AKIC's May to Early June 2015 Notes, Observations and Thoughts.

[The Kaulins Family goes to Canada for three weeks (June 9 to June 29).  So I have made this entry to encompass not only the blog entries I made in May but the entries from my time in June before I went to Canada.]

• May 1 was a public holiday.
• I spent that day at a park near Casa Kaulins posing for photos with my family.  
• There were a lot of people in the park that day and I found myself thinking that all those people had souls.  I then thought how that thought didn't really diminish the fact that they just seemed like a mass.
• At the park, the sight of  a  youngish woman, who was standing beside her bag of  cheap plastic toys for sale, seemed so forlorn.
• On May 2, I edited my April entry (my monthly entry previous to this one).
• I have been doing more blogging at my WCE sites.  Double Saint Archduke Sir Harry Moore Emeritus has made a movie  for which he has been awarded the Nobel Prize!
• Mr and Mrs Kaulins.  That's me and Jenny.  After 8 years of marriage, it still seems strange to me that this is so.
• I buy a “I am your father” t-shirt at Uniqlo, a chain clothing store from Japan that is akin to Old Navy.  At Uniqlo there are always some interesting t-shirts for sale.  Last year, I could have bought t-shirts of the Clash and the Sex Pistols.  This year, you can chose from their extensive line of Star Wars t-shirts of which now Tony has one, I have one and my brother Ron will have one, when I meet up with him in Canada.
• Twin students at our school, Iris and Emo, appeared to be reading a book in tandem.  That is the girls were both holding onto one  folio volume — one of the twins holding the left page, the other holding the right  –- and scanning together its text.
• I went to Hen Long Mall and Hui Ju  Mall one day; and I couldn't help but notice that there were many, many empty store fronts.
• My life is dull I will admit.  I can't find anything better to do on my days off with Tony than to take him to a mall.  This has got to stop.  It is so soul destroying.
• Being stared at can cause me to swear at the locals, whether they be children or adults, who are doing the staring.
• I took the Metro from the Civic Center to Yanqiao. About 21 stops!!
• I sleep with Tony in Tony's bed after a winter of having him sleep with us. Slowly, it seems, he is realizing that it is good to have a private spot of one's own.(or so I thought) 
• I eagerly await for the day when Tony kicks me out of his room. I'd rather be with Mommy if you know what I mean. (He in fact kicked himself out of his room.  Of this, I will say more anon.)
• I got an email asking if I wanted to take part in an Expat in China interview podcast.  Part of me thinks the email was a joke so I won't answer it, but if I did and they were serious, I would decline the request.  I think my experience in China has been rather pathetic in a way and my attitude to other foreigners in Wuxi is very negative, so I would feel very uncomfortable doing such an interview.  I want to be the subject of a podcast only if there is something of which I could be proud and at ease to talk about.  And currently there is nothing.
• How the last three American presidents could  inspire you: 3) President Bush was an alcoholic who cleaned up his act and became President.  So he should be a hero to alcoholics.  2)President Clinton was able to get away with being a pervert.  So he should be a hero to perverts.  1)President Obama overcame prejudice to become the President of the United States?  Okay.  I am going to have to work on why Obama is so inspiring to those who aren't blessed with victim or minority status.
• Tony was excited because he had a new class at school. When he first tried to tell me this, I couldn't quite get what it was he was trying to tell me  because his pronunciation of “P.E” was slurred.  But he then told me how he liked to do “this” in class:  this being jumping rope which he happily acted out for me.
• Katherine Hepburn spat in the face of the director as soon as he told her that her scenes in his  movie had been completed.  “This,” she said to him, was for some resentment she had towards him.  I will have to remember that.
• Despite saying I couldn't stand to watch Major League Baseball anymore, I am reading a collection of essays written by Roger Angell about the major baseball seasons of 1972 to 1976.
• I am without friends in Wuxi, I admit, but that is because the social options for me make this loneliness my best choice.  (And I say this while wholly admitting that I am not a great social option for anyone else.)
• There was a power failure at school, but of course it came back when it was time for class. 
• I am reading Paris 1919, a book about the peace conference held after the end of the Great War.  The author does a great job at outlining how the treaty affected each country.  I learned so much about the Balkans, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.
• On a recommendation from a Gilbert Godfrey podcast, I downloaded the classic Western film My Darling Clementine.  I then put the film on my Ipad.  Ipad in hand, I went to the empty theater in my school to watch because one of the teachers was in such a bad way (drunk) that I couldn't  stand to even have to overhear him.
• I finish watching My Darling Clementine and come out to see that it has begun to rain.  
• I love my son.  I love my wife.  These two things are the most important facts of my earthly existence.  I will sacrifice other things for this because I must.
• Summer is coming to Wuxi and I can see lots of female legs and thighs.
• Here's another rant, from me, about Chinese drivers.  The rant occurs to me after yet another driver made a right turn on a red without yielding to a pedestrian who happened to be me:  Perhaps the Chinese should all go back to riding bicycles.  Barbarism at a slow speed is much safer than barbarism at high speed.
• Is the problem with Chinese drivers due to the traits of the Chinese or of the car itself?  Chinese society has been demolished by the modernizing of Socialism and Capitalism.  No where is this exhibited better in the Chinese driver's inconsiderateness.  But then it is the nature of automobiles to make people solipsistic.  You can get people in Canada ranting like nothing else if you start talking about driving and traffic.  So perhaps, the devil matched cars and the  Chinese together.
• You have to love God with your whole mind.  A jarring and deserved slap in my face statement from David Warren, my favorite blogger.  I don't spend enough time thinking of Him.
• In the middle of the month, Tony was sleeping in his own bed in his own room and I still had to sleep with him.  I tried to get back to sleeping with Jenny in our bed in our room one night but Tony, in the middle of the night, came to sleep with us.  He said he was still scared to sleep by himself.
• One of our teachers came to work drunk, again.  It was my good fortune that the day he did so, I had already chosen to retreat to a quiet room in the school and read a book as well as watch another movie on the iPad.
• I was getting excited about my upcoming trip to Manitoba.
• My wife, who controls the finances of the Chinese Family Kaulins tells me that we could get a car if we wanted to, but she and I don't, thank God.
• If I drove in China, I would be hating the locals more than I do now.
• Getting off the train one morning, I very nearly gave a righteous elbow to a young man who was boarding.  It seems that he was very eager to get a seat and and  so he rushed onto the train despite the fact that several passengers wanted to get off.  He in fact got in my way and instead of backing off and letting me get off the train, he tried to dodge around me.  I was so annoyed that I gave him a shoulder and brushed him with my elbow.  I then wished the elbow had been more vicious.
• Is all this technology making the Chinese so inconsiderate?  Look at their behavior with cars and of course, you have to look at them staring at their mobile phones oblivious to all else.
• How are you Andis? (Asked the teacher who was drunk.)  I say one word in response: Sober. (That's what I should have said.)
• Reprobate.  That's a word that I should have been using to describe that person.  [I wish say this for the first time in this entry: so much reprobatity, no sanctity to be found anywhere in the Wuxi Expatdom.]
