Wuxi Tony Update #376: Corner Store

I took this short video as we walked to have lunch at a small restaurant near our apartment.

Last minute blogging before my work week begins...

• Wednesday was a hang-out-around the house day.  It was cloudy and thunder could be heard, although there wasn't that much rain.  Still it was enough to make me feel lethargic, and not do more than I had to. 
• I did take Tony for one bike ride and later, a walk.  We scooted to the newly opened branch of the bank at which my salary is deposited.  Tony actually did not run away as I was doing some transaction on an ATM.  It was fortunate for me in these circumstances that Tony has an interest in ATMs - he likes things that you have to press buttons to operate. 
• The walk with Tony in the afternoon just around the complex was very enjoyable.  Tony has developed a liking for throwing things in water.  Imitating me, he looks about the apartment grounds for stones to throw in the fountain pools as well as in the canal, that runs through the center of the apartment complex.  We had a fun session of jumping off a short  20 inch high embankment.  I would hold Tony by the hands and count to three at which time, Tony would jump onto the ground even tumbling at times but laughing all the while.  We encountered a grandfather with seven-year old grandson about to go on a bike ride.  I was with my limited grasp of Chinese able to ascertain that he had been a math teacher.  I told him, in Chinese, our basic details like my being Tony's father, his mother being Chinese, and Tony being nearly two years old.  I just rattled off this information even if I wasn't sure what he was asking.  When I told him I was from Canada, he kept saying the Chinese word for "cold" a lot.
• Other than this, I can say I have nearly finished my power-reading of Micheal Crichton's Timeline.  But when I say power-reading, you must understand that Tony constantly interrupts.  In a world without Tony, I would have finished the novel in one or two days.  With Tony, it is saying something if I can finish a novel in a week.
• Here is another article on the wild randomness a la The Black Swan.  The article asks this question:  How to explain the volatility of prices when production levels remain essentially the same?  Anyone who has studied the Supply and Demand curves at all should know.  The Supply and Demand curves take into account subjectivity of the participants in the market.  And as I can recall Conrad Black saying recently, psychology plays a big part in Economics.  And yet these Nobel-prize-winning financial models didn't predict the financial crisis last year because they seemed to have forgotten that humans and mobs can go irrational en masse.  Thankfully, these financial necromancers have been discredited.  But the damage they have done to Economics' reputation as a legitimate field of study will take years to overcome. 
• Today was a having to find something day for me.
• An image of Obama the Joker.

Two years ago: August 5, 2007

Tony's second birthday will be later this month.  But it also means an anniversary which I hope I never forget to mark.  It was about two years ago that my cousin Gundega died.  Gundega's death will always have a connection for me with Tony's birth because it had been only months before that she had been sending me letters full of advice for Jenny and I about pregnancy.  I hope she is up there somewhere and knows that Tony is a healthy but mischievous boy.

 

Gundega Anklavins R.I.P.

 

This video contains a tribute to Gundega.

Wuxi Tony Update #375: A Latvian Canuck in Emperor Tony's Court.

This Wuxi Tony Update is a tribute to Mark Twain and Michael Crichton.

Links I like.

• The U.S. Federal government is going to subsidize a ten year run of Cirque do Soleil in Los Angeles.  I have always thought that it was stretching it to compare America to the Roman Empire.  But in the days of Obama, the American government is providing circuses.  They provide bread through food stamps and wheat production subsidies.
• Bush is responsible for all of Obama's mistakes.  Why because Obama, nice guy that he is, has understandably gone too far in doing the exact opposite of everything Bush did.  Understand?
• Moderate Islam died in Xinjiang.  in the decisive theaters of foreign policy, the Obama administration has made itself worse than irrelevant. It has become an annoyance.
• Feynman Physics Lectures on Video are freely available here.

Akicistan Forecast: Cloudy with intermittent blogging

• It is Tuesday which means it is really Saturday which means rare AKIC glancers are in Akicistan.
• Much as I like to chronicle the exploits and adventures of the Chinese-Latvian-Canadian Family Kaulins, it does actually mean being away the the said family.  Sometimes, I have to fight the itch to blog and pontificate, and be with them - which is the proper thing to do.  So, a short blog entry today.  Expect intermittent blogging and cloud.
• I have taped or videoed WTU 375.

Monday Morning.

