece of writing for them.
• While I was talking to the gentleman, a man dragging a monkey came by asking for money. I gave him two rmb.
• To be continued, tomorrow.....

Monday [May 26]

[Home Laptop]

• I will continue on with what I did yesterday.
• After talking to the two gentleman and seeing the monkey yesterday afternoon, Tony & I walked from Ba Bai Ban to buy a toy. Tony of choose a Ultraman toy that cost 99 rmb and earned the wrath of Jenny when she found out how much I had spent on it.
• When she asked me how much the toy cost, I told her 60 or 70 rmb. Later when she found the receipt and saw that I had in fact spent 99, she was annoyed. I defended myself using the formulation used by the Chinese Communist party in their assessment of Chairman Mao. I was 70 percent right, not a liar, I said.
• From Ba Bai Ban, Tony & I took the bus back to Hui Shan where we meet Jenny at the recently opened Mr. PIZZA in the Wanda Plaza. As far as I can tell, Mr. PIZZA is a pizza restaurant chain started by Chinese. All the people featured in their ads are Chinese. I believe that Mr. PIZZA is in fact Chinese. The food was not bad though I did come in with very low expectations. The pizza was like Domino's. The fried chicken salad was big and could be a meal itself for just 20 rmb. The only thing that I found off-putting about the restaurant was the showing of video of Mr PIZZA personnel participating in some pizza dough spinning competition. Not a real useful skill and I don't see how it makes the pizza taste any better.
• The K clan then went to Tesco to see if we could find a bike for Tony to ride this summer. The one bike we would like to have wasn't in very good condition – its brakes didn't work and the training wheels were wobbly.
• When I got home, I phoned my brother in Canada. We switched from phone to Facetime on our Ipads for the rest of our conversation. Our reception of Ron was great. We could hear him and the video never got stuck buffering. Ron, however, kept telling us that video of me on his Ipad was periodic.
• Today, it is scorching outside. Waiting at a bus stop, I was suffering. I found Wuxi summers to be unbearable.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? Today. I can't think of anything to put on the list.

Diary: May 13 to May 19, 2014

Highlights

• Andis answers the following question: Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in?
• Andis consumes a lot of media on his Ipad.
• Andis heard some students say the darnedest things.

Tuesday [May 13]

[Home Laptop]

• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? Yes, I can. Each day this week, I will tell you one thing I am interested in. The first thing I am interested in is Roman Catholicism. Why? Because of the following people: David Warren, Seablogger, Evelyn Waugh, William F Buckley, GK Chesterton, Pope Benedict, Hillaire Belloc, Anthony Esolen, Cardinal Newman, TS Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, and so on.
• Last night, I took Tony to the Hui Shan Central Park and then to the square near the first stop of the #1 Wuxi Metro Line. At the park, Tony ran around and played on the slides and climbing fixtures. I noticed that new signs had been put up all over the park but one of the playsets hadn't been repaired and was in a dangerous state; and I saw a van that had somehow managed to evade the barriers put up to stop motor vehicles from being driven into the park. And to top it off, the van parked on the lawn. At the square, Tony played with some children who I presumed were his classmates from school. I talked briefly to a woman who was studying English at my school. In 2008, she had bought a house which is now near that subway stop. She is sitting pretty.
• I watch the film Psycho last night. What can I say? It's a classic.

[School Laptop]

• My shifts this week: Tuesday 13-21, Wednesday 13-21, Thursday 10-21, Friday 11-21, Saturday 10-18, and Sunday 10-18. I get overtime this week! Hurray!
• My trip to work was uneventful.

Wednesday [May 14]

[Home Laptop]

