Things I Was Told in October, 2014.

• In Beixin in the Jiangsu countryside, Jenny told me that Tony followed some countryside boys to a field and played with them. He didn't tell any adults that he was doing this and so they got worried and went to search for him. Whatever he did with the boys in the fields was all good boyhood stuff and so I told Jenny to not worry so much about him getting his socks and shoes all dirty.
• Jenny told me that she had heard that a policeman had been hit at the gathering I had seen at the entrance to the Hui Shan District government complex. (See October things seen.)
• Jenny told me that Tony did some work in the countryside. He helped scoop up harvested peanuts which had been lain on the ground to dry.
• Jenny told me that her sister (Jenny has two) had gotten into an evening argument with her husband and got beaten. Earlier that day, her sister had driven us to Taizhou, and had been exceedingly nice to Tony, in fact being very motherly to him. Jenny's sister spent the whole next day lying down. (Chinese men, I have read and I have been told, think nothing of slugging their wives in arguments. Whether this trait has changed in modern times is hard to discern. I read a book about China from over a hundred years written by a visitor that reported this. Foreigners have told me that it still happens a lot in these times.) Jenny also told me that her mother didn't see what the big deal was about the incident. Jenny told me she would visit her sister to see how she was doing.
• Student told me that in Nanjing during the October holiday, the subway station was so crowded that she had to wait three trains before she could board. In Nanjing, the trains come every four minutes. In Wuxi, they come every ten.
• Jenny tells me her sister was staying with her mother.
• In my first class back from the holiday, a student told me that she supported the demonstrators in Hong Kong. She said she wanted democracy in the mainland. The two other students in class told me that they hadn't been paying attention to what was happening in Hong Kong. One of these two students told me that she didn't like Hong Kongers, having been treated rudely by them, she said, when she visited that “small land where the people had small minds.”
• I asked another student about what was happening in Hong Kong. He was an older gentleman in his thirties. He said he hadn't been paying attention. I told him that the world was thinking it was big news. I told him it was the biggest protest in Hong Kong since the 1960s. He misunderstood and thought I was talking about all of China, and told me how students were killed in Beijing in '89.
• On the first Friday following the Golden Week, a student told me that his school was having classes on Saturday but on a Monday schedule. And then the next Monday, following the one day off on Sunday, would be another day with a Monday schedule. So, the student was telling me that he was having a weekend with a Monday and a Sunday, followed a Monday. Two Mondays in three days.
• Someone told me that they saw someone wearing a Mickey Mouse Jacket. Under the Mickey Mouse was written Sewer Rat.
• An acquaintance, a businessman who lives in the Hui Shan District, told me the following:
• HK can't succeed or the Party will have trouble on the mainland with citizens there wanting what HK got.
• The most powerful person in Wuxi city is the Wuxi Party Secretary, not the Wuxi Mayor.
• Thirty years ago, a Chinese delegation to New York City was surprised that American city delegations didn't have party secretaries but only mayors.
• Five star hotels in China have been desperately trying to downgrade themselves to four star after the central government, in its effort to fight corruption, said that party conferences would no longer be held in five star hotels.
• The problem the Chinese economy is that the central government wants to control everything.
• Only three our of the sixteen subway lines in Shanghai make money. The rest have to be subsidized. (I had to teach the word subsidized to my acquaintance.)
• In the 1950s, the Chinese Communist government sent a letter to Hong Kong telling them to not give their citizens so much freedom.
• Hong Kongers have a bias against Mainland Chinese. So, my friend would rather shop in Dubai.
• The local Lexus dealership sales are down which is a sign that the Chinese economy is slowing down.
• Buses in China can be very crowded and sometimes, the driver will tell passengers to pay and then get on the bus through the back door because for whatever reason some room is to be had there. I had a student tell me that one time he did this – that is, he paid at the front – but couldn't get on the bus because the driver closed the door on him. He was part of a group of three or four people who were told to pay at the front and board on the back, and he was the last to try to board. Usually, I find myself a seat on the bus because I take the time to wait for an empty bus. But I remember one time, I boarded a bus where this was not an option, and I boarded the bus at the back and then made a point of rushing to the front when I got off to pay the fare by swiping my card.
• Student told me that his company was getting less orders from Russia.
• A student told me that the workers hadn't got their pay from their company.
• A student told me that he was going to a notary to have a criminal records check done for his Australian Visa application. He will be going to Melbourne to study for a Master's Degree.
• A female student, who is attending FAS school, told me that she was feeling sad because she wasn't able to get a job with Hainan Airlines who had come to her campus to recruit. The thing that really got her was the fact that she didn't even get an interview because she wasn't slim enough.. As it was, her chances were slim (pardon the pun) to get the job. Only nine out of four hundred were selected she told me.
• What's happening in Hong Kong, a student told me, would be dealt with quickly in Mainland China.
• Problems with Italian components are causing delays on an assembly line in Wuxi, said a student working at the company.
• I should instead of calling this the “told things” entry to the “things told and overheard” entry. I overheard that local businessmen are finding the inability to bribe government officials hard to deal with, because the incentive of government officials is to do not anything efficiently for a businessman because they don't want to be suspected of having been bribed.
• I also overheard that local mayors and party secretaries in China are jockeying to become heads of committees investigating corruption because they would be immune from being investigated for corruption.
• I asked a student, with the English name Leo, why he had the English name of Leo. He told me that he had previously had the English name Hunk but felt compelled to change it because somebody already had that name at a company he had just joined. I explained to the all the students in the class with Leo, what a “hunk” was in English. To the young female who was a fan of the NFL, I said that she would think that all the players in the league were hunks because they were all so handsome and strong; but she said she only thought the quarterbacks were hunks. I asked a married male student if his wife thought he was a hunk and he coyly said yes. I then asked a married female student if her husband was a hunk and she said in a flat manner that he wasn't.
• A student named Terry tells me that fitting rooms are places where people can change their clothes.
• A student tells me that the banks are in bad shape in China and that I should take my RMB and convert then to dollars or euros.
• A middle school student told me that his friend broke his leg when trying to dash in front of oncoming traffic as part of a school boy dare; and that after the accident, the boys took the injured boy on a bus to his where they were subjected to severe questioning by the boy's parents. Stupid kids.

