The Andis Kaulins in China Diary for December 30, 2013 to January 5, 2014

Monday [December 30]

[Home Laptop]

• Today, I am at home reading.
• Tony came home and wanted to play on my Ipad Mini. This want of his was in direct conflict with my desire to keep reading. Jenny broke the stalemate by giving Tony her Ipad.
• I did go out for a e-bike ride and I took a photo of the end of the number one Wuxi Metro line. You can see the photo at AKIC wordpress.
• I have downloaded some great books from 2013. I came upon some best books of 2013 articles on the Internet and then went to to kick ass torrents.

Tuesday [December 31]

[Home Laptop]

• Last day of the year. The western year, that is.
• No plans for New Year's Eve. Jenny, being a Chinese mainlander, doesn't celebrate it. The idea of going out on that night never enters her mind. I have fallen into that habit.
• Tonight, I will work till 9:00 PM. I will take the bus home, probably arriving about 10:10 PM. I will spend the rest of the night on the Ipad, if Tony lets me.
• Yesterday, I read about the Papineau Rebellion of 1837 and Lee Harvey Oswald being a wife-beater.
• I read to Tony from a storybook that I had loaded on my Ipad. He seemed to very much appreciate it. Five minutes later, he was asleep.

[School Laptop]

• Coming to school, I felt uncomfortable because I was overdressed. I had to take off my toque, scarf, and open my parka.
• Jenny went downtown to get her “visa” to go to Hong Kong. She brought along my and Tony's passports but forgot to bring her own. When she realized and then phoned me, she was lucky that I had only just left the apartment.
• Contemplating my dull New Year's Eve made me a little depressed and resentful for a bit. For five minutes I let the bad feelings eat me up until I realized that I hadn't prayed and then recalled Pope Benedict's words about living for others. I stay home tonight for Jenny & Tony.
• Perhaps, it will be a good evening to set up the train set for Tony.
• Tony gets three days off starting on the 1^st. Sounded good until I realized that means that Tony will go to school on Saturday and Sunday.
• I just had to write a personal introduction about myself for the school. I was stumped what to say for it because I have lead a very uneventful unremarkable life with few experiences that anyone else would find interesting and differentiate me from other ESL teachers.

Wednesday [January 1, 2014]

[Home Laptop]

• At midnight, I was sitting in bed and reading the LHO biography section of Vincent Bugliosi's JFK assassination book. Tony & Jenny lay beside me. There was no festive moment to mark the change of the years.
• Jenny was in a sombre mood anyway. Ten hours earlier, there had an argument between Jenny and one of Tony's teachers. Tony had a scar under his eye for some reason and Jenny had not been pleased with one particular teacher's reaction to it. Jenny went to the school principal to complain. The teacher was not doing a good job of looking after Tony, said Jenny. The principal told Jenny to not worry and that Tony would be protected.
• The biography of LHO was engrossing. I read it until I finished it at 1:40 AM.
• I hadn't been aware that Oswald was a wife-beater. He had this cruel insistence that his Russian wife not learn English as well.
• Oswald's decision to kill JFK fits in with the rest of his biography. Oswald wanted to be important. He latched onto to Marxism as a way of doing it. In the months before the assassination, he acted upon a bunch of hair-brained scheme related to his Marxism. He distributed leaflets in New Orleans supporting Castro. He went to Mexico City in hopes of getting a Visa to Cuba. He attempted to murder General Walker. When Oswald learned that the JFK motorcade was to pass by his place of employment, it couldn't have taken him long to decide to assassinate the president. It was his chance to make a splash.
• [Later] After the earlier diary entry, I published two Expat of the Year articles. I then took Tony to Wanda where we went to KFC and the Arcade so Tony could play the Truck game. Jenny came to met us and we had supper at an unpretentious restaurant which I wouldn't take a foreigner to.
• Back home, I published another expat of the year article as well as some photos about the Year of the Firearm in Wuxi – my whacked idea for my Wuxi China Expatdom site.
• Despite having enough Apple products, we still like to waste time at the Wanda Plaza Apple store playing on the Ipads and Computers. I find an app, that is not free alas, that was very interesting, called Hair Salon 2 which allows you to be a hair-dresser. You can cut, shave, color, and re-grow a client's hair to your heart's content. Playing with it, I initially tried to make the clients look as preposterous as possible. I then wanted to make the male client look like Hitler but the app had the man's mustache part under his nose – an un-parted mustache could not be grown under it. I suppose this was on purpose.