• It is a hot day and the girl wears black clothes and complains about the heat.
• Tony brings his boots with him to school one morning.  The forecast is for thunder showers.
• I am living for a future, but not one where I have resolved my issues.  There is no point in resolving my issues if this life is all there is for me.
• A story about Jack Benny.  It was said that Jack Benny was very gracious and patient with the many people he meet :  all of whom seemed to ask him the same questions over and over again  about his fictional persona and world.  One time, he and a companion were taking an elevator down from a high floor in a hotel.  Everyone who got on the elevator recognized him and would then ask him those kinds of questions.  Was he that cheap?  Did he underpay Rochester?  Did he have a man imprisoned in his vault deep below the earth's surface?  As the elevator finally emptied, he said to his companion:  “Sometime you just want to tell them to fuck off!”  I can say I know that feeling in China when I get treatment tantamount to someone running into a celebrity.
• Despite my experience of celebrity, I am as far as a person can be from the well-connected of the world like the Clintons.  I have no connections, no close friends and no talents or abilities.  I just don't know how I do it.
• What's so disappointing about my social life, is not so much that I don't have friends; it is that I have not meet anyone who comes close to having sanctity.  Everyone I get stuck meeting here is a person of the world: a collection of experiences and anecdotes without a soul. [I've started reading this book A Humane Economy by Wilhelm Röpke , an economist  that my favorite blogger David Warren wrote about recently.  Röpke  who wasn't a socialist or a Keynesian, was  a free marketer, up to a point.  Warren says  Röpke  basic point is that you can get too much of a good thing and that is what the free market does.   Röpke talks about the boredom of mass man cut off nature, his soul starved because he consumes too much.  Anyway, Röpke brought out another reason why I hate meeting foreigners.  They are the product of modern enmassment.]
• The Chinese government is cracking down on strip tease shows at funerals.  I asked my wife Jenny if there were such shows at funerals in her home town.  She said that at a recent funeral, of an uncle that she attended, there was a performance of Chinese opera.
• Jenny tells me that we, that be her and I,  have a reputation for cheapness.  What a slap in the face this is because there is no denying it! 
• It is the slaps in the face that are deserved that really hurt.  I would rather be slapped undeservedly.
• Bad weather on my days off keeps me in the house.  So, I watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones and read Paris 1919 to pass the time.
• I see a foreigner at the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza and my first instinct is to look away.
• There are many disagreeable people in the world and I am one of them.  I sometimes think I am all of them.
• A student tells me that her baby was crying on the plane, annoying all the other passengers and so she was moved by the staff into the business class section.  Apparently, no seats had been sold in that section.
• Sure, I hate, but I hate passively.  The problem is that I also love passively.
• In a previous entry, I had prematurely stated that the 637 route had been changed because of lack of ridership.  What happened was that  that one evening, the buses weren't running normally but the next day they were...  Well, it seems that this change that I had foreseen has actually come about and is permanent.  Since mid-May, it has to be that when I take the train home in the evening, I have no choice but to walk home unless I want to wait twenty five minutes for the next bus to leave. It used to be that I only had to wait five.
• I was quite taken with a documentary about Vivian Maier that I had downloaded and watched.  Maier was this exceedingly marginal figure who died and was then discovered to have been a very talented photographer.  I was inspired to take more photos for AKIC Wordpress.  Alas, I don't have the sort of camera she has.  It is hard to take street photos with an iPhone.
• On the train, I looked up to see a young man wearing a three colored Montreal Expos cap.  I doubt if he would have understood what a Montreal Expo was.  I wish I could have taken a Vivian Maier style photo of this.
• Since seeing that Vivian Maier documentary, I have noticed there are many opportunities for good street photography in Wuxi.  Of course, I am limited by the camera I have and my nerves to just directly point my camera at someone.
• Temperatures were high enough that I could wear short sleeves on my way to work.
• One Monday, the three of us, that being the Kaulins Family, went to Taixing, about an hour by car from Wuxi.  We had to pay sympathy to a relative who had spent some time in the hospital.   The day was uneventful except for my having eaten frog's legs for the first time.  They taste like chicken.   This Monday was a day to to observe a lot as we took the bus to Taixing and then got a return ride in a car back to Wuxi.  I saw never ending people and buildings.
• The Tuesday following the Monday, I went to the Taihu New City area to teach a company class.  I wanted to walk through the Coastal City mall but it was too big for me to look at in the five minutes fate had given me to survey its premises.  The whole area seems a colossal example of overbuilding. {I would go later with Tony.]
• Wuxi, way back when I've been told, was a walled city.  Now, that wall has been completely taken down and any parts purporting to be of the wall are merely restorations.  One student told me that the wall may have been knocked down during the Cultural revolution though he couldn't say for sure.
• But there can be no doubt that the Cultural Revolution destroyed a lot of old things in China and anything purporting to be an historical site in China is probably a fake rebuild.
• Tony says “Oh! My Goodness!” a lot.  He picked up this expression from a Minecraft Youtube channel where the British host always says that phrase.
• I suffered from a bad cold in late May.  It came with a cough that I would say was “high up in the throat” making me feel at times like I am on the verge of choking.
• A student was going on and on about the Japanese and their not apologizing for what they did in World War Two.  The fact of the matter is that the Japanese have apologized on numerous occasions. To be fair though,  there is something to the Chinese complaint that many Japanese have a amnesia about the time.  But you have to couple this amnesia with the fact that the Japanese are a very civilized people these days — much more civilized that the Chinese — and there is no danger of a return of that virulent militarism. The Chinese government harps on the Japanese and World War Two because they want their population to forget the more recent horrors that they inflicted on their own people.  In fact if the Japanese prostrated themselves every day to apologize for what they did in World War Two, it wouldn't be enough for the Chinese Communists who need the experience of World War Two as a  way of not having to apologize for the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Maybe the Chinese Communists should set an example of how to apologize by apologizing to their people and giving up power.
• Another issue that the students tell me about concerning Japan is that there is this Shrine that  the Japanese go to to honor the soldiers of World War Two.  Well, if this is the case, then why do the Chinese TV people seemed compelled to show these propagandist World War Two recreations where Chinese – Chinese Communists actually -- are shown to offer heroic and decisive resistance to Japanese forces?  I happened to catch one of these shows where after wiping out a Japanese battalion, a closeup shot of a Chinese foot stomping on a Japanese flag was shown.  If the Chinese Communists are truly interested in peace then perhaps such programs should not be shown either.  
• Communist resistance to the Japanese, I have heard, is a myth.  Mao stood aside and let the KMT get bloodied by the Japanese.
