The Travails of Renewing My Son Tony’s Passport

My son Tony's passport expired on March 13.  It is now July 7, and he still doesn't have his new one.  A lot has happened to cause this to be so.

I started the process back in February.  I sent out the application to the Canadian consulate in Shanghai, but made some mistakes and so I had to redo the application.  The mistakes caused me to change the applicant for Tony's passport from myself, his father, to Jenny, my wife and his mother.

The second application arrived in Shanghai just on the eve of the city's great 63 day lockdown.  The staff weren't able to go to the consulate to do any work.  There was uncertainty as to where the second application package was.  The consulate staff I wrote an enquiry to said the package may not have been at the consulate.  My wife contacted the delivery company and they said it was there.  Nothing for us to do but wait for the lockdown to end.

When the lockdown finally ended, I sent an enquiry letter to find out what the status of Tony's application was.  I got a response saying that it was being processed.

Yesterday, my wife got a phone call from the consulate saying that Tony's passport was ready, but the they couldn't deliver it to us because Wuxi was now classified as a high risk area by the pandemic authorities.  It seems our options were to wait for Wuxi's high risk status to end or go to Shanghai to pick up the passport ourselves.  How we can go to Shanghai with the travel restrictions in place and quarantining is beyond me.

I asked around on WeChat about deliveries to Wuxi being stopped.  At first, no one knew of this and many reported that they had gotten packages and documents from Shanghai very recently.  But soon others started telling me that the deliveries were being stopped.  It seems that again a stage in the process of getting Tony his new passport met up with bad timing.

A Spliced Together Video Done on July 6, 2022.

 

A Spliced Together Video Done on July 5, 2022

 

Not in a Good Mood

Stupid me.  I didn't do the Nasal Swab Test properly.  I used two kits and didn't get any red lines to show up in the test result indicator.  After, I still went to the lineup for the throat swab and had that test done.  It was irksome and so I let out a diatribe of f-words on a social media chat.

If I have any attentive readers, they may recall I said something about getting a job at a High School in Jiangyin city.  Jiangyin is part of Wuxi.  It borders on the Hui Shan district where our apartment is.  We, that be my wife & I, had planned to for me to drive to the High School from our apartment every day.  Now, with no end to the Covid nonsense, we have decided that I will rent an apartment in Jiangyin and come back to Wuxi every fortnight.  

So I am having to slowly get rid of stuff in the Xishan apartment which I have rented till the end of July.  There is too much stuff here for me to deal with.  Another reason I will have to rent an apartment in Jiangyin is that there isn't enough room in the Hui Shan apartment for all the stuff we have.  We bought stuff for the apartment in Xishan thinking we would move it in two years to our new 27th floor apartment which is being built now.  My being forced to leave the school in Xishan after one year ruined those plans.  That's another thing contributing to my bad mood.

Another reason I am not in a good mood is that I am in an awkward position socially.  For three months at school, I had to avoid people because I was in an awkward position of not being part of the family anymore, as it were.  Now, I am by myself basically, since I have no colleagues.  If I do run into acquaintances I feel peeved to say the least.

At least, the farmers in Holland are fighting a good fight.  And I pray the rosary to keep me from going completely off the deep end.

A Spliced Together Video Done on July 4, 2022

 

The Madness of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward

 This zero Covid policy must come from the same mass psychosis that produced those two stirring events in Chinese history.

Self Administered Covid Nasal Tests

 They are distributing nasal Covid test kits in my apartment “community.”

I got one on Sunday evening and put it on the dining room table.  Monday morning, I lined up for the usual test where they stick a swab down your throat.  I then got another nasal kit.

I suppose the procedure from now on is that you self-administer the nasal test before doing the throat test.

What was the point of the throat test?  It was never enough it would seem if another test is now necessary.

Wearing a Mask in High Humidity is Stupid!

 I just tried to not wear a mask in the now compulsory daily NAT test line.

A man in a blue hazmat suit gave me a mask.  He had be eyeing me before.

Standing in line, the heat and humidity rendered the mask wearing pointless.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Covid Stupidity just in time for the start of Summer

 The second last day of my time at the kindergarten, we received news that cases had been found in Wuxi.  It was a conspiracy observed one of the teachers. For it seemed that every time there was a holiday, the government would announce cases  as if they didn’t want people to travel.  This was said between preparations for the graduation ceremony that was to be held the next day.

In the evening, just as I had finished ironing some nice clothes for the ceremony, I read on WeChat that the government had declared that the school year was over.  So the ceremony was cancelled.  The teacher still had to go to school though.  The teachers wondered why.

The last day of my time at the kindergarten was spent standing around waiting for permission to leave.  It was a sad day for me.  Not so much because there was no closure with the children I had spent time with since September, but because my being let go was official.  I was in a situation where I was ashamed to say what had happened to me and to say how my summer plans had thereby been ruined.  Tears came to my eyes a couple times during the day.

Seven weeks I now have off.   I doubt if I am going to travel.  I have to move stuff out of the Xishan apartment.  My wife Jeany does not want me to risk going somewhere and then being put in quarantine. (There is a person I am talking to on Instagram who had to quarantine for two weeks in Wuxi after coming from Shanghai).

The first day of my life after kindergarten was Trucker Day aka Dominion Day aka Canada Day, the national day of Canada.  On a Canadians in China WeChat group, I made statements in support of the truckers and some prominent anti-lockdown Canadians like the Polish pastor persecuted in Alberta.  It seemed that some people in the group wanted to derail possible trucker support by talking about the plight of aboriginals.   I wouldn’t have anything of it, and called the people doing it regime stooges.  One of them talked of aboriginal pipeline protestors being harassed by RCMP as being more egregious than what was done to the truckers in February and so how could he be a regime stooge.  The aboriginals I told him were regime-approved victims.  The point probably went over his head.  

On July 1, I was at the Huai Shan apartment which I will sleep in starting August 1.  It was so small.  It will be a while before I stop cursing what happened to me at the kindergarten.

July 2, Jenny told me that 72 cases had been found in Wuxi.  Is there going to be another lockdown? I wondered.  How will my travel plans will be affected? I saw many ask on WeChat groups.   In the morning, I took Tony to his baseball camp which is being held in Wuxi and they were to stay in a five star hotel.  In the evening, I got a phone call  from him where he sounded disappointed.  The government had expropriated the hotel they were staying in so it could be used as a quarantine hotel.  They were put in a less nice hotel.  In the evening, there was to be a get-together with some of the teachers from my now former school that I was looking forward.  Lockdown fears cancelled this  One of the teachers who was moving to Xiamen on the 6th decided to catch an earlier flight (on the 3rd) so as to avoid lockdowns.  I was faced with a lonely Saturday night in the Xishan apartment so I decided to take the subway to downtown Wuxi.  There, I noticed the traffic was reduced to a dribble.  I then saw that the Nanchang Temple market areas and walk streets had been closed.  Restaurants were still open which was why I ended up drinking two beers by myself at the Red Lion.  The Lion wasn’t that busy which put me in a good mood, or better to say a not so somber mood.

I heard there were lockdowns in the Liangxi district of Wuxi.  For me, there have been daily NAT tests.

One of the things you rare readerscan expect from me in July & August, will be some blog entries.