Drunk Again Po Chü-i (772-846 CE)

Last year, when I lay sick,

I vowed

I'd never touch a drop again

As long as I should live.

But who could know

Last year

What this year's spring would bring ?

And here I am,

Coming home from old Liu's house

As drunk as I can be!

Translated by Henry Hart

Here are photos from the school field trip as shown on the school website.  You can see me in a couple of the photos.  I am the guy in the brown jacket with the bad posture.

In New York City, the Dalai Lama decked a photographer in a disco melee and spent seven hours in jail.

It is the May 1 holiday tomorrow but unlike last year, we get only one day off.  I don't know what I am doing tomorrow.  Here is what we did last year, in a time where there was no Tony and when the May Day holiday was a week long:

Oh! how the times have changed.

The mother-in-law wants to take Tony to Beixing this week.  I am not too enthusiastic about the idea, but the wife needs a rest.

We have more furniture and appliances in the apartment now.  This week, the wife has received deliveries of a microwave and a bed for the master bedroom.

My mother-in-law just fried some peanuts.  Yum!

Yesterday, I was up at six AM.  I didn't go to work till 1300.  By the time, 2100 rolled around I was ready to drop dead.  And I wasn't that busy.  I was just awake farting around as you would say.

In the U.S. presidential race, Obama's reverend just won't go away.  Seablogger has an excellent posting on the subject.  Obama has to repudiate the Black racists and race hustlers.  He didn't in his first speech about Wright.  He has to make a second one that puts these Sharpton and Wrights in their place.  Problem is that if he does, he will be called a traitor by them.  He also courted their support to get where he is now.  Welcome to the world of compromise and making hard decisions and exhibiting the courage of being a leader, Barry!  Hopefully, he does not get away with his indecisiveness by finessing himself out of his quandary.

Meanwhile, a man who Obama should listen to, Thomas Sowell, uses a baseball analogy to show what is wrong about Obama's support.  He also points out that Obama has no original ideas, none , na da.

The students heard about the Sean Bell shooting in NYC.  White policemen had killed the African-American Bell and seriously injured his friends in an early morning incident outside a strip club.  Fifty shots were fired at Bell and his friends who had just celebrated a bachelor night for Bell who was to be married later that day.  In my English corner, one of the students used this incident to back up his claims that China had better human rights than America.  I use the link above to show that the details of the incident aren't well known about the case and to cite it as proof of some human rights infraction is ridiculous.  The incident was tragic for the victims and the police.  The victims did act stupidly that night.  They also couldn't get their story straight at the trial of the officers.  One of the policeman apologized and the two others did not.  The policemen had been frightened by the prospect of these drunk men running them over with a car.  The notorious race-baiter Al Sharpton is on the scene planning to protest. 

Sharpton and Wright have made a good living out of pandering to people's prejudices.

I remember an incident in Canada where policeman had shot a native.  It turned out the victim was drunk and had pointed a very authentic looking toy gun at the police.  But it was made into a racial incident.

Check this out.

I have a new poll at www.akic.wuxiguide.net.  Do your civic duty and vote!

I don't have to be at work till 1300.  I am up at 600 so I will make a posting of short items including links that I find interesting.

Victor Davis Hanson talks about Obama and the quality of current movie leading men.  It disappoints me when I walk into a DVD shop and they don't have any John Wayne movies.  Obama is George McGovern all over again.

I am uploading video as I blog.  All was taken on Sunday and so it will take a few days to upload it to Youtube.  You may see them by the time this posting is published.  I take some walks in Wuxi and you will see how Tony looked yesterday night.

It is getting hot in the Wux.  I taught classes without a jacket last night.

The School has put a mini-golf or mini-putt area in our school.  The management is also contemplating a field trip to the golf course near Ma Shan (Horse mountain).  I should take some photos of the first floor putting area.  So now we have something to do other than play table tennis.

Speaking of Table Tennis, but I don't know who gets the point when your shot that doesn't strike the table surface is swung at by your opponent.  The girl I was playing gave me points on balls badly hit by me because she attempted to hit them.