• A Def Leopard T-Shirt.  Riding the shuttle bus past a kindergarten one morning, I saw that the foreign teacher, who was out front greeting arriving children, was wearing a Def Leopard T-Shirt.  Interesting it was for me and it lead me to many speculations.  None of which I will enter here.  But I will say this about Def Leopard.  They had a good first album with some great songs but then I found their later efforts to be dull.
• A Chinese study project for myself:  learn the Chinese National Anthem.  I do know one refrain from the song by hear already: 起来！起来！ 起来！Arise!  Arise!  Arise!
• One thing I find funny about the anthem's lyrics is this urging to build a new Great Wall. (筑成我们新的长城）There was no Internet when the song was written so how could they have known to put that bit in the anthem? (Or was it added later, 1984 style?)
• Jenny says that I snore very loudly.  In fact she complained to me after a night in which I had slept  by myself in Tony's bed in another bedroom.  
• By the end of May, Tony was sleeping with Mom in the big bedroom and I was sleeping by myself in the little bedroom.  Tony has dashed my hopes that I had had earlier in the month and earlier in this blog entry .
• Tom, the student I can have a good conversation with, was telling how when he was young, he suffered from hunger.  Thirty years ago this was and so then, he and his young buddies would pry open a food warehouse door (that was then in the area near the three world department store) to steal bags of potato chips.
• Tom also explained the admiration I had witnessed for Chairman Mao in the countryside where images of him could be seen in prominent display areas of a few private residences I had chance to enter.  Some people, despite the bad things Mao did, did like the fact of everyone being equal and no one having more than anyone else and didn’t so much mind the poverty and shared misery.
• And speaking of chances, I had a chance on the last Saturday evening of May to go to Wuxi's Nanchang Jie Bar Street.  I very much enjoyed walking the area before having to join up with colleagues at a pub.  During these perambulations, I noticed two things:  1) That just away from the retail portion of the area, there were nauseating sights to smell and look at: abandoned buildings filled with trash.  So, Nanchang Jie Bar Street basically runs through a dump.  2)An area of residences near Nanchang Jie was enjoyable to walk through.  I saw a lot of those sights one associates with older China:  the compact neighborhoods where people don’t live behind locked doors but on the sidewalks and the doorways.  Where in Canada would you see an old woman eating at a front door?
• On the last Sunday of May, I took Tony to the Coastal City Mall near the New Wuxi Civic Center.  It was big , had many stores, was clean and was ominously under-utilized, but I decided to not invite Jenny to join us. I instead left the mall to join up with her because that mall, even with its vast size had nothing special in it for I to get her to take such a long trip on the subway.
• I ran into some South Africans near the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza.  They asked me some places that they could visit in the area and I had to admit that I was stumped.  It took me a minute to think of the Wu Culture Park and it turned out that they had already seen it.  And so there wasn't much else that I could think to suggest other than some parks down Hui Shan Da Dao  way.  For me the Hui Shan area is a place to move to and wander around because there are interesting things for a Westerner with an exploring urge to see.  It’s just that there’s no place I could tell a person or tourist passing through to visit.
• I don't go to Expat pubs in Wuxi because I am living my life in Wuxi.  And because I live in Wuxi, I don't normally cross paths with tourists and so have nothing to tell them about where to go in the area.
• One thing about my isolation is that I avoid questions.  Talking to the South African made me realize that there a lot of things about myself that I couldn’t explain.  I hate been confronted about myself because I am such a mystery and am so inexplicable to even myself.
• Again I say that I would like to meet people who have the quality of sanctity.  I so hate meeting foreigners because ultimately they have a very disappointing lack of it.  They are materialist and full of experiences, but soulless.
• I am going to publish this entry on the day before I leave for Canada.  My time in Canada will be an entry all of its own.
• So, June 2, it rained heavily in Wuxi.  Even though it wasn't windy, the rain was heavy enough to soak even the person who had an umbrella.  In the evening, I was hoping that the rain would subside by the time I was to go home, but it got worse.  As I arrived at the Yanqiao Metro Station, the rain was at its worst.  The wind had picked up and so one was greeted with a blast of rain as soon as one got off the train and onto the platform.  The rain was so heavy that I had to retreat against the wall of the bus shelter to minimize my exposure to it.  And I stood at the bus shelter for over 15 minutes.  The rain was too heavy to walk in with a backpack containing electronic equipment.
• If I didn't have all that electronic equipment (one  Ipod, one  Ipad and one Iphone), I would have walked home.  It was a Singing in the Rain kind of rain that I could have sung and danced in and it wasn't that cold.
• In the week before my flight to Canada, I sent out some emails to some people there to let them know I was coming.
• One thing I would like to do this Canada trip (my third since becoming AKIC) is take Jenny and Tony to the Peace Gardens, south of Brandon on the U.S. Border, so they can see the USA for the first time.
• I read a Chinese Science Fiction novel, the Three Body Problem.  The book was as good as Science Fiction books can go, but I found it a little too much when the author said that Science Fiction had more to say about the human condition than ordinary literature and religion...
• I see a person by Zhongshan Road with a t-shirt bearing a bad word that starts with the sixth letter of the alphabet.  On the shirt, the word was used multiple times in expressions telling everyone in the world, including the t-shirt wearer, that they should perform some unnatural act.  I then wondered what I would do if I had a student come into class wearing that t-shirt.  Hopefully, I thought, I would have the gumption to either kick the student out of a group class or refuse to teach him one-on-one.
• The redoubtable Edith will leave the school.  I learned on June 2 that she found another job.  HyLite's loss, is New Oriental's gain.  It could be said that she was the most attractive girl that ever worked here.  You can see her on my Youtube channel.
• June 4, I arrive at school and one of the Chinese workers ask if I had money stolen.  I didn't and I asked the co-worker for details of the theft but she didn't provide many details.
• On the night of June 3-4, I was able to get Tony to sleep in his own bed.  To get this to happen I had to get him in trouble with Ma.
• On the morning of June 4,  Tony said “Happy, happy, joy, joy” with a sinister smile on his face. He didn't tell me where he picked up this expression, but the chances are he picked it up on the Internet.
• Another favorite expression of Tony's:  “I'm going to kick your ass!”
• I see a dog on the subway.  It was accompanied by two police officers and was wearing a vest that said, in English, “police dog” which was a good thing because it wasn't a breed of dog that I would have thought was used for police work.  Not knowing much about dogs, and being overwhelmed by the listings of dog breeds on the Internet, I would say the dog was some kind of hound or perhaps the Australian Shepherd.  The Ozzie Shepherd was near the top of the list of dog breeds in the Wikipedia article that I gave up scanning all the way through.  The police dog had long ears and definitely wasn't a German Shepherd or a Poodle.
• Less than a week before my Canada trip, I am no longer excited to go, but full of dread.  I have a lot of idea for things to do but the grim facts of my past existence in Canada and my mother living a widow's life will damper it.
• Nonetheless, onward to Canada!

