Chapter 90

Up at 6, a big glass of cold water, tai chi, a walk with the dog, and off to work. The day’s music was entries 356 to 353, first it was a 1968 album called Gris-Gris by Dr. John, a bizarre eclectic mix of jazz and African percussion and all sorts of sound effects, I can’t say it wasn’t interesting. Then it was Black Sabbath’s first album, hell yeah, that’s an entry I agree with, though of course I’d like to see it placed higher. I listen to Paranoid and Master Of Reality way more than that self-titled debut, but it’s great, truly ahead of its time and considered the first metal album ever. Then it was two 1978 releases, a punk album by X-Ray Spex and the catchy “new wave” rock of The Cars, and I enjoyed them quite a bit. That Rolling Stone Top 500 is full of duds and overrated boomer shit but overall I’m glad I’m going through this exercise, I am discovering some fun music.

I listened to this through the day, between classes. I had three grade eleven groups in the morning, and taught them about ketones and aldehydes. Aldehydes are systematically named with the suffix –al: propanal, butanal, pentanal, etc. I’m glad my students don’t speak much English otherwise I’d have to deal with an avalanche of really immature comments.

Lunch was a baloney and cheese baguette sandwich, that I wrapped in foil and baked for 10 minutes before adding mayonnaise. One of my all-time favorite comfort foods. I watched the news, the trial of Derek Chauvin is taking place now, and it’s likely he’ll be exonerated. Boy, I wouldn’t want to be in an American city right now. If he walks, those summer riots will look like children slap fights in comparison.

I rode back to work, listening to the Boyscast. Ryan Long had a guest on, I didn’t catch his name, some kind of musician. He grew up in Saudi Arabia as an expat kid and talked about the aspects of life there that he liked, and how different countries value different cultural and social traits. It was very interesting and informative, and obviously something I can relate to, after living in China for so long.

I have a new period on my schedule, I’m merely supposed to supervise a grade 12 class. Two of them take economics in another classroom, and I thought it wouldn’t be fair to use the class to review chemistry concepts, plus, I already have them six times a week. As per yesterday’s vote, I gave them a presentation and started a discussion on hip-hop. I put on two music videos, the aptly titled Hip-Hop by Dead Prez, and then a Chinese underground rap track called Laobaixing (common people) by Xiao Ou and Alienkey. I made them brainstorm and talk about the differences between the former, a militant, in-your-face call for action, and the latter, a laid-back, positive fun track, but also the points they have in common and that define the musical genre. Then I talked about its origins in Jamaica’s rich musical tradition, showed a clip from a documentary about dancehall, and used them as examples. “So, imagine all of you live in the same block in a poor part of Kingston. Wang Yaoting here is the only guy who has enough money to own a record player, so at night, he brings it outside, and all of you go to his house so you can hang out and enjoy music. However, though he’s the richest guy in the block, he’s still not very rich, and only owns three records. At some point it can get boring, always listening to the same albums over and over, uh? So one day, Chen Wenzhu here starts singing over the music, and people like it, it’s something different. Then, Zhang Yan starts doing the same, and thinks she’s better.” I know it’s extremely oversimplified, but that’s the gist of it, and this culture eventually got brought to NYC in the late 70s. I showed a few pieces of key vocabulary, and ended it by showing a cypher with seven or eight underground rappers all flowing over the same beat in succession, and how it relates to those Jamaicans from fifty years ago.

I had a few more classes, doin’ my thang, then clocked out. For once, the girlfriend was off work before me, and she was at the park with the dog. She commented on how he’s always sitting and dragging his ass, I shaved the area around his butthole a few days ago so that there wouldn’t be specks of shit and urine stuck in all those long hairs, maybe I cut it too short. I hope it’s just mild discomfort and there’s no danger of infection or whatever.

I relaxed at home before heading to the gym. I watched a UFC fight from last weekend pitting a guy from my hometown named Marc-André Barriault against Abu Azaitar. First two rounds were back and forth, with a crazy high pace for the middleweight division, and then some weird fuckery happened in the last round. Azaitar dropped his mouthpiece, bent over to pick it up without waiting for the ref to stop the action, and “PowerBar” capitalized hard on the Moroccan’s mistake. He bludgeoned him with strikes from top position until he got a late stoppage. Quebecers in the UFC are now 2-0 since the beginning of 2021.

At the gym we drilled a few nice moves: leg drags, guard recovery, attacks from side control. I commented at some point “Man, when the blue belt demonstrates it, it looks so graceful, but when I do it I feel so damn clumsy, as if my limbs are installed backwards like Mr. Potato” and my fellow white belt said “Yeah, I feel like a sack of shit dropping on the floor” “Hey, I didn’t go that far!” We had a few nice rolls at the end, at some point the round ended and he was on my back. “Let’s keep going, deathmatch rules, until there’s a submission” I escaped, reversed the position, he reversed it back, and so on and so forth until he choked me. Good fun.

I made it home, threw my gi in the laundry, opened a delicious red imperial IPA from Oskar Blues, and cooked dinner. Oxtails in tomato sauce, macaroni, asparagus and broccoli, with a Tsingtao beer, as sometimes light pisswasser lager is the only thing that truly quenches my thirst. We ate while watching The Office and soon called it a night.

Chapter 89

I did almost one hour of yoga this morning. I really like it and give a shoutout to my old pal Matt and his channel Yin Yoga With Matt. There are obvious health benefits both on the physical and mental side of things so I like to get my yoga on in the morning, starting the day well. Green tea (or occasionally black tea) and a walk with the dog complete my routine, and I’m all loose and happy when I make it to work.

I also listened to music once yoga was done and I was getting ready. I finished the Sonic Youth album I started yesterday before bed, and I really liked it. That’s a band that hit its stride way before I came of age, and I obviously heard the name, but it was the first time I listened to an album. Will repeat. Then the next Top 500 entry was Tom Waits, seems like that guy is well regarded but I never cared for his weird minimalistic storytelling music and that Rain Dogs album didn’t change my mind.

In my mp3 player on the way to work, I listened to Ryan Long’s Boyscast, it’s an old episode and he was talking about the Trump-Biden debate. It’s only about 6 months ago, but it feels like so many things happened since.

At the intersection, I saw that they just painted lines for a bicycle lane beside the zebra crossing. There’s constant infrastructure work around the city, whether it’s functional or decorative. It’s a rich city in the Yangtze River Delta, probably the wealthiest part of China, and I have to say it’s a pretty pleasant place to live. All the public funds being allocated that way fills the dwellers with optimism, unlike cities that are stale or falling apart due to a lack of money or local officials embezzling everything.

