AKIC's July 2015 Back in Wuxi Notes

• Our flight from Vancouver arrived in Shanghai Pudong where the airport was dingy and the sky was gray.
• We took a bus from the airport to the Wuxi bus station.
• At the bus station, the taxi stand was closed so we had to hire a private driver to take us home. It was our good fortune that it wasn't raining because we had to walk a considerable distance, toting three heavy bags of luggage outside, to get to his vehicle.
• The first thing I noticed on my return to Wuxi was all the wetness. The Yanqiao Metro station, as I went back to work, was particularly damp.
• They say that of all the students in the world who speak English as a second language, the Chinese are among the worst. Why? I have what are only guesses since Chinese ESL students, not ESL students from other countries, are the only ones I encounter. I first guess that the Chinese are exceedingly shy about using English. I have seen that they will only speak English with a foreigner and often the foreigner has to force them to speak. Many of my students only want to answer questions with a yes, no, or okay. Despite my telling them to speak English among themselves, none of the students ever heed my advice. They will quickly break into Chinese in conversation among themselves in an English class. Do ESL students from other parts of the world have these bad habits?
• I also blame the Chinese education system for notoriously requiring too much rote learning. I have had many Chinese ESL students learn sentences by rote for my classes. [The same has been said about Japanese students of English as well.] When I ask my students to make a second sentence on the fly using their wits and imagination, they go mute. [Rote learning has its uses but turning history into an exercise of remembering exact dates, like the Chinese do, stops students from taking an interest in it. It must be deliberate.]
• Is this poor Chinese performance also due to a fear of losing face when making an English speaking mistake?
• Is it also because the Chinese are arrogant about their place in the world?
• First day back in Wuxi, I had an evening company class. Maybe, I have mentioned it before but this company is located near the Civic Center Metro Stop (Line #1) and the Coastal City Shopping Mall. To get to the company from the metro stop, I have to walk down a long pedestrian tunnel. This first day back from my trip to Canada, the tunnel floor was damp and my shoes were squeaking as I walked. I thought that there had to have been a flood, but what I learned from the students was that there hadn't been a flood, but that the dampness was the result of the large amount of rain that had fallen in Wuxi during my absence. Ultimately, it was a design flaw by the engineers that was to blame.
• Second day back at work was Dominion Day, a.k.a. Canada Day, but I didn't care. Stupidly, Canadian politicians changed the name of the July 1^st holiday to Canada Day from Dominion Day and so, many Canadians, who are ignorant of Canada's history, think Canada was somehow born on that date in 1867. Canada has existed for 400 years since it was so named by the French who first settled there. What happened in 1867 was that the various Canadian colonies decided to establish a federal government, become the Dominion of Canada as it were. Now, I am proud to be Canadian but not proud of its federal government. Canada would be better off if its federal government was weakened and so I can't celebrate Canada Day because it is really a celebration of the Canadian federal government formation.
• The second night after my return from Canada, I couldn't get to sleep. Jet Lag. The next day, I was awake till about 8:00 PM when I had to fight to stay awake for my final evening class. Then on the train ride home, I kept nodding off.
• I will have a class where, if all the students show up, the majority of them will be twins. That is, I will have a three person class with twins. So, 66.7 percent of the students in that class will be twins. Now if the class consisted of five students with two sets of twins, 80 percent of the students would be twins. This adding of a set of twins would mean a 13.3 percent increase in the size of the proportion of twins in the class expressed as a percentage. This increase seems small for what is in fact a 100 percent in the absolute number of twins. Now going from 66.7 to 80 could also be said to be a twenty percent increase if 13.3 is expressed as part of the 66.7. If the 13.3 is expressed as part of the 80, the increase could be said to be 16.7 percent. What does this tell you? Don't trust the numbers you hear from politicians or their spokesman or their enemies in the media. Look at the absolute numbers.
• A backfire or discharge of gas from a passing bus caused a loud exploding sound that startled the boys and girl in the office. The girls screamed and then some of the boys told stories of bomb explosion that they were near in South Africa and England. There was also talk of Xinjiang people. No one was hurt. The driver of the bus walked around the bus to inspect and eventually went on his way.
• Trying to cross Zhongshan Road at a pedestrian path, I had to stop otherwise I would have been run over by a bus. The driver was trying to maneuver his vehicle through a traffic jam.
• The decision to publish my monthly blog entries is fraught with indecision for me. Every time, I go through the notes, I notice something has been overlooked. Often, I am talking about a subject without first introducing it to my readers. I am always forgetting that any readers I may have are not in my mind and know nothing about me. I really need an editor.
• There are butchers in the butcher shop. So said a student when I asked her to make a sentence with the word butcher. In response to her sentence, I asked if butcher shops sell butchers. [That is another reason why the Chinese are such terrible English speakers.]
• I was doing a Speaker's Corner and two potential customers, that is possible paying students, fled. They didn't like it when I tried to say something to them. Some students don't want to be forced to overcome their shyness.
• Summer is humid in Wuxi but I do like the sight of women's legs and peasant wide brimmed straw hats.
• Tom, our most articulate student, is not in favor of “gay” marriage. “Why would they do that?” he asked me. They being the powers that be in the West. I could only tell him that like China, the West had a cultural revolution in the 1960s for which we are paying dearly now.
• How can I talk to a student about Game of Thrones which she hasn't seen all the episodes yet? I don't think I can but the student wants to...
• A teenage student told me that she had just learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels. She hadn't learned to ride a bicycle when she was younger because her mother thought it wasn't safe.
• Tony, at eight years of age, still rides his bicycle with training wheels. I can blame this on my working four evenings a week, my laziness when I do have time for Tony and Tony's addiction to computer games.
• On the first Saturday evening back in Wuxi, we found ourselves at Wuxi's Nanchang Jie bar street. Jenny & Tony went to someone's birthday party and I tagged along. Looking for food for myself, I discovered the hard way that the Burger King had shut down. I had to walk the long bar street about three times to make sure I hadn't passed its former location by mistake. The birthday party was at a restaurant and bar called Honeymoon. It had several floors and a nice view of the nearby canal to recommend it.
• After the party, the three of us had to fight through big crowds to get out of Nanchang Jie.
• On a Sunday, we bought a new E-Bike that was small-sized for Jenny. The old e-bike is big and hard for Jenny to push around, and will now be for my exclusive use.
• The Greek crisis caught my attention and for a few days I followed events there closely. These are my thoughts about it: I want to see the EU crumble because I feel large multinational super bureaucracies are evil. Greece, though certainly a wonderful country is socialist, and deserves its fate for being so. So the EU versus Greece, for me, is like the Iran – Iraq war where no one knows who to cheer for. For the sake of humanity, I hope that the battle is short and that from the wreckage, a more distributionist world order can emerge.
• I don't let Tony forget his shameful behavior to Grandma and Grandpa when we left Brandon. Sad to say, he was more interested in playing Minecraft on the Ipad.
• Nothing like a “Thank you!” from Jenny to make my day.
• 30,000 Japanese die a year of Kodokushi. That is, they die old, alone, and neglected so that they may lay undiscovered for weeks. In the USA, 11,000 are killed every year because of guns. (40,000 or so are killed in automobile accidents). Much ado is made of gun deaths in the US and yet we don't dwell so much on the atrocious care of old people in Western style cultures.
• It's the suits that have screwed up Greece. With their nice hair cuts and their fancy suits, they are truly effeminate, lacking in courage. They couldn't adult up in all the years that people knew the Greek debacle was coming.
• Rocky, a student, tells me that when he eats spicy food his voice changes.
• I hadn't been giving much thought to the Chinese stock market collapse till I read an article on the telegraph.uk site saying that what was happening in China was more impactful than what was happening in Greece. So I found myself looking at the stock market app on my Iphone for the first time and I began questioning some students who told me that they had lost money. One told me that the Chinese were now going to put all their money in real estate.
• That something like this collapse should happen to China is not a surprise to me. In this blog, I have reported how much unnecessary construction of retail space and apartments I have been seeing in the last few years.
• In the near middle of July as I was thinking about the market crash, I looked at the streets and life seemed to go on. Nobody was jumping out of buildings.
• I asked a student if she had made a difference during her day before the class. Once she understood what I meant by make a difference, she said she hadn't. Most students would probably tell me that. Selfish twerbs.
• Imagine, I said to a student, if you knocked on a stranger's door and told them that you wanted to help them, make a difference.
• How to be taller? Stand by a short person. How to be faster? Stand by a man with no legs.
• In a business salon class, the students and I were reviewing a dialogue where the following was said: “Do you want me to call Amsterdam?” One of the students, whose English is not weak, told me that he did know that Amsterdam was a city in the Netherlands. He had actually thought that Amsterdam was a person. Just have to be careful with proper nouns if you are a teacher and a student, but especially if you are a teacher.
• I had to ask the local Hui Shan businessman I know about the the stock market collapse. He told me of a few theories he'd heard. In one theory, it was the Americans that were to be blamed. That theory posits that they came to China and did some short selling and left the Chinese holding the bag. Another theory said that the Jiang Zemin faction destroyed the stock market to spite Xi Jing Ping.
