The Andis Kaulins in China Diary for March 18 to March 24, 2014

Highlights

• Five shifts this week at school.
• Jenny's uncle died. Jenny went to the funeral leaving Tony to be taken care of by Andis.
• On Sunday, the K family went to the Shengtai Agriculture Park.
• I thought to give up watching Downton Abbey.
• I started learning Java.

Tuesday [March 18]

[Home Laptop]

• My shift today will be 13:00 to 21:00 today.
• Right now, I am dealing with an IOS Update to my Ipad. Basically, my Ipad is out of commission because, for whatever reason, I am re-installing everything into my Ipad like all the apps and the books. It looks like it will take an hour.
• Speaking of taking hours, editing the diary entry of yesterday, that is the one that I published to the Internet, took hours. Editing is a painful and time-consuming process.
• The Ipad updating and reloading has thrown off my concentration for the time being. I haven't done anything to fulfill my daily requirements other than to make this diary entry.
• I was able to wander the area around Casa K yesterday. I took photos and videos of some things that I saw, like the Wuxi Metro train doing test runs.
• Last night, it took me an hour to put together Tony's 132 piece puzzle. Tony had poured the pieces on the floor and as was my habit, I cleaned up after him.
• Hopefully, I can continue today's daily sub-entry at school.

[School Laptop]

• As I walked to the bus stop, I passed an intersection where I saw a near collision between a left-turning e-bike and an oncoming car. It was the e-biker who was definitely driving imprudently. She made a left turn rather quickly and without looking. If I had happened to have had my camera pointing at her, I would have had a nice image of the e-bike turning right in front of an moving car. The car slowing down prevented the collision. Amazingly, the driver didn't honk his horn and shout epitaphs at the woman.
• I took the 25 bus to get downtown.
• I took the seat over the back wheel. In front of me sat a young man who opened the window and leaned his head against on the window edge so he could spit outside. Gross.
• [Later] I have done my Chinese study for the day. One of my projects is to create a database of the flashcards used for the 1,000 flashcards textbook on yellowbridge.com.
• I did an English Corner about Europe. There were nine students attending. It went okay, not great but any stretch of the imagination. I was looking for something to get everyone talking and make the time flow quickly but it didn't really happen. One student said that steak came to mind when she thought of Europe – a far cry from Hitler.
• In my wallet, I had a 100 rmb note and no small change. I was planning to go to the Xinjiang restaurant for my mid-afternoon meal but I didn't want to break the 100 there, so I went to McDonalds for the bacon potato double burger.
• No classes till 19:00. I may be able to get all the things I want to do today!
• John admires his sister only. What does this sentence mean? What is the only modifying. Is it modifying sister? Is it modifying the whole sentence?

Wednesday [March 19]

[Home Laptop]

• I tell myself to not be lazy. So I tell myself to make the date headline for this day's entry bold and not to save it for later.
• My shift today is 13:00 to 21:00. Yesterday, I had three classes. Having started out with five, I was dismayed, in a strange way, when the girl from booking told me that two of my classes were canceled. I took advantage of the free time to occupy myself with interesting things like my Chinese study, my daily readings, and my computer study. However, my hopes of being able to use databases with Python was dashed when a module, one of my Python textbooks suggested I download, didn't install.
• It is colder today. Yesterday was warm and I saw some foreigners walking around in t-shirts. It has cooled down overnight and it might rain today; and so I will have to don an extra layer when I go out.
• The big change in temperature is making me feel weary. The thought of doing anything – even writing in this blog – is wearying me.
• I began to watch the sixth episode of the second season of Downton Abbey last night.
• No binge-viewing for me.
• I wait for news about the missing Malaysian airliner. But it is drowned out, on the Drudge Report, by news of what is happening in Crimea.
• War?
• I hear fireworks nearby. Has someone moved into Jia Zhou Yang Fang?
• I carry Tony to the pickup stop from where he is taken to school. He tells me he is cold. Really, he is lazy.
• I hang laundry that Jenny had washed.
• They say it is all Malaysian Airliner all the time on the news. I wouldn't know. I listen to podcasts and don't watch any television news.
• I need to fill this entry with humor. I need some hilarious things to happen. I need to think some hilarious thoughts.
• Can the Winnipeg Jets make the 2014 National Hockey League playoffs? I doubt it. Jets 2.0 as bad as Jets 1.0.