I made it to work, and ran into my Zimbabwean coworker in his labcoat.

“Hi, do you need help setting up the lab exam? I’m free for the first two periods”

“No, it’s all good, we’re almost ready. I set it all up on Sunday”

“On Sunday?! You’re a trooper”

The lab is fun for everyone involved, but also quite a bit of work. I’m grateful that he’s usually the one doing it, and I do the easy part. I got upstairs, brewed some pu-er tea, and sat at my desk for two hours browsing the interwebs and grading papers. I looked for more music to listen to, a friend posted a link to an album by Ancst, a German black/crust band. It was sehr gut. Then I saw that Nine Treasures just released a new album and nearly fell off my chair. I must be one of the biggest Nine Trez fans on this planet, but turns out that this new album, titled Awakening From Dukkha, is some kind of best-of, with re-recordings of some of the tracks from their first three albums. I think they sound great as is, so I was a bit apprehensive diving into the new album on Bandcamp.com, hoping the new versions wouldn’t be stale or overproduced. They turned out awesome, and I was tapping my feet the whole time.

I let the twelfth-graders work on a past paper while I sat there grading. There’s beenn a schedule change, and now I have an extra period with them on Wednesdays, bringing it to a total of seven a week. I don’t need that much, in contrast, I only see Attitude Class for four periods weekly. So I had an idea, in order to do something different that is still somewhat educational, I’d use that period for an extracurricular of sorts. I asked them to vote between French, Spanish, history and styles of hip-hop, history and styles of heavy metal. Hip-hop won almost unanimously. So that’s what I’ll teach them once a week until the final exams.

I listened to the Metal Minded podcast from yesterday, the guests were two guys from a new death metal band called Obvurt, they had really interesting stories to tell. The guitar player had a serious car accident which left his hand incapacitated and had to learn to play left-handed, and the drummer was a Frenchman with years and years of touring and session work in bands of a serious caliber (in the world of extreme metal). Then the internet died, so I pulled out my mp3 player and listened to Ingrowing. I said a few days ago that Nasum is the greatest grindcore band, well, Ingrowing is my favorite grindcore band. Everything about that Czech fourpiece is pure excellence, especially their albums Sunrape and Suicide Binary Reflections.

I went home, heated some leftover fried rice from the Japanese restaurant, and ate it in front of the TV with an orange for dessert. I watched a documentary about the Children’s Crusade of the year 1212.

The afternoon was lab exam time. I supervised half of the first session, and then was the head supervisor for the second session. I had to read the list of chemicals and apparatus to ensure all the candidates have everything, and do the experiment in an empty room to get data to compare the students’ data to for accuracy points. Responsibilities n’ shit. It went well, can’t complain. Shoutout to my Zimbabwean coworker for setting up the whole thing, and to our lab technician who is always on the ball.

I got home, strapped the dog in his harness, and rode the longboard to a little eatery to go meet the girlfriend, as planned. Well first I took a dump, and got a message asking “Where are you?” “我拉个你” I replied (I’m dropping a you), and told her I’m coming soon. Well by the time I made it I got another message, she went to get her hair done with a coworker. So I just sat around with a Kirin beer can from a Lawson corner store from down the street, as the restaurant didn’t turn its fridge on, and neither did the shitty little Chinese chain store next door. The hot weather is coming, and those lazy cheapskates stores who don’t stock beer at acceptable temperatures will soon become the bane of my existence.

The eatery only has two tables, and a menu of simple but expertly executed favorites like fried rice and fried vermicelli, as well as a bunch of soupy noodles. The old guy also makes flatbreads stuffed with pickled herbs, that he cooks in some cylindrical oven similar to an Indian tandoori. He reaches in there with the disk of dough, sticks it to the wall, and takes it out a minute or two later.

The girlfriend came, we ate our food, and drove to Metro to stock up on imported food and booze. We got home and stored it all away. The girlfriend wanted to listen to Latin music so I put on an album by Abraxas Pool, from a collection I downloaded a while ago, it was pretty good. I ended my evening watching a 2005 wrestling match between Sabu and Abyss, which featured a lot of barbed wire and some insane bumps. Sabu is my favorite wrestler, he’s an absolute madman.

Chapter 88

Another day, another epic derp. On the 88th day of the year no less, what is supposed to be an auspicious number in Chinese culture (and among nazis, in a bizarre and unrelated way). I rode early to the driving exam center, hoping to be among the first in line, but it was useless, we all got brought to the circuit in a big bunch and waited around for ages. It was an exercise in inefficiency, rather than having a schedule with blocks of time we all had to show up before 8, and stand around doing nothing. There’s no place to sit except the curb, there’s no shelter, I’m wondering, what happens if it rains? Not that they give a shit, and not that it applied today, as the weather was sublime, sunny with a tiny refreshing breeze. I sat on the curb and read my Kindle.

Then it was my turn and... I failed. The computer is very anal on many things I was warned, and one of them is how long you can hold the clutch while the car is in motion. When the light turned red, I put it in second gear to decelerate, and then slowly, gradually stopped to a halt on neutral. I should have just hit the brakes and cause myself mild whiplash.

So... I can’t say I’m back at square one, I’m at square three I guess, but forced to idle there for two more weeks or so before I can do it again. I was flooded with negative emotions: the feeling of being an utter retard, anger at how much time has been and still is to be wasted, annoyance at the IQ-85 yokels around me commenting on how the laowai just failed, powerlessness in the face of that incredibly stupid but nitpicky exam, shame, sadness at the idea of still having to postpone those cool weekend road trips, and... mostly just dullness. I stared at the horizon with my mouth slightly gaping, and couldn’t really feel pissed off, or feel anything. I won’t let any of that shit ruin my good moods of the recent days and weeks. Fall down seven times, get up eight.

When all was said and done, it was noon. I have a packed schedule on Monday mornings but my colleagues and the principal covered me without fuss, compared to some other schools I worked at in the past in which the dickish top-down cuntfucian administration would never ever grant its indentured slaves any leave without a whole fucking obstacle course of bureaucratic hurdles. One of the many blessings in my life and a silver lining to the whole thing, though it makes me feel bad I’ll likely have to do it again and I hate abusing people’s goodwill.

