The AKIC Diary for October 14 to October 20, 2013

Monday [October 14]

[Home Laptop]

No work today.

I still had to be up early because I had to get Tony off to school.

I woke up feeling stuffy.

I published the October 7 to October 13 diary last night. I will publish the AKIC Weekly as soon as the video Views of China from Casa Kaulins #31 has been uploaded. The VPN connection is slow however.

While waiting for the upload to finish, I have taken photos for my Views of China from Casa Kaulins blog. I took a good photo of a bamboo load that you just have to see!

I so much liked the results of my fit of Joycean interior monologue writing that I did last week, that I will make a point of doing it at least once a week in my diary from now on.

Jenny and I went to the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza for lunch and some shopping, and ate at the same restaurant we had had supper at last night. Jenny ordered peanuts, broccoli, tofu, beans in sweet sauce, fried rice, and crispy rolls with some sort of vegetable filling. All that food with a bottle of beer made me happy. We then went on Jenny's instigation to H&M. She had read on some social group of a woman buying a pair of kids doc marten style boots for 30 rmb. She didn't find the boots but we did buy a XL sized shirt for me from clearance rack for just 50 rmb!

The last two days, I have noticed that there has been a plague of foreigners hanging out at the Wanda Plaza or walking between the Wanda and the nearby Ramada Hotel. They have been young adults mostly, who I assume are competing in some sort of international sports competition in the area. They have been wearing clothing bearing the names of their native countries including Mexico and Denmark. Some of the more swarthy-looking among them I suspect are from the middle east.

I rode the e-bike to pick up Tony from school. We then went of a tour of the area straddling the border between the Hui Shan District and Jiangyin. We saw six high-speed trains, crossed at least six major bridges, were chased by one dog, stopped to watch one digger in action, bought one radish for Jenny, had one nice moment of contemplation on one of the bridges, and had our photo taken by Jenny as we drove by the apartment.

Back at home, Tony and I had a good wrestling match. I wanted Tony to watch television instead of wrestle with his buddy Kramer. I call his buddy Kramer because this little boy will come to our apartment unannounced to hang out. Jenny says that Kramer is the only kid that she knows of who Tony can be aggressive with. Usually, Tony gets picked on by all the kids. Our wrestling match started because Tony was picking on Kramer and annoying me. I tried to turn on the television and get him to watch that but Tony didn't want me to and I had to physically restrain him from trying to turn the television off. Tony was very determined to turn off the television and so we wrestled for a long five minutes. I am still much stronger than Tony and so there was no danger of him overpowering me and getting to the television; but Tony's stamina was something. His squirming and kicking required me to be constantly vigilant. I had to relent because he wasn't going to give up.

And then a minute after our wrestling match, Tony turned on the television to watch some cartoon. So we had fought for nothing. Tony it seems didn't want me telling him what to do.

Tuesday [October 15]

[Home Laptop]

It was blustery this morning. The first breaths of Winter.

I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

Hanging laundry, I saw four or five good photo opportunities for my Views of China blog pass by. I didn't have my camera with me, alas.

[School Laptop]

I took the 25 bus to school.

It sure was windy outside, and I was thinking that my polo shirt and hoodie were insufficient to deal with it.

Wednesday [October 16]

[School Laptop]

I work 13:00 to 21:00.

I arrive at school at 11:00.

Yesterday's diary entry was pretty short. I gots to thinks of ways to make its longer. So, here is what thoughts and observations came to me as I rode the 25 bus to downtown:

• The subject of an EWTN podcast I was listening to: Gratitude. This lead me to have an anti-blog thought: Gratitude! Gratitude! You must thank Me very much!
• Team nicknames evolve. Dodgers mean a baseball team in Los Angeles, not the fans of a baseball team in Brooklyn who had to dodge trains to get to their teams' baseball stadium. Lakers means a basketball team in Los Angeles, not a basketball team in a city in a state full of lakes. Team nicknames can have many takes. The Reds are a baseball team in Cincinnati – there was no fuss to change their name during the cold war. Redskins are a professional football team in Washington D.C.
• When I take the 25 bus, I often see bags and luggage lying on the floor. This is because the bus stops by the train and bus stations, and it is much cheaper to take the bus than the taxi.
• When Wuxi People are on the phone, they squawk loudly.

