Chapter 59

I woke up at 8, lazed in bed a bit then watched the UFC card. A Brazilian fighter named Mayra Bueno Silva grabbed the fence to prevent being taken down, and the referee immediately took a point instead of giving her a limp-wristed warning. So even though Silva won two rounds out of three, the fight was ruled a draw. Good job, ref. Most fights were a bit subpar and ended in a decision, and I had to leave just before the main event to go to the driving school.

We got driven to the practice lot way out of town, and I practiced backing up without the help of the small round mirrors on the edge of the hood. At some point, there was an ominous beep and a thermometer icon flashing on the dash. I called the instructor, who was outside checking to make sure I don’t cross the lines.

“There’s a problem with the temperature”

He and another employee leaned in. “Oh, the temperature is too high uh? No problem, keep driving.”

“Are you sure? There was a... sound” My Chinese sucks.

I did a few more maneuvers, until there was white smoke coming out. I turned off the engine and they opened the hood. There seemed to be enough cooling fluid but the smoke was coming from somewhere under there. So we waited, and waited, and ultimately just went back to the city in another car. It still counts for my mandatory driving practice hours, even though I was behind the wheel for about 20 minutes. Earlier I would have been happy with that, but now I do want to practice and make sure I don’t flunk that nitpicky and surprisingly difficult test.

I got home and watched the UFC main event between heavyweights Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Cyril Gane. It was a dud, a slow affair in which neither fighter really engaged. Gane is now 5-0 in the UFC, a prospect with a lot of upside, but you have to put on more exciting performances if you want to please the brass and the fans, and get rewarded.

It was a lazy Sunday overall. I exercised a bit, ate too many snacks, and sat around reading about overland travel on the internet. The girlfriend has also been exploring blogs and forums on the Chinese side of things, there are people who drive their own cars to Europe and back and it’s manageable. We’ll see if we end up doing just that or scrap it out of our sabbatical itinerary.

I kept going down the Top 500, with albums by Chic, Creedence Clearwater Revival,  Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys. The only one I really liked was CCR. Chic had one good disco classic (Good Times) and a bunch of filler, Bob Dylan’s album was quite bland compared to the other albums I heard of him, and at least The Beach Boys didn’t suck as much as on the other album that was also on the Top 500 earlier.

Dinner was leftovers, with the last of the creamy seafood pasta and this morning’s dumplings, accompanied with olives and Italian cold cuts. We watched The Office, as always. I went to bed early and started Dan Grec’s second book, the one about his three-year overland trip around Africa.

Chapter 58

I woke up at 10, though I went to bed before midnight. I decided to just sleep naturally and get the sleep I needed, tomorrow I’ll put an alarm for 8 and ease me back up into my weekday schedule. I did a bit of reading in bed and listened to Eric Church’s album from the Top 500, some country-rock with lyrics mostly about drinking, the kind of music that makes me want to go on a road trip through the southern USA. Then it was Dire Straits, a band I didn’t know by name but instantly recognized the track Money For Nothing and its infectious guitar riff, the kind of song it’s impossible to never have heard. The second half of the album was a bit boring though, couldn’t get into it.

I did pull-ups in my home gym, then cooked a big-ass brunch of scrambled eggs, a sausage, a big quesadilla, a carrot, my homemade salsa and my homemade hot sauce, that I washed down with grape juice while watching an old wrestling match on YouTube. Kane and Mankind brutalized one another in a steel cage, The Undertaker and Steve Austin also intervened. Mick Foley took a lot of punishment, getting thrown on a concrete floor and repeatedly hit in the head with a steel chair. I thought my internet or the video was glitching because the image would freeze half a second before he’d get hit in the dome, but no, it’s the newer policies from WWE against unprotected head shots and now they censor it in their old footage. I listened to a few long-form interviews with Mick Foley, he is very articulate, quite a miracle he didn’t end up all punch drunk from all the brain damage he must have received.

I spent some time reading blogs about the Appalachian Trail, another bucket list item of mine, and entered the 25 CDs I received yesterday in an Excel spreadsheet. I put one in my PlayStation, but it’s connected to the bedroom TV and its crappy speakers so the lower sounds were a bit tinny, at times the bass drums sounded like banging on a yogurt lid. I listened to an album by Upon Ruins, an OK melodic death outfit, and wondered why it was so damn long, before I realized that the PS3 just loops albums by default. Then I put in Vargr’s EP, a doom/death side-project with guys from Obliveon and Gorguts, but the deficiencies in sound quality were too apparent. So I went back to playing music from my computer: a RABM-recommended “anarchist folk/Viking/black metal” band (yes, really) that wasn’t bad but reminded me why I dislike most folk metal, and then I plunged deep into a molasses pit of sludge and doom metal, with great albums from Black Sheep Wall, Iron Pike and Fange, that a friend shared on Facebook. He has exquisite tastes, and I am never disappointed with the music he brings to my attention.

In early 2017, I went on a three-week trip to India, focusing on the deep south. Today I uploaded pictures of the trip to my other blog, with a line of commentary for each one. It can be seen at: https://quesstuvascrisserla.com/2021/02/27/indeimages/

The whole process was frustrating, as Wordpress must have borrowed a page from CouchSurfing’s book and changed its perfectly functional editor interface to a clunky, buggy, crashing piece of shit. That’s the reason why this new diary is on Blogspot. I toyed with the idea of cutting ties with that wet turd called Wordpress and just moving my page elsewhere, but that would be quite a lot of work so for the time being I’ll just endure the crashes, error messages, and supremely retarded interface that uses “blocks” instead of just one big text window.

Anyway. It was nice to reminisce about that trip, India sure was a shock on the senses and I enjoyed it for the most part. There’s no sugar-coating how filthy and third-worldy it was though, and travelers I’d talk to would tell me how “I hadn’t seen nothing yet” and how worse it is in the north of the country. I’m a bit skeptical, to say the least, when people say that India would soon catch up with and even surpass China as an economic superpower.

I listened to a few political analysis videos. Apparently the American media is now using euphemisms (or, well, just accurately descriptive phrases) like “temporary detention centers for unaccompanied migrant minors” now that Senile Joe is in office, while they were talking about “children in cages” and even “concentration camps” when Trump was there. The whole thing is pure gaslighting, the way the two presidents are treated by the media is night and day.

Browsing the Political Compass Memes subreddit, which under the thick coat of absurdist internet humor is actually a pretty good place for political discussion between people from across the spectrum, I saw a discussion about how many people have a hard time reading or watching left-wing political analysis. I relate completely. I tend to gravitate to more centrist or right-wing or libertarian political content on YouTube, though I don't agree with all the opinions, as a social-democrat (I guess that’s the label I’m the closest to). Sometimes I tell myself I should check out more stuff from the left but I often end up rage-quitting in the face of their intransigence and fallacies and how antagonistic they are to whom they perceive to be their ideological opponents. And yeah, obligatory bUt tEh rIgHt wInGeRs tOo, to a much lesser extent I feel, though some of them became a bit insufferable themselves after Trump lost.

Kyle Kulinski is good, and I listen to him from time to time. The Amazing Atheist has mostly left-wing viewpoints though he's also quite anti-SJW (in fact wasn't he the very first to do anti-SJW videos?) and at times he's got some brilliant nuanced takes but his grating personality is hit or miss for many people. Aside from these two, I can’t say I know any worth watching, and couldn’t find any recommendations in the Reddit thread.

The girlfriend came back from work, we went to eat pizza, a 30-minute walk with the dog. She did her research, and had bad news about our plan to drive a vehicle to Europe: one branch of the Joyless Department Of Bureaucratic Commie Bullshit came up with a rule about driving a Chinese vehicle outside China, you need to get some kind of permit and put down an exorbitant bond to ensure the vehicle gets back to China. Now that’s odd, I heard of the opposite (countries that don’t allow overlanders to leave without the vehicle they came with, hence why that bureaucratic nightmare called the Carnet de passage exists). When we got back home, I browsed obscure corners of the internet where self-driving travelers congregate, and she was right. There’s talk about other options, like importing a vehicle from elsewhere on a temporary license and drive it out, but of course that comes with its own endless string of red tape, expenses and uncertainty. That’s a bummer, as this previously unknown retarded requirement complicates matters quite a bit. Fuck. We can’t have nice things. Of course we still have plenty of time, we’ll explore avenues as time goes by.