 

• The unusually mild and cloudy weather we have been having in Wuxi continues.  I heard someone say that this Summer has been the most comfortable in memory.
• It is wet outside and so I will be taking the bus to work again. 
• I will be going to buy some eggs this morning.  I will go to the nearest corner store to buy eggs.  I will take a KFC chicken and pick eggs from a unrefrigerated crate.
• Friday, the school will have a field trip.  We will go to Tian Mu Lake near Changzhou.  I will take Tony with me for the benefit of the students who are curious to see him, and for the benefit of my wife who is weary beyond all measure.

Sunday Night at Casa Kaulins

• My son Tony has fallen asleep so, Jenny and I can relax.  Jenny is watching television, the shopping channel of course.  I am surfing and blogging.  I have looked at Seablogger.  I checked out my monthly numbers for this blog and the other.  Traffic for both has been disappointing.  In this case of this blog, being blocked in China has cut my traffic in half.  After having two record months, AKIC blogspot traffic fell to the same levels as last year.  AKIC spaces has seen traffic fall fifty percent since last year.  I attribute that decline to my favouring this blog as well as the fact that not I am circulating much these days in the Wuxi Expat community.  Also, I am just too much into my own things to be of interest to most of them.  Having children is not a life style they are interested in.
• I don't know many details about that Beer Summit that took place at the White House between Obama, Gates, and Officer Crowley.  I did see a picture of Gates at the White House walking with the assistance of a cane.  The whole idea of a Kumbaya get-together brings out the cynic in me, as I am sure it did for many thoughtful observers.  Seeing Gates with a cane, I can't help but think what more of a prick he would be if he had other more serious infirmities, like an amputated leg, or was confined to a wheel chair.  Clearly, the professor is a grievance monger, but the photo of him with the cane was taken to make him appear the victim and somehow magnanimous.  The summit wasn't about stopping racism.  Obama and Gates surely want Crowley to be apologetic and go along with their racialism (race quotas and affirmative action and anti-profiling).  If racism was ended officially, Gates would be out of a job.  (Racism is not a problem in America, so much as Racialism which I define as seeing everything in terms of race without being truly racist.  Although, truly Racism still exists among the race hustlers whose jobs depend on the perception of racism being more wide-spread than it really is)  The other purpose of the summit was to make Obama look like Jimmy Carter brokering an agreement between Sadat and Begin.  Really, a face-saving measure to cover up Obama's racist gaffe at the press conference where he spoke out of his ass, not knowing the facts of the dispute.
• The last class of this day had two students studying in Nanjing.  Asking them if they liked Nanjing, they said didn't, much preferring Wuxi.  Many Chinese prefer their home towns to anywhere else.  Another student in that class had just graduated from a Beijing University.  Her major was International Politics.  She will start a teaching job in a month.  I always feel a slight trepidation about teaching these sorts, as in the back of my mind, I think what a fraud I am.  I am just a guy who was an indifferent student and wasted ten years of his life.
• Sometimes, classes go off on tangents.  In a salon class where the topic was internet dating, I had but one student who told me that he like to talk about military history on the Internet.  He didn't see himself meeting a woman on the Internet who was interested in this.  So, I decided to talk about military history instead of internet daing.  We ended up  briefly talking about WW II, the Korean War, Vietnam's wars against America and China, and the Middle East.  The student had a great knowledge of military hardware and so it was the most interesting class I had in a while.

"We had an accident."

• I got a text message from my wife yesterday saying this.  It was a momentary panic for me till I got all the details.  Thankfully, Jenny and Tony were okay.  What happened was that Jenny was on the electric bike with Tony.  She became distracted for a second and so run into a car that was parked illegally in the bike path.  The bike sustained superficial damage, but can be driven as always.
• Meanwhile my mobile phone is slowly giving up the ghost.  Yesterday morning, I found that the display would refresh itself every four,five seconds and so using the phone keyboard was a slow process:  punch a key and wait three seconds for the result to show on the screen.  On a budget, I may have to put up with the inconvenience for a month or so.
• I am power-reading Micheal Crichton's Timeline.  It is a gripping thriller but is filled with two dimensional characters.  Crichton fills his novels with interesting historical and scientific information.  Timeline focuses on Quantum theory and medieval history.
• "Monkeys give one-word answers."  Should I be saying that?