When you live long enough in a town, you are going to make enemies.

What goes around, comes around.

Something about Wuxi makes me fart a lot.

I did a English Corner with the topic of guilt.  I asked the students what they had done lately that they felt guilty about.  "Confess!" I yelled at the students who could not think of anything they had done wrong.  Some students even told me that could go a whole day without having done something to feel guilty about.  What a lot of rubbish, I told them.

Totalitarian solutions to mythical problems wind up causing real devastation.

Here is the first of three videos I am downloading this morning.  In this video I go for a walk on Wu Ai Lu here in Wuxi, China.

The Hab-Flyers series in the NHL playoffs is currently tied at a game apiece.

A viewer of Wuxi Jenny Apartment Update #13 says this about our new apartment: "Looks reasonably spacious, especially compared to some of the tiny apartments here in Japan."

Roger Scruton on Conservation.  He makes a lot of excellent points about why Conservation really is a Conservative cause.  His pronouncements on urban aesthetics need to be heeded too, especially here in Wuxi.

The fury over China and Tibet has subsided, or so it appears to me.  In the short attention span of the Internet, you knew people would soon get bored of it.  Maybe in the build-up to the Olympics, the controversy will rage anew.

As I blog, the wife and son are asleep.  An inspiring sight that makes me wonder what I should really be doing now.

Number two video of the day has been uploaded.  In this video we cross a street near the Liangxi Bridge and Grand Canal.

Tony is up so there goes my uninterrupted blogging.  I will upload the last of the three videos and call it a good morning's blogging.

Here is what the Toner was up to last night.

 That is Wuxi Tony Update #82. 

Click here to reread one of the greatest postings in the history of AKIC.

Sunday was a long day full of annoying and sometimes interesting things.  The object of the day was to get a big closet moved from Suzhou to Wuxi and then have it installed in our master bedroom in our new apartment.  It got done but not without trouble.

The wife hired a driver and truck to take us to Suzhou.  In my mind's eye, I had imagined us taking in a freeway between Suzhou and Wuxi, but instead we seemed to have taken an ordinary road between the cities.  So, we drove through countryside villages and the trip was interminable.  Having been in Jiangsu for almost four years now, I have seen enough of never-ending villages and houses, and had enough of the depressing brownish/gray skies.  But on the interesting side, I did see a fire in an industrial park.  As we drove by, I saw people running out of the building that was engulfed and looking up at a fire on a second floor.  I also saw a dog get hit by a car.  This dog made the mistake of walking into traffic.  There was a fence median that prevented the dog from crossing and so it ran along the fence against traffic.  The sight of an oncoming car caused the dog to run into the center of the lane.  The car tried to swerve to avoid it but I then heard the dog yelp in pain and run three legged off the road.  One of its' hind legs was dangling: a sickening sight. 

In Suzhou, we went to an apartment complex where garages were being using for commercial and warehousing purposes.  Our closet was stored in one of them.  We also had to pick up  a worker to put the closet together.  The driver took a different way back.  He didn't know the way to go in Suzhou.  On the way back, he took us through the countryside of Wuxi which the wife and I had never seen before.  As we got close to the apartment, our driver was scared to be pulled over by the police saying his kind of truck was not allowed on this road.  It always amuses me when Wuxi drivers worry about following rules.

Once at the new apartment, we fed the driver and installer.  Other workers were there waiting to take the parts of the closet up to our third floor apartment.  As they did this, the wife and the driver had a big argument because the driver wanted more money.  He said the drive was further than he thought and that since I was a foreigner he thought I could afford to pay him more.  He couldn't deal with my wife's fury (not that I can either).

The installation of the closet seem to be going along smoothly.  But then it was time to install the closet's very top shelves.  Lifting them with the installer, we quickly realized that the entire closet unit was about a centimeter too tall for our bedroom.  We had a quandary on our hands.  The ideal thing to do would have been to take an inch of wood off the closet's base but none of the tools necessary were on hand.  There was also a suggestion to take out some wood flooring and sink the closet.  For a moment, the wife decided to use the two top shelves as TV stands in the living room and master bed rooms.  But she was not at all happy about this.  It looks today that we will have a German expert craftsman with tools by name of Andreas take some wood of the closet's base to lower the its' height. 