Tony will have a car take him home after school. They took pity on Jenny & Tony yesterday when they were seen riding on an e-bike in the gusty and cool autumn winds.

Thursday [October 17]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 21:00. It's my long day at school

I was up at 5:45 this morning so I could shower, shave, and have Tony off to school by 7:00 and then just be able to go to school myself.

I took the 25 bus downtown. I had plenty of time to get off at the bus stop, near Nanchang Temple on Jiefang Road, and walk to the McDonalds, on the corner of Xueqian and Zhongshan Road, to have breakfast.

They are letting one of the foreign teachers, at our school, go.

Funny thing. I had to type today's entry (at least what I typed so far) twice. The computer froze and wouldn't even respond to CTRL-ALT-DEL. This also happened yesterday. It seems that ten minutes or so after I turn on the computer, it will freeze solid leaving me with no option but to turn it off. But it only happened once yesterday. Hopefully, it doesn't happen again today.

Maybe, I will go Joycean today; maybe, I won't.

An Xinjiang Restaurant will open across from the school! An Xinjiang Restaurant will open across from the school!

Friday [October 18]

[School Laptop]

I work 11:00 to 21:00 today.

Yesterday, I didn't do the Joycean thing. I will have to do it today.

So, without further ado, here is my weekly attempt at interior monologue style writing mixed with in third person narration:

I should say weakly attempt. Finished breakfast. Wait. Not exactly. I got to drink my coffee. My mind is blank. Andis's mind went blank. He didn't know what to type. I don't know what to type. Isn't this mixing of interior monologue and third person narration awesome!?! Only thing though. Should the third person narration be in the present tense or past tense? Andis wondered. Andis wonders. I think the past tense seems better. Most narration is done in the past tense. Andis thought that most narration was done in the past tense. At school, Andis goes straight into his office. I wait till the other office clears and I will do prep. (what little prep I do have...) Is it okay to be parenthetical in an interior monologue. Did Joyce use parenthesis in Ulysses? I can't recall.

In the office next to his, the tech guy summons the girl who sits in the office across the hall. (Not the stocking girl from last week.) Don't want to be thought of as a man who stalks girls in stockings. Andis stared at the breakfast sandwich wrapper. Waxy gloss. Crumpling reveals lack of symmetrical wrapping skill on part of kitchen worker. Two globs of dried and congealed cheese on the bottom left corner of the wrapper. Grab it. Roll it up. Throw in in the waste basket. Missed. Stand up. Grab the rebound off the floor. Andis bent over. Maybe I should have bent on my knees...

What's my first class. 13:00. Anna. Who get's the job? I wrote up a script for that a long time ago. Just have to run out the clock with conversation. 18:00 to 20:00. Leo Cao. Leo Cow. Leo Ciao. Crewcutted Chinese mail with a mustache. I wonder if he shaves. The lesson plan for his class is shit. I did come up with a way to string the conversation along based on the material. Materiale. I can't expect him to make a presentation. I don't know what to teach him. Four people at 20:00. Three woman and Zhou. Zhou could be a boy or girl, man or woman.

Andis looked at 141 Chinese flashcards on his computer.

What was it that I was thinking earlier? Colacho talked about the old woman praying in the corner of the church. Or in the back of pew or the seats. Colacho said he was like her. No. He said he was her. That is why I follow him. Is Bill Clinton like the old woman praying by herself in the church. No, he is thinking what is under the skirts of the young woman. Scum. I have to fight those tendencies all the time. That there was the British politician in the Tofumo(?) scandal. He resigned and spent the rest of his life working in soup kitchens, serving the lowest of the low. Clinton? He went around getting acclaim and lots of money making speeches. I can't stand to be with people who tolerate that. I can't.

Time to do some reading. Andis was to start his shift in 35 minutes. I will prep my lessons starting at 11:00. Turn on the Ipad. Wait for it to fully load. Select the KJV. Now in Revelations. Chapter 8. Wormwood. A ominous sounding word that I don't know the meaning of. Revelations is fun to read. Press library. Oops. Put four besides KJV on the to-do list. Choose Colacho.

