Diary: June 17 to June 23, 2014

Highlights

• Andis watches the WC.
• Andis gets Wifi in his office at school.
• Andis thinks up reasons to keep to himself.
• Andis has a thought about what is happening in Iraq.
• Andis watches the last episode of the latest season of Game of Thrones.
• Andis sees an e-biker run a red light.
• Andis has a student tell him that the high school teachers in Boston are lazy.
• Andis vows to not watch the WC anymore.
• Andis offers opinions on pragmatists.
• Andis watches the WC anyway despite his harsh thoughts about the manliness of soccer players
• Andis has a student tell him that the Chinese political system has to change.
• Andis reports a rumor that the opening of the Wuxi subway, which he hears will open on June 28, will be delayed.
• Jenny takes Tony to Hangzhou for a photo shoot.
• Andis goes to the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza on its first anniversary.
• Andis buys new glasses.
• Andis & Jenny eat at the Wuxi Blue Frog.

Tuesday [June 17]

[Home Laptop]

• Rain. And so I dread going to school for today's 13:00 to 21:00 shift.
• I read that a soccer fan in Suzhou died because of sleep deprivation brought on by watching World Cup football games.
• I haven't been able to see any WC games since the England Italy clash because of the time zone difference. All the games are being played between midnight and 8 AM Wuxi time.
• I am glad to see that the USA beat Ghana.
• These are the teams that I will cheer for in the WC: USA, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Croatia.

[School Laptop]

• I got Wifi at school! I got Wifi at school! Jenny gave me this USB device which installs in my laptop here at school and creates a Wifi signal that my Ipad and Ipod can pick up.
• The first thing I do with the Wifi is communicate with Jenny using the We Chat App.
• This week's 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, and Saturday 10:00 to 18:00.
• Tony & Jenny are going to Hangzhou this weekend for a photo shoot.
• Not much to say for myself. I am extremely distracted and I am finding it hard to stay focused. And my co-workers are talking shit.
• Almost forgot. What question to ask myself this week. Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible?
• Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible? I have witnessed what it is like when people get together...

Wednesday [June 18]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00.
• Chinese lesson this morning. I still have trouble with the second and fourth tones. So I now try to raise my eyebrows when saying the second tone and stamp my foot when saying the fourth.
• What is happening in Iraq shows the tyranny of good intentions. It should be a warning to those who pat themselves on the back for believing they have good intentions. Bush's intentions in invading Iraq were good. Obama, a god to those who think they have good and noble intentions that can't be questioned, abandoned Bush's good intentions. Let that be known. Now, Barabbas may have been right to do so; for foreign Policy is a tricky thing for America, especially because it has so much power. But good intentions can also cause lots of damage in domestic affairs as well. So those Leftists who mock Bush are mocking themselves.
• If I wrote an English text book for ESL students, what would I do? Hard to say. So many factors that I would consider and so I wouldn't be able to say anything about it in one sentence. All I can say is that it really depends on the students
• Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible? I am married, I have a child, and Western culture is a cesspool.

Thursday [June 19]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 21:00.
• Watched most of the Holland – Australia match last night. Australia played pretty well and in the first half of the game, they seemed to control the majority of the flow of play. But Holland can score goals.
• When the Dutch scored to take a 3-2 lead in the second half, there was an half-hour to play in the match, but it was also about 1:30 AM. So, I decided to go to sleep and found out this morning that I hadn't missed any more goal-scoring.
• I watched the game on my Ipad using the C-Box app.
• I should have mentioned the following: 1) I watched the final episode of the fourth season of Game of Thrones on Tuesday. 2) On Tuesday, I also saw an e-biker run a red light while coming awfully close to me. I was crossing the intersection near Casa Kaulins on a green pedestrian signal when the e-bike, going at full speed, swerved to avoid me and raced through the intersection as cars, that had stopped for a red, were beginning to move on the green. It was a risky maneuver for the e-biker because the cars coming from opposite directions gave him an Indiana-Jones style shrinking opening to get through. I stared hard at e-biker, a man in his twenties, as he rode away from the intersection, and noticed that he seemed to look behind himself sheepishly, possibly on account of the close call he had just had. Maneuvers such as that performed by the e-biker on Tuesday are very common. If I was looking for it, I would see the maneuver every time I took the bus to school.
• Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible? I am becoming more and more of an misanthrope. Also (I say this now in case I forget to say this tomorrow.), I am nothing important, so there is no need to thrust myself on people.
• I enjoyed the fourth season of Game of Thrones. The final episode of the season was full of surprises. I am glad to see that Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf character wasn't executed. I found his murder of Tywin Lannister to not make sense. How could he get into Tywin's privy so easily? Yet, I am glad it happened, although in a way I will miss Tywin's authoritative sounding villainy.
• What do I hate about the series? The Zombies. If the writers wrote off the characters with a zombie apocalypse, it would make me happy. What appeals to most people who watch the show is its castles, knights, kings and queens aspects.
• With the Wifi at school, I couldn't get email on my devices until I realized that I could get my email using the Ipad Safari browser. Having found this out, I have just emailed some photos to my Ipad so that I can show them to students in a salon class tonight.

Friday [June 20]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• I didn't watch any WC last night. Watching the Australia – Netherlands game the evening before ruined me for yesterday. I am afraid that I will be watching highlights for the rest of the tourney – live games are out of the question.
• That student who went to a Boston high school tells me that the teachers there were lazy. He told me that when he tried ask them a question at the end of the day, the teachers were already out the door. Ask me tomorrow!!! If teaching was a calling for those people, they would never be doing that. [I admit I do that all the time – go out the door to catch my bus home.]
• I finished watching Blazing Saddles, the Mel Brooks Western. It seemed dated to me.
• I finished reading the Shakespeare Play Coriolanus last evening. A man versus the mob play. I take the man's side.
• Next Shakespeare play that I will read: Cymbeline.
• The World Cup is just a bunch of homosexuals in shorts trying to put a ball in a net. Soccer is just a kid's game that my seven-year son would take a passing interest in for three minutes. Why do grown adults insist on turning it into an organized fetish?
• I am having an email exchange with a person who labels himself a pragmatist. A pragmatist is someone who doesn't bring a dish to a potluck. The potluck in this case being a potluck of ideas.

