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.

The AKIC Weekly: June 3 to June 9, 2013

Gratitude:  I am having difficulty thinking what I should be specifically thankful for this week. I always hope to find a new thing to be thankful for every week, but it always comes back to thanking the power that is for my Wife and my Son. I am also, now that I think of, thankful for having a brain and a pulse.

One more thing. I should be thankful that the things I have done that I am ashamed of are not all that bad compared to those of many people I read about in the news. But that is only small consolation. It is my luck or my curse to not be subject to too much temptation.

Acknowledgment: What to confess to this week? There is always something one did in the past that one shudders to think about now. I have had my fair share.

How about this? I sometimes mail it in.

Requests: I wish I could speak English with a lisp. I also need more courage.

The AKIC Mission:  To be China's leading forum of  Gómez-Dávilism and reactionary intransigence, as well as a provocation to all of AKIC's enemies and critics.

The AKIC Motto:  Believe in God, trust in Christ, look with suspicion.

Who should read AKIC? AKIC is more AK than C. So don't come here expecting the rantings of a would-be Sinologist. I just sometimes mention what I happen to see being here in China. Also, don't expect to read anything about the Wuxi Expat community here. I keep my contact with foreigners to a minimum – but then that is like someone declaring his party to be private even when no one is going to his party anyway. Everyone can read this blog, but only certain types would understand it – that is, flotsam, jetsam, waifs, lost souls, conservatives, reactionaries, lost-causers, medievalists, coin-tossers, base brats, marginal humans, watchers, cranks,walkers, wallflowers, failures, losers, Catholics, solitaries, and loners.

An AKIC Glossary

Gratitude: will always be the first word of the AKIC weekly blog entry -- it is the key to happiness.

Acknowledgment and Request:  For me Acknowledgment means confession; and Request means asking for stuff.  GAR [Gratitude, Acknowledgment, Request] are the simple stages of a prayer which I came upon following the Jewish World Review site.  I used the GAR format when I delivered the eulogy at my father's funeral last year.

Solecisms: I try to rid my blog and writings of these things, but they never seem to go away.

Jenny is my wife. She is a Jiangsu woman. Why she puts up with me is a mystery. I ain't good-looking and I don't have any money.

J: I will sometimes refer to her that way.

Tony is my son.  If he is annoying or is acting way, way, way out-of-line, I will spank him.

T: I will sometimes refer to Tony this way.

TKIC: Tony Kaulins in China.  I may be referring to the TKIC blogs or to Tony when I use TKIC.  I  am sure you can figure out which way I am using it from the context.

AKIC:  Andis Kaulins in China.  The same applies to AKIC as applies to TKIC.  That is, I may be referring to the AKIC blogs or to myself.  AKIC aspires to be China's leading forum of  Gómez-Dávilism and reactionary intransigence.

My School is HyLite English located on Zhongshan Road in Wuxi, China.

Casa Kaulins is what I call the apartment I (really my wife) owns.

California Villa: The English name of the apartment complex the Kaulins family resides. In Chinese pinyin, it is called Jia Zhou Yang Fang.

Train-spotting.  There is a high speed train track running near Casa K.  Tony & I, when we have a chance, love to go there to watch the trains go by.

Wuxi:  The city where Jenny, Tony & I live.  I sometimes call it the Wux.

Hui Shan: The district of Wuxi in which we live.  Not to be confused with the Hui Shan Mountain that is in Xihui Park.

Ba Bai Ban: Also known as Wuxi Yao Han, Ba Bai Ban is a famous department store at the corners of Zhongshan Road and Xueqian Road in Downtown Wuxi. AKIC goes there to buy Tomica and Plarail toys for his son Tony.

The Square:  The Hui Shan People's Square is nearby Casa Kaulins.

