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.

Blog Entry for February 11 to February 17, 2013

Gratitude: I cannot think of anything specific that I should be thankful for. I suppose I should be thankful for the usual things: life, my wife, and my son.

Acknowledgment: I am turning into a boring person. Perhaps, I have always been a boring person and I shouldn't say I am turning into one. I only admit this because it has really struck me so this week.

Request: I have nothing to ask for this week. I have demands for myself, and I can't ask anyone else to do anything these for me.

The AKIC Week in Brief: Not much to say for myself during the week of the Spring Festival holiday and the historic resignation of a Pope. I stayed in Wuxi. I didn't go to my wife's home village. I read a lot of books on my Ipad when Tony would let me. I didn't do much writing. In fact, I had a very lazy week. I didn't get out of the apartment much and I found on many nights, while I was on one of my electronic devices, that I would be startled by noticing how late it was. Last night, for instance, I was reading until two a.m.

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. I love to read about Johnson spouting his opinions and thoughts – many of which are memorable like the following: If (said he,) I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation. I have cut-and-pasted a few more passages from the biography below.

• 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. It has been serving as a counterweight to the Catholic works I have been reading.

• The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. An adventure set in Medieval Europe. A young monk, a rebellious monastery reject, and a soldier-of-adventure team up and join the White Company. There is more to Arthur Conan Doyle than Sherlock Holmes.

• 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.

• Ancient Rome : from the earliest times down to 476 A. D. by Robert F. Pennell: Finished. A nice concise overview of Roman History. If the author was alive today, I am sure Cole's Notes would have employed him. At the end of this book, there are sample exam questions which I find very intimidating. Maybe there should be exam questions at the end of all books. It would encourage readers to read more attentively, and maybe even encourage them to read the book again.

• Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter: From 1958 to 1962, China was a Hell because of insane economic policies. The period isn't talked about much (here) and reading this book, I think of all I have seen in Wuxi in a different light. Why is it that I don't seem to live in a place that is supposed to have thousands of years of history? How is it that anything built here can be so easily flattened and replaced by something new? Why is it that the ancient town near Xihui Park seemed so phony? Simply put, so much of China's past was destroyed in a revolutionary zeal during my lifetime, and this zeal to change carries on.

This Week's Don Colacho Quotes

I will say it again. He is turning me into a reactionary!

• 998 Certain things are interesting only when lived, others only when imagined.

• 1035 The imagination is the only place in the world where one can dwell.

• 1051 A life that has been lived to the fullest is one which delivers to the grave, after long years, an adolescent whom life did not corrupt. My adolescence was my undoing in my life. I have spent my adult life trying to forget what I was like when I was an adolescent. And yet everything that I was when I was an adolescent, I am still now. And I as think about how I am becoming old, I am becoming more comfortable with being that adolescent.

• 1054 Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it.

• 1055 The cultivated man is not someone who walks around loaded with answers, but who is capable of asking questions. My way to lesson plan is to make lists and lists of questions. So, there is something that I can say for myself.

• 1076 To search for the "truth outside of time" is the way to find the "truth of our time."
  Whoever searches for the "truth of his time" finds the clichés of the day. This is why I label myself conservative or reactionary. This is why I like the Pope. This is why I hate the Obamas of the world.

• 1079 The appearance of nationalism in any nation indicates that its originality is in its death throes. I think that I have cut-and-pasted this quote before. It applies to Canada where we no longer celebrate Dominion Day but Canada Day.

Interesting Quotes

• Nicholas Farrell: Think about it: Who better to tell white liberal lefties to fuck off than a black pope? I hope that the next Pope is Catholic and not Protestant as many Lefties are demanding.

• Doctor Johnson & Boswell: JOHNSON: He, who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him." So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.' BOSWELL. 'The proverb, I suppose, Sir, means, he must carry a large stock with him to trade with.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir.' On this score, I came to China poor. Not as poor as others I will add, but certainly poorer than someone like Doctor Johnson

• Doctor Johnson & Joshua Reynolds: JOHNSON. 'Sir, this is only saying the same thing over again.' SIR JOSHUA. 'No, this is new.' JOHNSON. 'You put it in new words, but it is an old thought. This is one of the disadvantages of wine. It makes a man mistake words for thoughts.'
  
