The Internet has been slow the past week.  Foreigners at our school and others in Wuxi have been complaining about not getting Hotmail, Yahoo mail, and Facebook.  As one Englishman said, it seems the Chicoms are trying to block sites that provide user-content.  This inconvenience is sure to stay with us as the Olympics approach.

The slow Internet makes it impossible for me to edit mistakes I have caught on the blog.  I stuck an extra "about" in my Deloris Morris entry that I can do nothing about to fix.

Little Amy Grant had her 100th day party last evening at the Wuxi Marriot.  The Kaulins family was honoured to attend.  I was very pleased to meet Simon Grant's parents (Amy's grandparents) who came all the way from England.  Simon's parents were impressed by the size of the family gathering.  They told me it was a sort of thing that happened in England up till about thirty years ago.

Of course, I took video.  Here is the link for the video if I am unable to supply you with the embedded player:

Tony wore a fabulously dreamy baby-blue creation knitted by my mother (his grandmother) to the party, which will surely rank as one of the most important 100th day celebrations of all-time.  Here he is with his mother, who I am happy to say to recovering.

From the Marriot, the celebration continued on at the Blue Bar.  There I was proud to introduce Amy's English grandparents to his most supreme and royal majesty, the liberator of Hans Island from Danish Tyranny, the next president of the United States of America, holder of the world record for bread consumption, the King of Wuxi Expatdom, Andrew the first.  He had been playing softball in the afternoon, and decided to come to the pub for a beer.  He was pleased to recieve greetings from the consort of the Prince of Wales, Camille Parker-Bowles, who was in China and thought it necessary to pass on her greetings to our King.

I happened to run into Ronnie Love, the southern gentleman par excellence.  He told me he is moving to Chengdu to set up a new factory.  His plane leaves tomorrow morning.

CNN won't tell you these thing but AKIC will.

I can't get facebook these days!  So if anyone is trying to reach me there, please send an email to akaulins@gmail.com instead.

Saturday, my wife went to our new apartment to monitor the progress being made in the decoration.  She took three videos which you can see below.

Below you can see the work that has been done in the controversial bathroom.

In this video, you can see what has been done in the kitchen:

Finally, you can see what is being done in the other rooms of the apartment.  You will see that they have put down the boards on which the flooring will be laid.

The King of Wuxi has announced the appointment of Deloris Morris as head of King of Wuxi for President 2008 election operations.  Morris was the  former campaign strategist for the Soviets before 1989 and more recently for Saddam Hussein in the last election he had before he was toppled by the Americans.  The announcement surprised many who had expected him to announce that yours truly AKIC would be running the campaign. 

In an exclusive interview with AKIC, his majesty cited the results earned by Morris for her former clients as his reason for choosing her.  "You can't argue with 99% vote totals.  Results like that are proof of excellent election campaign management.  I couldn't find one campaign strategist in North America or Europe who had results anyway close to that.  The best ones there seem able to get 60%, a bare pass if you ask me.  With Deloris Morris as my campaign manager I can achieve the unity that my opponents in the election about can only blow hot air about."

Asked why it was that no other election campaign in the West had hired Morris,  his majesty said that election campaign strategists are notoriously jealous and intimidated by the success of others in their line of work.

Simon Grant, the Duke of Wuxi, will hold a 100th day celebration of the birth of his daughter Amy this evening.  It will be the pleasure of Jenny, Tony and I to attend.

Jenny changes Tony's diapers:

I can blog in the evening because there is no one sleeping in the second bedroom in which our computer is located.  This rare respite from in-laws will change tomorrow when Jenny's natural mother comes to help her look after Tony.

While the wife was looking after the new apartment, We (that being Tony and I) spent Saturday afternoon with his majesty the King of Wuxi and his consort Steph and Prince Thomas.

We went to Bolters for lunch.  I enjoyed their burger.

From there, it was off to a lumber yard because his majesty is going to construct a deck in his new apartment.  At the lumber yard, I played with the kids and thus attracted a crowd of Chinese who presumably had never seen a foreigner play with two foreign-looking children before.  One thing I do like about these encounters is that I can get ladies to hold Tony and relieve myself of the burden of holding his now 11 kg frame.

The King in preparation for his bid for the U.S. presidency, has shaved his beard.  The last president he knew to have had a beard was Abe Lincoln who was shot.  While Lincoln surely wasn't the last president to sport a beard, the ones who did were non-entities historically so the King reasoned that to be clean-shaven would increase his chances of winning the election and not getting shot. 

The King and I are making up our own fairy tales to tell our children.  I am telling my son and his son Thomas political allegories where the moral is don't vote Democratic (in the case of the U.S.) and Liberal (in the case of Canada).  For instance I told Thomas the story of a politician named Goldilocks who tried to be everything to all three bear voters and thus earned the murderous wrath of Papa Bear when the promises she made to the other two bears increased his taxes.

If John McCain doesn't put him on the ticket, there will always be a place for Mitt Romney as the VP on the King of Wuxi ticket.  As a matter of fact, I wonder why Romney would pair up with the old fart McCain when he could instead join  the team of youthful Scottish dynamism that would bring about  real change, that is, the daily change of underwear famously promised by his majesty.  Furthermore, Romney's reputation for flip-flopping on issues would be a boon to the King of Wuxi ticket because his majesty loves pancakes, and a good piece of barbecued steak grilled to perfection on a open fire.  Romney would also provide the King of Wuxi with the hair, that his majesty's other choice for VP (yours truly AKIC) lacks.

The latest issue of WuxiLife magazine features the map for the proposed Wuxi subway system.  I was surprised by its ambition.  There will be five lines whenever the construction is completed.  When I first saw the map, I worried because I couldn't find the stop which is to be built near our new apartment.  That was one of the reasons I bought an apartment in what otherwise would be whoop-whoop boonie city.  I took the map to my wife and I was relieved to see that she could find it.  Our new apartment will be near the start of Line 1 which will supposedly be finished in 2011.

The latest issue of WuxiLife magazine features the map for the proposed Wuxi subway system.  I was surprised by its ambition.  There will be five lines whenever the construction is completed.  When I first saw the map, I worried because I couldn't find the stop which is to be built near our new apartment.  That was on of the reasons I bought an apartment in what otherwise would be whoop-whoop boonie city.  I took the maps to my wife and I was relieved to see that she could find it.  Our new apartment will be near the start of Line 1 which will supposedly be finished in 2011.

Never again, I say.  Never again, will I go to Carrefour (a French supermarket chain in Wuxi) in the evening or on the weekend.  It is just too bleeping crowded.  You would think it was Christmas last night or something but in fact it was just an ordinary evening in Wuxi.  The lineups at the checkout went  into the shopping aisles.  It was impossible to turn around.  Last night, I got to the end of the dairy aisle and found myself with a difficult choice.  I could either stay in the checkout lineup I had inadvertently joined or try and turn around and go back down  the crowded aisle  in order to get to the fruit and bread sections.   I choose the former option and got the hell out.

I took these videos as the Toner and I went for a walk around the center of Wuxi town.

Tony at Chongan Market:

Tony on Renmin Road:

We went out this afternoon.  I took these photos. 

Toner in a pram:

Below is the mural that can be seen in the main lobby of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital on Houxixi Street.

I have a day off.

But with Tony about, the meaning of day off has changed.

This band rehearsing near the school made it hard to teach yesterday.

Here is the video. (I can't get the embeded player today.)

Luis went to the zoo and made this lavishly produced video:

I took this video when I got up this morning:

I took some good photos this morning.

This was taken at 630 AM:

I was having coffee at McDonalds when I saw this: