The Andis Kaulins in China Diary for December 30, 2013 to January 5, 2014

Monday [December 30]

[Home Laptop]

• Today, I am at home reading.
• Tony came home and wanted to play on my Ipad Mini. This want of his was in direct conflict with my desire to keep reading. Jenny broke the stalemate by giving Tony her Ipad.
• I did go out for a e-bike ride and I took a photo of the end of the number one Wuxi Metro line. You can see the photo at AKIC wordpress.
• I have downloaded some great books from 2013. I came upon some best books of 2013 articles on the Internet and then went to to kick ass torrents.

Tuesday [December 31]

[Home Laptop]

• Last day of the year. The western year, that is.
• No plans for New Year's Eve. Jenny, being a Chinese mainlander, doesn't celebrate it. The idea of going out on that night never enters her mind. I have fallen into that habit.
• Tonight, I will work till 9:00 PM. I will take the bus home, probably arriving about 10:10 PM. I will spend the rest of the night on the Ipad, if Tony lets me.
• Yesterday, I read about the Papineau Rebellion of 1837 and Lee Harvey Oswald being a wife-beater.
• I read to Tony from a storybook that I had loaded on my Ipad. He seemed to very much appreciate it. Five minutes later, he was asleep.

[School Laptop]

• Coming to school, I felt uncomfortable because I was overdressed. I had to take off my toque, scarf, and open my parka.
• Jenny went downtown to get her “visa” to go to Hong Kong. She brought along my and Tony's passports but forgot to bring her own. When she realized and then phoned me, she was lucky that I had only just left the apartment.
• Contemplating my dull New Year's Eve made me a little depressed and resentful for a bit. For five minutes I let the bad feelings eat me up until I realized that I hadn't prayed and then recalled Pope Benedict's words about living for others. I stay home tonight for Jenny & Tony.
• Perhaps, it will be a good evening to set up the train set for Tony.
• Tony gets three days off starting on the 1^st. Sounded good until I realized that means that Tony will go to school on Saturday and Sunday.
• I just had to write a personal introduction about myself for the school. I was stumped what to say for it because I have lead a very uneventful unremarkable life with few experiences that anyone else would find interesting and differentiate me from other ESL teachers.

Wednesday [January 1, 2014]

[Home Laptop]

• At midnight, I was sitting in bed and reading the LHO biography section of Vincent Bugliosi's JFK assassination book. Tony & Jenny lay beside me. There was no festive moment to mark the change of the years.
• Jenny was in a sombre mood anyway. Ten hours earlier, there had an argument between Jenny and one of Tony's teachers. Tony had a scar under his eye for some reason and Jenny had not been pleased with one particular teacher's reaction to it. Jenny went to the school principal to complain. The teacher was not doing a good job of looking after Tony, said Jenny. The principal told Jenny to not worry and that Tony would be protected.
• The biography of LHO was engrossing. I read it until I finished it at 1:40 AM.
• I hadn't been aware that Oswald was a wife-beater. He had this cruel insistence that his Russian wife not learn English as well.
• Oswald's decision to kill JFK fits in with the rest of his biography. Oswald wanted to be important. He latched onto to Marxism as a way of doing it. In the months before the assassination, he acted upon a bunch of hair-brained scheme related to his Marxism. He distributed leaflets in New Orleans supporting Castro. He went to Mexico City in hopes of getting a Visa to Cuba. He attempted to murder General Walker. When Oswald learned that the JFK motorcade was to pass by his place of employment, it couldn't have taken him long to decide to assassinate the president. It was his chance to make a splash.
• [Later] After the earlier diary entry, I published two Expat of the Year articles. I then took Tony to Wanda where we went to KFC and the Arcade so Tony could play the Truck game. Jenny came to met us and we had supper at an unpretentious restaurant which I wouldn't take a foreigner to.
• Back home, I published another expat of the year article as well as some photos about the Year of the Firearm in Wuxi – my whacked idea for my Wuxi China Expatdom site.
• Despite having enough Apple products, we still like to waste time at the Wanda Plaza Apple store playing on the Ipads and Computers. I find an app, that is not free alas, that was very interesting, called Hair Salon 2 which allows you to be a hair-dresser. You can cut, shave, color, and re-grow a client's hair to your heart's content. Playing with it, I initially tried to make the clients look as preposterous as possible. I then wanted to make the male client look like Hitler but the app had the man's mustache part under his nose – an un-parted mustache could not be grown under it. I suppose this was on purpose.

