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].

A Week in the Life, of Sorts of a Wuxi Expat: September 23 to September 29, 2013

Monday [September 23]

[Home Laptop]

I didn't work today. In fact, I didn't do much of anything so there isn't much of an entry for today.

Here is what I did do:

1. I finished reading my WH Mallock book.
2. I went with Jenny downtown and got my hair cut really short.
3. I took a lot of photos for my Casa Kaulins blog.

Tuesday [September 24]

[School Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00.

Jenny says I snore. She said that she couldn't sleep Sunday night because of my doing so. She asked if I remembered being shoved by her (I didn't) during the night. She shoved me, she said, in hopes of getting me to be quiet, but instead I snored all the louder.

The idea of someone being awake when I am sleeping is strange to me because it seems to me that I am always the last to fall asleep, and I can remember many a night where others were fast asleep while I was staring at the ceiling. I even used to always say that I wasn't the sort of person who could put their head on a pillow and fall asleep right away.

I told Jenny to make a recording of my snoring.

I took the 602支 bus and then the 312 bus to get to work. While doing so, I listened to the latest Econtalk podcast. The topic was the Sports Gene. From what I could gather from listening to the podcast, I think that author of a book about the Sports Gene said genetics helps give athletes an advantage in sports, and that if you don't have these advantages, whether they be the right body shape or a gene, you have no hope, no matter how much you work at succeeding. The idea of genetics playing such a role in who we were and what we can become is one that I have always found depressing. I will never forget becoming so depressed from reading a New Yorker article which discussed how even personality was determined so much by evolution and where our ancestors came from. I was approaching my mid-twenties when reading the article and I was thoroughly miserable at my situation and my prospects in life. It seemed I was doomed to be lonely and poor, and the article seemed to indicate that I was genetically fated to be so doomed.

Wednesday [September 25]

[Home Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

I was up at 6:00 because Tony has to off to school by 7:00.

For the first time in months, I wore long pants in my civilian-non-English-teacher mode. It is getting cool. I may wear long sleeves during my English-teacher mode today.

Obama wanted to bomb Syria because the U.S. Armed Forces needed some combat practice, not having had any in a couple years. That is what one student told me was his theory about what he was trying to do in Syria. That combined with another student's assertion, made last week, that Obama was a puppet of the arms industry shows to me that the world's perception of America hasn't changed even with supposedly world-friendly Obama in the White House.

I am back to studying Python on my free time. I downloaded some PPT slides for a Cal Tech lecture on Python which I have found to be very informative. I don't really have a project in mind right now however. Having written my forty team tournament program, I am not sure how to proceed. I may try to make the program more detailed and increase its options for the user. I may allow the user an option of following one team through the entire tournament process. I would also like more statistical reports to be made of the results like single game records and multiple tournament records as well.

Last night, I did a class about superstitions. All the students told me that they were not superstitious. One of the students said he didn't believe in God because God didn't exist. None of the students could supply any examples of superstitions – I had to do so myself, and even then the students could not provide any other examples of superstitions. It seems the students have not had to actually think about superstitions and religions beyond being told that science is superior to both.

Tony has a dark bruise on his arm yesterday night. He told Jenny that the teacher had hit him. Jenny phoned the teacher who said she hadn't. This lead to an argument between Jenny and the teacher. I don't think Tony was hit by the teacher, though he does drive Jenny to such frustrations that she will hit him. Tony, as I have observed before, will be quiet or say I don't know! when he has been caught red-handed. He does lie on occasion. So it is hard to say how Tony got the bruise. Are the other kids picking on him because he is different? Is there resentment of the fact that he is a foreign kid maybe getting special treatment? Jenny told me that some other parents in Tony's class have alleged this. Did in fact the teacher get so frustrated with Tony? So whatever the cause of Tony's bruise, it sounds ugly and my stomach has a nauseous churning feeling when I contemplate the incident and the future of Tony at that school. I can't foresee things getting better. It seems a degree of animosity has built between Jenny, the other parents, and the teacher.

[School Laptop]

I take the 610 and then the 81 bus to get to school.

A student was in Beijing recently and he told me that compared to Beijing, Wuxi's air was fresh. The air was so bad in Beijing that the student said he got a sore throat very quickly.

Thursday [September 26]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 21:00. Because I have to get Tony out of the house at 7:00 AM, I got up at 5:45 to take a shower and shave. As soon as Tony was on the way to school, I caught a bus and got downtown about 8:00. I spent about 45 minutes at McDonald's where I had breakfast and read religious things on the Ipad.

I saw a tall foreigner having breakfast at the McDonald's. I ordered my food and stayed clear of him.

I blog about when I go to work but rarely, if ever, do I mention when I arrive home. Last night, I arrived home at 10:15 PM. Tony was fast asleep. I showered and then read on my Ipad.

Three files I work with through the day: My diary file, my AKIC Weekly file, and my thoughts file.

I walk around the school at ten and I don't see any students. I will see about six today in total if they all show up.

