AKIC Blog Entry for March 11 to March 17, 2013

Gratitude: I am thankful for the good health I have had. I am thankful I have a wife who tells like it is about me, but loves me just the same.

Acknowledgment: As my wife says, Tony & I are big wimps. (Read what happened on Sunday, the 17th)

Request: Pray for my friend Harry Moore, my occasional partner in crime at the WCE Blog. (He writes the funny bits in the blog – contrasting with my lame attempts at satire.) He suffered a stroke last week. You can email him with your best wishes at harry.m50@gmail.com.

The AKIC Week in Brief: The world has a new Pope who is Catholic and intends to keep his church Catholic. Google Reader, a daily part of my life for the past few years, is being retired. My friend HM had a stroke. Another week of my life spent as a homebody in China was dull but still well-worth living even if it didn't give me much to blog about.

What AKIC Is Reading this Week

• Don Colacho's Aphorisms: there are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled 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 goes through Joyce's hard-to-read novel. Delaney is making the novel more understandable and enjoyable. Delaney figures he will do his last ReJoyce Podcast in 22 years. Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast, I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book. I will be finished it, I figure, in the year.

• The Holy Bible King James Version. The Gospels According to Saint Mark. I have been reading the book, all the while – the KJV that is.

• The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. Finished. An adventure set in the Middle Ages. There is more to Doyle than Sherlock Holmes. This Doyle novel is another thrilling page-turner.

• The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Finished. A weighty book that was a translation. I got a little wisdom out of it. Or should I say I got little wisdom out of it?

• Penrod by Booth Tarkington. Finished. This book, which must have been a inspiration for the Little Rascals or Our Gang serials, has some really funny and politically-incorrect bits. But it is so well-written and full of wisdom, that it must be read. It shows childhood at its roughest and most tumble-some. I don't think kids are allowed to live as children did a hundred years ago which is about when this book was written. Here are a few of the many passages I that I found to be laugh-out-loud-funny:

  {Penrod's Aunt} When Penrod grows up he'll be just the same as he is now, except that whenever he does what he wants to do he'll tell himself and other people a little story about it to make his reason for doing it seem nice and pretty and noble."
  "No, I won't!" said Penrod suddenly."

  Also: He tried to climb higher, but began to slip downward, his exertions causing damage to his apparel. A button flew into the air, and his knickerbockers and his waistband severed relations.

  And also: Certumly, people gotta marry. Everybody. You don't know anybody over twenty years old that isn't married—except maybe teachers.

• The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huzinga. The past is another place as this book clearly shows.

• The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare. Father Schall writes somewhere on his site, that he knew a man who a point of reading the entire works of Shakespeare every year. I wish I could do that, but it will suffice for me to read the Great Bard every fourth or fifth book I do read.

• Flashman and the Dragon by George MacDonald Fraser. I have read both Peter Hitchens & John Derbyshire praise this series of novels. The novel am reading now, is apparently the 8^th of the series. It is set in China at the time of the Taiping Rebellion. So far, the novel is a fun way to learn some history. Like James Bond, Flashy meets many beautiful women and has adventures.

This Week's Don Colacho Quotes

• 1435 Nothing is more unforgivable than voluntarily imprisoning ourselves in another's convictions, when we should be trying to break through even the bars in the dungeon of our own intelligence.

• 1437 Cynicism is not a measure of astuteness but of impotence.

• 1448 Propose solutions? As if the world were not drowning in solutions! I was thinking of a middle-of-roader type who thought it was a stroke of rhetorical brilliance to claim that people who call themselves middle-of-the-road are equipping themselves with more tools to solve the world's problems.

• 1471 Authentic intellectual seriousness does not frown, but rather smiles.

• 1512 A woman has the intellectual temperature of the medium in which she lives: vehement revolutionary or dauntless conservative, according to the circumstances.

• 1526 Our soul has a future. Humanity has none.

• 1533 "Social" is the adjective that serves as a pretext for all swindles. I have also heard it said that when the word "social" is used a modifier, it negates the meaning of the word it modifies. Examples: Social Justice and Social Policy become non-justice and non-policy.

Quotes from Others

• Steve Sailer: The central paradox of American political life is that blacks and Latinos tend to do better in Republican states while affluent whites do best in Democratic states. I say it is a lie that Conservatives and Libertarians are racist. It is the Liberals and Socialists who are no longer interested in a color-blind society. It is the Liberals and Socialists who keep the black man down with their welfare state policies designed, it seems, to stoke resentments.

Interesting Links about China

• How Social Darwinism Made Modern China: A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom. I came upon this long piece in the American Conservative. I can't say I agree with it completely. The article does say that there are many things that Chinese culture does right. However, the recent economic success of China is a catching-up and a result of their having a large population.

• Here is John Derbyshire's reaction to the article.

Daily Entries (A Week in the Life of a Canadian living in Wuxi, China)

Monday (the 11^th)

• I tried to make my Monday entry by dictating into my Ipad Mini. Below you will see the result followed by a translation and explanation of what I was trying to say and trying to do:

Monday, March 11, 2013 (That was fine.)

I didn't work today. (That is what I meant to say.)

I did manage to get out of the house.  I went to Tesco to do a little bit of shopping.  I also bought a bucket at the KFC so we can have lunch.  However, call me through dinnerplate of the chicken pieces I had set out for him.  That is, he vomited. (This is what I meant to say: I did manage to get out of the house. I went to Tesco to do a bit of shopping. I also bought a bucket at the KFC so we could have lunch. However, Tony got sick on the plate of chicken plates I had set out for him. That is he vomited.)

By then decided to get hold me out of the house.  Again, I'll say it again, I got Tony and I to get out of the house.  We went to a nearby park.  That is, Tony decided to go to a nearby park. He first said he wanted to go for a bus ride. He changed his mind.   Glenn Locke was nice. We walked Boneriso canals and we walked by a whole slew of local businesses And including many small food shops I Kopple hair salons and a few industrial supply shops. (Then I decided to get us out of the house. Again. I will say it again. I got Tony and I out of the house. We went to a nearby park. That is, Tony decided to go to a nearby park – he first said he wanted to go for a bus ride. The walk was nice. We walked by some canals and we walked by a whole slow of local businesses including some small food shops, a couple hair salons, and a few industrial supply shops.)

