Diary: May 27 to June 2, 2014

Highlights

• The second anniversary of the death of Arnis Kaulins, Andis's father and Tony's grandfather.
• This week's question: Can tell you tell some memories of your father?
• Andis makes the case that the New York Yankees have an offensive nickname.
• Andis arouses the curiosity of an old man when taking the bus home one evening.
• Andis takes the taxi downtown from his apartment in the Hui Shan district.
• Tony has a modeling job.
• Andis's nephew has a chance to work in Australia.
• Andis saws large lineups of locals picking up free subway tickets.
• Andis watches some NHL playoff games.
• Andis phones his mother, his sister, and his brother in Canada.
• Andis spends Saturday Night at home by himself.
• Andis watches the Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy Stewart.
• Andis watches the end of two classic BBC documentary series.
• Tony & Jenny go to Changzhou.

Tuesday [May 27]

[Home Laptop]

• I have just published the May 20 to May 26^th diary entry. I looked it over, made a few corrections, and hope that it reads right.
• Last evening, I took Tony out of Casa Kaulins. We went to the Wanda Plaza and then the square near the Hui Shan White House Wuxi Metro station.
• The arcade in Wanda wouldn't give me ten rmb worth of tokens. I understood them to be telling them me that I could only ask for a minimum of twenty. I said fuck it and not give them my business.
• Here's a thought about the word Yankees. Foreigners who say they hate the Yanks are displaying an appalling lack of knowledge of American history. Yankees were on the Northern side of the American Civil War. And anti-Americanism being what it is: a hatred of a certain type of American, the foreigners are saying that they hate the kind of Americans who they do like. Usually, anti-Americans hate the southern rebel types who fought the Yankees in the civil war.
• Here's another thought about the word Yankees. The New York Yankees should change their name. Having the Yankees nickname is displaying a sense of triumphalism that is offensive to Americans who are from the Southern states.
• What have I done this morning besides publish my weekly diary and write this daily entry? I have taken Tony to his school pick up spot. I have gotten Jenny's e-bike from its charging spot and taken it to our apartment entrance. I have hung the laundry. I have showered and done my weekly grooming duties. I have packed my backpack. I have published an entry to the Wuxi China Expatdom Blog. I have read blog posts from David Warren and Taki's Magazine. I have listened to two episodes of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast. I have taken out garbage. I have ironed today's work clothes. I have taken and uploaded photos to the Wuxi Tony and the Casa Kaulins blogs.
• Phew! And I have to do some reading and synch my Ipad still.

[School Laptop]

• This week's schedule of shifts. Tuesday 13:00 to 21:00, Wednesday 13:00 to 21:00, Thursday 10:00 to 21:00, Friday 11:00 to 21:00, Saturday 10:00 to 18:00, and Sunday 10:00 to 18:00. I work a extra shift this week.
• It is hot today. Women are using their umbrellas for shade.
• Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my father's death. It happened, as rare readers may know, when I visited Canada and was so well-timed I feel shame.... This gives me an idea for my the question I will try to answer through the week.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Of course. The first memory I will mention is how my father reacted when he got the news, two years ago, that he only had a few days to live. He took it very bravely. He said that it was his time and that he wanted it mentioned on his gravestone that he was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Later, in his last lucid moments, he told me a memory he had of carrying me on his shoulders. I had got caught in the trees and was crying, and Dad told me the sadness he felt at not knowing for a brief instance why I was complaining. The story was a metaphor. You don't know if what you are doing for your child is the right thing. I had a similar thing happen once when I was carrying Tony on my shoulders around our apartment complex.

Wednesday [May 28]

[Home Laptop]

• I have so far spent the morning publishing blog entries to mark the second anniversary of my father's death. I would appreciate it if you could visit the page I have dedicated to my father and sign the guest book.
• I have been getting a lot of emails from North America this week. I want to thank Ron Busch from Detroit for sending me an email about my father.
• Last evening, I got my usual seat in the back corner of the 635 bus, the bus that takes me home at night. This old man sat next to me and was so fascinated by the hairiness of my arms that he grabbed one and felt the hair. It was a rather strange thing but the man then played with his phone the rest of the journey or watched what I was watching on my Ipad. I didn't feel a need to flee. China owes me a grope, though I don't plan on ever settling that debt no matter how attractive some Chinese girls can be.
• On my Ipad, I finished watching Godzilla 1954. On the bus, I watched the end of the fifth episode of the Search for the Trojan War series and the first half of the 12^th episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: The Fallacies of Hope.
• A foreigner can feel lonely on a crowded bus in China. A rare reader mentioned this to me. I have to say that I don't suffer from loneliness these days because I got Jenny and Tony and my Ipad. I have to fight feelings of misanthropy....
• Last night, I had two hours of no-shows and a one person 8:00 class. A very unfulfilling evening.

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00.

• The wife and I took a taxi downtown. A taxi trip downtown does take less time than a bus. However, to me it seems that the bus trip is shorter because when I take the taxi I am not looking at my Ipad. I'd rather take the bus with an Ipad than take the taxi. The taxi trip that I had just now seemed so long.
• I also noticed how brown and dusty Wuxi is.
• One of Tony's teachers got free tickets to take a preview ride of the subway train. She complained that the train stopped every three minutes and that the hour long trip between the northern most station of the #1 line and the southern most station was boring.

Thursday [May 29]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 13:00 to 21:00. Last night, my 19:00 class was a no-show and my 20:00 class was canceled so I was able to go home at 19:30. I took the 25 bus home. Along the way, I saw the Wuxi Metro train carrying passengers – perhaps they had gotten some of the over one million free tickets that are being distributed over Wuxi.
• When I arrived home, Jenny & Tony were out. I thought they perhaps had gone to the local public square so Tony could do some running around. I phoned Jenny to find out where she was and she told me that she & Tony were at the Mr. PIZZA in the Wanda Plaza. They were celebrating Tony's actually having gotten a job modeling and posing in clothes for a company photo shoot. Jenny said that the photographers were impressed by Tony's looks and his behavior. Tony didn't fret and fidget, and did what he was asked to do.
• I then phoned my Mom in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada to mark the second anniversary of Dad's death. She had placed flowers on his grave the day before. Mom told me about having moles in her backyard. They were living under the snow and in the old tree stumps in the back yard. Her cat Smooch had caught one of them.
• I then phoned my sister Benita who lives in Sardis, British Columbia and works as a prison guard for the federal government. It was the first time I ever actually phoned her home from China. Usually, my habit had been to talk to her when she was visiting Mom. I had been told that her schedule was haywire and that if I tried to phone her, I would have a difficult time getting an answer, but I was able to hear her voice on the second try. She told me that her son Kyle, aka my nephew, has a chance to go to Australia. Kyle works for a manufacturing company and is doing such a good job that the company may get him to help in a project that they plan to undertake in Australia. How can such a young fellow as Kyle – he is nineteen – get the expert status he would need to get a work visa in Australia? He is a good worker. Perhaps his industrious traits were inherited from his mother. He also doesn't do drugs in a place where the culture is such that someone who doesn't do drugs is an oddity. In order to get an Australian work visa, workers have to pass drug tests. Many British Columbians wouldn't pass these tests.
• My sister & I talked and talked, and before I knew it it was well past midnight and I had to go to bed.
• I started reading the play Coriolanus yesterday. I had finished the Comedy of Errors.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Since I neglected to mention any memories yesterday, I will have to tell you of two today. 1) Dad was in the army and often went away for months on training exercises. I remember the joy that I and my sister felt when he came back from these exercises with extra ration packs. 2)Dad's decision to retire in Brandon, Manitoba at first seemed to be a good decision. Having lived on military bases all my life, moving to Brandon was a step up for it had a junior hockey team and a McDonald's and other kinds of shopping. It seemed that I was living in a city for the first time. But after finishing High School, something went wrong. I wasted a lot of years not liking what I was doing and not having any clue of what to do with my life. So I decided to move to Winnipeg, and getting bored of that I moved to British Columbia, and then I moved to China. I never understood my father's reasons for wanting to settle in Brandon at the time, but now that I have seen a bit of the world and some of the people who inhabit it, I can see why Dad would want to live in an isolated small city in a neglected part of the North American continent. For I have inherited Dad's misanthropic streak.
• I can watch the Kings – Black Hawks game live on my computer here at school. The score is four – four early in the third period. [Later: The Black Hawks won in double OT. Oh, how I wish they or the Kings could have won the game sooner!!]
• From 10:00 to 13:30 (now), I have more or less sat at my desk and studied Chinese. After my three o'clock class, I will get something to eat somewhere.

