Diary: July 15 to July 21, 2014

Highlights

• Andis & Tony go to the technology side of the Wuxi Museum
• Andis talks to a student about the drivers in Wuxi and in Xian.
• Andis has to go through some hoops to download a week of the Coffee and Markets podcasts.
• Andis finishes reading Cymbeline, a play by Shakespeare, and I am Pilgrim, a thriller novel.
• Andis talks to a girl from Xian about Xian and Wuxi drivers.
• Andis makes more observations about the Wuxi Metro.
• Andis has a Chinese lesson and doesn't feel he has made progress with the tones.
• The Kaulins family goes to Ikea and the nearby Lavit Mall on a Saturday Night.
• Andis spends Sunday at Casa Kaulins by himself.
• Jenny compares the Old Navy in Winnipeg with the Old Navy in Wuxi.
• Andis suffers through Wuxi's summer heat.

Tuesday [July 15]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 13:00 to 21:00. I see I have been given an extra class! Yahoo! Overtime!
• I am tired after my days off. In an recent online conversation I was asked how I was doing, I had to say that I found Wuxi Summers to be dull. Yesterday, I spent the day with Tony either outside suffering in the heat or inside chasing Tony around museums and shopping centers. It wasn't very inspiring really. But Tony was happy so I shouldn't complain.
• Some of the activities that I like to do, to keep myself busy, will be neglected for July and August. The heat wearies me.
• The most interesting thing on the tech side of the Wuxi Museum, that we went to yesterday, was this setup where balls were made to pass through tracks and pipes and other paths in a random fashion so that they were ringing bells, spinning, bouncing on drums or landing in bowls. It was hypnotizing.
• The lovemaking last night was wonderful.
• I will still try to answer the question about favorite television series. The first series I mentioned was Kenneth Clark's Civilisation. The second series I have liked is the Wire. Interesting characters, great dialogue, and wonderful music.

Wednesday [July 16]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 13:00 to 21:00.
• When I arrived home last night, Tony was watching television with the Apple TV machine. He made a point of telling me that he was able to set up it all by himself.
• Tony & Jenny will be going to Hangzhou on Sunday for another model shoot. Tony's making money for himself! [Daddy, narrow minded bigot that he is, won't piss away the money drinking. The money goes into Tony's account for his future.]
• I had my weekly Chinese lesson this morning. Just as I think I have the tones figured out, my teacher would say you pronounced the words wrong. I am going to have to practice and practice till they become second nature and I don't have to think about them.
• As it is thinking about tones makes learning Chinese very difficult. I would rather do anything but think about them.
• One of my Chinese problems is that I pronounce the first tone as a third tone. If I say a word with a string of three first tone syllables, I get lazy on the last one. I also had a devil of a time trying to say two third tone syllables in succession.
• We had our lessons at a Starbucks near Ba Bai Ban. A table of five women made quite din as they chatted away. It took a lot of concentration on tones to not be bothered by them.
• I did a salon class about America yesterday. As a warm-up exercise I asked the students to each tell me a famous American. Two students said they couldn't think of any. I can understand it when they can't think of any famous Canadians but you really have to be provincial and wearing blinders if you can't name one American. I ended up asking these two students, both teenage middle school girls, if they could name some famous Chinese people thinking that perhaps they didn't know what I meant by “famous.”
• For some reason, Itunes was not downloading the latest episodes of the Coffee and Markets podcast for me. When I didn't get episodes for two days, I thought that maybe the podcast hosts were taking time off. But when I was synching my Itunes on my computer with my Ipod, I noticed that there were six new episodes that hadn't been added, automatically as they normally would, to the Ipod. So this morning, I spent a lot of time jiggering the Itunes so that I could get the episodes downloaded. For whatever reason, Itunes is not letting my subscription to the show work. I have to search for each episode myself at the Itunes store. [As I type this, the sixth missing episode is being downloaded. I have had to download the episodes at work and at Starbucks]
• On my attendance list for my next class, I have the student Jack, and on the line below I have Ruby. So, I read Jack Ruby, the man who shot JFK's assassin. The assassin of the assassin.

Thursday [July 17]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 21:00.
• Riding the train to work today, I noticed that I hadn't brought my umbrella with me. The last time I remember using it was last night. I remember pulling it out as it began to drizzle on my way home. So I hope it doesn't rain tonight.
• Last night, I had a class with a student who used to live in Xian. She was a young girl attending middle school who had lived in Wuxi for three years. She had moved to Wuxi because of her parents business. I asked her to compare and contrast Xian and Wuxi. She told me Xian had hotter summers, but more interestingly she told me that Xian drivers were much more likely to obey the rules of the road and weren't inconsiderate of pedestrians as Wuxi drivers were. Rare readers may know that one of my biggest sources of material for this blog is being cut off by what I considerate to be ignorant and inconsiderate and rude and generally all around asshat Wuxi drivers. And so it pleases me to know that what I have experienced is a local problem and not a problem of the whole Chinese mainland.
• Or could it be that Xian is the only place in the Chinese mainland where they drive civilized? Anyway, it is nice to see a Chinese person has a similar complaint about Wuxi drivers that I do.
• The girl also mentioned that Xian was building subway lines. The first of five lines there had been finished, she told me.
• Another television series that I like: The Simpsons. They say that the show has overstayed its welcome but I still love to quote moments from the show when it was in its prime.
• Chinese students don't seem to have much of a summer holiday compared to the summer holidays I had. Never in the summers of my school years did I do homework. I had great memories of walking in woods and exploring creeks when I was their age. The students I talk to complain of the homework constantly. When I ask the students what they are going to do for the day or the evening, they don't have much to tell me other than that they have homework to work on and if they have spare time, that they will watch a little bit of television.

Friday [July 18]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• I have got the yawns. I suppose the summer heat is getting to me.
• Two Metro anecdotes to pass on to you, my very rare readers: 1) This morning, I was attempting to take video of the metro pulling into the Xibei Station. I was at the end where the front of the train would have stopped. As I directed my camera at the train, one of the platform attendants ran up to me and told me that I couldn't take a video. Why? She tried to explain but I didn't bother trying to hear her explanation. There is a similar policy in Shanghai. 2) The train drivers don't seem to be able to get their trains to come to a smooth stop. The trains always jolt the passengers before coming to a full stop. Wednesday night, the train come to a rest at a station but then had to lurch forward about a foot to align itself properly with the platform exit gates, thereby giving the passengers who had stood up to exit a bigger jolt than they may have become accustomed to.
• Tony got a new bicycle. It has training wheels. I hope that they will soon be shed.
  [Later]
• This afternoon, I went to a company located near the Wuxi airport and so we had a half-hour taxi ride in the sweltering hear. I fell asleep on the ride – something I never usually do. Either I am adopting local ways or I am get old.

