Getting Old, Hockey Pucks & Mooncake, HK, Cold War, WW2, Racism

• I am getting old. The part of me that is observing the rest of me notices this. I do some mental activity in a slow fashion and the observant part of me notes that I used to do it much faster.
• My Mid-Autumn Festival joke: hockey pucks look like moon cake.
• Local holidays are good only because they mean I don't have to go to work. Otherwise, they are of no interest. No place is worth going to in China on a holiday because they will be so crowded that no pleasantness can be derived and so the visit becomes an time-wasting ordeal. And then there is the fact that the roads on holidays are full of Chinese drivers.
• I read an article on the internet, written by an European who has lived in Hong Kong, about how annoying Hong Kongers can be. The writer while telling us all their faults (they were materialistic, smug and looked down on the mainlanders), also couldn't help but display his anti-Americanism. The main point of his article, I suppose, was that because the Hong Kongers were so flawed, we should support the Chinese Communist government in the conflict they are having with them. Well, we might as well not get up in the morning, yet alone advocate for a cause or a people, because the whole human race is flawed. I didn't peruse the article closely enough to see if the blogger acknowledged the imperfections of the mainlanders. But I, can testify after having lived on the mainland for fifteen years, that the mainland Chinese aren't particularly attractive people either. Mainlanders are rude, crude, greedy, and full of themselves as well. Anyway, from my brief visit to Hong Kong I would say that they were a much better behaved lot that Wuxiren. But then familiarity does breed contempt.
• Things happen these days that make me wonder if we had actually won the Cold War. The world seems to be so full of stupid left wing, progressive thinking. I also look at what is happening with the unhappening of Brexit and wonder if we (that being the good guys) had actually won World War Two.
• I thought I knew what racism was. And I thought that racism would wither away and that one day we would all be judging a man by the content of his character and not his skin color. But then Obama got elected. And because of the color of his skin, he was not allowed to be judged by the content of his character. And then the definition of what racism changed and that certain people, not all people, were to be judged the basis of their skin color. I am now a racist and there was nothing I could do about it. And no one really seems interested in getting rid of racism. Be that as it may, the demand for racism from progressives exceed the supply.

January 2018 Diary

Email me at andiskaulins@qq.com.

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I am starting to think that anti-racism is more of a problem than racism these days. Because of the anti-racism movement, many persons, who most certainly possess good will to all people of good will regardless of race or ethnicity, are being unfairly persecuted because they are not willing to be blind or lie about the bad things that people, who don't have a white hue of skin, will unfortunately do. In fact, the so-called anti-racists today have given up on the ideas of judging a person merely on the content of their character and their actions, and of trying to ignore their ethnicity or race.

The anti-racists have become in fact the sort of people they purport to hate.

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Is China is the best country in the world to be?

Arguments for: Economic potential.

Arguments against: It's government.

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I am stopping at zebra crossings to let pedestrians cross. It is not a common practice in China, or at least in the neck of the woods I inhabit in China. Chinese drivers will not yield to pedestrians unless the pedestrian has a claim on space. Driving in China I have had to stop yielding to pedestrians. But now, I have to adopt this habit because it is the right thing to do and because you can be now be fined if you don't. However, many of the local pedestrians aren't used to cars stopping for them and so I often stop and frustratingly watch a pedestrian hesitate and hesitate before crossing. Sometimes I have to give up on them and leave them standing on the curb.

One morning, I was driving on Hui Shan Da Dao, a busy three lane either-way road, and saw a woman standing, waiting to cross a zebra crossing. I was in the left most lane when I stopped for her. She hesitated to cross. Part of her hesitation was understandable because cars in the other lane weren't slowing down. After a few seconds, she did try to cross. But as she walked in front of my car, a van that was stopped behind me couldn't wait and quickly passed on my right, scaring the woman back onto the curb. I finally gave up on her and continued on my way.

Local pedestrians have to learn to be aggressive when crossing. They have to take the mindset that it is their right to cross at the zebra crossings and cars have to stop for them. That is what I do and I have often passed hesitant local pedestrians who end up following me across the street.

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To drive a mini-van in China, it seems to me that you need a special license which you can only get by failing an IQ test.