So I rode home, and took the dog out, something I didn’t have to do in the morning. I got a message from the Pie Minister, a lady married to a British man who has a pretty successful business making savoury pies and other greasy goodies and delivering them all over the area. My order was ready, and she came to the gate to hand it in. I bought a steak and Guinness pie, a pork pie, a chicken pie, and two Scotch eggs, that I put in the freezer when I got home, except one of the Scotch eggs that I heated in the oven and ate right away with a side of leftover macaroni. It consists of a hard-boiled egg encased in ground meat, breaded and deep fried, a pretty tasty protein bomb, and a perfect canvas for hot sauce. I tried some of the sauce we ordered and got yesterday, it was very potent, and burned my lips well.

I got to the office, my tail between my legs. Every few minutes my mind would wander off and inevitably think about that botched driving exam and how inadequate I am as an adult human, then I’d shake it off, laugh about it, put it in perspective and see it as a rather minor setback in the grand scheme of things, before the negative thoughts would just come back not much later. I went trhough that shit with the other driving exam, the first days are full of negativity, but then I inevitably move on. Until then, all I can do is try to distract myself.

I still have an enormous pile of exams to grade, so I settled down and did just that. The repetitive nature of the task allowed me to accompany it with the last hour of the behemoth six-hour podcast by Dan Carlin’s  Hardcore History about the Celtic Holocaust, culminating with the battle of Alesia and the genius double siege tactics employed by Ceez. Then I put on the first episode of Fall Of Civilizations, talking about Roman Britain. Very interesting series, it’s meant to be enjoyed as a podcast but the YouTube video had stock footage that made it even more immersive.

I had one period with Attitude Class. They were asking about the exam, as they always do, I told them we’ll go over it in class but later, and until then I gave them another past paper to complete while I sat there grading and listening to Windir’s folk/black metal in my big headphones.

I got home and took a quick nap with the dog before heading to the kickboxing gym. I knew that just like with the previous driving derpish blunder, some hard physical activity would take my mind off that negative pollution, and it did. All my problems from outside the mat didn’t cross my mind even once as I drilled mount escapes and sweeps with my Italian blue belt friend, and the release of endorphins and genuinely fun aspect of Brazilian jiu-jitsu put me in a great mood. Two more training partners came in a bit later, and we had a few nice rolls. I’d have stayed for longer but had a Skype call to attend at 9. The guys (and the girl) were going for barbecue after training, which made it even harder, but I made a committment.

When I arrived home, the dog was all excited and grabbed his leash from the hook. OK, you little pooch, I have ten minutes. I took him for a little round, drinking a can of German black beer, before taking a quick shower and hopping on Skype. A project manager who works with an old friend of mine talked to me about their situation and need for a Chinese translator, that could be a pretty interesting sideline. I did translation for a while but stopped for a few reasons, mainly because it was taking too much of my time.

I ate a big plate of macaroni and cured chicken while watching a video by Punk Rock MBA about crunkcore. That gotta be the music subgenre I have the least interest for, but I enjoy his video breakdowns about the rise and fall and legacy of obscure alternative music styles. Then the internet died and I went to bed.

Chapter 87

Up at 8:30, all stiff and sore, my left biceps was particularly killing me after a grappling transition yesterday when I defended an armbar and it got turned into a compression sub that made me tap. Good times.

I turned on the UFC, in time for a prelim fight featuring Khabib Nurmagomedov’s cousin. He dominated his opponent.The Nurmagomedovs have several UFC fighters now even after Khabib’s retirement, what a clan, imagine one of their family gatherings. Alonzo Menifield quickly won with a quick OSP choke, Australian Jamie Mullarkey boganned out his opponent with a fast KO, Miranda Maverick (yes that’s her real name) won a back-and-forth flyweight fight, and then it was time for the big three. Sean O’Malley has a grating personality and lots of haters but there’s no denying the talent, as he pieced up Thomas Almeida with his sublime striking on route to a late KO. Almeida was once a highly regarded prospect but now this is his fourth loss in a row. Now we’ll get O’Malley douching it out for the next six months after beating another unranked fighter on the downwards slope.

Tyron Woodley also lost his fourth fight in a row, he who was seen as a dominant champion and possibly even surpassing GSP as the greatest welterweight ever. What a ruthless sport. Vicente Luque is a tough customer for sure, and after withstanding the early aggressive assault from Woodley, he outboxed the former champ and choked him out.

Then it was time for the heavyweight championship! The challenger: an ancient African god of war, unearthed and trained by an army of scientists and specialists in the same way the Russian guy was trained in Rocky 4. The incumbent: your friend's dad, who likes goofy jokes and baseball, has a bench press in his garage, and makes a mean barbecue. I’m a huge fan of both men, so it was a bit hard to know that one of them has to lose, but such is the nature of competition. Ngannou made proper adjustments since their first encounters, defending the takedowns and adopting a patient approach until he knocked the hell out of the Croatian-American fireman. What a scary man! With him at the top of the heavyweight heap, I don’t see a lot of people lining up to fight for the belt.

Two of the guys we play soccer with are coaching a middle school team, and we got invited to play with them. Since I wake up early during the week and our Wednesday games finish at 11 PM, I haven’t been going since the end of the holiday, so I was pretty happy with the invitation, seems like a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The school is pretty far in a satellite district of the city, 13 km away, I toyed with the idea of riding my bicycle there but ended up just sharing a taxi. We played all afternoon, two games against the middle schoolers and one game against a bunch of Korean engineers. The kids were really good, and kicked our asses in the first game but we managed to play to a 0-0 tie in the second one. The weather was superb, maybe a bit too hot even, it’s weird, not even that long ago we were playing on the indoor pitch and freezing our fingers off.

I made it back home, grabbed a beer from the fridge and took the dog out. We went on some kind of plaza in the middle of the apartment complex, where old people and families congregate, and I let the animal run around. He seemed to take a liking to a four-year-old girl who was carrying bananas, and chased her around a bit. She was giggling and leading him on, running in circles. Some Chinese adults are dead scared of him, even when he’s leashed, but some tiny children just say “gogo!” (dog!) and want to play. I give him some slack now that I know he doesn’t play aggressively with people and (most) other dogs, but still, I always keep an eye on him. I sat on a bench and drank my beer, a hibiscus and prickly pear ale called Guns n’ Rosé from Austin brewery Oskar Blues. Fancy. After all this running around in the sun, it got me a bit buzzed, and I sat there enjoying the serene environment, with the blossoming flower trees and the families taking a stroll before dinner.