Friday [May 30]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• When at school, I don't do much journalizing after 14:00.
• I go to the City Hall today for a lunchtime SPC. Hopefully, some government workers come. Many can't come, they tell me, because they have to have lunch.
• Another hot day. Yesterday, the high was 36 degrees C.
• At the police station entrance gate that is near Casa Kaulins and is across from the local mom & pop store, I saw a lot of security guards and civilians standing about. I ask the proprietress of the mom & pop why there were so many people and she answered that it was something to do about money.
• I caught the end of the Rangers – Canadiens game on the computer just now. The Rangers are going to the Stanley Cup Final. The last time they went to the final was 1994 when I was living in Winnipeg and working at Winners.
• The Rangers could play the Black Hawks or the Kings in the final. If you like uniforms, you would have to hope the Black Hawks win. I suppose the NHL would love to see a New York – Los Angeles final. They just might get this because the Kings are leading their series against the Hawks three games to two.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? My father was a gardener and I can definitely saying that gardening was his hobby. He spent a lot of time on his 2121 Queens Avenue garden in Brandon. When we were living in Oromocto, New Brunswick (the second time), my father rented a plot of land from a farmer who lived on the outskirts of that town, and many a weekend was spent there. I wasn't much interested in the garden but I did like wandering the area which was close to a river and woods. In the woods, we saw frogs that were as big as one's hands. In some bushes we stumbled upon a wasp's nest and my kid brother Ron got stung. Dad organized the garden with military precision. His plants arranged in low straight rows. The only problem with the land Dad rented was that it was filled with rocks which kept coming up no mater how much Dad tried to throw them away. Still he grew a lot of vegetables of which we ate lots and lots at our meals.
• Lots of bratty kids at the McDonald's this morning. Maybe, they had a holiday from school today. Although Tony didn't. Anyway, several kids were grabbing the counter's edge and jumping up and down like rabid monkeys. One boy took eight straws from the dispenser and put them all in his mouth. Those sights and the general din caused by the kids made me take my breakfast to school.
• [Later] I have gone to the City Hall. I had been wondering how comfortable the big open area that we have the English Corner in was going to be. A lot of electricity would be needed to keep the big interior cool I figured. When I walked into the City Hall, the first floor was cool, but when I arrived at the place on the fifth floor where the SPC was to be, the air was muggy and oppressive just as I figured it would be.

Saturday [May 31]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 18:00. My final class ends at 17:00.
• This morning, Jenny & Tony were getting ready to go to the Changzhou Dinosaur Park. Jenny's friend Ling Ling was coming to pick them up. They were to drive to where it was that they were going. [Last sentence construction was deliberate.]
• Tony & Jenny & friends will be staying at hotel tonight which means I will be by myself on Saturday evening.
• I, on the other hand [said like an economist which I claim to have studied in university], will be at school teaching today and tomorrow. Sunday's shift will be overtime for me.
• What will I be doing tonight? I will be treat myself to something at some restaurant. Perhaps, I will pick up a large pepperoni pizza from the Hut. If there was a Burger King on the way home, I would go to have a Whopper. Alas, there is none that I know of, possibly because there are none. After some food, I will watch some movies and/or do some blogging. Blogivating?
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Politically, Dad was a Socialist. Those who read me closely know I am not. I would like to think that Dad's Leftism was earnest in that he was a patriot who loved his country, who hated the Soviets, and wanted to see the poor and disadvantaged get a break. On my second last time to visit him in 2010, I remember he took us to an aboriginal event in Brandon and was eager for me to sign a petition for some aboriginal cause. I demurred. Be that as it may, Dad was an earnest Socialist, and was never cool enough to be part of the cynical, ironic, and crude wave of Leftism that rose in the time of the Bush the younger presidency.
• Tony told me that he really liked Dinosaur movies, whether they be from the Jurassic series or Godzilla.
• Oh yes! Long weekend in China. Monday is a holiday. The dragon boat festival. I will have Monday and Tuesday off!
• I took the 25 bus to the downtown this morning. I eschewed breakfast at McDonald's. I like teaching on an empty stomach.
• In the morning at Casa Kaulins, I as monitoring the progress of my podcast downloads on my Ipod Touch. I listened to Radio Derb, Father Z, and Mad Dogs and Englishmen on my way to work.
• I got five strikes on a row on an Ipad bowling game!
• UKIP is good! Why? Because it has a K in it!!! [Lector: What about the KKK?]
• On the computer, I could watch game Six of the NHL Western Conference Final between the Kings and the Black Hawks. The game is being played in Los Angeles and the Kings are leading three games to two.
• Verbose and self-indulgent?
• On the bus ride home last night, I finished watching the last episode of the Search for the Trojan war and begin watching the final episode of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series.