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Slush in Wuxi. [In the first week of January.]

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Steve Bannon. It looks like he is feuding with Trump. Sad. It had my instinct to defend Bannon but it seems that though he is probably ideologically sound, he has made some political mistakes.

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I was at the subway station, about to put my bag on the x-ray machine belt when a woman hurriedly came from behind, reached around me and put her handbag on the belt in front of my bag. I screamed “Bitch!” at her a couple times without getting a reaction. But I had the satisfaction of passing her at the entry gates because she had problems having the scanner read her metro pass.

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Tony & I saw the Last Jedi movie on a weekend morning (I won't say which one.) As I watched it, I could see the movie was flawed. I also had the sensation of it being long. Coming out of the cinema afterwards and if someone had asked me, I would have said that the film was okay but...

I very much objected to Yoda taking a stab at Luke Skywalker for keeping old texts. And thinking about it afterwards, I think the movie has a Maoist tinge to it with its characters talking about destroying the past and with what seemed a blatant appeal to Chinese sensibilities with having a Chinese looking character.

There was also the need to have female characters and characters of color appear.

Tony meanwhile thought the film was the best Star Wars movie ever. Or at least better than The Force Awakens and Rogue One.

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We have a parking space in our apartment complex which is a good thing because parking spots in the complex are precious.

The parking spot we have had (and hopefully still have) has been good to us. It is not too far from our apartment and affords us quick exit from the complex.

However, this may change. Typically in China, bad things can happen unpredictably, arbitrarily and without warning. One Sunday evening we drove to our parking spot to find someone parking his giant SUV in it. When Jenny asked him what he was doing, he said he had paid for the spot with the security office the day before. In the parlance of this day and age, it was a WTF moment for us. At that moment, we parked the car in the usual spot, and Tony & I went home leaving Jenny to hash the matter out.

After ten tense minutes, she came home and told me that the security had made a mistake and rented the SUV driver the wrong spot. I felt relief and thanked God for the way the whole incident timed out. If we had been ten minutes earlier or later, we really would have been screwed.

But then the next day, the security phoned Jenny and asked her if we could move our car to a spot two spaces over (leftwards) from where we were parking. They wanted to give the guy our spot because that was the deal they had made and the money had been paid.

This wouldn't be such a problem except for the pillars. Our spot, #90, has a pillar on the passenger side blocking the passenger side front door; the other spot at which they would like us to park, #92, has a pillar on the driver's side. I initially thought that the #92 pillar would block the driver door on our car, but after checking I saw this was not the case and that I would be able to get out of the car easily. However, having #90's pillar to back up by makes parking and backing up easy for us, and we are used to it. If we switch to #92, we will have to back up in a different way, and if there is a car occupying the #91 space as we do so, it will be an annoyance. And for the large SUV, it would make sense to have the #92 spot because its width would make it hard for even the driver to get out of the vehicle if a car is parked in the #91 spot.

[The end result was that the driver of the big SUV decided to take the #92 spot.]

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It's January 9^th and I feel foreboding because I have read on the Internet that the Chicoms are going to completely shut down all VPNs by January 11^th. I cross my fingers and hope that my VPN router will still be able to do the trick. It has been working well recently so a complete block by the GFW will be a big blow to my psyche as well as Tony's.

Jenny doesn't care and probably won't put up with my moaning about it.

[As January ends, our VPN is working fine.]

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I parallel-parked my car behind a van which then drove off about thirty seconds later. This left a parking space in front of my car. I wondered if there was enough space in front of me for a car to easily park because many locals can't parallel-park for shit. And then I saw a white Ford sedan, long like a boat, try to park in that space. I decided to watch, concerned that the Ford might strike my car.

What I witnessed was annoying. The car actually was parked fine on its first attempt to get in the space, but the driver then pulled out and tried again to park in the space and again and again and again and again.... Five minutes passed and I was annoyed to a frothing rage.... The driver was female, and as I learned from a passerby, a new driver. I could only think of how “new” wasn't the word I would have used to describe the woman's driver status and how the word I would have used to have described her would have started with a “C.”

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Tony said to me “I want to be a soldier.”

