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.

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary for September 30 to October 6, 2013

Monday [September 30]

[Home Laptop]

Tony went to school.

Andis read fifty pages of the Search of Modern China. He also watched the first hour of a movie in which Ava Gardner plays a woman named Pandora.

Andis picked Tony up at two p.m. His school got out early today. The parking around the school was frightful, even for the e-bikers. There was even a traffic jam with an irate motorist which made Andis laugh.

At three PM, the K family took a bus downtown so they could go to the Grandma's restaurant in the Nanchang Market.

They got to the Grandma's restaurant at 4:30PM. They were quickly seated but had to wait for their guests to arrive.

The guests, two of Tony's Primary School teachers, arrived at 6:05 PM. Andis was annoyed.

Jenny and the teachers chatted till about 8:00 PM. During that time, Andis read about five chapters of the novel Quo Vadis. He also came up with an idea to write a piece about taking up smoking again – it is something he would put on the school's website.

The K family arrived home about 10:00 PM.

Tuesday [October 1]

[Home Laptop]

Chinese National Day. I didn't work.

We had lunch, at the Wanda Plaza Pizza Hut, with an American who is teaching English at Jiangsu Xishan High School which is the Hui Shan District, just down the street from the Tesco and Wanda Plaza. Bill, I learned, is from California and has had experience teaching in Vietnam before coming to Wuxi.

Why did he come to Wuxi? He told me because of what he read in my blog. My bloggings, he said, made him choose a gig in Wuxi instead of in Shanghai.

He went on to tell me that I must be famous because of my blog. It seems that any time a teacher explores the possibility of teaching in Wuxi, my website appears high on the search rankings.

I mention what he said not to be boastful. When he said I was famous, I immediately thought that it couldn't be so. I really think I am like the Unabomber, the Unabomber of Wuxi. I sit in my small apartment in the hinterland of Wuxi sending out packets of satire and reaction.

If I really was famous, I would be getting speaking fees and engaging in more correspondence with readers. It could be that my reactionary views turn off lots of readers.

Anyway, I learned that there are twelve foreigners living at the Xishan High School. I never would have thunk it. It seems that I'd never cross paths with any of them, except Bill, because I work evenings and weekends and don't have much time to hang in the area of the Xishan school. The teachers hang out at the Starbucks at the Wanda Plaza but the chances of my being there in the evenings are rare.

The Xishan High School teachers are given dormitory style accommodations in their school. One of the reasons Bill wanted to talk to me was to see what I could tell him about renting an apartment in the area. The school accommodations left something to be desired, he told me.

After lunch with Bill, the K family wandered through the Wanda Plaza. There were far too many people there for Andis. He told Jenny that he wanted to be beamed out. After an hour of conversation with a foreigner, he was plum tuckered out.

Andis ordered a chocolate sundae at the McDonald's ice cream stand. It was just his luck that the chocolate syrup was running out. He saw the manager, a chubby woman with short hair and glasses, desperately tapping on the syrup dispenser trying to get the requisite amount of chocolate on his sundae. The manager had to run to the main restaurant counter with his sundae to get another bag of syrup.

What is AKIC's opinion of Starbucks? He is not a fan. He doesn't really like to consume anything they serve there, whether it be a beverage of food; and he thinks the atmosphere doesn't rate the premium that makes its product so expensive.

In the evening, Andis took Tony on an E-Bike ride to Yanqiao town. He got there just as the crowds were all making their way home.

Wednesday [October 2]

[Home Laptop]

I don't work today. The fourth of my five days off. The second of the three day Chinese National Holiday.

I didn't bespatter my blogs with any National Day symbols. The Mao Dynasty is not truly worthy of celebration.

When I took Tony to Yanqiao town last night, I bought him a book that I shown him in a book store. The book was a full of fold-and-glue-together trucks, emergency vehicles, and trains; and so he liked it immediately. When we got home, he had me put together the firetruck for him. This morning, he stuck his face into my face to wake me up and ask me to put together one of the buses in the book. Now, I wish I hadn't shown him that book. I hate arts and crafty things.

I have an idea for my Views of China from Casa Kaulins video series. I will record drive-bys. That is, I will focus the camera on one vehicle or person moving past the Casa Kaulins window. Five or Six of these drive-bys will make a VOCFCK video. VOCFCK #27 will be the first.

