Accept no substitutes.  Watch only genuine 100 percent natural and authentic Wuxi Tony Update videos as uploaded to the  Wuxi Andis Youtube Channel: the official supplier of Wuxi Tony Updates to the Internet.

The King of Wuxi is always telling me how the original Olympics held in Ancient Greece featured nude competitors.  One of his beefs with the Modern Olympics, besides the restriction on lard and soap in Greco-Roman Wrestling, is the fact that there are no nude competitors nor, for that matter, nude spectators.  To him, this takes away from the Olympic spirit which is not about peace and love, as he sees it, but an admiration of the human body.

To correct what he sees as a grievous Modern misinterpretation of the intended spirit of the Olympics, the King of Wuxi is proud to announce that he will be watching the Olympics in the nude at his apartment in the Hui Shan New City area of Wuxi, China and that all interested subjects of the his Wuxi, China Expat Kingdom are welcome to join him for a nominal fee of 100 rmb plus a transportation fee.  And not only will you be able to see his magnificence sans clothes, meiyou yifu, he will cook you up a batch of meatloaf or quiche, the recipes for which he has been perfecting in his new apartment's oven.  The air will also be very clean.

Here is a photo of the King and I watching the opening of the 1988 Calgary Olympics in a local Chinese restaurant.

If you are interested in attending this exclusive event, you can email me at akaulins@gmail.com or the KoW himself at info@evermoresw.com (in the subject line type: Watching the Olympics in the Nude!  I'm there!).  And be quick!  Tickets for this once-in-a-lifetime event are limited.

• To take the bike home or not.  That was the question tonight.  The occasional heavy rain during the day today and the reports of heavier rain tomorrow because of a Typhoon off the coast of China caused me to take the taxi home.  But it didn't rain on my ride back making me wonder if I had made the right decision.  But I was tired so part of me didn't mind. 
•  The scooter ride this morning into the downtown was no fun as it became a race to get to work before the rain came.  Heavy blustery wind also caused dust to get into my eyes.
• Rush Limbaugh has been a force in talk radio for over twenty years.  May he reign for another twenty!
• The lure of the great cliche of China.  The Olympics will bring on articles like this about this inscrutable country.
• Ten Economic truths about making all people better off.

Tony being irritable is rolling and squirming in a area that would be 100 square meters if he were adult-sized.  So it is no surprise that he rolled off the bed at two in the morning.  We are learning to take his accidents in stride.  All we can do as parents is minimize them as his curiosity and lack of awareness of the dangers he puts himself in is infinite.

You can go to my other blog to see photos of Yanqiao, a suburb of Wuxi.  You can go below to see video.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I charge AKIC with making highly entertaining baby update videos in a way that is disturbing to users of the Internet.  I submit the following video, Wuxi Tony Update Number One Hundred Forty Seven or Exhibit "A" as evidence.

Yanqiao is a small town near Hui Shan New City.  Sunday Evening, the Kaulins family walked there.  You can see the photos here.

Before that, I spent the afternoon with Tony. 

He wouldn't sit still.  So I kept putting him in the crib-slash-playpen.

In the photo below, Tony managed to take three steps before falling on his ass.

The smile, you see, turned into a frown very quickly.

For some reason, I can't post Youtube videos to my other site, so I will try to embed the video I have taken of the Field Trip here.

If the embeddable player does not show, you can click on these: video 1 and video 2.

So much for putting exclusive content on one blog or the other.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Wuxi Expats and Wuxi Ren, AKIC: A Wuxi Blog is proud to present Wuxi Tony Update Update Number One Hundred Forty Six.  The good time videos continue to roll.

His majesty, the King of Wuxi Expatdom grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the city of cold winters, mosquitos, my Aunt Ritma, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and memories of the Winnipeg Jets hockey team.  I spent seven years there myself to get out of small town Brandon, Manitoba (where my parents still live).

As much abuse as Winnipeg gets from other Canadians, Winterpeg can always have Brandon to look down on.  Be that as it may, if I grew up in China, both those cities or towns, even in this dumb modern age, would be paradises.  I can hardly wait till I can take Jenny and Tony there next year.