351 Resignation to error is the beginning of wisdom.

What to add to that? It is so true. What is the difference between true and so true? There shouldn't be any difference in the degree of truth. Either it is true or it isn't true. What about the heresies that are 95 percent true? Mixing error with truth is how to entrap fools.

Damn. Time to take a shit. Bring along the Ipod? No. Think.

Andis walked into the bathroom. The door to the western WC stall was closed and the handle had a red color. Damn! Someone is in there! Andis walked to a urinal. Instead of staring at the wall, he looked to his left towards the stall. Is there someone in there? Andis didn't see any feet. I will have to check it. It seems to be very silent in here. I can't feel the presence of anyone else. Pull on the handle and see what happens. It opened. The stall had been empty.

Andis sat. Andis shat. We are always committing some small heresy. The devil never rests. There is always something we could have been doing with our time that was better than what we had been doing. Even to eat is to deprive others of food. Eat we must. Sin we must deal with.

Back to the office. Time to read some Aristotle. We acquire virtue by acting. How about by avoiding? Is there any virtue to acquire by sitting at my desk and not dealing with the demons in the next room? Perhaps you are if you are always battling temptation to go to that room. Does having the habit of virtue cease to be virtuous if it becomes easy and second nature?

Taste of breakfast still in my mouth. Time to eat some gum. Andis went to his backpack, pulling a package with three strips of gum from a front pocket. Andis unwrapped two strips and put them in his mouth. He took the packages and rolled them in a ball. He rolled his wheeled chair to his right. The waste paper basket was in sight. He put his right forearm parallel to the ground making a right angle with his armpit. The upper arm he bent back so that it was nearly over his shoulder. He took a deep breath and then thrust the upper arm forward. He released the paper ball so that it went upwards in a high arch. The paper ball landed in the waste basket. Basket!!!!

Back to Aristotle. It may not be virtuous to do the right thing but in the wrong spirit.

Fireworks crackle loudly neat the school. It is the new restaurant opening across the street from the school. Xinjiang food. Chow Mian Pian. I suppose I should wait a few days before I try the restaurant's food. It will be crowded today. Still. A good thing.

Like Joyce. I will end my composition with a Yes. Yes. Yes!

Saturday [October 19]

[School Laptop]

Andis works 10:00 to 18:00 today.

Andis got to work at 8:40. He had to wait a few minutes before the girl came to open the school's main entrance.

On the bus ride to home the previous evening, Andis got on and rushed to a seat in the back corner of the bus. His sometimes bus companion told him she preferred to sit at the front. Andis tried to sit at a front on a few instances and found he couldn't abide it.

When he got home, he saw that his son Tony had a black eye. Jenny wasn't sure what had happened. The teacher told him that he had been running around... That put Andis out of the good mood that he had been in brought on by listening to Sinatra on the Ipod and having read Aristotle on his Ipad.

Andis finished watching the Hustler starring Paul Newman, George C. Scott, and Jackie Gleason. Newman was cool at times in the movie but it was hard to find his being a loser believable. His coolness contrasted in a Jekyll and Hydish way with his loserness.

[Home Laptop]

On the bus ride home, I started watching the movie Criss Cross starring Burt Lancaster. Watching it with my headphones on, I didn't hear my phone ringing about ten times as my wife was trying to get a hold of me. When I finally answered the phone, my wife was pissed.

Sunday [October 20]

I don't work today.

Other than publishing my blog entries tonight or tomorrow, I don't know what I am going to do the next two days. This isn't a good thing for this diary.

We went last night to Wanda for dinner. We will go to Wanda for lunch today.

I have spent an considerable amount of time on the AKIC Weekly. I just made a top ten list for it.

Tony's right eye is still black.

I have to make another toy for Tony was this fold-and-glue book that Jenny bought him yesterday. Unlike the book I had bought for Tony, the book Jenny bought doesn't have perforated folds.

I had a bad experience at the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza Pizza Hut. We got stuck in a corner table and they seemingly forgot about us. Our food was coming out slowly. They then gave us a free pizza because they had screwed up the pizza we had ordered. When we finally got the pizza we had ordered, I could see that it had been hastily made. The sauce and toppings were not spread properly over the pizza so that the space between the sauce edge and the crust edge was as much as two and a half inches long.