Saturday [June 21]

[School Laptop]

• I am in slow motion this week as can be witnessed from my paucity of blogging so far.
• Today's shift: 10:00 to 18:00.
• Classes seem to drag and so, during each one, I look at my watch at least fifteen times expecting time to go faster.
• Tony & Jenny are to spend some time in Hangzhou today. Tony is posing for some advertising. I will meet them at 7:30 tonight at the train station.
• Costa Rica beat Italy 1-0. It seemed a surprising result.
• Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible? I will have to think of two reasons today since I forgot to answer this question yesterday. 1)The world is full of pragmatists who are cool with everything no matter how messy it is and who go on happily fucking up the world. 2) People have a habit of boring each other. I bore others most certainly as they bore me.
• It is also raining today.
• I finished reading President Me by Adam Carolla. He comes across as a self-righteous libertarian. Not that there is anything completely wrong with this, for a lot of his criticisms are correct. His book is also very funny at points. Sure. Elect him president. If only he was more religious and less pornographic.

Sunday [June 22]

[Home Laptop]

• I am blogging at home which means no shift at school today.
• Yesterday at school, an adult student, who is an engineer and who frequently makes trips to Japan, told me that China needs to change its political system and its educational system. He expressed these opinions to me without fear. though we silently mentioned 6/4.
• Also yesterday at school, six students booked but only one showed up for an afternoon salon class.
• After school yesterday, I took the bus to the Baoli Starbucks where I had coffee, finished a book I was reading about Ancient Greece, worked on some exercises in an English grammar book, and just passed the time till I was to meet Jenny & Tony as they got off the train from Hangzhou.
• In Hangzhou yesterday, Tony participated in a photo shoot with three other mixed-blood children, two of whom were living in Shanghai and one who was living in Hangzhou.
• Jenny also told me the following little details about the shoot:
• One of the mixed blood children was a girl was from Denmark.
• There was a boy from England.
• Tony and these children were all wearing expensive clothes for next season.
• Tony did well posing but became bored at the end when he was forced to stay longer than the other kids who got done early and could leave.
• Tony enjoyed the four hours of train riding to and from Hangzhou and Wuxi. Jenny said he spent his time staring out the window.
• I walked from Baoli to the High Speed Train exit area. Usually I ride past the area in a bus. Yesterday's walk did nothing to disprove the adage that China doesn't look so good close up. I walked through grime, bad smells, and dilapidation. Uggh.
• Reunited at 7:30 PM, the K family took a taxi from the train station to the Wanda Plaza.
• The Plaza was very crowded for its first anniversary. For the day, the plaza offered many items at fifty percent off, had the stores open all night and held many other promotions. Funny how on the Monday, when Tony & I went to see a movie, the plaza was deserted. Yesterday, I had to hold onto Tony's hand for fear of getting separated from him.
• We were able to get seats easily enough, however, at the Mr. PIZZA. It being past the normal dinner time.
• I watched the Argentina – Iran game which was played after midnight, Wuxi time. In the scoreless first half, Argentina had the run of play and had ball possession over 70 percent of the time but couldn't get any substantial scoring chances. Iran either defended well or Argentina was lacking finish. In the second half, Iran had the majority of quality scoring chances because Argentina started to press, allowing Iran opportunities for some counter-attacks. On one of these counter-attacks, Iran could have been awarded a penalty. On another, a header sailed not too far above the bar. It looked like the game was going to end a scoreless tie because Argentina was frustratingly, to its fans, being easily thwarted by the Iranian defense. But then Messi had a brilliant kick curving the ball around the Iranian defense and away from the outstretched arms of the goalkeeper. Till then, I had been wandering what was so wonderful about this Messi. Except for some missed opportunities off set-pieces, he was invisible in the game.
• I had heard that the Subway was to begin operation on June 28th. With less than a week away from that date, I was becoming excited. But I have just heard that the opening may be delayed because of a sinking problem discovered at the end of the line near the City Hall in the south (My stop is north at the the other end of the line.). Some engineer told this to a taxi driver who in turn told it to an acquaintance of mine in Hui Shan.
• I have heard that the land in Wuxi was soft, what with its elevation, which is not too many meters above sea level, and all the canals that run through it. A few years ago in this blog, I published a rumor that the Moresky360 building had a dangerous tilting problem because of the softness of the land around its base. So the news is not quite shocking to me. It does make me wonder about the powers that be. When I first heard about the plans for a subway in Wuxi, I wondered how tunneling could take place in such a moist underground.
• Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible? I distrust mobs, crowds, and groups.

Monday [June 23]

[Home Laptop]

• In two months, it will be Tony's seventh birthday.
• In three days, Tony's summer vacation begins.
• No summer vacation for AKIC.
• No shifts today.
• Yesterday afternoon, the K family went downtown. We first went to an eyeglass seller at Houxixi. The place we went was the place where I bought my first ever pair of eyeglasses. From what I remembered, the place was a veritable eyeglass emporium. There were lots of merchants selling lots of glasses. Yesterday, the place seemed to have gone downhill. Half the stalls had been shut down and the whole building was dirty and showing signs of neglect.
• It just goes to show how development works in Wuxi. Something new shopping center is built and the old places just go to shit. The retail business is shuffled without being increased.
• The glasses I bought yesterday are great for reading. However if I am not looking at my Ipad or some book with small Chinese characters, I have to take the glasses off because everything more than a foot away becomes a blur...
• I suppose I should be wearing bifocals. My father did, I recall.
• From the glass shop, we went to the Xinhua book store so Tony could buy an Ultraman book. I was almost regretting my eyeglass purchase because I realized when perusing the shelves that my new glasses were only good for looking at things closeup. The books, the shelves and the signs were a completer blur if I wasn't reading a book.
• We then went to the Hen Long Plaza which is across the street from the Xinhua Bookstore. We had coffee at the Starbucks there. After finishing my coffee, I took Tony to the toy area where we hung out till Jenny joined up with us. Note to myself: Tony wants to buy the number two monster from the Bai Dan Ultraman toy collection. After Jenny joined her two boys, the K family wandered around the Hen Long Plaza. We saw the perfect bicycle for Tony at the Hummer shop. Unfortunately, it was 2500 rmb and very out of our budget. Tony would have to do two photo shoots before he could get that bike.
• At the end of our wanderings, we found the Blue Frog Restaurant (it is at the Hen Long plaza but not in the mall area) and had supper. Jenny really liked the place and the food, and she wants to go back. I thought she would have written the place off as too expensive.
• There was one other foreigner in the Blue Frog who kept looking our way.
• I like the food at Blue Frog. I had Grilled Salmon Sliders and two large glasses of Heineken draft. Jenny had a lamb platter. Tony had chicken fingers and chips.
• It was my second time at a Blue Frog. In 2013, Tony and I were taken to one in Shanghai by the eventual 2013 Shanghai Expat of the Year Paul Rudkin.
• We walked past some downtown metro stop entrances. Looking down the stairs, I saw dust and garbage from construction. It would seem that the Subway won't start operation on June 28.
• We took the 635 bus home.
• I phoned my mom last night. I learned that my nephew Kyle is now working in Australia for a month and that Mom may have to get cataract surgery.
• I couldn't be prouder of my nephew. The kid not even twenty yet and he is able to get a work visa in Australia. It's proof that he isn't a BC druggie.
• This morning, I saw a Wuxi Metro train running. Maybe, there is a chance that the subway will start operation on June 28. We will just have to wait and see.
• Reasons to keep to myself as much as possible? Pleasant as places like the Blue Frog can be, I have to avoid going to them. I have to think of Tony's future. Unless going out can advance Tony's cause, I shouldn't be going to pubs. They are too expensive.
• Guns and Cars, both of which kill, are apples and oranges says the Left. Well by that logic, rape and murder are apples and oranges too. Sure they are both crimes....
• I finished watching Lawrence of Arabia for the umpteenth time, and yet there are parts of it that I seemed not to have paid close attention to in the previous viewings. Usually I have watched the first half or so of the movie. The scene with the Turkish general depresses me.
• This evening, I took Tony to the Wanda Plaza. Having a late dinner at the McDonalds there is becoming a father & son tradition.
• Tony took a spill while riding his push-bike on pavement. He wailed so loud that Jenny could hear him a hundred meters away.
• I saw an ass-hat Wuxi driver take a corner,, where pedestrian traffic is heavy, near the Wanda Plaza at 60 kmh.