Sunday [June 1]

[School Laptop]

• After work, I took the bus to Wanda Plaza where I picked up a pizza at Pizza Hut. While the pizza was being made, I went to the Grocery Store in the basement to buy some beer (a three pack of Budweiser), ham, and a bottle of Coke.
• At home, I had my supper, published Ask a Wuxi Expat #2 on my computer, watched the movie the Shop Around the Corner starring James Stewart, watched the fourth episode of the first season of House of Cards, and did some video processing and downloading on the home laptop. I unsuccessfully tried to find the song that was played at the end of the latest episode of the Radio Free Delingpole podcast that was entitled the Gold Diggers. It was a very catchy song that I so much desperately wanted to put on my Ipod.
• I had trouble sleeping and was up at two o'clock in the morning.
• Jenny was sending me photos of Tony through the evening. This morning, she phoned me from the hotel. The Changzhou dinosaur park was crowded. One ride had to be shut down to more riders at two thirty in the afternoon. The number of people queued made for a three and a half hour wait.
• The Shop Around the Corner was a good movie, featured some great screen presences, and hit home with me on several fronts. It starred James Stewart and the man who played the wizard in the Wizard of Oz. Stewart played the retail shop's senior employee. The actor from the Wizard of Oz played the retail shop's owner. Five other actors made up the store's staff. They are all involved in some personal dramas. The Stewart character is the midst of a romance being done by correspondence. The Stewart character is having a troublesome relationship with the the owner. The manager thinks that his wife is cheating on him. A new girl is hired who has a troublesome relationship with the Stewart character. Eventually, the Stewart character is fired by the owner. The owner nearly commits suicide. The new girl tells the Stewart character off. But by the end of the movie everything works out. What struck home with me was the fact that Stewart was the senior employee and was expected to set examples for the rest of the staff. The Stewart character also had these conversations with other staff members where they tried to deal with their personal relationships. I don't have these sort of conversations at my job and I wouldn't want to if it was possible. I also don't set much of an example as a senior employee.
• I gave the students the following options: friend, beautiful women, handsome man, or talking animal; and asked them with whom they would like to have an adventure. One of the boys said handsome man. What he meant was that he would like to have a man like Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger as a partner....
• It rains heavily. I wonder if Jenny & Tony got caught in the rain. They were planning to go to the Zoo.

Monday [June 2]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• Dragon Boat Festival today. Perhaps Jenny will prepare the Zhongzhi, traditionally eaten on this day, that the school has provided us.
• Yesterday was Children's Day.
• After work yesterday, I walked to Sunning Plaza and meet Jenny & Tony at the Grandma's restaurant where we had supper with Jenny friend's Ling Ling and Ling Ling's son Jerry. We had to wait a hour or so for seats but we passed that time agreeably enough playing on our electronic devices.
• And the meal we had at the Grandma's made the wait worth it. We had the chicken broiled in a pot, the fabulous garlic fried potatoes chunks, shrimp grilled in garlic butter, and green beans cooked in peppers.
• After supper, we took the taxi home where we all had an early bed time.
• This morning, I am watching the seventh game of the Black Hawks – Kings series. The Hawks are leading four-three midway through the third period. I was watching the game on the laptop but now have the game playing on my Ipad mini. A good setup that lets me blog.
• Can you tell some memories of your father? Dad, being a Canadian, loved hockey. His favorite team was the Maple Leafs. He tried to make me a Leafs fan in 1973 by buying me a lever-controlled hockey game for Maple Leafs fans. I enjoyed the game but became a Canadiens fan because of Cournoyer and Ken Dryden. When Lanny McDonald scored the goal in 1979 that beat the Islanders, I remember being in the basement of our PMQ in Oromocto, New Brunswick, and hearing Dad scream with delight upstairs where he was watching the game. Dad didn't much care for the Canadiens. I remember I had to escape Dad's wrath when Yvon Lambert, later in those same playoffs, scored that famous seventh game overtime goal that eliminated the Bruins. Dad did cheer for the Canadiens in that Christmas Eve 1975 game between the Canadiens and the Red Army. He was seething when the game ended in a tie when the Canadiens should have won 7-1 based on the edge of play. [Hawks and Kings tied at four] Dad was the hockey parent with me and my brother Ron. He drove Ron and me all over Quebec, Manitoba, and New Brunswick to get us to games. He got up early on many a Saturday morning to drive us to ice cold rinks where the only way to keep warm was to be playing the game. A few years, he even volunteered to manage the league. Dad took great pride in the fact that his native country Latvia played hockey. He was proud that Helmut Balderis could play with the Soviet National Team. He followed the exploits of Arturs Irbe very closely. Sandis Ozoliņš playing on the a Stanley Cup winning team made him happy as well. Dad died during the 2012 Stanley Cup Final. On his death bed, he asked how the series between the Kings and Devils was going...
• I was trying to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones (s4e8) but it contained a virus. I have had to use another torrent.
• Kings win! So a Kings – Rangers Stanley Cup Final. A fluttering shot from the point goes over the goaler's shoulder.

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary Entry for March 4 to March 10, 2014

Highlights

• Tony accompanied me to school on Saturday.
• My e-bike ran out of juice in Jiangyin on Sunday.
• I watched the 1978 AL East Playoff game.
• I had mixed feelings about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Tuesday [March 4]

[Home Laptop]

• My shift today at school will be 13:00 to 21:00.
• Last evening, Tony and his buddy went to the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza unsupervised. It was a first for me to have my little guy in such a situation. That is, for him to go somewhere without an adult. Jenny worried that bad people would have tried to kidnap him. I told Jenny that when I was Tony's age, I went to school and back by myself, and that in the evenings, I wandered the neighborhood by myself. But that time, said Jenny, there weren't so many bad people.
• How would she know? That was Canada.
• I read Tony a story after which he said he had to go to sleep which he did in less than a minute.
• The weather today? Rainy and cool.
• I have downloaded the entire 1978 AL East playoff. I remember that at the time of the game, I was living in Oromocto, New Brunswick and learned of the game's result at the end of an ice hockey practice at the CFB Gagetown arena. I was cheering for the Red Sox at the time. It was in '79 that we got cable in our house and could watch many Red Sox games live.
• What to think about the Ukraine? In some ways, I can see that Putin has a point in Ukraine. A duly elected government was toppled in a coup lead by Europeans and an extreme Ukrainian Nationalists, and he could claim a right to defend Russian minorities who are demanding his intervention. But as a Latvian and knowing Latvia has a substantial number of Russians living it, Russia's intervention in the Ukraine is an ominous development. Would the Ukraine be worth defending? It is a swamp of corruption and nationalism. It is hard to attach any idealism to it.

[School Laptop]

• I took the 25 bus to get to school. The bus had to deviate from its route because there was something happening (a grand opening I presume) at a new apartment complex down the street from the train station. Thus this street, which the train station was on, was closed. So the driver did what I thought he would do and took a street that was parallel to the street of its current route to continue on to its Nanchang Market terminal stop. The street that he had to take was the street the 25 bus used to run before the completion of construction of the new train station. What was noteworthy to me about this unimportant incident was the squawking of the passengers – it was loud and panicked.
• It is a five minutes walk from the terminal stop of the 25 bus route to my school. This walk takes me through a narrow side street. What particularly struck me today about my walk was the parking of cars on the sidewalk on one side of the street. The cars were taking over pedestrians path leaving little space for sidewalk walking.
• With a one o'clock shift start, I do some of my daily reading requirements at home. I have added a scene from Shakespeare to these daily personal requirements – part of my egoistic desire to improve myself.