I caught one student gaming our school's system. What he had done was book a salon class but then not show up for it but then show up for his private class. The way it works at our school is that students have to attend private classes if they are to advance, or in the case of many company students: get out. They should attend salon classes but they aren't compulsory. So I noticed that this student didn't attend my 19:00 salon class, but showed up at my 20:00 private class. I pointed this out to him and he laughed in the weaselly way that Chinese people do when they have been caught out.

Friday [September 27]

[School Laptop]

I work 11:00 to 21:00 today.

It turns out that Tony is going to school tomorrow. I had believed that he would have tomorrow off and then would go back to school on Sunday and Monday. Instead, I believe now that he will go to school on Saturday, Sunday and on Monday. Jenny, however, tells me that he gets eight days off in a row instead of seven because of this schedule change so maybe he will get Monday off. Either way, the Chinese way of dealing with holidays is insane.

I have more thoughts to put into my other files instead of in this diary.

Sometimes, traffic puts me in a rage as some Chinese person in a car or e-bike cuts you off.

There is something to be said for monastic life. I believe that most English teachers in China should be in monasteries instead of classrooms teaching.

There was another thing Jenny told me about Tony. She thinks Tony is not happy these days. When she came to pick him up yesterday, Tony was not running excitedly to the exit like the other children in his class, but was walking behind them.

I am having great fun with Python. I have figured out how to scan my tourney result files and pull out results for a team of my choice. Tomorrow, if I have time, I will write a function that will pull out the complete line score of a team's playoff result. Right now, I can just pull out the team's line score for a playoff game but not the line score of the team's playoff game opponent.

Saturday [September 28]

[School Laptop]

Last night at the bus stop, where I wait for the 635 bus to take me home, my 635 bus companion asked me how my day was. I sighed; and a pang of boredom and uselessness came over me. I replied simply. “Just another day!” “You always say that when I ask you!” she replied.

The bus came, I got on, got a seat, and eventually I got to my stop. I walked home and was surprised to see a crowd of people and police standing in front of the #53 apartment building. (I live at the #52). The one lane that runs in front of the buildings was blocked by three cars which were parked so close together that I assumed that there had been an accident which would have explained the crowds and police. But walking pass the car expecting to see damage, I saw instead that the cars were parked within inches of each other and I could see no damage.

Arriving at the apartment, I asked Jenny what was going on. She told me that a woman had stopped her car in front of the apartment building and was waiting for her son to come down. The problem was that her son didn't come down right away and the drivers who were waiting in the lane because of her became piqued. So piqued that they become that they decided to not move their cars. A three car standoff ensued. Jenny told me that they almost came to blows.

The standoff started about 8:00. I arrived home about 10:15. I had a vantage point on the standoff from my third floor apartment window and I was continually checking in on it as I got ready to go to bed. The standoff was marked by people standing around with brief bursts of loud and seemingly animated conversation. There were policemen and security guards milling about with civilians.

The standoff ended at about 11:30 pm. It seems that everyone got in their cars and drove away.

I work today 10:00 to 18:00. I woke to see rain. It would have annoyed me so much but Tony had to go to school on this Saturday. I really felt sorry for him. Poor little fellow. He has to have me as his father.

[Home Laptop]

Tony is happy to see me because he wants to play with my Ipad.

A woman sat beside and asked if I was the person on the bus TV. I said I was, sheepishly. I just wanted to be left alone.

Sunday [September 29]

I don't work today. My five day holiday begins! What am I going to do? Not much. I'll stick around the house for the most part, and play it by ear. None of the students, I talked to yesterday, told me that they had big plans either.

Tony goes to school today because of a shuffling around of days off so the holiday can be seven days long.

I wear pants and my sweat jacket. The weather is cooling down.

An old friend of mine in Canada just recently had a birthday. Thanks to a reminder email I was able to send him a greeting. Hopefully, we will be to get together and talk on the phone. Happy Birthday Eric Van Munster!

Jenny went to the dentist in the morning. She didn't enjoy the experience. They were using drills and whatnot; and it was painful.

I meet her at the Tesco where we ate lunch at KFC and then did a bit of shopping.

Back home, we waited for Tony to finish school. I passed the time by reading The Search for Modern China and then watching this 1965 film, that I was finally able to get downloaded, called Simon of the Desert.

I downloaded the film because it was listed on a top 100 Catholic films article that I had found on the Internet. I had a notion that Simon of the Desert was this religious ascetic who spent a long time living on a column. People doing very ascetic things is very appealing me. Having the mental resources to survive in solitary confinement is something that I have grown to desire to be able to do.

I watched the move, found it quite affecting and startling, and was surprised to learn that it had been made by a Surreal and Atheist film director.

The movie started out, as one would expect, with a crowd of Christians honoring Simon. It was all quite solemn. However, I should have realized that something was up with this movie when Simon was being honored for having been on the column for six years, six months, and six days.

The film then startled me because it had nudity in it. It was not something that you would have expected from a black and white movie made in the mid-1960s, as well as from a movie that had made a list of top 100 Catholic films. But the nudity was used to show the ascetic being tempted by the devil so it wasn't gratuitous and not blasphemous I thought.