Thursday [January 2]

[School Laptop]

• I work today. 10:00 to 21:00.
• Tony doesn't go to school today. He was still asleep when I phoned Jenny at 11:00 this morning.
• This morning, I felt out-of-sorts as I went through my morning routine. I did fall asleep till late. [Jenny & I made love at 1:30 or so.] I got out of bed at 6:45 and I didn't have time to relax before it was time for me to leave the apartment and catch the bus to school.
• I am not wearing long underwear today. The temperature is supposed to get up to 15 degrees Celsius this afternoon.
• I had a 10:00 o'clock class with three lads who happen to attend a High School in the Hui Shan area – that be Jiangsu Xishan High School. The lads don't live in the Hui Shan area. While they are at the school, they stay in dorms but they never leave the campus. They might as well be going to High School in Shanghai because they have nothing to say about the area.
• Paul Rudkin, the True Git, is happy to have been named the 2013 Shanghai Expat of the Year.
• This afternoon, I will have an English Corner about 2014. I hope to talk with the students about things like plans, resolutions, and predictions.
• The students I talked to this morning, had very dull New Year's eve. It is very rare that any of them do anything on December 31.
• Jenny phoned me angrily because apparently, when I set up the train set for Tony last night, I had caused some piece of paper she had hurriedly placed down to go missing. I did not know what she was talking about and so I got hung up on. I had to think about it and then I phoned her back with a suggestion as to where the paper might be. Perhaps, I said, the paper had fallen behind some boxes in the closet because to set up the train I had to lift up some things to get to the box of train track and take it out of the closet. Jenny, in a huff, listened to the suggestion. I phoned later to find that I had been correct in my guess. Still, Jenny said, it was my doing...
• Walking down the street, I was greeted by a woman who said the following: “Hello, I saw you on TV.” She didn't stop to start a conversation but the information she gave me was nice to know...

Friday [January 3]

[School Laptop]

• Tony was a bad boy last night. After I arrived home last night, he took, without my permission, my Ipad. Still, I let him play with it for an hour or so. But when I looked at the time and saw how late it was, I took the Ipad from him. He howled for twenty minutes despite Jenny & I telling to stop or suffer consequences. He even refused to apologize for his behavior.
• The incident was very distressing because I wasn't in the mood to be tough with him, but I had no choice. I have to be more of an authority for the boy. I have to say no more often.
• I am not wearing long underwear today. Tomorrow, I may have to as the forecasts say it will get colder.
• I got a seat on the back corner of the 635 bus last night for my forty minute ride home. I passed the time by watching the end of the Long Voyage Home, a film about merchant seaman, that starred John Wayne playing a Swede. As I got to the Hui Shan area, I put away the Ipad and noticed that there was a foreigner standing on the bus – I assume he was a teacher at the Xishan High School because I got off the bus before he did.
• I will go to the City Hall to do a Lunch time English Corner.
• Tony doesn't have school today. Jenny will have him doing homework I presume.

[Later]

• I have gone to the City Hall.
• One of the woman who attended my English Corner told me she was an IT engineer in the military but didn't know what her rank was. She did get to shot some weapons in her training.
• I learned that Line #1 of the Wuxi Metro will run from Yanqiao to the City Hall. That is, if it opens in June, 2014, as has been planned.
• Some of the civil servants surprised me by expressing skepticism about the subway. They talked of how it was a monument to politicians and how Wuxi may not have the population to sustain it. One civil servant even predicted that it wouldn't make money.

Saturday [January 4]

[School Laptop]

• I work 10:00 to 17:00 although I get to school at 8:45. Such a keener am I. Ha! Ha Ha!
• It is my last day at school till the 20^th. Jenny had me take the first two weeks of my three weeks of vacation, that I had coming to me, in the next two weeks. I didn't want to, but it was her idea.
• I took the 602支 bus to downtown. I could then have taken the 79 bus to get to school, but I was indecisive and the bus driver closed the entrance door. The bus still had lots of passengers getting off at the back door, and I could have decided to knock on the front door and have the driver let me in. But I didn't want to appear to have been hesitant so I did nothing.
• Tony went to school today, and he will go to school tomorrow.