I went on the Internet seeing what mischief Paul Krugman had been up to lately. Niall Ferguson has written a devastating critique of him. No one needs to take Krugman seriously anymore.

I took Tony out for a walk in the late afternoon. He brought along his push-bike. He wanted to go to the Jia Zhou Yang Fang basketball court because it is a good place to ride his push-bike. However when he got there he joined up with three other boys of assorted age. They ran around playing high-and-seek but they got rowdy at times. Somewhere, they found some bricks and were throwing them down a stairwell.

I know enough Chinese characters to be able to read a sign and not have a clue what it means. As Tony played, I saw a sign with familiar characters. I brought out my Ipod, put on the notebook app, and changed the keyboard so I could do pinyin entry. I was able to enter the pinyin so that I could match the characters on the sign. I was able to read the words on the sign aloud, more or less, but I had no idea what they meant.

Blog Entry for April 15 to April 21, 2013

Gratitude:  I am thankful for the few comments and emails that my blogging has garnered me. I am also thankful to be ALIVE!!!!!

Acknowledgment:  You have come to the wrong place if you want to know anything about the Wuxi Expat scene.  I am like the Unabomber living in my own shack.  Of course, it is a shack with a lot of Chinese in it and not too many foreigners.  Really, I am more like this character – I think he was in a W. Somerset Maugham story – who lives in China but concerns himself with things western. If I remember the story correctly, this man living in the middle of China and occupied himself with the Greek and Roman Classics.  I occupy myself with old western texts as well.  A strange kind of seclusion no doubt, but what the hay!  I gots to be me.

Request:  I need Tylenol and Crown Royal:  not necessarily in that order.  I could also use some Sleeman's Honey Lager and Cottage Cheese.

The AKIC Week in Brief.  

Not much happened this week.  I went to work and then I went home.  It was a week worthy of Wuxi, China's Most Boring White Guy.  The only thing of note that could be said to have happened in AKICistan is that I embraced being the most boring white guy with aplomb.

To place this entry in historical context, there was a bombing at the Boston Marathon,and lo and behold some Muslims were responsible, and I learned that Justin Trudeau won the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

About Me (Andis)  This is  a weekly feature so don't expect me to give the whole store away all at once.  So, what will I tell you about me this week?  Actually, I have given some of the store away in other sections of this weekly blog entry.  So, I will say this:  I am teaching English at a training center in Wuxi, China.  I am married to a local girl and we have a five year old son who I probably spoil too much.  My views of the world and my surroundings are reactionary and Catholic.

I am in China!  【我在中国！】我住在无锡，江苏，中国。我是英文的老师。我的学校是环亚国际英语。我可以说得一点点点中文。我的发音不好。我爱我的中国的太太。她是无锡的最漂亮的女人。她也是中国的最漂亮的女人！我很喜欢中国的菜。我不喜欢很多的外国人。我觉得他们是不好人。我不喜欢看电视。我很喜欢看书。我孩子Tony 的年纪是五岁，八个月。他喜欢火车玩具和消防车玩具。下个星期，我告诉你们更多。

I'm Canadian!   I have heard that Justin Trudeau is now officially the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.  For this reason, I can say I am happy not to be in Canada even though I miss certain aspects of living there and constantly wonder if I should go back.  Justin, I hear, is less qualified to the Prime Minister of Canada than Obama was qualified to be the President of the USA.  But I hear that like Obama, Justin has superficiality going for him, and no matter how lacking in substance, qualifications, and managerial competence he is, people will stick by him because of what he appears to be.  The only positive is that will be easier to despise and laugh at Canadian Liberal Party members – not that it wasn't easy for me not to do so during their hey day as Canada's natural ruling party, but the fact that they elected the son of a former Prime Minister to be their leader says volumes and adds clarity.

I like to Read!

Here is what I am reading this week:

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

Ulysses by James Joyce:  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly goes through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney is making the novel more understandable and enjoyable.  Delaney figures he will do his last ReJoyce Podcast in 22 years.  Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast (he completed episode #149 this week), I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book.  I will be finished it, I figure, in a year.