Thursday [January 2]

[School Laptop]

• I work today. 10:00 to 21:00.
• Tony doesn't go to school today. He was still asleep when I phoned Jenny at 11:00 this morning.
• This morning, I felt out-of-sorts as I went through my morning routine. I did fall asleep till late. [Jenny & I made love at 1:30 or so.] I got out of bed at 6:45 and I didn't have time to relax before it was time for me to leave the apartment and catch the bus to school.
• I am not wearing long underwear today. The temperature is supposed to get up to 15 degrees Celsius this afternoon.
• I had a 10:00 o'clock class with three lads who happen to attend a High School in the Hui Shan area – that be Jiangsu Xishan High School. The lads don't live in the Hui Shan area. While they are at the school, they stay in dorms but they never leave the campus. They might as well be going to High School in Shanghai because they have nothing to say about the area.
• Paul Rudkin, the True Git, is happy to have been named the 2013 Shanghai Expat of the Year.
• This afternoon, I will have an English Corner about 2014. I hope to talk with the students about things like plans, resolutions, and predictions.
• The students I talked to this morning, had very dull New Year's eve. It is very rare that any of them do anything on December 31.
• Jenny phoned me angrily because apparently, when I set up the train set for Tony last night, I had caused some piece of paper she had hurriedly placed down to go missing. I did not know what she was talking about and so I got hung up on. I had to think about it and then I phoned her back with a suggestion as to where the paper might be. Perhaps, I said, the paper had fallen behind some boxes in the closet because to set up the train I had to lift up some things to get to the box of train track and take it out of the closet. Jenny, in a huff, listened to the suggestion. I phoned later to find that I had been correct in my guess. Still, Jenny said, it was my doing...
• Walking down the street, I was greeted by a woman who said the following: “Hello, I saw you on TV.” She didn't stop to start a conversation but the information she gave me was nice to know...

Friday [January 3]

[School Laptop]

• Tony was a bad boy last night. After I arrived home last night, he took, without my permission, my Ipad. Still, I let him play with it for an hour or so. But when I looked at the time and saw how late it was, I took the Ipad from him. He howled for twenty minutes despite Jenny & I telling to stop or suffer consequences. He even refused to apologize for his behavior.
• The incident was very distressing because I wasn't in the mood to be tough with him, but I had no choice. I have to be more of an authority for the boy. I have to say no more often.
• I am not wearing long underwear today. Tomorrow, I may have to as the forecasts say it will get colder.
• I got a seat on the back corner of the 635 bus last night for my forty minute ride home. I passed the time by watching the end of the Long Voyage Home, a film about merchant seaman, that starred John Wayne playing a Swede. As I got to the Hui Shan area, I put away the Ipad and noticed that there was a foreigner standing on the bus – I assume he was a teacher at the Xishan High School because I got off the bus before he did.
• I will go to the City Hall to do a Lunch time English Corner.
• Tony doesn't have school today. Jenny will have him doing homework I presume.

[Later]

• I have gone to the City Hall.
• One of the woman who attended my English Corner told me she was an IT engineer in the military but didn't know what her rank was. She did get to shot some weapons in her training.
• I learned that Line #1 of the Wuxi Metro will run from Yanqiao to the City Hall. That is, if it opens in June, 2014, as has been planned.
• Some of the civil servants surprised me by expressing skepticism about the subway. They talked of how it was a monument to politicians and how Wuxi may not have the population to sustain it. One civil servant even predicted that it wouldn't make money.