Central Park:  Hui Shan Central Park is the park closest to Casa Kaulins.  It has a playground area and a small lake with beach.  The park is nothing special.  The water in the lake is unbelievably foul.  The playground's fixtures are following apart.  The park is big enough that its narrow paths, that I would have thought were meant for pedestrians, have cars being driven on them.  The sight of these cars honking at pedestrians to get out their way disgusts me as much as the park's lake water.  Chinese people don't know how to drive and exhibit extreme selfishness when they get behind the steering wheel.

Hui Shan Wanda: A fancy shopping mall and cinema that is near Casa Kaulins. As of this typing, it is supposed to open June 21.

Yanqiao: a town of Hui Shan District -- not too far from Casa Kaulins.

Jiangyin: A city or district next to Wuxi.

Meicun:  A suburb of Wuxi city that is far from the downtown.

Shuo Feng:  Ditto!

Ditto!  Agrees with what has been previously said.

To do List At work, even though I am not that busy anymore, I print out a weekly list of things to do everyday. It is a compulsive-obsessive habit that does give my days some form.

LECTOR: I got the idea for Lector, a fictional sparring partner for my blog, from a Hilaire Belloc book I had read recently.

School Laptop:  I like to make note of where I make my notes for my weekly blog entry.  One of the four places is my school laptop.  The other three are: my home laptop, my Ipad Mini, and my Ipod Touch.

Dotdotdot: This is my favorite social app. It is a nice way to read long form articles on the Internet that allows you to proclaim to the world what you are reading. I use the app to read the Catechism and the writings of Father Schall. I get a new follower seemingly every day.

Python:  Some kind of script-writing computer program I am learning to use.

Atftb:  A thought for the blog.

Brandon, Manitoba, Canada is where my mother Aina lives. 

Winnipeg, Manitoba is where my brother Ron lives.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA is where some of my father's relatives live.

Bao Bao Sleepy:  What Tony calls it when he sleeps in Daddy's arms or on Daddy's lap.

David Warren:  I visit his website about five times a day.  He a fervent Catholic and reactionary.  If I model myself after anyone, it would be him.

Don Colacho:  a.k.a. Nicolás Gómez Dávila. A South American sage.  He died in 1993.  He would have been 100 in 2013.  I read his aphorisms everyday.  He is the consummate reactionary.

Father Schall: I am always reading the site of his which has a huge collection of his writings.

English Corner:  I go to a room and try to talk to a group of Chinese people in English.  Often, they don't understand me.

25,602, 602支，610，81，79，67，118，85, 635：These are buses I can take as I go downtown Wuxi from the Hui Shan New District. I usually take the 602支 in the morning, transferring to the 79, 81, or 85 to get to school. In the evening, I can take the 67,79,81,85 or 118 to get to the stop where I catch the 635. The 635 is the only bus running to my area of Wuxi after 800 PM. The 81 bus is a double-decker – quite the novelty for a guy who spent a lot of his life in Manitoba.

HM:  Harry Moore is from Brisbane Australia.  He had a brief stint as an English teacher at my school.  He sends me emails occasionally.  He was my partner in crime in my notorious Wuxi China Expatdom Blog.  He suffered a stroke recently but he still heroically plugs away.

The AKIC Week in Brief: It rained very heavily on Friday. The Ear Buds on my Ipod Touch needed to be replaced. I read about Erasmus. I fiddled around with my Python programs. I had a long conversation out of the classroom and realized I didn't have much to say.

About Me (Andis):

I am in China!  我不喜欢说的中文。我的发音不好。我想可以看得懂中文词。

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary!  I never started this way. Through most of my high school years and then in university, I would have proudly boasted of being a socialist. But then I listened to Rush Limbaugh and played devil's advocate with a member of the NDP. I am not sure what exact branch of the right wing I most feel a part – on the right, diversity is a natural thing. Much as I agree with Libertarians that the less government the better, I also agree with conservatives who would like to preserve the old-time checks on the excesses of capitalism and materialism. Lefties, whether they call themselves socialists, liberals, middle-of-the-roaders, progressives, activists, or communists are out-to-lunch and irredeemable because of the results of their policies,which may have been well-meaning at one time, but been shown time and time again to destroy the human spirit and breed a new kind of intolerance, as well as making the problems they seek to solve worse.

