Wuxi Tony Update #367: Tony wanders around an electronics market in Wuxi, China.

This video was taken on Wednesday.

Studio Photos of Tony

The photos, the K family posed for at the end of last month, were ready for pickup yesterday. I will be publishing them to this site over the next few days. Below, are the photos taken of Tony. He is looking cute even after having eaten from the tree of knowledge.

Long Day.

Wednesday, my only day off this week, was a long one.  I have a lot to put on the blog from this day.  But it being Wednesday night, I don't feel up to it.  Suffice to say, I have two WTU's, studio portrait photos, and photos taken on the Qingming Bridge & Ancient Canal Cruisde to show you.  You will seem them eventually.  The first thing to be uploaded will be the videos to youku.com

People's Hospital #7

• I went to do a demo class at a company called Areva.  To get there from downtown, a driver took us (that be Summer, Lisa, and me) past Mei Yuan Park not too far from Taihu.  We took a different route on the way back going past a mountain on which Xi Hui Park was on the other side.  It was on the way back that I saw a complex of buildings about which I had to ask was their purpose.  I thought I was looking at a school.  My question caused giggles from the female passengers.  "Have you heard of Hospital Number Seven?" they asked.  I replied "Have I!  It is the hospital for crazy people and where the KoW spent some down time in his first years in Wuxi!"  They then pointed out a crematorium that was across the street.  "Is that smoke coming from the chimney, burning bodies?" I asked.  "Yes" they replied, and I thought to myself, the crematorium is across from the mental health hospital - you can go crazy and die there if you want.
• If Chuck Norris came to Wuxi, all children would be named after him, even the girls and the children whom he didn't conceive.
• If Chuck Norris came to Wuxi, Chairman Mao would be posthumously called Chuck Norris I.  The Chairman would hit hereto be referred to as Chuck Mao.
• If Chuck Norris came to Wuxi in summer, the sun would retreat a bit making the weather much more tolerable.
• Tony knows the meaning of the word "dance".
• Wuxi has an aquarium.  I never knew but an email correspondent told me it be so.  Jenny just confirmed it.  Admission is 80 rmb for Adults.
• I will finish A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.  It has already given me a working title for a WTU:  A Latvian Canadian in Little Emperor Jia Le's Court.
• I managed to make it home tonight before my electric bike ran out of juice and it started to rain.
• I took Tony for a walk Tuesday evening.  He played on the swing.  I am becoming more confident of his ability to hold on and so have been pushing harder and higher and faster. 
•  I have just introduced Tony to the joys of throwing stones in water.  Tonight, I went searching for rocks to throw in the canal near our apartment.  Having found one and letting Tony throw it in so he could laugh at the resulting plop, I saw Tony immediately run to the spot I had found a rock so he could find more.

What if Chuck Norris came to Wuxi? A Thought Experiment.

What would happen if Chuck Norris, noted political columnist, movie actor, and all around he-man came to Wuxi?  A question like this is not simple to answer, it would require feats of human thought similar to scope to the feats of strength that Chuck Norris has performed and is capable of.  So expect much speculation about this question from AKIC over the next few decades.

 

So, off the top of my head, here are a few things that would happen if Chuck Norris came to Wuxi:

 

• Wuxi, China would instantly adopt the three child policy.
• The moderator of http://wuxiguide.net and Chuck Norris would engage in a belching contest.
• The moderator of http://wuxilife.com and all his buddies would be drank under the table by Chuck Norris in a drinking contest.
• We would all be living in the Chuck Norris Dynasty.
• Wuxi would become the capital of the Chinese Republic of Chuck Norris.
• Some of my dumb students would at least learn one sentence:  "Please don't kill me!  Chuck Norris!"
• Wuxi would have to change its' Chinese name from "Without Tin" to "With Steel".
• Wuxi Life Magazine would profile only one Wuxi Expat:  Chuck Norris.
• The moderator of http://wuxiguide.net  would be calling himself the Queen of Wuxi.
• The current Chinese government would give Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan to Chuck Norris in hopes of appeasing him.
• The Solar Eclipse would happen on Friday, July 25 at 730 PM, just after Chuck Norris has finished his dinner.
• The locals would learn how to line up in McDonalds.
• Chinese society would become harmonious alright.
• The Great Wall would be moved to Xihui Park.

Moory Harre. Where are you?

Long time, I heard from you, have not.   Email, please can send?

Henderson Scores for Canada! AKIC Friday!

• Henderson scores for Canada!
• Here is the miracle of all miracles!
• Both the above links depict events that happened in 1972.
• Tony loves to dance.
• Tony was on a boat near Nanchang Temple Market.  My wife wants to take this boat which goes on a one hour cruise around the downtown.  Maybe, Wednesday.
• It is Friday night in AKICistan!
• This Wuxi Expat site seems to be falling in the trap that the other Wuxi Expat site has fallen into.  It is going to be perceived as a Expat site for only certain cliquey portions of the Wuxi Expat community.  Especially if it starts talking about terrorist groups in Ronnie's.
• Search for the Trojan War Part 1  This documentary series is almost as good as Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.  And that is high praise coming form me.  If you are into more historical and literal tv dramas, you can watch The Fall of Eagles or I Claudius.
• Tomorrow afternoon.  Areva!
• The results of the photo shoot, which unfortunately resulted in me losing my keys, are ready for pick up.  You may seem them in this blog or the other or both.
• I have finished reading the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  It is a book I will reread and reread again like Kenneth Clark's Civilisation companion volume, With Charity towards None:  A Fond look at Misanthropy by Florence King, the Holy Bible, and anything by Evelyn Waugh.  Taleb has written the ultimate bullshit detector.
• The fading of Iran from the news seems to be a welcome relief for Obama.  He hopes many will escape the realization that:   The notion that appeasement is the only path to peace has always had great power over the minds of people who lack moral character. Like Neville Chamberlain and all the less famous freely-elected disasters of history, they think they are being very clever, and that they are morally superior to the Churchillian and Reaganite "peace through strength" types.
• "Eternity is in love with the productions of time."
  