• He also told me of the enormous shadow banking sector that exists everywhere in China to escape the controls, particularly the foreign exchange controls, imposed by the government, which require lots of paperwork to do foreign transactions and which impose daily limits on amounts of foreign currency that can be used. Need a lot of American currency? Go to the shadow bank.
• Tony told me he was angry with me. This was his response to my criticizing his desire to do nothing but play games on the Ipad and PC and his not wanting to walk to stores in the area of our apartment. And to the latter point about not walking, he told me that walking was not good for him.
• In spite the silliness of our arguments, Tony is talking more and showing a great fluency in English, using words that I would have thought that he didn't know how to use.
• I went to the local Decathalon to buy another pair of the same type of shoes that I had worn on my trip to Canada. While I can now buy shoes my size here, thanks to Decathalon, I don't want to take any chances and see my size of shoes no longer in stock.
• Some English Names the students have given themselves recently: Murphy Portman, Skywalker, Momo, Oliver, Ennis, Kell, Kingsley (a girl gave herself this name), Joyce (a boy), Circle, General, Rocky, Holly, Garfield, Sky, Snow, Nail, Maco (who is studying chemistry because he is a fan of the Breaking Bad TV series), Xavier, Thea, Aviva, Shella, and Effie.
• For the Summer, Tony is attending something called the HyLite School of Art and Sinology which is the same complex as my school. I can get to Tony's school from mine through a series of stairs and hallways without going outside. Picking him up the first day, Tony said he liked the school, but he couldn't me why.
• One morning, I got on the Metro at Tai Hu Square and went in the direction of Changguanxi, the southern terminus of Metro Line #1. I only wanted to ride the train to waste time so as to not to get to work too early. I had time on my hand because I took Tony to his school for an 8:30 kickoff. I didn't have to start at my school until 13:00.
• At the Changuanxi platform, I got off the train to see there was another train parked on the other side, but its doors were closed and looking at the board, I saw a sign saying it wasn't going to depart for forty minutes. I wondered what was going on till I looked back across the platform and saw that the train I had gotten off at was on the side of the platform with signs indicating it was going in the direction of Yanqiao which was the direction I was intending to go. So, I got back on the train. When I arrived at Nanchang station, I was interested to see that it only cost me 1.90 rmb to ride the subway as far as I did. [It should have cost 4.]
• This company I am teaching (Lan Gui Feng or Lan Kwai Fong is how you spell it) gave me this sheet written in English to edit about Taihu New City and Lan Kwai Fong Wuxi. Taihu New City is what the Wuxi Government wants to be the new Wuxi downtown. It was hoped or estimated or projected said this sheet that one million workers would move to this new CBD!!! I couldn't hold my laugher.
• Two students, Sky and Betty, or as I call them Skybetty because they are a inseparable pair, told me they went to Vietnam. I asked them if they went to Saigon, Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. They told me they went to an island that had a water park; and I told them that they had gone all the way to a tourist trap. That is not at all why I would have gone to Vietnam. I suppose their attitude to Vietnam is like a Canadian going to Florida. No one goes to these places for the culture or history.
• Thursday, which is the Wednesday of my work week, I woke up feeling dead tired. Tony's going to school downtown requires me to leave the house at 7:30 every morning on days when I won't return till 9:45 at night. I admit that my days are not so busy. I am no where near as busy as I was during my time at Loomis and DHL, but I am up a long time all the same.
• Live not by lies! I don't have the courage to live this way. I am scared to say anything when lies are spoken in my presence. I don't deserve freedom. Why should cattle have the gifts of freedom?
• To live in China as long as I have: ten years, is to tolerate lies.
• On a Friday, the forecast was for rain which meant that I wasn't going to chance using the e-bike to get to the Metro station. I still had to make a trip to the e-bike's parking spot to umplug it because I still had it recharging. And it was just as I was walking back to the apartment from the e-bike that I felt drops of rain and felt I had made the right decision to not take the e-bike. But there was a lull in the rain, and Tony doubted my decision. But as the shuttle bus pulled up near the Metro station and we got off, it was raining buckets.
• And then as we left the Nanchang station so I could go to work and Tony could go to his summer school, we saw that Zhongshan Road was dry and that not a speck of rain had fallen there. Hui Shan District, where I live, is far from Zhongshan Road.
• President Obama's answer to the question about the four American hostages not being released by the Iranians despite his deal with them was very telling. Obama was staggered by the question and his eventual response, after the stagger of silence, was to be insulted by the question.
• Long Dung II. In one of the two HyLite men's room stalls behind the squatter's hole, another big load of shit, that was nauseating to behold, had been deposited. Did someone bring their horse to the bathroom? I felt sorry for the janitor (a.k.a. I.E.) who had to clean it.
• I have chosen to be boring, not because I have decided to become conventional but because I lack courage.
• Tony and his friend Steven had a sleepover at our apartment. They played Minecraft on my Ipad and my Iphone.
• I wonder if some of the guys in my office still do sleepovers. It wouldn't surprise me.
• I'll say it again. I dislike Wuxi's summer humidity.
• Why do middle-aged and older Wuxi women seem to dress in a manner that makes them look like warthogs? Is it that they want their appearance to revolt and frighten others?
• Friendship. What is that? Is it something one should seek?
• Teppanyaki is alright. What is teppanyaki? A Japanese style of cooking when patrons sit around a grill and have a cook prepare their dishes right in front of them. And there is now such a restaurant at the Wanda near Casa K.
• What to make of the Iran -- USA nuclear deal? I don't know enough about the Middle East to have an opinion. But my instinct is to distrust it because Obama is notoriously anti-American in his foreign policy. He seems to prefer America's enemies at the expense of its friends.
• I finished reading two travel books written my an Englishwoman ME Durham who was able to tour the Balkan area in the early 20th century before the start of the Great War. She was able travel to places that seemed hundreds of years out of the 20th century. It was the kind of travel I would like to do. Instead, I am stuck witnessing the Chinese acquire cars and build shopping malls. The furthest I can go back in time is when I see some of the migrant workers in Wuxi. They seem to have come of the 1950s. [Lloyd Lofthouse, a Chicom apologist whose blog entries I subscribe to, said that some poverty has been in China for hundreds of years and it is not fair to blame the Chicoms for it. So, maybe these migrant workers I see are hundreds of years from the 21^st century.]
• Maybe I should get back to telling the one or two readers I have about Nicolás Gómez Dávila  quotes that seem quite apt. Here is #2390 from my collection: The people with whom we speak every day and our favorite authors cannot belong to the same zoological species. My favorite writers include David Warren, Anthony Esolen, Father Schall, and of course Dávila. I know no one who likes these authors. And so there seems no point in talking to anyone in Wuxi about anything.
• One night as I was taking the subway home from work, I got annoyed at a mother and child. The pair sat beside me and the child couldn't stop saying “laowai!” I was trying to read and I had been full of dark thoughts on account of a recent spat with Jenny and recent classes with annoying students; so I frowned at the woman and told her to shut up “her fucking kid!” When the child persisted, I did it again. Feeling sheepish on account of what I know now and even knew then was imprudent behavior, I tried to concentrate on the book I was reading which ironically enough was written by Joseph Ratzinger. I looked up from my book a few instances to see if I was being stared at by the onlookers but I couldn't tell.
• Since Jenny bought her e-bike, I have been using the old e-bike to go to the metro station. My one fear is that it will rain heavily while the bike is parked outside.
• At the Nanchang station, I saw a pair of hipster foreigners trying to buy subway tickets. How did I know they were hipsters? The male had one of those long Grizzly Adams beards that I have noticed many professional athletes sporting recently. The female, I assumed was hip, but really she looked non-descript and unexotic in comparison to Asian girls.
• I had a student tell me that he had been shocked to see foreign couples on the Wuxi Metro engaging in public displays of affection. He asked me why this was. I told him basically that there had been a change in culture in the West and that young foreign lovers now were no longer capable of controlling their passions and also no longer capable to committing themselves to each other beyond the most recent act of groping or fornication.
• I read reactionary and conservative blogging every day; and lately, I have been wondering what is the point of me doing so since I am in China and living an isolated life where there is no opportunities for me to discuss the issues with anyone anyhow.
• I had to explode at a listless student who was going, in a week, to board a plane to Canada where she was going to go to high school. I had to ask her if she even wanted to go given her ignorance of Canada which seemed to reveal a lack of interest. She said it was her parents idea to go.
• In a salon class, I asked the students what education was supposed to do, and they told me it was supposed to do all these wonderful things to make people so wonderful and thoughtful and able to live a productive life I then asked if the Chinese education system provided these things, and the students say it provided none of them. [Not to say that the Western system is doing that much better. Our system is pumping out infantilized adults who glorify in their craziness and lack of morals]
• As the 637 shuttle bus was approaching our stop one morning (I didn't take the e-bike on account of it raining), I saw an impatient and stupid Chinese driver who was following the bus decide to pass it on its passenger side. I didn't let this happen because I walked onto the road to board the bus. The driver seeing this and not wanting to wait, rapidly steered his wheels so he could pass the bus on the other side