I reheated the Japanese leftovers and opened a jumbo bottle of homebrew. I ate my victuals while watching a funny video about post-punk from PageFire, and then put on a few nostalgic music clips I randomly felt like watching. Spineshank, Exterio, Les Anticipateurs... I might or might not have been a little drunk at that point, and dancing in my living room.

With all that, it was a bit difficult to bring myself to grade the pile of grade 11 papers that have been watching me from the dinner table. Well I have to do it eventually, might as well do it now, I told myself. I put on the self-titled album by After Forever, a Dutch metal band fronted by a female singer with an operatic style, normally a metal subgenre I don’t give a shit for, but for whatever reason I really like that album. I followed it up with Tengger Cavalry, a Mongolian-themed metal band with a lot of folk instruments. I finished grading the sixty or so papers pretty much exactly as the album ended. Then I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen with the next Top 500 entry, a 70s rock band called Big Star, who failed to make much of an impression one way or another. Then the girlfriend arrived home from her long day at work and we watched The Office before sleeping.

Chapter 86

I woke up at 7:30, and I was quite excited. My friends from the Metal Minded YouTube channel/Facebook group put together an online music fest, and it started at 8. I prayed that the internet gods would be on my side and there hasn’t been a single interruption the whole time it lasted, so I’ll have to go burn an incense stick to thank them.

All bands were great, even Your Last Wish on the deathcore side of things (a subgenre I really don’t care for) was fun to watch. Last Dance Among Wolves played some energetic thrash metal, Tunguska Mammoth were the stoner metal representatives with a sound reminiscent of Mastodon or Forming The Void, Leprosys paid homage to old-school Floridian death metal, Spirit Of Rebellion had a more modern death metal approach, Chadhel bulldozed its way with a furious no-frills grindcore set, and then the main course was France’s Pilori, who released my favorite album of 2020, a seriously sick mix of extreme genres. Some of then played in a “quarantine” format, with each band member in separate rooms, but SoR had footage from an earlier show with an audience, Chadhel and Leprosys played in a cramped rehearsal space, and Pilori rented a venue, playing an intense set amid smoke and under an ominous red lighting. There was also a guy named Guillaume St-Georges who played one-man covers of Iron Maiden and another band I didn’t catch, he did all instruments and his vocals were on point. A great success overall, and a lot of fun was had interacting with other viewers in the live chat.

Afterwards there was an after-party on Zoom, I joined. Most of the guys had been drinking beer throughout their evening, but here I was, eating cereal. I eventually did open one of the beers I bought at the brewpub yesterday, a raisin oatmeal cookie dark ale, to fit with the AM hours. A bunch of us swapped stupid crude jokes, talked underground music, and some of the guys in bands had hilarious touring stories. Good times. There’s only a few of them I ever met in person but ever since they started that pandemic online hangout last year, I feel like I know them as if we are old friends.

My afternoon wasn’t super jolly, I spent it at the dinner table with an enormous pile of exams to grade. I rarely bring work home past my Mon-Fri 9-to-5, but I’d rather get a good headstart now so I have less of it to do through the week. I had to semi-focus, especially with the first few papers when I was still getting familiar with the marking scheme, but eventually it was autopilot and I could put something in the background, like the Hardcore History podcast (the one about the Gallic Wars), music, or Clown World news segments. The Lotus Eaters broke down an article written by some racist cunt about “not wanting to go back to white society, now that the pandemic is slowly winding down”. He crapped on and on about how he could limit or even eliminate his interactions with them whypipo during confinement but now he’ll have to endure their presence in his life again. Charming. This type of drivel not only doesn’t raise eyebrows, but it’s published in mainstream newspapers. They also analyzed a BBC-sponsored documentary pushing the idea that systemic racism leads to more people of colour dying from Covid, an amusing part was when the narrator (a wealthy black actor) interviewed a minister (a powerful black woman) and was “very disappointed” when she said that the main factors are socioeconomics and previous health conditions and that race has very little or no role to play in it. He really wanted her to push this idea that she’s oppressed and held back because of the color of her skin, y’know, being a member of parliament and what not.

I listened to an album by Funkadelic that was pretty cool, followed by the unrelenting Quebec black metal attack of Forteresse. Soon after I finished the pile of papers I assigned myself for the day, the girlfriend came back from work, and we went to walk the dog. He has a little friend at the gate of the apartment complex, he spends most of his day tied on a long leash in front of the corner shop his owners operate, and is always supremely excited when our dog comes to say hi. I asked them if we can bring the little furball to the grass field so they can run around a bit, and he was very happy.

I went to the gym to do jiu-jitsu with my friends. We had some pretty good rolls, the Italian blue belt let me practice my offense and defense, giving me good pointers, and the British white belt and I had some nice spazzy wars. We’re quite evenly matched him and I, I’d say though that he’s fundamentally a bit better than I am, and the times I shine it’s either because of my weight advantage or because I capitalized on one of his mistakes.

There were two Chinese teenagers hitting the heavy bags, we invited them to join. I took on one of them, and though he was muscular and strong, my basic-ass white belt moves and knowledge of positioning were no match. BJJ is like a magic skill. He then asked me if I want to box a bit, and we sparred for a few minutes, something I haven’t done for a long time.

My veins coursing with endorphins and adrenaline, I rode to the bar and had a Goose Island IPA, my go-to beer now. The boys were playing poker, but I didn’t join, I was waiting for the girlfriend to come meet me so we’d go to a new Japanese restaurant that opened right across the street. Our city has a lot of Japanese expatriates, so it has a lot of really cool Japanese restaurants, and this one is in the izakaya style, with wooden furniture, a lot of posters on the walls and colorful banners hanging from the ceiling, and a menu focused on nibbles to accompany drinks.

The waitress yelled OMISHITAKASEEEEHHHH or whatever the hell that is, and I asked if she speaks Chinese. “I’m Chinese”, she replied. The only other customers were a trio of Japanese men sitting around a pile of finished plates and nursing a bottle of Suntory whiskey, they stared curiously at me, I bowed and said “Koneecheewa. Nihonjin dewa arimasen”, the only Japanese phrase I learned, which means “Hello. I am not Japanese” and they laughed hard.

We ordered tons of dishes: octopus, tempura, fried chicken topped with potato salad, sushi rolls, salmon fried rice, little chicken skewers, and I washed it down with a crisp Kirin beer. Great stuff.

We got home, I made a double negroni and watched a documentary about the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Watching military history and rooting for the French is a very frustrating experience.