I am Canadian!  To other Canadians, I apologize for my being so. But I am sure that real Canadians are wondering about the nickname of Ottawa's latest CFL franchise: The Redblacks?

I teach English!  Thinking of all the years I went to school, the only things I can really remember from the classes, are not the subjects taught but the strange things that happened like a philosophy professor being accused of sleeping with some man's wife, a professor pulling chalk out of his pocket, and a teacher falling off a stage. In my classes, I always aim for the unforgettable moment that will stay in a student's memory long past whatever we were talking about faded from the memory. That about states my teaching philosophy. As for teaching English, I am here to get the students to talk – nothing else. I chide them constantly for their laziness or lack of imagination.

I like to Read!

Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:

Don Colacho's Aphorisms:  There are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled for myself.  I read ten aphorisms at a time.  I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually -- and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)

Ulysses by James Joyce:  I am following along with  Frank Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney figures he will have done his last ReJoyce Podcast in about 22 years.  Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast (he completed episode #156a this week), I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book.  I will be finished reading it, I figure, in a year.

The Holy Bible King James Version:   I am reading a chapter a day of the greatest book of all-time. This past week, I finished reading the Acts of the Apostles. I am now in Letters to the Romans.

University Economics:  Elements of Inquiry Third Edition by Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen:   A great Economics textbook. 

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation by Johan Huizingia. [Finished] David Warren mentioned Erasmus and so I am reading this book. I find the book quite fascinating so far, and I will probably read in Praise of Folly next. I had always thought of the Reformation as being boring till reading this book.

Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire A page-turner of a book.

In Praise of Folly by Erasmus. I should read something about Erasmus seeing how I have read a biography of him.

I like to take photos

I publish them in the following blogs:  AKIC wordpress , TKIC blogspot, and TKIC wordpress. In TKIC Wordpress, I publish photos of Tony taken at certain times of the week.

I like to make videos

Here is my Youtube Channel and my Youku Channel.

I like to cut and paste quotations:

The following are from Don Colacho:

2328 The great industrial trade fairs are the showcase of everything civilization does not require.

2336 The modern mentality’s conceptual pollution of the world is more serious than contemporary industry’s pollution of the environment.

1588 No one praises the people except the man who means to sell it something or rob it of something. [I have never been generous with praise.]

2345 Life is delightful at those moments when one is allowed to think or dream.

2350 In order to live peacefully with one’s neighbor, there is nothing better than not having a single postulate in common. [The meaning of this aphorism is very subtle. I take it to mean, ultimately, that conflict starts when people associate, and what better way to have peace with someone than to not share any of his assumptions about life and thus have reason to have nothing to do with him?]

2357 To be a reactionary is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.

The following are about Erasmus:

• Bad monarchs should perhaps be suffered now and then. The remedy should not be tried. [Hopefully, we only have to suffer through Obama till 2016.]
• The eternal ambiguity of human issues.
• As an intellectual type Erasmus was one of a rather small group: the absolute idealists who, at the same time, are thoroughly moderate. They can not bear the world's imperfections; they feel constrained to oppose. But extremes are uncongenial to them; they shrink back from action, because they know it pulls down as much as it erects, and so they withdraw themselves, and keep calling that everything should be different; but when the crisis comes, they reluctantly side with tradition and conservatism. [The withdraw phrases attracts me.]

From Letter to the Romans:

1:14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.

I like to keep a journal of my daily activities and any thoughts that occur to me.

Monday [June 3]

[Home Laptop]

I didn't work today, but that didn't mean that I could sleep in. At 620 AM, I was awoken by my wife's kicks. She said she kicked me once; I thought I had been kicked four times. Either number, the wife kicked or was kicking me because she didn't know what time it was, and she worried that we had overslept which would have meant that we would have to take Tony to the kindergarten ourselves.

The Black Hawks have taken a 2-0 series lead against the Kings. Wonderful!