We only spent about 15 minutes at the park. It was probably the first time that we were at the park nevermind.  Also it again. It was a first because Holani wanted to leave the park before I did. (We spent only about 15 minutes at the park. It was the first time, Tony wanted to leave the park before I did.)

After I dropped Octonia at home, I went to the Tesco again. This time, I bought some yogurt for Tony, he had vomited at least three times in the past 24 hours. (After, I dropped Tony off a home, I went to the Tesco again. This time, I bought some yogurt for Tony. He had vomited at least times in the past 24 hours.)

Monday, March 11 is the day that I uploaded the greatest comeback in toy train history video to the Internet. (That is what I meant to say!)

I then tried to get Tony to answer "Do you love Daddy?" with a "Yes, I do!" I heard him answer properly, but as you will see below, the Ipad didn't:

Do you Rulau daddy? Love yeah

Do you love daddy? Yeah hi there

Yeah I you

I cannot hope you did do you love daddy? Yeah bye yeah

Yeah I you

Hey have been trying to get told me to say yes I do.  I'll say it again. What I have been trying to do is get Tony to say yes I do.  E quotation mark yes I do quotation mark

Tuesday (the 12^th)

• I work 1300-2100 today.

• A warm day in Wuxi: I wear pants, dress shirt, and a fleece jacket.

Wednesday (the 13^th)

• I work 1300-2100 today.

• A cool day in Wuxi: I wore what I wore yesterday and put on a windbreaker.

• The Passport renewal process seems too good to be true. I don't need to find a guarantor. I don't need to supply a whole bunch of accompanying documents. I just need to provide my old passport and some new information.

• We have run out of Tylenol in the house. I got to get some more.

Thursday (the 14^th)

• I didn't have much to say yesterday. I hope I have more to say today. My lack of blogging has been distressing me.

• I work 1000-2100 today.

• My first class is about space exploration – a topic that usually doesn't go over well with the students.

• On my Ipod Touch, I learned about the election of a the new pope. He is from South America and has chosen the name of Francis. I hope he is Catholic.

• On my ring finger, there are two rings: my wedding ring and my father's wedding ring. I looked at my father's ring and I thought about him. I recall how he like Jenny. "She has more sense than all of us!" he said. In the commercial I recently recorded for the school, you will see me wearing two wedding rings, mine and my father's, on my finger.

• I showed my father's wedding ring to Tony. This is grandpa I told him.

• A student I had last night knew about Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian leader who was ousted and executed by firing squad just days after he had been making a speech to a large rally.

• Yesterday, there was a couple in my last evening class. It had happened before, a couple in a class, but last night was strange because of intimations I had of this in a previous class. I wasn't aware there was a couple till that man of the couple told me. The girl of the couple in question had actually come into my mind, the previous class where I had had a male student who reminded me of her. This male student wore the same kind of glasses as she did – they were too wide for a narrow face and the lenses were big; and he also spoke English in the manner of the girl. Recalling the girl, I asked him if he came from Wuxi. He said he came from Guilin – the girl I was thinking of came from Inner Mongolia. I knew the girl had a fiancee and I wondered if that male student was the fiance.... Well, lo and behold, the girl from Inner Mongolia was in my next class. The man she was sitting beside was her fiancee – he wasn't the student from the previous class. The topic of my last class was shopping. Thirty minutes into the class, I asked the students who they went shopping with and who they would have liked to have gone shopping with. The fiancee of the girl from Inner Mongolia told me that he liked shopping with his fiancee. I was surprised at this because I thought, as I had told the students, that most husbands or boyfriends didn't like shopping with their partners because it was boring. Seeing my surprise, the man told me that he had to say this because his fiancee was sitting next to him. This is when I learned that he and the girl from Inner Mongolia were engaged. He then asked me if I thought they were a good couple – made for each other as it were. I, of course, said they were – not telling them about the male student from the previous class. He and the student from the other class seemed very opposite in demeanour.

• Time seems to drag in class when you know that you are going to have use the bathroom as soon as the class is done.

• Damn it! Grammar mistake in my latest Youtube video!!!! In the opening titles, I inserted
  the Great Comeback in Toy Train History – I forgot an "est." I was able to correct the mistake in the Youtube video, thanks to their annotations feature. However, I won't bother correcting the mistake on the Youku video – the Chinese who watch the video won't notice anyway. So far, three hundred have viewed the Youku version.

Friday (the 15^th)

• It was Pi (3.14) day yesterday. I forgot all about it. One of my most-viewed blog entries was the Pi Day entry I made in 2009.

• I work 1100 to 2100 today. I was actually at work at 0900. I must love my job.

• I learned last night when logging onto Google Reader that it was going to be retired on July 1st. I was surprised and saddened – it was a product that I had been using everyday for years. Seeing the announcement pop up when I logged onto the Reader, I felt like I had been handed an eviction notice or divorce papers. It was only a few weeks ago that I had recommended it to a student. Learning of the scrapping, I quickly sought out reaction to the news of it on the Internet – I was glad to see that others were disappointed. I was also glad to know that there are many other alternatives on the Internet. I immediately found one this morning: www.feedly.com. Bye Bye Google Reader. R.I.P.

• I use RSS but not many others do. I don't know why. It seems a thing for techies but I am no techie, and the reader is not that hard to use.

• BTW, I have never been handed divorce or eviction papers. But I can imagine what it would feel like if it happened to me.

• I saw myself on the video screen on the bus ride to work. I was acting in the latest commercial I did for the school. (here is the link to the video on Youtube) It was well-edited. There is a shot of my father's wedding ring which I am happy to see – it may confuse others to see I have two rings.

Saturday (the 16th)

• I work 1000-1800 today.

• Last night, I received an email from my Aussie buddy Harry Moore. He had a stroke, a few days ago. He had to go to the hospital but he was able to compose an email, so I pray it wasn't serious.

• Here is an idea whose time has come: Caffeine Suppositories.

• I have to be going to Shanghai soon to get my passport renewed. Probably, April 1^st.