  
  

Monday (the 11^th)

• I don't work today. It is the third day of my seven day CNY holiday.

• It was a do-nothing day. I stayed in bed and read for two hours in the morning. Normally, I would have gotten up but I realized if I had done so, I would have earned my wife's wrath because I wasn't planning on doing any housework. So, I stayed in bed and didn't get into any trouble.

• When we did get up, Tony was wanting cheese cake and I was wanting to get out of the house. The wife suggested that we go downtown to buy cheese cake at the 85 degree bakery. We did and I took this photo from the bus. I showed the photo to my wife and she told me that they were in fact selling boiled pears.

• In tournament #9, I finished play in Group 1D. So, I am halfway through the group stage of the tournament. With all four groups (five teams in each group) of League 1 finished play, I will now play through the four groups of League 2. Then, I will play the two league championship playoffs. Once they are completed, I will play the 16-team Tournament Championship.

• I should have taken a photo. I saw a local fellow with one of these mohawk-like haircuts on the bus. I say mohawk-like because really the fellow's hair was long except around the temples which were shaved. This wouldn't have been so bad to my sensibilities if he hadn't worn, what I thought was, a preposterous all-white outfit which included white jeans and a white fur coat that looked like it was meant to be worn by females. The coat was fur-covered except for the sleeves and had a fur-lined hood.

Tuesday (the 12^th)

• How did I learn the Pope resigned? From National Review's Morning Jolt. Of course, I was surprised and immediately started surfing the Internet for reaction. I was most eager to hear what David Warren had to say. And he gave the best line: "Lord, do not send us the Pope we deserve."

• I liked this Pope. I am sorry to see him go. I liked Benedict as soon as I heard the usual Catholic haters moan his election. The same ones wanted make hay of his having been in the Hitler youth. Like, he was still a Nazi or something! How the experience shaped his faith seemed to be completely beyond their understanding. Anyway, he was a stick-in-the-mud, staunchly conservative, and a reformer. He willing to adapt to what was good about modernity while at the same pointing out what was terribly wrong about it. I pray that the next Pope is of the same mold.

• We stuck around the apartment for the fourth day in the row. I read a lot. Tony watched Youtube videos on my laptop.

• In Tournament #9, I started play in Group A (or Group 2A).

• I looked out the window towards the other apartments in the complex. They were so dark, I thought that there surely must have been a power failure. Jenny assured me that all the people weren't home and had left the California Villa complex for the holiday.

Wednesday (the 13^th)

• The holiday continues.

• We will get out of the house today. We will meet a couple, a Brit and a Wuxi girl, downtown at the Grandma's restaurant in Ba Bai Ban, for lunch. Paul, as I like to say, is the eleventh greatest Englishman of all time behind such great ones as Shakespeare, Dickens, Thatcher, Waugh, and Churchill.

• I have got Cormac McCarthy on my e-book reader! So many e-books! So little time!

• I now classify myself as a teleologicalist and a reactionary.

Thursday (the 14^th)

• The holiday goes on....

• I may get out of the house again.

• Wednesday was the busiest day of the holiday for us. We met Paul & Lilly at the Ba Bai Ban Grandma's where we had a wonderful repast. We then proceeded to a teahouse that was near and across the street from the street where Gigi's was once located. The teahouse, which was well-appointed, was also down the street from the former locations of Ronnie's Pub & the old Homemart. We got a tiny private room, and drank tea and ate all sorts of delicious snacks all afternoon. Paul put a VPN on my Ipad and Jenny's Ipad; and straightened out my Apple ID problem – I should have just gotten my own Apple ID to begin with. Paul is a repository of Tech knowledge, the 11^th greatest Englishman of all-time, and a drinker of Crown Royal. An enjoyable time was had by all.