I have set up the train set for Tony. He specifically asked me to set the track on bridges. He usually asks me to do this, but this time he asked because he was thinking to reenact the CRH high speed train crash of last year. He watched a video reenactment of the crash on Youku many times over. What had happened was that one train stalled out on the tracks because of an electrical problem brought on by a thunderstorm and then another train then ran into it. Train cars flew off the track which runs on a fifty meter high platform bridge. One car ended leaning against the side of the track bridge, one end in the air, the other in the ground. Tony had a train car do the same thing with the train set.

Tony wanted to go out and look at trains. So, I took him to the 惠江大桥 (pinyin: hui jiang da qiao), the bridge that links Wuxi and Jiangyin, and is our usual place to watch trains.

Before we got to the bridge, we rode through some spots of countryside residences that hadn't yet been claimed by apartment building developers. The countryside, we passed, didn't look at all natural. It seemed to be a place on the fringe of a garbage dump. Anything resembling a bigger patch of natural woodland was used as a dumping spot for trash.

At the Hui Jiang Bridge, we saw one train, and then Tony, after having begged to look at trains, wanted to go back. I suppose this was because he was annoyed at my being annoyed at him. What had happened was that he had decided to sit on the e-bike, as it was parked, despite my telling him not to. When the e-bike tipped over as I feared it would, I really got annoyed at Tony and absolutely blasted him verbally for not having listened to me. My harangue caused him to put on a pouty hurt look which caused me to immediately give him a consoling hug. But he had lost interest in spotting trains and looking at the goats ( which were grazing nearby under the Hui Jiang Bridge) after his mishap.

Tony, even in a pouty mood, didn't want to go home without spending some time in the Hui Shan Central Park. There, he tried to play with kids who didn't seemed interested in playing with him. Like father; like son.

Andis, who finds the time spent at the park playground dreadfully dull, passed the time reading Quo Vadis on his Ipod. After finishing a chapter, he wandered the hill going to spots of the park that he hadn't stood at before. At one place, he saw some older persons using farming tools to clear a spot of grass on a little bump of land standing amidst a swamp. Were they going to use the spot to grow some vegetables? Andis wondered. At another spot he was sickened to see to tissue paper and turds. The public park was disgusting beyond all belief, still, to Andis whose Western eyes were nine years removed from Canada.

Thursday [October 3]

[Home Laptop]

Last day of the holiday.

Last night, Andis & Tony went to the Tesco KFC (as opposed to the Wanda KFC) for dinner. Jenny went downtown to have her hair done.

In the middle of dinner, Andis noticed that Tony had put his pants on backwards. So Andis, not giving two cares about the decorum of it, took Tony's pants off and put them on proper.

The weather being nice, Andis & Tony walked to the Wanda Plaza. After a search of the places where toys could be bought, a boat that could be a bathtub toy was found and purchased. Andis & Tony returned home where it was no problem to get Tony to take a bath.

Tony then went to bed at a decent time.

Andis read David Warren's excitement about the government shutdown in the USA, and became excited himself. He hopes it lasts a long time. The Democrats, particularly Obama and Harry Reid are totally at fault in this affair.

Andis finished watching Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. An interesting movie with Ava Gardner looking very beautiful in an adult way, and James Mason speaking in a compelling style. He then started watching Hud with Paul Newman.

On his days off, Andis has had a chance to wander around the area passing by residences. Even the poorest looking neighborhoods, full of dank dirty decaying structures, have cars parked everywhere. What portion of their budgets are put into having a car?

Finishing watching Hud. I'll remember you Honey! You're the one the got away! Funny, I thought the line had “baby,” not “honey.” It was the second time I had seen the movie. From the first viewing, I remembered not liking the Hud character and not quite understanding the attraction between him and the strong woman character. The rest of the story I had completely forgotten. I find I'd liked the movie much better, watching it a second time.

The first time, the film left me cold. For the life of me, I can't remember exactly when it was that I saw the movie the first time.

There is a reason, I now see, why Newman is a movie star. His appearance. Those deep set eyes. And he doesn't ever overplay it. He is cool.

In the afternoon, Tony decided, after refusing earlier when asked, to go out of doors. He decided that he wanted to be taken to the playground at the Hui Shan Central Park. I didn't want to, preferring instead to take Tony an an e-bike ride of exploration around the area, but he wouldn't have anything to do with it, so to the park we went. I told Tony he had half an hour to play – thirty minutes being about all I can stand at the park which is dirty and trashy and full of too many people starring at me.