On the bright side, if you see Wuxi Jenny Apartment Update #13, we have an oven in the kitchen.

On the dark side, the floor in the master bedroom was scratched and the wife became very upset.  She will have to get used to scratches once Tony starts roaming there.

I have a lot to write about but no time at the moment.  I hate to give a summary of what we did and then write about it later.  I will leave you with this Wuxi Jenny Update Update which was taken on Sunday, April 27.

Also you can watch the latest Toner Update.

Visit here to find out.

Today, we have hired a truck which will take us to Suzhou so we can pick up the closets for our new apartment.  Closets in Chinese apartment are usually not built-in.

I hope these drivers aren't late like the ones yesterday who were supposed to deliver our dining table.

I also hope I can be at the current apartment sometimes tomorrow afternoon so I can relax the rest of the day.

I made a comment on this Seablogger posting.  One of the commenters said one world language will reduce misunderstandings in the world.  I made mention of the damage Politicians would do to this one language that would not reduce understanding one iota.  Example, Obama.  For other examples, you can refer to that essay by Orwell about Politics and the English Language.  I remember asking some students about the possibility of there being one world language.  They told me they didn't like the idea.  Language they told me was an essential part of culture and made for variety in the human species.  So, Wuxinese should never stop speaking Wuxi local dialect. 

Here is Tony at last night's wedding.  It is always easy for the wife and I to pawn him off on strangers.

Here Tony makes friends with a two-month old.

Hard core Wuxi expats probably already know this, but I just learned, from the King of Wuxi, that Ronnie's pub has been shut down.  The current location, I was told, will be torn down and so Ronnie is looking for a new location with one near Virus having potential. 

There goes a Wuxi Expat landmark.  The King of Wuxi should give out charters for a museum to protect Wuxi Expat legacy.

I did three things, more or less, today.  I was up at 530 AM (but I did arise at 400 AM to feed the Toner) and the day was at times maddening and exhilarating.

I had set the alarm for 600 AM because I had an early morning job fair to attend for the school.  They needed me to test the English level of applicants for sales and tutor positions.  I got up earlier because of the Toner demanding to be fed.  I arrived at the school at 730 AM and from there we went to Wuxi's new sports center for the job fair. 

I will recall four things from the job fair forever after.  There were soldiers or security looking like soldiers manning the doors.  I was told it was for "safety".  I finished reading Mordecai Richler's "Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" for the umpteenth time and then started Brideshead Revisited.  I had to listen to the audio of a promotional video of myself introducing the school over and over again.  I then had a stint of talking to about ten or so applicants in a row.  All of them spoke excellent English and I enjoyed chatting with all of them.  One applicant told me read CNN and New York Times on the Internet.  I asked him how he felt about Tibet and he told me he was neutral.  I then told him how I felt the criticism China is getting now was all part and parcel of being an important country and that they should learn to deal with it better.  He said in the future, they would be "able to take it."  Another applicant told me the place he was now working at had not paid him for four months.  He said he was selling electric bicycles overseas and working all hours because his employer had promised him he would get paid when he sold some bikes, which he had in fact done.  It was a negative tone to take for a job interview, but the applicant spoke good English even using the f-word.

The Jobfair took up my morning.

In the afternoon, I went to the new apartment with the wife.  The place is looking very good.  Since I was last there, they have done work on the kitchen.  A western style oven and stove have been put in.  The wife is now having furniture moved in.  This afternoon, one of the two sofas we will have was brought in.  We were also expecting the dining room table to come.  We waited for two hours during which the wife phoned three times to see if they were coming.  They told her they were on the way.  But around 400 PM, I was getting antsy because I wanted to get back downtown for Jen and Yan's wedding.  Soon after, my wife received a phone call saying that the dining table wouldn't come till Monday.  My antsiness turned into anger.

