Wuxi Tony Update #364: A New Toy

While in Shanghai yesterday, I bought a toy for Tony. You can watch the video above of my showing it to Tony for the first time.

Pardon if this is the second time that the embedded video appears on this blog. The first time I tried to embed it using Youtube's interface, it didn't seem to work. It may well be that the interface is slow today.

Wednesday Randoms

• The wife, as I type this sentence, is going to the police station now to start the process of getting Tony's visa.
• I took Tony for a walk at 1000 am this morning. The humidity was unbearable. Both of us were sweating like buggers.
  
• Tony gets excited by the presence of other children. Though, they don't seem excited by him.
  
• David Warren writes a depressing but all too true assessment of the New America, that is the Obama of America. And he fears it may be too late to do anything about it. Conservatives are split along the lines of strongly opposed and those wanting to get along. The thing is that the people who take the attitude that "Oh come on! Obama isn't that bad!" are contemptible. It is not worth the trouble to get along with these people - they are only concerned with appearing to be morally correct while having the fashionable moral smugness that goes along with it. It is enough to make this fallible being of a blogger fall into despair.
  
• The wife now tells me that the police told her Tony is Chinese till he goes to Canada. Then he is Canadian when he comes back. And so he doesn't need to get a visa now.
  
• I wore my Brandon Wheat Kings shirt to the Canadian Consulate yesterday. Brandon is a small city in the province of Manitoba. The Wheat Kings are the city's hockey team and play in the Junior Western Hockey League. A man from Virden, Manitoba was also in the consulate yesterday and he asked me if I played for the Wheat Kings. Embarassingly, I had to say no. I can say I played hockey but I was never anything to write home about. My greatest accomplishment was to once score two goals in a game. However, the accomplishment was tainted by the fact that I could have had a hat trick. I had an open net, the puck was three feet from the goal line, but managed to raise or loft the puck so that it was five feet above the cross bar! I could hear team mates asking who did that. I kept quiet. The game ended in a six-six tie if I remember correctly.
  
• Reading The Mill on the Floss brought tears to my eyes yesterday.
  
• I should mention that the man from Virden was teaching English in Suzhou. He was curious about how I bought the apartment here in Wuxi. I told him the process was done in Jenny's name. He told me that a Chinese lawyer told him he could buy a property here in his name. But, only one.
  
• WTU 364 is on my Youtube channel
  
• Another column from David Warren full of choice quotes including this one: The "global warming" environmental movement ....assures an ever-heavier hand for .... statism in the future, which is why it is so evil. Statism (government), while necessary for some things, is always evil when it goes beyond what should be a narrowly proscribed role. Governments for instance should have nothing to do with food. As a student here told me when asking him if China needs a government run medical system, when the government run the restaurants here, there were no restaurants. And often people starved.
  
• In the column cited above, Warren has praise for Thailand. He cites it as one third-world country that never succumbed to Western imperialism and did not fall prey to London- and Paris-educated "cool" socialist politicians. So in Thailand, there are fewer mental obstacles in Thailand to letting the people solve their own problems. Warren then correctly states that Thailand has been a bust as a democracy. And yet, It may be precisely because the politicians rendered themselves so ineffectual in Thailand that the country has prospered. All he says is music to my ears, for it is the antidote to those who say they believe government has a role to play. It is also shows a paradoxical and illogical trait of Socialist thought. Socialists love to go on righteously about the evil effects of Western Imperialism, and yet it is the spread of the Socialist creed that was probably the worst effect of Western Imperialism. That and the hypocritical intolerance of the Left (witness Sarah Palin) and you can see why I don't want to be near this people or even want to meet them halfway, finding common ground.
  
• I won't be taking Tony for an afternoon scooter ride. Too bloody hot.
  
• I buy Tony a new toy but he is more intrigued by an empty milk formula can. It is a good thing I say because it shows he has his own imagination and ways of amusing himself.
  
• Going to the Foreign Language Bookstore in Shanghai yesterday, I was on a budget of 20 rmb. I searched high and low for one suitable volume. I was almost going to buy another George Eliot novel (but the blurb had to have a recommendation from Virginia Woolf). I was also leaning towards buying a Sherlock Holmes anthology but having some Holmes already, I didn't want to make the mistake of buying something I already had. I came across a copy of Under Western Eyes that was unfortunately water-logged. I saw a copy of Wealth of Nations for 35 rmb. I even thought to break my rule and buy a 70 rmb copy of the Monkey, a Chinese story translated by the great Arthur Walley. But then I found a copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King's Arthur's Court by Mark Twain for 16....
  
