The edtion for AKIC's Weekend

Fifteen hours a day

One my students works at a Textile factory.  He tells me that he and the workers there will be putting in fifteen hour days, before the Spring Festival, as they try to fill an increase in orders from America.

 

I asked him if he worried about quality issues with workers putting in such long days.  He say what could they do?  The orders had to be filled.

 

I asked if the workers got paid for the overtime.  He told they would get paid a little more, but not the double pay that the central government dictated.  It seems that the local governments can ignore the central government when circumstances and local forces demand it.

 

Wait! Wait! Wait!

Again, Tony can say the words but I don't think he knows what they mean.  He learned it from his parents' constant use of the word around him.  Right now, he seems to think that "wait" means "open the fridge" and "tie your shoes".

 

Music DVDs

Tony can indicate the DVDs he wants to watch.  He can say "Go-Go", "Postman Pat", "Pee Wee", and "Peter Pan".  If he wants to watch one of my music DVDs, he will point to the area I store them.  (I put them out of his reach to prevent his mishandling of them -- his DVDs all seem to end up on the floor.)

 

He likes watching Morrissey videos -- disturbing for me.

 

Work on the Subway

Work on the first line of the Wuxi Subway has begun in full earnest, as the expression goes.  On my commute to work, I can see the roads and sidewalks being torn and dug up.

 

Eighteen Degrees!  Bah!!

I am not happy about the temperature going up to eighteen degrees today.  You can call me crazy, but I am dressed for minus five degrees, so any increase in the temperature is uncomfortable for me.  I prefer the temperature to be consistent.  I hate surprises.  And this temperature increase is only a spike.  The temperature will go back down in a few days.

Things I would like to see.

Wishes

I would like to see a Jets-Vikings Super Bowl, and a Republican win that special senate election in Massachusetts.  I know the chances are against it but yet the chances are better than one would have thought a month ago for both scenarios.

 

Training

I got to be on my best behavior today.  Now, I should be on my best behavior every day, but things seem to go in cycles for me.  Today, I have a new trainer coming in for training which is why I feel I have to be better today than other days.

 

Perish the thought.

 

 

It is my Friday; not yours.

My office is blessed by a Monk

Sunday afternoon, a Buddhist Monk walked around the school throwing rice everywhere.  I suppose it was a way of blessing the school or something.  I made sure he threw rice in my office.

 

The cynical among us questioned why they needed to do that.  I didn't mind it.  It nice to see some belief in the supernatural in this country which has hitherto been too soulless for its' own good.

 

Tony puts shoes in sofa cushion

Tony greeted me as I arrived home Sunday evening wearing only one shoe.  It is the way with toddlers that their shoes are always coming off and they seem nonplussed that they only have one shoe.  I looked for the other shoe for about thirty minutes before I discovered that he had put the shoe in a sofa cushion.  He loves to zip and unzip the cushion case.  And he was playing with the cushion, I recall, when I got through the door....

 

Tuesday and Wednesday are my Weekend, almost.

It would be a weekend for me except for the fact that I am doing three classes of overtime on Tuesday night.

 

Wuxi Tony Update #514: Glad to have Tony

The AKIC Wuxi Sunday Edition

No! No! No!

Tony knows how to say "no!".  He has picked it up because his parents say it to him all the time.  Problem is, though, that he doesn't know what it means.

 

The Frankfurt School

The secret of happiness is gratitude.  Figure that out, and most Left Wing philosophies quickly appear fraudulent.

 

I was listening to a BBC podcast for a show called In Our Time.  It is hosted by Melvyn Bragg.  The topic for the show I was listening to was the Frankfurt School -- a group of Left Wing intellectuals who lived in between-war Germany, 1940s America, and then finally post-war Germany.

 

I try my best to make a coherent critique of what I heard.  But, it won't be easy because I don't think the ideas presented were coherent.  I will try to recap, as best I can, in no particular order, some of the silly ideas I heard.

 

This Frankfurt group couldn't understand why there wasn't a revolution in Germany as there had been in Russia in 1917.  They thought by the laws of history that a revolution in Germany was inevitable.  They didn't understand that what had happened in Russia was that a particularly thuggish group was able to walk into a power vacuum -- there were no masses revolting demanding Socialism.

 

This Frankfurt group, trying to understand why revolution never happened in Germany, took some notions from Marx and Freud to explain it.  I won't go into detail about the notions but the conclusions were that the masses were "obtuse".  They were too stupid and were being duped, and so they didn't know that they should have been more unhappy than they were.

The Frankfurt Group rationalized the fact that their personal behaviour (they all seem to benefit from the Capitalist system) contradicted their professed disregard of materialism by saying that the Capitalist system had so co-opted everyone that until there was a complete change, no one had to change.  Thus, they could escape the Nazi persecutions by going to an America which they hated.  Talk about your lack of gratitude!

And what was that they wanted to by properly happy and unhappy about?  Who can say?  Tripe like that show shows why I am correct in my belief that the BBC and CBC (Canada's BBC) need not be funded by taxpayers.

 

New Shoes

We received the first pair of shoes ordered for me via Internet yesterday.  The shoes are ugly -- black and gold with Houston Rocket like designs.  The shoes fit as is to be expected with all shoes I buy  -- one of the shoes fits fine, the other is a little tight.  They are size 47.

 

 Sports Car Marriage Procession?