Diary: May 20 to May 26, 2014

Highlights

• This week's question: Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list?
• Andis sees an impatiently done driving maneuver get punished.
• Andis rants about the current uniform styles of Major League Baseball.
• Andis reflects on his father.
• The weather gets hot in Wuxi.
• Andis listens to some podcasts.
• Andis reflects after reading an article on loneliness.
• Andis says Coriolanus is his favorite Shakespeare play.
• Andis has theory about Wuxi's bad drivers.
• Andis watches a 1953 Alec Guinness movie.
• Andis talks to a student about the JFK assassination and Lin Biao.
• Andis takes Tony downtown on Sunday.
• Andis is called Mr. Wuxi.
• Andis actually meets a rare reader of his blog and is put on the spot for something he wrote.
• Andis & Tony see a monkey.
• Andis visits the newly opened Mr. PIZZA in the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza.
• Andis like Chairman Mao is seventy percent right.

Tuesday [May 20]

[Home Laptop]

• I have downloaded and watched half of the latest episode (s437) of Game of Thrones.
• I have just published last week's entry. Editing the entry, I saw that I had nothing to say and that I wasn't saying it very well.
• Sometime on the weekend, I was watching some highlights from MLB and I became disgusted by the uniforms being worn. The Angels wore these caps that look to have been designed by a graffiti vandal. And the bottom of the uniform pants for most of the teams are being being allowed to flare out, which seems ugly as sin to me.
• Tony can take showers by himself.
• This morning, Tony came up to me and gave me a hug and said “I love you Daddy!” I wondered why. What was his ulterior motive?
• Watching the Rangers and Canadiens live on my Ipad.

[School Laptop]

• This week's shifts: Tuesday, 13:00-21:00; Wednesday, 13:00-21:00; Thursday, 10:00-21:00; Friday, 11:00 to 21:00; and Saturday 10:00 to 18:00.
• Construction is annoying on the stretch of Zhongshan Road near our school. Sidewalk and road is being torn up everywhere making for piles of rubble and sand.
• I will determine this week's question, now. Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I want to go through life without ever having considered gotten a tattoo. I don't want attend a rap or hip-hop concert.

Wednesday [May 21]

[Home Laptop]

• What can I say for myself?
• I don't have much to say for myself about being China. I spend most of my time, consuming media on my PC and Ipad and Ipod.
• Yesterday, I finished watching the latest episode of Game of Thrones (s4e7) and the 11^th episode of Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation. GoT is keeping my interest though the last scene of s4e7 was predictable. You just knew minutes before that that lady would be pushed. The Worship of Nature episode put me off by Clark's stating at the beginning of the episode that in 1725 the Christian religion suddenly declined in England and was replaced by the worship of nature. Well, if that was the truth, what of it? That it should be so is a sad thing but not a disapproval of the Christian Religion.
• I spend the morning causing trouble with my WCE blog.
• HM's birthday tomorrow.
• The anniversary of my Father's death is a week away. I was just doing a Google search to see what images came up when I typed his name and the word death. One photo that popped up was a old photo of Dad giving a medal to the captain of a championship team in a minor hockey league that he volunteered to run in the 1970s. My Dad had many flaws, but his volunteering spirit showed him at his best. I remember with bitterness how when things didn't work out, the people who didn't volunteer would criticize him. I observe now with bitterness that Wuxi people are far more likely to cut pedestrians with their cars (while talking on their mobile phones) or cheat in business deals than volunteer to help the community or others.

[School Laptop]

• Attempting to cross the intersection on my way to the Casa Kaulins bus stop, a dickhead Wuxi driver didn't fail to surprise me by cutting me off. He was attempting to make a left turn and couldn't wait for me to cross the street. I told him to fuck off with hope that he heard me. I then gave him the middle finger gesture with hope that he saw me. What the fuck is wrong with Wuxi drivers? Has Chicomism made them selfish dicks? Or are they at a lower stage of civilization?
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to drive a car in China. [What I would like to do is drive a tank and run cars, preferably with Wuxi drivers therein, over.]
• There are efforts afoot to form an American football team in Wuxi. From what I have seen their efforts at designing a name and logo have been pathetic. First off, they are wearing these shirts with the number 88 on them. 88 is Neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler! They are also going to give their team a nickname having to do with devils. I can think of four or five nicknames that reflect the fact that they are in Wuxi. 1)The Wuxi Peach Kings 2) The Wuxi Bad Drivers 3) The Wuxi White Elephants 4)The Wuxi Sweet 5)The Wuxi Tin Kings.

Thursday [May 22]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 21:00.
• It is hard for me to have talks with Tony. For four days a week, I can only talk to him in the morning when he is mostly inattentive on account of having just got up very early to go to school. I can't even get a yes-no answer out of him when I am taking him to be picked up and taken to school.
• While waiting for the car that was to pick up Tony this morning, I saw a car get stuck when trying to back up. This car, the backing up car I will call it, came to a stop in the lane by a parking space (which was perpendicular to the lane). The backing up car had hesitated and so all the other cars behind it drove around it. That was about eight cars in total. And there was another car, the impatiently driven car I will call it, that also had to wait for the eight cars to pass as well, before it could proceed. What the driver of the impatiently driven car had done was impatiently try to drive around a car, on the passenger side, that had stopped because of the backing up car. This quick maneuver resulted in the impatiently driven car being blocked by the backing up car. Both these cars had to wait for the other eight cars to pass before they could go on their way. It was nice to see ass-hat Wuxi driver impatience get punished.
• I am listening to the Tyranny of Cliches audio book, written and read by Jonah Goldberg. It is a sequel to Liberal Fascism. So far, I find I am preferring the sequel. This could be because Goldberg is more fun to listen to for long stretches than read. I read Liberal Fascism. For me, Tyranny of Cliches is essentially an Amen book chronicling the stupidity of Liberalism.
• The construction on Zhongshan Road is creating these islands of torn up pavement that cars and buses have to swerve to avoid. I very much hate it in the evening because after school, when I am trying to get to my preferred 635 bus stop, the first bus I have to take will get stuck in a traffic jam and screw up the timing so necessary for me to ensure that I get a seat on my long bus ride back home.
• I could be watching the third period the second game of the Black Hawks – Kings series but I will be teaching a class.
• Dean!!! I just had a student named Dean in a class. He hadn't heard of Dean Martin and the Rat Pack. But why would I have expected him to? He told me that he had gone to Singapore to meet some girl he was having an Internet romance with but it didn't work out. The girl lost interest in him. Heartbreaking I can imagine but what can you do?
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to be divorced. I don't want to be an adulterer. I don't want to drive any expensive sports cars. I don't want to go under water diving. I don't want to go to Hawaii. I don't want to go surfing.