A bit more music before bed, positions 417 to 415 of the Top 500: Ornette Coleman’s free jazz, The Roots’ great Things Fall Apart (another one of the few albums I already know and like) and then an instrumental funk album by The Meters. I read a bit in bed, I’m near the end of the book about the Norman Conquest but it’s a pretty boring chapter I’m in now, about church reforms and other stuff that is much less of a page turner than the preparation and immediate aftermath of the Battle of Hastings.

Chapter 57

I did yoga for 15 minutes and slowly started my day listening to Brahms. The girlfriend doesn’t like loud music in the morning but classical is fine. I love classical music and have a pretty extensive collection saved on my external hard drive.

You know what I like besides classical music? Retardedly over-testosteroned modern thrash metal. Terror 2000 is one of my favorite purveyors of that genre, a Swedish band fronted by Bjorn Strid of Soilwork fame, with a speedy thrash assault, infectious hooks and a caustic sense of humor. I love their album Terror For Sale to death and listened to it for the 18 563^rd time this morning while getting ready (after the girlfriend had left of course) and on my bike ride.

I also listened to Zatrata, a Polish band expertly mixing death metal and crust punk, and an incredibly good black/crust metal album by Iskra, recommended by those commies on Reddit I talked about yesterday. Perhaps I shouldn’t judge them that harshly, and forgive them for wanting to impose a dystopia that would lead to famine and abject penury, if their musical taste is that good. Later during the day I kept going down that list, with Trespasser and Dawn Ray’d, and they were also very enjoyable.

I had two hours before my first lesson, as I switched a class period with a colleague, me taking her Wednesday class and her taking my Friday morning class. I fell into another rabbit hole on Reddit, on a sub called Crippling Alcoholism. The tone there is downright weird and unsettling, people use a distorted and dark sense of humor to talk about their addiction to alcohol and how it messes up their lives, but it’s also dead serious and without any detour or apologies, some threads on the front page were even about suicide. Yet there’s a palpable sense of support for one another, as I imagine most alcoholics don’t want to hear pseudo-self-help condescending bullcrap from normies. I read a few stories about rock bottom, some of them involving drinking one’s vomit because it might contain traces of alcohol (!!!), losing everything, ending up in prison, and all sorts of jolly stuff along those lines.

Alcoholism puzzles me. I’m now on my ninth day without a drop, after getting the covid vaccine and being advised not to imbibe during the incubation period. Ever since I became an adult, the number of days when I didn’t have at least one drink is probably in the low one-digit percent, yet I don’t think I ever felt addicted, rather “habituated”. Case in point, I can’t say I feel very different these days, other than thinking a beer would be nice with my dinner but forgetting about it ten minutes later. Yet some people get to the point where withdrawals are so intense that they need to constantly up the dose and god fucken knows how unhealthy that can be at every level.

I had a double class with the lower level eleventh-graders. Many of them struggle a lot even with basic concepts and their motivation can be low, however, they are nice and have a good sense of humor, and they try.

I went back home, in the rain. I forgot to put the child lock on the snack drawer, and the dog managed to open it and eat our tortilla chips and peanuts. Apparently peanuts are toxic for dogs, but our little triangle-faced simpleton has a stomach lined with steel from the first few months of his life spent on the tough streets of our apartment complex. He even ate a chocolate bar the other day and aside from a sugar rush that made him nearly insane with rage and with a full-body itch that got him to rub his body violently against the couch, he was unscathed.

Reheated pasta was my lunch, and I watched videos from a channel I saw in my recommendations for whatever reason, called Infinite Elgintensity. He has a series called “Exercises In Futility” (like the Mgla album) where he roasts internet fitness snake-oil salesmen and especially crossfitters. His dubbed-over commentary on crossfit competitions is hilarious. Crossfit gets a lot of hate in some circles and personally I don’t care that much, anything that gets people to exercise can’t be that bad, and there are benefits to circuit training and keeping it varied, but for sure there are a lot of crossfitters with shitty form or doing downright dangerous maneuvers in some of the videos I’ve seen over the years. Also it does feel like a weird cult at times.

I took the dog out for a quick walk and then went back to school, wearing a pair of sports pants over my dress pants to shield them at least a bit from the rain as I was pedaling under a now heavier rain. Bleh. The Haunted played in my speakers, their album Revolver has a good modern thrash sound and a cool little hardcore edge coming from the singer, I saw them live a few times in Montreal back in the day, and also when I drove to Massachusetts to attend the Ozzfest.

I had a double period with Attitude Class, it went pretty well. Just like that, the week was over. One down... Not sure how many to go. It’s a much shorter semester than the autumn one, either way, most of it being made up of review and exams, with increasingly nice weather and a corresponding increase in morale. And then, before you know it, boom, two months vacation! It’s just a matter of hanging in there till then and enjoying the ride.

A package was waiting for me in the little cabin by the gate where mail comes in. There’s a record label in Quebec that closed its doors in December and did a clearance sale, I got 25 CDs from various underground metal bands for $60. I was all giddy as I opened it after arriving home. The problem is, I don’t have anything to play CDs, except my PlayStation I guess... and the car. That I still can’t drive. I’m supposed to go to driving practice this weekend.

I watched No Country For Old Men. It was slow but worth sitting through, and the absence of music added to the suspense. I think it’s only the second movie I watched since the beginning of 2021.

The girlfriend is also reading about travel these days, a book written by a Chinese author about a trip through Latin America and also the Lonely Planet magazine. She’s always asking me “Can we go there? Can we go there?” and moaning about how we are stuck here working instead of out on the road. We watched a few videos about travel in Central Asia, then she sat at the computer and researched second-hand vehicles. The dream is alive, if Plan A materializes itself, we’ll set off in July of 2022.

One of the video montages had a soundtrack of cool folk music from what I assume is that part of the world, and it made me want to listen to Lao San, a folk musician from the Qiang ethnic minority group in western China. I saw his show in Jinan several years ago and was blown away, I immediately bought his album and listen to it quite regularly. I did a quick YouTube search, it’s not there, so I saved it as a video file and uploaded it so non-Chinese people can hear it. It’s now here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13QL8TerEfo. Go give it a listen if you like esoteric world music, it’s really good.

After the album finished playing, in the same “Folk and world music” folder on my hard drive I saw Tinariwen, the Tuareg band, and put on their album Amassakoul. Great stuff. I went to bed early enough to not fuck up my sleep schedule.

Chapter 56

Another day another dollar. The alarm rang at 5:48, I allow myself a 10-minute snooze spooning with the wife and the dog, then when it rings again it’s up on my feet before it’s 6:00:00. There’s a strong temptation to laze around in bed longer but once I’m out it’s not too bad, and in fact there’s something nice about having a morning that I can spend hanging out and slowly getting ready rather than rushing through my shit-shower-get dressed. Let’s make it a habit.

Jocko Willink and many others go through hard workouts first thing in the morning, but I always feel a bit too stiff for that. If I do lifting or calisthenics, I do it in mid-day, just before eating lunch and breaking my intermittent fasting. Morning is for yoga, taichi, taking a walk or stretching. Today I did a full body stretch and drank a bunch of water to reactivate my dormant joints and muscles.

