What AKIC Has Read in 2018, So Far.

For whatever reason, for the last four years,  I have been keeping track of the books I have read and annually publishing, in January, the list of them for the past year.  This year, I will publish the list of what I have read so far during the year.  So here is what I've read so far in 2018:

The Joke by Milan Kundura

Four Quartets by TS Eliot

The English and Their History by Robert Tombs

Righteous Indignation by Andrew Breitbart

Mother Angelica's Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality Edited by Raymond Arroyo

Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors by James Delingpole

American Pravda by James O'Keefe

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson

Bad Thoughts by Jamie Whyte

With the World's Great Travelers, Volume 2 by Various. Edited by Charles Morris & Oliver H.G. Leigh

Poems by Christina Rossetti

A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Houseman

What's Wrong with China by Rodney Gilbert

Philip Larkin Poems Selected by Martin Amis

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Village Life in China: A Study in Sociology by Arthur H. Smith

On a Chinese Screen by W. Somerset Maugham

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

Hombre by Elmore Leonard

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

The Liturgical Year Volume 3: Christmas by Abbot Prosper Gueranger

The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 by Jacob Gould Schurman

Gems of Chinese Verse by W.J.B. Fletcher

Angel's Flight by Michael Connelly

Selected Poems of Lord Byron edited by Matthew Arnold

The Liturgical Year Volume 6: Passiontide and Holy Week by Abbot Prosper Gueranger

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan

The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

Poorly Made in China by Paul Midler

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Currently, I am reading  Collected Poems of John Donne, Aphorisms of  Nicolás Gómez Dávila and a biography:  Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilsation.

I Should Have Taken Photos

I am writing another one of these "trouble comes in three" entries. This time, I can complain mostly about bad timing, though number three of my troubles is a complaint about the locals which I will try to demonstrate has geo-political implications for the world.

First, I was walking on the second level of my local shopping center towards a spot that overlooks an open area where there is a often a stage set up for performances and promotions.  I came upon the sight of four slim twenty-something girls wearing red costumes that went down to their upper thighs. They were dancing and thanks to the red, their legs stood out from a mile away and I immediately thought to pull out my phone to take a photo of them. It was just my luck that they finished their performance before the camera app became fully operational.

Secondly, I was at school in its second-floor office when I heard chanting coming from street level. I walked over to a classroom and looked down and saw about twenty delivery drivers, all in uniform, standing in formation (ranks as they said when I was in the militia) listening to some supervisor.  I decided to take a photo. Only problem was my phone was in the office. By the time I came back, the group had broken up and all the drivers were getting on their special delivery e-bikes to embark on a day of restaurant food deliveries.

Finally, I was driving Tony to school and was stopped at a traffic light along the way.  I was in the right-most car lane, a barrier separating my vehicle from the bike lane, when I saw a white Kia Sportage in the bike lane stopped behind a bunch of e-bikers and cyclists. I had become familiar with this particular SUV and its driver because it was the third time in a week that I had seen the vehicle blatantly being driven in a bike lane that was barriered-off from cars. Its driver was male, probably in his thirties, and he wore aviator sun glasses. His hair was short, his face was square, and his mouth was wide with a very visible smirk. His countenance, his getup, and his driving habits indicated to me that he was a thug accustomed to getting away with things. This third time to watch him, I was close enough to get a good look at him as his SUV was stopped just a little in front of me. I had the perfect photo to put on my AKIC photo blog, but alas because of my fumbling and the camera app of my Apple Hitler Phone not setting up in time, I was again just a little late.  Just as the camera was ready to take photos, the light turned green and the SUV quickly sped off.   It went straight ahead, merging into the car lane.  What the driver had done was to get into the bike lane so he could get around all the other cars that were lined up in the proper lanes for the red light. [A fucking prick maneuver! Pardon my French!] Proceeding through the intersection myself, I was not far behind the SUV as I witnessed it turn into the barriered-off bike lane again so the driver could again get around cars stopped at the next traffic light. He continued on the route I was taking to school, where it turned out he was dropping off his son as well.  Just the previous week, it was at that service opening in the boulevard between the bike and car lanes that the driver had first entered my consciousness because then and there, I had almost rear-ended him because he had unexpectedly and recklessly slowed down his SUV quite suddenly to make the illegal and immoral turn. I only pray that I will have another opportunity to record with a camera his maneuvers. Of course, it would be much better if he stopped doing this, but being an adult male it might be too late to for him to change his ways.