[School Laptop]

• It is raining cats and dogs. So it is annoying to be outside and I am wondering if my 13:00 student will show.
• Walk into a shop on rainy day and there will be a place to put your umbrellas near the entrance.
• Now, my pink umbrella is open and laying on the floor beside my desk. Open umbrellas being dried in offices is a common sight in Wuxi.
• Co-worker tells me that swishing a certain kind of olive oil in your mouth for ten to fifteen minutes is good for your health.
• My 13:00 student didn't show up.
• I got a database program to work using Python. Now, I need to refine it.

Thursday [March 20]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 10:00 to 21:00.
• I ran into 635 Sophia when I went to McDonalds to buy my second breakfast of the morning. She was off to her school where her day today consists of prepping for her weekend classes. My day, I told her, consists of doing a little bit of prepping, some teaching, and studying Chinese and Computer.
• I took the 602支 and then the 118 buses to work. The 118 bus was nearly empty. There was nothing but a driver, me, and another passenger on the bus. It was very unusual and contrasted with the packed-like-sardines 635 bus I took home last night.
• On the 635 bus home, many of the standing passengers were playing with their mobiles. One standing passenger earned this mention in my blog because she was watching a video on her Ipad. This is something I would never have thought to do if I was standing.
• Having a wife and son to support, I am glad I don't have much social intercourse outside of work because, really, my days at school are very, very cushy.
• What is my work? Talking to students and sometimes correcting their English. Reviewing an old English grammar yesterday, I realized that I don't know as much about English grammar as I thought I had, or thought I did. Some of the test questions in the test-section of the grammar were real head-scratchers for me. I could say that some of the grammar presented in the book was obsolete, but there were many questions in the test that I should be happy I don't get asked by the students. [I should say I should be happy if the students challenge me with these questions.]
• Missing Malaysian Airliner: 1) I saw William, our student from Malaysia, last night and I teased him about the airliner. He did say that it was the biggest crisis that Malaysia has ever faced. 2) Apparently, two employees from an insurance company in this building were on that flight.
• I spent about 45 minutes prepping for my classes. Most of the work for them had already been done, but I have been trying to supplement the lesson plans and my lesson plans with additional material.

March 21 [Friday]

[School Laptop]

• The shift today: 11:00 to 21:00. I arrive at school at 9:30. I am eager to install a Java Developers Kit on this machine. I tried yesterday but I couldn't get jvac to compile my first java program.
• This morning, Tony told me not to go to work. I asked him why and he told me that he wanted to play train simulator on my home laptop. It wasn't like he wanted to be with Daddy.
• Jenny's uncle, his father's brother, is at death's door. That is what Jenny told me this morning. He was at the hospital but because there was nothing they could do for him, he was taken back to his room at the family compound. Jenny's uncle was a quiet fellow who always wore a hat of some sort and was always wrapped in layers of clothing. He spent his days, when I saw him, sitting in the compound. If he dies, Jenny & Tony will go to the funeral. His manner of death seems particularly forlorn for his is dying like a ward or a pet in the forgotten countryside of China.
• When buying my breakfast at McDonald's, I noticed this old woman, who looked like she hadn't showered in a week, eating her breakfast in the most ungainly manner. She was using the thin brown stir stick as a straw to drink her coffee and her half-eaten breakfast sandwich, which she was clutching onto loosely while still in its wrapper, was held at chest-height as she went to get a refill of coffee. Squeezing the cup as she sipped the coffee, the plastic cap came unloosened and was dangling on the stir-stick straw.
• [Later] I have gotten the jvac compiler to work. Yes!
• Nothing worse than doing a salon class about Global Warming. It is the most boring topic for a salon ever!!!!
• The only thing I found interesting about the class was having two of the students tell me that they had been robbed. One student had been robbed in her office at work by a girl who had managed to get through the security doors. The other student said her apartment had been broken into and she had lost an Ipad and two gold rings. She didn't know how the thief had broken into her apartment. There was nothing broken in her apartment.

