Showing posts with label wuxi peach maoists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wuxi peach maoists. Show all posts

Sunday, December 8, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

Monday [December 2]
[Home Laptop]
  • I don't work today.
  • In the morning, after getting Tony off to school, I take apart the train set that both he & I had set up the night before. I know Tony won't like this.
  • I then do some work on the laptop. I know Jenny won't like this.
  • My laptop work consisted of designing a new logo and new helmets for my Wuxi Peach Maoists fantasy football team (You can see the designs at my Wuxi Peach Maoists Site), and uploading Views of China from Casa Kaulins #41 to the Youtube.
  • My 2013 Wuxi Peach Maoists are on the verge of winning their second game of the season. Playing the spoiler, the Maoists are beating their division leaders and are thus preventing them from clinching the division title. Heading into their match-up with the Peach Maoists, which was the second last game of the season, the division leaders had a one and a half game lead over the second place team. Their loss to the Peach Maoists combined with a victory by the second-place team means that their regular season finale match-up with that second-place team will decide who wins the division and get a spot in the playoffs.
  • Jenny gives me heck for doing things on the computer instead of doing things around the house and taking a shower. And so I feel like a heel until Jenny calls me “Honey” when asking for for my help.
  • In the afternoon, Jenny & I go the Wuxi Hui Shan Wanda Plaza for lunch and some grocery shopping. I look to buy long underwear at the Uni-Qlo but there is none that would fit me. [Times like that make me wish I was five foot nine.]
  • I put together the train set for Tony before he would arrive back from school. In the morning and then at lunch, he had told Jenny of his strong desire to not have the train set taken apart. I didn't want to hear him whine upon arriving home from school because he would immediately notice that the train set was taken apart like he had done so many times before.
  • When Tony arrived home, he was satisfied with the work I had done.

Tuesday [December 3]
[Home Laptop]
  • I work today. 13:00 to 21:00. I will probably arrive at work at 11:00.
  • I have gotten Tony off to school. The car, that takes him to school, pulled up at the meeting point twenty seconds before we did.
  • First thing I did when I got back home was take apart all the toy train track that had been laid in the living room last evening. [If you visit the Tony Kaulins in China blogs, you can see photos of what he and I had done.]
  • The temperature could get up to 17 degrees today if the weather app on my Ipod Touch is to be believed. This is trouble because now I don't know how to dress for today. Do I wear a toque and a scarf? Do I wear long underwear?
  • Laying beside Tony in bed last night, I put my head down so as to get Tony to fall asleep. I thought I would be able to raise my head and read once Tony was asleep, but then I realized I couldn't.
  • After putting away the train set, I take a shower and iron my clothes for work.
  • All the while, I listen to podcasts on the Ipod. So far, I have listened to a talk by David Horowitz, the Three Martinis podcast and Vatican Radio. A Greek girl dies of Carbon Monoxide poisoning – a terrible symptom of the Greek economic crisis.

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

Wednesday [December 4]
[School Laptop]
  • I work 13:00 to 21:00 today.
  • I take the 25 bus to get to school. Along the way, I see a media-conference style table at a corner near the Hui Shan Times Century (Tesco) plaza. Behind the table sat a bunch of cops in uniform. It seems that they were doing some sort of public safety awareness event.
  • I went to Ba Bai Ban to do my initial shopping probe of things that I plan to buy for Tony for Christmas. I am looking, as I have almost every Christmas, at buying Tony Plarail products like trains and fixtures.
  • I complained that the weather yesterday was too warm. Today it is worse.

Thursday [December 5]
[School Laptop]
  • It's my brother Ron's birthday today and so I will send him an email. Ron, my younger brother, 我弟弟, is in his forties, that much I will say. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba and owns my Aunt Ritma's old house, where I used to live when I spent a few years of my life, wasted years as it turned out, in Winnipeg.
  • Ron likes the Maple Leafs (to which I say hiss!) and mountain biking (which can be done in Manitoba, believe it or not).
  • The house that Ron owns was built before the Cultural Revolution in China. My parents held their wedding reception in house's basement which seems unbelievable because it a small cramped space with limited head room.
  • I work 10:00 to 21:00 today. It is my long day. Other than having to leave Casa Kaulins early, I don't mind it. It gives me plenty of time to work on my pet projects (the things I would rather be doing than teaching, or talking to students).
  • I took the 602and then the 79 bus to get to school this morning. The traffic jams I saw on the way were quite the sight. Wuxi people are unable to stand in line in a civilized and orderly manner, and are always trying to cut off others and jump the queue. Put them in cars and the disorder then is really something to behold: Cars sitting every which way in traffic. Seeking to gain any advantage they can and not content to stand in line, Wuxi drivers are always seeking to get into another lane. Some are so impatient they will even attempt to make u-turns to get out of a potential jam ahead even if there are lots of cars queuing behind him. All these tactics are self-defeating and so an absolute smozzle results as seemingly everybody in traffic engages in the self-defeating behavior.
  • Listening to Ann Coulter makes me angry, defiant, combative in thought, and sometimes depressed because I am stuck with the sort of stupid people that she articulately and brilliantly puts down. [I was listening to If Democrats Had Any Brains, They would be Republicans.]

Friday [December 6]
[School Laptop]
  • I work 11:00 to 21:00.
  • Smog Alert in Wuxi. Can I call it the Wuxi Smog Crisis?
  • As a result of the smog alert, students are not doing their PE lessons out doors.
  • I bought a mask (口罩)yesterday. I don't think there is much efficacy in wearing it to combat the smog, but there still is much efficacy for me because my wife is insisting that I wear one.
  • I overheard some Reductionism today.
  • Yesterday, a Wuxiren, now living in the U.K., walked up to me and told me that while there, she was homesick for her home town and visited Youtube where she found my videos.

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

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

Sunday [December 8]
[Home Laptop]


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

Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Andis Kaulins in China Diary: November 18 to November 24, 2013

Monday [November 18]
[Home Laptop]
Not working today. Just staying at home playing on the computer.

[Ipod]

I spend afternoon on couch.  I watch Red Dawn – a remake of a movie made in the 1980's.  I watch the start of the Keys to the Kingdom: a movie so far set in Scotland and China.  

It was a mistake to watch Red Dawn 2012. Like the original made in the 1980's, it was silly. The people who say it is a Conservative movie should be ashamed of themselves.

I wait for Tony.  He will do homework when he gets home. 

I want to hug the little fellow.  I can't help but overindulge him; for I have lead a lonely life. He is my buddy.

Completed a series in Real Racing 3: an app I play on my Ipad.

Tuesday [November 19]
[Home Laptop]
I work 13:00 to 21:00. It is my Monday.

Last night, I set up Plarail (toy train) track for Tony. I took a video of him proudly showing up a train crash he had set up.

This morning, I am trying to take things one at a time.

I drank some tea which seemed to collide with some phlegm that was coming up from my chest. I choked and was gasping for breath for about ten seconds. It happened last week at school when I had drank some water. After I was breathing normally again, I blew my nose and a big load of snot came out.

I can't shake this cold. It seems that its harsh symptoms are coming back.

Tony has this cold too.

[School Laptop]
I took the 25 bus to school. I like the walk I take, down a bustling side street, from the bus stop, near Nanchang Market, to the school. It makes me feel like I am really in China.

Peach Maoists are winning 87-84 with six minutes left in the Monday Night Game. Can they hold on for their second victory?