Chapter 85

We had stayed awake past our usual bedtime the night before, so it was a bit harder to get out of bed. I thought about sleeping in a bit, but then remembered Jocko’s podcast about the Cheyenne dude, how he wrapped it up by talking about how those Native American rugged warrior cultures didn’t get eradicated in a single battle, but rather eroded over time, as the Indians became “soft” and succumbed to the allure of an easy life on the reservation. He equated it to one’s life, how you slowly start to slip away and forgo disciplined, healthy habits. Truly wise. His sidekick added that when you learn history in school, you can end up wondering what’s the point, until you figure out it’s not about names and dates, but about lessons that can be applied to real life, most of those lessons are collective but many are applicable to individuals too.

So I got up. The girlfriend soon followed, shuffling around, looking like she hadn’t slept for centuries.

“Have some of that black tea”, I told her.

“I don’t want tea. I want a vacation”

“We have a three-day weekend soon. But we’re going hiking! We’ll have to rest before and after that”

I did my tai chi session and went out with the dog. He ran after a cat. He’s about the same size as a normal adult cat, which means some of those felines don’t flee, they just round their back like a crossfitter attempting a deadlift and hiss, which prompts him to stop his frontal attack and attempt flankings until the cat just darts away. I wonder who would win if they actually fought.

I rode to work, listening to an episode of the Boyscast. The guest was Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert comics. I much prefer when Ryan Long does a solo podcast, but Adams was a very interesting conversationalist and dropped a lot of wisdom. The office was particularly noisy, so after fixing myself some pu-er tea, I listened to an album by Spirit Of Rebellion, a solid Quebec death metal band, while I counted piles of data booklets for the chemistry exam.

Aside from a half-hour block where I went to invigilate an econ exam, I did some grading while watching news videos on YouTube. One particularly harrowing one was a boots-on-the-ground report by Project Veritas at an overcrowded “migrant temporary detention center” in Texas. Apparently 100 000 people (!) crossed or attempted to cross the border illegally in only a month, emboldened by the soft rhetoric of President Biden, and huge numbers of them are piled up in those glass enclosures. Truly a tragedy, no matter how you feel about the whole thing politically (the Project Veritas video didn’t really take a position one way or another, just showed images). The one question that deserves to be asked though, how come the mainstream media doesn’t attack Biden on the issue like they did with Trumpy?

I went home and had lunch: pieces of cold chicken, a mango, a banana, and a handful of strawberries. Some people advise to not eat too much fruit, but I feel that’s a bit extreme. Refined sugars make me all twitchy and queasy, but if I don’t have a bit of carbohydrates in my diet I just feel empty all the time. My body responds well to real foods, which include a lot of fruit and vegetables and grain products. I ate while watching UFC promos for the upcoming massive event. My boner is at full mast for the heavyweight championship rematch between Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou. The only thing that sucks is that both of these men are extremely likeable, and one of them has to lose on Saturday. I also gave the dog a shower, he was starting to get all stinky. Let’s just say he’s not a big fan of bathing.

I got back to the office, put the finishing touches to my travel story and published it at https://quesstuvascrisserla.com/2021/03/26/issan1/. It talks about the time I had a flat tire during a bicycle trip in rural Thailand and the locals went out of their way to help me out of this bad predicament. I have about five millions stories of generosity, hospitality and friendy encounters during my travels around the world.

I was dreading the next entry in the Top 500 but told myself I’d have to listen to every album for at least a few tracks. When I was in high school, my friends and I were heavily into the punk rock and the nü metal that was popular among angsty teenagers at the turn of the millenium (it was either that, or bling era rap, with very little crossover except maybe Eminem, who was somehow loved by both camps). Later I branched into increasingly more extreme metal, but a lot of guys went the emo route and I didn’t care for that sound and aesthetic at all and still don’t. So I wasn’t looking forward the The Chemical Romance’s Black Parade. Well... it was pretty good. It sounded more mature than all the stuff that was playing in my friends’ cars in 2003, and the Queens-like opera track is definitely interesting even if it’s not something I want to listen all the time. But then I got some ear cleanser in the form of a band called Black Mass Pervertor, a friend sent me a link to their newer album and said “Hey do you remember the Finnish guy we met at a death metal show in Bangkok in 2010? Well that’s his band” It was really fucking good, some first-wave black metal with a thick punk layer, I had to check out their other stuff, starting with their 2020 release Lux Sodomiticum, and I liked it even more. Really evil! I’ll check the rest of their catalog and try to find the dude online so I can say hi.

I went home, took a nap, then rode my bicycle to the municipal gym, with Nasum blaring in my earbuds. I uploaded their discography in my mp3 player, but the little piece of shit has the tendency to play some albums not in the order intended, like it would play 1, 10, 11, 12...19, 2, 20, 21 and so forth. Very unpleasant. Human 2.0 was like that, but Inhale Exhale wasn’t, so that’s the one I played. Nasum is the greatest grindcore band ever in my book, every single thing they’ve ever done is stellar. I went to play badminton. What a beautiful sport! I played for an hour and a half with various partners, then I saw that in the badminton group chat one guy and his wife were at the craft beer place not far from my home. I joined them. That brewpub is very nice, all in (fake) brick and metal, with a small stage for live music, a mezzanine with a pool table, their homebrews on tap, and a selection of rare microbrews from all over China and the world. However, it’s always dead empty. The manager told me they’re closing soon, we can’t have nice things.

I opened a Gose Gone Wild, a sour from Stillwater Artisanal in Baltimore, and it was superb. The price tag was a bit hefty, but I don’t have this label in my now pretty extensive collection. I have over 1800 beer labels now and am constantly on the lookout for new ones, which can be a bit of an expensive hobby but a man gotta indulge.

My new pal is a lawyer, and told me a few years ago he was doing immigration paperwork for Chinese people emigrating to Canada. They pay absurd amounts of money. Makes me wonder about all the recently arrived Chinese who operate corner stores, they can’t have millions of yuan sitting around... I imagine there are a few different avenues, some take longer than others, and when you have embezzled a lot of public funds made a lot of money through illegal business ventures, you can throw cash around to get those “investor visas”.

I then had a pineapple IPA from some British brewery, and finished with a Vedett. They left, and I sat there nursing my white beer and a plate of fried chicken nibbles. I got a few beers to go, and when I went to pay, I saw that the lawyer dude had already paid for my first three beers. Awww.

