Chapter 11

Another day another dollar. I had another block of four classes in a row, doing review that feels like “reteach” at times. I retrieved the final exams from the photocopy room and started stapling, an extremely tedious process but someone’s gotta do it. I listened to the Metal Minded podcast for a bit while I could catch it live, they were talking to the guys from Outre-Tombe, a great old-school death metal band from Quebec City, highly recommended if you like early 90s Stockholm bands and Autopsy and Bolt Thrower and all that wonderful stuff.

I reheated a big portion of R. n’ S. (rice and something) that I topped with two runny eggs. I devoured it, hungry as I was. About two years ago, I started doing what the cool kids call “intermittent fasting” but back in my day was just called “skipping breakfast”, I feel like two meals a day are sufficient for my mostly sedentary lifestyle. Even when I work out, I just eat a snack before and a bigger dinner afterwards.

I watched a YouTube video by political commentator TJ Kirk/The Amazing Atheist, who talked about the coup attempt in Washington DC and how it would be disingenuous to refer to it with euphemisms or denial. I agreed with that part, but then he started rambling about Trump supporters and implying that the only unifying current among them is white supremacy, which is bullshit. You can be skeptical towards unchecked mass immigration yet not hating Mexicans, you can disapprove of the actions of BLM as an organisation without hating black people, and you can hold nationalist or protectionist views without being a white supremacist.

Then I switched to something a bit lighter, on the recommendation of a friend I checked out a channel called Oversimplified, which makes crash-course type animated videos about history. The episode on Prohibition was particularly funny, and as far as I can tell from my own knowledge on the subject and the low numbers of “well akshually...” fact-checkers in the comment section, quite historically accurate.

One of the pages of the final exam didn’t come in the numbers requested, so I had to go back down to the copy office. The old piece-of-shit of a photocopier was broken, I imagine from a combination of overuse in those times just before final exams and also the fact that it’s an old pile of junk that looks to be straight from the 1950s. Our students pay around 20K USD in tuition fees only (on top of which endless other expenses pile on), yet the school doesn’t want to buy more decent photocopiers. I can’t complain too much, I worked in infinitely more penny-pinching schools before, in fact the facilities at my current place of employment are great for the most part, and more importantly, they pay me on time and in full.

I covered a few old exam questions with Attitude Class, then gave them some free time for self-study. They were chattering at high volume, but instead of futilely trying to restore calm, I put on my earbuds and listened to the album Pleine Noirceur by Fuck The Facts, that I have saved on my computer (for times with no internet) and is regarded by many as one of the very best metal albums of 2020.

I rushed home to drop off my computer and then went straight to the driving test center.

“Come to the testing center tomorrow at 4 PM” was the message they sent me yesterday late.

“I can’t, I finish work at 5”

“Just ask for some time off”

“No, I can’t. And why do I need to go? My appointment for the exam is Tuesday morning”

“You need to do a mock test. Just one loop, so you get familiar with the layout”

I thought it was unnecessary, I already did 12 hours of practice and I already know how to fucken drive a car. The girlfriend advised me to go anyway, apparently every Chinese student driver does it. Fine.

They reluctantly agreed I’d show up at 5:30, so I hauled ass all the way there to make it before darkness falls. There were already millions of cars all going around the circuit at a snail’s pace, and I was told to sit in the back of the car and wait for the three other student drivers to do their practice. What the fuck? Why did they tell me to hurry up then? I was fucking pissed off, gritted my teeth, then just said I’ll go home.

“How are you going to pass the exam if you don’t do a mock test first?”, the fat female driving instructor asked me, a bit condescendingly.

Uh, because I’m not retarded, and I can park between the lines? I just smiled and rode home, a bit mad I wasted that time. On the way, I saw something I hadn’t seen in a long time, one of my old favorites: public excretion of bodily waste in the middle of the cycling path. It used to be at least a weekly occurrence in other parts of China I used to live in that were, to be diplomatic, “not quite as adapted to the modern world”, grandparents would drop down some child’s trousers and have the kid just piss a puddle or shit a little brown pyramid right there on the sidewalk. But now, I can’t even recall when was the last time I’ve seen that, maybe a year ago or more. China truly is modernizing.

I took the dog for a walk, and saw I had unread messages by the people at the driving school. I expected a bunch of vitriolic shit about me just fucking off instead of waiting two hours but no, they just reminded me to bring my passport and one of those stupid useless glassfoggers tomorrow, and to show up early so I’d be among the first to go in.

I opened a 1-L bottle of my homemade black beer. Homebrewing is my new hobby, as of now there’s about 25 liters in my fermentor, and I’ll be bottling it soon. More on that later! Then I watched a documentary about infamous internet personality Jake Paul. I was only vaguely aware of who he is (because I’m not 8 years old) aside from his recent foray into the world of boxing and some kind of scandal about going into the suicide forest in Japan and taking pictures, which turned out to be his brother’s doing, not his. Anyway, though I’m about 0.000% interested in any of his “content”, I still find the subject matter fascinating, how he rose to a kind of fame that didn’t exist only one or two generations ago, and how enormous his following is. A lot of people absolutely hate that guy’s guts, personally I don’t give a shit, he is more of a symptom than a disease, judging how popular his inane pranks and self-aggrandizing douchebaggery (fake or real) are. I have to say I’m pretty far disconnected from that part of the cybersphere, and even though I interact with teenagers for a living, their Chinese platforms don’t have much overlap with the ones used by kids in the West.

I finished this diary while listening to Pillärs, a band from Ohio that mixes frenetic d-beat/crust punk with crushing doom/sludge. This came recommended in a thread from a Facebook group, I have so much damn music to check out.

And thus went my day. Now time for a glass of rum, a short video about the Siege Of Alexandria by Julius Caesar, a bit of reading and then bedtime.