• Sunny outside.

• I had to stand on the bus ride home last night. This meant listening to the Ipod and not reading the Ipad. Oh! What a tortured existence I lead! Woe is me!

• I see a pink BMW – a sporty model – trying to race through traffic.

• A white Mazda drives down the sidewalk and forces a crowd of people standing at a bus stop to get out of its way. It offends my sensibilities so to see people doing this.

• The new Pope seems to be alright. He is old and not one to give in to the ways of the modern world.

• I listened to episode 113 of the China History Podcast on the bus ride home tonight. Host Laslzo Montgomery, who I am proud to say gave me a heads-up on the chosen topic, presented the story of the famous Canadian in China: Norman Bethune. Bethune, though being a fervent Communist, made great humanitarian contributions to medicine. Having died in 1939 at the age of 49, one can defend him by saying if he had not died prematurely, he would have lived long enough to disavow his support for Communism.

Sunday (the 17^th)

• I don't work today.

• It rains. And so it sucks outside. It is really, really dismal. Whatever...

• Yesterday, I had a teacher tell me her mother was slim and also plump. Questioning her, I found out she meant her mother was buxom. I had a good giggle about it and of course, told all the other teachers.

• The K family went downtown this morning for Tony's drawing class.

• We then went to to Tesco which is near Casa Kaulins. (Casa Kaulins, BTW, is not downtown.) I wanted to see the English school that my wife had told me was now in the plaza. After looking for it for ten minutes and not finding it, my wife then told me that it was being built.

• The new English school will be near a Tesco Plaza playground which Tony frequents. Tony begged us to let him play at the playground today, and we relented. After finally finding where the new English school was to be, I sat by the playground and saw that all the other children were picking on Tony. Tony has the upper-hand in some of the confrontations, but he seemed to be a little bit too good-natured about what the other kids were doing to him. There was one boy who was continually throwing balls at Tony as well as swinging a rubber ball with handle at my son -- I was hoping Tony would have slugged that little bastard, but my boy just laughed it off. In another instance, the boy and three little girls tried to gang up on Tony by blocking him in a roomed area of the playground. The walls of the room were transparent, so I was able to see Tony force his way out like a football running back run through the line. I wonder if the kids, all Chinese, were picking on Tony because he was different being a mixed-blood kid. Or were they picking on him because he was weak-willed like his father?

• I took lots of photos in the downtown at the Tesco Plaza. Here are the links: Give me!, Mom!, Me, Toy Car, Old Man Waiting for the Bus, Tony enters the 85 Bakery, Chicken!, the Wuxi Skyline, and Future Driver.

• For supper, I ate six hot dogs. (I say this because I am trying to pad this entry out. I am really having trouble finding things to blog about.)

• In tournament #9, the two league champions have been determined.

• 532 million abortions and sterilizations in China since the implementation of the one-child policy.

• On the bus, Jenny finally saw me in the commercial that I recently recorded for the school. The commercial is now on Youtube.

• Malware has attached itself to my computer. My browser has been hijacked, and so when I try to go to a site, I am taken back to the Google search page with a flashing logo. As well, the mouse pointer flashes as well. It was some malware called default tab that I downloaded, and can't get rid. I have had to go to the registry to try to get rid of it. A simple uninstall doesn't work.

The Greatest Comeback in Toy Train History

Blog Entry for March 4 to March 10, 2013

March 4 to March 10

Gratitude: I am thankful for the warm weather we had this week.

Acknowledgment: I am a son-of-a-bitch. I can't tell you why exactly I am, but I am sure I must be. For instance,I always get a set on a crowded bus so, ipso facto cetabus perabus, there is something I am doing that must not be right and proper that an s.o.b. would do.

Request: Send me money. I have never asked before so I thought I would give it a shot. You can email me at andiskaulins@qq.com and we will iron out the details about how you can transfer the money to my account.

The AKIC Week in Brief: This is the week that my wife Jenny to order parts for our toy train set on Taobao. I also learned about an app called dotdotdot. Other than that, I went to work and returned home. I have been such a homebody lately.

What AKIC Is Reading this Week (The eleventh greatest Englishman of all-time introduced me to an app and site called www.dotdotdot.me. It lets you announce to the world what books you are reading. However, it needs to be able to interface with Ibook app as well as the Calibre e-book management program before it can be really effective in my eyes. I will persist, in this weekly AKIC blog feature just the same or I should say regardlessly or irregardlessly.)

• 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.

• Ulysses by James Joyce: I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly goes through Joyce's modernist novel. Delaney is making the novel more understandable and enjoyable. Delaney figures he will do his last ReJoyce Podcast in 22 years. Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast, I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book. I will be finished it, I figure, in the year.

• The Holy Bible King James Version. The Gospels According to Saint Mark. I have been reading the KJV, all the while I have engaged in making these weekly blog entries– I hadn't till a few weeks ago made a point of announcing it.

• The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. An adventure set in the Middle Ages. There is more to Doyle than Sherlock Holmes.

• Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. Finished. I am a fan of Goldberg's columns and shorter pieces. The point he is making in LF, I first came upon in Hayek's Road to Serfdom – that Fascism and Communism were just competing types of Socialism and really both movements of the Left; and that the Left has always tried, erroneously, to make all think that Fascism was a Right Wing movement. The degree to which many of the Left admired Fascism before it was discredited beyond all repair by the Holocaust was somewhat of a surpirse to me however.

• Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter. Finished. I look at Modern China in a different light after reading this book. The link between China and its past was severely broken in the late 1950s and 1960s. In Wuxi, I see things torn down readily without regard to their history and new "ancient" things being erected that in no way convey the spirit of countless generations.

• The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.

• Penrod by Booth Tarkington. The misadventures of a young boy written in a florid and humorous style.

This Week's Don Colacho Quotes

• 1343 The new left gathers together those who acknowledge the ineffectiveness of the cure without ceasing to believe in the prescription. That is why so many of them admired Hugo Chavez

• 1344 Decadence does not derive from an excess of civilization, but from the…attempt to take advantage of civilization in order to elude the prohibitions of which it consists. To be a rebel, you need something to rebel against.