Speaking of Jocko, I started one of his podcasts on the rainy and bleak bicycle commute to work. He talked about maneuver warfare versus attrition warfare and how we can apply those principles to other aspects of life. He also talked about his own teenage years as a hardcore punk and how having the mentality of an outsider benefited him in the military and in life in general. I could relate to a lot of what he said, how being a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel is counterproductive (and infantile) but marching to the beat of one’s own drum with the intent of “winning the game” (a game that, for a big part, you set the rules of) is one of the keys to fulfillment.

I had one class, it went well. Then I sat around the office preparing some exercises and put on an album from a German black metal project called Kanonenfieber. The lyrical themes, from the album description because they’re are all in German and inaudible black metal shrieks anyway, are about World War 1 and the album art is a giant skeleton wearing an officer’s uniform using a shovel to load tiny men into an artillery piece, an apt representation of that butchery.

I listened to one half of the Metal Minded podcast before I had to go to class. I didn’t listen to the albums being reviewed this week nor do I even know the bands, next time I should, that would be more engaging. There’s the album by The Amenta that piqued my curiosity, I took a mental note to listen to it in the afternoon.

Then I had a double class with the twelve-graders about NMR. I was wondering if I should just focus on its use as an analytical method in chemistry or go through the physics behind it, I chose the latter, because it ultimately helps understanding and making links with previously acquired knowledge. It’s a bit difficult to convey to people who don’t speak English well but I used examples and visuals and built it up slowly.

Some students spend a lot of time staring at their crotches. The school has a strict policy against phone use or even being in possession of one but either the homeroom teachers do a piss poor job or the students are dishonest, as a huge number of them are constantly staring mouth-breathingly at their little shitty time-wasting plastic rectangles resting on their laps. Honestly I’m not that bothered with the phone use itself, if they don’t want to listen it’s their damn prerogative, the only behavior that really pisses me off if chattering and disturbing others and myself. However I still have to enforce the rules to a certain point, especially when it’s blatant. Plus, it’s irritating and kind of disrespectful that they think it’s not the most goddamn obvious thing in the world.

I challenged one of the slackers in the back.

“Are you using your phone?”

He smiled widely. “No, teacher”

I asked his neighbor: “Was he using his phone just now?” I hoped he’d just say no.

“Now, no. But before, yes”

The whole class erupted in laughter.

“What do you mean, before? During the break?”

“No, during class”

The laughter started again, mixed with some taunting “WOOOOO!”s.

There’s a rhyming proverb about what happens to snitches... I’m not sure if I was more mad at the betrayal than the infraction. Either way I couldn’t not do anything at that point. I asked him to surrender his phone and he did, the homeroom teacher will keep it for a month. He seemed pretty unaffected, I wouldn’t be surprised his rich parents bought him several.

I got home, did some prep cooking by soaking pieces of chicken in a spiced yogurt marinade and making broth with pieces of carcass and old bones. I reheated some leftover pasta and watched a few small YouTube videos that popped on my feed. Cannibal Corpse just released a music video and I checked it out, the track was in the vein of their more recent albums like Kill and Evisceration Plague with the powerful and instantly recognizable vocals of George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, with an insanely gory music video. I don’t like horror movies, especially not the torture porn genre, so I squirmed pretty hard but the music was good.

Then I felt in a rabbit hole: underground black metal has sub-scenes that are very right-wing or even full-blown neo-nazi, and I saw an article about a band with the rather dumb name Harakiri For The Sky that just cut ties with a female guest vocalist who was supposed to feature on one track of their upcoming album, due to her association with undesirable individuals with shaved heads. That led me to a subreddit called RABM (Red Anarchist Black Metal?) where far-left-wingers (AKA filthy commies) congregate and discuss which bands are “safe” for their sensitivities.

Here’s my take on this, as a long-time black metal fan: I have no love for nazis and white supremacists and their retarded backwards ideologies, and I never seeked to listen to any of the pure-and-true NSBM bands out there and never will. And the few times that I found out after the fact, it’s not as if I was disgusted and wished I hadn’t listened to it, but for sure my interest for the band all but vanished. But I can’t say I’m a fan of antifas and champagne socialists and anarchos either, though I’m not as opposed to having that kind of rhetoric in their lyrical themes and aesthetics as in the case of nazi or racist trash. I’m not gonna go full “middle ground fallacy” and pretend that a NSBM band talking about the Holocaust in every other track and recruiting kids to neo-nazi groups is the same as a crust punk band with extreme anarchist or communist lyrics, no matter how virulent (and cringeworthy) they are.

Browsing the subreddit, it seemed to me that, being commies, they despise the very concept of nationalism and any sort of sense of cultural belonging and roots and thus this can lead to a bunch of bands being falsely flagged as “fash” just for, I don’t know, being proud to be Norwegian. Also there was a lot of guilt by association in there, along the lines of “Well their former bassist who left the band 12 years ago was briefly in Satanikgördblut, a band that was fronted by Helljuggler, the guy who co-founded the Shrieking Tundra label, who signed a band with Viking themes called Häärdumsafäraa, the lyrics are all in Finnish and are complete mangled gibberish if we put them through Google Translate but there’s a passage about “blood and the land” which sounds pretty damn problematic to me. I’d say avoid them.”

I exaggerate slightly but it sure looks like they’re digging for dirt at times. But then again I might be completely wrong, after all one band they seem to approve of highly is Panopticon, which incorporates a lot of bluegrass and American folk elements and thus gives off a proud Appalachian vibe (one album is titled Kentucky, for fuck’s sake). I think nationalism in the sense of being proud of one’s roots and culture, without being exclusionary, is a good thing (sue me, globo-commies) and in the context of music, can bring some interesting elements like folk instruments, imagery, language and themes that can help some artists stand out.

The subreddit has a list of “essential albums” and I clicked on the first link, a very raw black metal album titled Socialismo Satánico, by Argentinean band Profecium. Other then the endless intro with dissonant guitars and some spoken word in Spanish, it was pretty damn good. Now I have too much music to check out.

I had no classes in the afternoon so I spent my time in the office doing prep work, writing and reading. The internet died at some point, and I didn’t have much music saved on my hard drive that I felt like listening to. I put on a Soilent Green album, and only then did I recognize the singer’s voice. Holy shit it’s the guy from Goatwhore! I hadn’t made the connection before. Both bands are from Louisiana so that makes sense I guess. I’ll go back an listen to the other Soilent Green releases to see if his voice is so instantly recognizable but I just didn’t hear it then.

I had a chat with a coworker, he helped me out with questions about the grade 12 curriculum (that I’m teaching for the first time) and then we chatted about teaching in China versus teaching “back home” versus teaching in proper international schools. The girlfriend and I aim to go work at one of those as a medium-term goal, after we take a sabbatical. One of the problems I foresee is having to manage teaching to different English levels, from native to high to pretty low, and also I heard that some of those embassy kids can be extremely spoiled and unpleasant. Something to research for our future endeavors.

I got home and hit the punching bag for a bit. I listened to The Amenta’s album, it was an avant-garde mix of ambient, industrial, black and death metal, with clean as well as harsh vocals. Can’t say I disliked it but I wasn’t crazy for it either. Then I put on the funky sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire, number 420 on the Top 500, followed by Cheshire Cat, Blink-182’s first album released in 1994. Blink is probably the first band I was ever properly a fan of and I still like their stuff nowadays (well everything until Take Off Your Pants) but I never listened to their lesser-known debut. It’s a bit rough around the edges as expected but still a sign of great things to come, on Dude Ranch and beyond.

I cooked rice in a spiced chicken broth then made a casserole by laying the pieces of chicken on top and baking the whole thing. It was delicious. We watched an episode of The Office, it was a tiny bit too absurd for my taste, I prefer the type of raw realistic situational humor that is so relatable to anyone who’s ever had a white-collar job and thus made the show so popular. Then the girlfriend helped me with my Chinese studying, we read the dialogues from the previous ChinesePod lessons out loud. This language is hella hard, if instead of China I had moved to... well, anywhere they don’t use little pictures instead of letters, I’d be native-like fluent right now.