The wife and I went downtown for lunch and so I could get my hair cut. Beforehand, we first went to The Grandma's restaurant at Nanchang Market where we ate our fill. I like that restaurant, and so does my wife; and so we don't disagree, which is nice. However, my wife wanted me to try another Grandma's potato dish instead of the usual potato dish I eat there. I declined because the usual potato dish, that I had eaten many times, was my raison d'etre to come to The Grandma's. That fried potato dish never bores, and if you rare reader are at the restaurant be sure to order it! My wife then suggested, halfway through the meal, that I wait till Saturday to get my haircut because Tony was going to get his hair cut that day. I declined, saying that I had put off getting my hair cut long enough and that I was starting to look like a pot-smoking, greasy, long haired, work-out addicted hippie.

So, I got my haircut and looked respectable once more.

On the bus ride back home, my wife got a phone call from the kindergarten telling her that Tony had shit his pants.

Tuesday [June 4]

[School Laptop]

I work 1300 to 2100 today.

In the morning, I lingered around at home.

I took the 25 to work. At the bus stop, I saw a woman use a recyclable shopping bag as a hat. It would have made for a great photo but I can't be taking photos of strangers in my blog in order to mock them. [LECTOR: Like you have never done this before... ANDIS: Actually I knew those people.]

I phoned my brother in the morning to get an update about my Aunt Dzidra (my Mom's eldest sister) who is in the hospital with pancreatic cancer. He told me he hadn't heard anything about her after she was hospitalized a week ago. We then talked about the NHL playoffs. The Leafs fan that he is, he wants the Bruins to get to the Stanley Cup Final so he could at least have a what-might-have-been feeling about the game seven el foldo magnifico of the first round. [Leading 4-2 late in the game, the Leafs eventually lost to the Bruins in overtime.]

I just saw a girl wearing a shirt depicting a middle finger gesture, and words starting with the letter “f” and with the letter “y.” She was looking to enroll in some courses at our school. The interviewer told me she was some 17 year old who probably didn't know better.

This student Sarah is going to go to Vancouver. She thinks that UBC is in the countryside. It is not, I told her. It is in Burnaby which would probably seem like the countryside to her.

Wednesday [June 5]

[School Laptop]

I work up at seven thirty this morning and exclaimed aloud a word starting with “F.” The alarm on My Ipod Touch had gone off at six o'clock and I simple turned over, thinking I had plenty of time to snooze. The seven o'clock alarm on the Ipad Mini then didn't go off, and I continued to happily snooze away. It was just dumb luck that I awoke when I did for we were just able to get Tony to school on time.

My wife dropped some laundry from our third floor perch and so I had to go out to retrieve it. This involved me going down three sets of stairs, walking a 100 meters or so to the entrance of the apartment complex, walking 100 meters to the area in front of our apartment (and outside the apartment complex) where the laundry fell. I then had to find a narrow pathway in the row of hedges that go around the entire perimeter of our complex to finally pick up the laundry. The perimeter area is actually very disgusting. It consists of bushes grown in front of some fences. Between the bushes and the fences is a narrow pathway that is full of rubbish thrown either by passersby or people in the upper floors of the apartment buildings. I then had to make my way back to the apartment. I don't complain too much about these incidents – they have a trump card aspect to them – that is, I can use the fact that I did something as a way of defending myself against being selfish.

I took the 602 to work. I changed my routine somewhat and instead of getting off at a stop on Zhonghsan Road, I waited two more stops and got off at a stop near Chongan Market. From there I walked through the downtown to the school.

Sights on my way to work:

• There was a whole slew of e-bikes in front of the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza.
• I passed a scowling security guard.
• I saw a driver in an SUV honk at pedestrians. “Get out of my way! Can't you see I have a big vehicle and hence have a high social status!”
• Under a tree beside a curb, four men sit intently around a checker board. Perhaps they can't afford Ipads yet.

I have a few tasks to do today. By writing this blog entry, I can check off a task on my to do list.