We ended up being late for Jen and Yan's wedding.  It was one maddening delay after another as the evening proceeded.  I was told not to worry that we wouldn't be late, but these people trying to assure me must not have heard of German efficency.  The Germans do things at the stated time.  My wife had assume that the 618 on the invitation really meant 700 as it would for most Chinese weddings.  But, we arrived just as the ceremony was taking place at 645.  It was just our luck that the entrance to the hall was close to the stage.  We opened the door to see the happy couple.  Ouch!  I fumed but eventually got over it.  I had a good time when all was said and done. 

Congratulations to Jens and Yan!

Ladies and Gentleman, AKIC is proud to present Wuxi Tony Update #80.

I have a joke to tell you:

This old couple's sex life hadn't been much lately, so the wife decided to liven up.

One evening, she put on a wonder woman costume and walked into the bedroom where her husband was.

"Time for Super Sex!" she exclaimed.

The old guy looked at his wife,  thought for a instance, and then said "I will take the Soup!"

Now, if this guy was in Wuxi, he probably would have taken the sex.

I have just done a Salon class (conversation class really) about Cultural Differences.  It is useless to try to get the students to tell you about differences they have noticed between foreigners and themselves because their experience is limited.  Many have not been to foreign countries.  Many of them first meet a foreigner at our school.  And then the first thing they notice about us is our white skin and blue eyes.  They don't have much to say about differences in beliefs, values, behavior and artifacts.  So I have resorted to asking them about cultural differences between parts of China.  It is a legitimate question to ask because China is so vast.

This afternoon, I had a woman tell me about differences between Wuxi and Guangdong province.  Soup is more important to people in Guangdong than in Wuxi.

Coming from Canada, I can attest to this.  The soups of Wuxi are often nothing more than tepid water with a vegetable dipped in for no more than ten minutes.  I have never seen my wife spend all day making a soup.  Maybe, once it took her thirty minutes to make a fish soup.

So, don't go to Wuxi for Soup.  I was pleased to hear that not all of China has such bad soup as Wuxi.

I am too busy these days to do any proper blogging.  So here is another posting full of photos.

Here is the Toner this morning.  He is more fun and more trouble these days.

Here is how construction is proceeding across the street from our 21st floor apartment.

We went to Carrefour Baoli last night.

There were no angry mobs outside the store.  It was crowded as per usual.

On the way to Carrefour I took these photos of the Moresky360 Building.

A minute later, its lights' were turned on.

The Grocery Store that was once under Ba Bai Ban has moved to the basement of the shopping mall near Champion Pizza on the street where you can find the Blue Bar.  When that grocery store was located under Ba Bai Ban it was a daily stop for me.  It had a good selection of groceries including fresh fruit and meat, and was much cheaper than Parkson's.  I was dismayed when it shut down and pleased to learn it had reopened at a location that is not at all that far from our school.  One of our Trainers recently happened to come across it and now all the other trainers are going there.  The new location is clean and quiet.  Not too many people seem to know that there is a grocery store in that mall.  If you go, be sure to look for the escalators that go to the basement.

Yesterday, they put cabinets and shelves and a stove and oven into the kitchen of our new apartment.  Next time I go there I will take a video of it for you to inspect.

Here is a video I took of the new apartment last Sunday.

Here is how the Toner is looking this morning.

Tony was born 8 months ago on August 23, 2007.  So in recognition of this important milestone, AKIC is having a Wuxi Tony Update extraganza.

Here is WTU 76,

WTU 77,

WTU 78,

 and WTU 79.

I get cards and letters and emails all the time, asking why I have only put a hundred or so videos of the Toner on the Internet.  "If you really love your son," they say, "you would have put a thousand videos of him on the Internet!"  To this I can only respond by saying that I have still have up more videos of son on the Internet than other Wuxi Expats I know.  You would think they were ashamed of their children. 

And so remember:

when times are tough,

and friends are few,

a Wuxi Tony Update

is the thing for you

And finally, here is video taken 8 months ago today.