Chapter 55

I wanted to work out in the morning but my elbow was all sore, probably from sleeping on the plank of wood we call a mattress. I fired up some YouTube videos with taichi routines, on mute, and performed them in front of the TV. I used to do taichi regularly, during my first year in China (my Tim year) but I forgot all of it since.

I got to the office and had to navigate through a labyrinth of boxes containing photocopied past exams. That’s a pretty useful tool for review, I grabbed mine in case they forget to give me some. I then gave classes to the eleventh-graders about electrophilic substitution, they don’t seem to think it’s as cool as I do.

During the break I listen to Beck’s Odelay, I immediately recognized his weird lo-fi mixture of styles and his characteristic voice as the guy who sings “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me”. The album was great and I’ll check out more Beck in the future.

On the way home for lunch I listened to Chadhel, a no-frills grindcore band from Saguenay, Québec. Their LP Controversial Echoes Of Nihilism is excellent, clocking at just under 30 minutes, and their guitar player is one of the funniest guys in the universe, if he ever starts a YouTube channel in which he just rants and comments on stuff he’ll become a superstar in no time.

I did my home workout, took a shower, and ate baloney and cheese sandwiches in the leftover hamburger buns. I wrapped them in foil and threw them in the oven, then slattered them with mayonaise. I ate them and drank grapefruit juice while watching videos about internet lore. This one was about the leprechaun sighting in Mobile, Alabama, one of the all-time funniest viral videos. The guy who introduced it to me many years ago, an American stoner named Joe who taught at a sister school in a neighboring Chinese city, had his girlfriend at the time calling him racist for laughing at a video that paints black people in such a poor light. Well it’s a black neighborhood, what to expect, of course everyone in the video is African-American, just like all those hilarious Quebec viral videos I’m a huge connaisseur of feature white French-Canadian rednecks.

(No, I’m not gonna spell it connoisseur, because that’s retorded)

And as the guy who researched the history and context of that video found out, many of the residents were in on the joke, trolling the reporters. Notably the guy who held a piece of scaffolding and pretended it was a flute that his Irish great-great-grandfather used to summon leprechauns. My stomach sank, thinking I’ll soon be revealed that it’s a piece of pure fiction, a hoax like the “Fuck her right in the pussy!” video, but no, it’s a real news report from a local Alabama station. Two guys working at a Dallas radio station went to investigate years later and did pretty good detective work, tracing back a guy going by “Midget Sean” who climbed a tree wearing green clothing a few days before St-Patrick’s Day (presumably under the influence of lean and marijuana) and sparked the whole thing.

I took the dog out for a walk and a shit. The neighbors’ door was open, and I could see inside their living room. It was packed with flattened cardboard boxes. Their storage area in the basement is also packed to the brim with cardboard and styrofoam and plastic bottles and other recyclables, that they collect with a rusty tricycle. I never asked them (and when we make small talk it’s laborious, with my laowai accent and their deep countryside dialect) but I assume they were farmers who got compensated with an apartment when the city’s undending horizontal development swallowed their village. Collecting scrap to sell to recycling plants, in lieu of doing other unskilled labor of which there’s plenty around town for any able-bodied ex-cabbage planter, construction and landscaping and street cleaning and the like, can’t pay well but they work on their schedule and there’s always tons of food sitting on the derelict table right in front of the door so they must be doing okay.

Our landlord was also living in the countryside but got expropriated when a road was built, and he got four apartments as compensation. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

Between classes, a bunch of students were hanging out in the hallway, one was in a wheelchair with a bandaged foot. He could still stand, so his pals were taking turns sitting and being pushed around. I asked if I can try and they moved aside to let me. As it happens, I can do a wheelie and hold it in place and even move around on two wheels, a skill I acquired when a friend of mine was wheelchair-bound after breaking her leg but could still walk on crutches for periods of time, so I had a lot of time to practice. The students gasped and hooted and hollered. Some of them tried to do it, I told them “I’m not responsible if you get hurt!” and ran away to my class. A good teacher leads by example.

On the way out I made small talk with coworkers. There are a bunch of flagpoles in front of our building, with various national flags representing the foreign staff. The Croatian physics teacher pointed at the one that used to fly the cool checkered red, white and blue and now had the Hong Kong flower.

“What’s this?! This is discrimination!” he joked.

“Do we even have a teacher from Hong Kong?”

We used to, but he left after a tumultuous relationship with the then principal. And now we have one who is of Hong Kongese descent but was born and raised in England if I’m not mistaken.

“I guess it’s because so many of our students end up going to Hong Kong University”

I stopped at the little market on the way home to get groceries. When I came out, there was a little commotion, an elderly woman was sitting down on the asphalt holding her leg and one guy was trying to hoist her up. I did my good action of the day, I ran over and helped, and once she was back on her feet holding on to the other guys shoulders I went and got a dusty chair that was there against the wall. A scooter delivery guy was there, all agitated after hitting her. Those guys drive like absolute madmen, on sidewalks, down narrow alleys, against traffic, and you constantly have to watch out for their erratic driving. But then again old Chinese people are also a serious danger to traffic, as they tend to just wander across the road without ever looking left and right. So who knows who’s at fault, probably a bit of both. The old lady seemed OK, she survived the Taiping Rebellion, the fall of the Qing Dynsaty, the civil war and the dark days under Mao, you have to be strong for that.

I got home and made creamy, cheesy pasta with shrimp, calamari and broccoli. I ate it watching an episode of Bojack Horseman, that has got to be my favorite TV series of all time. I can’t even think of anything about it that is not absolutely stellar, let alone remotely negative. I watched every episode three times but will sometimes go revisit one.

I started a Ryan Long podcast, he was talking to James Altucher. I had never heard of the guy, he seems like quite the overachiever. He wrote like 20 books about personal development, ran hedge funds, started websites that sold for a large amount of money, is a world-ranked chess master, and then later in life he started doing stand-up comedy. There was a bar in Hefei, a central Chinese city I lived in for two years, that would do comedy open mic nights and I did a set. It was fun but this shit is much harder than what it seems, it’s not just about being (hopefully) funny and cracking jokes, there’s a whole sense of timing and a million other little aspects that separate the greats from the good and the passable and the forgettable. The two guys were talking about the craft of comedy, I didn’t like Ryan Long’s other podcasts with guests and thought he’s much better as a solo ranter but this conversation was quite interesting. I’m now tempted to go check out Altucher’s catalog of books.

I took the dog out and we went to the girlfriend’s workplace as she was clocking out. On the way I listened to the album Everything Sucks by Descendents, a band I wasn’t even aware existed before they came to Shanghai and guys in the WeChat group about local heavy music shows were talking about it. When I was in school, Blink-182, Green Day and The Offspring were insanely popular and likely owing Descendents one for coming up with the blueprint for pop punk, but these Californians weren’t well known at all in my circles by the time the late 90s rolled around. The band was founded in 1977 and I caught them live more than four decades later, the four grey-haired boomers gave a damn fun show.

Chapter 54

Up at 6 again. I brewed a pot of Yellow Mountain tea and sipped a cup after dropping an ice cube in it so I wouldn’t have to wait half an hour or burn my lips on the rim like a worthless imbecile. Then I did a 30-minute yoga routine. The dog often came to poke me with his triangle face or nibble at my ears, a common comical scenario among dog-owning yoga practitioners it seems, based on video compilations floating around the internet.

On my short commute, I finished an episode of Ryan Long’s podcast, in which he talked about what he saw at the riots he attended in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Then I started another podcast, with Carl Benjamin (AKA Sargon of Akkad) talking to another YouTube guy who goes by Shadiversity about masculinity. It’s an interesting and relevant topic, with the young men of today being demonized or led astray or lacking strong role models or being crippled by nihilism and a sense of impending doom. Neither of those two are macho types, more fitting the stereotype of the history nerd, and though one is an atheist and the other is very religious, they had a very good discussion about what it means to be a man, the main tenet they were agreeing on being a sense of sacrifice for those who depend on you. They argued that therefore, the ultimate expression of manliness is fatherhood and the sense of purpose it imparts. For the longest time I thought of manliness as independence, and while it’s definitely part of it, the flipside is that if nobody depends on you for anything, you just end up being an atomized speck, a lone wolf rather than an alpha male.