• About six pm Wednesday, the K family returned to Hui Shan. Tony had a hankering for some KFC, and so I took him. Afterward, we walked through the Hui Shan People's Square and took photos in front of the Year of the Snake display that was there.

• Thursday, the K family slept in. I was up early because I had coffee with Hui Shan Michael – a businessman who lives near the Hui Shan Times Century Plaza. He gave me a good low down on Wuxi history. Wuxi's importance comes from it being near the Grand Canal and Lake Taihu. Consequently, Wuxi, said M, was a shipping & receiving point for a great deal of important commodities because of its location. M had many interesting things to tell me about current affairs as well. His feeling about the economy is that it will improve next year – he tells me he has been getting more orders recently. He told me about a businessman living in Phoenix, Arizona who had his sick 85 year old mother airlifted to the USA for medical treatment. The businessman, who moved from Canada because of high taxes, didn't want to deal with the Canadian medical system which was just another NHS.

• I talked for M for two hours. I then had to do some shopping at Tesco – we had had coffee at a nearby "western" restaurant. At the Tesco, I had an experience which I swear had never before had happen to me while in a supermarket in China – I saw a cashier not serving customers. I was looking for the shortest line to pay for my groceries when I saw a clerk sitting behind a cash register. That I even noticed her was something of a miracle for, as I said, I had been looking for the shortest line – a cashier not serving any customers was beyond my wildest imaginings. When I saw the clerk, I looked to see if a barrier, used to tell customers the register was out of service, was up. It wasn't. And it was still with trepidation, bordering on slap-myself-in-the-side-of-the-head disbelief that I approached the cashier, and got served. It was so remarkable, I thought, that I told my wife about it, as well as YOU my far-and-in-between readers.

• If you don't mind, I have made myself a Crown Royal & Coke. I have been accused of reveling in drunken behavior because I like to make entries like this. I have one beer on a day I don't work.

• I am trying to get Tony to do some homework. He is incapable of sitting down and copying out some numbers. He writes one number out, stands up and runs around for ten minutes while asking Mom & Dad all sorts of stupid and repetitive questions, before he is finally coaxed to sit down and can write out one or two numbers and demonstrate yet again that he is incapable of sitting down and concentrating on something other than a computer video.

Friday (the 15^th)

• Last day of my holiday.

• I slept in.

• I tried to get some video files to play on my television with no luck. I think I know what I can do now that I have talked to my Shanghai tech source.

• In the afternoon, Tony and I took the bus to the new "ancient" town near Xi Hui Park. I took a lot of photos which you can see here.

• Tony's behavior was annoying. He only wanted to play the Ipad or with the Ipod. He wasn't the least bit interested in looking at the sights, until we actually got to one. Then, he was kept asking me to buy him a toy which I didn't do because HE HAD ENOUGH TOYS ALREADY! His most appalling act was his wanting to play with the Ipad while we were in the front seat of the #81 Double Decker bus.

• I took photos of Tony at some bus stops.

• In the evening, we had a Facetime conversation with my Tech Source, the eleventh greatest Englishman of all-time, who was in Shanghai.

Saturday (the 16^th)

• I work today 1000 to 1800.

• It was a miracle that I got up in time to get to work. I was lingering in bed in the morning when all-of-a-sudden I realized I had to go to work. After exclaiming shit! I checked my watch to see I had overslept but that if I quickly got ready, I would at work on time with plenty of time to prep for classes.

• I got an email from Laslzo Montgomery, host of the China History Podcast. He tells me he will be doing a podcast about the Wu Kingdom. He will make mention of Wuxi he tells me.

• Jacko, a student, went to Hong Kong for the Spring Festival so he could buy his fiancee a diamond ring. The students who are nurses were working during the holiday.

• Most of the students, like me, were lazy and played with their electronic devices.

• On the way home from school, I saw about four foreigners in quick succession. They weren't together. They were just by themselves, but I saw them in a space of four minutes – very unusual in Wuxi.

• Tournament #9: I finished play in Group 2A.

Sunday (the 17^th)

• No work today. I think it is going to be a lazy day.