I made it home, and was hungry, so I looked in the fridge and got an aluminium pack of Pakistani food. The label said “aloo matar”, but in Chinese it was a more direct “potato and chick pea curry”. I added a few chopped up peppers to the pan while it heated, and I munched on it with tortilla bread and a German beer while watching some UFC promos and history videos at low volume to not disturb the sleeping girlfriend. I also rewatched an episode of Love Death & Robots, the one with the farming colony getting invaded by insectoid aliens. That anthology series was pretty awesome, I should rewatch the whole thing eventually.

Chapter 84

So the way I start my daily routine is I set my alarm for 5:48, allow myself a 10-minute snooze, but then spring up on my feet (or reluctantly roll out of bed) so I’m good to go by the time 6:00 rolls around. The girlfriend also wakes up around the same time, and to fight the urge of just repeatedly smashing the snooze button, she puts her phone in the living room. However, when it rings, she just asks me to turn it off and stays in bed longer. What’s the point? Those little things she does amuse me a lot.

I did a 45-minute yin yoga session, some of the moves were a bit difficult but I was all loose and relaxed when it was over. Then I went out with the dog, and brought some beer bottles and cans to the garbage collection point. There’s a woman with a bright yellow sleeveless vest working there, she is around 140 years old, and her eyes brightened when she saw the recyclable goods I brought her. Her job is merely to direct people to put their refuse in the right box (foodstuff, recyclable, hazardous, general garbage) but she keeps all the recyclables to herself, she must be happy as hell with that new setup, not only she gets base pay, now she doesn’t even have to forage for cardboard or bottles, they’re brought to her.

I put on some music, next up in the Top 500 was a funk album by George Clinton’s Parliament. It was awesome, it truly felt like listening to one of those radio stations in the GTA games. One track had the chorus “Let me riiiiiide” that’s been sampled on The Chronic by Dr. Dre, and I couldn’t help but sing along. I then listened to Testament again, I think I could play that shit in a loop. Burnt Offerings, Disciples Of The Watch, Into The Pit (among others) are such strong thrash metal tracks. Then I put on a Jocko Willink podcast, it talked about the war between US forces and Indians from the perspective of a Cheyenne warrior named Wooden Leg. Pretty badass stuff.

My morning was filled with invigilation periods. Bleh. It’s easy but a bit boring. I saw a message on WeChat from a German friend, he’s a regular reader of this blog and a grammar n... uh, nitpicker, who was annoyed that I used the bastardized cowboy word “vittles” instead of “victuals”. He also said sometimes he gets depressed reading my narration of what is essentially a normal life, while he and hundreds of millions are still under lockdown with no end in sight. It truly is bizarro world, I’m the one who’s supposed to be living in a highly restrictive environment.

I went home, fried some bacon in the pan, and make BLT wraps with those jianbing flatbreads I bought yesterday. The weather was fantastic, so I took the dog out for a long walk/longboard ride. I was only wearing a light wool sweater and it was a bit too hot. Things are looking up, spring is a nice season for everyone but especially for high school teachers, as time goes by we get closer and closer to the summer vacation, and the workload lightens a lot. This week is lazy as hell, next one will be a bit busy with all the grading, but from then on it’s mostly review and practice for the exam, which is more relaxed and requires less class prep than normal classes. And on top of that, obviously, days become longer and warmer, morale improves, outdoors activities become attractive again. Hell yeah.

During lunchtime I watched a video by YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano, and System Of A Down was mentioned at some point. It made me want to revisit their first album, and it’s really, really good. I listened to half of it before going back to the office, where I finished it. Then I listened to Nocturnal by Heltah Skeltah, one of my favorite east coast hip-hop albums ever. My afternoon was spent grading papers, a tedious task if there’s ever been one, but I could listen to music and YouTube videos. I watched one about the videogame Cyberpunk 2077, how promising it was and how disappointing it turned out to be.

I got home, and there was a lady selling packaged snacks on the street. I bought crab legs and cured pieces of chicken, and ate the crab while I watched a 30-minute video about late medieval military tactics. It was very instructional, and presented different hypotheses (tactical, geopolitical, technological) for why infantry started to prevail over cavalry at that time. The period ranging from the 15^th to the 17^th centuries is fascinating, the way war was conducted changed every few decades, as paradigms shifted constantly with the advent of artillery, pike formations, fortresses, large professional armies, and all that.

The girlfriend came in, we took a quick nap, then she went to her pole dancing class and I went to the climbing gym. It was deserted except for me, my two pals, and one small boy. I finally made it to the top of route number 3.5, after passing a particularly tough crux with a thin crescent-shaped hold you have to grab on sideways with your fingertips. Yay! I repeated the feat, but couldn’t do it a third time since my forearm and finger strength were pretty much gone at that point. Climbing is pretty addictive, the next morning (as I wrote this) I was in class, bored out of my mind invigilating an economics exam, thinking about how cool it would be to be climbing now. My climbing junkie friend was also installing new pegs on the bouldering wall, and we played around with that for a bit.

I rode back to the city and had a late barbecue dinner with the girlfriend at a Xinjiang restaurant, then we got home and watched The Office in bed with cocktails (a pink one for her, a bourbon renewal for me) like the hedonists we are.

Chapter 83

To make up for skipping yesterday’s session, I did 40 minutes of tai chi in front of my TV this morning, after downing a big cup of green tea. Tai chi is supposed to be low impact and a good way to activate the muscles and joints after slumber, but I twisted something in my neck, even though I had stretched before. I’m becoming an old man, my mobility ain’t what it once was.

The music of the day was Madvillainy by MF Doom, a rapper with cult status due to his eccentric style and intricate wordplay. He kept his identity secret for a long time, performing with a mask, and he passed away not long ago.

Our dog can understand some words now, mostly things related to his impulsive needs and wants. If we say chifan (eat), he runs to his bowl, ready to be fed. Chuquwar (go outside and play) makes him all excited and grabbing his leash himself from the hook where it’s resting. We used to have another dog, who passed away last year at age 11, who would just put her paws in the harness hoops and wait to be strapped up, but our current little spaz isn’t there yet.

I was excited to go to work, because I just bought two containers of tea at the corner store and I was eager to try them. Yes, this is where I am in my life now. I brewed some white jinyinhua tea and headed to an eleventh-grade class to invigilate their physics exam. It lasted an hour and a half, and towards the end my bladder was about to rupture due to all the tea I’d been imbibing.