Saturday [January 4]

[School Laptop]

• I work 10:00 to 17:00 although I get to school at 8:45. Such a keener am I. Ha! Ha Ha!
• It is my last day at school till the 20^th. Jenny had me take the first two weeks of my three weeks of vacation, that I had coming to me, in the next two weeks. I didn't want to, but it was her idea.
• I took the 602支 bus to downtown. I could then have taken the 79 bus to get to school, but I was indecisive and the bus driver closed the entrance door. The bus still had lots of passengers getting off at the back door, and I could have decided to knock on the front door and have the driver let me in. But I didn't want to appear to have been hesitant so I did nothing.
• Tony went to school today, and he will go to school tomorrow.

Sunday [January 5]

[Home Laptop]

• My first full day of vacation starts today.
• I didn't get to sleep in today because Tony had to go to school. Yes. He goes to school on a Sunday. This is not unusual in China because days off will be arranged so that workers or students can get consecutive days off; but this means that they will have to work on weekends and sometimes for stretches lasting seven or eight or nine days in a row.
• I am watching the first NFL playoff game of the year live online. The Chiefs lead the Colts 38-17. I predict that the Colts will close the gap and maybe even take the lead. These things just seem to happen.... Fix?
• Inauspiciously, my vacation began last night. As soon as I finished my last class, I went home. I avoided mentioning to anyone that my vacation was starting. When I arrived home, Tony was taking a break from doing his homework. Jenny had him carry on with it after supper.
• Jenny bought me a blue tooth ear piece for my Ipod and Ipad products. I got the thing to work. The first thing I listened to was the latest John Derbyshire podcast.
• It is now 41-31 in the game. What did I tell you?
• [Later] Colts win 45-44. What DID I tell you?
• Now, I watch the Eagles and the Saints on PPTV.
• I got a better idea. I watch the Eagles and Saints on my Ipad. This lets me type on the laptop.
• Now, if only I had something to type.
• Listening to the John Derbyshire gave me a very distressing idea of how bad the smog in China has been. In Harbin, the smog level of the air was forty times above what is the lowest level of what is dangerous for the lungs. (The low number was 25. Harbin was at 1000! Shanghai, Derb said, was at 600!)
• It makes me want to move, but then the news from Manitoba, Canada is just as distressing. Temperatures are down to minus thirty, and to stay outdoors could kill somebody.
• So here's my choice: Bad air versus Extreme cold and Mosquitoes (Manitoba's are worse than Wuxi's).
• The score in the football game: Saints 23, Eagles 17. The Eagles are the home team. There are eight minutes to play in the game. The game won't end 23-17. It just isn't a score for a game to end on. It will probably end 24-23 or 26-24.
• Saints win 26-24. WHAT did I tell you?
• I will end the diary entry here. Onward with my vacation!!!!

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary: November 25 to December 1, 2013

Monday [November 25]

[Home Laptop]

• I don't work today.
• I stayed at home. In the afternoon, I do go out with Jenny to do some grocery shopping at Tesco.
• At the food court near the Tesco, I ate sushi. Afterward, as I was with Jenny in the Tesco, the food all came back to me, and I had to do the squats in the public toilet.
• I can't remember when it was that I last did the squats. I hate to squat because I just can't do it properly. I have to take off my pants so as not to splatter on them.
• I have a suspicion that one of the foreign trainers at my school has trained himself to do the squats.
• At the apartment, I posted a lot of entries to all my blogs the Internet.
• On his arrival home from school at 4:00 PM, Tony immediately complained that the train set, which had been set up on Sunday afternoon, had been taken down. So, I set it up for him after supper.
• I was watching, off and on, the Keys to the Kingdom, a film in which Gregory Peck plays a priest and sets up a mission in China. The Chinese, spoken, as far as I can tell, was authentic.