• 1347 It is never too late for anything truly important. Coming to the age of fifty, this short sentence inspires me... to be old.

• 1394 Specialized vocabularies allow one to speak with precision in the natural sciences and to disguise trivialities in the humanities. The Chinese do things different from us because they do. I have seen labels used instead "because they do" which just aren't very helpful.

Daily Entries (with links to photos in AKIC Wordpress)

Monday (the 4th)

• I didn't work today.

• Tony was sent off to school. He insisted that I carry him to the kindergarten van pickup stop, but he is now far too heavy for me to carry, so I had to make a deal with him – walk to the spot and I would let him lay his head on my shoulder and sleep while we waited for the van.

• A&J went to the Jinling Hotel for a lunch buffet. They both ate their fill. It was supposed to be Italian month at the Jinling – at least that was what Andis gathered from the signs, but you wouldn't have known it based on the food on offer – there wasn't any Italian food at all. Andis would have protested if he had known before he came that the buffet was supposedly Italian, but he had been looking forward to the fare that was there on offer anyway. (Perhaps, the Italian theme was only for supper. Perhaps, the theme was just that a theme and nothing else as Jenny suggested.)

• At the Jinling, Andis ate about five plates of food, one bottle of beer, and four cups of tea. And so he was sleepy the rest of the afternoon. – as was Jenny who rested her head on Andis's shoulder as they took the bus home.

• Observing the passing scene from the bus, Andis happened to see ten security guards stand abreast on a road. At first sight of the black-clad guards, Andis thought they were meant to block the road. He then saw another guard, also clad in black uniform, order them to march. Andis lamented not having taken a photo.

• Andis took a photo of a woman riding side-saddle on a passing bicycle. This practice is common in Wuxi. Trying the maneuver in Canada, the rider and passenger would most certainly be ticketed and fined and questioned by the police. For not only were there too many people on the bicycle, they were also not wearing helmets. The authorities here also try to clamp down on the the practice of bicycle carrying passengers, but only it seems they do so in the downtown of Wuxi. In the suburbs like Hui Shan District, they don't bother.

Tuesday (the 5^th)

• I didn't want to get out of bed this morning, but I did. I was feeling cold and had a slight headache. This made the bed seem so much warmer. But I had to get the crew up so that Tony could go to school. My wife had to be coaxed, by me, to arise. As it was, she was ten minutes behind schedule; and just as we had gotten Tony to the door, so I could accompany him to where he would be picked up by the school van, he told us he had to take a poo. While he sat on the throne, the van driver phoned wondering where we were. Finished, out of the apartment and on our way to the van, Tony asked me if I had brought along the Ipod. Having waited twenty minutes for the van to come on Monday (the 4^th), Tony must have been thinking that he could pass the time playing with it. As it was, the van was waiting...

• I work 1300 to 2100 today.

• My first class was with a student who is training to be an Olympic shooter. Her English wasn't very good. I had to force her to string out of sentence – she was all too ready to answer questions with yes's, no's, and nods.

• I had to repeat (fail) a student even though she told me an interesting anecdote. She is studying to be a flight attendant, and so I asked her if she had any male classmates. She said she had one. Asked by me what he was like, she told me that he was fat. This prompted further questions. When asked, she said she didn't think the boy was there to meet girls because that he seemed to do was eat. I didn't bother to ask about his degree of effeminacy.

Wednesday (the 6^th)

• It's warming up in the Wux! Temperatures are going to get above 20 degrees Celsius. On the way to work, I saw one foreigner wearing shorts and another in a short-sleeved t-shirt.

• I work 1300 to 2100 today.

• The pieces that I said I needed for Tony's toy train set had been ordered on Taobao (a popular Chinese internet shopping website) and arrived yesterday. I had been hoping to receive them on Monday. As it is, I won't be able to set up the train set for Tony till late Friday evening or on Saturday after work.

• From Baidu.com, I downloaded a few country songs. Not knowing what to look for, I chose, at random, some songs by Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton. I think I found a couple gems: Haggard's Mother Tried I found quite haunting and I was humming the song when I wasn't yodelling like Dolly Parton in Tennessee Homesick Blues – another gem of track I was fortunate to download.

• I will be starting the second round of my Tournament #9 soon. I have finished the first round where eight groups of five teams played a single round robin. The fourth and fifth place teams in each group have been eliminated. The second and third place teams from each group, sixteen in total, will play in the second round. Eight games will be played. The eight winners of the games will advance the third round – the league championships, and the fourth round – the tournament championships.

• I am learning my lines for a commercial, for the school, that is being recorded tomorrow.

Thursday (the 7^th)

• Tuesday evening was strange because there weren't so many people boarding the 635 bus (which takes me home after work in the evening). In recent months, it has come to be that there are usually many trying to board the bus and I so I always am anxious that I may not get a seat for the long 45 minute ride back home. Last evening, I had a premonition that the previous night was a pleasant aberration not to be repeated, and I was correct. There were a lot of people boarding the bus. In fact, there was a bit of a tussle getting on the bus. I got on and there was one seat left for the taking. I went for it and this woman tried to prevent me from taking the seat because she was saving it for a friend who got on the bus after me. I wasn't having anything to do with this. I took the seat forcing the woman to withdraw the bag she had placed on the seat. At home, my wife supported my action. "What a bitch!" she said.

• Today, I work 1000-2100. It is to be the day that I take part in the making of some commercials for our school. Don't worry! You will be able to see them on this or one of my other sites. Here is a previous commercial I have appeared in.

• Tony didn't want to go to school this morning. Apparently yesterday, the teacher gave him heck for not paying attention in class. I could understand his reluctance. Throughout most people's lives, there are many a day that we would rather just stay at home and avoid the world.

• I was reading my lines as the commercial was recorded. There were no second takes. I am not looking forward to seeing the final results.

Friday (the 8^th)

• I work 1100-2100 today.

• Tony & Jenny went to the Big Buddha today. Tony calls it the Biggest Buddha. Of course, he is incorrect. It isn't the biggest Buddha though it is the biggest Buddha he has ever seen. He made a point of telling me that I wasn't coming. Now, I don't mean to say that he didn't want me to accompany him. He was just making an observation. I make a not of him saying this in my blog because I like him to hear him talk about things or make observations that I have hitherto never heard him say before.