October 2014 Thoughts

• A showdown in Hong Kong. Will the Chicoms put down the demonstration '89 style? What would it mean for me?
• I didn't sense any trouble when I was in HK in February.
• Unlike '89, there is no Disneyland nearby.
• What would happen if there was a massacre in HK? It would be a dark day. Would I have to leave China? Would Tony & Jenny flee with me to Canada?
• And I went to that reception marking the 65^th anniversary of the PRC...
• I rationalize living in a country with a Communist Government by thinking the government really isn't Communist anymore and that I am just a spectator anyway. I may no longer be a spectator. I may be dealing with it.
• I told a student that I could never adopt the mentality of the mob here in China. As I was saying this, I thought about how the reason this was so was that the mobs here are not my people.
• Who my people are is another story. I am a loner and a solitary.
• Are all Chinese drivers as bad drivers as Wuxi drivers? China, being a big country, and I only knowing Wuxi drivers well, I should avoid generalizing about China. But there can be no doubt that Wuxi drivers are bad. They are rude, selfish, and inconsiderate. In civilized countries, drivers are made to yield to pedestrians, but not in Wuxi. I think that anytime you meet a driver from Wuxi, China, you should immediately slap him or her in the side of the head, and tell them that is for being a bad driver!
• Insult me but don't insult any of the people I love.
• It is nice to be important but it is important to be nice. I heard this on a Gilbert Gottfred podcast. I think I'll ask the students if is important to be nice but nicer to be important.
• I live in a world where everyone has an irregular life style which deviates far from what would be considered traditionally moral. In this universe, the rules are murky and so being more stridently self-righteous than others is the way to seem moral. And being a man of reactionary views, or more traditionally moral minded, I feel that this world is a wasteland which I couldn't clean up, even if I had the courage to do so. My saying the truth aloud would only make people more stridently self-righteous against me. It would be like firing a 22 gun at an elephant.
• I have an idea for changing the Chinese animal birth years. I would drop the year of the chicken and replace it with the year of the Shark. The year of the sheep would become the year of the Barracuda. The year of the mouse would become the year of Rhino. The year of the pig would become the year of the Gator.
• No one will ask me what my thoughts are on the parliament shootings so I will just put them here. Obviously, it is a bad thing, but not a complete surprise. There was that case a few years ago involving Marc Steyn, Canadian Human Rights Commission and Muslims. Living abroad, it is interesting to see that the story is international and that the Americans are paying attention to Canada.
• Here is a thing you can do next time someone shows you a photo of himself standing beside a clown. You can look at the photo and say that the person standing beside them looks to be a little light in the loafers. When the person gives a what-the-heck-you-talking-about response, you can say, “I'm sorry, I thought you were wearing the clown suit.”
• I imagine this happening: A teacher comes up to me and tells me that he has killed one of his students during a class. When I ask him how, he tells me he pushed the student out the window of the classroom, the student falling to his death three floors below. When he asks me what he should do, I tell him to do nothing. “Let's see if you get away it.” I say, hoping I can do a similar thing myself.
• I had a sore leg for a short time in October and so I was limping around and I have to say that I really enjoyed limping and kind of envy those who limp. The feeling of suffering gives one's ego a certain elevation.