“Which army?” I asked him, “Canadian or Chinese?”

He replied Canadian which was nice but I pointed out to him that the Chinese would probably have more modern equipment.

If only I could find a way for Tony to join the American army.

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I witnessed an e-bike rudely cut off another e-bike as I was walking to my school. The two e-bikes were practically side by side when the e-bike on the right-hand side decided to make a quick left turn. The e-bike on the left hand side had to quickly apply his brakes and it was the screeching of them that got my attention. It was as a blatant a cut-off as I had ever seen. I looked for a reaction from the e-biker who had been cut off. With a cigarette hanging from his lip, the cut-off e-biker's face was typical Chinese inscrutable, but he the looked back at the other e-bike.

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The best part of The Last Jedi movie, for me, has been listening to the reaction. Many hated it and many liked it, like Tony. I find myself agreeing with Jonah Goldberg who was in between. He said the movie was not great but it was better than the prequels and had some good things in it.

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Thinking to see the movie again. I asked Tony. He said yes. Now, we have to see what Jenny says. [She said no.]

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Is Haiti a s***hole? Most certainly.

Does America need more immigrants from this and other s***holes? Probably not. These countries need to keep their human capital.

Is immigration an answer to the problem of places being s***holes? Debatable.

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Tony said to me “Hitler had a Japanese mustache!” and I was first thinking Tony says the darnedest things. But it got me to thinking some about about his living in China, where he is exposed to lots of TV WWII dramatizations of Chinese fighting Japanese with mustaches under their noses; and so he would think that.

It was only recently that I thought of some of the Japanese as having Hitler mustaches.

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Tony says he wants to go to Finland because that is where Santa Claus lives.

Not everything he says excites me.

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So much reading I do that I can't think of anything original to say. So in the middle of January 2018, I feel like my mind is a desert.

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Am I happier because I became a conservative? Yes.

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Trump is more likely to be Joan Crawford than a racist. In fact, he is less racist than all his detractors, especially those who say he is a racist.

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If Trump is crazy, how would you describe the media that he is denouncing? It seems to me that they are off their duff....

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Some inspirational quotes:

• We never know what we want. So, if you think you want something, you shouldn't want it unless you are thinking that you really don't want it.
• Prefer the paradoxical to the rational.
• There is only one worse thing than not getting what you want; that is getting what you want.
• When should you feel most uncomfortable? When you feel comfortable.
• The only thing worse than being uncomfortable is being comfortable.
• Don't be friends with people you get along with. They will only make you feel comfortable and thus weaken you.
• Pain is good for you because it makes you stronger. Therefore, you should walk barefoot on broken glass at least once a day.
• There is only one thing worse than not being taken seriously, that is being taken seriously.
• We should take our silliness seriously and our seriousness sillily.
• Smile on the outside, frown on the inside or vice versa because you don't want to threaten people with your authenticity.
• People can't bear the truth; but they also can't bear lies that they think are untrue because others might think they are true.
• We should be blind to color except when it is trying to tell us something.
• You can't put a camel through the eye of a needle unless you have a really big needle or a very small camel.
• Don't overthink things or under-think things while always being aware that you are probably thinking about them wrongly.
• Don't let humility turn you into an overbearing egotist.
• What are three assets we really don't need? Cynicism, seriousness, pedantry and an ability to count.
• When should you never be scared? When you are in a scary situation.
• Don't double your efforts. Cube them. That is, no to E × 2, yes to E² (Where E > 2).
• You can always count on people to not be reliable.
• Is it better to have tried hard and failed, or to have had a relaxing afternoon of not having ventured and failed?
• If you make less things, you will eventually have less things to repair.

Maybe, I should say these quotes are perspirational. Not meant to inspire but to make you sweat.

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The Wuxi 2018 Snow Live Blog:

January 24: Yesterday, I learned of a forecast that called for two days of blizzard conditions in Wuxi starting tonight. I was worried about the prospect of my having to drive Tony to school with snow and stupid drivers with no experience of driving in snow, and of Jenny picking up Tony in such conditions. The fretting lasted about all of three hours until a student in the evening told me that the schools were going to be closed for those two days. This news gave me so much relief and I became filled with exhilaration.