• I look out the window and don't like what I see.

• Last night, Tony & I watched the Wizard of Oz on the Ipad.

• These torrents are taking up too much of my time. I have no time to read all the books I have downloaded.

• The books on my Ipad all disappeared! There I was, minding my own business, when the pages in the e-book, I was reading, started breaking up – it is the best way I can describe it. I shut the book I was reading at the time and opened another, and the same thing happened. So, clearly there was a software problem and not a corrupt book file to blame. I rebooted the Ipad, and the problem didn't go away. I then noticed that all the books in my collections had disappeared! I had to sync the Ipad with the Itunes program on my laptop to get the books back. It could well be that I have too many books on the Ipad, and I should delete some. But searching on the Internet, I discovered the problem has happened to many another Ibook user. Perhaps, I should use another e-reader app. Perhaps, I should stop playing around with torrents.

• I also wasted time because I had inadvertently downloaded some browser-kidnapping software. I had to spend an hour looking through browser preferences and program files to stop the bad effects that the program was having on my browser. And yet the .exe file for the software can't be deleted!

• There will be a van to take Tony to school again! Jenny says the school probably had to give hongbao (a red bag full of money) to the government.

Blog Entry for February 4 to February 10, 2013

Gratitude: I am thankful, this week, to be living in China during the Spring Festival and thus having a week off. I am also thankful for discovering torrents.

Acknowledgment: The holiday will see me far too idle and far too indulgent of my son Tony who goes to bed too late and sleeps in till midnight.

Request: Please watch this video. It took me thirty hours to upload it. It will take you but five minutes to watch it.

The Week in Brief

Jenny tells me that we won't be able to do much during the Spring Festival holiday because we don't have any money. So when I haven't been on the way to work or at work, I have been staying in Casa K playing on the computer where there is more than enough things to keep me occupied.

What AKIC Is Reading this Week

• Don Colacho's Aphorisms: there are 2,988 of them. I read ten of them at a time.
• The Life of Johnson by Boswell. I love to read about Johnson spouting his opinions and thoughts – many of which are memorable like the following: If (said he,) I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.
• Ulysses by James Joyce I am following along with Frank Delaney as he slowly goes through the novel. Delaney figures he will do his last ReJoyce Podcast in 22 years. It has been serving as a counterweight to the Catholic works I have been reading.
• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis. Finished.
• My Discovery of England by Stephen Leacock. Finished. ThE-Book is politically incorrect and thus economically wise. One chapter in thE-Book, Business in England. Wanted – More Profiteers, which was written in the 1920s could easily apply to today – it contains a plea for capitalism and an effective mockery of the economics of Obama and Mitt Romney. Check out this passage: The underlying cause (of the early 1920s economic distress) is plain enough. The economic distress that the world suffers now is the inevitable consequence of the war. Everybody knows that. But where the people differ is in regard to what is going to happen next, and what we must do about it. Here opinion takes a variety of forms. Some people blame it on the German mark: by permitting their mark to fall, the Germans, it is claimed, are taking away all the business from England; the fall of the mark, by allowing the Germans to work harder and eat less than the English, is threatening to drive the English out of house and home: if the mark goes on falling still further the Germans will thereby outdo us also in music, literature and in religion. What has got be done, therefore, is to force the Germans to lift the mark up again... This has been said about the Chinese.
• The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle. An adventure set in Medieval Europe.
• History of the Conquest of Peru; with a preliminary view of the civilization of the Incas by William Hickling Prescott. I am really enjoying this history.
• Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. I finally got my hands on a copy of thE-Book! From what I have read, I see that Stephen Leacock was out-of-step with the times in which he made his observations about England – this is a good thing in my books.