.
.
.
. No! They lose 92-89! Their record falls to 1-9-1.

It is cold in the office because the heater isn't on and there also isn't any central heating. I am tempted to put on my toque (or wool cap for those who don't speak Canadian.)

Something has happened to David Warren's website. All his blog entries have disappeared and the site has a message saying “coming soon.”

I won't have dinner till I get home, which will be after 10:00 PM.

A student told me that he and his roommates had caught a thief in their dorm room at their High School. The student and his friends had decided to go out for lunch in the evening instead of staying at school and studying. The thief, who knew the students schedule and so was expecting the dorm to be deserted, was surprised when they walked into their room. The student and his roommates keep the thief in their room, asked him questions, and took photos of him. He was a boy of school age who could speak Mandarin. The thief told the students that he was part of a gang of ten thieves who were robbing school dormitories. He even boasted to having the keys to all the rooms in their dormitory building.

Unfortunately, he was able to escape before the police arrived. The foreigners all said they would have rough-housed the thief. The students did nothing.

Wednesday [November 20]
[Home Laptop]
I work 13:00 to 21:00.

My struggle with my cold continues.

I hope the David Warren site comes back.  All its content was pulled about two days ago.

I phoned my Mom (she lives in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada) last night.  It is cold in Brandon (minus five) and they had a little snow.  My sister will be coming from British Columbia next week to pay Mom a visit.  I may get a chance to talk to my sister who I haven't really talked to since the time of Dad's death. (We have exchanged a few emails but we haven't talked)

There will be a by-election next week in Brandon.  The seat in the federal parliament is up for grabs.  

[School Laptop]
I took the 602bus to the downtown, and transferred to the 79 to get to school. On the 602支,an old man got sick into bucket, left for that purpose I would suppose, near the back exit door of the bus.

Thursday [November 21]
[School Laptop]
You'd think nothing was happening in my life; what with the paucity of words in my journal entries.

Well! Let me tell you. Stuff is happening and I am thinking things in my head that I just can't put into my blog. These thoughts are all unformed and amorphous.

I work 10:00 to 21:00 today. It is my long day, as I like to say.

Tuesday night, I did a salon about history. I asked the students if they could tell me what historical event they would change if they could. One student told me he would have changed the results of the Chinese Civil War. “We would be more free now!” he added. This is not the first time I have heard this sentiment expressed by students. Unfortunately, the Nationalists were the stupid side in the war, kind of like modern establishment Republicans.

Last night, I came home, hoping to see Tony fast asleep. Instead, Jenny was still having him do his Chinese homework. I could only sigh in frustration.

I got an email from HM's daughter.

HM is a friend of mine from Australia who worked at my school for a short time, after which we maintained a correspondence. He had a stroke recently but he was able to carry on with his life best he could – I receiving emails from him and he was attending courses at university and fighting Leftists To his credit, he was a Christian and a conservative.

After his stroke, I told him to just ensure that his daughters would keep updated about him if he wasn't able to. Well, I just got an email from his daughter. Not many details were provided. She said that HM was thinking of me. All I can do is pray for him and hope he gets better. He deserves many more years of life.

Friday [November 22]
[School Laptop]
I work 11:00 to 21:00 today.

Tony took his Tomica Plarail Catalog to school. I hope he doesn't lose it.

It is the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination today.

I have to admit that I am or can say I was a Kennedy Assassination buff. I read books about the JFK assassination, and I have been to Dealey Plaza and been on the sixth floor of the Texas School Depository Building. I started out thinking it was a conspiracy until I unknowingly bought a book that said Oswald did it. Reading the book forever changed my mind about what happened. People who think Oswald didn't do are brain dead. When I hear that people found Oliver Stone's film about the assassination to be influential, I am totally aghast.

Consider the following:
  • The magic bullet wasn't a magic bullet. If you take into account where and how the Governor and the President were sitting when the second shot was fired, the angles lined up. And if you watch the Zapruder film, you can see that Kennedy and the Texas Governor were hit at the same time by the second shot.
  • The Head shot physics were not as simple as a cue ball hitting another cue ball. The physics of a fast moving projectile puncturing a body with a hard shell isn't a simple transfer of force form one body to another. These forces generated by the shattering of the shell surrounding JFK's brain caused it to move toward where the shots were fired.
  • Oswald's fingerprints were on the gun that was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD. A photo of Oswald was taken before the assassination showing him holding the gun that he used to shot Kennedy.
  • Photos taken of the Grassy Knoll as the shots were being fired showed no shooter.
  • Oswald could have been rounded up by the FBI before the assassination but fell through the cracks of the security precautions that were made for JFK's visit to Dallas.
  • Oswald's brother thinks that LHO did the deed.
  • In fact, the assassination was a very open and shut case.

It is also my friend Heather's birthday today. She was born the day of the JFK assassination. I sent her a birthday greeting email and have just received a lovely email in response.

Tony wants me to set up the toy train track for him. I had set it up for him earlier this week but Jenny asked me to put it away. And so Tony complained last night.

Saturday [November 23]
[School Laptop]
I work 10:00 to 18:00 today.

Saturdays at school can be annoying if you have some of the annoying middle school students in your classes. Understandably, they are tired after a weekly regimen that I probably could never put up with; and so they just don't want to be in class – attempts to entertain them end up flat.

Tony & Jenny went to the Big Buddha this morning. They left the apartment before I did. Tony said good bye to me as he left.

Last evening, Tony was asking me to go to bed. “Why are you going to bed? Daddy?” he said.

I took the 602bus to the downtown.

I have this fear that someone is going to try to break into the apartment today. None of the Kaulins family is in the house today. The fear was sparked by workers near our home (they were painting white on tree trunk bottoms) staring at me. Let's break into the laowei's apartment! Yeah!

[Home Laptop]
No one broke into the apartment. So much for irrational premonitions!

After work, I quickly caught the bus and made my way to the Wuxi Hui Shan Wanda where I meet Jenny & Tony for dinner.

After eating, we went home.

Exciting life! I know.


Sunday [November 24]
[Home Laptop]
I don't work today.

It is raining outside. Because of this, I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but then Tony said he wanted to go to the Wuxi Hui Shan Wanda Plaza arcade to play the “Truck Game.”

And so we went since Sunday is the one day of the week I can indulge him.

I took Tony to the stores selling toys, the arcade so he could play the truck game, the Apple store so he could play on the Ipad, and to McDonalds so I could buy him a Happy Meal and get him a transformer toy.

We stayed at Wanda from lunch time to 4:00 PM. When I decided it was time to leave, I got a lot of resistance from Tony. His tactic was to stand in my way with his arms spread wide and not let me pass. I walked half the length of the Mall doing a stupid game of trying to get around him. I finally lost my temper and screamed at him, using language that I will admit was a trite vulgar.

Tony wanted to stay and look at toys. I think he has enough toys and I would rather he stay at home and play with the ones he has. In fact, he has more toys than I ever had. [Not that I begrudge this. In fact, I am glad that it is so.]

David Warren's site is back up. He has a pay button. If I had more money, I would make a contribution. I would also have to try to explain why I was doing it for Jenny.

I am thinking of ending the AKIC Weekly. From now on, I will publish an AKIC newsletter. It will have the same contents as the AKIC Weekly. However, I won't publish it on a weekly basis. I will publish it when I feel like it.

I will name this newsletter Dispatches from Akicistan. I won't date them I will number them. Dispatches from Akicistan #1 will be published in December. I will publish one more issue of the AKIC Weekly.

Tony & Jenny went to some charity event for Tibet. [Would the Chinese ever do one for North Korea? I suppose they have no plans to annex it.]

I still have the cough and the stuck-up feeling in my chest.




Sunday, November 17, 2013

The Andis Kaulins in China Weekly: November 11 to November 17, 2013

Gratitude:  I am thankful for the times the truth is revealed to me.

Acknowledgement: I have to stop living in my mind and grasp the things that I know I need. No one is going to give them to me.

Requests: Since I can't expect anything to be given to me, I shouldn't request it. I pray for the welfare of others, and that my enemies will see the light. I do hope I can have the good fortune to meet some good people I can befriend. But even then, you got to create your own fortune.

The AKIC Week in Brief: Another boring week in Akicistan. I was driven to a the administrative center of the new Wuxi CBD in a black Audi. A highlight of sorts I'd suppose.

About AKIC: If you want to learn what Andis & AKIC are all about, you can visit here.

If there are things about AKIC you don't know about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can go here to find out what they are all about.


AKIC Weekly Features:

I in in China!  我的家有两个卧室。我孩子的拼音是不好。我孩子是不好的学生。

I am Canadian! I still don't want Rob Ford to resign. Toronto should be thankful for the attention.

I am Latvian (sort of)! My middle name is Edmunds.

Reading Anne Applebaum's Gulag, I realize I should thank my lucky stars that my parents were able to get out of Latvia in the 1940s before the Russians came in.

Wuxi Peach Maoists Update: Visit here to find out how if your Peach Maoists (1-8-1) can get a winning streak going.

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary! Better to have a conservative who smokes crack as your mayor than a Leftist. Rob Ford was at least drunk when he smoked cracked. A modern progressive/leftist/democrat(U.S.)/socialist smokes crack when sober.

I teach English! Is there a way, I can make the headline of this section appear ironic?
Really, I talk to the students hoping to educate by entertaining them. Beats me if they learn anything.
I am not a freak! I try hard, in a monkish sort of way, to not be one.
I like to Read! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:
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. Now that I have finished the Catechism, I will read this and then begin to read the 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 #179 this week 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 was reading the Book of Genesis.

Mao Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi. A Hagiography given to me by a local. [The Chinese who protested against Jimmy Kimmel's six year old child by posting a picture of Kimmel with a Hitler moustache, could also have put a Mao mole on Kimmel's face while they were at it. Hitler never killed any Chinese that I know of. Mao did however. In fact, he killed a lot.]

Gulag by Anne Applebaum. Many Balts, from whom I am descended, were taken to the Gulag. I thank my lucky stars that my parents, who were born in Latvia, were able to get out before the Soviets came in.

I like to take photos
I publish them in the following blogs:  AKIC wordpress , TKIC blogspot, TKIC wordpress, Views of China from Casa Kaulins Blogspot and Views of China from Casa Kaulins Wordpress. It is my habit to take a least one photo of Tony a day and publish it in TKIC wordpress. I also try to capture interesting things that pass by the Casa Kaulins apartment, either on video on still image, and publish them in Views of China from Casa Kaulins.

I like to make videos

I like to cut, paste, and sometimes give my take on quotations:
Nicolas Gomez Davilla
497 To live with lucidity a simple, quiet, discrete life among intelligent books, loving a few beings. [That is the life!]
498 A sentence should be hard like a rock and shake like a branch. [To be honest, I am not sure what that means even though I like the sound of it. If I do ever figure out what this aphorism means, I wonder if I will be able to apply it to the sentence making the students do for me.]
505 To educate the soul consists in teaching it to transform its envy into admiration. [Get rid of envy and you should cease to be a Leftist, a progressive, a Communist, a Socialist, and so on....]
509 Society tends to be unjust, but not in the way the conceited imagine. There are always more masters who do not deserve their position than servants who do not deserve theirs. [I am part of the servant class. No way I could be a master.]
510 Resistance is futile when everything in the world is conspiring to destroy what we admire. We are always left, however, with an incorruptible soul, so that we might contemplate, judge, and disdain. [I like this quote because it ends with the word “disdain.” But I wonder about the state of my soul. I like the word “disdain” for the wrong reasons: pride.]
519: Happiness is that state of the sensibility in which everything appears to have a reason for being. [This is only true if souls exist.]


David Warren:
1)We are small & squalid & statistical, perhaps not even worth punishing. Our men are not men & our women are not women. Look at the vacant faces in the streets, blindly clutching their mall purchases. What god, what demon, could be bothered to regard our “public opinion”?

The debt crises in Europe & America, the omnipresence of “the NSA,” the conspicuous failure of schemes like Obamacare, the smug look on politicians’ faces, frustrations associated with longer commuting times & diminishing real wages — these are all little triggers. We are like union members in a company whose managers are too obviously incompetent to sustain their arrogance. And we are tired of obeying their innumerable, fussy little rules. My hunch is that there is going to be a strike.

2)Our very Anglo-Saxon, gliberal answer to our own racialism is “reverse discrimination.” This reverses the polarity, but on the same magnet.

Indeed, the election of the inexperienced, foolish, unqualified, excessively vain & deluded, obviously incompetent Barack Obama as President of those United States was, to my mind, not an indication that America was putting racialism behind her, but rather that it could not be overcome. He was elected because he was black, & that made the whites voting for him feel good about themselves. Had he been superficially a white man (as he might have been, had the Mendelian genetic dice rolled the other way), he would never have been taken seriously as a presidential candidate. [I had thought that the only way a Black could be elected U.S. President would have been if he was a Republican with the ideas of a Thomas Sowell. That, the first Black U.S. President is a Democrat shows I was too much of an optimist. Racialism seems stuck with humans like death and taxes. Sad.]

Excerpt from Anne Applebaum's Gulag:
Thinking about his arrest before it happened, Innokenty had pictured to himself a duel of wits to the death. For this he was ready, prepared for a high-principled defense of his life and his convictions. Never had he imagined anything so simple, so dull, and so irresistible as this reality. The people who had received him were petty-minded, low-grade officials, as uninterested in his personality as in what he had done. [I am kicking against the petty-mindedness and dullness of my reality. I suppose I could survive in the Gulag.]

Said about Flannery O'Connor:
She was always suspicious of her own motives,  [Believe it or not, I am suspicious of my own motives. And I do find myself checking many things I imagine I would say if I could. I am what I am.]

GK Chesterton:
The Lord said to love one's enemies. He didn't say anything but not having them.” [I am typing this quote from memory. A distinction that is not often thought of by people who aren't Christian and many who say they are.]

In the Anglo-Saxon world at least, there seems to be a law of the conservation of prudery: If we are not prudish about one thing, we are prudish about another, the total amount of prudery remaining constant.  [I think this law of the conversation of prudery can be applied to more than just prudery and the Anglo-Saxon world. Whatever tendencies there are in the human race, they are constant over time. For example, the callousness about the fate of people who weren't our own kind has been replaced by a callousness about the fate of the murdered unborn.]

Public transport is the great theatre of the world, which is why I always take it (whenever I can) in preference to that frightful contraption, my motor car. You learn so much on public transport; in a car you just lose your temper. [Actually, I lose my temper on the bus in Wuxi sometimes. But I would lose my temper all the time if I drove a car in Wuxi. And there things I see on the bus that I would never see in a car: lower and lower middle peasants, for instance.]