Diary: June 10 to June 16, 2014

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Diary: May 6 to May 12, 2014

Highlights

• This week's question for Andis: What are some things that you think should be prohibited? (This question was raised in a recent Theodore Dalrymple essay. See the quote in Akicistan #10.)
• On Thursday, Andis couldn't find his wallet.
• On Friday, Andis liked the idea of not having a wallet. Andis also advocated the rapping of knuckles. That be, the knuckles of students.
• Andis had a remarkable result from his coin tossing tournament program.
• On Saturday, Andis walked around Li Hu Lake and got very very very wet.
• Andis drank beer at a Burger King.
• Sunday was Mother's Day.
• Andis watched the film On the Beach and mixed up his Anthonys.
• Andis was cut off twice by vehicles as he was attempting to cross at an intersection near Casa Kaulins.
• Andis wrote about an underpass in Kemnay, Manitoba.

Tuesday [May 6]

[Home Laptop]

• For what's it worth, I have just published last week's dairy entry. I read through the entry ten times, and each time I found some wording that bothered me.
• How come I haven't heard much talk of driver-less cars lately?
• Last night, I got Tony out of the house. If he had his way, he would have played on my Ipad all evening. He very much didn't want to go out and had a tantrum and a session of brooding when I did get him out. There was a stand off on a roadside, I sitting on the e-bike and he standing, for ten minutes. He was wanting to go home; I was wanting to ride around the area. Eventually, I won out, and Tony had me go home to get his push-bike. I followed him as he took his push-bike from our apartment to the Metro station and back.
• The closest Metro stop and the end of the Wuxi Metro line is near the Hui Shan White House and the Olympic Apartments. At the corner of the Olympic apartments near the line, Tony & I happened to wander by when a train was stopped. There, the track runs and comes to an end about 500 meters from the metro station. So the train having gone to the final station carries on and use the extra track to change direction and track. It comes to a temporary stop and people nearby can have a gander at it, like Tony and I did last night.
• What are some things that you think should be prohibited? I should be careful of the things I list because I don't want to seem tyrannical and I don't want to use this question as a means of complaining about things I see in Wuxi. I will try to keep my prohibitions focused on the West and Westerners. The first thing I would like to see prohibited is the use of words racism and its related forms – the word stops honest discussion. I would prohibit the wearing of tattoos except by the sort of people who had been wearing them before they came mainstream. I would prohibit the use of the word mainstream. I would prohibit basketball being talked about. I would prohibit the wearing of ties with jeans. I would prohibit divorce, except in absolutely necessary circumstances. I would prohibit abortion.
• Listening to an Adam Carolla Podcast. I haven't been listening to his podcasts recently. What seems to happen with this podcast is that I listen to it for a stretch, find it amusing but then find it crude and vow to never listen to it again, and then I get bored with the other podcasts, or in the case of this morning, nothing on my Ipod begs “listen to me!”

[School Laptop]

• My shift today is 13:00 to 21:00. From Tuesday to Friday, my shifts will be as follows: 13:00 to 21:00, 13:00 to 21:00, 10:00 to 21:00 and 11:00 to 21:00. Saturday is a school outing day but normally it would be 10:00 to 18:00.
• I took a rickety 25 bus to school. As always, I looked down at my Ipad, not wanting to notice if there were old people or women with babies standing.
• When the 25 bus passed a school, I saw about twenty kids in formation holding red flags and I groaned.
• The 25 bus route terminates near the Nanchang Temple Market. From there, I will walk a pleasant walk down a narrow street to get to school.
• My school has to be the quietest place in Wuxi during the day.
• I listened to the second most recent episode of the China History Podcast. It was about a emperor in the Song Dynasty period.
• Just after leaving the apartment this morning, I had this funny feeling that I had left the keys to the e-bike in a place where Jenny wouldn't be able to find them. But as soon as I walked back into the apartment, I saw that the keys were right where they should have been. I was doubly chagrined because I had just laid my second pair of glasses, the ones I wear at home, on top of the keys just a minute before. I was triply chagrined because I had earned Jenny's ire – she had to rise from the toilet prematurely to open the door for me.
• The never-ending ongoing construction along Zhonghan Road has come near the school. The bus stop where I normally catch buses as soon as my evening shift is done has been closed down. I have just gone out to see where I can catch the bus tonight, and it turns out that I will have to catch buses in front of the #2 People's Hospital. I don't mind this actually because it gives me more options.
• Why are they tearing up the pavement near our school? I am thinking that they might be doing something for the subway, perhaps an entrance to it will built near our school, but what do I know?