As I was continually encountering this driver, I was following news of Trump's putting tariffs on Chinese products. Now, many places on the Internet say that Trump is starting the trade war. They have got it backwards. The Chinese started it years ago by having been cheating on trade and Trump is the first US president with the balls to do something about it.  How do the Chinese cheat?  In many ways.  A large portion of them arrogantly proceed through their days, like the SUV driver I witnessed above, as if the rules don't apply to them. The SUV driver's particular maneuvers mentioned above are not an anomaly.  I have been tiresome in this blog about the lack of consideration Chinese have for others as they go about in public. I have related many an anecdote of Chinese drivers selfishness and trickery in traffic.  One can only imagine the lack of consideration that goes on in their business dealings, especially with foreign devils. So.  Go get them Trump!

Tony Questions My Sanity

It was Saturday evening.  Tony & I were walking away from Burger King, heading to our car so we could drive to his 1830-2000 swim class.  Tony is not very enthusiastic about swimming classes but has to go because his mother insists and because she has paid for a year of them.  So, Tony was in a griping mood and blurted out the following:  "China is so boring!  I want to go to Canada!" to which I told him I heard and understood.

Tony then asked me a question that put me on the spot:  "Why did you decide to move to China?"  He asked this question in a tone that suggested I was crazy for having decided to come.  I answered him by saying that I came to China for the sake of travel.  I then told him that if I hadn't come to China, he wouldn't never have been born.

Really, he should have asked why I was still in China and why I was so crazy as to have not gone back to Canada.  I would have answered that there were a number of reasons:  going back to Canada would be hard; his mother wants to stay in China; and despite the dullness of our life in China, we were doing fairly well with a car and a paid-off apartment.  And yet, I feel like I am at the end of my string in China and that Tony needs to experience something other than the mindless and soul-killing Chinese Schooling System.

Wuxi, China #25 Bus

Thirty Seconds of Wuxi, China Traffic #56

My Patience Gets Tested

I constantly make vows to not lost my temper at the locals because of their selfish, uncouth habits and it seems that the only way I can keep these vows is to not have them tested.  For as soon as I go into public some minor impertinence on the part of some local has me swearing or doing something impertinent in response.

I made my latest vow as I was listening to a Mother Angelica Classic EWTN Podcast during which she suggested that her listeners smile more as they went through their day and keep their patience.  She even talked about traffic behavior and how we shouldn't use our horns.  Mother Angelica was a great speaker, her strong Catholic faith put her leagues above normal inspirational speakers, and she didn't sugarcoat what she was saying.  Saints, she said, were flawed and were always battling their flaws.  Yet, I made the mistake of going away from her podcast with my feet in clouds thinking this time I would once and for all conquer myself.  This vow was broken the next Tuesday as my patience got tested three times.

First, I was driving Tony to school and was stuck in the usual long line of cars waiting to drop off children.  I was stopped behind a white SUV which suddenly decided to go into reverse.  At first I didn't want to believe that someone would do that in that traffic situation, but they did.  I honked at the car loudly and when I was finally able to get around the car, I gave the driver the middle finger.

Secondly, I was in the Subway station and going through the process of getting to the platform. I had put my bag on the X-ray machine belt when some man came from behind and put their bag in front of mine.  I was miffed and thinking of a vow I had made, after some other local had done the same thing, I grabbed the man's bag and put it behind mine.  The guy looked at me and seem startled as I swore at him.  I went on my way.

The adage of trouble coming in threes was later proved to me at checkout line in a Carrefour Supermarket.  The male clerk operating the checkout wasn't very efficient and while I wasn't so impatient, the woman in line behind me was.  She was practically standing up against me, waiting for the shopper in front of us to be done and for the register counter to be cleared of items.  The woman's hovering so close compelled me to put my basket on the counter to stop her from encroaching any closer to my space.  I had a feeling that she would have cut in front of me if she could (the locals always give me that feeling).  When the shopper being served finally loaded her stuff into her bag, thus clearing the counter, the woman behind me lifted up her basket and tried to push mine ahead.  I used some impertinent language indicating to her that she should be more patient.

So, three times I failed to keep to my cool.  I should have smiled but I didn't.

Local Driver Being Very Unpredictable in Yet Another Way

You'd think I would have seen everything and that I would have come to to the end of my litany of complaints about local drivers and pedestrians and cyclists, but some local doofus found a new way to be selfish on the road.