Saturday [March 22]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today 10:00 to 18:00. My last class ends at 17:00 so I will get off early.
• When I got home last night, Jenny was mad at Tony because of his lack of progress in Math class. Tony had, in the morning, been telling me I shouldn't work so he could play Train Simulator on my home laptop. In the evening, he was too shell-shocked by Jenny's scolding to talk about this and he went to bed rather quickly.
• I took the 602支 to work and sat at the extreme back of the bus. Two people in front of me decided to open the windows causing a cool and uncomfortable breeze to blow in my face. A woman sitting in a seat right of front of me was the first to open the window and I moved to the seat on the other side of the aisle. But then a man sitting two seats in front of me decided to open a window very widely so I had an even more uncomfortable breeze in sit in. I ended up sitting at a seat in the aisle sort of between the two breezes. Eventually, The woman smartened up and closed her window; however, the man didn't and I cursed him loudly hoping he heard my f****s. After about three minutes, the woman then did what I didn't have the balls to do and went over to where the man was sitting and shut his window.
• I saw a blind woman being helped by another woman. I don't often see blind people.
• I listened to a depressing podcast about the employment prospects currently of people in their late forties and early fifties. The new technology is making them unemployable.

Sunday [March 23]

[Home Laptop]

• When the wife's away, the boys will play? Not really. I have got Tony in bed at 9:00 PM and I have to prepare his clothes for tomorrow and do some cleaning and I want to make a couple of blog entries – for this blog and another.
• So, I will blog about today tomorrow.

Monday [March 24]

[Home Laptop]

• Why is Jenny away? Well. Her uncle, who lived with her parents, has died and she is attending the funeral. She will be back at Casa Kaulins on Tuesday.
• I will have to see if I can dig up a photo of the uncle and publish it on AKIC Wordpress. I know there is one somewhere on some drive.
• I got Tony off to school. I hope I didn't forget anything. I was thinking to deliberately put something Tony backwards so as keep up the conceit of wives that husbands don't know what they are doing.
• A shipment of Ritz Cheese Cracker sandwiches arrived yesterday. I love them. I could crumble them up and throw them in my bath so I could luxuriate in them for twenty minutes or so.
• Sunday, the K family was driven, by some neighbors in their mini van, to the Shengtai Agriculture park in Jiangyin. To get to the park from Casa Kaulins is easy. You take Hui Shan Da Dao road to Jiangyin, cross the bridge to Jiangyin (the one where Tony & I go trainspotting), and continue along the road for a few kilometers. The park would be on your left.
• At Shengtai, we saw greenhouses with plant pots hanging from the ceiling so the visitors felt themselves to be in a completely luxuriant environ; we saw peacocks with magnificent rear end plumage; we saw gobbling turkeys and lanky storks; we fed a lot of gold fish; we saw what I thought was a black swan; I saw a swan get very pissed at a duck and change it all over the pond (around which was built a wooden patio deck.); and we ate at a table surrounded by plants.
• I finished watching the seventh game of the 1965 World Series (which I downloaded from Youtube). Koufax three hit the Twins on two days rest throwing mostly fastballs because his curve wasn't working for him. Amazing. The game seemed to have been played in another planet, not just another era. The spectators were mostly dressed in suit and ties. They weren't braying like monkeys through the game. And when the game ended, the Dodgers were dignified in their celebrations. And the Twins had nice uniforms.
• I also finished watching the seventh episode of the second series of Downton Abbey. I don't know if I will watch the third season. The episodes are becoming more and more like soap operas. Perhaps, I will check out house of cards.
• Tony & I went to the Wanda Plaza where we ate at Pizza Hut and visited the Apple Store for a brief visit. Every time, I go to the Hui Shan Pizza Hut, I always end up vowing to never return. The food is always mediocre and the pizza is not made properly. But, fool I am, I always return.
• My going to Pizza Hut causes the staff to jokingly made English phrases. Tony also always seem to attract the attention of the female staff members. Yesterday, Tony was too intent on the Ipad mini to notice. When the female manager gave him some gifts, I had to force him to be thankful.
• Tony & I were in bed by nine.
• Jenny phoned me and reported that a lot of people were attending his uncle's funeral and she was staying in a hotel.