As the movie proceeded, Simon, on his column, was being questioned and tested by monks and other characters, some very modern, who were very cynical about what he was doing. This was something I would have expected from a truly Catholic film because Jesus himself had to deal with this from his followers and the society in which he lived.

But it was the film's ending that truly surprised and unsettled me so that I was a little confused as to what its message was. The Devil was played by a woman, a very fetching girl, in the film. Early in the film, she had tempted Simon without success. But at the end of the film, she returned and took Simon off his column. They got on a jet plane, headed to a big city and a 1960s nightclub where the young people are dancing furiously to some very rocking music. The Devil gets up to dance and Simon, who looks like an old professorial type completely out of place in the nightclub, tells her that he wants to go home. From the dance floor, the Devil tells Simon that he can't because another person has moved into it. The music keeps playing and the kids keep dancing as the movie ends.

The film's concluding scene, besides being very startling – one of the most startling ends to a movie I have ever seen, depicted a choice that I personally have dealt with my life. Taking to the bus to work, I have flipped between listening to religious podcasts and the rock music I have on my Ipod. But more than just podcasts the ending depicted the many choices and temptations I have in life. In fact, the whole tenor of my life was depicted in the two final scenes. The film showed the allure of decadence. But was the movie trying to tell us to choose the night clubs of life and eschew the religious life?

As soon as the film ended, I had to Google for reactions to the film. I was disappointed to see that the film was loved by some atheists who said it showed how religion was all wrong, but as I thought more about the film and considered what I had read on the Internet about it, I now think the film was something a Catholic could watch and say they liked. I say the film was in fact more realistic than surrealistic. Its seeming incongruities depicted the actual temptations that life presents to the spirit in an artistic way. And what do atheists know about religion anyway? If they depict life realistically, atheists can make spiritual films.

I further read that the film's startling ending was the result of the film makers running out of money and so was it hastily made. This only goes to show that giving an artist all he wants may not be the best way to make a masterpiece. Sometimes, you can make an impact on the cheap.

The film was just 45 minutes long, as well because of its small budget, and so I was able to finish it before I had to pick up Tony.

It was my second time to pick up Tony at his primary school. The picking up of children at school is a ritual that I have seen done thousands of times by Chinese parents. My going to pick up Tony, however, was quite the sight for the Chinese parents and and the students at Tony's primary school. I heard a child exclaim 老外(laowai or foreigner) seven times in quick succession. I pretended not to hear that as I did a mental rolling of the eyes.

I picked up Tony and we went for a sight-see on the family E-bike. I first took Tony along the canal so we could look at boat traffic. Standing on a six foot high canal wall, we saw what looked like a hand floating in the water. The “hand” was green and black. It looked to have four fingers and nails with thumb under the surface of the water. I imagined that the hand was attached to an arm that was reaching up from a body floating or resting an arm's length below the surface. I threw some rocks at the “hand” to see what happened. One rock hit the “hand” directly so that the “hand” disappeared from view for five or six seconds before again returning to the surface. This freaked Tony out and we left. We went to a nearby park which the canal ran by and I observed pieces of wood and plants floating in the water that had the same dark and green hue of the “hand.”

We then rode through a transportation commercial park where we were able to see all manner of things having to do with vehicles and transportation. At one spot in the park, Tony wanted to go watch a digger in operation. Something about the digger was drawing a crowd. We wanted to see what was happening but the crowd started staring at us. We were the show now, and the show was watching us. I had to leave.

--

The Andis Kaulins in China Weekly: September 16, to September 22, 2013

Gratitude:  Thank God for holidays!

Acknowledgement: I don't think I am good for much of anything.

Requests: Email me at andiskaulins@qq.com.

The AKIC Week in Brief: It was a week of incidents such as running into people. Some people just happened know me from before. Some knew me from my blog or from bus television. It was also a week of being in holiday mood as I took Thursday off for the Mid-Autumn Festival and began to look forward to a five day stretch of days off for the Chinese National Day holiday. There was a change in my routine, as I took a different bus route to work.

About AKIC: If you want to learn what Andis & AKIC are all about, you can visit here.

An AKIC Glossary

If there are things about AKIC you don't know about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can go here to find out what they are all about.

AKIC Weekly Features:

I in in China!  我祝你们中秋节！

祝你国庆节？我不知道！

I am Canadian! 我是加拿大人！I hear it was cold in Brandon, Manitoba; and the water in Winnipeg was brown. From the Wuxi Water Crisis to the Winnipeg Water Crisis! Ha!

I am Latvian (sort of)! I can barely speak ten words of Latvian.

Wuxi Peach Maoists Update: Visit here to find out how Your Peach Maoists did in week two.

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary! In certain contexts, I wouldn't want to be a conservative. For example, being conservative now in China means wanting to keep the Chicoms in power. I am not for that. I would love to see China become a constitutional monarchy. I prefer calling myself a reactionary because I believe human nature never changes and humans never progress toward anything in their earthly existence. I believe in the Nicene Creed and that the only poverty that can be fought in our live is a spiritual poverty.