• Is the Western way of driving any better? In some ways, I can say it isn't because you can feel confined in traffic when you follow the rules, and if it wasn't for courtesy from other drivers, you can be stuck a long time trying to make a turn. In China, you can expect drivers to give you some courtesy, but unfortunately the courtesy of a driver to another driver does not redound to drivers giving pedestrians courtesy and so you have drivers thinking it is okay to pass a bus on its passenger side when it is trying to pick up passengers, and drivers thinking it is okay as well to cut off pedestrians so they can make right or left turns.
• Because Tony was hogging my Ipad on the train, I was able to read, on my Ipod, Nicolás Gómez Dávila aphorism # 2453: A prolonged childhood—permitted by industrial society’s current prosperity—redounds merely in a growing number of infantilized adults. I am sure I have commented on this aphorism before. And I hope I said that I agreed with it, that I mentioned I had seen the evidence of it with my own eyes, and that I was certainly one of these infantilized adults myself. And I probably can't take any solace for myself from the fact that I do feel some shame on account of this being so.
• I had the runs in July. Every morning, I sit on the toilet in order to rid myself of the liquidy workings of my stomach.
• The last Sunday of July, I went with Tony to Shanghai to visit with the reigning two-time Shanghai Expat of the year Paul Rudkin. The three of us went to the Shanghai Railway Museum, then Mister Pancake, then the Shanghai Maglev Museum and finally Paul's pad near the Longyang Road Subway Station. That's what we did more or less. For the next bunch of bullets, I will relate the interesting points of the day.
• It was hot and humid for us in Shanghai. I asked Paul how he liked summer there and he told he hated it. It was his first summer in Shanghai after having spent many in Korea. Tony was complaining a lot when we were walking around in the outside. I had sweat sting my eyes although it was Tony's whining that was more annoying. The humidity made us all lazy and so the trip had to social and not so much of a sightseeing tour.
• The two museums were okay, though I wouldn't recommend them if you weren't a train fan. It was our second visit to the Shanghai Train Museum and our first to the Maglev Museum. The Shanghai Train Museum didn't contain many English signs. The Maglev Museum did and for its price – free – it was worth a look.
• The sights very much worth seeing in Shanghai in summer were the girls. Lots and lots of lovely legs did Paul and I see. Talking about these sights, I learned from Paul that Shanghai men have a prejudice against girls who are not from Shanghai. Paul told me about a time that he was with a Shanghai colleague when a girl who was a real looker came into their presence. Paul pointed out the girl to the colleague but when the girl spoke, the colleague was really turned off by her Anhui accent. The Shanghairen wouldn't contemplate going out with a girl who wasn't from Shanghai, no matter how good looking she was.
• I learned from Paul that the 16^th line of the Shanghai Subway had a problem. The planners underestimated the number of riders and built train consists that were only about three cars long. They can't add cars for at least 22 months because the cars built were of a special gauge and size and the manufacturers couldn't fit the orders till then.
• I have been told that only three lines in the Shanghai Subway system make money.
• Compared to Shanghai, Wuxi's metro seems nicer. Wuxi's system is less crowded and less dingy; it's cars and turnstiles are more modern.
• I was able to use my Wuxi subway pass in Shanghai.
• Paul told me that he was very frustrated with his attempts to get around the Great Chinese Firewall. The powers that be, he says, are making it harder.
• From an article by Theodore Dalrymple in Taki's Magazine: If I had my way (which, fortunately for the world, is rather unlikely), I should make it a criminal offense to take a child to a MacDonald’s restaurant. If someone were to tell me that children love those restaurants, I should reply, “But that is precisely why it should be a criminal offense.” Theodore Dalrymple is one of my favorite writers on the Internet and I take Tony to MacDonald's a lot. So that passage is a slap in my face. But I deserve and I should at least try to make Tony learn to eat Vegetables.
• One Monday, I stood in nude in my humid apartment and my body glistened with sweat from my forehead to my stomach. I tried to point this out to Jenny. “Look at me!” I said, but she said I was fat. “But look at how I glisten!” I said. “Well, that's because you're fat!”
• A day of sweating in Shanghai put the end to my runs and my shits became more solid.
• I had a big scare at the Shanghai Railway Station when Tony accompanied me to the WC. He disappeared on me in a split instant. I saw him, looked another way, and turned back to not see him. And for a minute I couldn't see him, and I looked around, frantically calling his name. I was never so relieved as to hear him respond.
• Another writer I admire, though I only agree with him 90 percent of the time, John Derbyshire said he was supporting Donald Trump. His reasoning was that Trump wasn't a professional politician. Fair enough, I thought, and I tried to be more sympathetic to the Donald. But revelations have shown that the Donald had really hadn't been much of a conservative and had donated money to professional politicians on the Democratic side of the aisle. And I have thought of another reason to not support the Donald: he is from another class that rightly needs to be despised as much as the professional politician class: the celebrity class. The Donald is famous in the manner of Hilary Clinton: he has made a name for himself without accomplishing anything impressive enough to qualify him to be president.
• Hilary Clinton is a member of two despised classes: the professional politician and the celebrity class.
• I watch a lot of movies but I spare rare readers my reviews of them, for the most part. I recently watched a movie from 1972, Pocket Money, starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin, which I enjoyed it a lot. Newman looked cool and I thought that he and Marvin had great chemistry. But the reviewers, I learned from the Internet, panned it. Shows what I or the critics know.
• A typical day in July 2015. I wake up at 6:00 AM. I take Tony, via e-bike or bus and Wuxi Metro to his downtown summer school at 7:30 AM. We get there about 8:30 AM. If my work starts at 1:00 PM, I head back home where I have 90 minutes to do some things before returning downtown. I finish work usually at 9:00 PM. I take the train and then e-bike it or walk home around 10:00 PM. I go to bed before midnight.
• More about that teenage female student who is going to Canada and whose flight to Toronto was to leave in two days. I asked her if she was excited. She said she wasn't in a ho-hum manner. I asked her if she would miss her friends. She said she was going to see them next summer so she wasn't sad at all. Asking her what she knew about Canada, she couldn't tell me who the Prime Minister of Canada was even though I had told her three or four times before.
• This is what I found out about the details of her living arrangements in Canada. She will be accompanied by parents and a grandmother. Her meals will be cooked for her. So I figure she will not assimilate. Not that that is a bad thing, for Canada is a silly place these days, lacking in morals or common sense. But her lack of interest in Canada is coming from a materialist Chinese culture created by the excesses of Communism and Crony Capitalism. All she wants to do is play computer games and chat on WeChat or QQ. Confucian? She wouldn't know who that was.
• Tony thought my e-bike had been stolen. I had parked it in a bike lane in the morning when I took him to school and so he was expecting to see it there at suppertime when Mom was taking him home. But what I had done while he was going to school was take the e-bike home and then park it in a different place. But his thoughts and concern were interesting.
• Lacklustre company class. What to do? What to do? [Could it be that the Chinese speak such bad English because all the teachers they have, be they Chinese or native speaker, are awful?]
• My mother told me that in a certain municipality in Canada, house owners, with driveways and without cars, are renting their driveways to those who have cars, and so the government is getting in on this but insisting that these transactions be taxed. When will they start insisting that garage sales be taxed as well? This is what government in Canada is now. Sad.
• I like the days when I am able to use the e-bike to get to the Metro Station and back. It is much faster than walking home (though not as good exercise) and taking the shuttle bus. Charging the e-bike is a chore however because I do have to park the bike on the other end of the apartment complex, far from Casa K; and because I have to hope there is a empty spot where I can charge and park the e-bike. Despite the many cars in Wuxi, there are still a lot of e-bikes taking up parking space. This is especially noticeable at the Wuxi Metro Station where I often have to ride through a narrow gauntlet of parked e-bikes to find a parking spot. When driving the e-bike, I have figured out that the best time to make a turn is on the green left signal. When a car is tailing me in the apartment complex laneway, I hold my ground and make the vehicle slow down.
• I find I lack focus these days. I cannot concentrate on what I am doing at the moment and I find I am looking ahead to doing other things; and when I am doing these other things that I had been looking ahead to doing, I find I am further looking ahead to doing yet more other things.
• Working for wages and welfare dependency are both forms of slavery. While I am fortunate to have never been on welfare, I have been a wage slave all my life: a nigger by choice.
• A student tells me that someone's wife owns KTVs and thus runs a prostitution ring. Jenny has confirmed that this is the case.
• A rude action on the Wuxi Metro I would say is to lay oneself down on the seats and take a nap. I have seen this done at least three times including the second last evening of July. I thought to take a photo of the gentleman doing this and publish on my WordPress blog.
• Tony really hates walking. On the last Friday of July when I took him to the Yanqiao Metro Station, he insisted that I park the e-bike close to the station entrance. It had been my habit to park on the other end of the parking area far from the entrance.
• At the end of July, it seems like the trip to Canada happened longer than just a month previous. Do I want to move back there? It seems that I more I hem and haw about it, and the older I get, the less sense it makes to go back. I don't have the resources and the energy and the dumb optimism like I had when I moved to Wuxi from Canada, and previously to British Columbia from Winnipeg, or before that, when I moved to Winnipeg from Brandon.
• July was a month of students telling me they had lots of summer homework to do.
• No news about Greece as the month ended.