Wednesday [May 7]

[Home Laptop]

• Tony thought today was Thursday. Poor fellow, he doesn't know that he is doing a stretch of six school days in a row.
• My mind is full of ideas for my WCE Blog. I will work on that instead of this.
• I am about a hundred pages into the Deng bio by Ezra Vogel. The book is full of details about Deng's career but seems to be missing something: details about Deng as a person. To be fair to Vogel, he is really is looking at Deng from the outside. Vogel never meet Deng and is relying on Chicom source material and interviews with some people who knew Deng.
• Midnight, I nodded off as I was reading the Deng bio, the Ipad mini falling in my face. Five years ago, it would have been a open book resting on my nose.

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00. I arrive at school at 11:00.
• I took the 25 bus to school, sitting at my usual place at the back on the passenger side over the rear wheel.
• I put 100 rmb on my bus pass at a nearby bank. No lineup and so I was out in one minute splat!
• What are some things that you think should be prohibited? Really what is being asked is what things I would prohibit if I had the power and my orders were heeded. Not having any tyrannical abilities, I don't expect any of these things to ever be prohibited. So, if I could, I would prohibit rap music, hip-hop music, the wildcard in major league baseball, the National Hockey League's giving one point to losing teams during the regular season, website clutter [My ideal is David Warren's blog site.], small talk at work, no-fault divorce, gourmet burgers, gourmet pretensions among the mass men, would-be Sinologists, foreigners trying to understand the Chinese, celebrity gossip, private motor cars, skate boarding, bicycle helmets, high heel shoes, abortion, left-wing euphemisms like pro-choice and bi-partisan, cries for bi-partisanship, the seeing of bi-partisanship as a virtue, and the downgrading of sex to a fun activity like computer games or riding a bicycle.
• I finished watching the second episode of the BBC Series The Search for the Trojan War.
• I finished reading The Beauties of Tennyson: a very short anthology with excerpts of Tennyson's poetry. After each poem is a drawing with a scene from the poem – goes a long way towards one understanding the poem.

Thursday [May 8]

[School Laptop]

• My wallet has gone missing. It was this morning that I noticed. The last time I remember seeing it was yesterday afternoon about 1:00 PM. I remember taking some money out of it to buy myself some lunch. But I can't recall exactly what I did with it after that. This morning, I had assumed that I had left in the outer pouch of my backpack and so it was a bit of a surprise to not find it. I then went to look at the usual other places it could be around Casa Kaulins, and then I looked again, and then I looked again, and then I rifled through my backpack taking everything out. Nothing. I told Jenny, but she had no sympathy – she was displeased, worrying about the credit card that she knew was in the wallet. My only hope then was that perhaps I had left it at school, and would find it sitting on my desk or in a drawer.
• I arrived at school, full of anticipation, but it wasn't there.
• So what could have happened to it? Was it stolen? Perhaps. I don't like to carry the wallet on my person and instead leave it in an outer pouch of my backpack which is left under my desk in the trainers office at school. There was a lot of time, particularly in the evening, when someone could have come into the office, got into my bag, where my wallet should have been left, and taken it. But last night they could also have taken my Ipod and Ipad which is also left in that bag, but they didn't.
• Could someone have picked it from my backpack as I was making my way home? Again, perhaps, but I can't think of when this could have happened. I remember I was in a rush when I got on the 85 bus which pulled into the stop just as I got there. When I sat down, I had my backpack on my lap. When I got off the 85, I had to do the ten minute walk to the 635 bus, and I don't remember pausing along the way. I stood at the 635 bus for five minutes, and someone may well have seen an opportunity to get into my backpack. Someone could have gotten into my backpack as I got on that bus. When I sat down, I sat in the back corner and had my backpack on the side under the window, so it couldn't have been swiped then. When the 635 arrived in Hui Shan and I got off, the bus was crowded, so maybe when making my way off the bus, someone could have stolen it.
• Did I leave the wallet somewhere? There were only two places where it could have been left. First, at the restaurant where I bought my beef fried rice. Second, at the convenience store where I bought an ice tea. I will check these places out later, out of desperation.
• The last last possible explanation I can think of for my wallet having gone missing was that it may have fallen out of my backpack. I could have forgotten to zip a pouch up and it fell out.
• As far as losses go, the wallet having gone missing is not a big disaster. There was maybe 100 rmb in the wallet. I didn't have any identification in the wallet. There were a few Canadian coins in the wallet. There was a credit card but it couldn't be used without knowing the password. I may have left my Canadian bank card in it, but that can be replaced easily enough. The other cards were discount cards that I hardly used anyway. The worse aspect of this little bit of misfortune is that Jenny will be annoyed at me. I shrink at the prospect of having to phone her and tell her I couldn't find the wallet.
• Still, missing the wallet will ruin my concentration for the day.
• Funny thing, yesterday afternoon, I started to translate this little Chinese picture story book I have which is entitled 钱包 (Qiánbāo ). 钱包 is the Chinese word for wallet.
• I finished watching the fifth episode of the fourth season of Game of Thrones last night.
• I need to stop asking for smokes. I am such a cheap miserly sponge when I do that.
• What are some things that you think should be prohibited? Theft. The need to carry wallets around. My asking others, who I never give the time of day to, for cigarettes.
• [Later] I am still thinking about what could have happened to my wallet. I don't think it was stolen in school, for otherwise, the Ipod would have been stolen too. I think it may have been lost on the 635 bus when, because it was stuffy, I tried to stuff my jacket into my backpack.

Friday [May 9]

[School Laptop]