Saturday [July 19]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 18:00 but my last class finishes at 17:00 and so I can leave an hour early.
• Not much to say for myself today. I was glad to see that David Warren's blog site was accessible again. I have also finished two books in the past 36 hours: I am Pilgrim: a brain candy page-turner thriller that was praised by the blogger Duff, and Cymbeline: a play by Shakespeare. My capsule review: both good reads. Was struck me about Cymbeline was the amazingly gentlemanly behavior of the character Lucius – despite going to war with the British king Cymbeline, his and the king's disagreement and declaration of war was done civilly and with outstanding manners.
• One thing I find irksome about riding the subway is that the manner of seating on the train means I see more children and can look more directly at their parents and grandparents. It is not a pretty sight. You don't see too many urban hipsters on a Wuxi subway train, that is for sure.

Sunday [July 20]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• No wife and child as well. Jenny & Tony were up early this morning to catch a bus to go to Hangzhou so Tony can appear in a photo shoot.
• I will stay at home. It is going to be a unbearably hot today and I have some things to do and things I would like to do that I can do at home. I want to do some blogging, some research, and publish one article to the Wuxi China Expatdom blog among other things. I also have to keep the house clean and I do some have some tasks to perform for Jenny. One thing I have to do for her is put together this shelf that we bought last night at Ikea.
• Never go to Ikea on a Saturday night. If it was up to me, I would have followed this maxim that I formulated the last time Jenny had us go to Ikea on a Saturday. But it wasn't up to me. I phoned Jenny during a break from talking at school and she told me that she and Tony were on the way to Ikea. I joined her after my last gab session.
• Why shouldn't I go to Ikea on Saturday? Too many people. The lineup in the food places takes the joy out of eating the food. Also, the Ikea bus which comes by every forty minutes can be a frustrating bitch to wait for.
• I was at least fortunate last night to not have to take the bus to Ikea. It just so happened that a fellow at work, who had a car, was able to give me a ride there. It just so happened that he lived near Ikea 离家.
• The traffic, I observed, as I was taken to Ikea made me glad to ride the train to work. I don't have to worry so much about stopping.
• Tony and Jenny actually were eating at a Burger King as I was making my way to Ikea. This created a quandary for me. Should I eat there or go for the hot dogs at Ikea?
• I decided to do the latter. However, dumb me, I didn't know how to get to the checkout area, where the hot dogs were, and wasted ten minutes walking through the store to get to satisfy my craving. The actual hot dog experience was ruined by the fact that I was carrying a bag of bread with me. Trying to eat three hot dogs and drink a soft drink, with one hand, while standing, because there were no free tables is hard. I did it but I don't want to have the challenge again.
• Wuxi has another mega mall for shoppers to go to. [Just what it needs] Near the Ikea, there is the Lavit Mall which is at least four floors tall (I didn't get a chance to explore the whole place) and has a Subway, a Burger King, an Old Navy, a Toys R Us and a Gap store. It has the cavernous feeling of the Hen Long Plaza, the Suning Plaza, the Wuxi Wanda Plaza, the Moi Ye Plaza and the Chongan Walk Street.
• Like the Moi Ye Plaza, there were many empty store spaces. So many in fact that even the very bright and colorful boards that covered them could not hide the fact of under-occupancy.
• The Toys R Us didn't sell any Plarail products. Its selection disappointed Jenny & me.
• I was eager to check out the Old Navy store, thinking I could buy a China 2014 Old Navy shirt to add to my collection of Old Navy shirts that include a USA 2003 shirt, a Canada 2004 shirt, and a Canada 2012 shirt, but there was none to be had which disappointed and surprised me. I mentioned to this Jenny and she told me about the vulgarity of Canada memorabilia that she saw at the Old Navy in Winnipeg and other stores in Canada. There were Canada towels and balls and hats and so on, said Jenny. Chinese, she said, just don't go for that. [Although the Old Navy selling USA 2014 shirts (which I wouldn't buy because that would imply support of its having elected Obama) seemed strange to me.]
• To cap off a fun [not] evening of shopping, we took the Ikea bus to downtown to where we would catch the subway. The bus was packed and so I had to stand for the entire ride, Jenny and Tony eventually getting a seat. Thinking of the character in the film I like so much, the Lunchbox, standing every day on the train that he has to take to work, I didn't feel so aggrieved, and I even did not mind standing then on the subway ride as well.
• From the subway station, Tony and I took a petty-cab home because I was carrying the shelf that I will assemble sometime today. The first petty-cab driver wanted six rmb to get to the California Villa. Jenny insisted on five rmb and eventually found a driver who would take us there for that price.
• The driver knew enough English to ask what country I was from.
• Television series I like: 1) Firing Line with William F Buckley. I loved the fact that he was very welcoming to persons his views he didn't agree with like Alan Ginsburg and JK Galbraith and George McGovern. 2) Cosmos with Carl Sagan. William F Buckley was very critical of Sagan but no one would say that Sagan's television series wasn't compelling. The new Cosmos, however, has a host who is so full of liberal democrat Barack Obama sanctimony, that I find it unwatchable. I don't recall Sagan being that way, but I was a naïve one when I watched the series all those years ago. 3) Hockey Night in Canada. I feel I have to include a Canadian show and this would have to be it. The Americans who watch this show praise it for its ability to show a game that really isn't television friendly.

Monday [July 21]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• Yesterday, I put together the Ikea shelf no problem. I spent an hour or so trying to transcribe this speech made by a silly liberal evangelical type – I should get paid for it.
• Yesterday, I went for a brief walk outside and perspired heavily. I had to shower as soon as I got back to Casa Kaulins.
• I spent an hour on my AKIC diary entry – the very one that you are reading now!
• I then watched King's Row, a movie which starred Ronald Reagan and Claude Rains among others. Reagan's acting was awkward at times but his overall screen presence was likable. His type of character would go out of fashion, only to be replaced by the dark broodiness of Marlon Brandon, among others. The movie itself was melodramatic but full of enough plot twists and emotional moments to be worth a viewing by those who aren't Quentin Tarantino jaded fucks.
• Meanwhile, Jenny & Tony went to the countryside of Hangzhou for the photo shoot. To get there and back, they had to take buses and trains. There was no direct route.
• I meet them at the train station in the evening. We went downtown for a simple lunch at a noodle house called Baishilo which is two doors down from our school. We then went to the Babaiban department store so Tony could purchase a toy – his wages for his modeling.
• Tony unfortunately behaved badly the whole day and I wonder if he will get another modeling job.
• Today it is hot. I may take Tony for a long subway ride, but other than that we will stay home in the A/C.
• Another television series I like? Seinfeld. It had many moments of comic genius.
• I just got a phone call from Jenny that went like this: no more KFC, McDonald's, and Burger King for Tony & us. Jenny saw some report about the food at these restaurants being sold after its best-to-sell date.
• A few other television series that have earned my admiration: The Beverly Hillbillies, Get Smart, Pee Wee's Playhouse and Sledgehammer.