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary Entry for February 5 to February 16, 2014

Highlights

• This diary entry recounts the few days spent after our Spring Festival stay in Beixin, our time spent in Shanghai, our journey to Hong Kong and back, and the first few days of our return to Wuxi and my return to work.
• Being in holiday mode, I have departed from my normal way of dating the entries in this diary. Usually, I will date the entries on the day they were first written. In this blog entry, I have dated some of the entries for when the events took place, not when they were written about.

Wednesday [February 5]
[Home Laptop]

• It is raining outside. The K family stays at home.
• Jenny watches to get the stench of smoke out of the clothes that were taken to Beixin.
• J's parents and every one else in Beixin smoke.
• I will spend the day at home doing computer things if Tony lets me.
• Typically, I am doing things on the laptop and Tony then wants to play Train Simulator. [Train Simulator can only be played on my laptop.]
• I watched Adam's Rib. While doing so, I posted some screen shots of it to We Chat!
• I am almost finished 32 Shorts Films about Glen Gould. It makes me want to act eccentric.
• Only problem is that I am not a genius in any way.
• My new personal policy is to never think of myself as nothing special.
• On the 7th, we will go to Shanghai and stay at the 2013 Shanghai Expat of the Year's pad.
• Hong Kong has a train museum I learn doing some research on the Internet.
• Hong Kong has a train that goes up a mountain as well I have learned.
  
  Thursday [February 6]
  [Home Laptop]
• Another cold and rainy day.
• Tomorrow, we go to Shanghai. We will spend a day there before we take a plane to Hong Kong.
  I will be staying at Casa Rudkin. Sir Paul tells me that he has an extensive supply of alcohol.
• I haven't begun to pack yet for Hong Kong.
• Yesterday was spend at home. I didn't leave Casa K for any reason. I watched two movies and played on my electronic devices.
• I phone my Mom, who is in Manitoba, last night. Telling her about not being able to take a shower in Beixin, she recounted how she couldn't take a shower when she went to Latvia in the 1990s.
• Safeway in Manitoba is being bought out by Sobey's I learned. I spent a lot of time wandering Safeway aisles in my time.
• We talked a little about Downton Abbey. Apparently, my sister Benita is keen on the show as well.
• David Warren is making a point of journalizing every day on his anti-blog.
• In the afternoon, we go downtown so Jenny can get Hong Kong dollars.
• We have lunch at KFC.
• While Jenny goes to bank, Tony & I hang out at Starbucks.
• Afterwards, we go to the deluxe hot pot place near Wu Ai Lu. [It is called Hi Da Lao Hot Pot]
• Back at Casa K, Jenny is peed at me because I ate all the Hershey's Kisses. No point in defending myself to her, but I will say here that she shouldn't have left them on the counter.
  
  
  Friday [February 7]
  [Ipad Mini and therefore the entries are very short.]
• Wuxi rain.
• Taxi to train station
• Packing decisions
• Arrive in Shanghai at 1500.
• Crowds of people returning from holidays.  So it seemed crazy.
• Took line 1 and 2 to get to Sir Paul's.
• He meet us at station.
• Walked in rain with bags to his apartment.
• Talked and talked.  
• Harry their dog kept attacking Tony.  Even seemed to be humping T.
• Apple TV. I must get! Sir Paul has one and it is a wonderful tool.
• Tony liked Apple TV and so he hogged it.
• Took subway to The Grandma's restaurant. They have them in Shanghai as well.
• J said I talked loudly on subway ride back
• Blame it on Crown Royal!

Saturday [February 8]

[Ipad Mini]

• In Shanghai.  In morning, open curtain to see sun.
• See lots of foreigners as we go about.
• Morning. Go to Mr. Pancake for breakfast. That was good.
• Afternoon, Tony & I go the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. The building was impressive but the museum was a bore. It was meant to be interactive and educational. Interactive displays in China mean having to stand in long lines. Interactive exhibits in museums are more educational than entertaining. You couldn't have paid me any amount of money to waste memory on my Ipad if these exhibits had somehow been turned in Apps.
• Tony got his money's worth.  Dad didn't.  (Tony had free admission.)
• The evening was spent at Sir Paul's.

Sunday [February 9]

[Ipad Mini]

• We rode the Maglev Train to the Pudong Airport. The Maglev station is a ten minute walk from Sir Paul's. Top speed was over 400 kmh.
• At airport, Tony whiny.  Absolutely insisted on his parents buying him toys. He also said that he was scared to fly.
• Flight delayed 20 minutes.
• What to do in HK?
  

Monday [February 10]

[Ipad Mini]

• Prudential hotel:  good location in the middle of Kowloon.  It is above the Jordan MTR stop.
• Only problem:  Wifi No Wifi in rooms unless you pay for it.
• Before flight, Tony was scared.  After, he was happy.
• Train ride from airport to Kowloon was great.  Rode along coastline.
• We are in room 1216 in Hotel.
• Sunday evening:  walked around hotel.  The area was very touristy.  An very diverse collection of non-Chinese.  There seemed to be a lot of Turks and Pakistanis.
• Girls wearing shorts and short skirts.  I have to give a second glance.
• Jenny annoyed the K boys by spending twenty minutes in a cosmetics chain store.
• On Monday, plan: go to HK railway museum, take Star Ferry, and buy Apple TV unit.
• Monday, we did go to museum.  We took MTR there.  Transferred two times.  At Tai Po Market, we couldn't easily find the museum.  I had to pull out the Ipad instructions.  Museum was small.  However, it wasn't crowded and Tony enjoyed himself.  He had to, however, take my camera so he could run around with a group of older boys.
• On the MTR, a pair of older women looked at Tony and looked at me.  His mother is Chinese I told them.  They gave me a thumbs up.  In fact, many HKers liked Tony.
• Few foreigners at Tai Po Market area.
• HK has lots of mountains and skyscrapers.  Downtown streets are narrow.
• After HKRM, Tony & I return to hotel.  Tried to get a hold of Jenny via Wifi  No response. So, we go to Star Ferry area.  Tony didn't want to go on boat so walked the Avenue of Stars.  Found Bruce Lee statue where Tony hammed it up.
• Then back to hotel so I could find Apple store address.  Found it was at Kowloon Tong in a large shopping mall.  I got my Apple TV.  I used Wifi to contact sir Paul in Shanghai.  I sent him a photo of the store's Apple logo.  He asked me for a photo of the Apple TV unit.  He got it.  I also did a brief FaceTime call with him.
• We took the train back to hotel where we meet Jenny in the lobby.  She had had a nap.
• The K family then wandered around Kowloon.  I bought a Turkish doner.  Jenny then took us to a simple restaurant to have seafood.
• Sometime during the day, it seemed the train was too crowded.  We found a car that wasn't so crowded because someone had vomited on the floor.
  

Tuesday [February 11]

[School Laptop]

• This was HK Disneyland Day.
• We took the MTR from the Hotel (above the Jordan Stop) to get to the HK Disneyland Resort stop. Had to transfer to two trains to do so.
• We had a fright at the first subway stop. I ran to get on the train whose doors were open and just as I got inside the automatic doors closed, but J&T were still outside. I tried to pry the doors open and got caught in them. They automatically opened, thankfully, and J&T got inside, but I felt stupid and sheepish. I was relieved that we didn't get separated then. I don't know what I would have done.
• The Day at HKD was as expected and so it was not a bad day overall. We didn't see all we could have seen. We had to wait in long lineups. Some of the rides were quite corny. But some of the rides were quite interesting. The space roller-coaster, the one that goes in the dark, was scary. The spinning teacups gave one an interesting dizzy sensation. The rides through Toy Story land, It's a Small World land, and the Winnie the Pooh land were quite well done. I got my HKD Fridge magnet. Tony enjoyed himself. He particularly liked the train that went around the entire park. Jenny would have liked to have two days in the park to see everything.
• Mickey Mouse blankets were on sale that day and lots of visitors to the park could be seen wearing them. I read in the papers the next day that our HKD day was the coldest February day in HK since the 1990s.
• Our plane back to the Mainland was to leave 11:00 the next day. As the clock was making its way to 18:00, I was itching to get back to our hotel.
• Jenny did a lot of shopping in HK and so when we did go back to our hotel room, we had to buy ourselves another suitcase to take Jenny's purchases back. I thought to go to the outdoor tourist (possibly fake goods) markets to buy there, but Jenny ended up purchasing a suitcase for 770 HK dollars at a luggage shop near our hotel (the Prudential).
• We had supper at a street food place in downtown Kowloon. I drank a bottle of San Miguel beer. I also ate a doner roll from a Turkish restaurant.

Wednesday [February 11]

[School Laptop]

• Our trip to the Airport for our 11:00 flight to Shanghai went like clockwork. I had been worried that we would oversleep or that someone would be slow to move, but we were out of the hotel at 7:30. We took the regular MTR to get to the Airport Shuttle stop where we then had to buy another set of tickets.
• In the airport security, I had to take a lot of HK coins out of my pockets.
• Tony fell asleep on the plane so he didn't cause us any problems. However, in the terminal, he wanted me to carry him. He was tired and at HKD, I had put him on my shoulders so he could watch the parade (quite good actually as they played very catchy music.)
• The food on the Dragon Air flight was the worst I had ever had. But we get a small cup of Haagen-Daaz Ice Cream which was solid like a rock till it melted which wasn't soon enough for me.
• A two hour flight doesn't seem long at all if you have ever flown from China to Canada.
• Tony had told us that he was scared to fly planes. At the Shanghai airport on Sunday [the 9^th], he was whining about how he was scared to fly. But he got over his fright during the flight to HK. On the way back, he was in heaven when he woke up and was able to look out the window [he had a window seat.]. I very much enjoyed watching him look out the window as the plane landed.
• To arrive in Shanghai was to arrive in drab land. Tony wanted to take the train back to Wuxi but it wasn't to be as it would have been too expensive. We took a bus back to Wuxi which was depressing because immediately the locals seemed less interesting and more uncivilized. At the taxi station in the Wuxi Bus station, we stood in line with a lot of locals who looked like they had just taken buses from the countryside. I thought of a comparison that could be made between that line and a line in Disneyland.

Thursday [February 13]

[School Laptop]

[Note: I will talk about what I did on the 13^th in my entry for the 14^th. I will instead record some of my overall impression of Hong Kong.]

• HK people, like the English, drive on the wrong side of the road. It was my first time to be in a place where the cars are right-hand drive and thus are driven on the left side of the street.
• The traffic in HK is fast. I wasn't once cut off by a car or bus as I crossed the street, and I didn't seen anyone else cut off either.
• There were lots of double-decker buses.
• Students were already attending school unlike the mainland where they had a week yet of holiday.
• HK is a level or two up on the mainland for modernization or civilization. However, there were seedy aspects to it. There were lots of people standing about with the empty-gazing look of drug addicts.
• HK is very multicultural I saw a mosque there which on an electronic board with lit-up type I read a sign that said “There is only one God and Allah is his prophet.” I saw lots of people with different hues of skin that I hadn't seen in Wuxi or Shanghai.
• I didn't see any KFCs.
• I saw Watson's which can be found in Wuxi. I also saw Manning's which was its competitor. No Manning's in Wuxi.
• The subway system is quite good. I was surprised that you could transfer to another line by crossing the platform. I had expected that I would have to walk up and down some stairs, and then through tunnels to transfer.
• I saw containers piled ten high in places.
• I saw little evidence of the fact that HK was part of the PRC. I didn't see the five starred red flag anywhere.
• The coins were indistinguishable to me.
• Tony behaved at times well and at other times terribly. He was constantly whining about wanting me to buy him toys. He didn't want to take the star ferry. But then at the Bruce Lee statue he hammed it up and I was able to take some great photos of him. I was able to find a photo of me at a statue in Holland that compared quite remarkably with Tony at the Avenue of Stars.
• Not having a mobile phone can be a pain in the ass if you are with your wife and child. To be separated from them can be scary. In a big store at HKD, I couldn't find them for two minutes. With a mobile in hand, I would have phoned them.

Friday [February 14]

[School Laptop]

• Back to work. I work 9:00 to 17:00 which isn't a normal working shift for me. It is a special day on the Chinese calender.
• Yesterday, I spent at home recovering from the holiday slash vacation. I did get up early to deal with the electrical cord problem I had with my Apple TV unit (which I had purchased in Hong Kong). I looked for, but didn't find any adaptors or converters at Wanda or Tesco. Coming back, I was depressed at the prospect of how I was going to solve the problem. Where was I going to find the needed cord? I also worried that the unit would not work on the television at HK which was old, and not HD. It turned out that I already had a power cord, that came with my Nikon Coolpix camera, that I could use. How the thought came to me about the cord was a miracle.
• And the Apple TV seemed to work fine though there was buffering problems and the HDMI cord seemed loose. Jenny doesn't like it because it uses too much power, in her opinion.
• I am not back in the swing of things. I have podcasts to listen to, blog entries to make, books to read, and many things to get checked off on my to-do list.
• It is Valentine's and Lantern Festival Day today. I won't be observing either though I will be talking about them.
• The first class of the day went well though I was nervous at the start though I attribute that to my having drank a large Cafe Americano from 85 degree bakery.

Saturday [February 15]

[School Laptop]

• The school closed at 5:00 PM on the dot last night.
• Jenny & Tony came downtown. We walked to Nanchang Temple and then Nanchang Jie Bar Street. There was a lot of traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. We had supper at a Burger King on Nanchang Jie Street because all the good Chinese restaurants were packed.
• At about 8:00 PM we took the #25 bus home.
• At Casa Kaulins, we played on our many Apple devices including the Apple TV.
• I work 1000 to 18:00 today. I have but four classes. My first one will be at 11:00. My final class will end at 17:00.
• I am not yet up to fulfilling the obligations I set for myself on my to-do list. Today, I will work on editing this diary entry.
• A lot of poo-pooing the idea of going to Hong Kong among the foreigners at my school. I am glad I went. It was like going to a different country.
• When watching the parade at the HK Disneyland, I had put Tony on my shoulders so he could see the parade. Since then, he has kept asking me to carry him everywhere. When asking me, he has been using a phrase he picked up from Jenny: I am so tired!
• It gave me great pleasure this morning to force a car making a right turn to stop for me as I was crossing the street. I swear that Wuxi, China drivers are a life form on the level of weasels, toads, cockroaches, and maggots.