• Why is it asking a simple question can be more trouble than it is worth?
  
• Tuesday is free day at the Shanghai Museum. I killed a hour yesterday by wandering it. The coin section was interesting as was the Chinese painting section. I love those paintings with the mountains and trees, looking simple and yet elegant.
  
• My scooter tire was fixed yesterday. They had to put in a new intertube. The flat tire was caused a tire gremlin that managed to puncture the sidewall with a nail that had originally been under the tire.
  
• In the country of my ancestry, Latvia, souls are being used as collateral in loans. I don't think that would go over in Wuxi. And there isn't a Wuxi Expat I know whose soul I would accept as collateral if I was a bank manager. Talk about toxic assets!!!
  
• Caritas in Veritate is here! Caritas in Veritate is here! Here is Spengler's take on it
  
• The leader who caused the riots in Urumqi lives in America. So I read in the China Daily yesterday. Will, Oprah give him up to the Chinese in a bid to find common ground?
  

Back from Shanghai.

My day in Shanghai was spent pointlessly wandering.  I picked up Tony's passport easily enough.  Unfortunately, I could only get 1730 return tickets.  Having picked up the passport at about 1315, I had four hours on my hands during which I was continually asked to buy watches, bags, and DVDs.

 

I don't know if it was my lucky day or a lot of Chinese Summer tourists were visiting Shanghai but I had at least two groups ask me to join them at some tea-drinking ceremony.  I had to lie, saying I was busy, to get out of it.

 

I was also asked to pose for photos because I was a "friendly" foreigner.  The tourists who asked me were from Hunan province.  I haven't been asked to pose for photos by tourists since the time I first went to the Great Wall in 2003.

Akicistan goes to Shanghai.

Since Akicistan is in Shanghai tomorrow, the chances are that there will not be any Akicistan blogging on the appointed day.  So, rare and precious readers, you can rewatch the Dominion Day videos I have embedded in this site.  Or watch them for the first time.  If you are outside mainland China, you can even reacquaint yourself with all the classic videos I have on my Youtube channel.

 

I am going to pick up Tony's passport at the Canadian Consulate.  I will have to buy my train tickets tomorrow.  I don't want to go but the deed has to be done.

 

Tony has a virus which is causing him to have fevers, so my plan to have him accompany me will have to be unfortunately quashed.

 

Also, flat tire number four.  It happened five minutes from home.  It meant having to take fifteen minutes to push the scooter back.  Why is that nails also seem to puncture the sidewall of the tire?  It is like someone deliberately punctured the tire.  I guess I don't understand the physics of tires running over nails.

Wuxi Tony Update #362: Dominion Day #5

This is the last of the five WTU's I made on July 1, Dominion Day, not Canada Day. The choice of the words "Dominion Day" is deliberate.

Anyway, watch Tony climb stairs.

AKIC Friday

It is TGIF for me this Monday.  Tuesday and Wednesday are my days off.  They couldn't have come sooner because I am feeling lethargic.  Last night, after supper, I could feel "the bottom coming out" like I had a virus in my stomach.  As well, Tony seems to have a fever which is causing my wife to worry. 

 

I may be going to Shanghai to pick up Tony's passport but I will have to confirm some things first like the passport is in fact ready.  I also have heard that once Tony gets the passport, I have to rush off to the local police station and get his visa.

 

Last night, I took Tony for a walk but, after a while, it felt like he was taking me for a walk.  There were a few times where it was all I could do to catch him.  Tony was pulling me by the hand everywhere too.

 

I don't know what to make of the Sarah Palin resignation.  I would like to think that she resigned because her celebrity and the vileness of the Left attacking her had made it impossible for her to govern Alaska and so she generously stepped aside.  But the fact of the vileness of attacks against her is a sad statement on the level of political discourse that now exists.  If she does make a run for a federal position, she can't be accused of having abandoned the constituents that voted for her.  After all, Oprah's political career is strewn with examples of him quickly moving on to higher positions.

Downtown Wuxi Photos

The above photo taken from an alleyway behind Ba BAi Ban, shows two towers: The MoreSky360 and the Hongduo Group Building.

The second photo shows worshippers leaving a Sunday morning church service.

Wuxi Tony Update #363: Happy Independence Day to America from a Canadian in China.

It is mandatory that I do a Fourth of July WTU.

Wuxi Tony Update #361: Dominion Day #4

This the fourth of five videos taken on Dominion Day 2009: July 1. In this video, Tony wanders into the Yangqiao open-air produce and meat and fish market. The video looks dark at the start, but if you stick with it, you will see light shine on some interesting things. You will also notice the interest from onlookers about Tony.