The AKIC List of the Week: AKIC's Top Twelve Americans
  1. Rush Limbaugh [Warts and all, I thank Limbaugh for the fact that I am a conservative and on the way to being a person of faith.]
  2. William F Buckley [A Catholic who represented all that was fine about America.]
  3. Clint Eastwood [How could he not be included on this list?]
  4. George Washington [Under Chairman Mao, he didn't die in office. He retired to his estate.]
  5. Frank Sinatra [The greatest singer of all time.]
  6. Gary Carter [He was my favourite baseball player. A true American golly gee guy who'd be called a phony by Socialist sophisticates. With two outs in bottom of the ninth inning of the sixth game of the 1986 World Series, no body on base, his team down by two runs in the game, his team down 3-2 in the best of seven series, Carter got a hit that sparked the greatest rally in World Series history. Hearing of Carter's premature death brought the best and saddest memories of my time following the Montreal Expos from 1979 to 1983.]
  7. Andrew Breibart [David Warren, on my list of top ten Canadians, said Breibart was a happy warrior in the war against the Left. Hearing of his premature death filled me with immense sadness.
  8. Thomas Sowell [He is no token black on this list. Along with Rush and WFB, Sowell provided the intellectual proof I needed on my path to becoming a reactionary.]
  9. Ronald Reagan [The greatest president of my lifetime.]
  10. Jimmy Stewart [A tall and thin man like myself. He was the rare combination of movie star and decent human being.]
  11. Anne Coulter [A gutsy broad. An American Margaret Thatcher.]
  12. Sarah Palin [I still have hope that she can become the first female president of the USA. The woman is salt of the earth. No sage, she is, but she is fill of more common sense that Obama, Biden, or any of the Clintons.]

I fashion myself to be a 21st Century Pepys






Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Andis Kaulins in China Weekly: September 9 to September 15, 2013

Gratitude:  Thank God that time sometimes flies.

Acknowledgement: In the bio I recently read about “Chinese Gordon,” I highlighted this quote: Among the false reports that have been circulated about General Gordon is one that he was very unsociable and morose… I hereby acknowledge that I am unsociable and morose.

Requests: Please visit Views of China from Casa Kaulins! Lots of interesting things to be seen if you spend a little time exploring it. Also be sure to visit the page dedicated to my father and my new fantasy football site.

The AKIC Week in Brief: Towards the end of the week, I had some great news. Other than that, it was just another week. I went to work, didn't talk to anyone except students, played with Tony when I could, saw my Wuxi Peach Maoists struggle,and spent a lot of time on the Ipad.

About AKIC: If you want to learn what Andis & AKIC are all about, you can visit here.

If there are things you don't know about, like places and people I mention in the entries below, you can go here to find out what they are all about.


AKIC Weekly Features:

I in in China!  现在,在无锡,我的家在加州洋房。加州洋房 有很多汽车!

I am Canadian! I have met a lot of Chinese who want to immigrate to Canada. Canada has worsen in some ways, but it is not a bad place to live compared to many other parts of the world.

I am Latvian (sort of)! I just got an email from a Latvian wanting to teach English. Unfortunately, he has a Latvian passport.

Wuxi Peach Maoists Update: Visit here to find out how Your Peach Maoists did in week one.

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary! Much as I hate to see America humiliated as it has been in the past week. I can take some satisfaction that it is President Obama who has the mud on his face.

I teach English! It pays the bills and I can afford to have a son and a stay-at-home wife.
I am not a freak! The fact that I am insisting I am not a freak may well mean that I am. But then again, my acknowledging that I may well be a freak may be a mitigating factor against my not being one!
I like to Read! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:
Don Colacho's Aphorisms.  There are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled for myself.  I read ten aphorisms at a time.  I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually -- and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)
Ulysses by James Joyce.  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly 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 #170 this week 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 King James Version.   I am reading a chapter, or more, a day of the greatest book of all-time. I have finished the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews and I am now reading the the General Epistle of James.

Columns by Father Schall. I have been able to take all his archived writings and place them on the Dotdotdot app.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Like Father Schall's writings, I have been able to place its contents on the Dotdotdot app.

The Limits of Pure Democracy by WH Mallock. In this book, I read of numerous experiments in Socialist living that were conducted in the 19th century. All of them ended in disaster and eventually these communities had to become normal capitalist communities. So many lives could have been saved if more people had heeded the lessons of these experiments. For in reading of the 19th century socialist experiments, one could see the traces of the massive human tragedies that resulted from Socialist experiments in China and Russia. For all the contradictions, the inconsistencies, and the eventual having to go back to Capitalist methods that took place in China and Russia took place in these experiments in Paraguay, America, and Australia at least a half-century earlier.

The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence. The Donglin Building in Wuxi, China gets a mention at the start of this book. It was a place where intellectuals in the late Ming Dynasty debated how to save China.

General Gordon by Seton Churchill. Finished. Gordon was a genuinely heroic figure, the likes of which we don't see in this day and age.

Mao Zedong: Man, Not God by Quan Yanchi. This book was translated into English by the Foreign Language Press in Beijing. Chairman Mao was in tears during the Great Famine of 1959 to 1961. I am reading this hagiography because it was a gift.

I like to take photos

I like to make videos

I like to cut and paste quotations:
From the General Gordon Biography:
Among the false reports that have been circulated about General Gordon is one that he was very unsociable and morose, shunning society in general... [If they said it about me, it would be true.]

Here are the Don Colachoisms that I cut and pasted this week:
136 Nothing is more dangerous than to solve ephemeral problems with permanent solutions.
149 Nothing is rarer than someone who affirms, or denies, but does not exaggerate in order to flatter or to injure.
150 How routine insults are today proves our ignorance in the art of living.
151 Those who are partially wrong irritate us; those who are totally wrong amuse us.
[Socialists and Leftists irritate me.]
157 Nobody is completely lacking in qualities able to arouse our respect our admiration, or our envy. Whoever might appear unable to give us an example has been carelessly observed.
161 In the midst of a thousand noble things we sometimes pursue only the echo of some trivial lost emotion. Will my heart rest for eternity beneath the vineyard's shadow, near the rough, unfinished table, in the sight of the splendour of the sea?
163 What cements society together is mutual flattery. [This sentence explains to me why I am a failure at society.]
169 Modern man has the ambition of replacing with objects he buys what other ages hoped to obtain from the methodical cultivation of the sentiments.
181 Man hobbles through disappointments supported by small, trivial successes.
184 Legitimate ambitions become shy and resigning amidst the throng of fraudulent ambitions.
187 Triviality is the price of communication. [It is also why I have to be paid to teach English!]
191 To think that only important things matter is the menace of barbarism. [I don't socialize much these days because I have meet so many people who think this way. And many of these people do make a lot more money than me.]
192 The only influences on our life are small truths, miniscule insights.
196 We live because we do not view ourselves with the same eyes with which everybody else views us. [This answers the questions about how people can live with themselves.]
198 Speech was given to man not to deceive, but to deceive himself. [The person who talks a lot lies. I hate being lied to. So I find it strange that these blabber mouths don't hate themselves.]