Sunday [January 5]

[Home Laptop]

• My first full day of vacation starts today.
• I didn't get to sleep in today because Tony had to go to school. Yes. He goes to school on a Sunday. This is not unusual in China because days off will be arranged so that workers or students can get consecutive days off; but this means that they will have to work on weekends and sometimes for stretches lasting seven or eight or nine days in a row.
• I am watching the first NFL playoff game of the year live online. The Chiefs lead the Colts 38-17. I predict that the Colts will close the gap and maybe even take the lead. These things just seem to happen.... Fix?
• Inauspiciously, my vacation began last night. As soon as I finished my last class, I went home. I avoided mentioning to anyone that my vacation was starting. When I arrived home, Tony was taking a break from doing his homework. Jenny had him carry on with it after supper.
• Jenny bought me a blue tooth ear piece for my Ipod and Ipad products. I got the thing to work. The first thing I listened to was the latest John Derbyshire podcast.
• It is now 41-31 in the game. What did I tell you?
• [Later] Colts win 45-44. What DID I tell you?
• Now, I watch the Eagles and the Saints on PPTV.
• I got a better idea. I watch the Eagles and Saints on my Ipad. This lets me type on the laptop.
• Now, if only I had something to type.
• Listening to the John Derbyshire gave me a very distressing idea of how bad the smog in China has been. In Harbin, the smog level of the air was forty times above what is the lowest level of what is dangerous for the lungs. (The low number was 25. Harbin was at 1000! Shanghai, Derb said, was at 600!)
• It makes me want to move, but then the news from Manitoba, Canada is just as distressing. Temperatures are down to minus thirty, and to stay outdoors could kill somebody.
• So here's my choice: Bad air versus Extreme cold and Mosquitoes (Manitoba's are worse than Wuxi's).
• The score in the football game: Saints 23, Eagles 17. The Eagles are the home team. There are eight minutes to play in the game. The game won't end 23-17. It just isn't a score for a game to end on. It will probably end 24-23 or 26-24.
• Saints win 26-24. WHAT did I tell you?
• I will end the diary entry here. Onward with my vacation!!!!

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary: December 2 to December 8, 2013

December 2 to December 8 Highlights: History will note but one thing from this week's AKIC diary: the Wuxi Smog Crisis of 2013.

Funny how the week started with Andis complaining about how the weather was too warm for December.

Other than this, the exterior life lead by Andis Kaulins but was dull.

Thankfully, Andis has a rich interior life of an aristocratic gentleman. For as the famous sage Nicholas Gomez Davilla, aka Don Colacho, said: 1)The true aristocrat is the man who has an interior life. Whatever, his origin, his rank, or his fortune. and 2) In tedium freely assumed bloom the noblest things.

Monday [December 2]

[Home Laptop]

• I don't work today.
• In the morning, after getting Tony off to school, I take apart the train set that both he & I had set up the night before. I know Tony won't like this.
• I then do some work on the laptop. I know Jenny won't like this.
• My laptop work consisted of designing a new logo and new helmets for my Wuxi Peach Maoists fantasy football team (You can see the designs at my Wuxi Peach Maoists Site), and uploading Views of China from Casa Kaulins #41 to the Youtube.
• My 2013 Wuxi Peach Maoists are on the verge of winning their second game of the season. Playing the spoiler, the Maoists are beating their division leaders and are thus preventing them from clinching the division title. Heading into their match-up with the Peach Maoists, which was the second last game of the season, the division leaders had a one and a half game lead over the second place team. Their loss to the Peach Maoists combined with a victory by the second-place team means that their regular season finale match-up with that second-place team will decide who wins the division and get a spot in the playoffs.
• Jenny gives me heck for doing things on the computer instead of doing things around the house and taking a shower. And so I feel like a heel until Jenny calls me “Honey” when asking for for my help.
• In the afternoon, Jenny & I go the Wuxi Hui Shan Wanda Plaza for lunch and some grocery shopping. I look to buy long underwear at the Uni-Qlo but there is none that would fit me. [Times like that make me wish I was five foot nine.]
• I put together the train set for Tony before he would arrive back from school. In the morning and then at lunch, he had told Jenny of his strong desire to not have the train set taken apart. I didn't want to hear him whine upon arriving home from school because he would immediately notice that the train set was taken apart like he had done so many times before.
• When Tony arrived home, he was satisfied with the work I had done.