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 AKIC Blog Entry for April 29 to May 5, 2013

Gratitude: Thank God I am me, and not some people I happen to observe.

Acknowledgment: I don't think anyone who would want to be me – at least not among Caucasians.

Request: Visit the page I have dedicated to my father. The anniversary of his death [May 28^th] is approaching.

An AKIC Glossary

Gratitude: will always be the first word of the AKIC weekly blog entry -- it is the key to happiness.

Acknowledgment and Request:  For me Acknowledgment means confession; and Request means request.  GAR [Gratitude, Acknowledgment, Request] are the simple stages of a prayer which I came upon following the Jewish World Review site.  I used GAR when delivering my father's eulogy.

Jenny is my wife.

J: I will sometimes refer to her that way.

Tony is my son.

T: I will sometimes refer to him that way.

My School is HyLite English located on Zhongshan Road in Wuxi, China.

Casa Kaulins is what I call the apartment I (really my wife) owns.

California Villa: The English name of the apartment complex the Kaulins family resides. In Chinese, it is call Jia Zhou Yang Fang.

Train-spotting.  There is a high speed train track running near Casa K.  Tony & I, when we have a chance, love to go there to watch the trains.

Wuxi:  The city where Jenny, Tony & I live.

Hui Shan: The district of Wuxi in which we live.

Yanqiao: a town of Hui Shan District -- not too far from Casa Kaulins

Jiangyin: A city or district next to Wuxi.

Z: a foreign teacher at the school.

LECTOR: I got the idea for Lector, a fictional sparring partner for my blog, from a Hillaire Belloc book I had read recently.

The AKIC Week in Brief.  It was the week of the May Day holiday. I didn't do anything to celebrate the day because it is really a celebration of Communism or Socialism

About Me (Andis)  

I in in China!  我是英文老师。在无锡，我住在惠山新区，加州洋房。

I am Canadian!  I follow the NHL playoffs from afar. I hope the Montreal Canadiens win the cup, even if they really aren't from a Canadian city. I don't want Ottawa or Anaheim to win.

I teach English! So I am not really an expatriate. Engineers and the likes – these people are really expatriates. Why do I teach English? I got into it so that I could move abroad, and say that the degree(s) I got were good for something – they weren't in Canada where I did a lot of nothing kind of jobs like library page, militiaman, 7-11 clerk, courier driver, stock boy, and line cook.

I like to Read!

Here is what I am reading this 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 done his last ReJoyce Podcast in about 22 years.  Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast (he completed episode #151 this week), I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book.  I will be finished reading it, I figure, in a year.

The Holy Bible King James Version:  I am reading a chapter a day.  Now I am in the Gospel According to Saint John.

University Economics:  Elements of Inquiry Third Edition by Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen:   A great Economics textbook. 

The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods by A.G. Sertillanges. An uplifting book.

Hernando Cortez / Makers of History by John SC Abbott. I found this book at Project Gutenberg. A few months ago, I read a riveting account of the conquest of Peru, so naturally, I had to read about the conquest of Mexico.

I like to take photos: You can see some of the photos I take at AKIC Wordpress, TKIC Wordpress & TKIC Blogspot.

I like to make videos Here is the latest Youku video. I haven't uploaded it to my Youtube channel yet.

I like to cut and paste quotations

The following are from Don Colacho:

2043 The circus factions were not political parties; today’s political parties are circus factions.

2053 After seeing work exploit and demolish the world, laziness seems like the mother of the virtues.

2057 Dialogue does not consist of intelligences discussing with each other but of vanities confronting each other.

2059 Man speaks of the relativity of truth because he calls his innumerable errors truths.

I like to keep a journal of my daily activities and any thoughts that occur to me:

Monday (April 29th)

[Home Laptop]

I don't work today.

In the morning I edited and finally published my April 22 to 28 entry.