• Last night, student Lu Fei, the one who had told me that he had gotten a black eye because he had been punched during a late-night dispute about parking, gave me a ride home. I didn't ask for it and I warned him that I lived a long way from school, but he gave me a ride anyway. As we finally got to Hui Shan and were driving past the Olympic apartments, he said that I should get a new job because I live too far from work.
• My shift today is 11:00 to 21:00. I go to the City Hall for a English Corner and then have three classes in the evening.
• Still reeling from the lost wallet, I am thinking that I shouldn't get a new wallet. I like having one less thing to carry about with me.
• Tomorrow, the school will have an activity where we will be walking around Li Hu. I don't know what shoes I will wear. I really don't have any hiking shoes and the ones I would like to wear have soles that are too thin for such a long walk. I definitely won't be taking a wallet with me.
• I am thinking that perhaps I had left the wallet on a table at the restaurant where I ordered the beef fried rice. What had happened was that I had sat down, having ordered it for takeout and waited for them to cook it up. I may then have left the wallet on the table while I was fiddling with my Ipod touch.
• Typical things that I see in China. 1)This morning, I saw a car pull out of an underground parking garage without its driver looking. It just missed hitting another car, that was driving past the garage exit, by two feet. In Canada, this would have surely lead to a road rage incident. 2) Downtown just now, I was waiting at a bus stop for a bus to get me closer to the school. (I had mistakenly taken the 602, instead of the 602支, downtown.) Near that bus stop, I saw a hair salon manager have her entire staff stand in file outside the hair salon in order to have them do a rousing chant and to give them a speech. This seems right out of the bad old days of Chinese Communism. 3)I see an old woman, about 7:00 AM, riding an e-bike. On the floorboard, between the steering column and the seat, lies a bag of vegetables which she had just purchased. [Later] 4) Waiting for the handler who was to take me to the City Hall, I saw four girls walking arm-in-arm and abreast. Chinese girls like to hold hands or be arm-in-arm when they walk together.
• There was a scene in Game of Thrones that was said to have gone too far and raised the hackles of certain people. Game of Thrones features incest, rape, killing people for sport, and castration, so I had a hard time figuring out it was that was causing the fuss. Turned out it was the scene where the brother raped the sister beside the body of her son Joffrey who had been poisoned at his wedding. Rape at a funeral was too much for some feminist types who had not been upset before by anything else that had been depicted on the show. Anyway, what got me to thinking was the comment that the expectations of the audience had been disturbed by the fact that the Jamie Lannister character, the brother of the incestuous relationship, had been seeming to turn good. Jamie had actually crippled a child in the first season of Games of Thrones by pushing him out a window while he and his sister had been having some incestuous sex. Jamie was becoming a favorable character by having been a sympathetic companion of sorts to the giant women. And to be more specific, it was the pushing of the child out the window that got me to really thinking. What teacher hasn't dream of pushing some annoying student out the window or down some stairs? I know I have. So, Jamie has always been appealing, except for the incest.
• Now, I don't advocate pushing children down stairs or out of windows. But it does make the rapping of knuckles by Nuns seem not so bad and enlightened in comparison.
• What are some things that you think should be prohibited? People who take things too literally should be prohibited from engaging in debate. That is, in the case of the previous entry where I talked of pushing students out windows and down stairs. Because of dumb literal-mindedness, I had to quickly state that I wasn't advocating that. I would prohibit movies based on comic books. I would prohibit helmets in ice hockey. I would prohibit Health Nazism. I would prohibit gun-control advocacy.
• [Later] I have gone to city hall. I have found my wallet. It is where I thought I had left it: at the restaurant where I had ordered my beef fried rice.
• I have finished reading As You Like It by William Shakespeare. There is a clown in it named Touchstone.
• Yesterday I was playing with coin tossing tournament programs and I got the following result:

• What is going on here? In this five team round robin, all the teams had .500 records. Because three points are awarded for round robin victories, Baltimore and New York got the top two positions in the final standings. Baltimore was awarded first place over New York on point difference. Boston was awarded third place over Washington, which was in turn awarded fourth place over Philadelphia, because of point difference. Having played with this program a hundred times or so, I can attest that this result is remarkable. I would be dammed if I could tell the odds of getting this result but it is certainly less than 1 in a hundred.

Saturday [May 10]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today as I was saying. The teachers and some students went on a 10 kilometer walk around Li Hu lake. This walk had been postponed from April 26 on account of a forecast of heavy rain. Yesterday, I learned that the forecast for today called for heavy rain. The forecast was unfortunately correct, but the school went through the activity anyway and all the participants got thoroughly soaked. The rain was heavy and the wind was strong. Walking on some bridges, we had to endure rain that was coming at us sideways and wind that was strong enough to cause our umbrellas to fold outwards. I stupidly brought along my Ipad and worried the entire time about it getting wet for my backpack was like my shoes, socks, and pants, thoroughly drenched. But the Ipad was okay as I did have it wrapped in two plastic bags.
• We had a good time despite a dismal end, and I do hope to return to the area when the weather is nicer. I will make mention of some highlights of the trip in the following bullets:
• We went to a outdoor theater where the seats were separated from the performance area by a moat.
• There was a covered pedestrian bridge that afforded some nice views of hills in mists.
• We played this game where males were assigned a value of one rmb and female were assigned a value of half a rmb. One person would call out a value and everyone would have to get into groups equal to that value. So if there a value of 2.5 rmb was called, you would have to form a group of one girl and two boys, five girls, or one boy and three girls. A fun game if you can form the latter group.
• After the bus got us back to school. I went with teachers Zach and Dwight to the Burger King (Han Bao Wang) on Nanchang Jie Bar Street. I had an Italian Triple Stacker, onion rings, and three cans of beer. Zach brought the beers in from a nearby convenience store. I have never drunk beer before in a famous fast food chain restaurant before. What we did would have been thoroughly illegal in Canada and America, the supposed lands of freedom. That is one reason why I chose to live in China.
• Getting on the 25 bus at six o'clock this morning, I was looking forward to listening to John Derbyshire's latest podcast; but it was my misfortune to have someone want to talk to me. It was this girl who I had meet on the bus previously many months ago and to whom I had given my We Chat number. She asked me at what ages in Canada did boys and girls start to have boyfriend and girlfriends. I first told her fourteen but then quickly added that I didn't know for sure [I never had a girlfriend till well into my twenties and had a very lonely adolescence.] but I assumed that they probably started to do this earlier than in China.
• One more thing I see fit to mention because it may be of some interest. Earlier this week, I went around the classroom asking the students what one thing they would change about their looks if they could. One girl, who was quick pretty, answered the question by saying that she wanted to be a boy. She didn't really answer my question.... A situation that happens so often when teaching English.

Sunday [May11]

[School Laptop]