I had two hours in the office before my first class of the day. I messed around on the internet a bit but had some work to do, preparing upcoming lessons. I listened to a Big Pun compilation, I think that rotund rapper is a bit frustrating in the sense that he had some of the best verses or lines in the history of hip-hop, overflowing with an intimidating Latino swag and terrific technical ability, but his albums are also full of forgettable filler.

The first two classes went okay. At times my review feels like a reteach but what can I boy do? Then I went to a noodle shop and got my usual order of fried noods with shrimp and pieces of dried tofu, no mushrooms, to go. Upon entering my humble apartment, I saw that the dog had shredded some cardboard boxes and was looking at me sheepishly. I didn’t punish him then, just gave him the silent treatment.

I watched videos about the history of internet humor from a channel I just discovered called Wavywebsurf. I learned to my great disappointment that the old mustachioed guy with a black hoodie running to a TV reporter and shouting “Fuck her right in the pussy!” was a hoax and not a real local news segment. I also learned about “Sminem”, the mildly handicapped Russian teenager who became the mascot for a bunch of cryptocurrency enthusiasts without even knowing, based on a few pictures of him circulating. The internet is a strange place. I then finished the 19^th episode of Dovahhatty’s history of Rome, about the fall of the western empire to barbarian hordes and the beginning of the Dark Ages. It was really well done, his animation skills have improved leaps and bounds since his intentionally amateurish first videos.

I taught an eleven-grade class in the afternoon, and a pile of papers on the podium caught my attention. I co-teach my classes with a Chinese teacher, officially we’re supposed to teach different parts of the curriculum but oftentimes they step on my toes and teach my chapters behind my back. It might sound trivial or even something to celebrate but in fact it annoys me to no end and makes me question what the fuck am I even there for, besides posing for promo materials “Look! We have white teachers! Our school is legit!” and also it peddles the implicit message that I can’t do my goddamn job.

So I was a tad irritated to see a pile of homework about something I’m supposed to be covering... next week. I went to confront my colleague, for the millionth time. It always results in them saying “Sorry” and then doing it again the next day, in a very Oriental non-confrontational manner, or some childish pouting. This time it was the latter.

“What’s this?”

She gave me a scared look not unlike the dog’s when he got caught after destroying old boxes, then averted her eyes and went back to the pile of homework she was grading.

“We talked about this. Why do you keep doing that?”

“It’s just some review”

“No, I haven’t even taught this yet! I’m starting this chapter tomorrow!”

“Some parents asked me to help them with organic chemistry during the holiday. They’re worried.”

We do have quite a lot of students who spend their weekends and holiday periods in cram schools in the city, of the kind that’s advertised in the elevator of my apartment building. There, they mysteriously tend to unlearn the chemistry I teach them, as if they went to a fat camp where the only food served is donuts.

“But why you didn’t talk to me about it?” I can hear my fellow current or former long-term expats in China chuckle as I type this.

Her English is limited (to be polite) so she switched to Chinese: “We have the same goal, you and I. To make sure the students can get good marks. If you review my material in class, I won’t complain, I’ll be happy. You should be happy too, tomorrow you’ll show them and they’ll already be able to do it!”

I gave her the reasons why I think it’s annoying, how it makes me feel useless and as if I can’t teach the material myself. Our school program is supposed to be one that favors an immersive environment to fully prepare the students for university abroad, and once in a while we have big shots from the parent company coming to give workshops using the latest jargon about “embedding English”, but the Chinese teachers would rather be waterboarded than use English as the language of instruction in their classes, even the few who can string five words of English in a row. Therefore their classes are more about “hacking the exam” by recognizing patterns and memorizing the marking schemes of past papers and I wouldn’t be surprised if they see all the logic and rational thinking I and my fellow foreign teachers are trying to instill as a waste of time.

Anyway I’m not here to flip the world on its axis and change the way Chinese people have been operating through their 3500 years of existence, I’m here primarily to save up a bundle of money to eventually go on another round-the-world trip. Nah, that’s not fair, and I take that back. I like teaching and as I said before and will say it again, it’s mostly a good gig I found myself in and am grateful.

I went back to class (it was a double period with a break in the middle) and it went well. It’s the weakest group of students by far, but they are friendly, a bit goofy but put in the work and it’s fulfilling to see them improve.

I had an hour in the office reading up on nuclear magnetic resonance and preparing my PowerPoint. I opened the tab on Google Chrome that had been permanently set on the Top 500, next up was a vocal quartet named The Four Tops. It was really good, at times I wonder how the musical landscape would be if black people from Detroit never recorded a single track. The answer: infinitely sadder. The album was too short though, and I didn’t want to put on another full-length on knowing I only had a bit of time left, so I clicked on the link for the Fever 105 FM playlist in the YouTube sidebar. It’s a fictional funk and soul radio station from GTA Vice City, and the first song on it is And The Beat Goes On by The Whispers, one of the catchiest songs in the history of mankind.

I got home and liberated the dog from the prison I put him in for the afternoon (the bathroom). He was all excited and grabbed his leash himself, as soon as we were out, he started running and pulled me so fast on my longboard I had to put my foot down and decelerate a bit. He’s pretty strong for such a little pooch.

At the gate of the complex, there’s a small convenience store and the owners have a little puppy they leave outside tied to a motorbike with a long leash. I always make a little detour so that the two dogs play a bit together. The puppy repeatedly tried to mount my dog and was swaying his hips back and forth once he secured the position with his hind legs, not sure if he’s gay or playing, either way it’s hilarious.

I put on more music when I got back home, next up was Hüsker Dü, I had heard the name before and thought they were German or Swedish or something, with the umlauts. But they’re from Minnesota apparently, and their 1985 album New Day Rising was a pretty cool piece of old-school punk rock. Then it was soul singer Al Green, the first guy (I think) to appear for a second time on the list. I enjoyed it, and enjoyed even more Lucinda Williams’s twangy country. Then it was Paul Simon (without Garfunkel), another great album. So a pretty good streak.

I made myself two burgers and a plate of asparagus that I steamed for a bit and then fried with garlic. It was delicious but salty, a beer would have been perfect but nah, I’ll play along and abstain until I had incubated my next dose of the ‘Rona vaccine. A yearly “sober month” is all the craze among craft beer hipsters, just that mine will cradle the second half of February and the first half of March rather than being a 1-31 affair.

By the time I finished writing this piece of shit it was 8 PM. I did some Chinese studying, the topic of that upper intermediate ChinesePod lesson was traffic and public transportation. The bus and metro system in Shanghai and China in general is A+.

I watched John Oliver’s segment from last week. I hate John Oliver but a friend recommended that particular episode so I gave it a go, it was titled The Next Pandemic. The focus was on the destructive and careless way mankind treats the environment, through deforestation, factory farming and encroaching on wildlife habitats. All of those, added to the interconnected globalized world we live in, increases the risk of having another infectious disease run amok sooner than later. It was mostly interesting and well-researched but I sighed so hard at all his shitty jokes, holy fucking shit, he’s gotta the least funny person in the whole universe. He must have cracked about 120 jokes in the span of 20 endless minutes, constantly fucking up the flow of his presentation and cheapening the otherwise serious tone. The only two that were a teeny bit funny were a dry humor quip about factory farms and an obnoxious animated virus asking “Hey if there’s another pandemic, are there going to be a bunch of celebrities singing Imagine?” The only silver lining is that he was alone in a studio, if he was in front of an audience of NPCs cackling every time he made a face or spouted one of his retarded non-sequiturs I wouldn’t have lasted a minute in. I have to give it to them though, as a sinophile it’s always nice to see western media set the record straight about “wet markets” and how the majority are just, well, places I and my fellow Chinese go to buy meat and fish and vegetables.