I teach English! If only the students would prepare before they came to class, I could actually teach them something.

I am not a freak! I just like to act like I am one! Mind you, it isn't easy to be a freak in this day and age. Non-conformity is really conformity these days and true eccentricity is not tolerated.

I like to Read! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:

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

Ulysses by James Joyce.  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney figures he will have the whole novel covered in about 22 years.  Delaney completed episode #171 this week and is working his way through the chapter that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far as reading the book.  I will be finished my reading of it, I figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies. It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it, and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with it

The Holy Bible King James Version.   I am reading a chapter, or more, a day of the greatest book of all-time. I have finished the the General Epistle of James and the First Epistle General of Peter, and am now reading the Second.

Columns by Father Schall. I have been able to take all his archived writings and place them on the Dotdotdot app.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Like Father Schall's writings, I have been able to place its contents on the Dotdotdot app.

The Limits of Pure Democracy by WH Mallock. Oligarchy is man's natural state. Attempts to have it otherwise are illogical.

The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. A good book, but certainly not an authoritative book about China. One gets the impression that China is so big that it is hard for an historian to write a clearly focused book about it.

Mao Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi. A Hagiography given to me by a local.

I like to take photos

I publish them in the following blogs:  AKIC wordpress , TKIC blogspot, TKIC wordpress, Views of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot and Views of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress.

I like to make videos

Here is my Youtube Channel and my Youku Channel.

I like to cut and paste quotations:

200 We should not conclude that everything is permitted, if God does not exist, but that nothing matters.

202 Do they preach the truths in which they believe, or the truths in which they believe they ought to believe? [Good Question!]

210 The individual today rebels against immutable human nature so that he might refrain from amending his own correctable nature.

217 Societal salvation is near when each person admits that he can save only himself. Society is saved when its supposed saviors despair. [A despairing Obama is a good thing indeed.]

218 When today they tell us that someone lacks personality, we know they are speaking of a simple, trustworthy, upright being. [I have taken the expression to mean they find the person boring. But then boring, trustworthy and upright beings don't stand a chance in this day and age.]

228 The intelligent man's unjust judgements tend to be truths wrapped up in a bad mood.

229 The people have never been feted except at the expense of another social class.

230 Modern man already knows that political solutions are ludicrous and suspects that economic solutions are too. [It is certainly true to say that politics and economics don't mix like oil and water. Oil and water are useful things however. Is it better to say the politics and economics are like jealousy and materialism because both don't solve man's real problems?]

240 I envy those who do not feel that they own only their stupidities. [These people are saintly.]

WH Mallock:

It is, however, one thing for a man to accept a principle as such, and quite another to be satisfied with its particular application to himself. [That is the test of anyone who is conservative or reactionary. They would have to accept a lower position in life if that is what their talents consign themselves to. However, I suspect many are conservative because of a need to feel superior to socialists.]

David Warren:

The apes are specialized, each species for its niche; men, to the contrary, were generalists from our beginning. It is to be regretted that the modern university is, for the most part, graduating apes, not men.

A hideous, ape-like, destructive force has been at large in our world for generations, & through the hierarchy of our Church for at least the last two.

Literalism, reductionism, point-scoring, prioritizing, are marks of the poorly educated mind. [Thinking of point-scoring. I think how lefties always like to bring up the unfortunate hunting accident of U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney. Contrariwise, I think of how those on the right like to bring up the many verbal gaffes of President Obama and Vice-President Biden – this is done in response to the lefties trying to score points of George W. Bush's gaffes. Thinking of Literalism, I have run into a few ignorant Ape-like Wuxi Expats (most Wuxi Expats are Apes to be honest) who love to engage in this activity of taking something someone said too literally. I remember a few times having something I said, just for the sake of making conversation, taken literally and used to mock me for being trite. Thank God, I don't associate with these people. When I think of prioritizing, I think of the idea of being cool (Cool people are too cool to do common things); I think of the man who is all business all the time; I think of the man who even makes his leisure time a serious business; and I think of the people who compartmentalize. The latter remind me of SS concentration camp commanders who would go home to their wife and children after a hard day of work.]

Theodore Dalrymple:

My philosopher companion said that I should take pleasure in the good buildings of the square and disregard the bad for, after all, the good buildings were as good as they ever had been.

But, I said, the square was not just a lot of individual buildings, it was a Gestalt, more than the sum of its parts. The one atrocity destroyed it all.

The philosopher at first denied this, so I thought of an analogy. Suppose you are in a restaurant and your meal is delicious. Suddenly the diner at the next table vomits copiously. Do you continue to eat with the same delectation as before, just because the food on your plate remains unchanged?

[It is so hard to find a Gestalt in Wuxi that is beautiful. At best, Wuxi is a diner where the food at one table is delicious, and there is copious vomiting at every other table. For example, I have seen five star hotels located next to lots of rubble in China.]

