Chapter 8

I didn’t sleep well, and had some bizarre dreams that I tried to reconstitute in the morning, about drowning in water under a sheet of ice, but not dying, just falling into some kind of cryogenic coma. So I was irritable and sleep-deprived, not the best mood to teach four eleventh-year classes in a row.

To make things worse, the computer in class 2 wasn’t working, so I couldn’t put the visuals from the exercise book on the projector. But hey, the show must go on. The students were horribly tired, like they tend to be in the first classes in the morning, Chinese schoolkids truly get squeezed like sponges, forced to stay up late doing piles of useless rote memorization homework, and then wake up early and go through the grind of a whole day listening to teachers drone on and on. At times I question my ethics in participating in such a system, but like in the case of many other ethical conundrums, I eventually come to the nihilistic conclusion that if it wasn’t me, it’d be someone else. I like the teaching profession, the lifestyle, imparting scientific literacy to the fine youth of today, and generally interacting with teenagers and their idiosyncrasies, but I see a few things that could change about the whole way education is structured.

As stated before, disciplinary or disrespect problems are quite rare and minor with the classes I teach these days, there are students who sleep or do homework from other classes or even play with their phones behind the desk, but I don’t feel like playing the police, they’re almost adults by now, they should know that by not paying attention it’s only they themselves who will suffer. One thing that bugs me much more is the chit-chatting, especially when I get the students to read the questions and answer/explain, most of them do so at a volume of 0.05 decibels and end up getting drowned by the inane chatter of their classmates.

I listened to some more Jocko podcast on the ride home for lunch. He was reading excerpts from the memoir of a WW1 soldier, and it’s bone-chillingly horrific. He talked about the “million-dollar injury” that some men at the front wish for, one that would take them out of the trenches to recover in a hospital behind the lines, but nothing too dramatic like losing a limb or getting blinded or whatever. My little rich Chinese teenagers who talk in class appear rather trivial in comparison.

I ate my lunch watching some political analysis on YouTube, about the whole situation in Washington DC. Both sides accuse the other of “gaslighting”, distorting the truth so much that you end up questioning your own sanity. I think they’re both full of shit. At the beginning I was curious and willing to listen to the trumpers who claimed that the election had been fraudulent, but  in the two months that have passed since, they have delivered nothing of substance to prove their claim, so at this point, just fucken step aside and admit defeat, like you’d been urging the hillarybots to do for the past four years. But at the same time, whether you like or loathe the man, it’s undeniable that Trump has been done dirty by the media ever since he came to the forefront of politics, and that there’s an enormous double standard in place. Apparently he took on Twitter and told his supporters to go home, yet he’s treated as if he is inciting violence, and conversely, some of the high-profile Democrats have pretty much explicitly encouraged riots and destruction of businesses in the past months and not only didn’t they get any shit for it, but most media outlets defended their words and went to great lengths to say “oh that’s not what they meant”. It’s a bit insulting to see how biased and disconnected from reality they are at times, my favorite is still the whole thing about “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” as the guy is standing in front of an inferno. No wonder so many people don’t trust the media anymore.

Anyway. I’m pretty far from all that shit, as you can imagine I’m sure, there are rarely protests in my placid Chinese city. I went back to school, gave the final exam printout to the photocopy lady, and taught one more review period to Attitude Class. During the break, I thumbed through the 2019-2020 yearbook, that the students just received. There was very little English anywhere. Make no mistake, my school is not an international school, it’s a program for rich Chinese high schoolers to study for British entrance exams so they can go study abroad, and only begrudgingly do they ever use the English language. I thought the whole thing was a little absurd when I got in that line of work originally, but now I’m used to everything and know better than questioning it.

The dog has been annoying in the past few days, and would ransack the house when we’re gone. We’d been child-proofing everything, closing the bedroom and kitchen doors, putting locks on drawers, removing everything from the coffee table, but the little bastard has now started to knock down piles of laundry and clean clothing and spreading the garments all over the floor. I never know what I’ll come home to. He must be bored, after all he’s a predator, born to run freely through vast plains, but now that the weekend is upon us I’ll make sure to give him plenty of attention and exercise.

I opened a 1-L brown beer from Denmark I’d been keeping in my fridge and it tasted like freedom. I watched more of that Rizin card, and it absolutely delivered. I have to say I was a bit prejudiced against Rizin because of their infrequent events, B-league and/or washed out talent pool, and also their tendency to put on freak shows, but so far that New Years card (from last year!) had been nothing but high-level bangers. In the lightweight Grand Prix finals, one fighter accidentally went through the ropes and got caught by two crew members. Thankfully he wasn’t injured and could continue. I have always thought MMA in a ring is dumb.

Outside, a group of old people were gathered around a big fire pit, blowing up fireworks. Probably a funeral. I hope they won’t blow shit up too early tomorrow.

I rode my longboard to the bar, bringing the dog to trot along. My city is quite small and the expats congregate at only a few spots, so I like going to the bar on Fridays for a few pints and shooting the breeze with my pals. I had a Guinness and a Paulaner white, swapping stupid stories with a Brit and an Irish dude I sometimes play soccer with, the British guy’s girlfriend, and an American who used to live here and is visiting from another part of China. The girlfriend came to meet me after her pole dancing class, and we went home, her on an electric scooter and myself on my longboard, getting pulled by the dog. He’s only about 12 pounds, but he’s pretty strong, and could play the role of the workhorse pretty well.

The girlfriend wanted a margarita, so I mixed her a double while she took a hot bath. Now it’s only 10:30, I think I’ll watch YouTube videos about true crime stories while sipping whatever liquor catches my eye first in my booze shelf.