From the General Epistle of James:
1:19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

From David Warren:
  • Those of a non-criminal disposition should be able to live long lives without much worrying about government agents. [I can truthfully say that I am of a non-criminal disposition and that I do worry about government agents both in China and in Canada.]
  • ...I retain some respect for George W. Bush, & have none for Barack Obama. Bush thought the whole thing through, [Iraq] even if he made misjudgements & miscalculations. Everything about his behaviour suggested that he took very seriously alike the lives of his soldiers & all other lives. He did not act “for show,” nor did he make threats that were empty. At huge political cost, he did not walk away when things went badly. He did, however, foolishly bite off more than the American electorate could chew. [I was listening to a recent episode of Econtalk which had the guest Nicolas Tassem Taleb of Black Swan fame. Talking about his latest writings about the idea of having skin in the game, Taleb took some pot shots at Bush for Iraq. If you have skin in the game said Taleb, you will act more prudently. An argument that is appealing to Libertarians who hate, justifiably in most cases, how government uses tax payers money. Bush, because he didn't see combat action when he was younger, said Taleb, had no skin in the game when he made his decisions about Iraq. I thought Taleb was misapplying his idea in Bush's case. You don't have to be in the military or to have seen combat to realize that you have to be very prudent when you use your military forces and risk the lives of young men. But if you use Taleb's line or reasoning vis-a-vis, you would have to conclude that Hitler and Chairman Mao had skin in the game when they fought their wars. Hitler had been a victim of a gas attack in WWI so all he did in WWII was prudent. Chairman Mao's decision to waste hundreds of thousands of lives in the Korean War was justified because his son was killed in that War.]

Despite being defenestrated by National Review, I am still a fan of John Derbyshire and greedily read all his articles as soon as they appear on the Internet. I also listen to his weekly podcast as soon as I can download it. In the September 14 podcast, Derb had to say about Barabbas Obama :



Here is a guy who was wafted up far above his level of competence on thermals of affirmative action; who spent his youth lolling around in Academia soaking up all the claptrap of 1970s college radicalism; who then spent his young adulthood in the company of anti-American agitators and white-hating black preachers; who, while his mother who raised him was dying of cancer, wrote an autobiography dedicated to the father who abandoned him in infancy; who was elected to the Presidency with no executive experience at all, a deeply undistinguished legislative career, and no knowledge of the private sector beyond a few months he described as being, quote, "behind enemy lines"; who has never said or written a memorable or interesting thing; whose signature legislative initiative is being described even by some of his own supporters as a slow-motion catastrophe. Here he is, this emptiest of empty suits; and seeing him with egg all over his face, it's hard even for a patriot not to smile. [I should memorize this. It is a sheering indictment. I find what Derb said about Obama's writing of the book Dreams of My Father quite revelatory. Why did he write about his father while his mother was dying? Perhaps because his father was black and his mother was white.]

Sunday, June 23, 2013

The AKIC Wuxi Blog Weekly for June 17 to June 23, 2013


Gratitude:  It is nice to have days off, even while having a feeling that I am wasting them.

Acknowledgment: Four things to acknowledge this week. 1)My days off will be nothing to brag about – they may even depress me. 2) Ignoring or air-brushing problems is my way of dealing with them. 3)I have the seven vices to some degree. I could certainly say that I don't have them as bad as others, but that would be a poor way for letting myself off the hook for the ones I do have. 4)The Beatles Song Eleanor Rigby could be updated to include a passage about a blogger named Andis Kaulins.
Requests:  Please forgive my many solecisms. I tell you that I do check and re-check my entries for errors, but I always seem to miss some. Be sure to visit the new photo blog I have started not once a week, but every day.

The AKIC Week in Brief: The Wuxi Summer came to a definite start this week as the A/C unit in the office will be on till the end of August. The realization of the this start made Andis feel more lethargic, but he did have his vacation to look forward to. (It started on June 22nd and will run to July 1st, more or less. Andis will have to go to work on June 27th.) Andis started a new blog. Sunday afternoon, Tony dropped Jenny's Ipad.

The AKIC Mission:  To be China's leading forum of  Gómez-Dávilism and reactionary intransigence, as well as a provocation to all of AKIC's enemies and critics.

The AKIC Motto:  Believe in God, trust in Christ, look with suspicion.

The AKIC Idiom: Casual Insouciance and Solecism-ism.

Who should read AKIC? AKIC is more AK than C. So don't come here expecting the rantings of a would-be Sinologist. I just sometimes mention what I happen to see being here in China. Also, don't expect to read anything about the Expat community here at AKIC. I keep my contact with foreigners to a minimum – but then that is like someone declaring his party to be private even when no one is going to his party anyway. Only kindred spirits of me should read this blog. That is, flotsam, jetsam, waifs, lost souls, conservatives, reactionaries, lost-causers, medievalists, coin-tossers, base brats, marginal humans, watchers, cranks,walkers, wallflowers, failures, losers, Catholics, solitaries, and loners.

An AKIC Glossary
[I have been thinking that it is silly to put this glossary in each of my weekly blog entries and that I should set up a page on AKIC wordpress. However, I am constantly editing the glossary – something I can't do if I make it a page.]

Gratitude: will always be the first word of the AKIC weekly blog entry -- it is the key to happiness.

Acknowledgment and Request:  For me Acknowledgment means confession; and Request means asking for stuff.  GAR [Gratitude, Acknowledgment, Request] are the simple stages of a prayer which I came upon following the Jewish World Review site.  I used the GAR format when I delivered the eulogy at my father's funeral last year.

Solecisms: I try to rid my blog and writings of these things, but they never seem to go away.

Jenny is my wife. She is a Jiangsu woman. Why she puts up with me is a mystery. I ain't good-looking and I don't have any money. Her enemies are my enemies. I put up with a lot of isolation for her.

J: I will sometimes refer to her that way.

Tony is my son.  If he is annoying or is acting way, way, way out-of-line, I will spank him -- I don't do this as much as I used to, having mellowed out in that regard. I actually put this line in as a dig against anti-spanking activists who are about as useful for humanity as pacifists and social workers. I put up with a lot of isolation for Tony as well.

T: I will sometimes refer to Tony this way.

TKIC: Tony Kaulins in China.  I may be referring to the TKIC blogs or to Tony when I use TKIC.  I  am sure you can figure out which way I am using it from the context.

AKIC:  Andis Kaulins in China.  The same applies to AKIC as applies to TKIC.  That is, I may be referring to the AKIC blogs or to myself.  AKIC aspires to be China's leading forum of  Gómez-Dávilism and reactionary intransigence.

My School is HyLite English located on Zhongshan Road in Wuxi, China.

Casa Kaulins is what I call the apartment I (really my wife) owns.

California Villa: The English name of the apartment complex the Kaulins family resides. In Chinese pinyin, it is called Jia Zhou Yang Fang. (加州洋房)

Train-spotting.  There is a high speed train track running near Casa K.  Tony & I, when we have a chance, love to go there to watch the trains go by.

Wuxi (无锡):  The city where Jenny, Tony & I live.  I sometimes call it the Wux.

Hui Shan (惠山): The district of Wuxi in which we live.  Not to be confused with the Hui Shan Mountain that is in Xihui Park. There isn't a mountain anywhere in the district.

Ba Bai Ban (八佰伴): Also known as Wuxi Yao Han, Ba Bai Ban is a famous department store at the corners of Zhongshan Road and Xueqian Road in Downtown Wuxi. AKIC goes there to buy Tomica and Plarail toys for his son Tony.