The Andis Kaulins in China Weekly: September 2 to September 8, 2013

Gratitude:  I am thankful for food and beer. I am also thankful that I saw the Obama was no good from the first time I heard of him. So there is one thing I don't answer for!!!

Acknowledgment: I am one of those passive-aggressive types.

Requests: Please visit Views of China from Casa Kaulins! Lots of interesting things to be seen if you spend a little time exploring it. Also be sure to visit the page dedicated to my father and my new fantasy football site. Also, let's pray that Obama can do the right and honorable thing vis-a-via Syria. [Be that as it may, I am bashing Obama every chance I can in this week's blog entry. I have been holding back the last year or so. I think it is fine time I let some steam off!]

The AKIC Week in Brief: It was Tony's first week in Primary School and a radical change in our schedule. Tony has to be at school at 7:20 AM, and so he goes to bed before I arrive home from work. I started up a new blog for my fantasy football team. With a shrug of my shoulders, I observed the stupidity of Obama in the matter of Syria.

About AKIC: If you want to learn what Andis & AKIC are all about, you can visit here.

An AKIC Glossary

If there are things you don't know about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can go here to find out what they are all about.

AKIC Weekly Features:

I in in China!  我住在惠山新区。再回山，我和我孩子很喜欢看火车。

I am Canadian! On two separate occasions, I lived in Oromocto, New Brunswick.

I am Latvian (sort of)! Isiah Berlin was born in Riga. He is the most famous person to have come from that country.

I am a product of the Latvian diaspora.

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary! Living in the Age of Obama, one has to think of eternal things in order to keep one's sanity.

I teach English! Sometimes, I lead the students astray.

I am not a freak! Perhaps in the age I live in, I am.

I like to Read! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:

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

Ulysses by James Joyce.  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney figures he will have the whole novel covered in about 22 years.  Delaney completed episode #170 this week and is working his way through the chapter that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far as reading the book.  I will be finished my reading of it, I figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies. It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it, and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with it

The Holy Bible King James Version.   I am reading a chapter, or more, a day of the greatest book of all-time. I have finished the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Titus, the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Philemon and am now reading the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews.

Columns by Father Schall. I have been able to take all his archived writings and place them on the Dotdotdot app.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Like Father Schall's writings, I have been able to place its contents on the Dotdotdot app.

Diary of a Nobody by Weedon Goldsmith. Finished. I don't know if I got this book because I liked the title or because I found a recommendation for it on the Web. Either way, I like it. It is funny! Mister Gowing is coming, and Mister Cummings is going! What fun! And I now know of a manner in which to write my diary...

The Limits of Pure Democracy by WH Mallock. I am reading this book on the recommendation of David Warren who says it is essential reading for students of political science. Pure Democracy is logistically impossible says Mallock who provides countless detailed examples of how attempts at democracy always seem to lead to a situation where some sort of oligarchy is required. I won't be able to look at talk about Democracy in the same way because of what I have read in this book so far.

General Gordon by Seton Churchill. This is the General who helped in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion. This biography, subtitled Christian Hero, depicts a military Christian who wouldn't stand muster among modern PC types. But I can help but find Chinese Gordon to be a more humane and a genuinely decent man than even the least selfish of today. Gordon is a genuine hero who puts the likes of Barabbas Obama and Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton to shame.

I like to take photos

I publish them in the following blogs:  AKIC wordpress , TKIC blogspot, TKIC wordpress, Views of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot and Views of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress.

I like to make videos

Here is my Youtube Channel and my Youku Channel.

I like to cut and paste quotations:

Here are the Don Colachoisms that I cut and pasted this week:

57 Spasms of injured vanity, or of greed trampled underfoot—democratic doctrines invent the evils they denounce in order to justify the good they proclaim.

61 The momentary beauty of the instant is the only thing in the universe which accords with the deepest desire of our souls.

62 In medieval society, society is the state; in the bourgeois society, state and society confront each other; in the Communist society, the state is society.

67 Vulgarity consists in striving to be what we are not. [This blog must be a veritable fountain of vulgarity.]

76 Whoever does not turn his back on the contemporary world dishonors himself.

78 We only have those virtues and those flaws which we do not suspect.

79 The soul grows inwards. [I wish this was true.]

82 Write concisely, so as to finish before making the reader sick. [Good advice!]

92 The prestige of “culture” makes the fool eat though he is not hungry. [I have noticed this phenomenon and asked my students about it in some my classes about culture.]

94 History shows not the inefficacy of actions but the futility of intentions.

96 The arguments with which we justify our conduct are often dumber than our actual conduct. It is more tolerable to watch men live than to hear them spout their opinions.

102 To think like our contemporaries is the prescription for prosperity and for stupidity.

106 We need people to contradict us in order to refine our ideas. [Oh God! My life is bereft of people contradicting me.]