One morning, I was returning to Casa K after having dropped my son off at school and I came to a red light where ahead of me, in the left of two straight-ahead lanes, was a three-wheeled motorized vehicle and ahead of it was a long black sedan.  As I came to a stop, I noticed that the sedan's driver had turned on the four-way blinkers.  I wasn't sure what was going on and when the lights turned green, the car didn't move.  This caused a cacophony of horn-blowing from the drivers behind me, all of whom quickly -- much more quickly than me -- changed into the right-hand lane to get around the sedan.  When I was finally able to get in the right lane, the light had turned red.  I was then beside the black sedan and I eagerly looked at the driver to see if it was a male or female, if it showed the obvious facial and skull features of a mental incompetent,  and what he or she was doing.  I saw a forty-ish looking man talking on his cell phone.  He obviously figured that putting on his four-ways took the curse of what was a very inconsiderate act.   I honked at the moron and gave him the finger.  He continuing looking inscrutable.

Another anecdote to add to the hundreds I have and thousands that other expatriates in China have about the supreme lack of consideration the locals have for others as they go about their way during the day.

A Typical Day in the Life of AKIC

• I get up at 5:50 AM, I grab my phone which is, of course, by my bedside, and head for the toilet.

• On the toilet, I do a lesson of either French, German or Spanish on the Duolingo App.

• I prepare hot tea for Tony & Jenny while I wait for them to get up. I also prepare noodles that Tony can take to school and eat for lunch.  Finally, I prepare toast for Tony & Jenny to eat for breakfast.

• At 6:20 AM I tell Jenny it is time for her & Tony to get up.

• I try to finish three lessons on the Duolingo App so I can collect rewards for having completed my daily goals and kept my daily streak going. If time, I will then do a lesson on the Basic Chinese Skills app. I will also check out my Feedly App for updates from all my favorite websites and the Wechat App (the popular Chinese social app) to see if anything interesting is happening with people in my social network. Usually nothing happens on WeChat but, fool that I am, I look at it compulsively.

• At 6:50 AM or so, Tony & I leave the apartment. We walk to the car which is parked in an underground garage in the building that is across the lane from our apartment building. I start the drive by telling myself to not lose my temper at the locals I will encounter who have barbaric driving habits. Anything I do that is not cricket, I justify to myself by thinking of what they say about behaving in Rome...

• On the drive, I listen to music on the car stereo; either "my" music (usually the Kinks) or "Tony's" (Bon Jovi or Guns & Roses). I let Tony play games on my mobile phone.

• When I drop Tony off at school, there is always a traffic jam with impatient drivers trying to change lanes by cutting in, or muscling in, to the other lanes without warning and without turning on their turn signals. If they do this close to me, I don't yield to them and even try to block them. I'll stop on the road near a crosswalk where there is a traffic attendant.  Tony will get out. I continue down the road, having a easy right turn to make at the next intersection because traffic going in the three other directions is always clogged while somehow always leaving daylight for me to go right. But then on the road I have turned onto, I always have to wait at least two lights before I can proceed on my way home. While waiting I get annoyed at seeing the drivers who cheat either by trying to cut into the lineup stuck at the lights or by driving in the lane reserved for cyclists.

• 7:30 AM or so, I am backing up the car in our apartment parking space. If I am lucky the BMW isn't parked in the spot beside. As I have said in the blog, I back up beside a pillar that is on the passenger side.

• Back in the apartment, I either continue on with my language study or do my daily reading which includes devotional passages, Catholic prayers in various languages, poetry, Nicolás Gómez Dávila aphorisms, and whatever other non-fiction or fiction book I am in the midst of reading.

• Sometimes during the morning, I post a Dávila aphorism, in English and Spanish, to WeChat.

• I shower, shave, and hang the load of laundry that Jenny put in the washing machine before she went back to sleep. While doing these duties, I try to listen to a podcast, usually the Andrew Klavan podcast or whatever other politics/culture podcast strikes my fancy at the moment.

• My breakfast will consist of tea and toast.

• I leave the apartment about 11:00 AM to go to work. I walk to the bus stop. Along the way, I stop at my local small shop and buy water, gum and throat lozenges. I wait for the first bus that comes along that can get me a subway station. If the 25 bus comes, I take it to the Xi Zhuang station. If the 602 bus comes I take it to the Xi Bei Canal Station. If the 650 or 617 bus comes, I can take them to the Yanqiao Station. Usually, I catch the 25 bus.