The Square:  The Hui Shan People's Square is nearby Casa Kaulins.

Central Park:  Hui Shan Central Park is the park closest to Casa Kaulins.  It has a playground area and a small lake with beach.  The park is nothing special.  The water in the lake is unbelievably foul.  The playground's fixtures are falling apart.  The park is big enough that its narrow paths, that I would have thought were meant for pedestrians, have cars being driven on them.  The sight of these cars honking at pedestrians to get out their way disgusts me as much as the park's lake water. 

Hui Shan Wanda (惠山万达): A fancy shopping mall and cinema that is near Casa Kaulins. As of this typing, it is supposed to open June 21.

Century Times Plaza (Tesco) That is the supermarket that is closest to Casa Kaulins.

Yanqiao: a town of Hui Shan District -- not too far from Casa Kaulins.

Qianzhou: an area or a district or a town that borders on Yanqiao.

Jiangyin (江阴): A city or district next to Wuxi.

Meicun:  A suburb of Wuxi city that is far from the downtown.

Shuo Feng:  Ditto!

Ditto!  Agrees with what has been previously said.

To do List At work, even though I am not that busy anymore, I print out a weekly list of things to do everyday. It is a compulsive-obsessive habit that does give my days some form.

LECTOR: I got the idea for Lector, a fictional sparring partner for my blog, from a Hilaire Belloc book I had read recently.

DBs: I will leave it to you to try and figure out what D & B stand for.

School Laptop:  I like to make note of where I make my notes for my weekly blog entry.  One of the four places is my school laptop.  The other three are: my home laptop, my Ipad Mini, and my Ipod Touch.

Dotdotdot: This is my favorite social app. It is a nice way to read long form articles on the Internet that allows you to proclaim to the world what you are reading. I use the app to read the Catechism and the writings of Father Schall. I get a new follower seemingly every day.

Python:  A script-writing computer program I am learning to use.

Atftb:  A thought for the blog.

Brandon, Manitoba, Canada is where my mother Aina lives. 
Winnipeg, Manitoba is where my brother Ron lives.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA is where some of my father's relatives live.

Bao Bao Sleepy:  What Tony calls it when he sleeps in Daddy's arms or on Daddy's lap.

David Warren:  I visit his website about five times a day.  He a fervent Catholic and reactionary.  If I model myself after anyone, it would be him.

Don Colacho:  a.k.a. Nicolás Gómez Dávila. A South American sage.  He died in 1993.  He would have been 100 in 2013.  I read his aphorisms everyday.  He is the consummate reactionary.

Father Schall: I am always reading the site of his which has a huge collection of his writings.

English Corner:  I go to a room and try to talk to a group of Chinese people in English.  Often, they don't understand me and they have nothing to say about anything.

25,602, 602支,61081796711885, 635These are the buses I can take as I go to downtown Wuxi from my home (Casa Kaulins) the Hui Shan New District. I usually take the 602in the morning, transferring to the 79, the 81, or the 85 to get to school. In the evening, I can take the 67, the 79, the 81, the 85 or the 118 to get to the stop where I catch the 635. The 635 is the only bus running to my area of Wuxi after 800 PM. The 81 bus is a double-decker – quite the novelty for a guy who spent a lot of his life in Manitoba. The 25 bus is the cheap 1 RMB that I used to take all the time but now rarely take.

HM:  Harry Moore is from Brisbane Australia.  He had a brief stint as an English teacher at my school.  He sends me emails occasionally.  He was my partner in crime in my notorious Wuxi China Expatdom Blog.  He suffered a stroke recently but he still heroically plugs away.
The Wuxi Peach Maoists: AKIC is proud to be the manager of the official NFL fantasy football team of Wuxi Expats.

About Me (Andis):

I in in China!  

我可以写得,在电脑,中文词。我不可以说的中文。我的发音不好。

我妈妈住在加拿大。

我没有中文的老师。我自己交。我妻子想我不说的中文在我们家。她想我和我们儿子说的英文。她和我们儿子说的中文。

我不喜欢共产主义。

Politically I am Conservative/Reactionary!  Put me down as being more reactionary than conservative. Many of the things worth preserving have been destroyed.

I am Canadian!  Oh, how I love to watch replays of Team Canada beating the Soviets in 1972!

I am Latvian (sort of)! My parents definitely were. I was second generation and grew up speaking English. I can count to ten in the language. I can also say hello and good night in Latvian. But that is about it. I was never in an environment where I could have learned it. I tried to learn in my twenties but couldn't pronounce it to save myself. Reading the Black Book of Communism, I read of a Latvian who played a prominent role in the Cheka. While it is great that Latvia is independent, it is hard to look at what happened during the war without feeling sheepish

I teach English!  Teaching English in China is a free Chinese lesson as it turns out. How often do I hear a word translated that I had come across in my private Chinese studies.
I am not a freak! There are in fact other people named Andis Kaulins in the world. Another Andis Kaulins has a site called andiskaulins.com. I love the fact that reference to AKIC is made in the site's banner. And as far as I know, I am not related to the Andis Kaulins who is domiciled in the USA. [LECTOR: You are a freak!]


I like to Read! Here is what I had been working my way through the past week:
Don Colacho's Aphorisms.  There are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled for myself.  I read ten aphorisms at a time.  I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually -- and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)
Ulysses by James Joyce.  I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through Joyce's hard-to-read novel.  Delaney figures he will have done his last ReJoyce Podcast in about 22 years.  Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast (he completed episode #158 this week), I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book.  I will be finished reading 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 King James Version.   I am reading a chapter a day of the greatest book of all-time. I finished reading Letters to the Romans.

Columns by Father Schall. I have been able to take all his archived writings and place them on the Dotdotdot app.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Like Father Schall's writings, I have been able to place them on the Dotdotdot app.

Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. I wish I could bury myself in this book at the expense of all else.

The Black Book of Communism. A must read, especially for left-wingers. It may smarten some of them up. Most just change their labels calling themselves socialists, democratic socialists, middle-of-the-roaders, and progressives, instead of admitting they were wrong.


I like to take photos
I publish them in the following blogs:  AKIC wordpress , TKIC blogspot, TKIC wordpress and Views of China from Casa Kaulins.

I like to make videos

I like to cut and paste quotations:
Here are the ones I have chosen this week from Don Colacho:
2381 The only possible progress is the internal progress of each individual. [I am making no discernible external progress. Of that there can be no doubt. But it doesn't matter.]
2395 Intelligence isolates; stupidity brings together.
2396 The ability to consume pornography is the distinctive characteristic of the imbecile. [This week, I had decided to read ten Colacho Aphorisms a day, and choose the best one. Tuesday, I couldn't decide which was better: 2395 or 2396.]
2400 What cloisters us gives us the chance to ennoble ourselves. [It is hard for me to feel ennobled after interacting with anyone other than my wife and son. Another benefit of being cloistered is that one doesn't adopt the fashionable stupidities of the day.]
2418 One must live for the moment and for eternity. Not for the disloyalty of time.
2427 The being one finds oneself to be is also a stranger to us. [The beings we interact with are also strangers too, but not as strange as ourselves.]
2439 Avoid repeating a word is the favorite rule of rhetoric of one who does not know how to write. [I don't know how to write; and the more I try to and the more I read, the less I realize that I do know. And that rule, that Colacho mentions, is one that I have tried to follow often. I can see now why it isn't a good rule, it encourages pretentious sort of writing, use of jargon, and using words incorrectly.]
2444 The fool does not concede superiority except to one who exhibits idiotic refinements. [Ha! So true!]