In the afternoon, I took Tony on an e-bike ride in the area near Casa Kaulins.  We did some train-spotting but not at our usual location.  We instead took some roads that paralleled the track in order to perhaps find a better vantage point for some train spotting, and just see what else we could find.

And we did see many interesting things: 

• We crossed numerous bridges.  
• We found at least four other great train-spotting locations that offered us some more spectacular views of the trains that we had from our usual spot on a bridge that joins Jiangyin and Wuxi districts.  
• We saw a lot of people fishing.  
• I saw an old man walking on a road in bare feet.  
• We saw more peasants looking to me like they were farming at a subsistence level.  
• We found a nice old bridge.

I, of course, took a lot of photos and video.  I was even able to coax Tony to take some of me.

Tony's behavior, this day, was whimsical in that his whims kept changing in a manner that seemed ridiculous to me.  Three times on our excursion, he expressed an desire to go home, and so as I was driving him home, we came upon something that struck his interest and caused him to tell me to stop. “I thought you wanted to go home!”

Tuesday（April 30^th)

[School Laptop]

I work 1300 to 2100.  Hard to come to work today because I am in holiday mode.  Tony is at home now because he doesn't have to go to school.

More thoughts about Monday:

• How to describe the countryside I saw yesterday?  It was plopped down.  That is, it was strewn with many interesting structures that had been seemingly plopped from above (or to be more accurate from the center or a centralized place.)  Many of the structures seemed out of place and not to conform to the landscape or the situation of the people living there.  For example, I saw this four lane bridge built to join two narrow dirt roads.  I also saw other bridges similarly looking in-congruent with their surroundings.  But the biggest plop-down was the high speed rail way.  It towered above the landscape with its pillars six stories tall “plopped” above poor peasant hovels.
• People were fishing in any puddle you came across in the countryside.
• The old man with bare feet was so far from any place that I had to wonder why he had no shoes on.

I went to the photocopier at school.  I notice it was not turned on.  I turned it on and it made a horrible grinding noise.  I wondered to myself if the thing was out-of-order, and why there wasn't a sign to tell me so.  I then look to the white board that is on the wall behind the copier.  It tells me the copier is out of order.  Doh!  I wasn't looking high enough, I reasoned to an attempt to excuse myself.

Z is doing a bus TV commercial for the school.  He'll be talking about fashion.  I got to edit the script so as to make it more campy.  For instance:  "excellent!' was changed to "super!"

Wednesday (May 1^st)

[Home Laptop]

Will Tony want to go on an e-bike ride with Dad?  He will if he doesn't want to do homework which will be his other option,

Shame on me:
Women & Child standing near me on account of there being no seats.  I don't get up and yield them my seat; my wife does.  I give my seat to my wife to put the curse off it.  I can at least say I was ashamed of myself and my better half was the better half.

Jason Collins.  Jason Collins.  Thank God, I spell my name K-a-u-l-i-n-s.

[Ipad]
After some coaxing today, Tony came with me on an afternoon ebike ride.  Like our previous Monday outing, we took a route which skirted the high speed rate track, but we went the other way, going left wards from the Jiangyin-Wuxi bridge instead of right.  We went down a road that took us past dilapidated storefronts and factories.  We came upon an arched sign over a road and decided to see where the road  lead.  We rode past roadside vendors, piles of trash,  and white- washed row houses between which were pools used for washing clothes - it was a squalid scene and yet I detected the energy of a convivial slum as there were plenty of people to be seen.  At the end of the slum stood the high-speed rail track.  Going under the track, we were in the midst of fields where rice and wined plants were being cultivated.  As we rode through the fields, we were passed by cars being driven by student drivers; for at the end of the road was a big complex with a glass building crowned with a concrete dome bearing a five-star red flag around which cars could be driven for practice.  It seemed an uninviting and depressing place -- it was filled with the stench of garbage.  So, we turned around.

We returned to the road from which we had turned.  We continued along it and came to a T-intersection where turning right could have taken us to Jiangyin City.  We instead turned left towards Wuxi and discovered that the road lead to an area familiar to us:  Yanqiao.