[Home Laptop]

• There is a drop dead gorgeous girl, recently graduated from university, working at our school as a study adviser. I asked her what she did on Valentine's Day and she told me that she spent the evening at home because she had no “lover.” [Her use of the word “lover” was not meant in the sense that native English speakers would take it these days.] Her telling me this shocked me. There was no way a girl so pretty could not have a boyfriend. But it was also strangely gratifying for me. Not in the sense that I would have a chance with her myself, but some girls are so beautiful that the idea of them actually having relations with the male sex doesn't seem right. It is hard to think of any male, even me in my mind, who is the right man for her.

Sunday [February 16]

[Home Laptop]

• No school today for me or Tony.
• Tony goes back to school tomorrow. None of the K family is looking forward to that.
• It is wet and cold outside Casa Kaulins.
• Last night, I put together some video of Tony, taken in Shanghai and Hong Kong, that showed Tony with or on trains.
• Theory: Chinese men think with their wallets, and not with their other thingee. So they look at a very beautiful girl and figure she is too expensive. Thus there can be pretty girls without boyfriends in China.

The Andis Kaulins in China Weekly: August 26 to September 1, 2013

Gratitude:  With the Summer coming to an end and public school starting up for another year, there are many things I can be thankful for this week like the fact that I won't be seeing twerps so often and that Tony is in his first year of Primary School.

Acknowledgment: I have avoided dealing with a lot of issues of which some you can read about below.

Requests: Please visit Views of China from Casa Kaulins! Lots of interesting things to be seen if you spend a little time exploring it. Also be sure to visit the page dedicated to my father.

The AKIC Week in Brief: The last week of Summer for Tony & I. Tony and Jenny went to Shanghai early in the week so I had the apartment to myself. I worked at school where our busy period was winding down. Tony sat in his primary school class for the first time on Sunday. I was happy to wish off our summer students to their regular schools.

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

An AKIC Glossary

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

AKIC Weekly Features:

I in in China!  星期六，我儿子开始去小学。星期六晚上，我和我儿子去了万大广商。这个星期，我工作了星期二到星期六。星期一和星期天，我没有工作。

I am Canadian! How I miss Tim Horton's! How I miss Hockey Night in Canada!

I am Latvian (sort of)! To be honest, I don't give the fact much thought, and don't have much to say about it. It is a fact that plays little in my life.

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary! I didn't start out that way, all those years ago. In my early twenties, I was boasting that I was a socialist. Rush Limbaugh and common sense changed that.

I teach English! At my school, September means the end of being busy as the twerpish students return to their Monday to Friday 7:00 to 5:00 school.

I am not a freak! I like to think of myself as something of an eccentric.

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

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

Ulysses by James Joyce.  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney figures he will have the whole novel covered in about 22 years.  Delaney completed episode #169 this week and is working his way through the chapter that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far as reading the book.  I will be finished my reading of it, I figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies. It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it, and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with it

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

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

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

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

The New Republic by WH Mallock. Finished. I read it because mention of it was made in the comment sections of one of the recent entries in David Warren's blog. Half way through it, I wondered why it was that I hadn't heard of this book till last week. It is well-written, a real page-turner, and it deals with all the issues I like to reflect on.

The Limits of Pure Democracy by WH Mallock. I am reading this book on the recommendation of David Warren who says it is essential reading for students of political science.

Fire in the Hole by Elmore Leonard. Finished. I now have about thirty Elmore Leonard novels and whatnot on my Ipad. At random, I picked this one to read. I almost blanched at the fact that it was a story about Nazi skinheads and anti-government types, but it was a short story so I decided to forgive the fact that it was almost left-wing porn.

I like to take photos

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

I like to make videos

Here is my Youtube Channel and my Youku Channel. Views of China from Casa Kaulins #14 is my latest.

I like to cut and paste quotations:

Blaise Pascal:

All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room. [LECTOR: Why do you stay in your office and rarely go out of it to talk to anyone? ANDIS: I don't want trouble.]

Catechism of the Catholic Church: 1435 Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one's brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one's cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance. [This is all good, but there is one thing I wonder about. Who are my brethren? I am going to have to search the Internet to find any.]

Below is my usual batch of Don Colacho quotes. The first four are aphorisms added along with essays at the end of my 2,988 Colacho Aphorisms compilation:

He who speaks of his “generation” admits that he’s part of a herd.

The supreme aristocrat is not the feudal lord in his castle but the contemplative monk in his cell.

Confused ideas and muddy ponds appear deep.

Poetry is the fingerprint of God in human clay.

I will read the Colacho Compilation again:

#4 Those who lament the narrowness of the environment in which they live long for events, neighbors, landscapes to give them the sensibility and intelligence which nature denied them.[That so accurately describes why I came to China. But it also does for a lot of other Wuxi Expats as well.

#17 Every end other than God dishonors us.

#26 Love of the people is the aristocrat's vision. The democrat does not love the people except during election season.

#27 By the same measure that the state grows, the individual shrinks.

#28 Technology does not fulfill man's perennial dreams, but craftily mimics them.

#36 Thinking is often reduced to inventing reasons to doubt the obvious. [If this is the case then Paul Krugman is the greatest thinker of all time.]

#38 The man who renounces appears impotent to a man incapable of renouncing.

#46 To be right is just one more reason not to achieve any success. [Being mediocre, I can take solace in this. Not complete solace however because I have confessed to my mediocrity.]

#48 Religion did not arise out of the need to assure social solidarity, nor were cathedrals built to encourage tourism. [Amen. Those religious types who want to give in to the times should read this and think long and hard about it.]

David Warren:

As a journalist I had often to make judgements in the course of an interview; to decide on whom I could or could not rely. I was actually taught, young, the sort of ticks to look out for. In particular, the inability to return one’s gaze unselfconsciously; for shifty eyes are the very flag of devious low cunning. The ability to distinguish upright from dishonest was once taught, generally, as a survival skill. Today we are taught instead “not to be judgemental,” & to overlook what “isn’t important.” But to the wise, the large is revealed in the small. The skill of reading character is not in itself a cultural property, though it may take cultural modes; it is rather one of the universal properties of man. It is a human skill, in the acquirement of which we are constantly reminded that nobility is simple & direct; that the ignoble are complex & crooked.

The leaders in our public life today — our “politicians” — are more or less invariably ignoble, self-serving, crooked men & women; “complicated people,” who cannot coherently explain themselves; “passive-aggressive” as the current saying goes. They boast, they are coarse, they are shifty in behaviour. This has much to do with the way they are selected. [So much wisdom in here that I can think of nothing to add to it. I can only wonder if I could ever coherently explain myself. I suspect I can't for two reasons: 1) I have lived in China for nine years. 2) I have many passive-aggressive personality traits. These two reasons have so re-enforced each other in the time I have been in China that I have retreated to my office at work, only coming out for classes, meals, and bathroom breaks.]

I fashion myself to be a 21^st Century Pepys

Monday [August 26]

[Home Laptop]

I made the following notes (in bold) when riding on the bus this afternoon.