Tuesday [November 26]

[Home Laptop]

• I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.
• I didn't want to arise this morning, but I had to. I had to take Tony, who was less willing than me to get up, to get picked up by the car, a black VW sedan, that takes him to school.
• When I was in grade one, I walked to school by myself.
• When I was in grades three to six and living in Quebec, I took the bus to school. At the lunchtime, the bus would pick us up from school and take us back home where Mom would make us a hot lunch. At Tony's school, the lunch period is so short that Jenny has to ride the e-bike out to school to feed him.
• Jenny has to go to the school because the food at the school is terrible and Tony won't touch it.
• Last night, I phoned my Mother, who lives by herself in Brandon, Manitoba. My sister is paying her a visit but because I was so sleepy when I phoned, I only talked to Mom. I hope I am awake enough to talk to my sister tonight.
• Mom voted in a Federal by-election.
• I haven't shaved since Saturday morning.
• I enjoyed the film Keys to the Kingdom that I finished watching yesterday. They don't make films like that anymore. They, being the major film makers. The Keys to the Kingdom show religious people in a good light.

[School Laptop]

• I took the 25 bus to school and I just happened to get a glimpse of the new metro train doing a test run on the portion of track where the train goes from underground to above ground. It was going at a fast clip. Too bad, Tony wasn't with me to see it – he would have been very excited.
• Tony won't be happy when he comes home this afternoon because I again had to put away his train set.

Wednesday [November 27]

[School Laptop]

• I work 13:00 to 21:00.
• You can order Crown Royal Whiskey on Taobao! When I got home last night, I was happy to see that it had finally arrived.
• The Conservatives won the by-election in Brandon, Mom told me, by a thousand votes. The CJOB podcast said by four hundred.
• To celebrate the arrival of my new bottle of Crown Royal, I almost finished off the old bottle which I had been saving till an auspicious enough occasion arose that I could drink it. And last night, I decided that the arrival of a new bottle of Crown was just such an occasion. I had saved two slugs of Crown in that old bottle but only drank one last night. My next chance to finish off the bottle will come on Saturday.
• Who would have thunk it? There I was in China, listening to a Winnipeg Blue Bombers press conference. They hired a new general manager
• Last night, I talked to my sister who was in Brandon to visit our mother. We engaged in friendly chat.
• Mom mentioned wind chill factors of minus twenty five in Brandon!!! Do I miss that? Yes, I do.
• I am wearing a cardigan sweater today because reports predict the temperature in Wuxi could get down to zero degrees.

Thursday [November 28]

[School Laptop]

• I work 10:00 to 21:00.
• I am wearing long johns today because it is cold, for Wuxi; and temperatures could go down to around zero degrees Celsius. [I know this isn't as bad as in Manitoba from where I was listing to a CJOB podcast about the differences between winter tires and all season radial tires. The report, if it could be believed, said winter tires are much better than all-season tires. The latter, it was said during the podcast, should really be called no-season radials.]
• I had a blue screen this morning on my school laptop. As I was typing out today's diary entry, my word processing program froze and then crashed. All I had just typed in was lost.
• And as I was waiting for the laptop to reboot, I had a filling come out. I didn't think I had any fillings left in my mouth. I had had three fall out last year and I have been scared to look at my teeth because I knew they were in such a bad way.
• I have been putting off going to the dentist for a long time. I do have money on my social insurance card that I can use towards dental work.
• Dentists are an issue for expats here. Some of the dentists hear will yank out teeth without pain-numbing medicine.

Friday [November 29]

[School Laptop]

• I work 11:00 to 21:00 today.
• Nippy outside. What else can I say?
• I go to the Government Administration Building in the new CBD to do a lunchtime English Corner with an indeterminate number of civil servants.
• I heard that the owners of the Havana Cafe are selling the business. While it hadn't loss money, the pub hadn't made enough money to make it worth the owners' while.
• On the 81 bus, I refused an older man who was trying to yield me his seat. I am not sure why this happens to me. Do I look that old and infirm?
• I voraciously read this book about the Kennedy Assassination which was written by Vincent Bugliosi.
• LATER: I have gone to the Wuxi government central administration center and done my lunch hour English corner. It was my second time to do it. The first time, I did the English Corner in a large conference room with heavy wooden tables and chairs, high ceilings, and a carpeted floor – it was very plush but not the ideal setting for an English corner. So today, the powers-that-be decided to hold the English corner in an area, with sofas, that was in a hallway on a fourth level of a very high and open interior space. It was like holding an English corner in a walkway overlooking the open central area of a multi-floored shopping mall, like the Hen Long plaza. The place where I talked to the students today offered a brilliant view of a lake that was surrounded on its two sides by bricked walkways. The walkways curved towards each other at the far end of the end lake where there was a brick bridge. The walkways, I was told, lead to stairways on the bridge which allowed one to cross, get to the other walkway, and make a circuit of the lake which could be walked in thirty minutes.
• I asked two of the students where they worked and they told me that they worked in the discipline department. Not knowing what they meant, I got them to try and clarify, and they then told me that they worked in the discipline department for the members of the Communist Party of China. I realize now they meant to say the disciplinary department.
• Hearing the world discipline, I should have made jokes about stud leather collars, leather clothing, whips, and chains. Instead, I tried to relate it to Xi Jing Ping talking of reducing corruption in the government. That fell flat. Of course, the other attempt would have fallen flat too but it was a better joke.