Wednesday [March 5]

[Home Laptop]

• My shift today will be 13:00 to 21:00.
• Last night, I had a class with a student who worked in media. She was thinking to get out of the business because newspapers, where she worked, were dying because of declining advertising revenue. You could succeed maybe in a big city like Shanghai, but Wuxi was too small.
• As I mentioned yesterday, I downloaded the complete 1978 American League East One Game Playoff from Youtube and now have it on my Ipad. I started watching the game yesterday. Heading into the bottom of the third inning, the Red Sox are leading one to nothing on a Carl Yazstremski home run. Observations: Reggie Jackson had quite the swing; the uniforms in the late seventies were ugly – they went away from the traditional baseball uniforms starting in the early seventies. The Reds in the 1970 World Series game I watched looked great in their uniforms.
• I think that currently baseball is in another ugly uniform age. They aren't wearing stirrups any more. Some players are wearing baggy pants that flare at the bottom. Disgusting.
• Tony is a picky eater. He apparently isn't touching bread anymore and is hiding the fact from Mom by throwing it in the rubbish bin while claiming that he is finished.
• You are quiet! That's because I am not saying anything.
• A lot of students like Downton Abbey. I am currently making my way through the third episode of the second season.
• David Warren wrote a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. He said it was an act of war – phraseology that Obama and the EU are avoiding while they instead threaten to impose economic sanctions.
• Will a war in the Crimea produce a poem as great as the last war in the Crimea did? Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade was brilliant. Alas, we don't live in a poetic age. The only artistic things that one could expect to come out of a new Crimean War would be some movies.
• I saw My bus mate Sophia on the 635 last night. She is working at a school that is across the street from my school. She had vowed to get out of the education industry. The school that she works at now is in a building that contains the McDonald's that I always go to. It was there that I ran into her and learned of her new employment. Rare readers may recall that she had been working at WEB.
• I overheard that the Red Lion celebrated its second anniversary over the weekend. I haven't entered through the doors of what is probably the most popular Expat pub in Wuxi. I can't say if I ever will. I don't have the time and the money. It is out of way and I have heard it is very expensive.

[School Laptop]

• I took the 25 bus to school this morning. On the way, I saw the subway train running. On the bus, I saw a particularly peasant-looking couple with child sit at the back. They were both short and squat, wore soiled clothes, and gave off an air of poverty. I also saw an old man, lanky and slightly slouched, who wore these cheap cotton shoes that have a flimsy rubber sole and a cheap plushy, slipper body to them that had to be zipped up to be stay on one's foot. I was in the presence of common Chinese folk.

Thursday [March 6]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 21:00
• I have almost finished watching the video footage of the 1978 AL East Playoff game between the Red Sox and the Yankees.
• I have started trying to make comparison shots between the Wuxi I took photos of in 2004, 2005, and 2006, and the 2014 Wuxi. I went to the intersection where I had taken photos of the old Sheraton hotel and the old Home Mart which were kitty corner from each other. [One of the roads was Zhongshan Road but I don't remember the other] this morning. I found that so much had changed that I couldn't even stand in the same spot I did over eight years ago. For one thing, trees had been planted on the road. So, I tried to get as close to the original spots as I could.
• I floated this idea of having Tony come with me to the school this Saturday. He seems to be enthusiastic about the idea and has told Jenny that he wants to do it. Now, whether this does in fact happen remains to be seen. For one thing, I don't seem him wanting to get up early on Saturday morning to be able to accompany me.
• I just had a student who will study a masters in architecture somewhere in America. I had all sorts of questions to ask him. He did tell me that he thought the buildings constructed now, though of far better technology than anything made before, were comparatively lacking in aesthetic appeal.
• His English was very good but he lacked confidence. Ask him questions and he was great; but ask him to make sentences and he had no imagination. So I told him to try making questions with the new vocabulary.

Friday [March 7]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 11:00 to 21:00. My English Corner at the City Hall was canceled.
• Will Tony accompany me to school tomorrow? I doubt it but there is a small chance it could happen. For that eventuality, I had to spend a lot of time trying to reinstall the Microsoft Train Simulator on my school laptop. I had trouble first with getting the game to install. At certain point after having put the second installation disk in the DVD ROM drive, I got an error message. I tried over and over again to do a complete installation by trying to move my the MSTS files I did have on my computer to different locations. I finally was able to install the game by choosing only to install two instead of the six routes on the disk.
• Having installed the game, I got an error message telling me that I needed hardware acceleration. A little research on the Internet told me that I needed to reinstall video drivers. These I was able to download from the HP site. I did this downloading at Casa K and brought the drivers to school via flash-drive. The MSTS now works I am proud to say.
• Other then (or than?) that, I don't have much to say for myself. I will have to tell you what I observed today.
• I saw a lot of bad driving and stupid old people ignoring traffic rules. I really got angry seeing this driver, at the intersection near the Ramada and California Villas, make a left turn without bothering to slow down for pedestrians who were walking on a green walk signal. Drivers who don't slow down for pedestrians, as I have said before, are scum. I then saw about a least four cases of old-aged pedestrians being stranded in traffic and narrowly being dodged by vehicles because they were ignoring traffic signals or were ignorant of their purpose. Are these old age pedestrians stupid, uncivilized, or blind? I don't get it.
• I finished watching the 1978 AL East Playoff game. It was a great game, but heartbreaking for the Red Sox. There were so many what-ifs. In the ninth inning, a Yankee outfielder was lucky to have had a ball that he lost in the sun bounce close to him. If the ball had gotten by him, a Red Sox Runner could have advanced from second to third base. He would have scored because the next hitter, Jim Rice, hit a ball to the outfield which would have driven in that runner and tied the game. Alas, Yaz who had had a great game, hitting a home run and scoring another run, popped out to end the game. As I said before, as the game was being played, I was at the CFB Gagetown arena for an ice hockey practice.
• [Later] I can't install all the routes from the MSTS Disk onto my computer. Tony will have to content himself with the three I was able to install from the disk and the three routes I found on the Internet.
• [Later] I am working my way through my Chinese study. I have completed typing a few pages from the New Practical Chinese Reader, volume 2. I have typed about fifteen characters from a list of 3,000 Chinese characters I have in pdf format. Now, I will work on translating a magazine article from Chinese to English.

Saturday [March 8]
[iPod]

• Shift:  10:00 to 18:00.
• Tony comes with me.  He hogs the school laptop playing MSTS all the day.  Hence, no diary making.
• I will give full report tomorrow.