It was with great curiosity, after reading a Camila Pagila column on Slate, that I clicked on a link for a movie called My Winnipeg.  I want to see this film though I think the chances of it making it to Wuxi DVD shops are minimal.

The photo from the film above brings back a lot of memories.  It had to have been taken on the Red River in Winnipeg.

As promised, I will tell you about the mini putt tournament we put on at the school for Timken company and other students on Friday evening.  HyLite has a 3 hole, par 2 putting green in the back of its first floor beside its Speakers' Corner area.  This was the second time we have held a golfing party.

It was my pleasure to have Leo the Greek and my honor to have his majesty, the King of Wuxi Expatdom, help us run the event.  Twenty students came to see the Greek and the King talk about and demonstrate the hallowed game of golf.  After their lecture, a two round, six hole putting tournament was held.  While the tournament was fun for all who participated, the tournament itself was without drama.  One student named Rita won the tournament with a score of 15.  Her next closest competitor had a 19.  Going to the sixth and final hole, she had six strokes to play with.  She panicked when I told her the tournament was on the line but was quickly relieved when I told her how far ahead she was.  As the rest of the participants watched, she sank a three inch putt to clinch.

Here are some more photos from our field trip to Zhejiang.

Below, the Duke of Wuxi.

The entrance to the Bamboo Garden.

We found Bamboo Universe but we never found the Bamboo Lounge.

I saw a statue of a man of amazingly short stature.

This was a cool-looking bamboo shelf.

This girls are supposedly twins.

The students said this reminded them of one of our teachers named Terry.

It is a stretch to think that if you ask me.

China isn't fascist after all.  It allows some freedoms that are unheard of in Canada.

The parrot show at the Bamboo Garden sucked.  Other than being able to take money from people's hands, these birds did nothing.

The Bamboo was nothing to write home about either.

The student with the camera was taking photos of everything I was taking photos of.

He asked me why I took a photo of this.

No reason I told him.  But truly, I wanted to see how the shadows showed up in the photograph.

The trip was better when we got into the mountains.

You can go to my other site to see video taken on the trip.  Or you go here.

The QoW was just saying Friday that she had seen a Ferris Wheel being built in Hui Shan New City that was similar in size to the wheel out in Li Hu. 

Saturday night, on my ride home, I saw this Ferris Wheel with my own eyes and I snapped some photos with my handy digital.  Here they be:

If you don't have a large Ferris Wheel in your part of Wuxi, China town, it must be because you live in a neighborhood for losers.

In the latest update, I couldn't let go of the last update which has been viewed a lot.  So I have Tony #145 and Tony #144 have a talk.

I participated in two events on Friday: a field trip to Zhejiang and then a golf party for Timken at our school.

As long as we were in the air-conditioned bus, the field trip was great.  Riding the ultra-modern freeways, it was great to see the scenery of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.  However, go outside and the heat was too much. 

Where it was much too hot.

The museum was not interesting unless you like looking at jars of Bamboo.

This sign caught my eye.

The trip through the mountains made the day worth it.

But walking in the woods was exhausting.

That moisture on my shirt is all sweat.

But I took some spectacular pics.

Anyway, I am exhausted.  I will post more pics from the day.  I will tell you also how the golf went.

The School is taking students to a bamboo forest in An Ji, Zhe Jiang Province.  We will be leaving  downtown Wuxi at 730 am to get there and back in a day.

So, I may not be making a blog entry for a day or so.

But you can comb the archives for controversy if you want.

I am busy the next two days, what with more classes to teach and the early-rise-field-trip-day-on-Friday-followed-by-golf-party-in-the-evening day.  So I can provide you with some links, some tidbits, as it were:   the lazy man's way to blog...

• From Thomas Sowell, economic sense:  We don’t look to arsonists to help put out fires but we do look to politicians to help solve financial crises that they played a major role in creating.
• If you haven't seen my last two Wuxi Tony Updates, I insist that you do.  They are two of my top ten favorite WTUs.  Here they are:  WTU 143 and WTU 144.
• What to do about Africa?  This columnist says to do nothing.  His article is very controversial and anti-P.C..  But, it is filled with a lot of truth:  Africa is screwed up and nothing the West is doing can change this.  But one, after reading the article, can't hope but wish there was another way to deal with the problem. 