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary Entry for March 11 to March 17, 2014

Highlights

• I tried to make this week's entry longer than normal. Last week's entry was four pages long at font size 12. This week, I got to the ninth page
• I was in the doghouse for most of the week with Jenny.
• I began to watch video of the 7^th game of the 1965 World Series. I can say I was at the stadium where the game took place.
• I work six days at the school, having taken on a day of overtime.
• I made dark jokes about the missing Malaysian airliner.

Tuesday [March 11]

[Home Laptop]

• My shift will be 13:00 to 18:00.
• I will have six days in a row of shifts this week. I am working on Sunday. One of our trainers has gone home for a vacation, so more shifts for me!
• Take pains with every word. Take pains with every word I write? Can I?
• No time to take pains?
• I have watched the first inning and a half of the seventh game of the 1965 World Series. I am cheering for the Twins.
• I asked the question about pains above because of that piece I read yesterday, written by Theodore Dalrymple, about Joseph Conrad. Dalrymple has a way of making the great literature of the past relevant to today. Conrad, said Dalrymple, admired people who did their duty, because it was their duty and not because they had some highfaluting theory about why they should do their duty. Or in other words, Conrad derided egoists who abound in this world. [I am probably one myself.] Conrad took pains to describe the things he saw properly, using the right words to give up the right effect so the reader feels like he is there with the writer.
• I feel like I am in the doghouse with Jenny. I earned her ire by her having earned my ire. But I found evidence that it was that time of the month and so the storm will pass.
• Tony & I shrugged our shoulders to each other last night. Mom! What can we do?
• Tony & I went to bed as soon as we could.
• I listened to a podcast about China, from Australia's RN, that really didn't say much about China that I didn't already know. But, the expert interviewed did say one thing about Mao that was worth remembering: Mao tried to change the way the Chinese people were and failed.
• Funny, how Joseph Needham, a man who supposedly loved China and the Chinese, cavorted with Mao who didn't really like the Chinese so much. [Mao was responsible for more murders of Chinese people in his time in power than the Japanese of World War Two.]
• Anyway, I will email this file to my school laptop, and time permitting, I will carry on with my random thoughts. Hopefully, I will observe something worth chronicling on my way to school.

[School Laptop]

• Jenny was still mad at me. I tried to give her a goodbye kiss but she shoved me away.
• I took the 25 bus to get to school. Getting on a bus, I felt of spasm of rage as some man ran to get on the bus and cut in front of me. Standing practically on his heels, I had to check myself from kicking him in the heels or punching him in the back of the head.
• It was probably just as well that I didn't attempt to assault the man. It was not like I didn't get a seat and not it wasn't the same as someone cutting off a pedestrian with a fast-moving car.
• On the bus, I see a woman squatting next to a seat in which her baby was sitting. I wondered why she didn't have the baby sit in her lap.
• I then saw grandparents get on the bus with a baby. The grandfather walked to a seat, in the middle of the bus, but the grandmother just stood on the steps next to the boarding door. It seemed that she was watching the grandchild playing with the change-box. The grandfather saw this, once he had turned around to look for his wife, and he was indecisive as to whether he should come from his seat to help them. If I was the old man, I would have been cursing the slowness of his wife.
• Off the bus, I walked down some side streets to get to my school. I enjoy the walk because it feels like I am seeing things that are authentically Chinese and interesting. This morning, I saw two beggars. One was a male with no legs who was not wearing a shirt. He had a full backpack strung on his back and was on the road, not the sidewalk. Having change in my pocket, I thought, as I had already passed, to give him some money but I wasn't interested in making a dramatic gesture of turning around and doing so. My conscience was then assuaged by being able to give an one rmb coin to the second beggar I saw: a woman holding a child in her arm as she sat behind a bowl placed on the sidewalk. She was about twenty meters down the street, on the sidewalk, from the legless man.
• The next sight I noticed was an old woman who was slowly crossing the street at an angle almost parallel to the street. In China, she really is unremarkable, but she would be a sight in Canada. She was wearing those cloth shoes typical of the older and poorer sorts in China, her back was stooped as she walked, and her face was skeletal, her skin not at all loose.
• My English Corner topic for this afternoon? Dancing. Dancing, of all things.
• One more thing I will mention for now. The smog or haze was bad. I hazard to say it is a sunny day because the skies are brown with little hint of blue. Best to say the weather is dirty. [On a rainy day, it is dull.]
• When I walked into the school, I saw that the posters of the teachers on the walls of the school's main lobby had been changed. The previous poster of me had been on the wall for six or seven years. I hadn't realized that I had been posing for the new poster last week. I am not too enthused with my appearance these days. I look old and bitter.
• Since I have arrived at school, I have prepped four of my five lessons, put money in Tony's toy fund, did my half-hour of Chinese typing practice, and entered a Don Colacho quote into Dispatches from Akicistan #8.
• After the English Corner about Dancing, I went to the nearby Xinjiang Restaurant and had a plate of fried noodles. I had ordered a potato and rice dish but I was told that they didn't have any potatoes.

Wednesday [March 12]

[Home Laptop]