Sunday [March 9]

[Home Laptop]

• Yesterday, I made an obligatory diary entry so I didn't need to say that I didn't make an entry.
• Today, no shifts.
• I don't think I would grade Tony's accompanying me to school yesterday a success. For one thing, I realized that it is not something that I want to be doing all the time. When I had Tony with me, he hogged the laptop and I couldn't do the things that make my time at school worthwhile. [Those things are my daily readings, Chinese study, and computer projects.] For another, Tony did nothing but play on the computer. I would say he spent six hours on it yesterday. I couldn't get him to eat anything other than a hash-brown from McDonald's and this later earned my the severe approbation of Jenny. Tony was also shy and I wasn't able to show off his amazing language skills. His being there as well affected my teaching because I couldn't quite concentrate fully on the students as I was half wondering what Tony was up to in the office. So, it wasn't much of a bonding experience.
• But it was done it seemed to others for Women's Day, a day that I believe is declared by the UN and so is really just a sham day anyway.
• After the shift was done yesterday, the K family all went to the Sunning Plaza to have dinner at the Grandma's. We waited awhile but we had devices and computers to keep us occupied. I finished reading the first half of Orphan Master's Son on my Ipad. The hero of the first half of the novel is thrown into a prison camp after he becomes too familiar with some Americans he had been delegated to visit. The DPRK, as depicted in the novel, is a country run at the behest of a greedy ruling class who will stop at nothing to get what they want. The place abounds in lies.
• Amazingly, the fried potato dish that I adore so much at the Grandma's came first. Another time, the dish came twenty minutes after all the others had been brought out and eaten.
• During the wait, Tony was on a computer provided by the restaurant for waiting patrons. These computers are always used by the children and sometimes you can see four or five kids gathered around a monitor. They are watching and waiting for the computer to become available for their use. Tony had girls and then boys lurking around him as he was on the monitor. Trying to pry Tony away from the computer once we have a table is not easy. Usually, I have to walk from the table to the computers to see what he is doing. Last night, I walked to the computers and Tony was at the computer sitting on the lap of an older and fatter boy wanting to join in on whatever Tony was playing on the computer. The fat boy went crazy when he saw me. He keep shouting “外国人！waiguoren! (translation: foreigner)” over and over again. I had to ignore that kid and talk into Tony's ear to tell him that his computer playing was about to come to an end.
• We were seated in a booth. The booth was separated from the next booth by a grill on top of the wooden siding. Through the grill I noticed that a party of four, next to us, was staring at us rather too intently and obviously for my comfort. Becoming very self-conscious on account of the staring, I muttered some cuss words under my breath. These people all seemed to be in their early twenties or late teens, and then they started to wave. I suppose they were looking at Tony.
• We took the Taxi home which was much better than taking the bus given we were full of food and tired. The driver had to come to a quick stop at a certain moment, because of uncertain driving done by others, and so he jokingly said “fuck!” to me. I smiled, not knowing what else I could say or add even if I could have said something to him that he would have understood.
• I went out for a walk this morning and have three things to report. 1)They are tearing up the pavement near the Times Century (Tesco) plaza for some reason. The work is making certain parts of the area untenable for pedestrian traffic. 2) They, the powers that be, have set up public bicycle stalls at an intersection near Casa Kaulins. The bicycles have yet to arrive. 3) They don't serve breakfast at the McDonald's and the KFC in Wanda Plaza.
• Wuxi still pales in comparison to Hong Kong. Wuxi looks so dingy, dull, under construction, rickety, and backward these days.
• [Later] This afternoon, I played on the computer and completed two pieces for my Wuxi China Expatdom blog. Meanwhile, Jenny & Tony went to a hospital to have a doctor look at a skin problem Tony was having in the area below his nose and above his lip. This area is red and so Tony looks like Hitler with a red rash for a mustache. The rash looks to be a result of a Tony liking the snot coming from his nose.
• When they were finished, I joined up with them at the Tesco. Jenny did some shopping and I took Tony, on the e-bike, to the Huijiang bridge (惠江桥) to watch trains. We had a good time of it; I took some great photos; but the e-bike unfortunately ran out of power. The strange thing about it was I was able to do about 15 kmh for about 3 kilometers; the bike didn't completely run out of power. Slowly making our way home, I was asked by Tony to go faster...

Monday [March 10]

[Home Laptop]

• Beware the Ides of March?
• No shiftiness today.
• It is Sunny outside
• I have just edited the video Hanging Out with Tony Kaulins #6.
• Yesterday as I stood at the deck of the bridge looking at the surroundings, I wondered if I was looking at haze or pollution. I have this problem because Wuxi is riddled with canals and bodies of water, and so I would think that haze has always been present in this area.
• I read another brilliant piece by Theodore Dalrymple today. It was in the City Journal and was about Joseph Conrad.
• Putin has broken International law. His instincts are in Soviet and hence evil.
• It is all well and go to talk about Russia's dignity. How about talking about its redemption? It hasn't adequately dealt with the criminal past of the Soviet Regime. First things first.
• Tony is home from school and doing his homework. The atmosphere in the house is thus oppressive. He whines and Jenny chastises him in a voice that sends shivers down my spine.

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary Entry for February 24 to March 3, 2014

Highlights

• Not an eventful diary entry.
• I had an English version of Windows XP put on my ten year old laptop.
• I looked at some photos taken in Wuxi in 2004 to 2006.

Monday [February 24]

[Home Laptop]

• I'm not working today. I will stay at home. So far [It is 12:00 noon], I have read parts of four books on my Ipad [in bed] and taken a shower [which gives me a great idea for my Wuxi China Expatdom blog].
• Last night, I watched the Canada Sweden Olympic Men's Ice Hockey Final. The game started at 8:00 PM local time and so it was the first time I had ever seen a live hockey game in prime time in China. I first tried watching the game on computer but couldn't find a video feed or an audio feed. The sites providing Internet feeds were in other countries and so the feeds of the game were blocked in China. I resorted to butting Jenny off the television so I could watch the game on CCTV 5. I got to the second half of the second period when Tony in turn butted me off the television so he could watch a cartoon with bears and a mustachioed Chinese fellow, all of whom lived in the woods. Returning to the computer (I had been trying while I was watching the game on television to find a computer feed), I was able to find a feed and watch the rest of the game which Canada won 3-0.

Tuesday [February 25]

[School Laptop]

• My shift today is 13:00 to 21:00.
• I was in Jenny's doghouse yesterday. I can't say why.
• Today, it is raining.
• Last night, I helped Tony with his arithmetic. Jenny had him doing problems like this: 9 + (?) = 16. Tony couldn't figure out how to do them. To solve the example problem, I would get him to answer the following equations. 9 + 0 = ?, 9 + 1 = ?, 9 + 2 = ? and so on. All those problems solved by Tony, I would then get him to write the answer to the original problem, and he would do this 9 + (16) = 16. Tony!!! I would say. He would then finally write the correct answer in the bracket: 9 + (7) = 16. I had to do this for ten problems in a row for him and he still didn't seem to get it. I then tried to get him to solve the following arithmetic problems to get him to understand: 0 + 16 = ?, 1 + 15 = ?, 2 + 14 + ?, 3 + 13 + ?, 4 + 12?,......., all the way to 15 + 1 = ?
• One day, something will click in his brain, I hope.

Wednesday [February 26]

[School Laptop]

• I had trouble with the school laptop yesterday. I had to get the school IT technician to reinstall Windows XP on it. So, I had an afternoon in which I didn't get to tend to my daily projects. Now, I have to reinstall software on my computer and so I won't be back till normal till later this week. Right now, I don't have Chinese character support.
• My shift today is from 13:00 to 21:00.
• I got on the wrong bus this morning and ended up at the train station. I had been intently studying Chinese on my Ipad and didn't notice something was amiss till I was downtown.