• As I was going home yesterday from the Li Hu excursion, Jenny & Tony were taking a bus downtown. I found that this was the case just as I was close to Casa Kaulins and so I told Jenny I was too wet and tired to join them. So, I was in the house by myself for five hours. With the time to myself, I typed out yesterday's blog entry, and watched the end of the movie On the Beach and the first episode of the television series House of Cards. I went to sleep about 8:00 PM.
• On the Beach is interesting movie, shot in black and white, that was mentioned to me by loyal reader HM from Australia. It stars Gregory Peck, Anthony Hopkins, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire. It is set in Australia after a thermonuclear war. The war has wiped out human life in the rest of the world and also rendered it uninhabitable because of high levels of radiation. Australia, though having not participated in the war, will soon be uninhabitable too as the radiation clouds from the rest of the world are soon to arrive. So the characters in the movie all have just a few months to live. Peck plays a commander of an American nuclear submarine. At one point in the movie, his submarine goes to America to see what is happening and to check out a mysterious radio signal. The footage of San Francisco and San Diego show scenes of cities void of human life. Anthony Hopkins plays a American navy lieutenant. Hopkins has quite the scene presence, despite having a build that would probably seem too lanky for 2014 movies. I am going to have to watch Psycho again. Gardner plays a love interest to both the Peck and Astaire characters. She has the face of an beautiful Adult woman. Astaire didn't dance in this movie though a character did mention singing and dancing in a scene with Astaire. Astaire plays a scientist who helped build the nuclear weapons and is of course filled with angst about the consequences. He features in the best scenes of the movie: a car race with some amazing shots of car crashes. On the Beach is a movie built on star power and an amazing artifact from the time of the first worries about thermonuclear war. I wonder what Australians watching the movie would think of the constant playing and singing of their national anthem throughout the movie. A criticism that crossed my mind was the dress of the characters. They were dressed to the nines. One would think that the prospect of death would have made their appearance shabby, but then this movie was made before the oncoming casualness of the 1960s. Perhaps the people of that time would have bravely keep up appearances to the bitter end unlike 2014 people.
• House of Cards, a series starring Kevin Spacey, is a typically amoral and cynical depiction of Washington DC politics.

Monday [May 12]

[Home Laptop]

• I was of course mistaken when yesterday I said that Anthony Hopkins starred in the film On the Beach. I meant Anthony Perkins. Now, I could have gone back and corrected the mistake, but I want to show what a wonderful and great and honest and upright and on-the-level guy I am by acknowledging the mistake.
• I should add that I have downloaded the entire first season of House of Cards.
• I have also just downloaded the movie Psycho.
• BTW, Tony's official name, that is the name on his birth certificate, is Anthony.
• What are some things that you think should be prohibited? I would prohibit the sort of dishonesty that is meant to make the person being honest look good. I prohibit NHL hockey in May or June or July. I would stop the amount of attention that sports league drafts, the NFL's especially, get. I would prohibit foreigners from using the term China Day. I would prohibit gratuitous sex in television dramas. I would prohibit the current use of the word like. I would prohibit pubs being open past 10:00 PM. I would prohibit people who want to enter politics from entering politics. I would prohibit most trans-national organizations from existing. I would prohibit gay marriage.
• No shifts today.
• I went to Starbucks for lunch. Unfortunately some store decoration was going on nearby ruining the normally quiet atmosphere and so I left early. I had a Venti Cafe Americano and a Chicken Terayaki Sandwich before I left.
• Coming back from Starbucks, I was walking across an intersection near Casa Kaulins when I was cut off by a black VW Sedan which had no intention of slowing down for me. I had the satisfaction of at least forcing the driver make such a wide turn that his car was in the opposing lane and forced to come to a near stop when it had made its turn. I gave the car, which then turned into the police HQ the evil glare. Yesterday, at the same intersection, I had a similar thing done to me by the driver of a black SUV. The vehicle cut so close to me that I was able to see that this guy was talking on his mobile phone. I got so annoyed at the driver that whacked his vehicle with my umbrella and gave him the finger. Why don't the fucking asshole drivers here in Wuxi have any concern for pedestrians? Automobiles seem to bring out the asshole inconsideration tendencies in Wuxi people. [You can say the same thing about money and Wuxi people.]
• On a brighter note, it was Mother's Day yesterday. I made all sorts of Mother Day's messages on We Chat which were appreciated by Jenny; I had Tony wish his mother a happy Mother's Day; and I phoned my Mother, who lives in Brandon, late last night.
• Mom told me that my sister had hurt her shoulder but was waiting to see someone who could look at it, that my brother was changing jobs, and that a truck got stuck at the underpass at Kemnay.
• My mother had to jog my memory about Kemnay and its underpass. I first thought it was the little town between Brandon and Shilo, but then I remembered that it was in fact west of Brandon on a road that runs from Victoria Avenue. This underpass is well marked with flashing lights and warning signs about its low height, but still eight trucks a year that stuck trying to go through it. They are all trucks from out of province who are using GPS to navigate. The GPS tells them that taking the turnoff at Kenmay, instead of going on the #1 road and turning later, is the shortest route which it is to get to Brandon, but the GPS doesn't take into account the low underpass. Hilarious! Sounds like something that would happen in China.
• No Austrian, since Adolf Hitler has made as a big splash in Europe as Conchita Wurst, the winner of the Eurovision song contest.
• I also advocate the rapping of knuckles of Wuxi drivers. I am sure that are a few Wuxi Drivers that are considerate, but I say presume them guilty first of being like the drivers I have been complaining about.

Diary: April 29 to May 5, 2014

Highlights

• I answer the question: What are some nice memories you have?
• Thursday was a holiday. I got angry at Tony because he only wanted to go to the mall. It could have been worse. He could have wanted to have done something to mark International Socialism Day.
• Via email, I received the first sign that I was becoming aged.
• A David Warren essay lead me to waxing.
• Other than that it was another week of going to school, talking to students, and consuming media via my Ipad.
• One evening after work, I was distressed to see my bus pull into the stop when I was still on the third floor.
• Tony doesn't like doing his Chinese homework.

Tuesday [April 29]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00. Tomorrow's shift will be the same. Thursday will be a holiday which I am looking forward to.
• Yesterday, I finished reading American Gun by Chris Kyle. I read it to annoy progressive types.
• Last night, I watched the fourth episode of the fourth season of Game of Thrones. It wasn't a great episode. It just seemed to be transitioning the series's various plot lines along. Towards the end of the episode, there were characters from a plot line I had almost forgotten about. The last time, some of these characters appeared was in season three!
• I also began watching Game Six of the 1986 World Series – a game with one of the most dramatic and heart-wrenching conclusions of all time. After three innings, the Red Sox had a two nothing lead – Clemens had yet to allow a hit.
• What question should I deal with this week? I said last week that I would ask myself a softball question, so: What are some nice memories you have? The first one is the birth of my son. Another one is of my mother hugging my father on his death bed. And then there was the time when my wife was dancing with my father.
• I forgot to mention. Yesterday, I was walking past the car dealerships in my area of Wuxi. From them, I could have taken a good photo of the Metro riding past, but it didn't. I did instead see that a Mazda dealership had been closed down. There was all this empty space around the building and the showroom looked particularly forlorn. I have never seen an abandoned car dealership before.