• Tony wore his blue China tracksuit this morning. He also wears it in this video.

Saturday (the 9^th)

• After work last night, there were a lot of people downtown, even for a Friday night. The first bus I took, to get to the bus stop to catch the bus I take home, was slowed down by a constant flow of crowds crossing the street. The traffic cops tried in vain to make pedestrians stop and let some vehicles pass through. I ended up arriving home twenty minutes later than usual. I was so late that Jenny phoned me asking where I was. I told her about the crowds and she told me that they were out because of Woman's Day which I knew about but had paid not much heed.

• Back at home, I set up the train track for Tony so we could use the new pieces of track that had arrived on Tuesday.

• I work 1000 to 1800 today.

• Hugo Chavez died this week. I am not sad to hear of his passing away. That the Left does mourn is inconceivable to me. You would think they had learned some lessons from history by now, but many on the Left are just pure stubborn. Chavez was a dictator, who because of oil resources, had a license to print money.

• Stomping Tom Connors, a Canadian musician who has made the best and only recognizable hockey song ever died this week. A shame. He was a Canadian patriot in the best way.

• Listening to the latest John Derbyshire podcast, I learned that the comedian George Carlin suggested that the United States should be put an umlaut about the "U" in its name so people would be more scared of America. I wonder if I should do the same with my name. Maybe it would get me more respect. Andis Ka��ülins in China! Are you scared!!

• This morning, I was sitting on the #81 bus on the second deck towards the back – the stairwell was at the front. My stop was coming so I got up to quickly get downstairs and be by the exit – but there was an old man, who was clutching seats on both sides of the aisle, in front of me with the same intention. He was walking too slowly and I could see that at the rate he was going, both of us weren't going to make it downstairs and get to the exit in time. The bus driver won't wait for stragglers to get off the bus and I didn't relish the propect of having to walk an extra block to get to school. As the old man got to the top of the stairs, I grunted and he let go of one of the seat tops to let me get pass him. I rushed to the door where passengers had almost all gotten off. Thinking of the old man, I stood by the exit door, which almost closed on me, so that the old man could get off as well.

• In the English Corner I did last night, a student said his hero was himself – an answer one could expect from an adolescent. I remember in high school joking that the Ayatollah in Iran was my hero. I was at the age where it was it uncool to say you admired anyone.

• In another class, a young boy shocked me by telling me his favorite book was Gone with the Wind. When asked about his favorite books, Ray had first told me that he couldn't name the book, and would have just left it at that; but I insisted on him telling me the details of it. The book was set in America, he said, and the North and the South went to war. I quickly thought of Gone with the Wind, and he confirmed it. He said it liked the book for the accurate portrayal of the characters.

• Prompted by a David Warren blog entry, I watched a video of this now-famous Korean orphan Choi Sung Bong who has an amazing tenor voice. It brought tears to my eyes and I hoped his story was true, that his suffering has come to an end, and that celebrity-status doesn't destroy him.

Sunday (the 10^th)

• I don't work today.

• It is cool outside.

• I spent Saturday night at home. I was going to break open a bottle of Glenmorangie Whiskey that I had. (It was a gift from a friend of my wife.) However, I didn't have any ice in my fridge.

• I now have ice in my fridge so I will be able to break the bottle open tonight.

• For Tony, it was an evening of vomit and poo. He got sick in bed, and later pooed himself in bed.

• Tony is okay now. But he doesn't want to go outside and is constantly moaning for my Ipad-Mini.

• Train Set Update I have set up the longest Takara TOMY Plarail configuration in Casa Kaulins history. About 24 feet long, it takes one, two, three photos to show it all.

• The last two times, I went to work, I happen to see myself on the Bus Video Screen. A commercial I shot nearly a year ago was being shown.

• Tournament #9: I played games in the League 2 playoffs. With the first playoff round, finished, the 16 teams (of the original 40) in the tournament championship have been determined. But before the tournament championship commences, the two league champions must first be decided.

• Tony takes an evening nap.

Blog Entry for February 25, 2013 to March 3, 2013

Gratitude: Thanks to you for visiting my blog. I hope you read this entry to the end and offer some comments. I further hope you will come back once a week and check up what is happening in my life. I publish photos of my life in China here.

Acknowledgment: I don't have that many readers. I can't really think of myself as a blogger anymore.

Request: Despite what I said in the gratitude section, I realize there is no point in asking my rare and far-and-in-between readers for anything. I am just going to have to talk to the big guy. Now. What do I want? Actually, I want what is good for my son, wife and mother.

The AKIC Week in Brief: Recently, I have really slowed down on my contributions to the Internet. I may be running out of ideas or nothing much is happening in my life. Like last week, it has been a slow week for me with nothing notable happening. I can't help but think & feel, however, that is is the calm before the storm.

Richard Nixon at 100

The week which saw a second rate NBA star visit North Korea, was also the week of Richard Nixon's 100^th birthday. In 1972, Nixon made a visit to a China that was in a state of impoverishment and imprisonment similar to that of North Korea now. Nixon's visit lead to the opening up of China and the lifting of hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. It would really be something if somehow Rodman's visit lead to a similar freeing of North Koreans but I say this because I am trying to seem generous and optimistic. (There is more about Rodman's visit below.)

I don't hate Nixon as most, it seems, are compelled to do. In fact, I have a soft spot in my heart for him. He was a decent but flawed man brought down by despicable people. I fondly recall how he was recorded as referring to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau as a c**ksucker in those oval office tapes. In Canada, Trudeau is portrayed as having made a rhetorical triumph by saying, when asked about what Nixon said, that he had been called worse things by better people. Truth be told, Nixon had the full measure of Trudeau, and was really restraining himself in what he said.

Trudeau had a connection with China too. He visited the place during the time of Mao's regime and was full of praise for it. Which just goes to show how good Trudeau, who had Fidel Castro as a pall-bearer, was at measuring things. (But to give the devil his due, Trudeau did establish diplomatic relationship with Beijing before America did. That he did so really wasn't that important. The most famous Canadians in China are Norman Bethune, Da Shan, Celine Dion, and Justin Bieber.)