• I took the taxi home last night. I had taken the 118 bus to the stop by Baoli to transfer to the 635. I thought I had arrived in time to catch the 635 but I then saw the bus pull into the stop across the street. I was hesitant to run across the road to board it – the traffic on the road was busy and fast. So, not wanting to wait thirty minutes for the next bus, I waited for a 312 bus which got me halfway home and then caught a taxi.
• What went wrong? Why did I miss the bus? The first cause was the dump trucks at the construction site at the corner of Zhongshan and Renmin roads putting traffic to a standstill for three to five minutes. Despite this, I thought that I still had enough time when the 118 bus was able to move again. And so as the 118 bus approached Baoli I didn't look for the 635 bus. This inattention might have been the second cause. I just assumed my timing was fine. And when I got to the stop, I may have been distracted by the free wifi I could get there. My spending at least a minute concentrating on my email and not looking for the bus may have been the second cause. So, I can say for sure that the dump trucks and my inattentiveness, on the bus or at the bus stop, caused me to miss the stop.
• After getting off the 312, I had to catch a taxi driving away from Hui Shan District because the stretch of road I was on didn't appear to have taxis cruising there looking for fares going to the Hui Shan District. The taxis going in the direction of the Hui Shan district already had passengers in them which was why they would have been heading to the Hui Shan District in the first place. When I flagged the driver down, he didn't at first understand my pronunciation of Jiazhouyangfang, hui shan wanda, and hui shan huameida. I was thinking that he didn't want to go back to Hui Shan which is out of the way, far from the city center, and thus a bad place to get fares. But he then understood Hui Shan Wanda. He drove me there and it cost me twenty rmb. From the Wanda, I walked home past the businesses that congregate around the Wanda Plaza mall. I enjoyed the walk and if the weather is good tonight, I make get off the 635 bus – provided I don't miss it again – earlier and walk past the businesses again. Normally, when I got off the 635, I walk home in darkness past grass and closed buildings.
• In my last class of the evening, there was a woman who was very attractive and looked older than she was. Her appearance was that of a well made up store clerk or even store manager, and so it shocked me to learn that she was in the third year of a Flight Attendant studies program. My first reaction upon learning this cause me to say that she looked like she was already a flight attendant. She really contrasted with another student in the class who was a flight attendant classmate of hers. This classmate had coke-bottle glasses, braces, was slightly plump, and a pimply complexion. The woman and the girl classmate look to have a ten year age difference, and so it seem so incongruous that they acted with similar levels of maturity.
• Jenny is still mad at me. She gave me the silent treatment last night. Nothing for me to do but wait for the storm to pass and be on my best behavior.
• I had a student in my seven o'clock class who liked philosophy. She was interested in the classic Chinese philosophers and was unfamiliar with any modern ones. Her favorite western philosopher was Schopenhauer. She was unable to explain to me why she liked him.
• Schopenhauer is the sort who appeals to young minds. As one gets older, one tends to forget about him.
• Like last week, I will email this Wednesday file to myself so I can upload it to my school laptop. I will then cut paste and the text to my diary file.
• I have just washed some dishes. I am trying to get back on Jenny's good side. The chances are that she will say I didn't clean them properly.
• It is raining outside.
• I saw there was a new entry on the David Warren blog this morning. It was about a columnist named Needham who wrote for the Globe and Mail. This Needham, unlike the Joseph Needham of the Man Who Loved China book, was a thoroughly decent man in the old-fashioned sense. The columnist Needham was a man of duty to his job and to his family. The columnist Needham was eventually forced out of his columnist job by younger types who saw him as something of a dinosaur with his reactionary views. Warren, who had contact with Needham, after this ousting said Needham became somewhat bitter. Though sympathetic to the Canadian Needham, Warren had to say that one can't be bitter. A commenter to this Warren blog post said that Misanthropy is the pitfall of the Christian. The Christian has to love everyone, even the stupid, fashionable, idiotic, self-righteous, self-important, egotistical, dull, and unimaginative types that comprise 99.9 percent of humanity. That is the hardest cross to bear for the Christian – more than pain and suffering and loneliness.
• Misanthropy and Christianity are the two things that very much appeal to me? Why?
• Perhaps I will continue with these thoughts anon.
• For now, I will email this entry to myself so I can continue it at school. I will report on how my attempting to talk to Jenny went and what I happened to observe on my bus ride downtown.

[School Laptop]

• I have decided to make this diary blog entry long. My goal is to have ten pages typed using the times roman font size 12.
• It was raining outside but not heavily so using the umbrella was optional. I decided to use the umbrella.
• Jenny still seemed annoyed at me, but not as much as yesterday. Yesterday, She was still in bed when I bade her good bye and she was smacking me when I attempted to kiss her. This morning, she merely drew the sheets over her head.
• What did I see on my way to work? At the bus stop, the Jia Zhou bus stop that is, that I go to most mornings, workers had dug a pit in the lawn that was behind the bus stop. The pit was deep enough so that a wall of bricks one brick high (bricks laid width wise)could be built on its periphery. Inside the ring of bricks, cement was being laid. I suspect that they are building the foundation for a public bicycle rack. They have been building them in the Hui Shan District.
• Also while waiting, I saw an old man get out of of the back seat of a black sedan that had pulled up near the bus stop. Another passenger in the sedan came out from the front passenger seat, and restrained him. It seemed that he was trying to pull the old man back into the car. I could tell from their manner that it was a friendly sort of restraining like the wrestling that takes place among Chinese when it comes to paying the restaurant bill. This tug-of-war went on for a minute till they shook hands and parted company.
• I spend my time on the bus listening to the GLOP podcast on my Ipod from Riccochet.com and studying chapter 23 of my New Practical Chinese Reader on my Ipad.
• I did look up from my Chinese study to see that the street cleaners were wearing those traditional looking Asian farm worker hats, the kind that are round, brim-less, and slope downwards uniformly from a pointed center. Or in other words, they look like a very wide and flat cone.
• On GLOP, I heard mention that Harold Ramis was on cocaine the whole time he was working on the famous film Caddyshack. I wish I hadn't heard that.
• Ah. The life of the rich and the famous is really the life of the depraved and lucky. Meanwhile, decent guys like the Needham that David Warren knew rate only a mention in an obscure blog.
• I did hear a new word on the podcast which I will teach to the students every available opportunity. The word is bingeview which describes the phenomenon of watching many consecutive episodes of a series at one time, like for example someone watching a whole season of Game of Thrones in ten hours. My wife bingeviews many series as do many of the students.
• [Later] My 13:00 class was a no-show. So, I went back to working on my Chinese.
• [Later] What to eat? I decided on Dico's and their fifteen rmb special. I had had Muslim Noodles yesterday and I had had Niurou Fan (Beef Fried Rice) on Saturday and I had had McDonald's for breakfast.
• I taught a student named Tiny. I asked him what the opposite of huge was and he hesitated. He was embarrassed when he realized that the answer was his name.