The Holy Bible King James Version .  The Gospel According to Saint John.

University Economics:  Elements of Inquiry Third Edition by Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen.   It end-of-chapter questions force one to think so as to be able to explain one's thought to other people.  

The Hills & The Sea by Hilaire Belloc.  I liked The Path to Rome so much that I decided to read another Belloc Book - I have ten of them on my Ipad.  I choose this one because Father Schall mentioned it in one of his essays (which I read daily on my dotdotdot app)

Put out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh. He is one awesome writer. Loads and loads of fun to read. If you read Evelyn Waugh, you should the fact on your CV. It puts you in the .00001 percent of pure awesome people of human history!

I like to make videos  When I have the time. Here are the two places you can see my videos:  My Youtube Channel and My Youku Channel.

I teach English or at least I go through the motions of it. On my resume, I can say I am an AESL teacher – Andis English as a Second Language.

I like to cut and paste quotes that I found interesting:

The following are quotes from Don Colacho:

1838 Innumerable problems arise from the method by which we seek to solve them.

1850 Pedantry is the weapon with which the professional protects the interests of his guild.

1857 The increasing integration of humanity merely makes it easier to share the same vices.

1877 The ugliness of the modern face is an ethical phenomenon.

1891 No one now is ignorant of the fact that transforming the world means bureaucratizing man.

1892 To condemn oneself is no less pretentious than to absolve oneself. Damn! He has a point! I suppose my self-condemnations are a way above transcending my existence while on earth.

1896 Liberal ideas are likeable.  Their consequences ruinous. I don't even think they are likable anymore. Rather than admitting that their ideas don't work in practice. Liberals have doubled down and become rude & crude. The earlier Liberals, though foolish were at least earnest in a decent sort of way. Now, they are just mostly complete iceholes.

1922 The individual does not search for his identity except when he despairs of his quality. I never did find myself in China – I did find a wife thought.

Some interesting advice from Hillaire Belloc: if you will let your fellow-citizen curse you and grunt at you, and if you will but talk to him on matters which he knows far better than you, then you have him ready at the end.

Blame the Boston Bombings on Rap and Pot Smokers? Sounds good to me. Here is a link from vdare.com:

Fox News tonight reported that one or more of the Muslim terrorists who bombed the Boston Marathon were well known among their peers for smoking pot and listening to rap.  And people think that pot and rap are part of acculturation to America?

No, rap music is anti-American and anti-white.  It is openly racist.  A Muslim immigrant who listens to rap is acculturating to an anti-American, an anti-white sub-culture.  It is also of note that Barack Hussein Obama is a big fan of rap and smoked a lot of pot while younger.  I don't think this is coincidental.

President Obama failed in his attempt to pull brains out of hearts or use emotional blackmail in a supremely brazen attempt to pass gun-control legislation: Obama is in a huff this week because his gun bill got shot down like a clay pigeon. Like most of us, he was deeply affected by the massacre at Sandy Hook. Like much of the country, he seems to think emotions should drive public policy.

An anagram of mother-in-law is 'Woman Hitler.' You can find other mother-in-law jokes here.

Another cut-and-paste from Belloc's The Hills and The Seas: the story of that Sultan who publicly proclaimed that he had possessed all power on earth, and had numbered on a tablet with his own hand each of his happy days, and had found them, when he came to die, to be seventeen. There is a profound observation in that quote, for sure. I can think of ever having had a completely happy day – many happy moments but not many happy days. I had a wonderful feeling sitting in bed on Sunday with Tony, but the little bugger then annoyed me in the afternoon.

And another: Wealth makes the run of our days somewhat more easy, poverty makes them more hard—or very hard. But no poverty has ever yet brought of itself despair into the soul—the men who kill themselves are neither rich nor poor.

Politically, I am conservative  I say this knowing that it doesn't matter to anyone but me.  And with no plans to go on a murderous killing spree, it will never matter. How much of a conservative am I anyway? I don't care for Obama. I honored the life of Margaret Thatcher. I don't care for most of the Republican party.

I like to keep a diary [Not that anything happens in my life – nothing does. But I do have some thoughts and I see some things.]