Happy Birthday Richard Nixon! Rot in hell P.E.T.!

One final thing: I have distinct memories from my childhood reading the news of the resignation of Nixon in 74 and Mao's death in 76. Being very young then, I was disappointed to see Nixon resign. He seemed so presidential I thought at the time. (But then I thought at the time that Trudeau was cool. So, half-foolish I was.)

What AKIC Is Reading this Week

• Don Colacho's Aphorisms: there are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled 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.

• The Life of Johnson by Boswell. Finished it for the third time. A great read. Depend upon it, if I could say one thing in my life that was as wise and striking as everything Doctor Johnson said, I would be very lucky indeed.

• Ulysses by James Joyce I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly goes through Joyce's modernist novel. Delaney is making the novel more understandable and enjoyable. Delaney figures he will do his last ReJoyce Podcast in 22 years. Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast, I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book. I will be finished it, I figure, in the year.

• The Holy Bible King James Version. The Gospels According to Saint Matthew & Saint Mark. I have been reading the book, all the while – the KJV that is.

• The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. An adventure set in the Middle Ages. There is more to Doyle than Sherlock Holmes.

• History of the Conquest of Peru by William Hickling Prescott. Finished. A really gripping history. Having been ignorant of the events, this history read like a suspense novel.

• Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. Calling Conservatives Fascists is asinine.

• Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter: the famine is not talked much in China. I have had a few students mention it to me. The Chicoms cynically harp on the Rape of Nanking and never mention the brutal things they did to the Chinese as well.

This Week's Don Colacho Quotes

• 1137 Social problems are the favorite refuge of those fleeing their own problems. That explains my interest in politics. I realize that I am wasting my time and my family's time but occupying myself with it as I do. It doesn't matter what I think. Whatever happens will happen and there is nothing I can do about it except have the courage to deal whatever the consequences of world events are on me personally.

• 1140 The only man who thanks life for what it gives him is the man who does not expect everything from life. I realized this when I was twenty.

• 1196 Boredom is the antonym of solitude.

• 1281 Everything that interrupts a tradition obliges us to start over. And every origin is bloody. Just look at Russian and Chinese history.

• 1292 The intelligent man quickly reaches reactionary conclusions. Today, however, the universal consensus of fools turns him into a coward. When they interrogate him in public, he denies being a Galilean. Anyone who reads an honest writer must be prepared to read something that both flatters his conceit and puts himself in his place. This quote does it for me.

• 1310 The recluse is humanity's delegate to what is important. God! I love this quote!

• 1329 Each day we demand more from society so that we can demand less from ourselves. So true.

• 1338 Our tolerance grows with our disdain.

A Quote from David Warren

• There is nothing so Canadian as a blueberry. Left-wingers and people from Canada who label themselves middle-of-the-road make me ashamed to be Canadian. Reactionaries like David Warren and Rednecks like Don Cherry bring back a sense of Canadian patriotism in my cold, cold heart. (You can find that quote here. Warren also writes a fine tribute to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger here.)

Quotes from the Life of Johnson (Two of the three are admonishments.)

• Most friendships are formed by caprice or by chance, mere confederacies in vice or leagues in folly. So who needs them?

• Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

• I recollect nothing that passed this day, except Johnson's quickness, who, when Dr. Beattie observed, as something remarkable which had happened to him, that he had chanced to see both No. 1, and No. 1000, of the hackney-coaches, the first and the last; 'Why, Sir, (said Johnson,) there is an equal chance for one's seeing those two numbers as any other two.' That is the sort of observation I would make in my blog!

Daily Entries

Monday (the 25^th)

• Went to Ikea, the Kaulins family did. Photos, you can see here, here, here, here, here, and here.

• I tried to reload my Microsoft Train Simulator on my home laptop so I could access the editor with which I wanted to teach Tony to make his own consists. This created problems. The program didn't work until I installed it on a different drive from which I had originally stored its files. I have tried to bringing over added files, that I had downloaded off the net, to the new file location but some of them have worked and some of them haven't.

• I talked to my Mom. Her desktop is dead. She doesn't have the Internet for now. I suggested that she get a Ipad.

Tuesday (the 26^th)

• I work 1300-2100.

• A new trainer – an American from Iowa – has arrived.

• I found a new book to use to study Chinese characters. The book groups together characters that look like and creates a narrative as to how they can become built up.

• I taught a student named Jill. She is a skeet-shooter or some sort of athlete who fires guns at moving targets. She is training in hopes of getting into the next Olympics. Her English is not so good however, and I have to force her to make sentences. I have to be as strict as she says her coach is. (When she tried to describe her coach, she was lost for words. I assumed she meant strict so I put on a stern face and briefly walked around the classroom like I was a sergeant-major. She nodded in affirmation at my prancing.)

• In tournament #9, I finished play in group 2C. The results & final standings can be seen here.

Wednesday (the 27^th)

• I work 1300-2100.

• Last night, I was given four classes to teach this day. When I arrived this morning at school, I saw they had book a fifth class for me. My gut reaction was annoyance which I knew I shouldn't feel.

• Riding the bus today to work, I was so absorbed in the books that I was reading on my Ipad that I didn't realize I was at my destination till I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that everyone was getting off the bus. Thankfully, my stop was the terminal stop of the route so I didn't have to double back.

• McDonald's has a double bacon burger with mashed potato in it. Mmmmm!

Thursday (the 28^th)

• It is hard to believe that February is just about finished! Boy! Did the month seem to go fast! Is it just me or was it a few days shorter than other months?

• I work 1000-2100 today.

• Right now, I don't have classes to teach in the morning. So, I can work on my Chinese.

• I listened to a London School of Economics lecture on the new leadership in China. It didn't tell me anything I didn't know. The professors spoke professorially and that was that. But to be fair, I learned that the leadership hates the North Koreans as much as the rest of the world does.

• As I crossing at an intersection near Casa Kaulins, this car making a left turn blared its horn at me. I kept on walking, made the car come to a halt, and glared at its driver. I also noticed that Chinese drivers don't believe in stopping at a red lights before making a right turn. BASTARDS!!