Thursday [March 13]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 10:00 to 21:00.
• Jenny is still mad at me. I got the silent treatment when I arrived home last evening and then this morning when I tried to talk to her. I was only able to get her to say one thing: “You only love yourself!”
• This storm (Jenny being mad at me) started on Monday evening.
• David Warren had another blog entry today. Re-reading the previous one about the journalist named Needham, I realized that its tone was pessimistic as was the latest entry which I read this morning. This morning's entry was about marriage and how the Catholic Church, instead of sticking to its gun about the seriousness of marriage, is being cowardly and trying to accommodate the modern world's attitudes toward it.
• Do I really only love myself? That charge of Jenny is probably all too true. I suppose I have the left wing habit of thinking that my nice thoughts are sufficient to show my love. But what to do to get on Jenny's good side? I can't talk to her about it. She just issues a series of ultimatums that leave one exasperated and without hope.
• I read in the Bible earlier this week about Jesus's suffering in the garden on the night before he was arrested and then put to death. One of the disciples, Peter(?) stayed that night with him but ultimately failed in his duty to be with Jesus and fell asleep. In my younger days, I would have wondered how Peter could have done such a thing. As I age, I realize that part of my wonder was a one brought on by hindsight. I also recalled the last night I spent by my father's side (he lived one more night and then died in the middle of the next day.) Despite knowing at the time, the seeming sacredness of being beside my father, I had to deal with the discomforts of the moment: the boredom, the urge to play with the Ipod, and my wanting to sleep. The disciple Peter was dealing with the same sensations. I, like Peter, failed in my duty that night.
• I taught(?) a student named Tony last evening. This Tony –Tony is popular English name with the students – is very talkative. He told me about how the government is preventing real estate companies from selling apartments at the market rate, which would logically be cheaper than they are now since there are clearly too many empty apartment buildings all about Wuxi. The government (Tony agreed with me on this point) had lent out too much money to developers and thus had paid too much for the apartments. To try and manipulate the real estate prices and get the money back, the government is moving schools out to the areas where the new apartments are being built. Chinese parents will pay to live near a good school. One example of the government doing this is Big Bridge School which is on Xueqian Road, about a block from my school. Two years ago, Big Bridge students who come to our school started to tell me about the school being moved out by Lake Taihu – far away from its present location but near recent real estate development. The Big Bridge School move would seem to be an attempt by the government to manipulate real estate market.
• It is cold outside. I had to put on my toque and scarf as I made my way to school.
• Not much to report about my bus ride to work. I took the 602支 and then transferred to the 118. There did seem to be more people on the bus, as it pulled into my stop, and so I had to take a seat that wasn't at the back of the bus where I usually happily ensconce myself.
• Last night, I had to catch the 635 bus as it was leaving the downtown. I made sure, unlike Tuesday evening, to look for it, as I rode the 312 to the two stops where I can catch the 635 at Baoli. Seeing the 635 pass while on the 312, I had to wait for the 635 at the stop in front of the Hotel (the leaving the downtown stop), instead of at the stop across the street (the entering downtown stop).
• Four pages of journalist efforts completed!
• My 10:00 AM class was with a housewife of what I assumed was a car company executive. She just got her visa to go to Japan.
• It bugs me that I can't just phone Jenny and talk her. I have become so used to waiting out her silences that I only rarely – like I am now – think about how silly and frustrating it is. It should be so if she could somehow act rationally. As it is, I am scared to take any initiative. Jenny, with her ways, kills it and makes it worse by getting upset about it which then makes it more unlikely that this dream world she wants can ever come close to being achieved.
• My English Corner will be in the evening. The topic will be Eating.
• I wonder what my Mom is up to now. I suppose at the very instant that I type this, she is asleep.
• Talk to the students who get to travel and I reflect on my father who didn't travel at all in his later years.
• This : 引领群众接受革命传统 教育 translates to To lead the masses to accept the revolutionary tradition. [I am working on translating a very short article I have found in a local magazine. It seems I decided to translate an article where a government official makes a visit to some place. And I never would have thought, judging from its appearance, that the magazine was so Communist.]
• I hope Jenny stops being mad at me tonight.
• I had niurou fan, beef fried rice, for lunch. I ate it at the restaurant to where I had brought my Ipad so I could fulfill my daily Shakespeare and Aquinas requirement.
• 15:00 Class with Steven, a clever boy, who talks a lot. Not a good conversationalist however, his style is monologuish.
• The sentences that the girls ask me to explain to them. Sheesh! I really need to see the sentence in context. Some sentences taken from their article make no sense.
• Twenty minutes to Six. What Jenny said this morning still stings.

Friday [March 14]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 11:00 to 21:00.
• I was just thinking. As I took my daily photo of Tony which I post to my TKIC Wordpress blog, I labeled the entry Thursday Morning Tony. I am going to have to change that later.
• My concentration on my routine was ruined this morning when I realized that I had forgotten to download the photos for my City Hall English Corner onto my Ipad last night. I had mailed them to myself from work yesterday, and planned on opening the email when I got home later. But when I got home, I immediately washed my feet and face, and went to bed without bothering to open the email on Ipad and download the photos.
• I realized my forgetfulness when I was on the bus. Instead of concentrating fully on my Chinese text, I was thinking of what I could do to get Wifi and be able to download those photos. Unfortunately at school, there is no Wifi. The nearby 85 degree bakery has a sign saying they have complimentary Wifi but it turned out to be bunk because while I did lock onto a signal there, I wasn't able to open any web pages or get email.
• This quickly going to bed upon arriving home from work is not something I usually do. But with Jenny giving me the silent treatment, I thought I would just be quiet in my own way.
• As for Jenny, she did speak to me today, and she did answer one of my questions. When giving her a going-to-work goodbye kiss, she didn't throttle me, so things were looking up as far as being in the doghouse was concerned.
• One of my favorite podcasts is the Sunday gospel program that I get from Vatican Radio. It presents a reading of the gospel presented in a dramatic fashion and is interspersed with poetry readings from great poets modern and old. I listened to two of the episodes this morning.
• Sophia, my 635 bus mate, was on the bus last night. I was able to ask her why she was working at an other school and she told me that she preferred the teaching she was doing there which was more about teaching English writing than English speaking.
• I was thinking that I should have yielded her my seat last night. She looked weary leaning against a pole.
• In fact, I spend a lot of the time, when on the bus, thinking that I should be yielding my seat to people because I feel a little guilty for always being so successful at ensuring that I get a seat.
• I took the 25 bus to work this morning. A pretty woman stood near me who I stole glances at till an older woman stood between her and me; and so not wanting to notice the older woman and feel compelled to yield her my seat, I concentrated on the Chinese text I had up on my Ipad.
• I say I concentrated but I really should say that I stared. As I mentioned earlier, I was thinking about how I was to get Wifi. I was actually thinking of getting off at the bus stop near Baoli where I can get Wifi, but it seemed too risky. I tried 85 degree instead.
• I had a good turnout at my English Corner last night, or at least much more than I am accustomed to. I made jokes about how I was glad to see some old faces having worried that they might have been on that flight from Malaysia that had gone missing.
• This morning, I have an English Corner at City Hall. The photos I forgot to download are meant to be used at that English Corner. I was going to talk about parts of cities with the students and so I had some photos to show them.
• I am rushing to get things I want to do done before I head off the City Hall with Dwight.
• [Later] There were only four people at the City Hall English Corner. What a shame!
• I had lunch at McDonald's: the bacon and potato burger.
• After the city hall English Corner and having prepared for my classes this evening, I have not much to do but my daily projects. I have looked at 575 flashcards, typed a page from the New Practical Chinese Reader, read an article of Aquinas, read two acts of All's Well that Ends Well, typed about fifteen characters into a database, and I am about to try and understand this article I have been reading in a magazine. I mentioned the magazine yesterday.
• As we (Dwight and I) rode back from City Hall, we saw lots and lots of apartment buildings.
• I was trying to figure out how to make a database program with Python.
• The 701^th to 800^th flashcards I was working with were difficult. I was only able to identify 49 of them on the first try.