I should have mentioned that I phoned my mother this morning. The news about my Aunt Dzidra and Uncle Red was grim. They, whoever “They” are, want Dzidra to go back home. She should be put in palliative care, but that would mean putting her in a hospital that is on the other side of Winnipeg from where her family lives. Uncle Red may recover from his operation. Uncle Red took me fishing once near the Winnipeg Floodway gates. I caught a eel that must have been a foot long – the last time I ever caught a fish.

In the ongoing war between students and teachers, I like to arm my enemies. I am like the Americans that way. That is why I am teaching them interjections that they can use in classes with other teachers like “damn straight,” “gosh”, “holey moley,” “hell's bell,” “la-di-da,” and “gadzooks!” [LECTOR: Geez, Andis! You must be bored.]

Thursday [June 6]

[School Laptop]

D-Day. I work 1000-2100.

I didn't sleep well last night. Thoughts and heat were keeping me awake.

I don't have much to say for myself today. I can say that I have a bit of prep to do, but not much teaching. It is going to be a long day of ticking off my to do list.

Breakfast at McDonald's where I notice an old couple took a seat. They didn't buy anything. They came in from a side entrance and walked into a back room which was far and hidden from the counter.

My wife had lunch with some Wuxi locals who now live in Richmond, B.C. We had opportunity to stay at their home for a short time last year. This couple is so loaded with cash that the husband doesn't work and doesn't want to. The wife has to tell people she knows that her husband is in real estate – she is too ashamed to tell the truth about him. The temptation to not work, to mail in it, is strong.

I bought Tony a toy yesterday. [LECTOR: You did what!?! I can hear you wife saying.] I will look to give it to him in a moment where he deserves to get a reward, and hopefully not when I think he deserves to get an award, if you what I mean.

My wife tells me that there is a boy in Tony's class who may well be gay. Can people be gay at such a young age? Anyway, the boy is always kissing and hugging Tony. Tony doesn't seem to care, but I hope it doesn't warp him. [LECTOR: Well. I think the fact that he has you as a father is life-warping. ANDIS: True, but I am just mediocre and disagreeable. I am not a psychopath as far as I know. I may be a stubborn narcissist.]

I am not a walrus.

Damn! The girl has been here three or four months, at least. I mean that is when I noticed her. She always here. She always sits at the front of the class, and is always eagerly working on the computer, and yet she speaks nothing but gibberish in class. It is hard to help her but I don't have the slightest clue what she is trying to say.

And yet at the same time – I am talking about Tony's gay admirer – there is something widely fascinating about gay people. Their whole manner will make even the most straight of man to smile with amusement. You can help but love their manner and not want to see that aspect of them disappear.

At Casa Kaulins, the clock in the living room needed its batteries replaced. The effect of the clock not having batteries was quite jarring on AKIC. He realized how much he relied on the clock to keep time.

It's hard to trust people when you walk on to them minimizing a screen of twat shots.

I am battling tension today, baby. The only thing that keep me in check is GAR.

Friday [June 7]

[School Laptop]

I work 1100 to 2100 today. I arrive at the school at 930. [LECTOR: WTF! You want a medal or something? ANDIS: What's with the swearing? LECTOR: You were listening to an Andrew Dice Clay and Adam Carolla podcast. ANDIS: I sure was.]

It was raining like a son-of-a-bitch on my way to work today. I had to keep my umbrella up till the very last moment, if you know what I mean.

夫 fu 未 wei: Those two characters I am always mixing up.

What do I think of Chairman Mao? To the Chinese, I will say he is not for export.

I did some python programming this afternoon. I can now stage a forty team tournament in the time it takes me to stage two games by hand.

Saturday[June 8]

[School Laptop]

I work 1000-1800 today.

It is still raining.

It turns that many Chinese, who normally wouldn't, are working today. Wednesday [June 12] is the Dragon Boat Festival so some companies are making their employees work today and tomorrow so they can get three days off in a row [Monday to Wednesday, June 10 to 12]. Some companies are doing what my school does and just giving the workers the Wednesday off and not shuffling their days off.