Wednesday [April 30]

[Home Laptop]

• I just got an email from a friend of mine [HM in fact] telling me he got news that he will become a grandfather. It is a milestone for me. I have never had anyone send me “I am going to be a grandfather” news before.
• It means I am getting old.
• Tony is awful at learning Chinese characters. He got a four out of a hundred score on a recent test. Jenny says he really hates doing the Chinese character practice. Last week, he took to not bringing his Chinese homework home. On Friday, he left the homework at his desk at school. Jenny was suspicious about why he didn't bring any Chinese homework home and talked to the teacher. So yesterday the teacher made a point of it to put the homework in Tony's backpack and to tell Jenny that she had done so. But when Tony arrived home, he didn't bring the Chinese homework with him. He told Jenny that he took it out of his bag and left it at his desk.
• Having Jenny tell me this story filled me with chagrined amusement. What a bugger! I thought.
• But it shows that he does get ideas. Last week, he got the idea to bring his Ultraman and Godzilla toys to a table with a model real estate presentation in order to reenact fight scenes he had seen on Youku.
• Last night, a student told me about citizens in Nanjing beating up the Chengguan (Chinese: 城管; pinyin: Chéngguǎn). I have heard about these government bully types on the Internet but it was the first time, a student told me about them. She got the news about them on the Internet. She told me that stories of the abuses of the Chengguan are reported in the government media.

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 13:00 to 21:00. Tomorrow – I will say it again – is a holiday.
• What are some nice memories you have? Going to Met Stadium in the 1970's to see the Minnesota Vikings play the Miami Dolphins in an exhibition game. Going to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Going to the Bay in Downtown Winnipeg with an Aunt in the 1970s and buying Beatles songs on 45 rpm records. Driving in New Mexico. Seeing desert in Arizona.

Thursday [May 1]

[Home Laptop]

• Holiday! I sleep in.
• Unfortunately, Jenny has a bad cold. I will have to make sure she is doing as well as she can.
• I hope I can drag Tony out of the house and away from the Ipad.
• I finished watching Game Six of the 1986 World Series. For all its drama, the game seemed to have been poorly played. There was an error by Ray Knight that shouldn't have been made by a major leaguer that lead to the game even having gone to extra innings. The Mets fifth and sixth runs were scored on account of Red Sox bumbling.
• This morning, I finished watching Mother, Jugs & Speed, a movie about a private ambulance company in Los Angeles. Mother was Bill Crosby, Jugs was Raquel Welch, and Harvey Kietel was Speed. Larry Hagman played this creepy character who ogled at Raquel and had sex with one of the patients who was unconscious. The film is now a 1970s artifact but it is not without its merit. Bill Crosby gave a great performance as a cynical veteran driver who drinks as he drives. Tony watched part of the film with me. He liked the scenes with the ambulances rushing around the streets. He didn't seem to be put off by the 1970 vintage look of all the vehicles in the movie.
• It is sunny outside. A perfect day to take Tony trainspotting.

[Later]

• I swore at Tony this afternoon. I got him out of the apartment but he just wanted to go to the shopping mall, that is the Wanda Plaza. I indulged Tony up to a point. I took him to the two arcades in the Mall and then to the KFC and then to a courtyard or mezzanine{?} area where I sat and watched him play with other kids. After those twenty minutes of watching, I told Tony that it was time to get out of the f***ing mall. The noise and the crowds were driving me mad. When Tony got upset and started to cry, I really over did it with the f-bombs. It is so f***ing pathetic that all you want to do is hang out at the Shopping Mall on a day when you should be outside enjoying the nice weather and exploring the countryside around our apartment! Instead you want to be like all the f***ing unimaginative and zombie types who have nothing better to do than go to this f***ing mall! At one point, Tony told me to f*** off. [Best to prepare him for the nonsense he will encounter in his life.]
• I got Tony out of the Mall, and took him via e-bike to the Wu Culture Park where we wandered about for forty minutes. The Wu Culture Park is not a bad place to waste an afternoon, at least in comparison to the Wanda Mall. The Park has interesting buildings, exhibits, and walkways. However, it was at a pagoda in the park that I had my second session of swearing at Tony. He then earned my ire by refusing to come into the pagoda. When he didn't even want to come in for even a minute, I really laid into him. WTF is wrong with you! Are you f***ing scared! How about letting Daddy look at something for a minute? I had my outburst in front of a couple of other families. I eventually went up the pagoda myself and let Tony stew and sob at the entrance. But I then went downstairs and carried him up, full of apologies.
• “Tony” I said. “There are some things that Daddy does that you shouldn't do and that Daddy shouldn't do either!”
• From the park, we took the e-bike to the Wuxi Jiangyin bridge where we saw one train and went home. We then took the bus downtown to meet Jenny at the Grandma's restaurant in Sunning Plaza. She had had coffee with a classmate she went to school with in Nanjing.
• What are some nice memories you have? Seeing Iggy Pop in Winnipeg. Seeing REM and U2 on consecutive nights in Minneapolis. Giving a donation to a nun in Chilliwack. Talking to the Nuns who lived next to my elementary school in Quebec.

Friday [May 2]

[Home Laptop]

• A three day holiday for Tony and many others in China, but I got to work.
• I wake up feeling like crap. It must be because yesterday I drank a bottle of beer and two shots of Crown Royal.

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• I took a crowded 25 bus – crowded on account of the holiday – to work. With temperatures feeling summer-like, I was very much glad when the ride was over and I was downtown. [I had a seat but didn't look up from my Ipad to see if there were women with children or old people standing nearby.]
• David Warren's latest essay was on silence. He complained about the noise of the modern world. He said it was grand to live, for a time, in an area where nobody owned cars. Modern men, he said, could not stand silence. Anyway, he said these and other things, and I agreed with his observations and his sentiments. I can add but these thoughts or observations. I achieve silence, of a sort, in the office at work. It is sometimes the silence of an empty office; empty that is except me. It is sometimes the silence of an office where no one is talking. The latter silence is an uncomfortable silence. It maybe stems from the modern feeling that one should not be silent in the comfort of others or from my misanthropy where the presence of others makes me uncomfortable. I prefer silence with solitude – a solitude spent with books. I am not sure if I could enjoy a silence with nothing but my thoughts.
• As for Warren's observation about cars. So many of my neighbors in my apartment complex have cars; and I hate it. Part of this hatred of mine surely comes from the fact that I don't have a car myself. But as a pedestrian, I can justly be angry at how cars make walking hard and almost dangerous. To be fair, Chinese people, like people from Canada, when put in cars are isolating themselves from other people; but, this is also unfortunately true about the drivers in Wuxi: they are all inconsiderate brutes when it comes to pedestrians, and it makes me wish all Chinese drivers were back on bicycles.
• I hate what cars do to this apartment complex – they destroy the pavement.
• With more and more people in China having cars, more and more places in China are becoming not worth going to. Many places in China are being built to accommodate cars and are hence utterly charmless like commercial developments in North America that are surrounded or fronted by big parking lots.
• What are some nice memories you have? From my immediate past, I would say that yesterday, it was nice to ride the bus with Tony with each of us having an Ipad. I could watch Olivier performing Hamlet while Tony could play his games. From my more distant past. I remember skating around Stanley Park in Vancouver twice; seeing the Mariners play at Safeco Field in Seattle; jogging on the country roads near Brandon, Manitoba; wandering book stores, used and new, all over the world; playing billiards and snooker in Brandon, Manitoba; walking to Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis from my grandmother's house; listening to Sinatra CDs; watching Brandon Wheat King games in the Keystone center; buying Tony toys; talking to pretty girls in Chinaa; attending a Vancouver Canadian game where I got to talk to this old man who had been a musician and performed with Dean Martin – it beat seeing the beauty of British Columbia, and was probably the best time I had in B.C.
• No Takara Tomy Plarail at the Ba Bai Ban toy department! I just went to look for something to buy Tony and discovered this disappointing fact. Is Takara Tomy available anywhere in Wuxi?
• Student Lu Fei went to the pub last night got a black eye and a swollen lip because he got punched by a parking attendant during a dispute about parking.

