Saturday Mid-October 2009

So far

So far, I haven't much to say for myself.  So, I am going to have it fake it.

At Work

This headlined entry is being written as I am at work.  Currently, I haven't decided exactly when I will publish this post -- probably, this evening.  This afternoon, I have a public event to do for the school.  I will tell you later, perhaps, how it went.

Took the Bus

I took the bus to work so Jenny can use the electric bike.  It was crowded so I stood.

Reading and Standing

Multi-tasking isn't my forte, so it was unusual for me to be reading a book at the bus stop.  I thought to read on the bus, even while standing, but it seemed too daunting a task.  

Currently, I am reading the Wind in the Willows, A collection of Chinese Humorous Stories, the Holy Bible King James Version, and 300 poems of the Tang Dynasty.

Weather Forecast

A student tells me that the weather will become much colder on Monday.  The sunny warm weather we are having Saturday will come to an end till next year.

Sick Child

A student, I just had in class, tells me his four year old daughter is entering the hospital today.  She is scheduled to be there for five days.  She has a very bad cough.  Apparently, the girl has spent a lot of time in hospital in her short life -- half a year already her father told me.  Hearing that, my heart goes out to him and thank the powers-that-be for Tony's good health.

In Tony's bad books

I seem to be in Tony's bad books these days.  He refuses to have me accompany him to the bathroom.  He relishes joining in Jenny's lambastings of me.

However, he does show me the occasional kindness.  Last night, he brought me my doll.

Your doll? you ask.  Yes.  What happened is that we have bought two dolls for Tony.  The dolls are characters in this strange children's show called In the Night Garden.  Now, Tony really likes one of the dolls.  I took the other doll and was imitating Tony's actions with his favorite doll.  When he goes to sleep with his doll, I go to sleep with mine.

Jenny scolds me saying that Tony is supposed to copying me, not me copying him.  I defend myself because I am trying to create a ruse to get him to go to sleep.  And plus I don't want Tony copying me that much anyway.  He needs to be more grounded.

Anyway, back to last night.  Jenny told Tony to go to the living room to get his doll.  He did this showing his understanding of our words is improving.  But he also brought in my doll and gave it to me, showing he is capable of taking initiative and giving his dad the occasional kindness.

So.  How Was it?

I am back from the thing I have said I was going to do in a headline entry that is previous in this entry.

The School did a Expo English community event in an apartment complex in downtown Wuxi.  I can't bloody remember now the name of the place.  Suffice to say that is located along a canal that runs through downtown.  I believe that Zhongshan Road runs over it.  But it could be European Street.  It is in the general area of where Zhongshan Road changes into European Street.  You would have to be a Wuxi Expat veteran to understand what I am saying.  Not that it is important.

The event was attended, maybe sparsely, maybe not.  I did have this moment of supreme awareness where I was thinking that I had no inhibitions about singing in front of strangers.  Now I have to think of ways to get strangers to overcome their inhibitions.  To do it gracefully?  Or to do it badly with a wicked sense of aplomb?

Harper!

A taxi driver upon hearing that I was from Canada, said "Harper!"  Some guy named Harper is Canada's prime minister.  99.9 percent of Chinese don't know who Canada's leader is.  So needless to say, I was very surprised.

Let Limbaugh own a NFL team!

I may be Canadian but Rush Limbaugh is a hero of mine.  I have been reading accounts of efforts to stop him from buying a share in a NFL team because some ignorant and bigoted people, who probably have never listened to his show, have decided he is some kind of knuckle dragging KKK racist.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, if you look objectively, real racism and prejudice comes from the Left, center or far loony.  In this day and age, bigotry has just taken on another hideous form.

Wuxi Tony Update #441: Tony on a canal bank

This is the second last video I took of Tony during the October Holiday week.

This canal is a ten minutes' scooter ride from our home.

Wuxi Tony Update #440: Tony teases a dog

This is the last video that I have taken in Beixing. In it, Tony teases a dog that lives in my in-laws' compound.

Soon, you will be caught up on the video.

Yesterday evening, I recorded WTU 444.

Another person talks to me on the bus

It happened again today.  Previously, I had mentioned a girl staring at me intently on the bus had caused me to bark at her.  On reflection, I realized that she thought I was going to the train station and that I was about to miss my stop.  This time, a gentleman asked if I knew that the train station was "over there".  Yes, I said.  And he then asked if I was familiar with the city.  I answered in the affirmative.  He then asked me how long I had lived in the city.  I told him five years.  I found he lived not too far from me and got his phone number.  Maybe I will have a friend in the area who can answer me questions I have about it.

A much better ending to an encounter.

Wuxi Tony Update #439: Two Bridges in Beixing

This is the longest video I took over the October holiday which was spent in Beixing. I had to carry Tony two kilometers to get to this setting with so many bridges.

Complaints against the Government

I had a student tell me that the Chinese government is too soft.  The Japanese and Russians have territory that rightfully belongs to China.  China, he says, has the military might to take these lands back.  Also, the Americans are initiating a trade war.