Friday [May 23]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00.
• I was listening to the Radio Free Delingpole podcast this morning, and a line came up which I must repeat to my rare readers because it is all so true. The demand of the Left for White Racists far outstrips supply.
• The weather today is warm. Yesterday, two students talked about the warm spring weather making them sleepy.
• Last salon I conducted a salon class about Global Warming. It isn't my favorite topic but this class actually had some students say some interesting things. One student said that much of the pollution in China is a result of foreign companies coming here to pollute. Whether this is true or not, I cannot rightly say. The first reaction to the statement made by the student that I can think of is that it takes two to tango. China wants the foreign companies here. The second reaction that comes to mind is that it is hard to believe that Chinese companies really care about doing something about pollution.
• The next podcast I listened to this morning made mention of the Cultural Revolution. Said Mona Charen: it was a very horrible and depraved thing. I had a few students, when I first came here, tell me that it was a time of madness. My wife tells me how it splits people still in her village. There are people she won't associate with from her hometown because of it.
• I have the feed of the third game of Rangers—Canadiens series on my computer. I have to decide if I should study Chinese or watch the game. Not feeling comfortable with choosing either, I will try to do both.
• I wonder if the cultural revolution can explain why Wuxi people are such bad drivers.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I have to be careful when I answer this question. I want to say things that could possibly be on other people's bucket lists. So! I don't want to visit Jim Morrison's grave. I don't want to drive an expensive sports car. I don't want to own a Rolex.

Saturday [May 24]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 10:00 to 18:00.
• I was annoyed at Tony last night. It has crossed my mind but last night it became very apparent that Tony doesn't talk much to me, and that we don't have real conversations. He will talk to his mother in Chinese and will often ask her what I had been trying to say to him.
• There was an interesting article, that was became aware of thanks to a email update, in the American Spectator on loneliness. The modern mores have made Americans by and large a group of lonely individuals. Being Canadian, I am affected by the same winds of culture that Americans are; and living a life that has been plagued by loneliness, it would seem nice for me to blame my loneliness and isolation on the culture, and it would seem nice for me to say to if only the culture or the people I do run into were somehow better, I wouldn't be so lonely. But I do have a misanthropic streak in me that I think I would have had any age I would have lived. (though I could say that in a more enlightened age I would have more readily become aware of monasteries). Anyway, articles on loneliness draw my attention in spite of a somewhat spiteful desire on my part to embrace solitariness. [Should I have used spite in two ways in that sentence?] And there was a factoid in the article that really hit home with me. It said that the longer one's commute to work, the more one felt lonely or socially isolated. That is so true in my situation where I ride the bus for two hours a day to get to work and back.
• No dinner yesterday. I decided about lunchtime that I would fast till I got home.
• I also decided to make a point of sitting down at my seat for as long as possible, only getting up to go to classes. I remember reading Florence King extolling the discipline necessary to be able to sit for long times in one place without fidgeting or giving into an urge to get up and chat.
• Coriolanus. That has to be my favorite Shakespeare play. I don't fashion myself to be a Coriolanus. Though he hated the mob and was no middle-of-the-roader trying to appeal to them, he earned his contempt for them through getting scars and exhibiting tremendous physical courage. I am fearful of confrontation and wouldn't definitely shirk from any physical threat to my person. I have to admire Coriolanus and envy his being able to adopt the attitude that he did toward them. The mob is full of meatheads and he was right to despise it. Are politicians who talk of the mob as if it was full of simple well-meaning folk who don't get high all the time or don't brag of debaucheries, speaking truthfully or cowardly kow-towing? I suspect the latter. Coriolanus is a play that tells us what is so wrong with the modern world.
• I can see some Obamacolytes saying that Obama is like Coriolanus. Obama is the man of virtue having to deal with a mob of bigots and conservatives and homophobes and so on. I of course wouldn't agree with this depiction. I would say Obama does have an element of Coriolanus's despising of the mob, but what he really despises is the country he thinks he is serving so honorably. He despises America. As well a comparison between Coriolanus and Obama also breaks down on the fact that Coriolanus before confronting the mob, had performed acts of extraordinary physical. That couldn't be said about Obama who was elected on false hopes of what he could be. Furthermore, Coriolanus told the mob to stuff it and joined his sworn enemies. Is there any chance that Obama will quit the presidency of the country he despises and move to France or somewhere else in the European Union, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba,or North Korea? If he did, I would gladly said he was like Coriolanus for giving up a cushy life, is as much as that would be an act of courage that we can expect in this modern world.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to see the Xian Warriors. I feel that place is probably a vulgar tourist spot. I don't want to go skiing in the Swiss Alps. I don't want to go golfing in Augusta.
• I am almost finished watching this 1953 Alec Guinness move the Captain's Paradise. Great performance of Guinness who I am thinking I will honor by making him the King of the Wuxi China Expatdom. The perfect life says the Captain character played by Guinness in the movie? Two women of complimentary temperaments and the intellectual company of men. Says the Captain: The women who can bring home the groceries, can't bring home the milk. I am not exactly sure what is meant by that line but it seems funny and clever nonetheless. My life would be a one in three to the captain. But in the end it seems that the life that the Captain created that had those elements of perfection has broken down.
• I will spend the day here, when not in a class, working on my blog thingies. I feel I have fulfilled my Chinese study requirement for the week and day.
• I just spent an hour talking about the JFK assassination and Lin Biao with a student. The student mentioned some interesting factors in the mystery of Biao's plane crash. Biao had a wife who was ambitious and impatient, said the student, who forced Biao to reluctantly make a plan to bomb Mao's train. And Chou En Lai had the power over the use of air planes. The student said that Chou approved Biao using the plane but told Mao that Biao was escaping so that Mao would make the decision to shot the plane down.
• I have had that humid feeling in class today. Summer is here.

