Chapter 24

I got awakened by loud explosions outside, and looked at my phone on the bedstand. 7:49 AM. The Chinese new year holiday is coming, this shit will ramp up exponentially and I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

I managed to sleep a bit more before an ugly triangle-faced animal jumped on the bed and rubbed a drooly toy on my face. I threw it around for a bit.

The first half of the day was pretty lazy, I ate pan-fried dumplings, drank two beers, and watched various videos on YouTube about music or late medieval history. I also did a bit of cleaning and laundry, while listening to Gorguts, a cult progressive death metal hailing from Sherbrooke, Quebec. I had listened to their classic Obscura a while ago and found it too weird, too chaotic, too deconstructed, but Erosion Of Sanity has an unmistakable Suffocation vibe that is riiiiight up my alley. I also listened to Pleiade’s Dust, their EP from 2016, and Colored Sands, their latest full-length released in 2013. They had a much more experimental and avant-garde vibe, while still being, y’know, listenable. The mastermind of the band will be interviewed on my friends’ podcast tomorrow so I thought I’d dive in their discography a bit.

I rode my bike to the mall with the rock climbing wall, in a bit of a grey haze. The app on my phone describes today’s weather as “slightly unhealthy”, which I find amusing. I’ve seen much worse. Along the way I listened to Jocko Willink talk about the My Lai massacre, in which American troops gunned down, raped and bayonetted Vietnamese civilians, one of the most infamous skeletons in the closet of US military history.

The climbing area was packed with children, but I could still climb my route without having to wait too long. Most left not long after I got there, as my buddies arrived. We played a bit of hacky sack and I climbed until my grip strength was completely gone.

I bought a 10-kg bag of dog chow on the way home, and then, famished, we went to another mall where we gorged ourselves on Korean fried chicken. There are street stands by the mall entrance, and one of them sells stinky tofu, the most abominable snack in the whole wide godforsaken world. The stench is enough to gag a maggot.

Back home, I put the final touches to a travel story for my other blog, while listening to Gorguts. It’s about crossing the border between China and Kazakhstan more than 10 years ago, and having to deal with illegal taxi drivers trying to rip me off ike the vermin that they are. Go take a look if you can read French, it’s on http://quesstuvascrisserla.com/.

Among my numerous back-burner projects, one I’ve been thinking about for a while is to create a YouTube channel and upload obscure music that has little to no online presence. I did just that, starting with Nagzul, a great Chinese black metal one-man band that released one album in 2011 before fading into complete obscurity. I’ll try to upload one or two albums a day in the near future, especially as I have so much free time now.

At 10 PM I had a Skype conference call with my father and my brother. We talked about recent stuff happening in our lives, personal finance, and the possibility of having a vacation together in the winter of 2022. We’ll see whether this will be feasible, who knows how long the world will be tits up with all that pandemic crap.