117 Mankind believes that it corrects its mistakes by repeating them.

118 He who understands least is he who stubbornly insists on understanding more than can be understood.

119 Civilization is what old men manage to salvage from the onslaught of young idealists. [That could be a purpose of this blog and the latter stage of my life.]

120 Thinking does not prepare one to live, nor does living prepare one to think.

124 To depend solely on God’s will is our true autonomy.

125 Eloquence is the child of presumption. [That is why it is best to keep one's mouth shut.]

129 The idea of another only interests the fool when it touches on his own personal tribulations. [That is why complaining with others is such a joy.]

132 Who does not fear that the most trivial of his present moments will seem a lost paradise in years to come?

135 Despair is the dark valley through which the soul ascends toward a universe no longer sullied by greed. [Makes me happy to feel despair, this aphorism does.]

136 Nothing is more dangerous than to solve ephemeral problems with permanent solutions. [Ever notice how government programs designed to solve some social ill never go away?]

Here is one quote from David Warren: To my mind, the election of Obama was a mistake; his re-election an unforgiveable mistake, on the part of the American people. Neither USA nor allies could afford eight years of hollow at the centre of Western power. [I am in complete agreement with this quote. Here are some thoughts it causes me to have: I despise anti-Americanism. People who spout such beliefs are to be shunned like Nazis or Ku Klux Klansmen or Socialists. I believe America is a decent country which has done its best to use the power it has in a good way. When anti-Americans like to talk of the faults of America, they are missing the point. So America isn't perfect but it is lot better than the rest of the world who envy what America has and has been able to do... But then the Americans had to elect Obama. Now, anti-Americans love Obama. What is a person who likes America, Americans, and despises anti-Americans to make of this? It would seem that maybe the anti-Americans are right and America is irredeemable. After all, America did elect Obama – a dumb thing to do. But anti-Americans praised his election. So it is ironic, that the election of Obama, an event of great joy to anti-Americans, is proof that perhaps America now is irredeemable.]

I fashion myself to be a 21^st Century Pepys

Monday [September 2]

Tony is at Primary School now. God, I hope he is doing okay.

I don't work today.

I got an email form Laslzo Montgomery of the China History Podcast. He told me he had a good writeup in the South China Morning Post.

I launched my Wuxi Peach Maoists website this morning. The Peach Maoists are Wuxi's official NFL fantasy football team. Why the name Wuxi Peach Maoists? It is tongue-in-cheek but I have my reasons. Where my mother lives in Canada, the team's main sports team is called the Brandon Wheat Kings. Brandon has a lot of wheat; Wuxi is famous for its peaches. Brandon is located in a country whose system of government evolved from a constitutional monarchy, hence the Kings; Wuxi is located in a country created by Maoists, hence the Maoists. The logo which is a pop art image of Mao superimposed on a peach is meant to resemble the logo of the Washington Redskins who I hope will not buck into PC pressure and change their name.

Tuesday [September 3]

[Home Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

Yesterday, I spent the day at home. With Tony having gone to school so early in the morning, there was a change in the Casa Kaulins routine which required a day at home to recover from. I took the time to start up my Wuxi Peach Maoists website, convert about six movies from avi to mp4 format, watch the rest of the Japanese film Shall We Dance, produce and upload Scenes from My Life in Wuxi China #46, and read.

Yesterday, Jenny had a visitor who wanted to see the photos I had on my laptop so I pulled out the photos I had scanned from my family photo albums. Looking at the photos from my past, the visitor thought that we were rich. I told her that in the Canadian context, we weren't. I also came upon a photo of myself wearing a graduation cap. I was probably about six or seven, Tony's current age, when the photo was taken so, using a photo software program, I put the old photo of me and a photo taken of Tony wearing a graduation cap together.

Yesterday evening, I took Tony, on his request, to a park. He brought along his push-bike but unthinkingly threw it to the ground when alternative chances for fun appeared. He instead grabbed a thin branch and ran around with another little boy; and they took to whacking bushes. He also got on some other boy's bicycle and rode it around while that boy played with his push-bike. He drove me mad!!

While Tony played, I read Don Colacho on My Ipod.

Shall We Dance was a charming movie. This Japanese office worker sees a melancholy but pretty looking woman standing in the window of a dance studio, and decides to take up ballroom dancing. He keeps the fact of his doing so from his wife and child. While dancing, he meets an interesting cast of characters, overcomes his infatuation with the pretty woman, who is a professional dancer, and becomes a decent dancer himself.

Tony fell asleep, my Ipad in his hand, at about 8:40 PM! Wonderful! Cross our fingers and hope that this become his new routine!!

This morning, Jenny and Tony were on the road at 7:00 AM!

[School Laptop]

I took the 602 bus (not the 602支!) and the 81 bus (a double-decker) to school today. I noticed that the 81's windshield on the second deck was cracked on the top passenger-side corner. If there is ever going to be a smashed windshield on a double-decker bus, that top passenger-side corner is the place that you would most likely see a smash occur.