A friend sent me a link to a Twitter page from a random Asian-American activist. Last week there’s been a killing spree in Atlanta, with a scumbag taking the lives of eight women, six of Asian descent. Of course some race grifters jumped on the occasion to claim their little slice of the victimhood pie, virtue-signalers rose up to the occasion to get a few more brownie points, and some media pundits blamed the integrality of white America for that heinous crime (meanwhile, terrorist attacks committed by card-carrying ISIS members with six-inch beards who yell “In the name of the Caliphate and Allah, I condemn you to die” before ploughing a crowd with their Truck of Peace are said to have nothing to do with Islam, really gets you thinking). That particular online slacktivist was mostly irate at how the names of the victims were reported incorrectly, and... I agree with her grievance. It’s lazy journalism, and quite disrespectful. I also get annoyed when Chinese names are butchered, like in the UFC for instance, of course it’s a bit much to ask to pronounce those complicated foreign names flawlessly, but at least do a damn Google search on basic phonetics and recognize that the family name comes first, and the given name after. But then she went off the rails completely, talking about how the white man has always disdained the Asian race, how not knowing how to pronounce foreign names is an act of white supremacy, and how tragic it is that her name is Michelle since her parents wanted her to integrate more easily. There's about 5 million things I could say, regarding how integration is in fact a good thing (unless you just want to create ghettos), my experience as a Caucasian-Chinese, general resilience in the face of minor adversity, the welcoming nature of western nations (and western nations only) to immigration, and also my high school students over the years who like their English names and go by them even if I know their real names.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s definitely a weird kind of creepy racism towards Asian-Americans that manifests itself in a few different ways, and the most insidious thing is how open it can be. Women are oversexualized, men are unfairly seen as less masculine, and whole communities are mocked in ways that would cause enormous offense if it targeted another race (except white people, who are of course fair game). From what I’ve read thus far the scumfuck who gunned down these women did it because of a hatred for sex workers, but if he was indeed a racist like they claim, well, may he rot in hell even more. Fuck racism in all its forms, in this instance fuck anti-Asian racism, and I say this as a Caucasian-Chinese with a Han Chinese girlfriend whom I love dearly, and a strong attachment towards Chinese people and Chinese culture, but the same goes for all races and creeds. I’m just saying that some shit needs to be kept in perspective, some grievances are trivial at best and makes you sound like a whining crybaby for bringing them up, and also that some of these “militant antiracist activists” are themselves among the most racist people on the face of the planet, who are just interested in furthering the interests of their self-ghettoized communities by pitting them against their host nations.

I had another invigilating session to do, only for 45 minutes this time. It was pretty boring, but I passed the time by singing songs in my head, reminiscing stories and also doing press-ups against the door frame using only the tips of my fingers. I got this habit of constantly doing calisthenics when I have a bit of down time, like pike push-ups or calf raises when I’m waiting for taxis in the middle of nowhere, banging a set of pull-ups when I’m bored at home, and stretching a lot. I looked at the exam, it consisted of pretty complicated physics shit, stuff I was doing in college and have long forgotten since. Our students do a multitude of advanced courses in a language they only have a thin grasp of, it’s quite admirable but also a bit sad, their brains must constantly be on the verge of imploding.

I rode home for lunch, listening to a podcast by my old army friend who has a yoga YouTube channel I use twice a week for my morning sessions. He was having a nice wholesome conversation with a couple who are also running their own yoga channel. I stopped at the small grocery store to buy tomatoes for my homemade salsa and saw that they now stock some kind of thin flatbreads, I bought a pack and they turned out great to make tacos. I used the beef chunks that had been sitting in the slow cooker all day yesterday, a very satisfying lunch, or can I call it breakfast, as lunch is always my first meal and it breaks my intermittent fast.

I watched a YouTube video about world champion bodybuilder Dorian Yates, with a narration by himself superimposed over gritty black-and-white footage taken in a gym. I don’t care much about that level of bodybuilding and the absurdly deformed steroid junkies that populate it, but for sure they are driven and focused men who can teach a thing or two about motivation and discipline.

In the afternoon I had a self-study babysitting period, and drowned the chattering noise with Bleach’s second album, eponymously titled. I can’t really say which one of their LPs I prefer, they’re all great, with an alternance of furious noise rock and quirky Japaneseness. This one has got a track called Revenge Of The Canary, which is ridiculously catchy, the first song I ever heard from them many years ago.

In the last two periods, I invigilated a grade 12 pure mathematics exam, the questions could have been written in ancient Carthaginian runes and I wouldn’t have understood less what the fuck they were about. The students were quickly filling the boxes with equations and diagrams, seemingly unaffected by the level of difficulty. I walked around and looked at the pinboard in the back of the class, it used to be filled with goofy photographs and drawings from the students, but now they were replaced with austere patriotic artwork with the theme 我爱我祖国 (I love my motherland). As I stated many times I have zero problems with and in fact see great virtues in patriotism, and am personally moved just as much by the sight of the blue fleurdelysé as I am by the five-star red banner of my adopted homeland. On the board there was also a poster with each student’s name and their “dream university”, and it’s more than a little ironic that all of them are outside China. Their at-times ardent patriotism still comes with the implicit admission that their own universities are crap, or even that expatriation is preferable to staying in China.

A tab from a travel aggregator website was open on my phone’s browser, from when I looked at plane tickets. I browsed options a bit, compared schedules and prices, and then completed the purchase. The first weekend of May is a holiday, and the Nash Hash (the yearly national hash run) will take place in the southwestern city of Kunming. That should be fun, hundreds of hashers descending upon the region to hike and drink colossal amounts of beer.

I got home and relaxed a bit. The math exam lasted two hours, and doing nothing can be surprisingly exhausting, mentally. I watched a few ADCC grappling matches, I find it hard to get into, mostly because it’s hard to see what’s going on. Two guys roll around, attacking and defending submissions, then boom one of them taps out from some complicated leg lock. Even with my rudimentary knowledge of BJJ, oftentimes I sit there wondering “what the hell just happened?”

Speaking of which, we were supposed to go train tonight, but now we’re in a bit of a limbo situation, as the expensive gym with its tiny mat wants to charge us a hefty inflexible fee if we want to continue going there, and the other guys seem lukewarm at the idea of using the kickboxing gym. Well shit. For tonight at least, maybe resting would be a good idea, with my neck still a bit jacked up.