It can be boring and frustrating to take Tony on these outings.  Sometimes, he insists on things that make no sense.  One time, he was insistent that we were going the wrong way.  In fact, he was very wrong and if we had gone in the direction he insisted, we would have taken 30 minutes more to go where he had insisted that he wanted to go to right away.  In a grocery store, he wouldn't let me spend two minutes to look among the shelves for something -- I had no choice but to smack him.  And many times, I have to stand by, bored out of my mind, at some place he insists on spending time at: like at a toy section that sells cheap crappy toys, at a playground with other children, and at an amusement arcade to watch him waste money on the most tawdry of amusements.  It is a duty that I must perform, I tell myself -- and the fact that I do feel put out and made to suffer is a good thing -- we are here to take pains for others.

Why is it that people who support abortion on demand are usually in favor of gun control?  It seems a contradiction.  [LECTOR: Why is it that many people who oppose abortion are against gun control?  That seems a contradiction!  Andis:  Abortion kills more than guns; and victims of gun violence actually did get more of a chance to lead a life. ]

I make a video and put it on Youku.  I use music by Cheap Trick and so I couldn't put the video on Youtube.  I will have to make a different version.

[Home Laptop]

I phoned my Mom.  I learn that it is still snowing in Brandon, my Aunt Dzidra is three months older than the Queen, and that my cousin Sandra is expecting her ninth child in September. I love the last bit of news – it is a nice piece of fuck you! to people who think there are too many people in the world.

Thursday (May 2nd)

[School Laptop]

I work 1000-2100 today.  It is my longest day of the week.  That is, the day of the week where my time spent in my school is the longest.   I ask myself what fresh horrors await?  Usually, I state, in my blog, something along the lines of: Alas!  What fresh horrors await me?   Well, really there aren't any, and most potential horrors I avoid by sitting in my office where I blog, study Chinese flashcards, type Chinese character using pinyin, read e-books on my Ipad, and now try my hand at the Python programming language.  I wonder how if I will react when the horrors do come, as surely they must eventually.  Will I take it all in stride and preserve some semblance (a very small semblance at that) of dignity?  At the least, I will act like I am not surprised.

I read a new blog entry by David Warren this morning.  He was writing about the car and the detrimental effects it has on civilization.  Personally, I am witnessing the detrimental effects that the car is having on China.  Because -- this is my theory -- the Chinese drive their cars with the mentality of people who ride bicycles, they don't take into account the overwhelming physical power they have over pedestrians, and so China is becoming uglier than ever.  The car is probably only second, now, to the Cultural Revolution in damage done, to classical Chinese civilization and Chinese beauty.  I don't want to have a car in China because I don't want to become one with the Chinese driver who has become everything that Mao's revolution was meant, in the mind of its idealists, to stop.  

I saw two examples of driving in China today. First, this morning, I saw a woman trying to cross at an intersection.  She had a green walk light telling her it was safe to proceed.  However, as she was between the two corners of the intersection, a car, making a left turn, cut her off.  She had to come to a full stop of the type one can only have when one is nearly hit by a fast-moving passerby.  Witnessing this from afar, I wanted to make a rude gesture to the driver who was then just happening to pass by me.  There was no point, I reasoned, for he would have understood why I was gesturing him and the fact that I was a foreigner would have been of much more import than any message I could have conveyed to him.  Secondly, as I was exiting my apartment building, I had seen a driver do about 40 km/h down the lane than runs in front of my house -- in Canada, the lane would have had speed bumps.  But that as well testifies to the character of Chinese Drivers -- they haven't been taught that they are supposed to show courtesy to pedestrians and cyclists – or maybe they have and they just don't care.  The Chinese people are not as one, not a great Socialist horde, when put into cars.  And because of Communism, the sense that an individual has to care about his neighbor and the people he meets has been squashed, and so there isn't a need or want on the part of Chinese to change this.

I am trying to wrap my head around what object-orientated programming is all about.  Python, they say, is that sort of programming language.  I hope I figure it out eventually.  But I did something with the language last night that I thought was cool.  I had a line of code like this: hscore=game1.hheads().  This statement can cause something to be printed -- not just an argument!!  The fact that I can do two things with a line of code is useful.