I had taken some solace from having seen that the people running the park had placed barriers at the entrance to stop visitors from driving their cars into the park using the park sidewalks as roadways. But as I entered the park I saw three vehicles had driven in all the same. Bloody toads, I thought, how did they do it? (When I told Jenny about this in the evening, she said that that was like Chinese to not care rules and other people. And if there was a way to get around common rules of behavior, they would find a way, she added.)

I suppose they will have to put tank barriers around the park to stop the vehicles from being driven in.

Much to my relief, Tony wanted to leave the park after fifteen minutes. However, he wanted to go to the Wanda Plaza and still wasn't interested in my exploration ideas, and so we went to the Wanda Plaza. There, we wandered. Tony went to his favorite haunts: a curio shop that sells toys and the Apple shop. We also went to the arcade and it was good to see that Tony was tall enough to play a driving game which had steering wheel and foot pedals. We capped our time together at the McDonald's where I had a double cheeseburger for the first time in the Hui Shan District after having lived there for five years...

Friday [October 4]

[School Laptop]

I work 11:00 to 21:00 today. It isn't a holiday officially, though it is for many Chinese who had their days off shifted around so they could get October 1 to October 7 off.

I don't feel like going work today. I really am going through the motions.

I wore long sleeves today. Maybe, I shouldn't have. I am sweating in the noon hour heat.

Saturday [October 4]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 18:00 today.

Alpha Kilo Indian Charlie

Tango Kilo Indian Charlie

Last night, on the bus ride home, I began to watch the movie Becket. I had found it mentioned on a list of top 100 Catholic movies on the Internet. After having watched about thirty minutes of it, I think it is a smashing picture with Peter O'Toole, Lawrence of Arabia, performing great in his role as the King and Richard Burton playing the role of Becket.

A interesting thing happened as I was watching the film. A scene early in the movie featured characters in ecclesiastical garb. A woman next to me saw this, tapped me on the shoulder, and showed me a cross that she had on what looked to be a transistor radio, but perhaps was her mobile phone. I guess she was a Christian. It was good to see.

[Home Laptop]

Tony & Jenny came downtown and met me after I finished teaching classes. We had dinner at Baishiluo and then walked to the newly open Suning Plaza.

Suning Plaza is a new shopping mall next to the Moresky360 Building and opposite the Banana Leaf Restaurant. I believe it was built on the former location of the #1 People's Hospital but Jenny says it wasn't. When I first heard about the Suning Plaza opening, I sarcastically thought that it was just what Wuxi needed: another large shopping mall. I had no intention of going to it but the idea to visit it came to me at dinnertime when Jenny said she wanted to go for a wander after we finished eating. The new mall was seven stories high with lots of clothing stores and restaurants. I don't see myself spending much time at that place other than to eat at a restaurant. The mall had nothing in it that other shopping areas in downtown Wuxi already had.

I will have to do some penance after my behavior on the bus. I didn't lost my temper or anything like that on that bus. I just was acting thoughtlessly and hadn't realized I was till Jenny pointed it out to me. I seemed to be too happy to have been able to get a seat on the bus, said Jenny, and I was earning the ire of someone standing next to me. I shall have to make a point of not being the first to get on the 635 bus and do a stretch of standing on my way home to make up for it.

Sunday [October 6]

[School Laptop]

I don't work today.

It is a rainy day. Not much to do but stay indoors.

I was out early in the morning to do an errand and I was wearing a e-bike raincoat while riding the e-bike. Something I hadn't done in years. There was a time when I took my e-bike from Casa Kaulins all the way to Zhongshan and Xueqian roads. Flat tires forced me to ride the bus.

I finished the 1964 film Becket starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. It was a great movie, with a great story, well-acted, well-shot with great sets.

A typhoon is supposed to come to Wuxi. Of course, it won't be hitting Wuxi full bore since Wuxi is about 100 km or so inland, but I won't be going out tomorrow.

We are supposed to go to the Wanda Plaza tonight. Jenny is treating the family that gives Tony a ride to school in the morning to dinner. Hopefully, we will go to the Xinjiang Restaurant.

I wasn't aware that the National Hockey League had realigned its division so that the Winnipeg Jets are now in the West instead of in a division of teams from the Atlantic Seaboard. But I found out soon enough as I looked at the NHL standings for the first time this season. The Jets have won their first two games of the season.

Jenny says the Typhoon will come to Wuxi tonight. We will have to close the windows, batten the hatches as it were.