January 25: Yesterday evening, there was snow in the air as I walked home from the subway station. I saw snow collecting on car exteriors. After getting home, snow started collecting on the ground. Looking out the window of Casa K this morning, I saw a lot of snow on trees, grasses and bushes but the roads looked pretty good which makes the decision to preemptively close the schools look incorrect. Still, a snow day for Tony! I am happy even though I have to go to work.

January 25 later: This snow has fallen almost ten years to the date of the great Wuxi snow of 2008 which you can see video of on my Youtube channel. So far, less snow than 2008.

January 25: I am at school. There is snow collecting in the downtown as snow falls. I just got a coffee at the 85 Bakery and the place was empty. Perhaps, everybody is staying home, not going anywhere. Annoying thing: the zipper on the winter jacket I bought ten years ago has busted, but at least I have velcro to keep the jacket together.

January 26: It snowed last night and so work has been slow on account of no students coming to school. I might as well have gone home at 17:00 yesterday but there was a student who thought that he could drive forty minutes to school and have a two hour class from 19:00 to 21:00. I realized he was crazy when I went outside at dinner time and saw that the streets were very messy. And then I got word that he had cancelled and so I had to think more of his sanity that I had been. If this sort of weather happened in Winnipeg, there would have been no need to cancel school but this being Wuxi, which is not used to snow, it was a good thing that the decision was made. I heard on social media that there had been 6,000 accidents in Wuxi yesterday. I was sure if I could believe this because I hadn't seen any accidents in my travels to and from home to work.

January 26 evening: I hear that it is supposed to snow again on the 27^th. I read that schools will be closed on the 29^th and 30^th (Monday and Tuesday). Tony and I like this; Jenny does not.

January 27 early: I leave home early. The roads, I see, are dry with piles of snow or frozen patches. It is not snowing. I take the subway to downtown. Coming out of the station, I see snow is starting to fall.

January 27 (Saturday) at work: Saturday and I was supposed to be teaching the kiddies. I come to work and am told immediately that my classes with them have been cancelled. There is a 13:00 private class that I will teach if Roy (Roy Boy!!) actually attends.

January 30 (Tuesday. (Sunday and Monday were days off.)): The rest of Saturday, the city was a mess because it snowed heavily, and the streets and sidewalks were very slushy. I spent my days not driving the car and mostly sitting at home. Sunday, I took Tony downtown via the bus and subway. For Tony, it was a chance to experience snow. He had never seen so much of it before.

It was cold last night. This morning, I started the car up and it didn't start so easily. That sound of the ignition turning over was a sound I hadn't heard in years. When I arrived at work, I talked to a Chinese colleague who I knew had a car and she told me that she had the same problem starting her car. It scared her, she told me, and I told her what it was like in cold weather in Canada and how we needed booster cables, things which I don't think they have in southern China.

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Am I a Roundhead or a Cavalier? I suspect I am a Cavalier and, while you are at it, a Jacobin.

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Because of the snow, I told some of the students and Chinese co-workers, nine months from January 26, October 26 could be a busy day. They didn't get my joke.

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My new passport! My new, expires in ten year, passport is here!!!

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I took Tony to the Subway sandwich shop at Sanyang Plaza. As I suspected, he liked a sandwich heated with bacon, spicy Italian sausage and Cheese, with Ketchup added afterwards. The sandwich maker couldn't believe that Tony didn't want any vegetables on it. The sparseness of ingredients on the sandwich made it seem very expensive: 60 rmb. I can understand the stories I have read on the Internet of the chain starting to fail in North America.

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It is lonely life I lead in Wuxi for which there are many reasons. Major reason, I suppose, is that my kind is not here. But then I never meet my kind in Canada. And there so are probably disagreeable things about my personage...

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Email me at andiskaulins@qq.com.

April 2017 Notes

For Qing Ming Festival Day, we drove out to Jenny's hometown. We spent more time getting to and from her hometown then actually visiting with her parents. The traffic was horrible. What would in theory be a 70 minute drive took us 150 minutes. The sources of the delays were the toll gate area at the Jiangying Bridge and a turn-off near the bridge which was but one lane wide. Three lanes of traffic were trying to get into it and this was a cluster lanes became blurred.