Saturday [March 15]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 10:00 to 18:00.
• After I arrived home last night, it seemed like I was still in the doghouse with Jenny. She didn't say anything to me.
• I really haven't talked to Tony much since Monday. He has been asleep when I have arrived home in the evening. In the mornings, he doesn't say much to me.
• A girl named Ritz, who I gave a package of Ritz Cheese Sandwich Crackers to, told me that she ordered a box of them on Taobao, the popular Chinese Internet Shopping Site. If she really likes them, she told me she would buy more.
• One of my classes last night was a waste of time. I had a junior high school student who didn't want to be there. His life, from what I could make out, was boring to the extreme: homework and classes. Of course, if he took the right attitude to this work, it would pay off for him in the future.
• On the bus this morning, I read an actual book instead of an e-book on my Ipad. The book was a Chinese grammar and workbook that I bought all those years ago when I was preparing to move to China. I felt I needed to review the grammar in the book. I have been concentrating so much on learning characters that I am now at the point where I can recognize many characters in a sentence but not have any idea of the sentence's meaning.
• I listened to a John Derbyshire podcast as I got read to go to work.
• I could say I had two breakfasts. At Casa K, I had a bowl of oatmeal, an apple, a package of the Ritz Cheese Crackers, some dry meat, and a cup of tea; downtown, I got a egg sausage burger with hash brown from McDonald's.
• [Later] It is lunchtime. I can say that I have had two classes. They were both one-on-one, nothing difficult to do, though the second student I had to chastise because she hadn't been paying attention to what I had just taught her. Five minutes after teaching her the proper way to answer the question What do you do?, she told me she didn't understand the question. Flabbergasted, I ended up drilling the answer into her. Five times I asked the question; five times she answered it in the proper manner.
• For lunch, I will eat a can of oranges that I have had in my backpack all week.

Sunday [March 16]

[School Laptop]

• I am doing an extra shift today: 10:00 to 17:00.
• Yesterday evening, I meet Jenny & Tony and Ling Ling & Jerry at a restaurant in the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza. Tony was happy to see me and immediately asked if he could play with my Ipad. I let him and justified it to myself by thinking how he hadn't actually played with it since last Saturday.
• I drank two beers instead of my usual one for dinner. I was thirsty and bored.
• Afterward, I went to the DQ in Wanda to get an Oreo Blizzard. The women and children went to this honeymoon dessert place to get their desserts. Tony & I left the Mall early because Tony wanted to go home early and play on the computer. But before we left the Mall, we took a look at the spring clothing on the shelves at Uni-Qlo, a chain store that reminds me of the Gap. At Uni-Qlo, they sell Takara TOMY t-shirts which Tony likes very much.
• At home, I played with my Apple TV device and played Real Racing Three on the Ipad. Tony played Train Simulator on my computer.
• Was affectionate with Jenny, hmmm hmmmm, during the night.
• This morning, I had two breakfasts again. At home, I had a cup of tea and four slices of bread; before going to school, I had coffee, an egg sausage sandwich, and two hash browns.
• On the bus, read the second chapter of my Basic Chinese Grammar and Workbook.
• At school, I got a lot of things to do. My priorities are classes, this diary, printing off next week's todo list, emailing myself these files, and looking for good B2B sites on the 'net.
• And of course, I do want to get some Chinese study in.
• Yesterday, I had a class with a girl who is learning Cello. In the morning, her father drove her to Shanghai to have a lesson. The other girl in class was learning to play the wujin, a harp like instrument that instead of being stood up, is laid on a table top or on legs.
• [Later] Lunchtime. I am eating 牛肉饭（Niurou Fan or Beef Fried Rice) at my desk after having executed a perfect order-take-out-and-then-pick-it-up-operation. The restaurant is near my school and so I walk into it, say 牛肉饭 and then say 我去买东西 (I go buy things.) I then walk to a small convenience, buy a drink, and return to pick up my rice which is usually waiting for me to be picked up.
• In my first morning class, I had a coincidence and a near-coincidence. A student Jenny was born on December 24^th – the same birthday as me. The other student Grace was born on April 13^th – the date before my mother's birthday.
• I gave Jenny her English name. She had a Chinese name of Jin and that was the only English name I knew of that could approximate it.
• People in the West who are born on December 24^th are an aggrieved minority. December 24thers are probably more aggrieved that the American Negro and even more aggrieved that a white person speaking the truth.
• In my second class, I asked the students if today in Wuxi was an ideal day for a picnic. It being a nice early spring day, I was expecting the students to answer in the affirmative. But this one student, a male high school student named Unicorn, said that today wasn't a good day because of all the smog. So I then asked the students if there wasn't so much smog today would it be a good day for a picnic. Another student, another male high school student who likes to always buttons his shirt up to the very top button, said that there were too many people in Wuxi. Saying okay in an exasperated manner, I then asked the students if there wasn't so much smog and weren't so many people today in Wuxi, would it be a good day to have a picnic. One of those two students then said that there weren't many facilities in Wuxi to have picnics. “How about this?” I asked, “Would it be a good day for a picnic if we were in Canada and had today's weather?” Unicorn said that he didn't like going to picnics. “Okay!” I then said. “We are in Canada, Unicorn can't come with us, and the weather is like today in Wuxi. Would TODAY BE A GOOD DAY FOR A PICNIC?!?!?”
• [Later] One more class to teach! Not much to report from the two classes I have taught since lunch.
• I will now mail the contents of this file to myself so I can continue on with my blogging when I get home tonight.

Monday [March 17]

[School Laptop]

• I didn't continue on with my blogging last night. After work, I met up with my wife and son downtown. We then took the bus to the Wanda Plaza where we had dinner and did some shopping. When we got home, we played with our devices. Tony wanted to use my laptop to play Train Simulator which meant I could do no blogging.
• Today, the high is to be 23 degrees Celsius. I won't be wearing a toque, scarf, or jacket today.
• I have typed about 81/4 pages of blogging at font size 12!
• I have spent an hour and a half going over this entry. There are probably still many mistakes.