Don Colacho Aphorisms that Strike Andis as Wise

• 903 Reading the newspaper degrades whomever it does not make into a brute. I have also heard it said the reading the newspaper everyday make one stupid. The reason being that the view of the newspaper is temporal, ephemeral, and thus limited.
• 908 The punishment of the man who searches for himself is that he finds himself.
• 914 Though he knows he cannot win, the reactionary has no desire to lie.
• 931 Let us try, as we grow older, to assume attitudes which our adolescence would have approved and to have ideas which it would not have understood.
• 951 To be authentically modern is, in any century, a sign of mediocrity.
• 954 “Solutions” are the ideologies of stupidity.
• 979 Tolerance consists of a firm decision to allow them to insult everything we seek to love and respect, as long as they do not threaten our material comforts. Tolerance, as I understand those who talk of being tolerant like it is a virtue, is really cowardice. I will never forget a man who bragged of his tolerance when he said he didn't have any problems with his daughter dating a boy dressed like a gang member.

A Quote from James Schall on Loneliness

Who is James Schall? You can find out here.

Here is one quote of his that I like a lot:  Loneliness is an intrinsic aspect of healthy personality.  There is and must be in all of us somewhere an interior, deep loneliness.  We cannot escape this.  Small groups, deep loves, comradeship, companionship, activity, all of these good and necessary though they be, will never erase the basic loneliness that is also about us.  Loneliness, then, is the sign that we are never satisfied with any earthly love or work, a sign of the dignity of our creation.  This too is why we must be somewhat skeptical about all enthusiasms and friendships that are conceived in terms of removing this fundamental loneliness.  Should they succeed, they can only end up by making our lives more shallow.  We are made for something else, yet this too. 

Things I can't get upset about

I made this list a few weeks ago and didn't publish it, thinking I would have more to add to it. But I didn't. There are many things that don't upset me, and far more things that make me feel elated. The items in the list below are things that I have seen others get upset about that don't matter to me either way:

• Chinese beer.
• The high prices at Expat pubs. It give me a reason not to go.
• People not wearing helmets on bikes.
• Canada losing to the USA in ice hockey. (I hate it when Canada loses to Russia or Sweden however. When someone tells me they cheer for Russia against the USA – that gets me angry. But, hockey-wise, Americans are our brothers – I can't think of the Yanks as rivals.)
• Girls who are good looking and know it. Thanks for the free show. That is all I can ask for.
• The influence that Chinese parents have on their children. There are idiot parents all over the world but children should heed their parents.
• The process of making hot dogs.
• PSY.
• McDonald’s or KFC or Pizza Hut in China. It's all good.

Monday (the 4^th)