Not having a class till 1600, I spent about two hours on Python programming.

Friday (May 3rd)

I work 1100 to 2100 today.

Not much is happening today.  I will teach a class in the afternoon and then three classes in the evening.  I will be back at Casa K at 1015 PM.  I will spend some time studying Chinese and fiddling around with Python programing.  Right now with Python, I can stage a four team round robin tournament where I can have the teams play each other, I can present the results of the games, and I can present the win-loss-tie records of the teams.  I have been thinking of the problem of how to sort them into proper standings.  The classes or data-structures that are built into Python may not be able to help me -- I will have to create a new class -- which I am now trying to do.

On Wednesday, Tony saw a boy, at the playground, who was playing with a toy police car.  Tony had me take him home so he could get a firetruck and take it to the playground so he could play and talk to the boy.  Tony whines but he never complains about things like loneliness and being cold.

I actually took the time to read all that I had previously put into this entry.

I sent an email to my friend HM.  He replied to me quickly and I noticed that what I had written wasn't coherent and should have been edited.  HM didn't point it out to me but I feel embarrassed all the same.

Topic for one of my classes:  Top Ten Lists.  I will have a student in the class who is so shy and quiet that I will ask him to give me a top one list.

The top Chinese school boy's excuse for not having done one's homework:  The Japanese stole it.

Saturday (May 4th)

[Ipad]

The Chinese character for music 乐 (yue)  also means joy (le).

I got on the bus and realized I had forgotten my glasses.

[School Laptop]

I work 1000 - 1800

The students make sentences, that while grammatically correct, are just not said.  For instance, a female student said this:  The boy is thinking that the sun is circular.  The grammar is fine.  All I could do was ask her to make another sentence to see if she could make a sentence that could actually be said in day-to-day life.

[Home Laptop]

As I was saying on the Ipad, I got on the bus, took my seat, pulled my Ipad out, opened my glass case which I kept in the outside pocket of my backpack, and realized I had forgotten my glasses. “I will have to get off at the next stop and walk home!” I lamented. (I also swore but that is another story. ) “I can go a day without glasses!” I thought before quickly realizing I was going to have to get off the next stop and walk back to Casa K to get my glasses because I couldn't go a day without my glasses. It cost me about 25 minutes – not that it mattered much. It was about 730 anyway and I didn't have to be at work until 1000.

I meet Jenny & Tony downtown. “What do you want to eat?” Jenny asked. “Ah don't know!” I replied. “Let's just go home!”

We did to go the local Tesco for some KFC. We took a motorcycle taxi home from there and the driver tried to charge us more than the usual rate. Jenny took exception so that the driver lost any advantage he was hoping to extract from us as he ended up with a long argument and brow-beating from my wife.

Sunday (May 5^th)

[Home Laptop]

I don't work today. Hooray!

I am spending the afternoon at home – got some work to do. T&J are going downtown. J says T needs to have his photo taken.

I figured out this morning how to present sorted standings for my tournament program that I am writing in the Python language. It isn't an elegant solution for I am sure that there has to be a shorter way to do what I am trying to do, but it is a solution nonetheless.

I wish I could have taken a photo: The old people you sometimes see walking down the street are very interesting sights. They dress like they are still in Mao's China. They also look like types that one would have also seen in dynastic China. This afternoon, I saw one such elderly man walking down the street in front of the California Villa. He was barely five feet tall; he wore a Mao hat, glasses, a Mao jacket and pants; and he walked with a cane which he swung briskly as he made his way down the street. I didn't take a photo because I felt it would have been rude.

Tony wore a baseball cap today.

Flopsweat: this is a Vaudeville term I have picked up from Radio Derb's latest podcast. It describes a feeling that Vaudeville performers get when their performance is bombing with the audience. This is a sort of feeling I have all the time when I am teaching. I deal with it by knowing that I don't always strike out, and that in fact, I am like the hitter Dave Kingman who would either strike out ingloriously or hit the ball out of the park.

I have this cruel streak in me. I say cruel things. What can I say? I shouldn't never have said that boy was chubby.