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

Highlights

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

Wednesday [February 5]
[Home Laptop]

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

Saturday [February 8]

[Ipad Mini]

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

Sunday [February 9]

[Ipad Mini]

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

Monday [February 10]

[Ipad Mini]

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

Tuesday [February 11]

[School Laptop]

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

Wednesday [February 11]

[School Laptop]

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

Thursday [February 13]

[School Laptop]

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

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

Friday [February 14]

[School Laptop]

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

Saturday [February 15]

[School Laptop]

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

[Home Laptop]

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

Sunday [February 16]

[Home Laptop]

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

Dispatches from Akicistan #6

Gratitude:  I am thankful that my vacation did not depress me as much as I thought it would.

Acknowledgement: I have wasted great portions of my life. I could write a book about it called Chronicles of Wasted Time except it has already been done and the author at least was successful enough in an earthly sense to have been able to have the autobiography published. I, on the other hand, am a null, a non-entity but I going to have to get myself to get use to the moments of wincing about it that can't be helped.

Request(s): There isn't anything I can ask for these days.

What is Akicistan? It isn't a place. It is a state of mind that places cutting-edge state-of-the-art sticks in mud. The word Akicistan is formed from the initials AKIC and the root stan.

If Akicistan was an empire, it would comprise China, Canada, the Red States of the USA, Latvia, and the parts of the world that comprise Modern Christendom as well as ancient Christendom.

Akicistan news in brief:

• Andis did nothing interesting in the first week of his vacation. He didn't go anywhere even in Wuxi.
• Andis decided that he will try to watch the first three seasons of Downton Abbey.
• Andis did one thing of not in the second week of his vacation. He took Tony to Shanghai for a day. Unfortunately, they got bored after half-a-day and had to spend three torturous hours waiting for the train that was to take them back to Wuxi.
• Andis worked nine days in a row at his school before having another two week vacation/holiday.
• Andis spend the first six days of the second vacation/holiday in Beixin with his wife's in-laws. He was bored silly.
• The second week of the second v/h would be spent in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Important Akicistan Links:

• About AKIC
• An AKIC Glossary
• Wuxi Peach Maoists
• AKIC wordpress 
• TKIC blogspot
• TKIC wordpress
• Views of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot
• Views of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress
• My Youtube Channel 
• My Youku Channel
• One of my Twitter profiles
• The other one of my Twitter profiles – this one lets you know about my many blog postings.

In Akicistan:

Some of us can speak Chinese! 对！我的儿子可以说的中文。我的中文？你们问的。我的中文不好。很不好！很很不好！！ 明白？

We sometimes pay attention to China. Actually, with all the time off, I didn't spend much time paying attention to China.

We are fond of Canada! Listening to CJOB podcasts depresses about my prospects if I went back to Canada. The city of Winnipeg, I heard, is incapable of clearing snow. The medical system is sending patients, who are still sick, home by taxi.

We are fond of Latvia! On the Internet, I read a Latvian women cried when she heard the hateful comments made by New York governor Andrew Cuomo. She was reminded of what it was like to live in the Soviet Union.

The Politics are Conservative and Reactionary! Look at the quotes section below.

English is taught! I haven't been doing much English teaching in the start of 2014.

Citizens aren't freaks! Akicistanis keep to themselves.