It could very well have been a publicity stunt.  It could have been a real marriage procession -- I did see a camera man in one of the procession cars taking video (as you would see in more simple Chinese weddings).  But what I definitely saw was a procession of 20 very expensive sports cars -- Porsche's, Audi's, and Lamborghini's -- on Zhongshan Road Sunday Morning.  Most of them had just married signs on their bumpers.  The procession attracted much attention -- people took photos.  The procession had me marvel at the irony of seeing such conspicuous material display in a country that still calls itself a People's Republic.

The edition for your weekend!

Your Weekend

So it is your weekend.  Set to go on a weekend getaway?  Have a party to go to?  Time to have a life you say?

 

Live every moment!  What is the matter with you?

 

Haiti Reaction

The students seem to have a dim awareness of the earthquake in Haiti, but the catastrophic nature of it hasn't gotten them to talk.  The subject of Haiti for me becomes a lecture -- not good.

 

Tony's moving

Tony, yesterday, was moving all his toy cars and trucks from the living room to under the old crib in the second bedroom.  Jenny tells me that Tony took each toy individually to the bedroom, moved the crib aside, laid down the toy, pushed the crib back in place, and then returned to pick up another toy and repeat the process.  There were about ten toys under the crib when I got home last night.

 

Tony notices Fireworks

Tony's first reaction to fireworks was fear.  It later became indifference.  But now, my wife tells me, Tony finds them interesting.  Last night, he ran to the window to watch a display.  He will have a lot to watch next month....

 

Google and China

Seablogger has this entry about Google and China.  One of the co-founders of Google was born in the Soviet Union, so he should have been under no illusions about his dealings with the Chinese.  You can also find out about China's most popular blogger.

 

I will have to find out if the students know about Han Han.

 

Nothing to do during the Spring Festival

Sadly, that is the complaint of some foreigners (laowai) about being in China during the Spring Festival.  Thankfully, that is not mine.  I have a million ways to occupy myself.

 

Ordering Shoes on the Internet

Nothing, I think, could be more problematic than ordering shoes on the Internet, but that is what Jenny did for me yesterday.  It seems that it is only on the Internet that I can find shoes that are my size: 46 and 47.  In Wuxi, all stores don't stock larger than 44.  The prices of the shoes seem reasonable:  my wife ordered two pairs for me for about 230 rmb.  But, the proof will be in the pudding.

 

Workers already at it

The apartment decoration process continues on the floor above us.  Hopefully, they will be finished in a month or so before the Spring Festival.  Anyway, as I type this Saturday morning at 730 a.m., I can hear them starting to work.

Miep Gies R.I.P.

Who is Miep Gies? 

She is the Miep in Anne Frank's diary, the gentile friend who helped hide the Jewish family and four of their friends for more than two years in the small attic apartment in Amsterdam. She is the woman who regularly bought groceries and supplies to keep all of them alive and who, along with her husband, lived every day in fear that the Nazis would discover what they were doing.

So, let us pause for a moment and recall the extraordinary life of Miep Gies, who died Monday at the age of 100.

Wuxi Tony Update #513: The corridor of a White Elephant

760,000 views on my Youtube channel.

Thank you very much!

Quotes and Links: the mid January 2010 edition.

From The Journey to the West

"Brother Li," said Zhang Shao, "it seems to me that people who struggle for fame kill themselves for it; those who compete for profit die for it; those who accept honors sleep with a tiger in their arms; and those who receive imperial favours walk around with snakes in their sleeves. Taking all in all, we are much better off living free among our clear waters and blue hills: we delight in our poverty and follow our destinies."

 

Yiddish Proverb

You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails."

Obama's Legacy as a Community Organizer in Chicago

In fact, "there is zero legacy from when Obama was here,"

What was Obama's solution at the time to Chicago's crime problems?

Obama attacks the Christian Right and the Republican Congress for "hijack[ing] the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility." Yeah, sure, family values are fine, he says, but what about "collective action . . . collective institutions and organizations"? Let's take "these same values that are encouraged within our families," he urges, "and apply them to a larger society."

Socialism.

David Warren on Ice Hockey and Effeminacy

David Warren, being Canadian and Catholic, I am interested in his opinions of the game of Ice Hockey.  In the article linked above, he abhors the attempts to abolish fighting and brawling from Hockey.  He says:  We need to appreciate the greater evil presented by the intrusion of effeminacy into what is essentially a man's game.  

His view of Hockey in general is appreciative and realistic:

Hockey is itself a surrogate for warfare, and if you doubt it for a moment, listen to the crowd. (Including the women. Especially the women.) And while I might think professional sports in general a circus for the masses, and a lure into couch potatodom -- real men don't watch, they play -- hockey in particular has become valuable as a museum exhibit of many forgotten virtues.

He goes on to relate the sport to what as happened to Airport Security -- a further example of effeminacy of society in general.

I wish he could have commented on the use of helmets in the game.  Hockey, I feel, was a much better sport, when they didn't wear helmets and those ugly wire-caged goalie masks.  While the players are faster and stronger today, they are so in all sports.  In American football with all its padded equipment, there are more injuries than say rugby where they wear practically no equipment.  The game has become less about stick-handling and more about tackling -- offensive skill and initiative doesn't seem to get rewarded.

I further wish the institution of the bench-clearing brawl was, instead of being abolished, added to other endeavors like politics, synchronized swimming, and ping-pong.  The brawls in Taiwan are an argument for democracy.  Parliament should be civil war for the masses instead of the childish name-calling and government evasiveness it has become.  I, for one, would respect Stephen Harper more if he had socked that Iggy guy in the jaw a few times.  To have seen some Reform members duking it out with the NDP caucus would have been a great service for the country.  Parties like the NDP and politicians like Obama and Trudeau can only flourish in time of effeminacy.