Tuesday [December 3]

[Home Laptop]

• I work today. 13:00 to 21:00. I will probably arrive at work at 11:00.
• I have gotten Tony off to school. The car, that takes him to school, pulled up at the meeting point twenty seconds before we did.
• First thing I did when I got back home was take apart all the toy train track that had been laid in the living room last evening. [If you visit the Tony Kaulins in China blogs, you can see photos of what he and I had done.]
• The temperature could get up to 17 degrees today if the weather app on my Ipod Touch is to be believed. This is trouble because now I don't know how to dress for today. Do I wear a toque and a scarf? Do I wear long underwear?
• Laying beside Tony in bed last night, I put my head down so as to get Tony to fall asleep. I thought I would be able to raise my head and read once Tony was asleep, but then I realized I couldn't.
• After putting away the train set, I take a shower and iron my clothes for work.
• All the while, I listen to podcasts on the Ipod. So far, I have listened to a talk by David Horowitz, the Three Martinis podcast and Vatican Radio. A Greek girl dies of Carbon Monoxide poisoning – a terrible symptom of the Greek economic crisis.

[School Laptop]

• I took the 25 bus to work.
• On the bus, I was listening to a podcast on my Ipod and I heard a woman talking so loudly and shrilly behind me that I had to turn around and take a look at her. She was talking on her mobile phone.
• When I arrived at school, I turned on my computer, unpacked my lunch from my bag and put it in the elevator, and then walked to the bathroom (men's of course) entered the western toilet stall and took off my long underwear.
• I helped Tony do some simple arithmetic homework last night. However, it wasn't so simple for him. My wife has taught him to do these problems (with numbers no bigger than ten) using his fingers. It was all I could do to keep my patience with him. As it was, I was asking him, contemptuously, if he was a dumb boy.
• Later, I took a shower with Tony. I get annoyed with him then as he has to control the shower head flow. A few times, I had to wrestle the portable nozzle out of his tightly grasping hands.

Wednesday [December 4]

[School Laptop]

• I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.
• I take the 25 bus to get to school. Along the way, I see a media-conference style table at a corner near the Hui Shan Times Century (Tesco) plaza. Behind the table sat a bunch of cops in uniform. It seems that they were doing some sort of public safety awareness event.
• I went to Ba Bai Ban to do my initial shopping probe of things that I plan to buy for Tony for Christmas. I am looking, as I have almost every Christmas, at buying Tony Plarail products like trains and fixtures.
• I complained that the weather yesterday was too warm. Today it is worse.

Thursday [December 5]

[School Laptop]

• It's my brother Ron's birthday today and so I will send him an email. Ron, my younger brother, 我弟弟, is in his forties, that much I will say. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba and owns my Aunt Ritma's old house, where I used to live when I spent a few years of my life, wasted years as it turned out, in Winnipeg.
• Ron likes the Maple Leafs (to which I say hiss!) and mountain biking (which can be done in Manitoba, believe it or not).
• The house that Ron owns was built before the Cultural Revolution in China. My parents held their wedding reception in house's basement which seems unbelievable because it a small cramped space with limited head room.
• I work 10:00 to 21:00 today. It is my long day. Other than having to leave Casa Kaulins early, I don't mind it. It gives me plenty of time to work on my pet projects (the things I would rather be doing than teaching, or talking to students).
• I took the 602支 and then the 79 bus to get to school this morning. The traffic jams I saw on the way were quite the sight. Wuxi people are unable to stand in line in a civilized and orderly manner, and are always trying to cut off others and jump the queue. Put them in cars and the disorder then is really something to behold: Cars sitting every which way in traffic. Seeking to gain any advantage they can and not content to stand in line, Wuxi drivers are always seeking to get into another lane. Some are so impatient they will even attempt to make u-turns to get out of a potential jam ahead even if there are lots of cars queuing behind him. All these tactics are self-defeating and so an absolute smozzle results as seemingly everybody in traffic engages in the self-defeating behavior.
• Listening to Ann Coulter makes me angry, defiant, combative in thought, and sometimes depressed because I am stuck with the sort of stupid people that she articulately and brilliantly puts down. [I was listening to If Democrats Had Any Brains, They would be Republicans.]