Chapter 53

Up at 6. I used to wake up around 7, but now on this perpetual journey of self-improvement I gave myself the mission of getting up earlier and have a leisurely morning, exercising and drinking tea and walking the dog before going to work.

I got my mp3 player and put on Pearl Jam. I’m too young to have caught the grunge wave and not many of the guys in my high school were listening to any of that early 90s Seattle shit aside from Nirvana, but much later in life I started to listen to them a bit. Some people blame their singer for popularizing the “veddering” vocal style so prevalent in shitty post-grunge or alt rock bands but I like how he does it.

I went to school way earlier than usual, to make sure my things are in order before a full morning of classes. I won’t hit the ground running anyway, first I’ll go through the final exam question by question, with the goal of reviewing, clarifying points about the marking scheme, and also giving myself and the students an easier week before grinding again.

The classes went really well and I had to deal with very little shit. I remember some schools from my past where every minute of every lesson felt like tending a field of cucumbers at best and having to put up with rude little wastes of space at worst (but not being legally allowed to hit them or even yell) but now I’m in a pretty good place. Knock on wood. The weather is magnificient and likely to get better, so I hope the students don’t start getting too restless in their minimum-security prison and keep their eyes on the prize.

In one of the classrooms, the mouse that operates the computer wasn’t there. I shrugged and pulled out my own wireless mouse from the bag I use to carry my odds and ends. The students gasped and some applauded. Always have a plan B.

At lunchtime, I was already downstairs walking to my bicycle when I realized I didn’t bring my laptop. I have to relearn all those auto-pilot moves. Ah well, I didn’t feel like going back to get it, I’ll just read a book while eating rather than watching YouTube. I listened to the album Born Annoying by Helmet, another band I am a little bit too young to have caught in its prime. From what I’ve gathered, their mid-tempo alternative metal wasn’t that well received in their time, being too heavy for rock fans and not enough for metal fans, but it sure has influenced a lot of the nü metal bands I grew up with. Then I put on a Dark Tranquillity album, now that’s a band who was at its apex at the same time I was an avid little consoomer of metal, I caught them live four times I think. They released an album this year and I haven’t listened to it, I kinda moved on from the Göthenburg-style melodic death metal, perhaps I should go and give it a spin for ol’ times’ sake.

I ate a bowl of soup, a reheated KFC sandwich the girlfriend brought back from her work yesterday, and some fruit. The soup tasted a bit sour, not sure if it’s because it’s turning bad after four days in a glass Tupperware or because of the tomatoes in it, anyway I ate it all and didn’t get sick. My computer desk was filthy, I cleaned it, took the dog for a little walk and then rode back to the office.

I wanted to listen to music from YouTube but the third-world fascist internet was shitting in the shovel. It didn’t disturb me that much though, I now make sure to have a few albums of various genres saved on my hard drive for such occasions, it pays to prepare for contingencies, like in the case of the classroom with no mouse. So I put on Windir’s third album, called 1184. It was a good piece of epic black metal, with more folkloric elements than I remembered were on their other LPs. I was curious and wanted to look up why it’s called 1184, but of course the internet was still down, because I’m exactly 800 years after 1184, metaphorically speaking.

I had a double class in the second half of the afternoon and then got ready to head home. My earbuds were malfunctioning and playing at a much lower volume they are supposed to, but then I found the source of the problem: both of them were clogged with a big gob of ear wax. Gross. I removed the rubber part and pushed the crud out with the tip of a pencil, then they were working normally.

At night I watched a video by Internet Historian, a YouTuber with a unique and amazing animation style, about the wreckage of the Costa Concordia. That enormous luxury cruise ship hit some rocks off the coast of an Italian island, and the investigation led to conclusions of incompetence and utter fuckery by its captain and others. I also watched a few videos about driving in Central Asia with the girlfriend, damn this whole wanderlust. I have been to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan a decade ago, it will be so cool when we can go drive the endless steppes with our own vehicle.

Chapter 52

Last day of freedom. I decided to get up at 8 to get gradually used to early starts but in fact I was wide awake in bed way before sunrise, suffering from insomnia and overthinking a bunch of stuff. When the girlfriend got up around 6, I still couldn’t fall asleep so I stayed in bed a bit, reading. There were birds chirping outside my window, that’s something I don’t hear that often.

I did a kettlebell workout. I have three kettlebells, the biggest one must be around 60 pounds and is in a weird spot, being too light for deadlifts but too heavy for everything else. I still find creative ways to use it, that’s the fun thing about those strange cannonballs with handles.

The UFC was on, and I watched it live. The fights were decent if not exactly as exciting as those from the previous few shows, and in the main event, Derrick Lewis nearly decapitated Curtis Blaydes with an uppercut. That man really has insane one-bomb KO power. It’s been a while since I watched a UFC live as it happened, usually I replay it through the week and skip the downtime, but now I had to wait sometimes 20 or 30 minutes between fights, watching promos or ads. I read a few pages of the book about the Norman conquest to pass the time in between bouts. I attended several UFC events in person, and with the prelims and all, they last about 6 or 7 hours total. 100% worth it but it’s long and tiring.

I listened to a ton of music, clearing positions 435-430 on the Top 500. First it was the Pet Shop Boys, whom I have had a soft spot for since going to parties in college where people would play oldies ironically, then a nice indie rock album from a Californian band called Pavement, and LCD Soundsystem. That’s another album I was familiar with, I had downloaded it on my mp3 player and we put it on a few times during a road trip with the girlfriend’s parents, I can’t say the vocals don’t eventually get on my nerves but the electro beats are catchy and fun. Usher’s entry was full of RnB bangers and ballads, then Los Lobos and Elvis Costello played some good ol’ rock n’ roll, the former with a cool Mexican twist. After that I felt like listening to Gronibard for whatever reason. Gronibard is a French grindcore band with a ridiculous sense of humor. Though they play technically proficient and ultraviolent music, the vocals vary from gargles to high-pitched barks, there are hilarious samples from deviant porno movies, and the song titles look like they’ve been written by a bunch of perverted 14-year-olds. The Satanic Tuning Club EP is my favorite of theirs. Then I put on some classical music, orchestra pieces by Jean Sibelius, one of my favorite composers, his Concerto Number 47 is awesome, with dissonant creepy parts and hair-raising epicness. A quite eclectic selection overall, if I dare say so.

The weather was astonishingly nice today, blue skies with an incredible 25 degrees on the thermometer! I rode my bike an hour to Metro and back, I only had a hoodie on but even just a t-shirt would have been okay. I wouldn’t be surprised if it drops back to subzero on Tuesday or even tomorrow, the climate is playing weird games with us these days.

The girlfriend wanted to eat hamburgers for dinner, and we needed buns. Usually when I go to Metro I buy a bunch of cool imported beers and a bottle of spirits or two to replenish our home bar, but now I’m on my fifth day without a drop, about 4.5 days longer than my previous period of sobriety in years. I don’t miss alcohol per se, at least not in an addict’s way, but I do like to have a nice beer in the late afternoon and with dinner and also a glass of whiskey or rum or a cocktail before bed so now, drinking only tea and water, my days feel a bit incomplete. I bought a few bottles of juice, trying to get the stuff as close as possible to natural juice and not the shit packed with additives. On the way out, I tried to use the self-checkout machine, scanning my items was easy enough but when it came time to pay, it wasn’t a straightforward “scan n’ pay” but rather some dogshit convoluted process that needed me to download 37 bloatware apps on shittily-designed and perma-crashing websites. Fucking shit. I wasted five minutes and felt retarded for even trying, so I just went to a normal line and dumped the already bagged groceries on the conveyor belt.