Thursday [February 27]

[School Laptop]

• I have a 10:00 to 21:00 shift today which means I have lots of free time. I do some prep in the morning, have an SPC in the afternoon, and three classes in the evening, when I am at the end of my tether.
• I am not used to my new laptop setup. My operating system is in English which is nice but the operating system is Windows XP which soon set to be a dinosaur. I have just started to notice a pause in the screen refresh if I scroll up and down a document.
• I was able to put a Chinese Character Set on my operating system yesterday. It is an accomplishment I can am proud of because the tech guy at school couldn't help me, forcing me to do it on my own. I had been at point where I thought to give up on trying to get a Chinese character set but I persisted. I uploaded the windows XP third support package which then allowed me to be able to use the Tech's XP installation disk and thus get the character set on the computer.
• I have been watching the fifth game of the 1970 World Series: the first time, the Big Red Machine made it to the Series. It is cool to see a young Johnny Bench and a young Pete Rose.
• Today's weather: Gray but comfortable. Last night would have been a pleasant night to go out for a walk.
• No comments to make on the passing scene. I really haven't been paying that much attention.
• I have been going through photos that I took in Wuxi in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Someone at City Hall told me that he wanted to see the photos when I mentioned them in conversation. Perhaps, I will publish them in the blog to show my loyal readers some of whom may be old Wuxi-hands.

Friday [February 28]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00. I talk to some city hall workers at lunch time and then I talk to students for three hours in the evening. What a day.
• I took the 25 bus to get downtown. Getting off, I thought about how it is always interesting to scan the old people waiting for the bus. Old men and youngish Chinese women are the most interesting sights in China I figure.
• I had a headache going through my 2004 to 2006 photos. I took so many. It was an interesting time but a time that couldn't continue. I believe the 2008 financial crisis changed everything in Wuxi. The government decided to spend a lot of money on infrastructure at the time and the city has changed in many ways. Not many or any of these changes have added any charm to Wuxi.
• Jenny tells me that Tony counts down the days till Friday and the end of the school week.
• I have loaded the 2004 to 2006 photos, that I chose for my city hall project, on my Ipad. I will show them to the people at city hall and see which ones I should send to the guy who told that he wanted them.
• My photo review caused a session about reminiscing with the foreign staff. Our biggest laments about the Wuxi changes were the good restaurants that disappeared because the management decided to change their menu and just got cheap on their offerings to their clientele. One example, I remember very well was the Sichuan Girls restaurant on Renmin Road. I actually took some newbies there in order to give them a good first impression of Wuxi. But then the management decided to change the décor, making it more plastic and bright; and also decided to change the menu – the food became crap.
• I am listening to The Man Who Loved China, an audiobook. And I just finished listening to the China History Podcast's latest episode which was about Two Gun Cohen, a Jew who came to China from the Canadian Prairies. I never thought I would hear mention of Virden or Winnipeg in an episode of CHP.

Saturday [March 1]

[School Laptop]

• The weather: crap. It is cold, wet, and windy.
• My shift: 10:00 to 18:00.
• Russia invades Ukraine. Obama looks weak says Krauthammer.
• I really hate Wuxi drivers who insist on making turns and thus cutting off pedestrians. These people are inconsiderate, barbaric, and represent a lower level of civilization. They are apes and lizards. Real pieces of scum.
• I may have mentioned that I had a student who told me he had cancer earlier this week. The only problem was that I didn't know if I could believe him or not. His manner made me suspicious. He is always phlegmatic in class so that I couldn't help but think he was saying BS. Anyway, he also asked me a why it was that his father would buy personal things and then charge them to his company. I should have told him his father was cheating, being corrupt as it were, but I instead I claimed ignorance of that sort of practice.
• Tony burnt his fingers last evening at Pizza Hut. He had gone with another family who ordered a pizza he didn't like. Another pizza was ordered and it took a while for it to finally arrive. When it did, Tony impatiently touched the hot pan.
• Later, Tony said he couldn't do his homework because his fingers hurt.

Sunday [March 2]

[Home Laptop]

• No talking to English students today.
• Sunny and cool outside. I went for a walk and saw a lovely thing: a grandfather playing with his daughter.
• Back at home now, I have to give up the laptop to Tony who is eager to play the train simulator game on it. More. Anon. I hope.
• [Later] Tony is doing homework so I have the computer. It is nice to have the computer but it is hard to sit around while Jenny is drilling him. Jenny will never be known for her patience.
• I don't know what to say for myself.
• Life seems pleasant in a way, but also sadly dispiriting. I really don't have much to complain about but I also don't have much for which I can be proud.
• Here is something I should mention. I had one student whose family life seems to come right out of the West. Her parents are divorced and remarried and separated. She lives with her father who doesn't want her to have contact with her mother who lives in Kunming [from where, this morning, I heard news of attacks at the train station.]

March 3, 2014 [Monday]

• No shifts of work today.
• Yesterday afternoon, the K family went downtown so the boys could get haircuts. Jenny, a.k.a. Mama K, took the boys to a hole-in-the-wall, 2-seat hair salon near the end of the #3 bus route.
• It took the K family two buses to get to the hair salon. They first took the 25 bus during which Tony sat on Andis's lap where Tony played on the Ipad. With Tony on his lap, Andis lamented that he couldn't play with his Ipad – space was cramped. A foreigner with a kid on his lap was a sight for the other passengers and Andis noticed one passenger who seemed to not take his eyes off him and Tony. It made Andis uncomfortable to look in that passenger's direction.
• From the 25 bus, the K family transferred to the #3 bus to get to the salon. The hair salon was located in a plaza which had many missing tiles on its front paved area which was also wet because of a neighboring car wash business. The Salon itself was cramped and untidy. It was opened by a pair who had decided to leave a bigger salon where they had been working and had had Jenny as a client.
• We (the K family) left the Salon at 6:30 which I (one of the K boys) thought was late. It seemed a waste I told Jenny to spend the whole afternoon getting haircuts. This didn't please Jenny who later gave me heck for saying so.
• From the Hair Salon, we took the #3 Bus to the Suning Plaza to have dinner at the Grandma's ( 外婆家). We waited a bit but I had my Ipad to pass the time. The food was good as always. I haven't got tired of it like some J.F.'s I know.
• It getting late, we decided to take the Taxi home. Watching Tony try to hail the taxi himself was quite the sight. Not realizing that only taxis with green lights on in their windshields are available, Tony hailed every one he saw and when they passed by, he cursed in Chinese at them.
• Just before catching a cab home, while we stood waiting in a shopping walk street for Jenny, Tony a group of five black-uniformed security guards pass by, and hid behind a column where he adopted a ultra-man shooting stance and pointed his imaginary weapon at them.
• This morning [Is is now Monday afternoon] Jenny played a recording, she made last night, of my snoring. Let me tell you. I am a major league snorer. If I was Italian, my snoring would be Serie A. If German, it would be Bundesligia. If English, my snoring would be Premiership.