At the 85 Degree Bakery, I chanced to see a young girl, quite pretty, wearing shorts that were beyond what I would have thought was the acceptable level of modesty. She might just as well have been wearing her underwear. [LECTOR: You are a pervert for having noticed that and then deciding to write about it in righteous terms! ANDIS: True enough, but I needed something to journalize about. I couldn't help, even at my advanced age, to have noticed and been struck by it.]

Wednesday [September 4]

[Home Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

Last night, Tony was fast asleep when I got home. It has been a rare thing but I expect to see more of it for the school year.

I have downloaded two episodes of Views of China from Casa Kaulins; episodes #15 and #16 to be exact. I did this despite reading a Taki's Magazine screed against the tweeting habit which correctly pointed out that constant exposure of one's self to the Internet was narcissistic.

Hey world! Look at AKIC and all its subsidiary blogs, and see what an interesting life I lead! That is the basic theme of all of I do on the Internet. [LECTOR: Amen!]

Hey world! See what a beautiful child I have!

Hey world! See what profundity I am capable of!

I finished watching The Naked Spur, another James Stewart Western. The film had a good story and was shot in the Rockies of Colorado. I downloaded it via torrent.

[School Laptop]

I took the #25 bus to work today. If I see the 602支 drive by while I am on the way to the bus stop, I know that I would be in for a long wait for the next one so I hop on an empty 25 if one happens to show up.

Sight of the day: A red headed Chinese person or perhaps an albino man boarded the 25 bus. He was dressed for business and was carrying a bag with a shoulder strap. He had this mischievous grin on his face and for a brief moment, he suspended himself above the floor by hanging onto to the overhead bar used for passengers who have to stand..

I just listened to the China History Podcast 123. It had a rather obscure topic I thought: the history of the Chinese diaspora in Mexico, but listening to it, I could not help but be engrossed. The Mexican Chinese became victims of nationalist forces unleashed by Mexico's 1910 revolution.

An engineer from Johnson Controls talked to me of PM, by which I think he meant Planned Maintenance or Periodic Maintenance. My thoughts then gravitated to the PM of my creation: The Wuxi Peach Maoists. My PM's will have their first match-up this upcoming weekend.

今天，我开写中文在我的日记。今天，我有五个课。第一课，我受教英文的衣服的词。I mean to say that today I will begin to write Chinese words in my diary. I have five classes today. My first class, I will talk about English clothing words.

I just noticed that I haven't smoked a cigarette in a while. The last time I may have smoked one was in late July. How I have managed to do it? I have made the spending of money on smoking anathema to my very being and I have avoided being near people who may offer me cigarettes.

Are they “the students” or “my students?” I call them “the students.” I hear other teacher use “my.' This practice on the part of other teachers seem self-aggrandizing to me. Other professions talk of “my clients” or “my patients” and so teachers hearing this want to create similar aura of importance for themselves. I will have none of it. [LECTOR: Thereby creating your own aura of righteousness...]

He doesn't look me in the eye. Coward. [LECTOR: You are not the only one! Ha!]

Thursday [September 5, 2013]

[School Laptop]

Last night, a student told me that there had been a great explosion at Hynix in the Wuxi New District. The fire was black and lasted for at least two hours. This is not the first time I have heard of this: I had a student tell me that there a tire factory in the WND that had been on fire as well months ago.

今天，下雨。Today, Rain.

Last night, both Tony and Jenny were asleep when I arrived home. At supper time, I had tried to phone Tony just so I could talk him other than at the short time in the morning when he is getting ready to go to school.

Thanks to my Wuxi Google alert, I read a story about corruption involving land in the Binhu District. That district government, said the article, was flipping land in order to get cash. As well, the government was stealing land from residents. I have been told that the Hui Shan New District, where I reside, is having similar problems. I was told that the local government there had made its money by selling all its land and now was lacking in cash sources. It seems Bin Hu has tried to solve a similar cash problem by land flipping which sounds eerily similar to the real estate flipping that was taking place in America before 2008.

我看书在我的Ipad。 I read books on my Ipad.

我的中文马马虎虎。

今天，我下班九点钟。

Friday [September 6] 星期六【九日六号】

[School Laptop]

I work 11:00 to 21:00 today. However, I will be home early. I will do a demo class between five and six this afternoon.

It is raining this morning, not in summer torrents but in an autumn shower. Jenny & Tony rode to school via e-bike in the rain but they won't be doing so next week when Tony will have a ride to school.

This new early morning routine has everybody, even me, feeling tired.

I was listening to this podcast about plastic bag bans in the U.S. In Wuxi, you have to pay a few extra maos if you want to get a plastic bag; in many American cities, they have banned plastic bags entirely. I can't imagine how people could function. The podcast talked of shoppers driving a little extra distance to go to jurisdictions with no plastic bag bans. As well, relatives are bringing plastic bags from jurisdictions without the bag ban to relatives in jurisdictions who are subject to it.

I can almost say that I don't have loose lips. I do however have loose typing hands with which I may not commit any slanders against anyone in particular but I do slander groups as a whole. So my silence though laudatory is not accompanied by any corresponding virtuous action; and I don't use my lips in even the smallest way to promote virtue.