Reading is the #1 Pastime! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week or so:

Don Colacho's (Nicolas Gomez Davilla) Aphorisms.  There are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled for myself.  I try to read at least one aphorism a day.  I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually -- and I put them in the AKIC Weekly. (See below)

The Niomachean Ethics of Aristotle. After this, I will read Aquinas's Summa.

Ulysses by James Joyce.  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney figures he will have the whole novel covered in about 22 years.  Delaney completed episode #191 recently and is working his way through the chapter that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far as reading the book.  I will be finished my reading of it, I figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies. It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it, and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with it

The Holy Bible (RSV-C2E version, aka the Ignatius Bible, and Douay-Rheims version).  I will read the two versions in conjunction. Last week, I finished reading the Book of Genesis. I am not in the Book of Exodus. In the New Testament, I am reading the Gospel According to Matthew.

Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 by Sir John George Bourinot. Finished. I felt I needed to bone up on some Canadian history. This book was informative. It was a little too optimistic about the results of the British Crown's dealing with the native population.

The Rise of Modern China by Immanuel CY Hsu. Finished Part One. A good book. David Warren recommended this history of China which pegs Modern China beginning with the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

The U.S. Civil War by John Keegan. Finished. Dan Carlin, the host of Hardcore History, has expressed a disliking of Keegan so I am now wont to think that Keegan has many merits. I wondered about Carlin when he weighed in on the U.S. Healthcare debate. All Carlin wanted was to have a bunch of experts get into a room and design a system – self-evident nonsense to anyone who knows anything about economics and how bureaucracies work. Anyway, someone who thinks like that clearly is full of it. Not to say that Carlin's podcast isn't interesting – it is the best and most professionally done history podcast there is.

Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics by Charles Krauthammer. Finished. Krauthammer is a great pundit. He seems to be well-grounded and he has a good idea what it is that lib-dems and progressives are thinking.

Our Culture, What's Left of it: The Mandarins and the Masses by Theodore Dalrymple. Finished. Another great collection of essays by Dalrymple. I put him up with the following writers whose latest pieces, when ever I can come across them on the Internet, are must-reads for me: John Derbyshire, David Warren, Thomas Sowell, Camille Paglia, Peter Hitchens, Victor David Hansen, Steve Sailer, and Anne Coulter. In this collection of essays, Dalrymple writes about legalizing drugs (he is against it.), Africa (wonderful people there except when you give them government positions.), and evil that takes advantage of the modern attitudes of non-judgemental-ism and anti-limits.

Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks. Finished. What Faulks attempted in this novel was very audacious: he sought to add a novel to the Wodehouse oeuvre. I think he pulled it off. The book is true to the spirit of the original. More importantly, it doesn't conform to the vulgarity of today.

Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson. Finished. The best novel I have read in years. It was written over a hundred years ago. It was prophetic in the manner of 1984. I suppose that because the novel is very Catholic, it is not well known which is too bad because it should be. I can't help but think that the character  Julian Felsenburgh, the novel's anti-Christ, bears a vague resemblance to Barack Obama.

Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America by Mark R. Levin. Finished. Not a great book. Levin is on the side of the angels, but there isn't much in this book that I hadn't known already.

Memorable quotes are presented and discussed!

Nicholas Gomez Davilla:

673 There is no need to expect anything from anyone, nor to disdain anything from anyone.

678 All peace is bought with vile acts.

686 Nobody who knows himself can absolve himself.

705 Doctrinaire individualism is dangerous not because it produces individuals, but because it suppresses them. The product of the doctrinaire individualism of the 19th century is the mass man of the 20th century.

709 Impartiality is the child of laziness and fear.

710 To be Christian, in accordance with the latest fashion, consists less in repenting of our sins than in repenting of our Christianity.

712 A cultured man is someone for whom nothing lacks interest and almost everything lacks importance.

722 Intentional, systematic originality is mediocrity's contemporary uniform.

725 Politics is not the art of imposing the best solutions, but of blocking the worst.

732 Modern psychology renounced introspection, not so much to obtain results as to obtain less disquieting results.

734 There are only instants. [On my todo list, I have the following written for constant referral: Focus on the present. For that is where your life really is. And it consists only of tests.]

736 Primitive man transform objects into subjects; modern man transforms subjects into objects. We can suppose that the former deceives himself, but we know with certainty that the latter is wrong. [What does this mean. This one is so pregnant with meaning and insight.]