Cat away! Jenny & Tony took at 14:57 train to Shanghai. They will be gone for three days.T&J take train to Shanghai I accompanied them to the station. Amazingly, to me, Jenny didn't buy tickets till when we got to the station, and she didn't have to wait long for the train once she had bought them. Tony was excited to be at the train station which wasn't a surprise.601 bus To get to the train station, we took the 601 bus. It was the first time I was on that bus, and it was a sensation to ride an elevated road that hitherto I had ridden underneath with the other buses. I had a new perspective on the area being renovated for the metro line. It seemed small from above and it had parks and neighborhoods that I hadn't suspected existed.Leonid Brezhnev look alike.  Grey  wool pants.  25 bus. After seeing off Jenny & Tony at the train station, I took the 25 bus home. I didn't have a seat right away but after three minutes, a seat, seemingly magically, became available for me. As I sat, I was startled to see a ugly man with a Leonid Brezhnev scowl on his face. Seeing that he was wearing this rather comfortable looking gray and wool trousers, I imagined that I would have scowled too if I was wearing those pants.Moment of eternity  Dad's last memory. I was listening to a audiobook podcast of GK Chesterton's Heretics as I made my way back to Casa Kaulins. In the particular chapter I listened to, Chesterton wrote of the proper way to drink. To think of wine as medicine was not a reason to drink said Chesterton, but to drink for enjoyment and eternity, that was the way to drink. I wondered if my Dad, who liked his drink, drank that way. Chesterton then said that the moments we spend with others are meant for eternity. He cared not for those whose motto was
“Carpe Diem!” Before my father passed away, he told me of a time when I was a toddler and he had me on his shoulders, carrying me down some stairs leading to a beach, and hadn't realized that I had become stuck in a tree overhead. It took him too long, he said, to realize what my distress was. That was the last recollection I ever got from my Dad, and there isn't a week that goes by that I don't think of it. Moments like that, moments spent with a dying person, are moments when Carpe Diem becomes a big load of Leftism.... That moment was a moment for eternity. Try to put subtitle on film. There is a Japanese film I would like to watch on my Ipad. The film which I got via a torrent is in Japanese. I was able to find a subtitles file on the Internet so I can watch the film on my laptop; however I still couldn't watch it on my Ipad. But I found a program today, and I put the subtitles on a MP4 file of the film. I will have to see whether the subtitles appear when I watch the film sometime this week.What to do? When the wife is away, this cat will play? Nada chance! I am going to spend the evening at home reading and watching movies.

Tuesday [August 27]

[Home Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00. I will try to leave the house by 9:30.

It's a busy morning. With J&T away, I have extra things I have to do like the dishes and some sweeping.

I can hear a piano being played. Many Chinese have pianos or have their children take piano lessons and so there is one somewhere in my apartment.

I watched Le Quattro Volte last night. An Italian film, without dialogue, was a meditation on four aspects of life. I figured out what three of the Quattros were: man, animal, and plant. Is mineral close to earth? If is is then I figured out the fourth as well. The film had a shepherd and goats. Funny, I saw some goats but one day before.

[School Laptop]

I took the 602支 and 79 buses to get to school. I sat in the very back of the 602支. On the 79 bus, I stood since I didn't have far to go and my right leg wasn't acting up. I did feel uncomfortable however because this young boy who I stood beside was obviously starring at me the foreigner. I tried to ignore him by concentrating on the podcast of Mother Angelica I was listening to.

Mother Angelica was talking about tolerance. What I got out of her talk was that I should be more tolerant. With her Catholic eye, she did point out many examples of modern intolerance. The intolerance of what is normal and ordinary. This got me to thinking of how today's culture is tolerant of weirdness but not tolerant of eccentricity. The weirdness we see today is deliberate and is intolerant of what is normal and ordinary. Eccentricity is natural, completely self-possessed, and not slave to fashion – thus it couldn't be tolerated in today's society.

I also listened to the Three Martinis podcast and the Coffee & Markets podcast. Libertarian Populism is the buzzword of the moment on the right I learned. I became a Libertarian Populist twenty years ago. I have since modified my views to become more reactionary.

A thought that just occurred to me: Yesterday, at the train station, after Jenny had purchased her tickets, and we had done through the security, Tony was able to see about three trains roll into or through the station – it was a perfect sight, well coordinated, though it was coincidental, for Tony to espy, and of course he was very enthused by the sight.

I just had a class about hobbies. There are creative hobbies, I told the students, where you can make things. I then asked the students what creative things they did, and I had a boy who almost put me off balance when he said he liked growing flowers. As it was, I guffawed.

Wednesday [August 28]

[School Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

Jenny & Tony are in Shanghai so last night I talked to Tony on the phone. He told me he saw a fire station and fire truck. I was pleased to hear him sounding so enthusiastic. Then, Jenny told me she had some bad news for me. It turned out that Tony had seen the fire station when Jenny was taking him to the hospital – Tony had been bitten by a dog that was hanging around the apartment of Jenny's friend. Presumably, Tony had been teasing the dog. Tony got two shots at the hospital yesterday and will have to get another in a week. Little Boys will be little boys and they will have accidents all the time...

I decided to put the Ibooks app back on my Ipod so that I will have something to read when Tony is playing with my Ipad. I vow, now, that I will only put a few select volumes on the Ipod. So far, I have only put on two: the Psalms and Don Colacho's Aphorisms.

I did another thing different, or at least something I haven't done in a long time: I had coffee and pie at McDonald's. Funny, I arrived at the Restaurant just as they were changing over from their breakfast menu. I didn't pull a Michael Douglas and demand to be served breakfast.

Now that I think of it, when I saw that Douglas film Falling Down in the cinema, I wasn't impressed with that film's famous fast food restaurant scene. I thought it was so cliché and manipulative on the part of the movie makers, and no big deal. Yet, a few years after the film came out, I overheard some driver at Loomis talking about the scene like it was a classic, and I felt resentful that people could be so manipulated by movies.

I had a good idea for a Speaker's Corner [SPC]. [LECTOR: You had a good idea eh? That's a first!] The topic for the SPC was Interviews during which I had interviews conducted involving me, the class, or another students. I had some of the interviewees pretend to be other people like Obama, a famous football player, or patients from the #7 People's Hospital (the crazy hospital in Wuxi). I came up with the #7 hospital idea just before the class, and it worked rather well. The students had lots of questions to ask the would-be mental patients. After the class, I realized that I could have spent an hour having students pretend to be mental patients.... [LECTOR: Are you pretending to be a mental patient when you are at school?]

Thursday [August 29]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 21:00 today.

J&T return to Wuxi this morning, or at least that is what Jenny told me last night. Last night, they were apparently on the Bund looking at the Huangpu River boat traffic, the lights, and the tall buildings. While this impressed Tony, he was more interested to report to me that he saw ambulances.

Tony got a new train for his Plarail train set. A shop he went to had a better selection of our favorite toy brand than was on offer at the Wuxi Ba Bai Ban. [ANDIS: I saw him with a train in one of the photos Jenny had sent me of Tony in Shanghai. LECTOR: Is that so?]

7:30 AM, I was standing at the bus stop and I got this notion that I may not have turned off the air-conditioner in the small bedroom before I had left. Trying to recall, I could not visualize a recollection of my actually having turned off that a/c, so I walked back to the apartment to see that I had in fact turned off the a/c. What I got for giving myself peace of mind was sweat that will linger with me the rest of the day and that will probably result in a rank body odor till I get home at 10:15 tonight. For as I got to the bus stop for the second time, I was soaked with wet patches on my shirt and pants.

I bought the big breakfast at McDonald's and was intending to eat it in the restaurant. But the staff person gave it to me in a bag so instead of telling her not to bother, I took my breakfast to school because I figured it was too late to correct her since I hadn't specified that I wanted to eat in the restaurant and I didn't want them to change their default assumption that I wanted my food take-away.

中国话 and 中国画. Both these sets of characters are pronounced zhongguohua. The hua must surely have a different tone. Now, I should be able to figure out the difference between the two not by hearing the tone, but in context of a conversation. Still, how often have I said zhongguohua and pronounced it like I was talking about painting? Further proof that the more I learn about Chinese, the less I should bother trying to speak it.

I am so skinny that I can avoid getting wet when it rains by standing between the rain drops.

That attempt at a joke came to me as I was walking to McDonald's to get my supper. It was cloudy and the air was moist, and so I wondered it if might start raining while I was at the restaurant. Not having brought my umbrella, I imagined myself having to stay at the restaurant till the rain subsided. But this was only a speculation for, when the I heard cracks of thunder, my instinct was to get my order as quickly as possible and run back to school. I did get the order quickly and felt some big drops as I crossed the one intersection between the School and McDonald's. Closer to the school, I had to sprint.

Back at school, I have noticed that the one packet of ketchup McDonald's supplies one with an order of fries is not enough. Now, usually I never bother using the ketchup when I eat my fries because I am too lazy and impatient but recently, maybe because I am old or the menu at McDonald's in China lacks variety, I have been using the ketchup. So I wonder now how long has it been that McDonald's has been cheap with the ketchup? Or should I just ask for more when they fill my order in the first place?

Jenny & Tony are back in Wuxi but haven't gotten back to Casa Kaulins yet. I hope they are on the bus or under some shelter. I don't want to hear that they got caught in the rain.