• Last night's salon topic: Fantasy and Reality. I asked the students who or what they fantasized about. A male student told me he fantasized about Lebron James.... ahhh.....He didn't understand.
• I had a no-show for my 8:00 PM class and so I got to go home early.
• I watched the sixth episode of the fourth season of Game of Thrones and the second episode of the first season of House of Cards. I should adopt the affectation of the Spacey character in HoC and talk to the camera that I believe is following me around. If Spacey is really such a wonderful actor, he should find a third thing to talk to when performing: a hedgehog named Norman. George Stephanopolous – if I spell his name right, I don't care – makes an appearance in that show. Stephanopolous is the egregious hack from the Clinton election team – he starred in the documentary The War Room – who became a hack journalist. Seeing him appear in the show is enough to make me want to stop watching it. There was also a character in the show who used the line trickle-down foreign policy in saying he didn't agree with Reagan except for his trickle-down economic policy which was a reference to a Democratic myth.... Aagghh! I'll keep watching the show anyway.
• I overheard a story of a car that hit the back of a Wuxi public bus. It was a case of a Wuxi driver turning onto the road and not looking. And yet, the car driver thought the bus driver was at fault. It would seem that Wuxi drivers do believe that everyone should just get out of their way.
• Why am I interested in Roman Catholicism? It is a beautiful thing when done right. It stands athwart the modern world. It embraces paradox. It gives free range to all the concerns we have about the world while keeping them in proper perspective. It really is the key to unlocking the mystery of our existence.
• I listened to two Econtalk podcasts yesterday. The first one was about Bitcoin. The second one was about the economics of towns and cities. The second podcast was the more interesting because it discussed the kind of the things one can see everyday with one's own eyes: road and other sorts of municipal construction. Besides the well known problems caused to their financing by their worker pensions, cities in America are in dire straits because of perverse incentives which caused them to build white elephant mega projects, unnecessary roads, and neglect the basic services they were always meant to supply like policing and basic infrastructure maintenance. The take-away line from the podcast for me was the point made by the guest that city governments should get out of the business of trying to drive economic innovation. Innovation is for the private sector to do.
• The podcast was especially interesting for me in light of what I am witnessing happen in Wuxi where a seemingly unsustainable building binge, with apartments and shopping malls and subways being constructed, is taking place.
• Narrow streets encourage pedestrian traffic and wide roads encourage traffic flow. So the podcast did say. The wide boulevards around Casa Kaulins are monstrosities. I hate them. I only really feel I am in China when walking down its narrow streets. I can think of two in Wuxi that I love walking down because they seem lively. One is close to Casa Kaulins. I walk down it sometimes to get to the central park. The street is a few hundred meters long but is full of shops and restaurant, and has lots of pedestrian traffic. The other is the street I walk down from the bus 25 terminal stop to my school. This street is narrower that the one close to my apartment but again is lively because of its compactness. Zhongshan Road, on the other hand, is full of cars and buses and empty storefronts.

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00.
• I took the 25 bus to get to school and had another uneventful trip.
• I can't get access my email account. This hasn't happened to me in a long time. Trainers with yahoo accounts had this problem often. I had this problem when I was using my gmail account and then I switched to a qq account which had given me far less trouble until today.
• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? The second thing I am interested in is China. Why? Because I have to be, being here and all. I am learning to read simplified Chinese and I like to read about Chinese history. I don't want to a Sinologist though. If anything, I want to be thought as an anti-Sinologist, someone who observes the Chinese but has no desire to be an expert about them.
• Another thing that annoyed me about that second episode of House of Cards. The Spacey character – he is the majority leader of the house or representatives – has some young college kids working on an education bill. Education bill! That shouldn't be a federal responsibility!

Thursday [May 15]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 21:00. No class in the morning, so I can work on the things that interest me. I then have a salon class, topic: conversation, at 13:00. Then, three classes in the evening. The 20:00 class is the Music Salon where I will try to play music for the students using my Ipod or Ipad.
• Last night, for the last class of the evening, I had a pair of lively and talkative students. I fed off their energy and enjoyed talking to them. However, I had no advice to offer them about improving their English.
• In the class I mentioned where the male student told me he fantasized about Lebron James, I forgot to mention that one of the women said she fantasized about Putin. A much more acceptable answer.
• Took the 602支 and then the 67 bus to get to work.
• Weather today is nice.
• I am monitoring the game seven between the Bruins and Les Canadiens. Yesterday, the two game sevens were 2-1 affairs. The goals scored were the result of mistakes and crazy bounces, and no real offensive imagination or initiative. The important games during the NHL playoffs can be snoozers as it seems that the puck's random movements and not the players will decide who wins.
• Anyway, Les Canadiens lead the Bruins 2-1 in the second period. I will cheer for a Canadien victory.
• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? The third thing I will say that I am interested in is Economics. I am particularly interested in microeconomics, the sort of economic things that you can see with your own eyes. I find Macroeconomics and Econometrics boring. These two fields of economics are about as useful to people as alchemy and astrology. Value is subjective and so any economic numbers you work with are the result of subjectivity. Economic numbers are not as hard as the numbers of physics or of natural number mathematics.

Friday [May 16]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00. I have an 11:00 class and then three classes, including an English corner, in the evening from 18:00 to 21:00. I will have plenty of time in the afternoon to work on keeping myself busy.
• I have these interior rages that would physically manifest themselves, to anyone who would be watching me, as sudden mad gnashing of teeth and clutching of fists accompanied by a sudden straightening of the shoulders. The rages overtake me for an instance before I mentally take a step back and wonder why I have them.
• There should be no wonder about these rages, not that I have taken a step back and thought about them. Some things in my life are not as they should be.
• To say one is middle-of-the-road is to be glib.
• The teams in the NHL playoffs seem to be evenly matched and the goals that are being scored are the result of some good fortune like a wild careen of a puck that no player, even the most properly positioned and alert, could anticipate. But for an offensive team to produce these careens of good fortune there has to be good fortune in turn.
• Jenny & Tony will be going to Beixing, Jenny's hometown, on the weekend. I will have Casa Kaulins to myself on Saturday night.
• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? The fourth thing I am interested in is blogging, whether writing or reading them. I have six blogs that I update on a regular basis. Four and a half of them are basically photo blogs. The blog that I put this diary entry in is my one blog that is completely devoted to writing. I read about three blogs on a regular basis: The David Warren blog, the Duff and Nonsense blog, and the blog of Peter Hitchens (the brother of the famous Christopher). Reading those three blogs is inspiring to me as a blogger and also humbling. Their writing can be glorious and it is finally dawning on me that I could never write like them. I must confess that I don't read any blogs about China.