Saturday [May 3]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 10:00 to 18:00.
• Jenny bought Tony a toy yesterday. It was some of kind of transformer toy that wasn't cheap. Tony, you see, won't stand for cheap toys. When I came home last night, Tony proudly showed the new toy to me.
• After finishing my classes last night, I was walking down a third floor corridor when I saw below an 118 bus pull into the bus stop where I was planning to go to catch it. I often take the 118 bus to get to the stop where I catch the 635 which takes me to the Hui Shan District. Seeing the 118 bus from the third floor just then made me curse. The next 118 bus wouldn't come in time for me to get to the 635 stop where I can get a seat for my fifty minute ride home. So I instead took the 67 bus and hoofed it (walked at a brisk pace) to get to the 635 stop. It takes me ten minutes to walk from where I de-board the 67 to get to my ideal 635 stop. As I do this ten minute walk, I pass another 635 stop where, if I wait, there would have been a chance I would have lost the competition to get a seat. (At this stop, sometimes as many as twenty people board and people jostle intently to get on first and get a seat).
• What are some nice memories you have? Seeing my brother's band play in a pub in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The name of the pub was the Saint Charles if I remember correctly. Seeing a no-hitter pitched in a minor league game in Vancouver, and being one of the few fans in the stands who was aware that a no-hitter was being pitched. Watching the Winnipeg Goldeyes clinch a Northern League Championship in their first season.

Sunday [May 4]

[Home Laptop]

• No shift today.
• Tony goes to school. Because the Chinese had May 1^st to May 3^rd off, that is Thursday to Saturday, they will have to work from Sunday to Friday.
• I am spending the morning on the computer. I published two entries to the Wuxi China Expatdom Blog. I am processing four video files so I can watch them on my Apple products.
• A student told me that the Chinese were annoyed that Obama came to Asia and didn't visit them. I told them that was one thing worse than Obama not visiting, and that was Obama visiting. Obama, I told the student, would have made a speech that bored everyone, so the Chinese should be grateful.
• I am reading another book on Mathematics: Infinite Ascent by David Berlinski.
• Picked up a pizza at the Wanda Plaza Pizza Hut last night. The person who took my order said they knew me. I am one of the few foreigners who come to that restaurant, I would suppose. I picked up an Hawaiian pizza and Tony was not pleased. I had to pick the pineapple pieces out for him before he would eat the pizza.
• Jenny goes to Tony's school everyday to feed him lunch. He won't eat the cafeteria food.
• What are some nice memories you have? Having Tony sit beside me at bedtime. Reading to Tony at bedtime. Hiking the mountains and hills of British Columbia. Pretty girls coming to talk to me. Eating Cheese Nips at Salisbury House in Winnipeg. Watching bands at the Spectrum Cabaret in Winnipeg. The occasional mentions I have gotten on the Internet.
• Finished watching a Fistful of Dynamite. James Caan plays an Irishmen and Rod Steiger plays a Mexican in the film which is set during the Mexican Revolution. Contains the usual Sergio Leone flourishes.
• Finished watching the 1948 film adaptation of Hamlet starring Laurence Olivier. Great film.
• Finished reading Infinite Ascent by David Berlinski. The book is a history of Mathematics. I can't say I completely understood it. I can't say I even half understood it.
• I read bits of the Bible, an Italian grammar book, a small anthology of Tennyson poetry, As You Like It, a book about Deng Xiaopeng written by Ezra Vogel, a book about Teaching English, and The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton.
• Watched the replay of the perfect game that Denis Martinez pitched for the Expos in 1992.

Monday [May 5]

[Home Laptop]

• No shift today.
• Jenny was sick yesterday. She slept all day while I took in media on my Ipad.
• Yesterday evening, I took Tony to the Wanda Plaza to have supper.
• I don't feel so hot today. I won't do much and I won't blog much.
• What are some nice memories you have? Watching Denis Martinez pitch the perfect game live on the television. Getting Maurice Richard's autograph in Fredericton, New Brunswick at a Montreal Canadien old-timers game. Getting Don Cherry's autograph at Brandon's Keystone Center during a Wheat King's game. Being able to get Frank Mahovlich's autograph at the Brandon Keystone Center during a Maple Leaf's old-timers game. Watching the Jets play in the old Winnipeg Arena. Going to Husky Stadium to see the Seahawks play. Going to Husky Stadium to see the Huskies play. Watching the Canadian Junior Hockey Team trounce the Soviet Junior Hockey Team 7-0 at the Winnipeg Arena in 1981. Twenty years later, I saw a replay of the game on the TSN classic channel. I also remember seeing the Jets beat the Red Army team but I don't recall the year it happened.
• The entrance gate to our complex is finally being repaired two weeks after it broke which was two weeks after it was installed. [I mentioned the gate in last week's entry.] Ah! Yes! Chinese workmanship! Almost as bad as Andis Kaulins workmanship.
• Episode five of the fourth season of Game of Thrones has been downloaded. Jenny has two episodes to watch. She refuses to watch one episode at a time.
• I was able to take photos of a Wuxi Metro and the seemingly abandoned Mazda dealership today. [Refer to April 29].