Since I will continue to prep for this demo class, this is all I will do today for journalizing.

Saturday [September 7]

[School Laptop]

I was at on the grounds of Jiangnan University yesterday evening. The first time, in my nine years of being in Wuxi, to have been there. I saw a lot of buildings and a stadium, but I didn't leave the place with any impressions.

I was near campus in order to do a demo class for a software company whose offices are nearby.

I got home about 7:30 PM last evening, and of course Tony took the opportunity to play with my Ipad. He feel asleep with it while having placed it on a pillow so he could watch it will falling asleep – it made for a great photo.

I finished watching the Far Country, another Western starring James Stewart. I enjoyed it. It was set in the Yukon and Alaska territories but, as I suspected it, was actually filmed in Alberta.

Last night, I started watching Bend of the River, yet another Western starring James Stewart. I will have to put him in the pantheon of Western Stars which includes John Wayne. I can't help but be taken with Stewart's aw-schucks and taciturn acting methods, and his tall & lean physique which is not in fashion thanks to that modern cult of body. It is probably true to say that when acting in movies, less is more, and Stewart does this to a tee.

Last night, I was told of a young men, just getting out of university, whose rich factory-owning fathers were buying them Audis. I commented that if I had the money, I wouldn't be spoiling my child in that manner. I will spoil him on the cheap...

If you want to ruin the society from which you benefit, spoil your children.

Is the word “than” a preposition or a conjunction? I had stupidly thought that it was a preposition, and hence I told the students that you could say “I am happier than him” or “I am happier than he is” and not say “I am happier than he” based on the assumption that the “than” was a preposition. If “than” is a preposition then you couldn't say “than he” because “he” could not be the object of a preposition.

But then this morning, a student told me that he was told that “than” was a conjunction. I told him that I had assumed that it was a preposition, but I immediately went to look at my references and search on the Internet to check. It seems that it is okay to say “happier than he” because the “is” is often assumed, and that maybe “happier than him” is incorrect because the “than” is said to be a conjunction. Swan's Practical English Grammar says that “happier than him” is correct in an informal style, but “happier than he” is correct in a formal style. On the Internet, I read that some grammarians say that “than” can be thought of a preposition, and there may even be controversy about this, but most of the time “than” acts like a conjunction, a coordinating conjunction in fact. The fact that “than” is in fact a coordinating conjunction is the cause of the confusion I had on the matter for you can really slap two independent clauses together with a “than.”

So, lets look at the following phrases using “than:”

1. I am happier than he.
2. I am happier than him.
3. She likes me more than him.
4. She likes me more than he does.
5. She likes tea more than him.
6. She likes tea more than he.

From what I have learned, sentence #1 and #2 are correct, although I would say I am happier than he is, and not assume anything. Sentences #3 and #4 have very different meanings. In #3, it is a question of “she likes me” or “she likes him;” in #4, it is a question of “she likes me” or “he likes me.” The same problems arise with sentences #5 and #6. Sentence #5 is a question of whether she likes tea more or she likes him more; while Sentence #6 answers the question of who likes tea more. So, I am going to have to be more careful when I talk about comparisons. Now, I think that “than” is a conjunction in #4 and #6 most certainly; the other four examples, I am not certain. And #6, I would say as follows: She likes tea more than he likes tea.

Sunday [September 8]

[School Laptop]

Last night after work, I went straight to a restaurant in the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza. This restaurant was so big that it had two floors, each about a football field long, and its own elevator. I went there because Jenny was treating the family who will give Tony a drive to primary school and back.

The food was standard China banquet food. Okay but boring if you have eaten as many times as I have. I ended up drinking about four bottles of beer and felt sick for the rest of the evening and through the night where I couldn't sleep. I woke this morning with a headache and my day's opening bowel movement was a wet and dark one. Clearly I had had something that wasn't good for me last night.

It is now evening:

• I lazed around all day more or less. I did vacuum around the house and clean behind the toilet where I discovered the plunger that I had thought Jenny had thrown away.
• I took photos for my Casa Kaulins Blog.
• I filmed, edited, and uploaded Views of China from Casa Kaulins #17.
• I read some of the General Gordon biography. He was a hero who exhibited real courage unlike Obama.
• It took a while to coax Tony but I got him out of Casa Kaulins and onto the Kaulins Family China E-Bike which we took to Jiangyin for a bit of train-spotting. We went to the area near the Xiake park where I had recorded some scenes for Scenes from My Life in Wuxi, China #46.
• Tony acted strangely on the outing. As soon as we got to our train-spotting spot, Tony wanted to leave. He first talked of going to the Wanda Plaza but I would have nothing of that. He then told me that it was going to rain. Making our way back, Tony then insisted on stopping at a few places on the way.
• Dogs that we passed were not very friendly. We even had one chase us a ways.
• We did encounter this friendly old woman who was on a pedal bike. Seeing Tony run on the road, she expressed concern when she saw him stumble onto the pavement.

再见！