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary: December 9 to December 15, 2013

This week's highlights: Wuxi was cold and cool. I was a twit. I went on Twitter to follow David Warren and I created a second Twitter account only to have one of my followerships rejected by the great man. Other than that, I went for a long overdue visit to the dentist – a Chinese dentist.

Monday [December 9]

[Entered on my home laptop]

• I don't work today. At 7:00 AM, I took Tony to the rendezvous point with the VW sedan that takes him to primary school.
• There is a lot traffic leaving the California Villa complex (aka 加州洋房) in the morning. I have to fight for open space in order to get to the meeting point and afterward go home.
• I have spent the rest of the morning doing nothing in particular. I went on Twitter to follow David Warren, creating a second account to do so. I proceeded to follow all the followers of David Warren. I did some e-book reading. I downloaded seven by Theodore Dalrymple – I think I spelled the name right!
• I read the first two chapters of a Dalrymple book and I am tempted to add it to my list of books I am currently reading.
• I feel guilty and annoyed with myself. I am not concentrating on anything in particular. I am doing things out of guilt. I feel annoyed that I can't enjoy myself.
• Outside, it is cold, gray, and the smog level is still high.
• I got to go to the dentist on of these days. Jenny won't take me today because it is a miserable day outside. [I would go myself but the dentist doesn't speak English.] My teeth are horror show. I have lost a few fillings over the past year so that food gets stuck in my cavities when I eat; one of my two front teeth is very brownish so I don't show my teeth in photos if I can help it; and sometimes they hurt a bit. And it didn't help that I heard a story about a boy whose teeth were so bad that he ended up dying from a brain infection.
• I will try to watch the 1963 movie The Pink Panther. I remember way back in the seventies, watching a Pink Panther movie in the cinema. It ended with some hot chick taking off her fur coat and entering the bed with Inspector Clouseau – but the bed which was mechanical and folded down from the wall had controls which flummoxed the bumbling inspector....
• Last week I watched Them! and the Three Godfathers. The former film was an alright sci-fi flick from the 1950s – not in the least corny; the latter film was a Western where one of the characters read the Bible and could say The Lord's Prayer. Both films backed my belief that old movies are better than the movies made today.

[Later]

• We did go to the dentist after all.
• Jenny took me to the dentist at the Yanqiao Hospital.
• Walking into the Hospital, I was disappointed to see that there were lineups ten deep of people waiting to get their registration booklets.
• There was no lineup at the dental office however. The dentist was in my mouth lickety-split.
• The time spent on the dental chair was full of unpleasant sensations. There were many moments of awkward tugging but only a few instances of sharp pain.
• I had warned Jenny that my teeth were very bad, but she told me that was horrified when she, along with the dentist, looked in my mouth.
• The conditions in the hospital were primitive by Western standards. The hospital had no central heating so it was cold in the dental office. Furthermore, unlike the dental offices I had been in Canada where a vacuum is used to clean saliva and debris from a patient's mouth, I had to raise my head, grab a cup of water, and spit in a nearby sink.
• I will be making four more trips to the dentist to get one tooth restored.
• Tony & I set up the train set tonight. After just an hour, Tony told me he wanted to watch something on my Ipad. So, I got him to help me take apart the train set and put the pieces in their plastic container. I saw that if Tony had his druthers, he would throw the pieces in the box in no particular order. I had to constantly admonish him.
• Since Tony wants the Ipad, he has to learn to clean up the mess he has made before he can use it.
• My first return trip to the dentist will be on Wednesday morning.
• Show 'em you have a rich interior life. What is on your mind? Nothing. My mind is blank.

Tuesday [December 10]

[Home Laptop]

• I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.
• I was up at 6:25 AM. I had to get Tony off to school, you know.
• I won't wear long johns today.
• With the late shift start at work, my morning is a little enjoyable. I can hang out at the house, getting ready for work at a civilized pace, listening to podcasts all the while.
• I have listened to a Russian history podcast, the Three Martinis podcast about politics, and am now listening to the Adam Carolla Show.
• I make this entry because I will be emailing it to my school laptop....

[School Laptop]

• And so here I am, typing this entry at school. Two hours earlier, I was typing this entry at home.
• I took the 25 bus to school and I had no problem getting a seat. It always gratifies me when I know to not get on a crowded 25 bus and watch ten people board it anyway, and then two minutes later, board another 25 bus which is empty.
• I've just bought Tony some more accessories for his train set. That may be the end of the Christmas Shopping I do for him..... Unless, I buy him another six bridge girders.

Wednesday [December 11]

[School Laptop]

• This morning, I went to the Yanqiao Hospital (about four bus stops from Casa Kaulins) to have my second of five visits to the dentist to fix one of my many decayed teeth. As he worked on one tooth, Jenny stood nearby watching and talking to him. It was another session of unpleasant sessions but not moments of agony.
• My appearance in the dental office excited two primary school students whose mouths were and numb after having some work of their teeth. One of the young boys wanted to exclaim but could only gasp inaudibly at the sight of the foreigner.
• 禁止抽烟 – smoking is forbidden. The pinyin for this is jinzhichouyan。
• Jenny surprised me by casually mentioning that she had reconciled with her parents. She had a disagreement with them and so she hadn't seen or talked to them for a year. So, we may again be making trips to the countryside.
• I am reading Theodore Dalrymple. I find that his writing is very addictive.
• The school marketing director is now the former school marketing director. Someone mentioned it to me and when I asked some Chinese staff they said it was very complicated as to why she was leaving. She may have resigned; she may have been fired. [She told me that someone had denounced her.]
• I want to buy one more Christmas present for Tony. However, Jenny thinks I have bought him too many already because she thinks she has bought him enough already. Don't take the joy I get in buying Christmas presents! I told her.

Thursday [December 12]

[School Laptop]