Friday (the 1^st)

• Tony is back to school today, after a two month hiatus. He was picked up the same old van, so what the purpose of the moratorium on school vans is beyond me.

• Tony behaved very well this morning. I wasn't expecting this. He woke up with no fuss and he seemed very enthusiastic to go to school.

• I work 1100-2100.

• It is rainy and windy today. A doubly annoying combination.

• I found it interesting to read that Peter Hitchens, the younger brother of Christoper Hitchens likes e-book readers. As he says:  for someone who loves to read, and travels quite a bit, e-readers are a boon. You can load a dozen books, for all occasions, into the device, and it weighs no more than a middle-sized paperback. Now, I don't travel at all anymore – funny thing for a Canadian to say who is living in China but it is true – but, Casa Kaulins doesn't have space for a thousand actual physical books which I would like to have. I am an avid reader and I love the fact that I can put a thousand books on my Ipad – I think I now have more books on my Ipad than I had in my last Canadian apartment where I had about four shelves packed with books.

• P. Hitchens, like his deceased brother C, is someone you I completely agree with but when he is on my side, I am quick to steal his arguments. P. Hitchens is no fan of Ronald Reagan and the United States for example – I don't like that. But he is a conservative and a Christian unlike his brother. I suppose P. has less renown that his brother because he never achieved fame in the USA. Ultimately, P is the more intellectually coherent Hitchens.

Saturday (the 2^nd)

• I work 1000 to 1800.

• Having the new trainer throws me off my routine today. I didn't do much Chinese study as I felt I ought.

• I saw photos and video of the Dennis Rodman visit to the North Korea while I was riding the bus to work. I wasn't sure that it was really Dennis Rodman I saw until I read reports confirming it on the Internet. And so I wonder. Can such a visit be a propaganda coup for the Norks? Anyone who knows that Rodman is a grade D celebrity, realizes that the Nork leader is really lowering himself to be in Rodman's company and so can't help but see what a pathetic light it puts the North Korean regime in. But Rodman was a teammate of Micheal Jordan who has a god-like status in China for instance. So, you just don't know.

Sunday (the 3^rd)

• I didn't work today.

• I didn't get to sleep in however. Tony had a drawing class downtown. The class started at 1015 and finished at 1130.

• While at Tony's drawing classroom, which was on the 11^th floor, I took a photo of a nearby apartment building to wonder effect, I think.

• After Tony's class was done, the K family walked to their regular hair salon so Andis could get his hair neatened up – he will be shooting a commercial for the school on Thursday. The K's then walked to Nanchang Temple Market so they could buy some roast duck. Jenny made the food purchase and since the place was packed with people, Tony & Andis had lots of time to look for Ultraman books in the book market while Jenny stood in line. Once Tony found a book he wanted, he & his father went to the Nanchang pet market – it was far too crowded and Andis held tightly onto Tony's hand so he wouldn't lose him. Andis's other arm was inadvertently elbowing every passerby.

• I finished reading Boswell's Life of Johnson and The Conquest of Peru. I also finished play in the first round of Tournament #9.

• I either take too many pictures or not enough. I say this because I didn't take any photos except on Monday and Sunday. And when I do take photos, I take so many and I don't have enough power of discrimination to just publish one or two. I will publish five or six even if they are practically the same.

• I saw a suppertime news report from the local television station about the Sunday crowds at Mei Yuan Park. They were large and because of all the cars that were brought with them, there were some problems like traffic jams and lack of parking spots. I saw images of three-lane roads turned into parking lines and a long line of cars all having had sticky parking tickets attached to their driver-side windows. It made me want to stay home and be even more reclusive. With the government running the media here, I wondered at the motives in showing the congestion. Did they want to show the abundance in China? Did they want to dissuade people from using their cars? Did the station need some content to fill their newscast and this was okay to show?

Blog Entry for February 18 to February 24, 2012

Gratitude: Reading the history of Mao's Famine & the history of the Conquest of Peru, I realize that I should be very thankful for the circumstances I have had in my life. I haven't been the victim of bestial cruelty and greed and famine. I was born in a civilized country.

Acknowledgment: I haven't made the best of the circumstances that I have been so fortunate to have. Still, to quote Doctor Johnson, it is rather to be wondered at that I have so much.

Request: If you are interested at all in Wuxi history, you will have the China History Podcast #111 very interesting. So I request you listen to it.

The AKIC Week in Brief: It was a slow news week, apparently. It was also a slow week in my life. I went back to work and not much of note happened. There was a heavy snow on Tuesday, but it quickly melted away by Thursday.

What AKIC Is Reading this Week

• Don Colacho's Aphorisms: there are 2,988 of them in this book that I compiled 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.

• The Life of Johnson by Boswell. This is the third time I am reading the biography. Why? I remember a used bookshop seller asking me when I bought the book. It was like the time someone asked me how old I was when I told him I was a Sinatra fan. Some people just don't understand. It is good to be different � way different � from the people around you and the time in which they are living.

• Ulysses by James Joyce I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly goes through Joyce's modernist novel. Delaney is making the novel more understandable and enjoyable. Delaney figures he will do his last ReJoyce Podcast in 22 years. Now that I have caught up to Delaney's podcast, I am getting ahead him as far as reading the book. I will be finished it, I figure, in the year.

• The Holy Bible King James Version. The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. I have been reading the book, all the while � the KJV that is.

• The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. I was reading this adventure set in the Middle Ages till My Ipad decided to lose all my book collection. (see Sunday the 17^th) I realized on Saturday, that I hadn't been reading it. That's what's happen when you try to read eight books on the trot.)

• History of the Conquest of Peru; with a preliminary view of the civilization of the Incas by William Hickling Prescott. I am really enjoying reading this history. How could a rag-tag bunch of Spaniards conquer an empire? It boggles the mind as one reads.

• Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. I finally got my hands on a copy of the e-book! Except for the fact that they don't want to kill Jews and eschew violence, the modern Liberal agrees with pretty much everything that the Fascists and Nazis of the 1930s stood for. I find reading the book boring however. The story of how modern Liberalism became so annoying and anti-truth is depressing reading.

• Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter: I am in China so I should be reading something about China. What a bastard was what's-his-nuts!

This Week's Don Colacho Quotes

• 1137 Social problems are the favorite refuge of those fleeing their own problems.

• 1140 The only man who thanks life for what it gives him is the man who does not expect everything from life.

• 1196 Boredom is the antonym of solitude.

  
  
  

Quotes from Doctor Johnson

• There is nothing more likely to betray a man into absurdity than CONDESCENSION; when he seems to suppose his understanding too powerful for his company.

• It is rather to be wondered at that I have so much. Johnson said this when asked if he felt that he shouldn't had more than he did considering the eminence he had achieved in his life. I can say this about my life but for the opposite reasons.

Monday (the 18^th)

• I didn't work today.

• It was raining and very cold and very damp so I just stayed in Casa Kaulins all day.

• The only productive thing I did do was finish last week's blog entry.

• Beside that, I had another day of reading e-books.

• Beside that, my son Tony had me set up his train set.

• Bust my buttons! Tony can eat using chopsticks.

Tuesday (the 19^th)

• It snowed last night. A big dump of it. My wife told me that the snow was accompanied by thunder which would have been very strange.

• The snow is melting quickly however. I will be teaching the students the meaning of the word slush.

• The slush for me meant I had to make a decision about footwear. I choose to wear my pair of crappy shoes � one of which had a hole in the sole and wreck them further in the slush than risk ruining my nice new shoes.

• I work 1300-2100 today.

• I am not in the swing of things. The snow so put me off my routine that I didn't read my Chinese textbook on the bus.

Wednesday (the 20^th)

• I work 1300 to 2100 today.

• Last night, I taught a VIP student from Malaysia. Very interesting guy I thought. He told me he grew up in what started as a Maoist-style commune in Malaysia. His parents told him that they hated living in a commune. For meals, one had to go to a canteen and get a bowl of rice or porridge, and there was no freedom....

• I spent about an hour this morning uploading and installing IOS updates to my Ipad and Ipod.

• Yesterday, as I was saying, was the Great Wuxi, China Dump of 2013. I took a lot of photos and videos using my Ipod, Ipad, and Nikon Coolpix. Here are the links to the photos I took with the Ipad: one, two. Here are the links to the photos I took with the Ipod: one, two. Here are the links to the photos I took with the Nikon: one, two, three.

• Most of the Great Dump's snow has melted.

• I can say that I am slowly getting back into the swing of things. I read my Chinese textbook on the bus (using my Ipad I might add!). I am studying Chinese at work using Yellowbridge flashcards.

Thursday (the 21^st)

• I work 1000-2100 today.

• I listened to the China History Podcast #111 last evening on my bus ride back home. (I should note that I was particularly aggressive getting on the #635. I don't mean I shoved someone but I made sure that I got myself at the front of the line getting on the bus � this was more a question of getting in the right spot before others.)

Friday (the 22^nd)

• I work 1100-2100 today.

• Yesterday, I spend a lot of time in the office studying Chinese. One of the other trainers commented that he hadn't seen me all day. I have a lot of days like that.

• 我很喜欢学中文的词！

• Yesterday evening, I had a class with my student from Malaysia. I asked him what he knew about Canada. He told me he knew Canada was a commonwealth country. He thought its favorite sport was skiing. He didn't know any famous Canadians. My knowledge of Malaysia was just as bad. I can't think of any famous Malays.

• The fact that the students don't know much about Canada amuses me. I hate Canadian nationalism. It makes a conscious effort to be like America while at the same time despising America. It wants to be Canada to as proud of itself as America is. I suppose it also wants to be as well-known. Well, the world doesn't give a damn about Canada.

• Yesterday in Tournament #9, I completed play in group 2B. What is tournament #9? It is a competition I have created with imaginary teams. The results of the matches between these teams are based on the results of coin tosses. I have been playing this thing since I was an adolescent.

• I also took three photos, using my Ipad Mini, from school. Here they are: one, two, three. If you look, you will see that two skyscrapers are being added to the Wuxi skyline.

Saturday (the 23^rd)

• I work 1000-1800 today.

• I downloaded and then listened to the latest John Derbyshire Podcast. He was saying he didn't have much to talk about this week. I know what he means. I haven't had much to blog about.

• Lucky me. I suppose. My VIP student didn't come in. He had booked two morning classes and so I have two free hours, more or less. I have chosen to spend the time on Chinese typing practice. For you, my rare and far and in-between readers, I will provide you a sample of my work: 中国的首都是北京。Here is the pinyin：zhongguode shoudu shi beijing。The English: China's capital is Bejing. Typing Chinese characters is easy. The programs to do this are quite helpful and are predictive. If you can't be bothered to learn to write Chinese, I would recommend learning to type it. It does aid your pinyin and Chinese character knowledge since typing them out is like writing them and is an aid to memory.

• I had a class with students named Alex and Sally. "When Alex meet Sally!" I joked.

• I had a student who worked in the HR department of an American company that makes cranes � the kind of cranes I can see everywhere in Wuxi on top of buildings under construction. (The cranes with tracks are called crawling cranes the student told me) I had to ask her how the heck they get the cranes on tops of the buildings. She told me that they drill a hole in the ground to begin with, and as the building increases in height, hydraulics push the crane upwards.

• On Friday night, Tony played with the Microsoft Train Simulator.

• I took some photos, of bike stalls and the downtown Wuxi skyline, on my way home from work today.

• Spent the evening at home.

Sunday (the 24^th)

• I didn't work today and I didn't do much.

• We � the wife and I -- talked of getting out of the house and perhaps going to Li Hu, but we got up late.

• We did go shopping in the afternoon. We went to Tesco.

• We walked to the Hui Shan Tesco, going through the local People's Square.

• I followed Tony as he ran around the Square.

• I listened to an audio book: The Rape of Nanking. All the corpses could have filled a 74-story building.

• Cleaning out my Hotmail mailbox � I deleted 16,000 messages � I came upon some emails from my father. He had sent me some photos and I have put them here.

• A layout by Tony.