A Family Can't Have a Vacation this Summer

Before I get into the material of my lessons with students, I will start with some chit-chat about whatever may seem to be topical.  So during the Summer, I will ask the students if they have gone on vacation trips.

One student, an older woman, told me her family would not be able to go on a trip this summer.  I asked her why and she told me that her son had been assigned too much summer homework by his school.  If they went on a trip, he wouldn't get it all done.

I then asked her what grade her son was going to enter in the autumn.  The parent told me grade five!  Hearing this filled me with rage.  My son Tony is going into the fifth grade as well.  I want my son to be a normal human being, not a constantly-schooled cypher that this culture is producing.

Only problem is that my only other option is the Canadian public school system which is all wrong for the opposite reasons.  The school days in Canada are excessively short.  The subject matter taught is not at all substantial and stupidly faddish.  And there is the problem of kids getting into drugs.

So, I see myself stuck in a sort of Latvian World War Two dilemna.  Nazism or Communism?  Facism or Cult-Marxism?  Chinese or Western school systems?

Wuxi, China: View of the Yanqiao Métro Station from the 617 Bus

I was on the way to work as I took this video.  The bus route I was on passes this subway station.  I learned quite by accident that if I took this bus past the Yanqiao station I could get off right at the stairs to the next subway station.  Till then, I had been walking 200 meters from a stop this section of the route to get to the area shown in this video.

Chinese Students and the Use of "Too"

"I want to have too much money!" is a sentence the students will often say to me.  And so I have constantly had to correct the students on their use of the word "too."

Recently, I choose to talk about Germany in one of my speaker's corners.  During the class, a student said this about the Germans:  "they killed too many Jews."  I had to quickly admonish her and tease her for having saying that.  "Do you mean to say that was a proper amount of Jews the Germans should have killed?"

Wuxi, China Trainspotters 2018

Tony & Andis Driving in China #6

Road Block

A big intersection near Casa Kaulins is often the site for police roadblocks.  There, I have seen the police pulling over e-bikers, mini-vans and commercial trucks.  The e-bikers usually get pulled over for having passengers, and the other vehicles for inspection.

One fine morning, I was approaching the intersection, trailing a three-wheel pick up, when I saw one of the cops gesturing to the pick-up to pull over for inspection or on account of some violation.  The driver wasn't interested and made a u-turn, passing by me as I was slowing to a stop for a red light at the intersection.  Coming to a halt, I saw the cop gesture for a few more seconds at the pick-up to come back before giving up and gazing at the pick-up going off into the distance.  What was so surreal about the incident was how slowly the driver made his u-turn (his max speed no more that 25 kmh), how little perturbed the cop was and how none of the other twelve uniformed cops at the intersection seemed interested in chasing the pick-up.

When the light turned green, I was proceeding through the intersection and looked into my rearview mirror to see the pick-up still driving away.

Watching World Cup 2018 in Wuxi

I wasn't happy with the end of the World Cup.  When France, aka The French Legion, took a 3-1 lead in the final, I shut off the TV and went to bed (It was just past midnight local time.) I had been following it closely for the month till that moment.

Here are some personal anecdotes about following the WC in Wuxi:

• The matches took place late in the evening and early morning local time.  I watched them on my mobile phone or on television (CCTV5.

• Tony was interested in the results of the matches; not so much in the watching of them.  His rooting interests were Australia, England and any other team that played against France.  For some reason, he really hated France.  When France defeated Australia, he cried.  When the games being played late night and early morning local time, he was content to watch five and six minute highlight packages of them the next morning.  I would queue these packages up for him so he wouldn't know the results of the games  beforehand.  

• My rooting loyalities went to England and Poland.  Alas the Poles stank.  I watched England's last game against Croatia even though it was played from 2:00 AM to 4:00 AM local time.  I rooted strongly against France, Brazil and Germany.  The best moment of the tournament for me was South Korea scoring late goals to eliminate Germany which though being my country of birth, I had become sour upon because of German Hillary.  Neymar's crybaby antics solidified my desire to see Brazil lose.  And the antics of a French person on WeChat along with memories of encountering rude Frenchmen in Wuxi during the 2010 WC made me loathe to see les bleues win.