It also turned out that Tony was supposed to be going to school on Saturday and Sunday. This morning, I did my normal Saturday routine and leisurely got ready to get to work – strangely, I do get out of the house earlier when I am more lazy about my routine. So, at 740, I sat at the front door and was putting my shoes on. But I took off my shoes because I realized that I had said bye to J&T. As I tried to kissed them good bye, J looked at me with a start and told me that Tony was supposed to go to school today. It was then too late to get Tony to get to the van to get to school. “He's not feeling too well today!” reasoned my wife, but she insisted that she had told me that Tony's kindergarten was going to have classes on Saturday and Sunday. So, I was in the doghouse as I left the apartment.

Yesterday evening, I had a class with a male student who told me that he was going to go to KTV (karaoke) with his girlfriend today. When I asked him how many would be at KTV with him and his girl, he said that it would be just him and his girlfriend. After several rounds of confirming this, I told him that it seemed unusual to me. Now, I should mention that in China, KTV is not quite a public affair. When the Chinese have a night of KTV, they go as a group and rent a room, they are not in a big public room as they would be on karaoke nights in Aldergrove, BC. So, this fellow and his girlfriend were going to be the only two people in a room singing KTV. So, images in my mind of the man and woman singing love songs to each other, or singing duets came into my mind. [Having listened to Andrew Dice Clay yesterday, other images, very filthy, entered my mind as well. I shouldn't be mentioning this. LECTOR: Oh yeah! You shouldn't be!]

I asked my 635 bus companion – the girl who works at a rival school – about this. She said it wasn't such a strange thing, but she wasn't enough of a KTV goer to have an opinion. [Talking to this girl, I quickly began to realize that I didn't have much to talk about. I have gotten out of the habit of talking about myself to others, and can only think in unconnected bullet points like I do in this blog. Disjointed conversation drives me mad, and that is about the only sorts of conversations I can have with people, if I bother. I used to make the pretext of being interested in talking to people I have been acquainted with. I now walk quickly past them or if I see them coming from a distance, hide or get on the other side of the street.] [LECTOR: Why didn't you ask your wife about the couple going to KTV? ANDIS: Good idea!]

I found myself saying this in class: If the heart can make up its mind,......

I like to make gerunds using Chinese words. For instance. 女人很喜欢买东西ing。 In English, I said that women really like to maidongxiing. Maidongxiing is my gerundish Chinese way of saying shopping. 我是看ing。I am kaning or I am looking [LECTOR: I like the first one. I hate the second one.]

Damn! I need to get new ear buds for my Ipod. I think I will sneak away from work and see how much they cost.

Thus, I am finished any entries I make today on my school laptop.....

[Home Laptop]

The trip to look for ear buds at Ba Bai Ban was a waste of time. The buds at the Apple Store were over 300 rmb!!!

Because students had to go to school today, I had the rare opportunity to try and catch a bus just after they had finished classes. I saw so many of them at the bus stop by the school that I decided to walk through the downtown to get to the stop where I could catch the 602支。The thought of having to stand near so many of them creeped me out. And I walked through the downtown despite the drizzle and the wind.

I hope that this photo and this photo gets me in trouble. [LECTOR: WTF! Why would you publish such photos? What are you trying to prove? You don't have that many readers and the few that cold have been sympathetic to you would have been rightly turned off.]

[LECTOR: I saw that you just finished the GAR section of the blog entry. So, you are thankful for having a pulse and a brain, but you would like some courage like Dandy Lion from the Wizard of Oz cartoon! ANDIS a.k.a. DANDY: Ppp! Aah! Don't be such a super silly willy!]

Over 1,900,000 Views on my Youtube Channel!

Sunday [June 9]

[Home Laptop]

The body worries about things that my mind knows it shouldn't. Being human is to be not completely rational.