Here is the list of diary characters:

Andis writing in the first person.

Andis being written about in the third person.

Tony: Andis's five year old son.

Jenny: Andis's Chinese wife.

LECTOR: Andis's imaginary critic and sometime debate partner.

Students

Passersby

Jimmy Stewart

Robert Downey Junior

Someone who probably has competed in the Boston Marathon

Peter Hitchens

PSY

[My Ipad Mini]

[My School Laptop: a ten year old Compaq Presario]

[My Home Laptop: a not as old Dell]

The square braces: “[“ and “]”

Monday (the 15^th)

[this entry was made in my Ipad]

[LECTOR: Can I make comments earlier in this entry? I mean, like not just in the diary section. I have some issues with things you said earlier in this entry. Andis: Are you a Leftie? LECTOR: If you want me to be. You are the ones who puts the words behind my name and the colon. Andis: If you talk earlier in the entry, readers will just day WTF! ]

I don't work today.  I stay home.

I watch a film on my IPad:  Winchester 73 starring Jimmy Stewart.  A great movie of the Western genre.    I loved the landscapes.  I was thinking how I yearned so much to see such scenery. Any sort of scenery there is in the Jiangsu and Wuxi area is being bulldozed over for scenery-blocking and soul-less high rises.

I wonder what book to read next.  I wonder if I will ever stop downloading books.  Today, I download a book called The Intellectual Life by AG Sertillanges.  I hadn't heard of the book till today.  Searching for it on the Internet, I read that  a few writers swore by it, said it was their favorite.

Today was a day that some shit was to happen in Nork land, supposively.  So far, nothing.

I watched PSY's new video a few times.  I got a good copy of it via torrent, and so I don't need Wifi to watch while I am on the bus.

All my stated goals for myself seem empty.  I can't raise any enthusiasms for them. I need discipline today to work towards them.

Laundry, hung outside the window, flutters in the wind.  Behind the clothes, I see the tops of the trees that are planted on the grounds of the government building that is across the road from our apartment complex. Behind and above the trees stands a 20 storey apartment building. -- on its roof, on each corner, are four covered patio areas.  I would love to be in them taking a gander at all that is below.

Tuesday (the 16^th)

[this entry was started on my Home Laptop]

I will work 1300 to 2100.  I look forward to the challenge to be offered by the fresh horrors that may greet me.  Reflecting on the things you don't want to meet -- indifference to my being is a thing to be devoutly wished for.

I hope that the workers clear the pile they made in our apartment stairwell.  (Here is the photo of it.)  Jenny doesn't seem to mind because it is above our floor and so it doesn't affect us.  But I am livid about the eyesore and the fucking sheer laziness of the apartment workers.  This is not an uncommon sight in Wuxi apartmendom -- piles of building materials left in stairwells and never ever picked up.  This case is particularly grievous because it has been left not in some corner of a stairwell that is never used but on a stairwell that people have to pass through all the time.

At the apartment, I will spend some time looking at Chinese flashcards before going to work.

I read in the news that someone set off some bombs at the Boston Marathon.

[I made the following entries for the 16th on my school laptop]

No afternoon classes.  It is 1300 and I am prepped for the evening.  So, I have an afternoon of Chinese and Python study to look forward to.

I watched the PSY Gentleman video on the bus.  I showed the video to a colleague at work.  The eleventh greatest Englishman of all-time told me that he likes it.

They tell me I am a celebrity; what with my image been shown on buses all over the city.  Forced to think an of answer to the question of what it is like, I say that it doesn't impress my wife and son very much  -- no respect at home, like I am Rodney Dangerfield.  And besides, no one who I would want to impress would be impressed anyway by my performances.

Some Chinese Sign Translation.

[Later at home on the IPad.]

The pile was cleared. [LECTOR: You were a bit premature in making a hubbub about it weren't you!]

I showed the new PSY video to students.  Most didn't like it. One girl, a Korean pop devotee, knew who PSY's dance partner was. [LECTOR: Don't you think you are a little old to be liking PSY?]

Wednesday (the 17^th)

[I am at home on the laptop.]