• I don't work today.
• I caught the end of the Super Bowl. That is, I saw the 49ers, trailing by five points with less than two minutes in the game, have a first and goal on the Ravens five yard line and not score. I had tried to watch the game on television but I couldn't find it – the only sports being shown on the television was a Chinese Basketball Association game. I gave up hope of watching the Super Bowl live but when I looked for a game update at nfl.com, I clicked and got a live feed of the game on cbs.com.
• In the afternoon, the K family went to the local Tesco to stock up for Chinese New Year. We ate at a Hunan Restaurant first, and then went into the store which was stocked for the holiday with all sorts of CNY decorations, including toy snakes. To get home, we took a motorcycle taxi, once we were able to catch one – we had to wait for ten minutes before one passed near us. The taxi's driver and the security guards at our complex had an argument because the driver choose not to drive his cab through the pedestrian entrance, but insisted on having the guards open the car gate for him.
• I watch the Super Bowl highlights.  I hadn't known that there had been a power failure.
• Mistake:  I let Tony play Microsoft Train Simulator.  It seems to make him miserable .
• If I stay indoors through the entire CNY, I will go mad.
• Red train incident:  Tony wanted me to find a particular red train on Microsoft Train Simulator.  I couldn't find the red train he wanted after cursoring through the menu of trains twice -- we have 80 or so trains to choose from on the program.  Every red train I had shown him was not the train he wanted.  Annoyed that Tony had pulled me away from my reading for the umpteenth time, I gave up and told him to find it himself, upsetting him to no end.  He cried but then he tried to find it himself.  Five minutes later, he pulled me away from my reading to show me the red train for which he had been looking.  He found the train he wanted in the tutorial section of MSTS, and Dad was now able to find the train in the drive-a-train section. Look Daddy, there is the red train!  He had never done that before – that is look for something in order to point it out to me and as aid in helping me find something for him.
• Here I was typing out the red train incident, when all I had to do was dictate into my iPad mini! I just discovered the dictate function on it!
• I listen to the ReJoyce podcast episodes #135 and 136.  Listening to the the most recent John Derbyshire podcast, I learned that Finnigan's Wake has been translated into Chinese and it's a bestseller in China.
• I have put together the Scenes from My Life in Wuxi China Video #38. Now, if I can only get the thing uploaded to YouTube! I haven't had any luck so far.
  Tuesday (the 5^th)
• I work 1300 to 2100.
• It's wet and miserable outside.
• I decide to not go to Subway because I wasn't interested in walking downtown Wuxi in the rain. (I learn later in the week that it was just as well that I didn't go to Subway.)
• “There are two kinds of socks at my home..” said the student as I started to giggle, keen to know what he was going to tell me, “my mother's socks which are.... and my father's and my socks which are....” The closest thing to interesting that happened in that class.
• I see this pair of fellows holding yellow flags standing at a corner. These people, who carry yellow flags and stand at corners, are usually performing some sort of community-service punishment. I felt sorry for them because they were having to stand under an umbrella and bear the cold damp weather. I was walking to the McDonald's when I saw them again. Waiting in line at McDonald's, these same two guys then cut in front of me while I was waiting to order. I was annoyed at them and, in my mind, I withdrew the sympathy I had for them, but I didn't make an issue of it beyond that.
• The following four entries (in italics) were dictated into my Ipad mini:
• Darn the dictate function of the iPad mini doesn't work if you're not with him I say you're not within Wi-Fi range.
• I forgot to mention that my wife made bread yesterday with her new bread-maker.  She started making bread about midnight in about 2 o'clock in the morning she scared the crap out of me when she woke me up asked me if I wanted to try the bread that she had just made.  I actually did get up and try the bread. However I was almost not going to but then I realized that's Brad I better try it so I got up and get it.
• I'm about to get Tony to make his first ever entry into the AKIC Block just wait for it.  Here it is:  Hello my name is Tony!
• The school gave all the staff a box each of vacuum packed meat.

Wednesday (the 6^th)

• Damn! They closed down the Parkson's Subway. I find out the hard way as I go to get my lunch and dinner for the day. It has been closed down for a few days I learn at the office. I can only add that the sign for the restaurant replacing it has already been put up.
• I work 1300 to 2100 today. I will be talking about elevators in my English Corner and Pets in a Salon class. Interesting, names: Miki, Cherry, Sissy, Violet, Albert, Molly, and Carrie. One of these students (I won't be so bold as to mention the exact one) is a piece of work. I have been told he plays on an Ipad till the last possible minute and shows up for class fashionably late – he thinks he is going to Harvard.
• I just took the latest Pew News Quiz. I got thirteen out of thirteen questions right along with 8 percent of the population.
• I have just listened to episode #138 of the ReJoyce Podcast. I have caught up!!
• In the English Corner, there was a student who could recall the first time he was in an elevator. He entered the elevator and said he couldn't understand why it wouldn't move so he stood inside until someone else came in and pressed a button. Later, when he had to leave the building, he told me he was too intimidated to use the elevator and so took the stairs.

Thursday (the 6^th)