  

Sunday Night Whatevers.

• I feel I should be blogging but I don't know why.  I will just type away for a hour and you can judge if anything happened.
• Obama is Forrest Gump with a Thesaurus.  I saw the comparison here.  I rather like it.  You know I agree with it.
• Two great BBC documentary series,  The Search for Troy and Kenneth Clark's Civilisation can be watched at www.youku.com. as well as this rare video.
• The wife bought a third a/c unit for the apartment.  This one is now in the main bedroom.  Only problem is that it took the workers three hours to install and at the end of the process, it was found that the electrical plug-in needed to be repaired.  My wife was pissed.
• I am chicken boy.  See previous entry.
• The VPN program I have on this computer (I am working at home) angers the wife.  She claims it slows down the computer.
• Tony likes dancing.
• Tony seemed to like watch episodes from Pee Wee's Playhouse.  I wonder if Paul Reubens ever went to Never Never land.
• Rare Readers may know that I like to fiddle around with titles.  For example, Tolstoy wrote Peace and War.  DH Lawrence wrote Lovers and Sons.  Orwell wrote 8419 and Farm Animal.  I have been working through Beatles' song titles.  So far, I have come up with: Man Tax, 8 weeks a day, Belle My Michelle, I wanna hand your hold, Madonna Lady (kind of like saying military intelligence),  and USSR in the back.
• It rained heavy at about five this afternoon.  We learned that a lot of builders in China didn't take drainage into account when they constructed their buildings.
• If I am any kind of boy, I guess you can call me Blogging Boy.  Tony I call Poo Boy.  The KoW I call Bullshit Boy.
• The solar eclipse is happening on Wednesday, July 22 at 800 a.m.  I will not be working that day so I will probably sleep in and miss it....   Not!  Instead expect one of the greatest WTU's ever.  And I mean ever.
• I like asking the students when they say never if they mean never, ever.   And if they yes to that, I ask if they mean never, ever, ever.
• The neighbors, I see, have a fridge next to their sofa in the living room of the apartment.  I am thinking to take a photo but the man is in his undershorts.
• On the way to work, when I take the bus, I see this outside poster of Deng Xiaopeng, the great reformer.   It is located in this factory that looks to have been constructed along the lines of worker communes.  Old and decrepit as these factories are, I would have to say they probably were built as communal places.
• Could I live in this country without the Internet? I doubt it.
• Reading the Black Swan book has provided me with some support to my contention that the Nobel Prize Committee is screwy.  Taleb, who does knock down Economics several pegs as a science, sees the fact that there is a Nobel Prize for Economic Science as a vain attempt on the part of Economists to make their profession have the certainty and scientific feel of Physics.  Many of the Nobel Prize winning Economists says Taleb are frauds (except for a few like Hayek).  In the Black Swan, Taleb  listed a few Nobel Prize winning Economists who engaged in the filthy habit of Econometrics on Gaussian terms.  I believe that one Taleb  listed was responsible for the horrible IS-LM curve, an attempt to graphically present Keynes's General Theory.  Whether I am correct in this assertion or not, the economist Taleb mentioned did managed to destroy the basis of Keynesian Economics which employed, Taleb said, an understanding of uncertainty.
• I always see people who should know better.  Every time I look in the mirror I see one as well.
• There is no bread and sugar in the house.  And there is nowhere close I can go to buy some.  I will just have to do without.
• The runner of this site seems overly obsessed with nationalities.  He has proclaimed the universal ugly tourist is no longer American but French.  I suppose he had to do after I pointed out to him that he definitely was an anti-American.  He tried to use the Ernst Zundel free speech defence to cover the fact.
• Does hanging out with people and Expats from all over the world make one more cosmopolitan or wise or something?  I suppose it depends on the people you hang with.  Many Expats assume they are world wise or something and so a joy for everyone else to behold... not.  I think it would be better to hang with a bunch of good sorts at something like a monastery than to hang with self-proclaimed wise guys convinced beyond doubt of their ineffable worldliness and big view.  All that this travel to another continent has taught me is that the world is full of assholes.
• I look at three Micheal Crichton novels with eager anticipation.
• As for students, I prefer teaching girls to boys.  Girls are just better behaved and make for better students.
• Says Taleb, if one has to resort to Ad Hominem attacks, one should realize that one is winning the argument.  One should in fact try to be attacked Ad Hominemly as much as possible, especially when make assertions of facts and logic.
• I haven't looked at the Papal Encyclical yet.

I am Chicken Boy!

I was doing a conversation class about food, and was trying to be jocular and affable with the young male students, of whom we have many in the Summer.  Trying to achieve jocularity and affability, I suddenly got it into my head to call the students "_____ boy.".  "So you like pork eh?  Okay.  You must be pork boy! 

 

 I had already called some of the kids: banana boy, apple boy, McDonald's boy, ice cream boy, egg boy, egg man,  broccoli boy, cauliflower boy, and yogurt boy when I got around to talking about meat.  "What meat do you like?" I asked one of the male middle-school students.  He replied "Oh!  I am chicken boy!" getting laughs from his buddies, the rest of the class, and me.