I took photos of Tony, Tony's Kindergarten Van, Tony in the kindergarten van, and my shoes.

Why did I take a photo of my shoes?  Well, I am a boring white guy who wears Chinese slip-on style.  And as a boring white guy, I will defend to my dying breath, the importance of little things.

No more showing on the new PSY video to students.  

I will work 1300-2100.  I will spend the morning at the apartment doing some flashcard practice.

I am trying to get ahead of myself with the Python language learning.

I am really having trouble determining what book I will read after the Hills and the Seas.

[I am now on the school laptop]

I prepare for a 1400 SPC.

I end the day with a class with two boys of middle-school age.  The topic:  Strife in the Holy Land.   And so it is not a class I am looking forward to.

[LECTOR: That's it?]

Thursday (the 18^th)

[I am at school on the laptop]

This week, I had been taking a photo a day of Tony [in the morning].  I didn't this morning because Tony was sick.  He had a very phlegmy cough but no fever.  Sleeping last night, he couldn't sit still and straight.  He took off the covers and would roll over and around so that he was at a perpendicular angle in bed to his parents. [LECTOR: Tony still sleeps with his parents. Andis: Yes. Indeed. In between his parents.]

As I was about to order breakfast at McD's, I saw a woman buying an ice cream.  Breakfast ice cream?  It seems very unseemly to me.

I work 1000-2100 today.

The Strife in the Holy Land Class turned out to be with an adult and an middle-school student.  The adult had lot to say and there wasn't much I could do to get the middle-school student, who is very quiet at the best of times, to speak; but I couldn't help but feel that I was ignoring him.  Anyway, talking about the Middle East, the adult told me his belief that the Americans wanted control of the "tap" of Middle East oil as part of what it saw as its struggle with China.  I thought he was nuts.

I had a grandmother in my class, just now.  That is only the second time that has happened.  The other grandmother student I can remember was from Japan.

Friday (the 19^th)

[I am on the Ipad.]

I am waiting for T&J to get up.

The pile is gone.

I will expound on these things when I am on the school laptop.

I started to read Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh. [LECTOR: Oh! Whoopde Whoopde do!]

I don't think of myself as a Wuxi Expat anymore.  

Robert Downey Junior is being "screwed again?"

I will expound on this things as well except for the sentences I want to be cryptic.

ptvn cudr ghr sjbi!

The last sentence is in code. [LECTOR: You are telling us you have homosexual proclivities? Andis: No! LECTOR: You are saying that some people you everyday are gay? Andis: Nope!]

[I am now working on my laptop that is at school.]

The pile of material that I complained about earlier has been taken away.  Thank God.  And it is nice to be wrong.

Tony always gets up at the lastest minute possible when he has to go to school. [LECTOR: Latest?]

I read Peter Hitchens praising Evelyn Waugh's novel Put Out More Flags.

I suppose that to be a real Wuxi Expat, you have to be part of the Wuxi Expat Scene.  I keep to myself like the Una-bomber in a shack.  I am also an English teacher.  English teachers really can't be Expats, for they live in China, they don't travel back and forth to it. [LECTOR: I think what you mean to say is that ET's are low-status Expats.]

In order to not to get people mad at me.  I will write certain things in code.  It is more for my benefit for I plan to read these rantings sometimes in my waning days.  I have figured out a code pattern, and I dare you to try to crack it.

I did my Chinese flashcard practice, my Chinese typing practice, my Python fiddling-around (perhaps you can call it study), and my daily readings (of books and sacred books).  So, feeling I had done something, I decided to take a break.  I went to the nearby department store and bought a toy for Tony -- a fire-fighting ambulance trick made by Tomica.  Tony is sure to love it when he gets it -- I am not sure when I will give it to him.  I'd like to give it to him after he does something extraordinary.

Saturday (the 20^th)

[Ipad mini]

I wake up hungry for updates from Boston.

Last night,  Jenny Laid out almost all of Tony's toys for some photos.  I posted three of the photos I took to my various blogs:  here, here, and here.

I found some of Tony's completed homework.

[School Laptop]

A crappy wet day outside.  I should have worn a extra layer of clothing under my shirt and sweat jacket.

The surviving Boston bomber is on a boat, or so I have been told.