Saturday [May 17]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift is 10:00 to 18:00.
• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? The fifth thing I am interested in is books. I must have nearly two thousand of them on my Ipad. I love all sorts of books except anything that would trashy or pornographic.
• I have discovered that I can get a live feed of an NHL playoff game on my computer. [Later: It wasn't much of a game and I was teaching anyway and so I didn't get to see much .]
• “What is a network?” I asked the student, who was bitterly amusing me with his obvious lack of preparedness. He told me that a network was used to catch people.
• In the game I didn't watch much of, the Kings defeated the Ducks 6-2 and clinched a spot in the Western Conference Final against the Black Hawks. I would like to see a Canadiens – Black Hawks Stanley Cup Final. The first Stanley Cup final that I was ever aware of as it happened was the 1973 final between the Black Hawks and the Canadiens.

Sunday [May 18]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 10:00 to 17:00. Overtime.
• Jenny & Tony went to Beixing (J's hometown yesterday). I heard that Tony hurt himself playing basketball.
• So while the cats were away, the mice played? Sort of. I spoiled myself. I had a pizza from Pizza Hut for supper. I made myself a Crown Royal and coke. On the Apple TV, I watched the end of the movie Coriolanus, the third episode of the first season of House of Cards, and the tenth episode (The Smile of Reason) of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.
• Coriolanus, a great Shakespeare play, was made into a great movie by Ralph Fiennes who updates the play by setting in a Yugoslavian Civil War type situation. I suppose everyone identifies himself with Coriolanus in that he is against the world and the mob. Of course, Coriolanus earns his right to denounce his mob with his incredible physical acts of courage. These days, a figure like Obama fashions himself to be like Coriolanus in that he has to put up with people who disagree with him.
• House of Cards shows the Spacey character making a tear-inducing sermon in a church for entirely political purposes. It annoys him to have to do this because he would rather be working on an education bill. He loathes small-ball local concerns, does this Washington politician.
• The Smile of Reason episode of Civilisation was very beautiful to watch. It showed truly beautiful art done by truly skilled artists. And it was made before anyone had even thought of CGI graphics.
• I have seen lineups, hundreds of people long before opening time, at several banks this weekend. I will have to ask some students if they might know why. Was I witnessing a bank run? Were people expecting some kind of deposit to be put in their accounts? Were the banks having a promotion? Did the Wuxi people heard rumors of banks giving away free money? [I just asked a student and he told me that free subway tickets were being given away. So, it was like free money.]
• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? The sixth thing I am interested in is American politics. Conrad Black says it is a magnificent spectacle. I agree with him but not without a sense of shame. I should have more interest in Canadian politics but I can't help but feel that the important debates about universal man are taking place in America. Furthermore, I envy those who can go through life with nary a concern for politics and don't bother to vote in elections because democratic politics does seem a puerile activity. Over concern with politics and too much time spent on hating people with different politics can turn one into a crank.... Be that as it may, I listen to podcasts about U.S. Politics every day.

Monday [May 19]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• Tony got a red mark on his face because some classmate hit him with a rope. The teacher told Jenny that Tony and this boy are basically roughhousing it every day, and that after the boy struck Tony, he immediately apologized.
• What can you do? Boys will be boys.
• Can you tell your readers seven things that you are interested in? The seventh thing I am interested in is listening to podcasts. Before there was ever podcasting, I loved listening to Talk Radio. I remember using a transistor radio to pick up signals from Boston, Philadelphia and New York when I lived in New Brunswick. When I was in Manitoba, I would try to listen to radio from Chicago and Minneapolis. I remember a Minneapolis station playing replays of the Rush Limbaugh show late at night. So you can see that for a person with my radio listening experiences, podcasts were a god-sent. I can now listen to podcasts about US politics, Economics, History, and Roman Catholicism. My favorite podcasts about US politics include Radio Derb, the Three Martini podcast, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the Riccochet Podcast, Need to Know with Mona Charen and Jay Nordlinger, Uncommon Knowledge, Radio Delingpole, the GLOP culture podcast, and the Milt Rosenberg Show. My favorite podcasts about economics are the Econ Talk blog, and Coffee and Markets. My favorite history podcasts are the China History podcast, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and the Russian Rulers podcast. To satisfy my Roman Catholic urges I listen to Vatican Radio podcasts, EWTN podcasts, Forward Boldly and Father Z's blog. Other podcasts I will listen to, on occasion, include the Charles Adler Show (from Winnipeg), the Rex Murphy audio podcast (from Canada), Great Lives (from the BBC), Frank Delaney's ReJoyce podcast, Popup Chinese, Mark Levin, and Grammar Girl.