737 For two centuries the people has borne the burden not only of those who exploit it, but also of those who liberate it. Its back is buckling under the double weight. [The people who fashion themselves to be the liberators often think they can defy the laws of gravity: hence the buckling and the doubling burden of taxes and bureaucracy with little to show for it.]

739 In order to convince our interlocutors, it is often necessary to invent contemptible, deceitful, ridiculous arguments. Whoever respects his neighbor fails as an apostle.[Can the English teaching fraternity in China stand together? I am afraid not. There are perverts among us.]

744 To mature is to see increase the number of things about which it seems grotesque to give an opinion, for or against.

David Warren:

There is poison in every "charitable" act done under external compulsion; poison for both the giver & receiver.

In both my experience and observation of others, I have noticed this. When an obstacle is created between oneself and God, an obstacle is also necessarily created within oneself. And until that is removed – or shifted, adjusted, or otherwise dealt with – one remains divided against oneself.

One embarks on a double life. And this can prove quite inconvenient to someone with only one soul.

George Jonas:

Like Obama a few generations later, Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize for making the world a little more dangerous. Obama received his prize in advance, while Pearson's came as a reward for facilitating the efforts of a leading democracy (Eisenhower's) to save a military dictatorship (Nasser's) from the consequences of aggression, by forcing three allied democracies (Britain, France, and Israel) to leave the job unfinished. It was a high price to pay for a moral victory. And I suggest we are still paying for it today.

Charles Krauthammer:

the greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective.

The conscious deployment of a double standard directed at the Jewish state and at no other state in the world, the willingness systematically to condemn the Jewish state for things others are not condemned for—this is not a higher standard. It is a discriminatory standard. And discrimination against Jews has a name too. The word for it is antisemitism. [So much for poo-pooing the idea that opposition to the Jewish state is somehow not anti-Semitism.]

Theodore Dalrymple

He would have felt it tactless to obtrude where he was not really wanted; and (an almost inconceivable attitude today) he felt no bitterness at not being wanted. [How easy my life would have been if I had had that attitude. I will have to try to be that way for the rest of my life however. There is still a chance to redeem myself.]

The choice for Gillray, as for all persons of good sense, was never between perfection and hell on earth, but always between better and worse. [Gillray was a political caricaturist who lived at the time of Edmund Burke. Currently, it is Conservatism that is the better and Progressivism that is the worse.]

Horace’s famous line of two millennia ago comes to mind: they change their skies, not their souls, who run across the sea.

 Eric Voegelin

“no one needs to participate in the aberrations of his time.”

Sebastian, Faulks from “Jeeves and the Wedding Bells.”

I’ve never really understood why girls fall for chaps at all, to be quite frank, but I suppose if a twenty-four-carat popsy like Pauline Stoker can declare undying love for an ass like Chuffy Chufnell then all things are possible. Women are, as my old housemaster had remarked, queer cattle.

Lists are made: Things I like about America

• Old Hollywood Movies
• Hollywood Musicals
• Frank Sinatra Records.
• Major League Baseball (before the wild card)
• Rush Limbaugh
• Right Wing Talk Radio
• American Generous
• Rock and Roll
• American Rules Football
• The National Football League
• It isn't Europe.
• It isn't China.
• They are Canada's neighbours.
• It isn't Mexico.
• Their pop culture
• McDonald's.
• Pizza Hut.
• Walmart.
• Denis Prager
• EWTN
• Seablogger
• American Fez
• Babe Ruth
• Joe Dimaggio
• James Stewart
• Westerns
• The NRA
• The U.S. Military
• Charles Krauthammer
• William F Buckley
• Pamela Anderson* (She is an American citizen now.)
• Mickey Mantle
• Roger Staubach
• Early Van Halen
• Wendy's
• Florence King
• Flannery O'Connor
• Mark Twain
• Ambrose Bierce
• Milt Rosenberg
• Westerns
• Cowboys
• Jazz
• Rock and Roll
• Country Music

Thoughts are thought

• As the Western world becomes gayer and more dysfunctional, kids who have a mother and a father are going to be persecuted on playgrounds.
• I wish I could have been a butler, a chauffeur, or a monk. These are the professions that would have suited me. Alas, I live in the wrong age.