Here are two passages from Saint Paul to his epistle to the Romans:

  1. Be not wise in your own conceits.
  2. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.

I was slow on the uptake in understanding Chinese communism’s awfulness. I’d been a lefty in my student days without knowing anything much about China. [My one problem with this quote is that he modifies communism with Chinese. Aren't all communisms, whether Cuban, Russian, or Cambodian awful?]

the disconcerting barrenness of the Chinese monumental landscape cannot be read simply as a consequence of the chaotic years of the Maoist period. It is a feature much more permanent and deep—and it had already struck Western travelers in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. [That's why China is a pile of rubble and will always be a pile of rubble. It is part of the Chinese character to not like old stuff.]

I like to keep a journal of my daily activities and any thoughts that occur to me.
[This journal records the events that I can talk about. In fact, a lot happens that I can't talk about, though I try to allude to these happenings with my thoughts which I will record in this journal. As well, I don't blog about people I happen to know. I scrupulously try to avoid mentioning names, except if I happen to have something good to say about them. [LECTOR: You rarely have anything good to say about people, I notice. ANDIS: Uh-huh!]]

Monday [June 17]
I don't work today & Tony goes to school, but I must be on my toes all the same. Jenny isn't about to let me laze about the house, and I have got some things I would like to do like study Chinese, read Pickwick Papers, do some Python programming, watch Game of Thrones, and blog of course.

Last night, I slapped together a video which I put on Youtube and Youku. In the ten hours, it has been on the 'net, The Bridge to Qianzhou has garnered about ten views. I have actually had a couple of videos get over a thousand views on Youku: Tony and his Toys and The Greatest Comeback in Toy Train History.

I am a bit of a tweetybird. That is, I do tweet on Twitter. Anytime, I make an entry to a wordpress blog, a tweet is produced. My tweeter name is wuxiandis.

I am also on Facebook. Look for Andis Edmunds Kaulins if you want to friend me. Again, anytime I make an entry to my wordpress blog, the fact of the publishing is announced on Facebook. I may have a hundred friends of course I did go through a process of de-friending a bunch of Wuxi Expats.



Tuesday [June 18]
[Home Laptop]
I work today 1300 to 2100.

The temperatures outside are in the mid-thirties. It is unbearably humid. Wuxi carpetbaggers -- I hesitate to call them Wuxi Expats – leave Wuxi at this time of year. I don't have a choice and so I am stuck here, but damn those who don't stick around and yet claim to be Wuxi Expats – you are nothing but opportunistic carpetbaggers!

Tony comes home from school yesterday and immediately plays with his toy cars and firetrucks, parking them in nice lineups, as those who may follow his two photo blogs may know.

Yesterday, I stayed at home, trying to not sweat. I watched a few episodes of the second season of the Game of Thrones. They finally introduced a black character – something which the first season lacked. There were also a bunch of butch lesbians introduced as well. The characters are portrayed from a modern perspective.

BTW, I have added a new feature to TKIC Blogspot. Tony says the darnedest things.

I was told that were beavers in Jiangsu – that is that dam-building creature that is a symbol of Canada and featured on the Canadian five-cent coin. There may be some now in Jiangsu, but they are very rare.

A weasel was roaming the first floor of the school last week. These longish squirrel-like creatures are not an uncommon sight in the Wux.

[School Laptop]
My wife had watched Season One of Game of Thrones but hadn't actually seen the climactic scene with the nude woman and the three dragons. That scene had been censored on the Chinese website where my wife had been watching the series. I have complained about the nudity and the sex in the series, but that doesn't mean I support the censorship or think of myself as a prude. My complaint has been that the nudity and the sex really don't advance the plot – the explicit scenes are there because of some formula it seems to me. Sex having been around for as long as man has, there isn't much you can do with it after awhile, except try to pile outlandish upon outlandish so that you are left with nothing but perversions to show. Sex is a small part of the human drama and yet it has been turned into a God.

The only thing that can be said for the Wuxi heat is that woman are better to look at, as they wear less clothing and their curves really show up.

To be with the Moderns, you have to give softballish advice that seems utterly pointless. What should often be said to people these days is this: “You are a knucklehead who must change his ways!” This is a harsh thing to say, but in many cases it is true and the only thing that can be said. There is no point in trying to sugar coat things so that people's self-esteem is not damaged. The fact of the matter is that most people's existences don't matter in this life – they just aren't important as individuals to very many people except hopefully their parents and friends. Why should you be told that you are appreciated when you are just a body. Why will being lied to really change things.

Better for them to know that they have souls and they better look after them. If they don't realize this, they can't be helped, only prayed for.

The people who think there are too many people in the world, should begin by criticizing their parents for having ever brought them into the world.

The orifice is air-conditioned. It is okay for now but what will it mean later when I get into the harsh heat?

Wednesday [June 19]
[School Laptop]
I work 1300 to 2100. I got to school at elevenish. It was humid at home and I had things to do and things that I could do, here. [Should I put in the last comma?]

Statement: I don't understand how people can worship something that doesn't exist.

Response: The “I don't understand” in your statement means two things: first, you think you are superior to people who are religious; and secondly, you are very stupid. If you are in fact superior to these people, you should be able to understand them. Obviously, they have faith that what you think doesn't exist does. Best for you to say you don't think God exists, and leave it at that. Your conceit belies your stupidity. [LECTOR: That last sentence is true of you as well. ANDIS: No doubt.]

I just taught a student (female) who is a pitcher, that be a baseball pitcher, at some sort of sports school. She said her school is connected to MLB. She couldn't tell me who her favorite baseball player or team was, however. [My favorite player was Gary Carter. I couldn't tell you who I currently like. My favorite teams were the Expos, the Mariners, and the Jays at times. I couldn't tell you which team I like now. More than anything, I don't like it when the Rays, the Marlins, or the Diamondbacks do well.]


Thursday [June 20]
[School Laptop]
I work 1000 to 2100 today

I had the 早晨全餐 (big breakfast) at McDonald’s this morning. It cost me 22 rmb, up from the 21.5 rmb that it was last week.

Oh yes. The pinyin for the big breakfast word is zao chen quan can.

No thoughts to type in this blog early in the morning.

I will be doing an SPC on Art this afternoon. Not Art Linkletter or Art Garfunkel but the Art that is contained in the word Artifice. [I was thinking to take the photos I was using for the class and putting them in my teaching English blog, but I thought better of it.]

I noticed a lot of teenagers on buses and at McDonald's – I normally wouldn't see any. It must mean that their summer vacations are beginning.

Another slow day at school. Nothing to blog about.

One day, I will become social again. Just not today. I keep hearing stories of how fucked the world is, and people are becoming more barbaric. Any interactions I have only seem to confirm this, and I feel naïve to the point of imbecility of actually seeing what others are up to.

Later, in the evening today, I will teach a class about culture. It is a big word, I will tell them, and I will use it in many ways.

The Stanley Cup Final is tied at two games a piece. I don't know who I would like to see win it. Both the Black Hawks and the Bruins would be aesthetically fine looking champions I think. Maybe the series goes to seven with the final game going to overtime. That would be cool.

I was all sore after doing my afternoon SPC which was about art.