Saturday [November 30]

[School Computer]

• I work 10:00 to 18:00.
• Last night, I didn't get a seat on the 635 bus home. The bus I take to the 635 stop, that be the 118, was late -- I had been recently taking this bus after school so as to better ensure that I got a seat on the 635. I had discovered that by taking the 118 I could get to an earlier stop on the 635 route that was by the International Hotel (across from Baoli) and so I could avoid the crowded stop (by Wall Street English) and the wrestling that takes place there when it is time to board the bus and get a seat. But the 118 has to arrive earlier enough by my school to allow me do this. Last night, the 118 did not come right away and I had two 67 buses which I could have taken to the crowded and later stop but didn't. I decided to chance it and wait for the 118 but when it did arrive I got to my preferred 635 stop by the International hotel a minute too late – I saw the 635 come to the stop and I was too far away to catch it. So I had to go a stop across the street (by the Jinling Hotel next to the Baoli Shopping Mall) and stand when I did board the bus.
• At the end of it all, I survived having to stand all the way home for fifty minutes. I listened to my Ipod and thought of the standing as a kind of penance for having always been so fortunate as to have a seat so, so many times before.

[Home Laptop]

• The classes today were outstanding. I was giddy as I taught them. However, giddiness always make me feel remorseful later. Was I talking too fast? I wondered.
• When I got home, there were six rowdy children and Tony in the living room – a nightmare. Jenny was having a party for Tony and his friends. I couldn't wait till they got out. They looked to be wrecking all of Tony's toys.
• Christmas is not going to be very good this year for me. The day is going to be sandwiched in between two working days. So, I will be working on my birthday, the 24^th, till 9:00 PM. That evening, I will be faced with the prospect of a depressing one hour bus ride home. Thankfully, I will have Tony and Jenny waiting for me when I get home. Boxing Day, the 26^th, will be on a Thursday which happens to be my longest day of the week, so Christmas evening, I will have to go to bed early.
• What do other expats do for Christmas? I suppose many will be going to an overpriced meal at some Expat pub. My wife, who controls the family purse, won't put up with that.

Sunday [December 1]

• I don't work today. Yahoo!
• I was up at 6:20 AM this morning. I couldn't sleep in even I wanted to. So, I got dressed and walked to the Tesco. Walking around it at eight o'clock, I was surprised to see how deserted it was. You would think that there would be lots of Wuxi shoppers up at the time, but either they were the Wanda Plaza Grocery Store or it was even too early for them to be shopping.
• I walked to the Tesco and enjoyed the crisp cold of the morning since I was dressed for it.
• Losing that filling earlier this week brought on a temporary feeling of relief since the loose feeling must have been causing me some discomfort. But now, it is painful to chew food with the teeth that I have remaining. So. I have am going to have to see a dentist!
• But not this week!
• Tony whines as Jenny tries to cajole him to do his homework.
• Talking to Jenny, I doubly realize that Christmas is not going to very enjoyable this year. We don't want to repeat what we did last year and go to a cheap buffet restaurant promising a turkey dinner that turns out to be disappointing – and we can't afford to go to a place that would serve anything halfway decent.
• And the excitement I had about buying Tony some toys was severely dampened by the thief who stole the money I had been saving up in my desk at work for this purpose.
• I will just have to make the best of it.