Sunday [May 25]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• It is humid. I went for a walk and now I am all in a sweat.
• Last night and this morning, I watched Magnum Force, a classic Dirty Harry movie. The film had a great look and feel and sound. Clint Eastwood was the epitome of cool. The film ended rather improbably however even if it did allow a great shot of Clint saying that a man had to know his limitations.
• I watched the highlights of the Champions League Final. Having watched a lot of Stanley Cup playoff highlights, I can say that football or soccer does allow a spectator time to see the buildup to a goal as well it being scored. Too often in hockey, the goal is scored and you have to watch the replay to see what happened.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? I don't want to attend the NFL draft. I don't want to meet the President of the United States. I don't want to attend a major tennis event. I don't want to attend an Olympic event. I don't want to say I have cooked a gourmet meal. I don't want to go to the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I don't want to see the lady boys in Thailand. I don't want to smoke Cuban cigars.
• [Later] In the afternoon, I took Tony downtown so I could buy myself something from Burger King and buy Tony a toy. We took the 25 bus and it got stuck in traffic downtown. It gave me time to think about an email I got from Arielle. Once Tony & I were off the bus, we walked through the Nanchang Temple Market area, browsing at toy shops along the way, to get to the Nanchang Jie Burger King or Han Bao Wang as the locals would call it. I ordered an Italian Triple Stacker with fries and two drinks. I ate the sandwich, Tony refusing my offers to try it, and shared the fries with Tony.
• Leaving Burger King I ran into a couple of Americans who are teaching English at a program or school that is on the campus of Jiangnan University. One of the teachers insisted that I was mister Wuxi. I denied it and now wish I could have said something about my 49 year old body being a long way from some Adonis like muscularity it may have had in my early twenties. And I said that if I was famous, I would rather have money; the fame having not earned me any benefits. The other teacher said he was a regular reader of my blog, and had seen videos of Tony on the bridge deck during a session of trainspotting. He mentioned my having written something about not liking to talk to foreigners. I scoffed in response and talked about how I hated to see other foreigners in my territory of Wuxi. Of course, the truth of the matter is that I write things in a spiteful mood and don't have the good sense to not publish these spiteful things. The only thing I can truly say in my defense is that my reactionary posture and misanthropy is a mental pose or delusion that is almost always instantly disarmed by friendliness on the part of others. [If you are reading this, Andy, please make a comment or send me an email.]
• The two gentlemen taught writing and what they told me about it was just as I imagined from the few times I have students ask me to edit some piece of writing for them.
• While I was talking to the gentleman, a man dragging a monkey came by asking for money. I gave him two rmb.
• To be continued, tomorrow.....

Monday [May 26]

[Home Laptop]

• I will continue on with what I did yesterday.
• After talking to the two gentleman and seeing the monkey yesterday afternoon, Tony & I walked from Ba Bai Ban to buy a toy. Tony of choose a Ultraman toy that cost 99 rmb and earned the wrath of Jenny when she found out how much I had spent on it.
• When she asked me how much the toy cost, I told her 60 or 70 rmb. Later when she found the receipt and saw that I had in fact spent 99, she was annoyed. I defended myself using the formulation used by the Chinese Communist party in their assessment of Chairman Mao. I was 70 percent right, not a liar, I said.
• From Ba Bai Ban, Tony & I took the bus back to Hui Shan where we meet Jenny at the recently opened Mr. PIZZA in the Wanda Plaza. As far as I can tell, Mr. PIZZA is a pizza restaurant chain started by Chinese. All the people featured in their ads are Chinese. I believe that Mr. PIZZA is in fact Chinese. The food was not bad though I did come in with very low expectations. The pizza was like Domino's. The fried chicken salad was big and could be a meal itself for just 20 rmb. The only thing that I found off-putting about the restaurant was the showing of video of Mr PIZZA personnel participating in some pizza dough spinning competition. Not a real useful skill and I don't see how it makes the pizza taste any better.
• The K clan then went to Tesco to see if we could find a bike for Tony to ride this summer. The one bike we would like to have wasn't in very good condition – its brakes didn't work and the training wheels were wobbly.
• When I got home, I phoned my brother in Canada. We switched from phone to Facetime on our Ipads for the rest of our conversation. Our reception of Ron was great. We could hear him and the video never got stuck buffering. Ron, however, kept telling us that video of me on his Ipad was periodic.
• Today, it is scorching outside. Waiting at a bus stop, I was suffering. I found Wuxi summers to be unbearable.
• Can you tell us some items that you would put on an anti-bucket list? Today. I can't think of anything to put on the list.

Diary: April 1 to April 7, 2014

Highlights

• Coasting. That's what I have been doing. That is the perfect word to describe the life I have been leading these days.
• Nothing happened on April 1.
• I had this idea to give the students Polish-Chinese English names.
• I had four beers on Saturday – a high for 2014.
• I attempted to answer the question How can you improve yourself?
• I unsuccessfully tried to take photos of the Wuxi Metro train while it was on the Hui Shan Metro Train Bridge.
• I made two videos that I published on the Internet.
• I discussed how much time I spend on blogs and sites about China.
• I had a long weekend. That is, a Saturday, Sunday, and then a Monday off.
• Movies watched: The Big Heat, Once Upon a Time in the West, and I started to watch Rome: Open City.
• I watched the first episode of the new Cosmos series. I watched two episodes of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series as well. My comments on Cosmos could get me in trouble.

Tuesday [April 1]

[Home Laptop]

• I don't have to worry about practical jokes this morning. I won't be getting strange emails or phone calls because I don't get normal emails and phone calls these days. I start work at 13:00 and even though I get to the school usually around 11:00, today is a day of Trappist silence so I won't be telling the others in the office that I don't think they are pederasts.
• My VPN was slow yesterday so I wasted a lot of time on the computer trying to do things like get the previous week's diary entry published (I tried in the afternoon but wasn't able to publish the thing till late evening) and download some Manning Center videos from Youtube (the Manning center is a Canadian conservative organization) which featured speeches by Mark Steyn and Preston Manning.
• I have this idea for giving students English names. Give them Polish-Chinese names! Or even just Polish names. When I say give them Polish-Chinese names, I mean to take their Chinese names and add “ski” to them; so, for example, you could give them English names like Chenlongski or Leexiaolongski. I would even like to give them Polish names like Kowalski and Stemkowski. As it is now, the students have a habit of choosing very, very common English names like Mike, John, and Tom. Oh! I can grow to like a student with the name of Pelski or Komanski!
• It is sunny outside. It felt pleasant when I took Tony to be picked up and taken to his primary school.
• I registered on the Wuxi City Guide site. I gave myself the name of Nicolas_Gomez_Davilla and in my short bio, I said I was a happy warrior and a reactionary living in the Hui Shan District.
• Last week, I liked so much the being able to ponder a question during the course of typing in this diary, that I think I will try to answer another question this week. I was thinking to ask myself what good I have done in China, but that is too hard a question and would feel too much like a CV writing exercise which I hate, because for me, my CV is boring and depressing. So instead I will answer this question: How can you improve yourself?
• This thought just occurred to me, so apropos of nothing, I will enter it in this diary. I don't often visit sites about China, whether they be news sites about China or the blogs of other people living in China. My favorite blogs are/were written by a former Ottawa Citizen columnist who is Catholic and Reactionary, a Brit who calls Anne Coulter darling Anne, and this gay man of conservative tendencies who converted to Catholicism in the last year of his life. The latter blogger blogged right to the end. Anyway, I find these blogs more compelling than anything written by anyone about China. China these days is surfeit with people blogging about their experiences in China. They are merely adding to the fog and ignorance that all westerners have about China.
• How can you improve yourself? First, I need to be more attentive to my wife, my son, and my mother. That part of my answer is easy to make because I haven't talked about the sacrifices it would entail me doing.