A few good things came out of the ordeal One was news from Jenny that the 3,000 drivers who tried to cheat and get around traffic slowdowns by driving on the shoulder were all to be punished severely. Two was Jenny's vowing never to go to the hometown for a day trip on a holiday.

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Restaurant at the Wu Culture Park. Coming back from Jenny's hometown on Qing Ming day, our plans to visit a military museum in Jiangying were scuttled by traffic and so we decided to check out this restaurant at the park near Casa Kaulins. We had quite an enjoybable time. The restaurant was situated so that it overlooked a pond and thus afforded a great view. And it also had good food. If you look at my wordpress blog, you can find some photos I took of the place.

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On the day after Qing Ming Day, we drove out to to a park near the Ling Shan Buddha. I wish I could tell you the name of it, but I am too lazy to check on the Internet.. All I can say is other than the nice drive to it , the park was forgettable. A pedestrian walk street with a phony park next to it built for the sole purpose of attracting tourists.

One detail about going to the park struck me as interesting. The road to it was narrow: one lane either way with bike lanes on both sides.

I have seen how these roads can be nightmares at busy times because cars will try to pass other cars by driving in the bike lanes. To stop this from happening on Qing Ming Day, the powers that be decided to lay lots and lots of traffic cones on the dividing lines between the lanes in order to bring some order to the traffic.

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Tony tells me he has work to do on the Iphone. He just wanted to play a driving game.

He must have heard me say that I had work to do on my computer so I could get him off my computer.

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On the train one evening, I saw this older local woman eating a banana. How boorish I thought to myself. I then saw that she had noticed me and my foreign colleague who I was standing by, and that she was pointing us out to her child.

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On the Shanghaiist site, there was a report of a “blatantly racist” (against Chinese) leaflet being distributed on some campus in Texas. I saw the leaflet in the report. And all its complaints about Chinese behavior were true. I showed it to another foreign colleague and he said that it could have said more. I found the whole report troubling because, the school authorities were treating the whole incident as racist without dealing with the real and justifiable complaints that the leaflet had presented. As well, the response from a Chinese student group was focus on the “racist” aspect of the leaflet and make a statement of being proud of being Chinese, without any acknowledgment that maybe their behavior needed some modification.

It was a clear example of truth being suppressed and a real injustice being done; and so I found it very troubling. This calling people racist is being used as a cover for some people to behave boorishly.

Alas, I am becoming a person who can be accused of being racist. And I am also very confused about what racism is exactly. I thought it was a hatred of a group of people because of their skin color. That kind of hatred is stupid and irrational; and it is evil if it involves wanting to do actual harm to these groups. But racism is currently viewed as more than just that and even people who mean well or who have truthful complaints can be called racist.

*

I realized I can take an alternate route on the days when I have to walk to Tony's classroom to pick him up.

Instead of going up the stairwell everyone else does, I realized I can go down a hallway to another stairwell that no one else would think of taking. The route isn't shorter than the popular route, but I don't have to deal with squirts yelling “laowai” as I pass them.

*

I was hyping a meeting between Xi and Trump but it was overshadowed by Trump's decision to bomb Syria.

I have no opinion on the bombing but I can appreciate the arguments that both sides, pro and con, are making for their positions

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Just let it go! I was telling myself this as I drove Tony to school in the morning because I didn't want to get carried away with road rage. But sure as heck, I got angry as I was driving back home. Some prick in a BMW cut me off.

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Breaking rulers and overturning desks so that the contents of the student's desk fall on the floor.

Whatever it takes to get the primary school students to be quiet and respectful.

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When taking the subway, I choose to board cars that are at the ends of the train. So when waiting for the train, I stand at either end of the platform; and usually the end that fewer people will stand at. While I wait, it is my habit to pace back and forth and not to stand in a spot.

I would think that if I came upon another person doing this, that this person would have dibs on boarding the train before others. In Wuxi however, I have discovered that locals will walk up and take up the spot that I think I am entitled to by having gotten there first. The local mind sees nothing wrong with this. Talking to other foreigners in Wuxi, they have noticed this behavior as well and taken it as being rude and selfish.