• I work 10:00 to 21:00 today. My long day of the week. I don't complain however. I have lots of time to attend to my pet projects like my Chinese study, all the reading I want to do, and my Python programming.
• Using Python, I have made an interactive GUI that lets me conduct a five team single round robin tournament where I can enter the team names. Unfortunately, the GUI doesn't look right so I am going to have to spend some time fixing it.
• My last class of the evening yesterday was an one student conversation class which had homosexuality as a topic. I thought I had enough discussion questions to make the class last fifty five minutes, but the class petered out with about 15 minutes to go. I didn't have so much to say about the topic as I thought I did.
• Two traffic incidents occurred after which I fantasized about wanting to punch the driver.
• First incident occurred last evening. I was de-boarding the 118 bus so I could get to the 635 bus stop when I was nearly hit by a car seeking to pass the bus, on its passenger side, as it was stopped so as to let off passengers. (Rare readers may recall I have complained about this before) I shook my fist over the car's trunk but choose not to pound on the car. To be honest, the bus driver should have pulled closer to the bus stop. If I was driving I would also have probably unthinkingly drove past on the bus's right. (Though, I do recall once having seen a car drive around a bus on the passenger side by driving in the portion of the road that was clearly meant for passengers to board and de-board buses.)
• The second incident occurred as I was on my way to school just now. I was crossing the street from the McDonalds at the corner of Xueqian and Zhongshan Roads. The maddening thing, to me, about crossing at that corner, is the right-turning cars cutting off pedestrians who have a green walking signal in their favor and thus one would think, especially coming from a semi-civilized country as I do, have the right of way. This morning, I was almost finished my crossing when a Honda SUV, without slowing down, tried to make a turn in front of me. I didn't give ground however and I made the SUV come to a halt. I glared at the driver but he seem to have averted his glance.
• I had a student tell me that in driving school, the instructors tell the students that is okay to make a right turn without checking to see what traffic is coming from the left. I told the student that this was absolutely demented.
• A 10:00 no-show. That is, the student didn't show up. So, I spend the hour looking at Chinese flashcards.
• It is Frank Sinatra's birthday today. So, I know what I am going to be listening to on the Ipod.
• No students show up for the SPC. Is it something that I am doing?
• I won't be doing any work till 18:00. I have too much time to spend on my pet projects now.

Friday [December 13]

[School Laptop]

• Yesterday, I had a 20:00 no-show, so I only taught for two hours all of yesterday.
• Today, my shift at the school is from 11:00 to 21:00. [I should talk about shifts instead of saying I work from such time to such time. Really, I just sit at my desk all day just keeping myself occupied unless I do have to go to a classroom and talk to some students.]
• I will be going to the Wuxi City Hall today to do an English Corner with some civil servants. I will talk to them and talk with them about Canada and Christmas. I hope there is a good mob there. [There was only six. I felt I talked too much and looked too disorganized.]
• This morning, Tony and I exchanged some comedic and guttural hellos, and some good-byes. “Hellooooo!” I said. Tony would smile and repeat what I said in a deep voice imitating my emphasis and holding of a vowel sound. It was a nice moment.
• I found a box in which to put my toys for Tony. I alternate between “What the hell, buy him another toy!” and “Why bother? You and Jenny have bought him enough already.”
• News of the execution of  Jang Song Thaek was shown on the bus this morning. [That was the number two of the Great Leader in North Korea. I wonder how many riders thought about Lin Biao.]

Saturday [December 14]

[School Laptop]

• I work 10:00 to 18:00 today. Tomorrow I don't work, as well as the day after that. So, today is my Friday. Hooray!
• It will be a challenge to find something to blog about because there are no novel things for me to report to my very rare readers.
• Here is what I do have to say:
• Construction at the corners of Zhongshan and Xueqian roads. In front of the McDonald's and Wang Dumplings restaurants, they have put up the blue temporary metal fences that block the view of construction from passersby. I assume that it has something to do with the subway construction but I could be wrong.
• The first class of the day will be a salon (conversation) class about history. This class is often disappointing because most of the students have no thoughts about history other than it is boring. This could be because the schools really want to make history seem very boring and thus discourage the students from doing any independent reading of it. The history of China from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s was dreadful and something the current regime really doesn't want to talk about openly.
• This evening, like last Saturday evening, we will go to the Grandma's restaurant. This time, we will go to the Sunning Plaza the Grandma's; we won't go to the overpriced and limited-selection the Golden Grandma's.

[Home Laptop]

• Two lucky things happened this evening.
• First, when I went to the Grandma's at the Suning Plaza, I got a seat right away. I have no idea why because I went to get a number and the hostess took me to a seat. It must have been because I was a foreigner. My wife said there was long lineup outside.
• If you must go to the Grandma's in Wuxi, you can't go wrong with the one at the Suning Plaza. The service today was very good.
• The second lucky thing: After dinner, we walked to the 635 bus stop and had great timing. The bus pulled in only a minute after we had arrived. Last Saturday eveing, we had to wait twenty five minutes.
• Only problem was the temperature rose by five degrees and I was sweating in my winter dress.
• The damn thing about the weather now is that it if goes up five degrees, you are overdressed. This evening, my long johns and parka were causing me to sweat profusely.
• I am glad that I don't hang out the Wuxi Expat pubs anymore. Today , at school, I just happened to be told things that I wish I hadn't been told. If I was in the pub community, I would have known about this awful gossip months ago. Just too many fucking big-mouthed gossips...

Sunday [December 15]

[Home Laptop]

• I don't work today. I am not going downtown. I am hanging out in the area of Casa K.
• I went for a walk in the morning and I saw a foreigner. I assumed he worked at a high school in my area because he was walking on the road that came from it. He wore black wrap-around sunglasses and and looked straight ahead – I couldn't have sworn he was pretending to not notice me.
• I have to confess that I more often than not pretend to not see a foreigner when I do see a foreigner anywhere in Wuxi. So the previous point is not so much a complaint as something that happened that I thought I could put in my diary.
• I do have this question about the person wearing sunglasses. Other than driving a car, I don't see why people need to wear sunglasses, other than for nefarious reasons. When I was young and trying to be hip so as to deny my nerdish and humiliating adolescence, I wore Ray-Bans and I actually relished the glare of sun directly in my eyes at sunset as I drove because it gave me a practical reason to be wearing my sunglasses. Living in Manitoba, Canada, I also saw that sunglasses were useful on a day where the sky was gray and the ground was covered with snow: all that gray hurt my eyes and so my sunglasses were useful. But since I don't drive anymore, I have no need for sunglasses. So why people wear sunglasses as they walk down the street. Are their eyes bloodshot? Do they not want to be noticed? Are they still adolescent or of the adolescent mindset?
• Tony gets me to help him put together the train set.
• For lunch, I got a bucket from KFC.
• For supper, the K family is going to stay home.
• David Warren is on Twitter. Mentioning this in his blog, I clicked on the link to his Twitter page. I immediately clicked on the follow button. I wasn't logged onto Twitter however when I did it. I was prompted to enter email addresses and what not. Instead of entering the email address for my first Twitter account which is my gmail address (akaulins@gmail.com), I entered the address for my qq mail (andiskaulins@qq.com), and so I now have two qq accounts. I decided that a second Twitter account was a good idea using the logic of “what the heck!”, but I now I regret it. I decided to follow David Warren twice and follow everyone who was following David Warren's Twitter account. This has lead to David Warren or his Twitter account rejecting one of my followerships. Unfortunately, my original Twitter account was rejected. I would cancel the second account but I don't want to lost the followers I have garnered from following David Warren's followers.
• So I was a complete twit when I decided to get a second Twitter account.
• Here is my original Twitter account profile.
• Here is my second Twitter account profile.
• David Warren has 160 followers as I type this. I was the 101^st. I am proud to say. I am part of very exclusive company.
• I try to listen to Catholic podcasts as I walk the area Sunday morning.
• I will end this week's diary in the afternoon. If anything happens tonight, you can read about it in the next diary entry.