Friday [December 6]

[School Laptop]

• I work 11:00 to 21:00.
• Smog Alert in Wuxi. Can I call it the Wuxi Smog Crisis?
• As a result of the smog alert, students are not doing their PE lessons out doors.
• I bought a mask （口罩）yesterday. I don't think there is much efficacy in wearing it to combat the smog, but there still is much efficacy for me because my wife is insisting that I wear one.
• I overheard some Reductionism today.
• Yesterday, a Wuxiren, now living in the U.K., walked up to me and told me that while there, she was homesick for her home town and visited Youtube where she found my videos.

Saturday [December 7]

[School Laptop]

• I work 10:00 to 18:00 today.
• December 7, 2013. A day that will live in infamy? Let's hope not.
• The Wuxi Smog Crisis is depressing. Is that the disaster that has been prophesied to hit China? Or was it Chairman Mao already?
• It is gray and dull and smoggy today. Wuxi looks absolutely depressing.
• The wife says we will be going to the Golden Grandma's at the Hen Long Plaza tonight. I warned her that it would be expensive.
• I had an interesting V.I.P. Student this morning. He works in the automotive industry and has lived in Japan for eight years – he is a Wuxiren. He told me that the causes of the Wuxi Smog Crisis can be attributed to all the cars that the Chinese now have, the gas used to fuel them being of low quality, and the cars manufactured by Chinese companies not needing to follow high emissions standards that the car manufacturers of other countries can easily comply with. The student also said that if the Chinese car companies did have to higher emission standards, they would not be able to compete with foreign car manufacturers in China.

[Home Laptop]

• The school gave us masks to wear in the horrible air.
• After work, Andis met Jenny & Tony at the Golden Grandma's Restaurant in the Hen Long Plaza. This “golden restaurant” wasn't as good as the lower grade, non-golden Grandma's Restaurants in Ba Bai Ban, Nanchang Market, and the Suning Plaza – it was much more expensive and had a more limited menu than the other locations. It didn't serve a potato dish that was Andis's raison d'etat to go there in the first place. So, the Grandma's at the Hen Long Plaza is not so golden and the K family will never go there ever again, unless of course someone else invites us.
• From the Hen Long plaza the K family walked to the bus stop where they could catch the 635 bus home. It took the K's twenty minutes to get to the bus stop, after which they waited twenty five minutes for the bus which then took them forty five minutes to get them home.
• We couldn't get out of the Hen Long Plaza without Tony getting to look at some toys.
• I couldn't help but notice that many of the stores in the Hen Long Plaza didn't have any customers.
• I noticed that when I see a foreigner these days, as I go out and about, I feel embarrassed to be wearing a mask. I suppose it would be like being seen taking on the natives' superstitions.

Sunday [December 8]

[Home Laptop]

• I don't work today but I am busy nonetheless, and I actually feel more busy than if I was so-called working. My wife is less prone to put up with idleness on my part than my employers would be.
• The air has been very bad this week – so I was told by a Hui Shan local I know who can speak good English.
• It a cool and sunny day out there. Going for a walk in the morning, I did see buildings that were less than a block away enshrouded in mist.
• David Horowitz said, in a video I watched today, that abandoning the Left cost him all his friends. I could say that being a reactionary here is an explanation for my loneliness. And as far as it goes, there is some truth in this explanation, for it has put up barriers between me and many others in a profession that is disease-ridden with leftists. But I have to admit that I was a loner in my leftist thinking days. So what may be true for DH, is not a sufficient explanation for me.
• I set up the train set for Tony. We should have gone out for a walk today. The weather was good for it. But Tony wanted to play with the train so he could reenact train accidents and derailments.
• Damn! I have so many things I want to read. Right now, I am in the midst of reading a book of short stories by Flannery O'Connor, a long book on the JFK assassination, an apostolic exhortation by the current Pope, a book on Christianity by CS Lewis, and an book on the illogicality of Positivism. I want to read some Shakespeare, Canadian history, Chinese history, Hobbies and Walker Percy, to name but a few.
• It is supposed to be colder and less smoggy tomorrow. Maybe I will be able to don my long johns and discard my mask.
• I did some Christmas shopping on Thursday. I bought Tony a Plarail Train. The model S05 which Tony pointed to in his Plarail catalog.
• Tony asks to play with my Ipad, and so Jenny orders me to take apart the train set. Tony was made to choose: play with the Ipad and have the train set taken apart; play with the train set and give back the Ipad to Daddy. He choose to play with the Ipad.