• On the bus I listen to a podcast. Walking to the station and waiting on the platform, I listen to a podcast. Boarding the train, which I usually do at the front of the train because that's where the seats are usually unoccupied, I pull out my Ipad and read.

• I get off at the Nanchang Temple station. I take the stairs to go up instead of the escalator which all the locals will inevitably take. I walk to the 85 Degree Bakery and ask for "一大杯美式咖啡，热的." This translates to a large cup of hot American Coffee. Along with the coffee, I get some bread for our morning toast. If the lineup at the 85 is long, I will just purchase the bread  and instead buy my coffee at the Family Mart convenience store which is by our school's entrance.

• My shift starts at 1:00 PM and I am usually at school at least thirty minutes before that time. I first spend the time pulling out binders for the lessons and printing out what materials I may need for them.

• Depending on how many classes I have (five is the maximum), I may have a lot of time or a little time to continue on with my language study which involves playing with the language learning apps I mentioned earlier or practicing my Chinese character reading by typing text on the computer using a pinyin typing app that I have installed on at my work computer. I may also do more language study with the Duolingo app. I work through a lesson and enter new words and sentences into a notebook. And if I remember, I enter something into my blogging file. It is my habit now to edit and edit and edit the blog file before I dare publish it.

• I have many options for my dinner which I will have at 4:00 PM : I can have noodles at the nearby Muslim noodle house, fried dumplings from another nearby local restaurant, foreign fare at a restaurant called BMC (that was established by an Australian), a hamburger at the McDonald's near Nanchang Market, or a sandwich from the Subway restaurant at Sanyang Plaza.

• Whenever my classes have all been taught, I can go home. If I am finished before 8:00 PM, my preference is to take the 25 bus. If I finish at 9:00 PM, I have to take the subway. If on the bus, I read or listen to a podcast. When I get off the bus, I can walk home in five minutes, which is why I prefer taking it to the train in the evening. If taking the train, I will just listen to podcasts or music (on the Netease app). I will get off at the Yanqiao station which is the terminal stop of Line #1 of the Wuxi Metro System. I will then have a twenty minute walk home. I sometimes take a three-wheel pedicab taxi for a fare of five RMB home is the weather is bad or I am not feeling energetic.  If I do walk, I can take various routes. One route is along the main drag and I have to skirt e-bikes that may pass; another route I take through a apartment complex where I have to skirt around many parked cars until I get to a street lined with shops, restaurants and service places.

• Back home, I talk to Tony, take a shower, go to bed with Tony until he falls asleep. I then read, talk to Jenny or watch video on my computer.

• I put everything down at about 11:30 PM and go to sleep.

Noisy Neighbours

The neighbors who are above us, on the fourth floor, are noisy and annoying.  My wife has had a few run-ins with them because they trying to cheat their water meter.  I don't know how this cheating process exactly works but it takes place overnight and involves dripping water which makes a noise that gets on Jenny's nerves: and trust me you don't want to get on Jenny's nerves!  As well, these neighbors always seem to be pushing things about during waking hours, if they are not squabbling as married couples will do.  Jenny says they are from the countryside and that there are seven of them living in an apartment that is barely big enough for three.

On a recent Saturday night, we were lying in bed and heard louder than usual noises coming from the fourth floor.  I was expecting Jenny to get annoyed, but she figured, correctly as it turned out, that the husband of the apartment was trying to get in the house but his wife was fast asleep and not hearing his knocks.  The husband was locked out not because he didn't have a key, but because of the way the doors in our apartment complex can be locked.  One can lock or unlock the deadbolt of these doors using a key from the inside or the outside.  One can also lock the door by manually turning a latch bolt from the inside.  So, there are two strange scenarios that can result from this arrangement.  First, one can actually be locked inside the apartment if one doesn't have a key and if the door's deadbolt was last locked using a key from the outside.  Secondly, one can be locked out, even if they have a key, if someone inside the apartment has locked the door using the latch bolt.  The latter scenario is what took place on the Saturday evening.  So, for about thirty minutes, we heard the husband knocking.  There was also screaming that we first heard from the stairwell, but then from street level below our window as the husband tried to get his wife's attention by screaming at their bedroom which is directly above ours.