Would it be better if I tried to be a stand-up comedian than an English teacher? I always have to restrain myself in an English class because I have to think about whether the students will understand me or not. Of course, if I was talking to an English speaking audience, they would understand me which would be a worse thing.

I am watching the sixth episode of the second season of Game of Thrones.

Friday [June 21]
[School Laptop]
I work 1100 to 2100. I get to school at 910. [LECTOR: Why? ANDIS: What else am I going to do? LECTOR: Does it matter? ANDIS: To me, yes. In the big scheme of things, no.]

We are religious animals. Man, that is. It is part of our nature. That is why I think that to be an avowed atheist is perverse. Atheism is an inclination we have, like to murder and to steal. If we give in to all our inclinations, we become perverse. And we worship even when we think we don't. We just worship different Gods. In China, they tried to make a God of Chairman Mao. It didn't work out for them, so now they worship money.

The Hui Shan Wanda Plaza, a big luxurious shopping mall has its grand opening today. Because I am downtown I won't be going. I don't plan to go there tomorrow or the day after that either. It will be crowded I imagine, and crowds destroy the purpose of anything they converge on.

The strange thing is that there is another shopping mall in the area that has been under construction for all the time I have been going to Casa Kaulins. I figure this mall has been under construction for seven years. In an age where people prefer to shop on taobao and not in shops and stores, you have to wonder if this mall, whenever it is finished being constructed, will be needed.

I just opened an email from Taki's magazine. John Derbyshire has an article entitled the Man who blew the lid off Maoism.

Peasant types that I had seen in my wife's home village. Some of them had shrines of Chairman Mao in their homes. How much better off they would have been to have worshiped more traditional ones.

Saturday[June 22]
[Home Laptop]
I am not working today. My vacation days begin.

There were a lot of people at the opening of the Hui Shan Wanda Plaza. So, I was told by my wife and my 635 bus companion.

What to do today? I don't know.

Sunday [June 23]
[Home Laptop]
I don't work today. It is the second of period of days off and vacation time taken. Today is really just my day off. I have a vague plan to go to the Wanda today, but given how the place is so crowded for its opening weekend, I may not bother. Tony however wants to go. I have found out, by asking students who are parents children of similar ages, that children love crowds but their parents don't.

If yesterday is any indication, this vacation will be boring in the doing and then in the retelling. I found myself having to sit around while Tony played with my Ipad. I found myself doing a lot of waiting whether it be for a bus to come, for a restaurant to open, or for one of the other two members of Canadian-Chinese-Latvian Family Kaulins to finish what they were doing. I found myself drifting aimlessly in a shopping area. I found myself sitting in a room with a crowd of screaming parents and screaming children. Tony goes back to school on Monday so I will have time to work on my projects, but I won't be going anywhere. Next Saturday, I will attending a performance of Tony's dance class. I had been hoping to spent the weekend in Shanghai, so when my wife asked me if I thought it was a good idea to attend, I started to pout. [LECTOR: You are a bad selfish parent! ANDIS: No! Children performing is an awful thing to behold.]

Yesterday, I didn't get a chance to watch an episode of Game of Thrones.

Today, I finished watching the ninth episode of the second season.

Yesterday, I started reading the Black Book of Communism. I then took a look at a thing and wanted to spit. I wish that there was a symbol of China that is universally recognized and has nothing to do with the party!

Yesterday and today, I took a lot of photos for my new blog. It was annoying process because when you take the time to take a photo, nothing much of interest happens outside the apartment. When something interesting does happen, it happens so quickly that it is too late to bring out a camera.

I saw four people riding an ebike: two adult woman with two small children squeezed in-between. I couldn't take a photo.

I hear thunder – 830 am.

I won't go to Wanda today. It is just a shopping mall. Sure, it has a cinema, but it is one that will have Chinese audiences who don't know how to behave in cinemas.

I phoned my Mom last night. She tells me that there is heavy rain in Brandon, and that the downtown of Calgary is flooded so that 100,000 people have to be evacuated. Aunt Dzidra, her older sister, hangs in there at the hospital. Dzidra suffers from pancreatic cancer. Uncle Red, her one brother, got back from the hospital and has been with equipped with a walker to get around.

My wife was visibly angry when she heard the story of two children in Nanjing, two and six years of age, who had been ignored by their parents and so died of starvation. The parents were drug addicts – the lowest of the low. My first reaction was to tell her that stories like this are not uncommon in the West. I realized that it was a good thing that I had stayed away from bars for these negligent parents are the sort of people you will encounter in bars. I now think about why my wife took the news so personal – she was pawned off by her natural parents because she the third girl they had had. Furthermore, the society she grew up in often teased her for being an unwanted child. [LECTOR: Do you think the case of the two parents is an argument for the necessity of abortion. ANDIS: WTF are you saying? LECTOR: It would have been better that these children hadn't been born for they suffered so much. ANDIS: It would have been better if the parents had lived in a culture that valued children and not saw them as a burden.]

I don't think China has too many people, even though I hate crowds of Chinese and try to avoid them. I tell the students that China could have two billion people no problem. (And BTW, how many people are there really in China? How can they make an actual count when it is just so easy for many to hide from the counters.) Despite the large amount of people here, I do find I have plenty of space to be solitary here. I can often be by myself for hours on end.

To say there are too many people in the world is barbaric, selfish, inhumane and fascist. People, who accept this idea that there are too many people, do so unthinkingly. I have come to the realization that people who really believe this line and devote their lives to are power-seeking individuals who want to be part of a totalitarian political system. Nothing could be better for a bureaucratic organization to advance its aims, to gain more power than to advance the notion that the Earth has too many humans. It is a way of justifying murder whether through abortion or genocides based on racial or class hatred.

What was the difference between the genocides of the Nazis and the Leftists? The Nazis exterminated people because of their racial or physical status. The Leftists slaughtered people because of their class or their thoughts. Really, what was the difference?

A thought I should have recorded earlier in the week after I had done an English Topic with the topic of Art. I had shown the students a photo of graffiti. I said it wasn't art because it was vandalism and thus not truly beautiful. I then thought this: tattoos aren't art either for like graffiti, they are vandalism, in fact a vandalism of the body.

I made a cameo appearance in two of my blogs. [Mom says I have too many blogs.]

The Lanesters of Game of Thrones are like the Clintons, I think.  Jamie Lanester and his sister to be exact. An incestuous relationship based on a desire for power. Perhaps, Bill and Hilary are siblings.

Went to
外婆家 on Saturday.  That be the Grandma's Restaurant that is in the Nanchang Market area. We went there at 345 pm and waited at seats by the reception desk till the restaurant opened at 430.

I don't use my mobile phone much.  Good thing:  those who do, strut arrogantly, their lips pouting with a sense of a superiority and disdainfulness.

I saw a VW Beetle ride in front of Casa Kaulins. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take a photo.


Tony dropped Jenny's Ipad. He is trouble for awhile. He will be forced to watch television instead of playing with the computer or the laptop.
[LECTOR: Do you think anyone reads this blog? You only had 39 views of last week's entry. Why do you spend so much time on something that yields no benefit and if anything, only re-enforces the fact that you are one lonely and isolated person? ANDIS: I will let you have the last word. LECTOR: Thanks! ANDIS: You are welcome. LECTOR: Well then! Let me have the last word!!! ANDIS: Okay..... oops. LECTOR: No one reads your fucking blog!!!]