The podcast about d’Iberville finished, then I listened to Jocko Willink. He had a fellow SEAL officer on and they answered questions from the audience about motivation, leadership and the evils of islamist terrorism. I rode home, dropped the groceries, and brought the dog to a park. I had my Kindle with me so I soaked up the sun like Sheryl Crow and read for half an hour. Towards the end I was actually too hot, even just wearing a t-shirt. I started to be afraid I’d get sunburnt if I stayed exposed much longer.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening browing a website called Caravanistan and reading about the logistics of traveling to Central Asia, even though we won’t go there for a good 18 months at the very least. I’m getting antsy, and now I opened a Pandora’s box of vicarious travel, with books and blogs. An old friend started updating his own blog after almost a decade of dormancy and posted the link on Facebook, I read all his old entries, about his time spent living in Indonesia and elsewhere. Not sure whether going back to work will calm down this wanderlust or make it worst.

The girlfriend came in, horribly tired and suffering from a stomachache. She still had work to do, preparing her classes for tomorrow and also teaching a private AP Art History lesson online. She works a lot, much more than I do, yet makes a fraction of the salary. Gotta love that white privilege!

I retreated to the bedroom while she taught her one-on-one lesson. The PlayStation is there (for some dumb reason it doesn’t work on the big TV in the living room) but I don’t really ever feel like playing videogames. I put on some music on a small speaker, first Morbid Visions, an early raw Sepultura album, and then A N D, by Japanese math rock band Tricot. I finished The Road Chose Me, Dan the enthusiastic Australian made it from Alaska to Argentina. I bought his second book about his circumnavigation of Africa, also in a Jeep.

Then I read a chapter from Roosh V’s new book. The doomy and brooding tone was night and day compared to Dan Grec’s upbeat and motivating vibe. Roosh has always been an odd character, and though I genuinely like his no-nonsense writing style and how some of his themes resonate with me and my expatriate life, I am also amused by his near-autistic and graphic descriptions of his interactions with the opposite sex that are at times the focus of his older books. Now that he went full-blown Jesus Freak, he spends a lot of time lamenting on the secularisation of the USA, and it gets a bit tiresome at times, especially when he says stuff like “geologists say that those rock formations were shaped by retreating glaciers, but no, it’s clearly God”. He does offer good commentary however, in this book about a road trip through the whole country, about the negative effects of consoomerism and how miserable and soul-sucking cities feel compared with smaller towns and nature. I agree with a lot of it (hence why I live in a smaller city and not Shanghai) but can’t say I’m bothered with gays as much as he is, as I said in the past I can’t think of any reason why I should dislike my queer brothers and sisters and non-binary siblings.

Speaking of which, I went to the kitchen, brought some LGBT (lettuce, grilled buns, burger patties and tomatoes) to the living room and we assembled burgers that we devoured watching The Office.

Back to work tomorrow... and it’s a packed day. Maybe these entries will become a bit shorter, or maybe not, we’ll see.

Chapter 51

 My dad told me that Édith Blais, the young woman who got kidnapped by jihadists in Africa, has been interviewed on Quebec’s biggest talk show, I looked it up. She said she fled through the desert at night, but a lot of people, including a retired intelligence officer, speculate that in fact the government paid the scumbags off and the whole thing is being covered up to save face and continue pretending that “they don’t negotiate with terrorists”. There was another guy on the interview set, working for the government in some capacity as a specialist of radicalized groups, who had been the link with Édith’s family throughout that ordeal. When the interviewer asked him “So the federal government didn’t do anything then?” he backpedaled and mumbled things about trying to stay on top of things, but being severely limited by local geopolitics and France’s military involvement in the region, it wasn’t very convincing.

Also a lot of viewers in the comment section were skeptical of how relaxed she seemed to be and how that doesn’t really fit with what we’ve seen in the past of military personnel or other people who have experienced traumatic events. I don’t know enough about her situation and think it’s a bit unchristian to not give her the benefit of the doubt, who knows, perhaps she is indeed mentally strong and deals with her PTSD by projecting this positive vibe.

Either way it’s genuinely nice that she’s safe and sound. That kind of stories makes me question my committment to pursue adventure travel as a hobby, especially now that I travel as a couple, but the addiction is too strong.

I saw that author Roosh V just released a new book, and that made me want to reread one of his short ebooks called Why Can’t I Use A Smiley Face. Roosh is a rather controversial figure to say the least and I don’t agree with all his political views, far from that, but he’s had an interesting life that I can relate to in many ways. And while I don’t care much for his “pick-up artist” material, some of his writings about the hedonistic treadmill, being burned out from the expat life or feeling reverse culture shock upon going home really hit me, as well as some of his commenting on cultural, political and social issues. He pretty much renounced his past, becoming a born-again christian and finding some purpose through his love for Jesus. Now that’s something I can’t relate to and more than likely never will, but I did enjoy his YouTube video series about his road trip around the USA so I bought the new book and will plunge into it soon.

I watched the Slay At Home, an online music festival. Ten bands ranging from grindcore to doom metal and from technical death metal to modern black metal performed short sets. All of them were good, the highlights were the furious grinding attack of Hivemaster and the bass-heavy Portuguese black metal outfit Gaerea, whom I saw live in Shanghai two years ago and been a fan since, as well as an Amon Amarth cover that made me headbang in my living room like a chicken. Some people think those online shows are a poor substitute for the real thing, well, no shit, but I’ve always liked well-produced, well-recorded live sets like what’s offered by NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and KXRP so it’s nice that metal and grindcore bands are also doing that.

The host, a guy from Metal Injection, intervened once in a while to introduce the next band and to push a black arts fund of some sort, I thought he was talking about satanic stuff until I realized it’s something for African-Americans. I smiled at the irony that not a single of the musicians in the whole 90-minute show was black.

I also listened to an interview with Carl Benjamin AKA Sargon Of Akkad, one of the most astute political commentators on the internet in my opinion. I have been following him for a long time now, and the fact that so many want to paint him as an extremist while he’s so reasonable and rational does highlight in its own way the problem with the current political discourse in the West.

Down the Top 500, it was the legendary funkmaster James Brown and his appropriately titled Sex Machine, followed by a boring Blur album. Then it was an eclectic and fun piece of music by UK band Primal Scream, and 2Pac’s All Eyez On Me. I never liked 2Pac nearly as much as many other rappers from that era, not sure why. I still listened to the whole two-hour album.

I took the dog out for a little longboard ride. I like walking, but I much prefer riding when I can and I think he likes it too, as he can go faster, when we walk him he tends to pull on his leash. We went to a pedestrian path by a canal, it’s incredibly picturesque, and there are dozens and dozens of such small parks around the city, many of them built in the past few years in places that were previously barren. I’m impressed and grateful seeing how much money and resources the municipal government dedicates to make the city pleasant.

Along the way I started a podcast about one of the most badass men to ever walk the face of the Earth, Pierre Lemoyne d’Iberville. He was a corsair, basically a state-approved pirate for France in the late 1600s and early 1700s, dedicating his life to the noble endeavor of ruining England’s shit. Most of his exploits took place in the great north, he would sail to the Hudson Bay and take over English fur trading centers, once he managed to do so with only one small ship against three much bigger ones. He got fucked over by history to some extent (the central theme of that podcast series), as some of his impressive and gutsy victories were made useless by diplomats and perfumed nobles, like in the Treaty of Utrecht that gave back the Hudson Bay and the James Bay to England. As a result, he was somewhat of a pariah during peacetime, and he eventually went to ply his trade in the Gulf Of Mexico, working to establish Louisiana. He is now buried in Havana, erased from many French history books.

At night I listened to mixtapes from Kool G Rap and Pete Rock, the latter being a highly respected producer of 90s east coast hip-hop, having collaborated with INI, Baby Pa and Edo G to produce absolute greatness. I buzzed my hair and trimmed my beard, I was starting to look like a hobo. I have to look presentable, school starts on Monday, and I can’t say I’m not looking forward to it to at least some extent.