Wuxi Tony Update #438: Ketchup!

This video is not in chronological order with the other videos I have done. For some reason when I was making all those videos in Beixing, I miscounted and didn't do a WTU 438.

So, WTU 438 shows Tony's return to Wuxi. However, WTU 439 and 440 were made in Beixing.

Friday, Mid-October dispatch

Liaoning Student

I had a one-on-one class with a student from the Northeastern province of Liaoning.  The topic was the conflict in the Middle East.  He didn't know much about it so the class drifted off to other topics.

 

Coming from a cold province, the student and I talked about Wuxi's climate.  He had the same reaction I had:  Summers are too hot and the Winters are uncomfortably cold because of the dampness.  Coming from Northern China, he also can testify to the fact that Wuxi buildings, without central heating, add to the winter discomfort here.

 

Open pit mines so deep that you cannot see the bottom, toward which they have trains running.  That is the image the student left me with from his coal-mining hometown.  It sounds like a place that I want to visit but not live in -- the environment is quite awful.  The coal mining accidents we seem to always hear about are caused by unscrupulous mine owners, he told me.

 

Drifting back to the subject of the Middle East and Culture, the student told me how he admired the thousands of years of culture to be found in the there.  China has lost these important culture memories.  While the government is trying to revive the old ways, the spirit of them has been lost.  People do the dances, perform the rituals, but they don't know why and they don't do them very inauthenticily.  He left me wandering if anything in China that is supposedly old and traditional is authentic.  He said many people, looking for work, will dress up as monks.

 

No Diapers but...

Tony doesn't wear diapers no more except for long road trips.  However, he doesn't go to the bathroom by himself yet.  The procedure is he points to his crotch, and his mother takes him to the toilet, holding him above it till he does his business.  His father wants to help but Tony only seems to want his mom to take him.

HyLite Halloween Party

It seemed that the school wasn't going to have a Halloween Party but now we are.  Saturday October 31, in the evening, there will be a party at the A-1 pub, or the place where the A-1 was.  (Did it change its name?)  Not having the party was a relief because it meant not having to make a costume.  I have had plenty of ideas for costumes with my favorite idea being to dress up as a woman.  Unfortunately Jenny's clothes don't fit me -- even her maternity wear, and I just don't have the time and money to have women's clothes made for me.

More student thoughts about 0's Nobel

• Yet another student has suggested that Hu Jiantao should have received the award because he has been making peace with everyone in the world  -- much more than Obama.
• Another student mentioned Obama making economic war on China.
• The student who suggested that Chairman Hu should have received the award, complained that the Nobel Committee was blatantly pro-American.  "Obama got the award for being American president." was his take. (*meanwhile Obama's domestic political opponent see the Nobel Committee as being anti-American.  Better, to say the Nobel Committee likes the American Democratic party and can't abide Republicans.)

 

I need someone new to be a sycophant to...

WMM seeks a Male to lionize in a light-hearted way

Perhaps, people have a Milton Friedman side or a Alan Greenspan side to their personality.  Both men made a name for themselves in Economics.  Friedman was the combative, argumentative theorist; Greenspan is the accommodating type able to work in government and so stand making the compromises that governing and politics demand.  Friedman was perhaps too dogmatic; Greenspan  perhaps made too many compromises.  Forced to choose I would be like Friedman.  In reality, I am a Greenspan.  I am not where I would like to be in theory.  I am where circumstances have put me.  

Perhaps also, people have a Jeeves or Wooster side to them.  Jeeves was the brainy, rational, sober, calm-under-pressure butler for Bertram Wooster who was frivolous, prone to panic, not quite in grasp of ideas, and always needing to be saved.  On this count, I am conflicted.  I like to be both at the same time.  Alas, I deviate from one extreme of these personality types to the other.

Then again, people could have their Saintly and Hell Angelish sides to their personality.  And this paradigm isn't exactly Atheist and Theist.  They can overlap.  What, I mean is I would never end up in jail.  I could never be in a motorcycle.  I would blush at locker room talk.  I will quietly go along with whoever I am with.  So I would be the passive saintly type, not the aggressive saintly type.

There was this division of personalities in my relations with the KoW.  I have serious tastes while his are pedestrian.  But when it comes to practical matters, I am Bertram Wooster without a pile or a butler, the KoW is like Bismarck with the knowing smile of the Buddha to boot.

But the KoW will be deserting Wuxi eventually so I need a new person to be a sycophant to.  Requirements:  the virtues of chastity and the vice of gluttony; an interest in literature so maybe we can talk; an interest in politics - you can be left-center leaning so I can mock you, you must come from a place like Winnipeg - you lack glamour, and you must like science fiction and Cheetos so I can mock your taste.

If you fit the bill, email me at akaulins@gmail.com.  

p.s.  I should have mentioned Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panchaz.  In this coupling, the KoW is definitely Don Quixote with illusions of grandeur.

p.p.s.  Another pairing comes to mind:  Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon.  In this pairing I am the suave and cool Carson.  Imp is like Ed McMahon with a weakness for the sensual.