I was up at five o'clock this morning. I was trying to find subtitles for Game of Thrones – Season Two. My darling J is watching the series. I would maybe give that series a shot but I still haven't watched the fifth season of The Wire.

I then worked on a lesson plan.

Yesterday, I asked a student if her grandparents spoiled her. She said they didn't. I then wittily retorted: “Really? Well then. Who did?” The students got my joke.

Doing a class about Taxation with a student who loves to talk is enjoyable. That is how I ended my work week.

Perhaps, I am gay.

Mao Zedong and Chang Kai-Shek were both sons-of-bitches. Tragically, for China, Mao prevailed in their conflict. I have meet more than just a few Chinese who have suggested to me that they would have been better off if the KMT had won the Civil War. Mao held back China's development for thirty years at least. But hindsight is twenty-twenty. If the Americans had made more of an effort to be nice to the Chicoms, the relationship would have ended the way the alliance with the Soviets in WWII did.

“Honey, I can't come home! I was trying to come but a black cat crossed, where my path had been heading, right in front of the apartment entrance. Not wanting to cause myself a stretch of bad luck, I had no choice but to return to the safety of the pub!”

“Teacher, I am afraid I can't come to school today. I saw a black cat run around the whole perimeter of the school. Maybe, I will come tomorrow!”

In Erasmus's Praise of Folly, I saw a picture of two asses (the animals) rubbing against each other. I would have loved to have copied it and put it into one of my blogs, for it so resembled a common scene I see in my life – asses rubbing themselves together, not able to stand being alone for even ten seconds.

Last night, I uploaded last week's issue of the AKIC Weekly into the dotdotdot app – it came to thirty pages in length! If I can't write quality, it is a mite reassuring to know that I can write in quantity like all those great writers.

The Bruins will play the Black Hawks in what should prove to be an aesthetically pleasing Stanley Cup Final. Have the Hawks and Bruins ever played in a final before? I think not. I do recall that that were in some playoff series against each other in the seventies. In 1970 for instance, the Bruins swept the Hawks – Tony Esposito was in goal for the Hawks.

I asked my wife about couples going to KTV alone. She said it was nothing unusual. I guess it is only me that thinks it is unusual. I am such an unromantic.

I touched myself. Being the homophobic homosexual that I am, I then slapped myself. Hey me! Watch it!

Wassup at Wannnnndaaaaaaa!!!

I watched season 1 episode 1 of Game of Thrones. My idea of a throne being a toilet, it wasn't what I expected, but given in the investment in time I have already given to the series, I will keep my commitment and continue watching.

Tony went to school today. That is, he went to school on a Sunday so he could get Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday [the 10^th, 11^th, and 12th] off. At 1600, I waited for his return on the family ebike. I rode him to the a bike repair shop so he could ride his bicycle [with training wheels] home.

Watching him ride the bicycle was a frustrating experience. Tony has a hard time getting on the bike because he figures he has to step on a pedal to do so. When he finally gets the bike in motion, he can't ride it on two wheels – he has to lean the bike on one of the training wheels and so he is off-balance when he rides, looking ungainly when he hasn't fallen over which he seems to do every ten meters or so.

On Saturday, I did a salon class about Grandparents. One of the students told me that she hated her grandparents because they were old-school and didn't like the fact that she was a girl and thus gave favorable treatment to her brother.

I have very personal experience about this Chinese rejection of girls. J was the third daughter of her biological family and because she was one girl too many, her biological parents gave her away to someone else in her village. T & I have meet J's biological mother once about four years ago – J is reluctant to have anything to do with the woman. I remember that the woman somehow managed to get some photos of Tony into her photo album which I had a chance to look at the one time I went to her house.

Jenny's village bears scars and divisions dating back to the Cultural Revolution. J's family was harassed by other families at that time so that only did J had to deal with being harassed on account of her having been an unwanted child – she had to deal with people who had, because of the power of the state, harassed her family.

I watched the first three episodes of season one of Game of Thrones. I then loaded the remaining seven of season one onto my Ipad.