• The temperature will dip around zero today so I am wearing my thermals or long johns or long underwear – whatever you choose to call 'em.
• I didn't sleep well last night. Tony lay beside me as I tried to fall asleep, and he was being no help as he kept tossing and turning, singing Ultraman theme songs, and kicking me. At five a.m., I was looking at my Ipad.
• I see some snow falling as I make my way to work. It won't stay on the ground though.
• I work 1000-2100. At 1000, I have a four person private class which is not something I do so early in the morning on a Thursday but then the students, who are full-time students, have twenty day off for the Spring Festival. At 1300, I have an Advanced level private class with a good student and a student who isn't really advanced – I may have to repeat the latter student. My hope had been to push him through so we could have him go to a lower level. With another student present in class, I will have to keep up the standards. I will do a salon class in the evening on Physical Fitness – I should change the topic to mental fitness. At 2000, I have a private class, topic: the Fitting Room, with the girl who told me last week that she was going to go shopping for underwear.... That underwear-shopping conversation had me thinking of Homer Simpson. I imagined or recalled him doing a short gasp of fright which was followed by sounds of heavy footsteps, a door slamming, a car door opening, and finally tires squealing.
• At lunch hour, I went to the toy section of Ba Bai Ban to see if I could buy something for Tony but I had no luck, which is probably just as well since Tony HAS ENOUGH TOYS! I was hoping to get him a Ultraman action figure but I didn't see any. I did see another piece of track I could buy for his train set but I wondered if it could fit with the track he already had.
• In tournament #9, I have completed play in group 1C: the third of eight groups.
• Researching on the Internet I have found that I can use the u-turn piece with the Plarial track I do have. So! I am gonna to buy it!
• It is snowing in Wuxi. (Two people liked the link on facebook.)

Friday (the 8^th)

• I work 1000 to 1700 today. We finish early and the Spring Festival holiday begins!!
• It is below zero.
• I listened to the Russian Rulers Podcast episode about the end of the Soviet Union. It puts me in a even better mood.
• Last evening, interesting class about superstitions as the students asked me some interesting questions about religion and Socialism. Responding to questions, I told them that students weren't taught socialism the schools I attended but mostly were naturally socialists anyway, and then hopefully they smartened up, though more and more don't seem to be if the election results in the USA are any guide. I then found myself defending the Christian and Buddhist religions. “Religion answers a human need,” I told them, “and if we don't worship a god, we will worship something else like celebrities or national leaders!” Then, I had two lame classes. Most of the students weren't talking. One student however did talk – her performance was quite admirable though her English was all over the place.
• I say to the students： 新年快乐！
• The last dinner of the Year of Dragon was eaten at Pizza Hut.

Saturday (the 9^th)

• I don't work today. It is the first day of my seven day Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) holiday.
• It is the last day of the Year of the Dragon.
• It is my wife Jenny's birthday. She was born on CNY eve.
• Last night, I started playing with torrents. They are wonderful things. I now have the short stories of Evelyn Waugh, Clock Orange, the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and Free to Choose by Milton & Rose Friedman on my Ipad Mini E-Book reader.
• Torrents seem to work like Napster and the peer-to-peer software from nearly ten years ago. Like then, I have spent a lot of time looking a the download screen hoping for something to happen.
• Jenny spent the day cleaning the house. I helped her as much as I could cleaning the bathroom, the toilet, and the bedroom.
• We had a big CNY eve dinner: just the three of us.
• Like last CNY, Tony is very scared of fireworks. He will plug his ears and cry whenever he hears some. And he has heard a lot, and will hear a lot.
• I bought the Takara TOMY Plarail track piece R10. It didn't quite work out as I had hoped, and to compound my error, I bought two of the pieces thinking it would solve a problem – it didn't.

Sunday (the 10^th)

• It is Chinese New Year!
• I don't work today.
• I was up till 300 AM last night. I finally finished uploading Scenes from My Life in Wuxi, China #38 to Youtube. The upload started on Friday at 1100 PM.
• Looks like the K family going to stay in the house for a second day in a row. I asked Tony if he wanted to go out and he refused.
• I am in the dog house so I walk around the house with a guilty feeling. Even trying to help the wife doesn't allay the guilt I feel because I can't escape the feeling I am putting on a show to try to assuage the guilt which makes me feel like I am irredeemable anyway. If I try to read, which is all I want to do, I can't enjoy it because I know I will be given heck for reading a book and not doing something else.
• What did I do wrong? I don't know.
• I have am having great fun with torrents. I have downloaded some fantastic e-books by some of my favorite authors.
• I end the week waiting for the episode #139 of the ReJoyce Podcast.