The AKIC Diary for October 14 to October 20, 2013

Monday [October 14]

[Home Laptop]

No work today.

I still had to be up early because I had to get Tony off to school.

I woke up feeling stuffy.

I published the October 7 to October 13 diary last night. I will publish the AKIC Weekly as soon as the video Views of China from Casa Kaulins #31 has been uploaded. The VPN connection is slow however.

While waiting for the upload to finish, I have taken photos for my Views of China from Casa Kaulins blog. I took a good photo of a bamboo load that you just have to see!

I so much liked the results of my fit of Joycean interior monologue writing that I did last week, that I will make a point of doing it at least once a week in my diary from now on.

Jenny and I went to the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza for lunch and some shopping, and ate at the same restaurant we had had supper at last night. Jenny ordered peanuts, broccoli, tofu, beans in sweet sauce, fried rice, and crispy rolls with some sort of vegetable filling. All that food with a bottle of beer made me happy. We then went on Jenny's instigation to H&M. She had read on some social group of a woman buying a pair of kids doc marten style boots for 30 rmb. She didn't find the boots but we did buy a XL sized shirt for me from clearance rack for just 50 rmb!

The last two days, I have noticed that there has been a plague of foreigners hanging out at the Wanda Plaza or walking between the Wanda and the nearby Ramada Hotel. They have been young adults mostly, who I assume are competing in some sort of international sports competition in the area. They have been wearing clothing bearing the names of their native countries including Mexico and Denmark. Some of the more swarthy-looking among them I suspect are from the middle east.

I rode the e-bike to pick up Tony from school. We then went of a tour of the area straddling the border between the Hui Shan District and Jiangyin. We saw six high-speed trains, crossed at least six major bridges, were chased by one dog, stopped to watch one digger in action, bought one radish for Jenny, had one nice moment of contemplation on one of the bridges, and had our photo taken by Jenny as we drove by the apartment.

Back at home, Tony and I had a good wrestling match. I wanted Tony to watch television instead of wrestle with his buddy Kramer. I call his buddy Kramer because this little boy will come to our apartment unannounced to hang out. Jenny says that Kramer is the only kid that she knows of who Tony can be aggressive with. Usually, Tony gets picked on by all the kids. Our wrestling match started because Tony was picking on Kramer and annoying me. I tried to turn on the television and get him to watch that but Tony didn't want me to and I had to physically restrain him from trying to turn the television off. Tony was very determined to turn off the television and so we wrestled for a long five minutes. I am still much stronger than Tony and so there was no danger of him overpowering me and getting to the television; but Tony's stamina was something. His squirming and kicking required me to be constantly vigilant. I had to relent because he wasn't going to give up.

And then a minute after our wrestling match, Tony turned on the television to watch some cartoon. So we had fought for nothing. Tony it seems didn't want me telling him what to do.

Tuesday [October 15]

[Home Laptop]

It was blustery this morning. The first breaths of Winter.

I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

Hanging laundry, I saw four or five good photo opportunities for my Views of China blog pass by. I didn't have my camera with me, alas.

[School Laptop]

I took the 25 bus to school.

It sure was windy outside, and I was thinking that my polo shirt and hoodie were insufficient to deal with it.

Wednesday [October 16]

[School Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00.

I arrive at school at 11:00.

Yesterday's diary entry was pretty short. I gots to thinks of ways to make its longer. So, here is what thoughts and observations came to me as I rode the 25 bus to downtown:

• The subject of an EWTN podcast I was listening to: Gratitude. This lead me to have an anti-blog thought: Gratitude! Gratitude! You must thank Me very much!
• Team nicknames evolve. Dodgers mean a baseball team in Los Angeles, not the fans of a baseball team in Brooklyn who had to dodge trains to get to their teams' baseball stadium. Lakers means a basketball team in Los Angeles, not a basketball team in a city in a state full of lakes. Team nicknames can have many takes. The Reds are a baseball team in Cincinnati – there was no fuss to change their name during the cold war. Redskins are a professional football team in Washington D.C.
• When I take the 25 bus, I often see bags and luggage lying on the floor. This is because the bus stops by the train and bus stations, and it is much cheaper to take the bus than the taxi.
• When Wuxi People are on the phone, they squawk loudly.

Tony will have a car take him home after school. They took pity on Jenny & Tony yesterday when they were seen riding on an e-bike in the gusty and cool autumn winds.

Thursday [October 17]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 21:00. It's my long day at school

I was up at 5:45 this morning so I could shower, shave, and have Tony off to school by 7:00 and then just be able to go to school myself.

I took the 25 bus downtown. I had plenty of time to get off at the bus stop, near Nanchang Temple on Jiefang Road, and walk to the McDonalds, on the corner of Xueqian and Zhongshan Road, to have breakfast.

They are letting one of the foreign teachers, at our school, go.

Funny thing. I had to type today's entry (at least what I typed so far) twice. The computer froze and wouldn't even respond to CTRL-ALT-DEL. This also happened yesterday. It seems that ten minutes or so after I turn on the computer, it will freeze solid leaving me with no option but to turn it off. But it only happened once yesterday. Hopefully, it doesn't happen again today.

Maybe, I will go Joycean today; maybe, I won't.

An Xinjiang Restaurant will open across from the school! An Xinjiang Restaurant will open across from the school!

Friday [October 18]

[School Laptop]

I work 11:00 to 21:00 today.

Yesterday, I didn't do the Joycean thing. I will have to do it today.

So, without further ado, here is my weekly attempt at interior monologue style writing mixed with in third person narration:

I should say weakly attempt. Finished breakfast. Wait. Not exactly. I got to drink my coffee. My mind is blank. Andis's mind went blank. He didn't know what to type. I don't know what to type. Isn't this mixing of interior monologue and third person narration awesome!?! Only thing though. Should the third person narration be in the present tense or past tense? Andis wondered. Andis wonders. I think the past tense seems better. Most narration is done in the past tense. Andis thought that most narration was done in the past tense. At school, Andis goes straight into his office. I wait till the other office clears and I will do prep. (what little prep I do have...) Is it okay to be parenthetical in an interior monologue. Did Joyce use parenthesis in Ulysses? I can't recall.

In the office next to his, the tech guy summons the girl who sits in the office across the hall. (Not the stocking girl from last week.) Don't want to be thought of as a man who stalks girls in stockings. Andis stared at the breakfast sandwich wrapper. Waxy gloss. Crumpling reveals lack of symmetrical wrapping skill on part of kitchen worker. Two globs of dried and congealed cheese on the bottom left corner of the wrapper. Grab it. Roll it up. Throw in in the waste basket. Missed. Stand up. Grab the rebound off the floor. Andis bent over. Maybe I should have bent on my knees...