• The WC was a boon for my classes because it gave me something to talk about with the students.  And what did they have to say?  Some of them said that the German team was the most handsome.  And a rare local Japanophile, after their tough loss to Belgium, told me that at least the Japanese team was all Japanese.  She added that they wouldn't, unlike the French and the Belguimers, stack their teams with foreign looking players.  

• This race question raised its head after France's victory in the final.  On a Wuxi WeChat foreigner group, jokes about the French team appearing mostly African got under a Frenchman's skin.

• I got commentary on the matches from podcasts and articles coming from England and the USA.  The American political podcasts lambasted the tournament and the game for its lack of scoring.  While I accepted their points, I had to disagree and keep following the tournament.  A better argument against kickball was made by Peter Hitchens, an actual Englishman. Hitchens cited the lack of scoring in Modern kickball, but made a more pointed observation when he contasted seeing male Germans marching on the streets of London to protest seating arrangements (that were made for them at a match where the club kickball team they supported was visiting an English side), with their seeming inaction when their women were being raped on their streets, the streets of Germany, by Syrians. This obsession with football was an escape from the responsibility of real life.

What Wuxi, China Locals Know about Canada

It was Dominion Day's eve.

What do you know about Canada? I asked some students. One student, who was the most articulate of the group, admitted he knew nothing. So you never heard of the place till now? I jokingly asked the student. The others said things about Canada having kangaroos and it being the largest country in the world.

Famous Canadians? The group couldn't think of any. I had to remind them of Norman Bethune (oh yes, that guy, they said, after I explained who he was.), Justin Bieber and Celine Dion (students in the past when asked this question mentioned these two).

Who's the Canadian leader? No one knew. Showing them a picture of the PM with Xi Jing Ping, they remarked how young Justin Trudeau was.

What do Canadians like to do? Most said they didn't know. One Student said ski and drink beer. The second half of that answer was a result of my giving the student leading questions. One other student said Canadians liked ice ball, which is the literal translation of the Mandarin word for Ice Hockey. In all my years of querying students about their knowledge of Canada, this was the first time a student mentioned hockey.

What are Canadians like? Most couldn't say. One student did say awesome. (But one learns to discount compliments from Chinese. ) No one said polite or boring. (One student did call me boring the day before but they should have said bored. Boredom is something one must fight when spending time with the locals.)

Finally, one word to describe Canada? Beautiful and cold. That much they knew.

andiskaulins@hotmail.com or andiskaulins@qq.com

Are World Cup Football/Soccer/Kickball Players All a Bunch of Snowflakes?

Some say Football, some say Soccer, I say Kickball.

My son Tony & I are following the World Cup; though to be honest I am watching much more of it than him.  I have also been listening to American Conservative commentators who have been mocking the World Cup.  I wince as they do so because I, as I said in a previous entry, I have been watching the WC since 1974.  There are some good things to be said about the game of Kickball, like how it takes less than two hours to play a normal match and how, unlike Ice Hockey, most of the goals do have a build up to them.  But the cricitisms of Kickball that the conservative commentators have made, about its lack of scoring, the power of its referees to influence games by awarding or not awarding penalty kicks, and the annoying habit of the players to act melodramtically after collisions, are valid.

The latter criticism is particularly valid because the melodramatics ruin the flow of a Kickball game in the manner that constant commercials ruin the flow of NFL games.  But at least in the NFL where players are being hit directly with greater force, you never ever see or even begin to suspect that an injured NFL player is faking it.  In fact, the players in the NFL who suffer concussions never flop around after doing so.  An NFL player will also get up after a collision and get in position for the next play without the need to do the funky chicken.  [NFL players usually only flop around after their score touchdowns.] Kickball players need only to be tapped by an opponent and they begin to become very aggrieved.  It is enough to make one think that most Kickball players are snowflakes, and that Americans of the progressive political persuasion see Kickball players as their kind of people.

So it is out of habit and an unfailing Charlie-Brown-and-Lucy-with-the-football optimism, I watch the World Cup.  Often I find, like during that Brazil-Italy WC final played in Pasadena, myself cheering for someone -- it doesn't matter from which team -- to score a goal because I want the game and the tournament to be better than it actually is.

andiskaulins@hotmail.com

andiskaulins@qq.com