So from the time of this entry, I am going to have to stand my guard as I wait for the train.

*

Tony and I have been watching Rick and Morty.

*

Don Rickles R.I.P. To a Canadian, he said “Why don't you put skates on your face and go play hockey somewhere.”

*

Got two more traffic tickets. One of them we got when we were stuck in a traffic jam returning from that day at the park near Ling Shan. I found myself in a left turn lane and no one would let me in a straightaway lane. Some idiot then got on my left and I was wedged in between cars so that I was straddling a line. A traffic camera caught this and so a message was sent to Jenny's phone.

The damn thing about the roads in China is that you are always having to change lanes to avoid getting stuck in a turn lane. Every once and while, you find yourself in a left turn lane and stuck in heavy unforgiving traffic that won't let you change lanes. I know how to avoid this on familiar stretches of road, but if I am an area of town that is new to me, I will often make this mistake.

*

It has been pointed out to me that the disruptive students in the primary school classes are often stuck at the front of the class. Getting a close look at them, I can report that they are a mixed bunch. That is, the disrupters come in all shapes, sizes and personalities.

One of the kids in a grade three class is too clever for the material I have been teaching. He sits towards my left. I got great joy at being able to get him to cry when I took his desk and dumped its contents on the floor to stop him from acting like a baboon.

A male classmate of this boy who sits on my right, looks like a mental defective because he has all the teeth on one side of his mouth missing as well as a cereal bowl haircut. When he approaches me, I have to fight the urge to swat him away. He is like a mosquito

Near the boy on my left sits a girl who always scowls and refuses to answers any questions. If I had to teach her everyday, I would want to take a ruler and smack her on each side of the head to put across the notion that only low-grade people answer questions in monosyllables.

There is this boy, in a grade four class, who looks like he will grow up to be a criminal – he seems to enjoy being able to leer and scowl like a devil. Nothing in this devil child's countenance suggests he is capable of anything but malevolence. I see the other kids mock him as something of a freak.

*

On the road betwixt Casa Kaulins and the Hui Shan Wanda Shopping Center there are many government buildings including a tax bureau and a police station and a law court.

One Sunday I could not help but notice that there was something going on at the law court. There were crowds of people there, and a heightened security and police presence. I saw seven police motorcycles (that usually cruise the area around our apartment) parked near the entrance of the courthouse grounds, two vans full of black uniformed security types parked across the street from the courthouse entrance, a firetruck with fireman inside parked in the court parking lot, and a very officious looking uniformed police who seemed to be directing the whole affair. The actual civilians standing by were older types who didn't seem angry and who definitely didn't seem just curious. They seemed to have been cowed into quiescence by the increased security presence.

I asked my wife what was going on and she told me that an unpopular decision had been made by the court.

*

I got to see Wuxi from 64^th floor. Jenny took me and a friend to lunch at a buffet restaurant on the 64^th floor of the Hyatt Regency. The view was great. I was struck by how I seemed to be on top of things that I knew to be many blocks away from the Hyatt's location. The food at the buffet was just okay however, and so as I sat vegetating, I recalled my visit to the Space Needle in Seattle. I went to a lot of trouble, spending lots of money on parking and admissions, to get to the famous landmark's observation deck. The view from the Space Needle was great but after two minutes I was bored. But it seemed a waste to go down so soon so I hung out on the observation deck with nothing to do for a further twenty minutes. Looking out from a skyscraper is something you'd only need do once in your life.

The deck was setting for a scene in the Warren Beatty Film the Parallax View in which a politician is assassinated.

It was the third assassination spot I had been too. The others being Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the Trotsky compound in Mexico City.

*

My grilled cheese sandwiches are quite the hit with Tony & Jenny.

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Not much to say for myself this month. The world goes on and while I observe as avidly as ever, I don't have the same emotional investment in these events and so feel less compelled to say anything about them.

Besides, it doesn't matter what I think about them away. The sad fact about Andis is that he concerns himself with events that are far removed from his actual physical real world circumstances because he is too mediocre to deal with the things that should matter to him.

This realization should be liberating. Why waste time trying to be something I am not?