While I was sitting on the couch reading my Kindle, the dog came and slept beside me. He stank of urine, and the hair on his belly was all yellow. One thing we noticed is he doesn’t pee like most male dogs do, by lifting one of his hind legs against a tree or a pole or a wall, he just stops in his tracks and does his job. The problem is he has a micropenis, or at least I think that description would fit him, a tiny one centimeter long twig not quite emerging outside his body. As a result, he sprays his piss all over his belly, chest and legs rather than shooting it in a more controlled jet. I know it’s a bit weird to be talking about my dog’s dick like that, but it’s something we have to deal it daily, otherwise it stinks and he gets red spots. I shaved a lot of the hair down there and we clean him with wet wipes or water and soap and a towel every day. I wonder if there’s some kind of surgery that could be done to remove the excess skin on his underdevelopped pecker, but as much as I like dogs I’ve always seen expensive surgical procedures on pets as a little obscene, with the number of people living in penury (yes, I’m a speciesist and it’s a bit dumb that it’s even a thing).

Other than that, our dog is the posterboy of health and youthful vigor so we can’t complain too much I guess.

The girlfriend came in, after her work dinner, and we went on a short walk to retrieve some mail. One of the hot sauces we ordered arrived, the Peri-Peri sauce from Portuguese chicken chain Nando’s. I tried it on a piece of fried chicken and it’s nice, not very spicy but with a good sour kick to it. Dinner was the same as lunch, a big bowl of soup and some pieces of chicken. The soup has been sitting in the pot for two days now, and since I put red cabbage, tomatoes, lentils and broccoli in it, it all turned an unappetizing purplish-brown color, but it’s damn tasty, even tastier than when I had just made it.

In a discussion about music on Facebook, a friend of mine mentioned he likes “psybient”. I asked him what the hell is that, and he replied with a link to an album by an Italian band named Progenie Terrestre Pura. It turned out to be a very atmospheric and multi-layered piece of black metal and I loved it.

Chapter 50

Up early, not because of retards blowing up fireworks for once, but because the girlfriend started working today and left just after 7. I stayed in bed a bit, enjoying the warmth of the covers and reading, then got up and watched documentaries about the Battle of Hastings. The book I’m reading just covered that pivotal event.

A friend of mine posted something on Facebook about a book that just came out, written by a young woman from Quebec who got kidnapped by terrorists in Africa and held hostage for over 400 days. As an avid traveler who’s been to fucked up dangerous destinations in the past, this topic is close to my heart. Another piece of news that made waves a year or two ago was about the two Americans cycling through Central Asia and getting rammed by a car driven by ISIS cunts, I remember watching a video by right-wing political commentator Paul Joseph Watson who called it “the tragedy of cultural relativism” and “pathological altruism” to deny that some parts of the world present a serious danger. I think he exaggerates a bit, but I also really dislike the sugar-coating you often see in travel publications, urging inexperienced solo female backpackers to go to Pakistan or Egypt or whatever and underplay or flat-out deny that huge parts of the world are giant shitholes where violence, chaos, poverty and dysfunctional governments are the norm more than the exception. Yeah, the vast majority of people are welcoming and hospitable and friendly and babadee babada and that’s the reason I like to travel, but in a lot of third-worldy places I have been, I had to be extra vigilant, and even then the higher level of risk put me in an obviously much higher danger than if I stayed home in Quebec or China. Also another thing I noticed, the guy from the excellent overland YouTube channel The Road Chose Me always talks about how wholesome and fun and rewarding travel is, but in his book, whole chapters are dedicated to nightmarish border crossings dealing with scamming scumbags.

So I’d like to see what is that woman’s perspective on the subject, if her (presumably) hippie worldview has changed after being captured and held against her will by bloodthirsty religious zealots. I looked up the book on Amazon: 18 dollars for the Kindle version. I guess I’ll wait.

There’s a craft beer and metal enthusiasts group on Facebook, they do a weekly online meetup that I rarely attend because I usually work on Friday mornings. I logged in, and had a chat with them. One guy is in Texas, apparently there’s been a crazy cold wave and a bunch of people are without electricity there. And because their houses aren’t prepared and insulated for subzero temperatures, their pipes clog with ice or even burst. Shit.  

I proofread and published my blog post about my trip to Norway. It’s on https://quesstuvascrisserla.com/2021/02/18/bergen/. More than twelve years have passed since, man, time goes by.

I ate a big lunch: a quesadilla with three dips (sour cream, homemade salsa, homemade hot sauce), a bowl of vegetable soup and dried up mango slices. Hell yeah. Then I watched 7 Jours Sur Terre, the three topics were Saudi Arabia, Canada pussyfooting around regarding the vaccination campaign, and the development of satellite internet. I spent the afternoon doing mostly nothing, watching YouTube videos and reading. At some point, the internet was down, so I couldn’t listen to the vaporwave playlist. I put on a Soilent Green album, with the awesome title A Deleted Symphony For The Beaten Down.

There’s a stripper pole in our living room, as the girlfriend started taking pole dancing lessons. I had an idea, it would be cool to see if I can ever do the flag. I looked up videos on YouTube, an impossibly sinewy and muscular black British guy went through basic exercises one can do to work up to the full flag. I tried it, and there’s a lot of work to do still.

In the afternoon I went on a longboard ride with the dog, meeting the girlfriend when she finished working. We drove home, dropped off the animal, and rode our bicycles to the mall where I ordered a mountain of fried chicken. I intentionally ordered way too much, so we’d have leftovers to munch on for the upcoming days.

We discussed travel plans. We’ve been talking about taking a long sabbatical, driving a van to Europe, hiking the Camino in Spain, taking a cruise across the Atlantic, hanging out in Quebec for part of the winter, and then hiking the Appalachian Trail. Ambitious, but more than doable. I’m starting to get some serious wanderlust now, I haven’t left China and barely left the region for a year now.

She told me of a story she heard, a private kindergarten in Shanghai doesn’t accept children of obese parents, and their justification is that if the parents are so damn fat they clearly don’t have their lives together and are unlikely to be good role models to their children. I’m trying to imagine how many lawsuits they would crumble under if that happened in the West. I told her about “fatphobia”, she’s vaguely aware of the fact that western countries are gangrened by baizuo bullcrap but doesn’t know about that particular symptom. To exemplify it, I told her about Adele and how she got lambasted by “fat activists” (oxymoron?) online after she went on a diet and lost weight, and also the people who try to convince the world that morbid obesity is not in fact a health problem.

That said, I don’t think flat-out discriminating against fat people, like in that case, is something I agree with. Especially as I sat there, having devoured so much fried chicken I was about to rupture.

She ordered two 24-packs of Perrier, and they had arrived at the gate of the apartment complex by the time we made it home. With all the foam casings, they were enormous boxes.

“Should we go park the bicycles, and come back?”

“Are you crazy, woman?” I put one of the boxes on her bicycle crossbar, she could reach the handlebars and clumsily pedal home if she pointed her knees outwards like a duck. I did the same with the other box. I’ve been a cyclist for so long, I can carry things on a bicycle nobody would think possible.

We got home and, contrary to my habit, I didn’t pour myself an alcoholic drink. It’s been two and a half days since I got the vaccine, and them telling me not to consume any booze is probably just a precaution, but still I’ll play the game and abstain for a bit. The next album in the Top 500 is by Britney Spears, the one with “Gimme gimme more, gimme gimme more” on it, and it surprised me, it was quite enjoyable. Then Loretta Lynn came in with her infectiously catchy country music, I remembered that duet “Mississippi Man, Louisiana Woman” from one of the radio stations in a GTA game.

I did a bit of writing, and a Chinese lesson from ChinesePod. It was about the Shaolin Temple and zen buddhism. Then I was too full of fried chicken to do yoga so I plopped on the couch and watched a history video on YouTube before going to bed, reading a bit more, and then sleeping like a zhu.