Should the Americans be getting involved in Syria? Not in the manner I have heard that they are planning to get involved which seems, from what I have heard, to be more for show than for any real purpose. Obama, vowing to do something if Syria crossed a red line, had talked himself into doing it. Dreading the charge of being weak and indecisive, he seems to be approving a bombing campaign that won't destroy anything military, including possible chemical weapon depots, and will target only empty buildings or buildings that will have lots of time to be emptied before they are bombed.

Friday [August 30]

[School Laptop]

I work 11:00 to 21:00 today.

It rained heavily last evening. As I wrote yesterday, I was outside just as the rain started to come down and I was fortunate to get back to school with only a few drops of rain having hit me. When the rain started to come down, it came down in buckets and was accompanied by loud cracks of thunder that seemed to burst just outside the building. Because of this, I was hoping to have some no-shows but alas, my students all came. As it was, the thunder and the humidity made it hard for me to concentrate in class, as it did for one student who apologized to me for not being able to concentrate because of the stuffiness of the air in the school.

What is happening to Wall Street English? I heard news that the School has been punished by the authorities for employing part-time foreign teachers this Summer. Punishment for the school is that it has to shut down for three months; Punishment for the part-time teachers was deportation. Some of these part-timers were working other jobs in Wuxi like at Jiangnan University. The full-time teachers had been given an option: take a three month unpaid leave or work at a Wall Street School in another city in China for the three months.

Last night, I asked my 635 bus companion, who works at a school competing with both my school and Wall Street, if she had heard about what had happened at Wall Street. I was surprised and disappointed to hear from her that, other than from me, she hadn't heard anything about it. She told me her school had been employing part-timers and was still employing part-time foreigners because of the increased demand for summer-time classes. As has become my habit in China, because I can never be sure if my questions have been understood, I asked the same questions of her again, and she told me, while complaining that I had asked her ten times, she hadn't heard anything about Wall Street and her school was still doing what Wall Street had been punished for.

I will have to find another source of information about what is happening at this school. If what she says is true, then one must conclude that Wall Street doesn't have much guanxi in Wuxi.

I did learn from my 635 bus companion that the school's Speaker's Corner room's roof was leaking so badly during last evening's rain that some classes had to be canceled.

Sights seen on the way to work this morning:

1. Walking along Zhongshan road, I could see a torrent of water, surely a residue of yesterday's heavy rain or the result of a broken pipe, falling from the front of the building onto the street. As I approached I could that see that the waterfall wasn't coming down through a proper drainage path but was instead coming through a gap in the overhang of the building that shelters a small area between the store entrance and the sidewalk. Passing in front of the waterfall, I saw that the water was blocking a cosmetic's store entrance. Thanks to the bright commercial lighting in the store, I could see a stricken-looking worker, or perhaps owner, of the store talking on her mobile phone as she looked at the waterfall ruining her business.
2. Just a minute later, at the corner of Zhongshan and Xueqian Roads and in front of Wang's dumpling, I saw a motor-cycle taxi, the kind that I like to take photos of for my Casa Kaulins blog, being pulled up onto a tow truck. The taxi was being confiscated by the authorities because they are illegal in the downtown area of Wuxi. Near the tow truck, an old woman stood, with tears in her eyes, seeing her livelihood being taken away.
3. Crossing the intersection, I see a man taking a photo of his daughter sitting next to the Ronald McDonald figure. He seemed to have a nice camera – one of those SLR types.

Tony is going to be in Grade One, Class Seven at his primary school.

Things that drive an English Teacher crazy. The 85 Degree Bakery puts the word toast on the bags they use to package their loaves of bread. This causes me much pain when I try to explain what toast is to the students. So often, they tell me they have bread and milk tea for breakfast. Hearing them say bread, I try to ask for clarification. Did they eat toast or a slice of bread? Trying to explain toast and toaster to them doesn't work. As soon as I think they understand what I mean by toast, one of the students blares out that he bought a bag of toast at 85!!!

Our younger students go back to school! Hooray! I won't have to see the little twerps hanging around the school on weekdays. However, the poor buggers start school on Sunday! Foreigners, who are new to Wuxi, find that hard to believe. I never went to school on Sunday. Never!

My son Tony, the poor little fellow, starts Primary School on Sunday, as well.

Saturday [August 31]

I work 10:00 to 18:00.

Jenny & Tony were up early this morning because Jenny had to go to his primary school to pay four months of tuition.

Jenny took Tony there via e-bike. There is a problem with getting Tony to the school which is near the kindergarten. The primary school, unlike the kindergarten, doesn't have a van to pick up students so Jenny has be looking for parents living in our area to carpool with. She has found someone but the drives won't be happening till the middle of September which means she will be taking Tony to school via e-bike. She tells me that she will be taking Tony herself to school because she won't be able to accompany him in the car. She wants to be there with for Tony until he gets used to going to school.

I read David Warren's latest blog entry this morning. It was superb and worthy of linking because it touched on two things I am interested in: Chinese history, and dealing with other people. Warren rightly pointed out that the fact of the Communists still being in power in China has made most modern histories of China suspect; and he had some interesting observations to make on how by looking at people and their physical mannerisms, you can see their level of trustworthiness. Thinking about the latter point, I can't think of anyone that I can trust here in China, be they Chinese or foreigner. Chinese society is corrupt to the core, and anyone who has spent as much time as I have here cannot help but be corrupted as well. Knowing this has resulted in my going into a shell: I kept silent and look at all with suspicion, knowing full well that I should be looked upon with suspicion as well.

Warren also wrote that you can't trust people who boast, people who are coarse, and people who are shifty-eyed and never look anyone in the eye. I am probably guilty on two of those three accounts. I can say that I don't boast because I don't have anything to boast about, and that if I did have something to boast about, I wouldn't because I have seen too many who do boast, whether they have a reason or not to, whose boasting has the opposite effect on me that they may have intended. That is, boasting is truly inelegant, and the quiet confident type is the person I most admire and most worthy of admiration. On the other two counts, I can say that I often don't resist the urge to say the coarse thing, and I am scared of confrontation. For instance, I kept my budding Christianity and my reactionary political views to myself.

I see that Tony had actually sat in his Primary School Class for the first time today. A lady at work who is a contact of Jenny on a popular social networking app showed me photos of Tony in his classroom. Tony seemed happy. I suspect that he was because he had his own desk to sit at. [This detail: having a desk of one's own for the first time when one goes to primary school is something that I hadn't thought about till now.]

Sunday [September 1]

[Home Laptop]

I don't work today. It turns out that Tony doesn't have to go to school till tomorrow.

I will do something with Tony today.

Tony has to be at school at 7:20 in the morning!! Jenny doesn't like this one bit. I don't care for it either because it means that there will be days when Tony is asleep and I won't being interacting with him.

To please him I put some pdf files of Siku Toy catalogues and fire truck photos on my Ipad.

Last night, I took Tony to the Wanda Plaza where he brought his push-bike and was happily darting among the shoppers. We had chips and ice cream at the McDonald's, and were heading home when Jenny, being bored at home, joined us.

Back at home, before Tony confiscated the Ipad from me, I finished watching the Western film Hombre starring Paul Newman. Newman's character Russell is a white man raised by Apaches. Getting an inheritance, Russell sells a house and puts its head matron out of work. He accompanies the woman on a stage coach ride that is held up by bandits seeking to get cash carried by one of the wealthy passengers.... It was a good movie that held me in suspense in the very end, and Newman's taciturn portrayal of the Russell character was inspiring.

I also started watching Shall We Dance! As I mentioned earlier this week, it is a Japanese movie so I had to put subtitles on it before I could watch it on my Ipad.

And the subtitles, I am pleased to report, are fine, and so I am enjoying the movie. It is fun and cute at the same time!

It looks like we will be going to Pizza Hut, the one at the Wanda Plaza, for Lunch.

Monday [September 2]

[Home Laptop]

I didn't have a chance to get finish off the blog entry yesterday so I will do it this morning.

We didn't go to Pizza Hut yesterday. We went to the Xinjiang Restaurant instead.

After lunch yesterday, I took Tony out on the e-bike. We went into Jiangyin where we saw trains, a canal, geese, goats, duck, and chickens.

In the evening, we went to bed early. Tony had to be up at school at 7:20 AM!