What's my first class. 13:00. Anna. Who get's the job? I wrote up a script for that a long time ago. Just have to run out the clock with conversation. 18:00 to 20:00. Leo Cao. Leo Cow. Leo Ciao. Crewcutted Chinese mail with a mustache. I wonder if he shaves. The lesson plan for his class is shit. I did come up with a way to string the conversation along based on the material. Materiale. I can't expect him to make a presentation. I don't know what to teach him. Four people at 20:00. Three woman and Zhou. Zhou could be a boy or girl, man or woman.

Andis looked at 141 Chinese flashcards on his computer.

What was it that I was thinking earlier? Colacho talked about the old woman praying in the corner of the church. Or in the back of pew or the seats. Colacho said he was like her. No. He said he was her. That is why I follow him. Is Bill Clinton like the old woman praying by herself in the church. No, he is thinking what is under the skirts of the young woman. Scum. I have to fight those tendencies all the time. That there was the British politician in the Tofumo(?) scandal. He resigned and spent the rest of his life working in soup kitchens, serving the lowest of the low. Clinton? He went around getting acclaim and lots of money making speeches. I can't stand to be with people who tolerate that. I can't.

Time to do some reading. Andis was to start his shift in 35 minutes. I will prep my lessons starting at 11:00. Turn on the Ipad. Wait for it to fully load. Select the KJV. Now in Revelations. Chapter 8. Wormwood. A ominous sounding word that I don't know the meaning of. Revelations is fun to read. Press library. Oops. Put four besides KJV on the to-do list. Choose Colacho.

351 Resignation to error is the beginning of wisdom.

What to add to that? It is so true. What is the difference between true and so true? There shouldn't be any difference in the degree of truth. Either it is true or it isn't true. What about the heresies that are 95 percent true? Mixing error with truth is how to entrap fools.

Damn. Time to take a shit. Bring along the Ipod? No. Think.

Andis walked into the bathroom. The door to the western WC stall was closed and the handle had a red color. Damn! Someone is in there! Andis walked to a urinal. Instead of staring at the wall, he looked to his left towards the stall. Is there someone in there? Andis didn't see any feet. I will have to check it. It seems to be very silent in here. I can't feel the presence of anyone else. Pull on the handle and see what happens. It opened. The stall had been empty.

Andis sat. Andis shat. We are always committing some small heresy. The devil never rests. There is always something we could have been doing with our time that was better than what we had been doing. Even to eat is to deprive others of food. Eat we must. Sin we must deal with.

Back to the office. Time to read some Aristotle. We acquire virtue by acting. How about by avoiding? Is there any virtue to acquire by sitting at my desk and not dealing with the demons in the next room? Perhaps you are if you are always battling temptation to go to that room. Does having the habit of virtue cease to be virtuous if it becomes easy and second nature?

Taste of breakfast still in my mouth. Time to eat some gum. Andis went to his backpack, pulling a package with three strips of gum from a front pocket. Andis unwrapped two strips and put them in his mouth. He took the packages and rolled them in a ball. He rolled his wheeled chair to his right. The waste paper basket was in sight. He put his right forearm parallel to the ground making a right angle with his armpit. The upper arm he bent back so that it was nearly over his shoulder. He took a deep breath and then thrust the upper arm forward. He released the paper ball so that it went upwards in a high arch. The paper ball landed in the waste basket. Basket!!!!

Back to Aristotle. It may not be virtuous to do the right thing but in the wrong spirit.

Fireworks crackle loudly neat the school. It is the new restaurant opening across the street from the school. Xinjiang food. Chow Mian Pian. I suppose I should wait a few days before I try the restaurant's food. It will be crowded today. Still. A good thing.

Like Joyce. I will end my composition with a Yes. Yes. Yes!

Saturday [October 19]

[School Laptop]

Andis works 10:00 to 18:00 today.

Andis got to work at 8:40. He had to wait a few minutes before the girl came to open the school's main entrance.

On the bus ride to home the previous evening, Andis got on and rushed to a seat in the back corner of the bus. His sometimes bus companion told him she preferred to sit at the front. Andis tried to sit at a front on a few instances and found he couldn't abide it.

When he got home, he saw that his son Tony had a black eye. Jenny wasn't sure what had happened. The teacher told him that he had been running around... That put Andis out of the good mood that he had been in brought on by listening to Sinatra on the Ipod and having read Aristotle on his Ipad.

Andis finished watching the Hustler starring Paul Newman, George C. Scott, and Jackie Gleason. Newman was cool at times in the movie but it was hard to find his being a loser believable. His coolness contrasted in a Jekyll and Hydish way with his loserness.

[Home Laptop]

On the bus ride home, I started watching the movie Criss Cross starring Burt Lancaster. Watching it with my headphones on, I didn't hear my phone ringing about ten times as my wife was trying to get a hold of me. When I finally answered the phone, my wife was pissed.

Sunday [October 20]

I don't work today.

Other than publishing my blog entries tonight or tomorrow, I don't know what I am going to do the next two days. This isn't a good thing for this diary.

We went last night to Wanda for dinner. We will go to Wanda for lunch today.

I have spent an considerable amount of time on the AKIC Weekly. I just made a top ten list for it.

Tony's right eye is still black.

I have to make another toy for Tony was this fold-and-glue book that Jenny bought him yesterday. Unlike the book I had bought for Tony, the book Jenny bought doesn't have perforated folds.

I had a bad experience at the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza Pizza Hut. We got stuck in a corner table and they seemingly forgot about us. Our food was coming out slowly. They then gave us a free pizza because they had screwed up the pizza we had ordered. When we finally got the pizza we had ordered, I could see that it had been hastily made. The sauce and toppings were not spread properly over the pizza so that the space between the sauce edge and the crust edge was as much as two and a half inches long.

I went on the Internet seeing what mischief Paul Krugman had been up to lately. Niall Ferguson has written a devastating critique of him. No one needs to take Krugman seriously anymore.

I took Tony out for a walk in the late afternoon. He brought along his push-bike. He wanted to go to the Jia Zhou Yang Fang basketball court because it is a good place to ride his push-bike. However when he got there he joined up with three other boys of assorted age. They ran around playing high-and-seek but they got rowdy at times. Somewhere, they found some bricks and were throwing them down a stairwell.

I know enough Chinese characters to be able to read a sign and not have a clue what it means. As Tony played, I saw a sign with familiar characters. I brought out my Ipod, put on the notebook app, and changed the keyboard so I could do pinyin entry. I was able to enter the pinyin so that I could match the characters on the sign. I was able to read the words on the sign aloud, more or less, but I had no idea what they meant.