For some reason, a problem with my blogging software means I have to write this very sentence before continuing on with the Tidbits.

• From the same columnist:  Let China have the Olympics.
• If you are interested:  here are other links from the same author who I have just discovered.
• Thursday means I have to take the scooter to work.
• I hope a bus leaves Hui Shan early enough Friday so I can get downtown at 7 am.
• I meet a Chinese woman whose English name is Cecilia.  I played for her the famous song bearing her name performed by Simon and Garfunkel.  Being a modest girl, the Cecilia, who is our neighbor, was worried more about understanding the meaning of the song's lyrics than judging whether she could dance to it or not.  She seemed to like Bridge over Troubled Waters, which I played for her as well.  The lyrics of Bridge appealed to her more.
• My main man, Tony was up at 530 am.  Thankfully, he was placated by a bottle of milk and quickly returned to sleep.  So my morning routine has been peaceful and I can provide you, rare reader, with many tidbits.

Anthony Arnis Peng Kaulins wishes his Canadian Grandfather Arnis the happiest of birthdays.  Tony marvels at how his father could have almost forgotten. 

Here is the first video of Tony (taken August 23, 2007)...

...and the latest:

How time has flown!  Or should I exclaim how quickly Tony has grown!?!

I am frequently asked after having done so many Wuxi Tony Updates, how I keep the creative juices going.  Does the Muse leave you?  I have been asked.  Have you ever felt the need to make pee-pee and poo-poo jokes like the Austin Powers series?  some Wisenheimer also asked me.  Others have told me Rembrandt was only good for about fifty masterpieces, The KoW can only eat at most 10 pork chops in one sitting, Dickens didn't write one hundred great novels and Einstein made his name on only a couple scientific papers.  To this I can only respond that the genius is in Tony and me together.  I think we are good for a lifetime of creative cutting edge baby update videos. 

So Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Wuxi Expats and English Teachers, AKIC is proud to present the best WTU to date.  Here is the latest product of the genius of the Wuxi Kaulins family:  Wuxi Tony Update Number One Hundred Forty Three (pronounced Tree).

See what I can do and where I can go with my electric bicycle.

I am working a stretch of 11 days in a row because of a scheduling bullocks (not my fault) and I am working overtime because it is that busy.  Monday, I do have the afternoon and evening off. 

As of 4 p.m. on Monday, I have spend all my time off with my son Tony.  My wife is having a well-deserved afternoon nap.  Tony, as I realize and can now testify to, is a bundle of energy that can wear out the most patient of parents.  So, despite the hot afternoon sun, I decided to take Tony for a walk because he couldn't sit still and was always wanting to get into something that he shouldn't.  Also the hot sun is a good way to exhaust a child.  Taking Tony on this afternoon jaunt, I learned that he was scared of barking dogs, pretty girls who wanted to kiss him and playground slides.  Unfortunately, he is too young to try talk any sense into.  But I was able to get him to fall asleep without causing further damage to the new apartment.

I have been trying for the last sixteen hours to upload some videos to Youtube.  I don't know it it is because of the Olympics but uploading has become hard to do except at certain times of the day.  You would have seen, but may see yet a video taken on the Hui Shan Big Bridge and WTU 143: the most dynamic video ever taken of Tony.

I find this defense of Obama's foreign policy very inexplicable.  At one point, the author says Obama has crafted views on foreign policy similar to Henry Kissinger.  You would think the candidate of Hope and Change and a new kind of politics would not have foreign policy views similar to Henry Kissinger.  The problem is that when it came to Hope and Change in foreign policy, the Left's most hated person George Bush already tried to employ it.  But because Bush is from Texas and is a born-again Christian, the Left couldn't never accept the idealism of Bush's cause.  Because of their bigotry (yes, there is more bigotry on the left than the right), the Left rather than supporting Bush's idealistic cause, became foreign-policy realists akin to Nixon and Kissinger and the first George Bush.  And if Obama is a foreign policy realist, he is also a fraud.  His appeal to the idealism of his star-struck supporters could not have caused the swooning it did if any of his hot airified rhetoric contained specifics or hard-headed realism.