I await a trainer who is famous for his tendency to exaggerate.  I want to ask him if he had run in the Boston Marathon naked and drunk only to be robbed of a victory trophy by officials who were out to get him.

That last Bomber, Sarejevo Mahovolich or whatever his name is, has been caught! [LECTOR: Don't read anything into the fact that he is Muslim!]

A student told me that live monkey brains tastes like tofu. I liked that because I am sure to repeat that saying to many a person.

[I am writing on my home laptop]

A student told me that a Chinese woman was killed in the Boston Marathon bombings. Her name was Lu Lingzi.

Jenny wanted to go to The Grandma's restaurant in Ba Bai Ban. As we left school at 500 PM, I was thinking that the cold weather would make for a shorter lineup, but I was to be sadden mistaken and shown to be overly optimistic, as the lineup was absolutely terrible. We had 77 parties ahead of us so we gave up. We ended up going to 永和大 where I had black pepper beef and youtiao. [LECTOR: What is Youtiao? Andis: Fried dough sticks.]

Back at Casa K, our home, I immediately departed on a shopping expedition to the nearby Tesco where I bought bread, milk, margarine, and chips.

Tony wants to draw.

I used three devices to make today's entry. What do you think of that? [LECTOR: Not much!]

I forgot to mention that I worked 1000-1700 today.

I gave Tony his new toy almost as soon as I got home yesterday night. I couldn't wait.

Sunday (the 21^st)

[The following has been typed in my Ipad and sent to my laptop by email.]

Last night, for a few moments, we took Tony to the toy store at Ba Bai Ban where a table set up with TOMY Plarail track and Tomica parking garages.  The latter are used with Tomica toy cars which are the same size as Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars.  The toy "garages" are an ingenious combination of elevators operated with cranks, levers, and push-button releases.  Tony is always immediately drawn to play with them, as he was yesterday.

As I was saying, you need a toy car to play with the garages.  It just so happened that Tony had a toy truck, from Matchbox, in his backpack.  Seeing the toy garage set, he took off his backpack to find his toy truck which he knew he had.

I found this little incident with Tony looking for his toy a wonder to behold.  My little guy has ideas.  My little guy has the concept of possession.  It shouldn't surprise me that he does or will; he is growing up, and yet it does.  I suppose I still have my childhood sense of time where a year seems like forever; and yet the time flows like a I am a middle-aged person -- quickly.

I am still amazed at the fact of my son's birth.  I still think he is the little helpless creature with no concepts.  His growth is a wonder to me and those little things he does.

I didn't work today, but I was up at six all the same.  [LECTOR: Those links have nothing to do with the sentence!] I read for a couple of hours and then did huggy baobao with Tony -- I don't often get to linger in bed with Tony my side so it was a pleasant moment to be remembered for eternity I told myself.  [I remember December 24, 1971 looking out the window at the snow.  I was in Courcelette, Quebec in a PMQ.  I told myself to remember that moment for eternity as well.  I couldn't tell you from what room I was looking outside.  All that I can recall is the snow and the thought. LECTOR: Big Deal!]

We went to a Taiwanese Restaurant for lunch where I found myself actually liking the Tofu.  I suppose I liked it because it was spicy.  The Taiwanese restaurant is the only foreign restaurant in our complex.  Ha ha!  [LECTOR:  Your wife is right.  Your jokes aren't funny.  Andis:  Shut up you lefty!  I was about to type dumb lefty but that would have implied that are lefties who are smart. LECTOR:  When you say smart lefty, you could be saying he is smart among lefties but not the whole population.  Andis:  True.  But, now I wonder whose side you are on.  Lector:  You're the one putting words in my mouth, so to speak.  It. Is really your fault if I am not consistent.]

I spent the afternoon with Tony.  I had been hoping to go on an e-bike ride with him to the countryside, but he peevishly and petulantly insisted on being taken to Ba Bai Ban to visit the toy department -- the one we had been to the night before.  It was not what I wanted to do, but Tony agreed and did abide by a vow made to his mom that we weren't to buy any toys.  He didn't beg for toys once!

Photos of Tony at the toy shop can be seen:  here, here, here, and here.