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 13:00 to 21:00.
• I took the 25 bus to get to school. The Wuxi Metro train wasn't on the Hui Shan Metro bridge when the bus drove past. It could be seen, though, parked in its nearby work yard which is on the shore of the river over which the Hui Shan Big Bridge crosses.
• My English Corner topic today is April Fool's day. I don't know what to do with that topic.
• I finished reading the Orphan Master's Son last night. Interesting novel. North Korea is more horrible than I have imagined.
• [Later] During the English Corner, I got, what I thought was, a brilliant idea for a practical joke to play on a co-worker's computer. I will take a screen shot of his desk top, then take all the icons and put them in a special file, and then make the screen shot his desk top. I chortle at the idea of his clicking on the icons and having nothing happen.

Wednesday [April 2]

[Home Laptop]

• Last night, I finished watching the Big Heat starring Glen Ford and an actress who had a role in Oklahoma. Big Heat was a great movie. Black and White. Everyone wore suits. Everyone looked like an adult. The woman who played the Glen Ford character's wife was said to be 27. To my modern eyes, she acted like she was fifty. Very mature.
• I then starting watching Once Upon a Time in the West. I had it on my Ipad, I hadn't realized it was a Sergio Leone western, having downloaded because I saw it a top Westerns movie list, and so I was terribly impressed when I watched the opening credits. The movie starred Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robarbs, and Claudia Cardinale. The style of the film immediately drew me it. It slammed me on the head with its stylish effects whether audio or visual. I want to get off board the life I am leading and take the time to watch the film in one sitting.
• Last class of yesterday evening, I had a student who teaches a kindergarten class, senior level. I had to ask her how she controls her students. It has been my experience at Tony's kindergarten that the kids are impossible to control, at least by me. I wonder how the females are able to do it. Part of it is, I suppose, that she loves kids. She told she did with such a directness and frankness that I was taken aback.
• I have just phoned my Mom, who lives by herself in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. The weather over the weekend there? Minus 27 degrees!!! Although it has warmed up to minus seven, the roads were still too slippery and so Mom was staying inside.
• Last night, my Mom watched On the Waterfront.
• My nephew Kyle will be nineteen on April 6^th. He has been driving for three years. I mention this because in China, they don't get to drive till they are out of high school. I can remember I was in Winnipeg at the time he was born. When I first saw him a few months later, he was still small, a bundle not yet able to crawl. Now, he drives while I take public transportation to work.

[School Laptop]

• My shift today: 13:00 to 21:00.
• I took the 25 bus to work, sat on the side that afforded me a good view of the Hui Shan Subway Bridge, and didn't see the metro train on it. I would see it later coming up from the portion of the line that does underground.
• How can you improve yourself? Other than what I said yesterday to answer this question, there probably isn't much else I can do because 1) I am as perfect as it gets. 2)I am as good as I am ever going to get.
• Those answers were nonsense.
• The beef sandwiches at the Xinjiang Restaurant across the way from the school are wonderful. The Chinese pinyin I have heard for them: rou jie mo.

Thursday [April 3]

[School Laptop]

• Today: 10:00 to 21:00.
• I saw the Wuxi Metro train on the Hui Shan Metro Bridge. Unfortunately, I was on another bus and was only able to see the train from a distance and so was not able take a photo.
• Saturday will be a holiday. The K family has chosen to stay at Casa Kaulins, eschewing the opportunity to spend Tomb Sweeping Day in Beixin.
• Last night, a student told me something that maybe demanded some investigation. She told me that when buying a car, a customer had to pay this non-refundable fee to the car dealer. As I understood her, the fee was paid if a price for a car was agreed upon and if for any reason the deal fell through, the money was not returned. I have never heard of such a thing happening in Canada.
• How can you improve yourself? I can't. I am what I am and it is too late in life to make any radical changes to myself.
• Earlier last evening, a student told me that her company was putting together an application to get High Tech Enterprise status from the local government. Having HTE status entitles a company to tax breaks. Which reminds me that earlier, I had been told by a student that the local government was also promising to give rent subsidies to Masters and PhD students who choose to locate in Wuxi. Yes. Government in action.
• It is quiet in the office right now. That is just the way I like it.
• I finished watching Once Upon a Time in the West last night. I thought it was an enjoyable film to watch, full of interesting performances, great stock characters, Leone's directing techniques, wonderful cinematography of the Utah and Arizona landscape, and great soundtrack music. Henry Fonda, who I had thought of as an actor always playing the good guy, was the baddie in this flick. Charles Bronson was the film's star despite not having top billing. The camera made him look intense and confident. His performance was seemingly minimal. Having read somewhere that in film acting, less is more, Bronson's performance was perfect, but I wonder if it seemed perfect because of the camera and Bronson's remarkable face and physical presence, or because of some genuine acting skill on his part. The film was fill of Leone's Spaghetti Western flourishes: the amazing marksmanship scenes, the focus on the expressions of the actors, the building up of tensions in the scenes, the interesting looking characters, the casual violence of the antagonists, the use of sound to magnify the lethal force of the shots, and the great music. If there was anything wrong with the film, it was the plot. Sometimes, the characters did inexplicable things and the scenes seemed disjointed from the plot. For example, a dramatic scene on a train came to an end, and this crippled character was suddenly in a cleft in a mountain. I couldn't tell if this scene was a flashback or a continuation of the plot in its normal sequence.
• I will have to seek out the entire body or Leone's work.
• A change in the one child policy. If you or your wife is an only child, you can have a second child.

Friday [April 4]

[School Laptop]

• Today's shift: 11:00 to 21:00. Tomorrow's shift? None. Ha ha.
• What will I do on this holiday? Don't know. I have vague ideas of wandering in the countryside on the family e-bike with Tony or sitting at the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza Starbucks reading a book on my Ipad.
• Public bikes in Hui Shan! The public bike stalls now have bikes in them.
• How can you improve yourself? Last night, I was on the 635 with 635 Sophia. I was telling her that I don't come into contact, outside of work, with any foreigners. Then she then point-blank asked me if I had any foreigner friends in Wuxi. I told her I didn't. She then asked me if I had any Chinese friends. I told her I didn't. So, getting back to that question I am answering this week, I suppose I could improve myself by having more friends “on the ground” in Wuxi. But that is easier said than done for me. I know people aren't perfect and you have to be very, very tolerant of their foibles. I, of course, am as far from perfect as a person can get while still having a pulse. But the foibles that many of the people have that I come in contact with here are really worthy of contempt. They are the foibles of numbingly stupid people, people who rationalize their stupidity and not face up to it, and not just weakness of character. I can't be friends with these people. Be that as it may, while withdrawal is completely understandable in my situation, I can't give up hope. There are surely some souls I can be pals with in Wuxi and I have to improve myself to meet them. [Am I the only right-winger reactionary in Wuxi?]
• At least, I don't have to change my political beliefs. I may be a cunt, but I am not a left-winger, so I do have one redeeming virtue.
• What can most people do to improve their oration abilities? Shut up.
• I was listening to the Radio Free Delingpole podcast. Delingpole seems to be more of a libertarian conservative than a traditional conservative. He supports the legalization of mary jane in Colorado. He went overboard to show much he thinks it a really wonderful idea. At one time I would have supported this but now I have my misgivings. It seem to be the triumph of barbarism. Being a rock critic and thus a conservative who hasn't given up the rock and roll lifestyle, Delingpole seems like a conservative who doesn't want to give up on the idea of coolness. Conservatives, he seems to be saying, are people who can be cool! Nonsense. Bullocks. Conservatives are people of substance and not easily to be fooled by shallowness which is what cool really is.

Saturday [April 5]

[Home Laptop]

• It is my sister's birthday today. I believe she is in Mexico now.
• It is Tomb Sweeping Day. I don't have a shift today.
• We have a visitor from Suzhou coming. Jenny says we will be taking her downtown.
• I downloaded the first episode of the new Cosmos series. The host of the new series is black and he reminds me of Bryant Gumbel, the NBC sports host. I know that I shouldn't mention the detail but in this day and age, you can't help but feel that the race of the host is a factor in the choosing of the host. It is done with the best of intentions, but....

Sunday [April 6]

[Home Laptop]

• No shifts today.
• Yesterday. I drank four beers. I haven't done that in a long time. Reality can slap you in the face and actually make you realize that some course of actions you have taken were wise. I won't be drinking any beer today.
• Yesterday afternoon, we, that be the K family, went to the Western Restaurant in the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza. I had two beers there.
• Various places in the Plaza had wax figures of celebrities on display. I posed with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chen.
• We then took the bus downtown to Nanchang Market and to the Nanchang Bar Street. We spent time at a Starbucks. We ate at some barbecue restaurant.
• Tony caused me a brief scare. We were walking in a crowded Nanchang Market. He turned a corner while in my sight. I turned the corner two seconds after he did and I lost sight of him for two minutes. What he had done was quickly turn the corner and climb up a pedestal to look at some animals on display.
• Later, Tony & I were at the Nanchang Temple Book Market when these two girls came up to me, told me Tony was very cute, and asked if they could take a photo with him. Tony refused in no uncertain terms. I had to apologize to the girls.
• The public bikes are in the stall, but the card machines, that one has to use to borrow them, are not yet in operation. When will they be? I was keen to try the bikes this long weekend but it won't happen.
• [Later] I took Tony out briefly this afternoon, we took the e-bike to the area near the bridge that joins the Hui Shan and Jiangyin Districts, and where we do some train spotting. Today, we didn't actually spend much time on the bridge deck. We instead rode further on to an overpass over the freeway that connects Jiangyin and Wuxi cities. We were able to do some trainspotting from this spot because not away, the high speed rail runs over the freeway as well. I took video which you will be able to see at Youtube or Youku!
• Tony was a putz. As quickly as we got out to Jiangyin, he wanted to go home. He wasn't at all interested in exploring.
• I have made my first Microsoft Train Simulation video. It will be shown on Youku. Using a David Bowie for music, I can't upload it to Youtube.

Monday [April 7]

[Home Laptop]

• I did upload a video to Youtube last night. Entitled Trainspotting from an Overpass, it was filmed and edited yesterday.
• No shifts for me. No school for Tony. I'd like to take Tony out but he would prefer to play with all our gadgets.
• I may not be able to publish this blog entry today. Family things will take up my time.
• Uploading of the torrents I really want has been slow. I want to watch some episodes of Sarah Palin's Alaska show and The Search for the Trojan War documentary that I have always admired.
• How can you improve yourself? Listening to a podcast from Vatican Radio, a priest suggested that, during Lent, a good Christian should reach out to ten people who one normally would not talk to. I should do something like this, and I must confess that I go into my way to do nothing of the sort. I have to change this.
• How can you improve yourself? I got to be a happy warrior, not the sullen and passive one that I am now.
• Tony tells me that he has too much computer today. It seemed a surprising admission from him till he grabbed the Ipad from me. Clever of him to twist a criticism of his parents to suit his needs.
• I have just watched the first episode of the new Cosmos series. Way back when, I was enthralled with the first series and its host Carl Sagan. I even requested and then got the companion book to the series for a Christmas/Birthday present. That there would be attempt at a sequel to the series is not unexpected. With video and graphic technology as it is, an update of the visuals would make the sequel worthwhile. Watching the first episode, I can say that the visuals are quite something and it was a treat to watch the show on the big screen via my Apple TV device. Unfortunately, the show took some shots at the Catholic Church and Christians that were scientism propaganda. (The fact that they used cartoons to show this version of what did happen was telling. Cartoon history.) The real history of what happened and why it did was more complex than people who see everything a scientist – ignorant savage lens could ever begin to fathom or understand. The host, Neil DeGrasse Tyson who, I earlier this week said was Bryant-Gumbelish and black, was black the whole show through, and wasn't so Bryant-Gumbelish as I first thought. He seemed a nice enough guy. He didn't speak in a strident manner. However, he was no Sir Kenneth Clark who spoke in an authoritative and yet personal way about Western Civilization in that 1969 series Civilisation (Civilisation ages quite well in fact compared to the Cosmos of Carl Sagan). Tyson's manner is too much of a nerd trying to sound authoritative.
• Watch Civilisation and then watch the new Cosmos. Which show is conducted in a more intelligent manner? Which show is more appreciative of the genius of the past?
• I will watch further episodes of the new Cosmos.