The girlfriend came in and we went to walk the doggo and buy vegetables. She cooked a great meal like the great wife she is, with steamed eggplant, some kind of sweet buns, rice, and the beef I braised yesterday in the slow cooker. I felt like drinking wine, so I opened a cheap bottle of Changyu red and poured a big glass. We ate while watching the Season 4 finale of The Office, it had a few storylines, one of them being about marriage proposal. I asked the girlfriend if she wants to get married, she shrugged. She told me before that she’d like to get married in a small village in Argentina, as it’s the country the furthest away from China and she’s even more misanthropic than I am.

I washed the dishes while listening to the next Top 500 entry, an eclectic and hard to qualify thing called Talking Heads. I liked it, though the high-pitched vocals got on my nerves at times. Then I watched a video called Hell World, by YouTube social commentator Shoe0nHead, summarizing the events of 2021 thus far. She espouses left-wing progressive views, and because of this, she despises Biden and Harris. Yes, I said “because of”, not “despite”. I wonder how long will it take for the general opinion to get past that “Well at least he’s not Orange Man” cop-out and see the current political regime as cancerous and destructive.

I wanted to watch a video about late medieval infanrty tactics like the enormous nerd I am but the internet started getting spotty, most likely due to every teenager in the building coming back from their cram schools and clogging the network. I went to bed and played a bit of GTA IV on the PlayStation before crashing early.

Chapter 82

I didn’t do tai chi this morning like I was planning to, a good friend was online and we chatted on Facebook briefly before switching to Skype. The company he works for makes sulfur detectors and sells them to shipyards and other factories in China, and they need the expertise of an Old Asia Hand. We talked about it for a bit but then mostly just caught up and reminisced about random shit from our happy-go-lucky college days.

I had more stapling and folding to do, so I sat around doing just that. I listened to Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late album, its Rolling Stone Top 500 entry describes it as him moving away from sappy pop sounds and going “street” but it was still just a bunch of lazy trap beats like most of that newer hip-hop that doesn’t do much for me. The guy has bars though, and he drops N-bombs an awful lot for a white kid from Toronto. It was followed by an equally bland album by Aerosmith, then I listened to Clown World news. Some people in the UK and the USA lost their jobs and are even facing prison sentences for sharing dark humor about George Floyd or Greta on the internet. Sometimes I wonder who is living under an authoritarian dictatorship. Not that I’m willing to poke the bear though, and post spicy memes of Lei Feng or Xi Jinping. To my assigned CCP censor: the author of this journal abides by the rules and regulations of the People’s Republic of China. 富强、民主、文明、和谐，自由、平等、公正、法治，爱国、敬业、诚信、友善.

I had a double period with the twelfth-graders, and let them study while I wrote a travel story for my French-language blog, it is about a bicycle trip I took in rural Thailand twelve years ago. I ain’t getting younger. I brought my Beats headphones to the classroom as I knew there would be constant chattering, and listened to Blink-182’s Cheshire Cat and then the album 冷血动物 (Cold-Blooded Animal) by Xie Tianxiao. It’s an absolutely fantastic piece of Chinese rock n’ roll.

I rode home, and didn’t even put my coat on, as the midday weather was superb. The flowers in the trees are blossoming, making the scenery colorful and filling the air with fragrances.

Lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich (with hot sauces on the side), slices of salami, and a huge carrot chopped in sticks. I watched a video by The Amazing Atheist, he compared the left-wing and the right-wing view of freedom, elaborating on the many ways that the latter are in fact restricting individual freedom despite proclaiming to do the opposite. As a left-leaning person, I agreed with most of his points. The freedom that comes with having a smaller tax burden comes with a weaker or an absent social net. The freedom given to bosses are often at the detriment of the workers. Like he said, there’s no freedom, but rather there are freedoms. One part I didn’t agree with was about transgender athletes playing competitive sports as the gender they choose, it seems like such a no-brainer to me why this would lead and has already led to abuse. Also he used a pretty monodimensional political axis, ommitting to recognize authoritarian leftists (commies) and freedom-minded right-wingers (libertarians).

In the afternoon there was a practical exam, so I spent all of that time in the lab. It’s a lot of running around, because there’s always faulty apparatus, chemicals that run out, and also I had to go to an empty room and do the experiment myself in order to get data to compare with for the accuracy points. I didn’t see time go by, and hadn’t read the schedule carefully, so I was late for an invigilation period upstairs and the principal covered me. He was a bit mad and I apologized.

One of the people who run the main expat bar is Indonesian, and she posted in the bar’s WeChat group about ayam gorem (Indonesian chicken wings) being added to the menu. After getting home from work, the dog and I headed there. When I ride my longboard, he runs along and keeps his distance at the end of the leash, but sometimes he sees another dog and either runs towards or away from it, which can be a bit dangerous if I don’t see it coming. We were crusing in a small back alley when a stray dog came and aggressively barked, which got my little triangle-faced animal to throw himself in front of my board and I almost crashed.

We got to the deserted bar and the girlfriend was already there after driving directly from work, munching on her serving of poultry and rice. It was pretty good, and came with a sweet thick soy sauce and a fermented spicy paste. They were installing a Goose Island sign that they probably got for free in some kind of promotion, so I washed down my vittles with a cold Goose IPA.

I looked at my phone and a terrible surprise awaited me: there was an error in the goddamn driving school computer, and as it turns out I still need to clock 30 minutes in the system to complete my mandatory 38 hours. FUCK. I thought I was done with that dogshit. I pondered not replying or just telling them to fuck off, but it would only negatively affect myself and stall me in this inflexible bureaucratic system. So I rode my bike there, got driven to the boondocks, sat in the back of the car while another trainee clumsily drove around, and then went back to the city by taxi. I didn’t even touch the steering wheel, but the system must be fed. The taxi was at my expense of course, but it was only about 22 yuan, at least there’s that.

I was listening to the Chewjitsu podcast with Dean Lister on as a guest, the man is a grappling legend but his MMA career, although reaching the high levels, was middling, as he never really managed to get his striking together. It was an interesting conversation and he dropped a lot of wisdom. Then I listened to Shenjingcuoluan, the Chinese grindcore band. Their demo tracks are excellent, it’s a bit of a shame the sound quality isn’t top notch.

I detoured to a craft beer bar on the way home but they were closed, so I just went home. I opened one of my homemade spiced ales and tried to watch some YouTube videos, but the internet sucked donkey shit. I got pretty mad, and am not proud of it, it was very un-stoic of me. It’s not as if they were “important” videos, just some casual time-wasters about pro wrestling trivia. So I poured a glass of dark rum and went to watch The Office in bed with the significant other.

Chapter 81

Up at 6, green tea in the pot, a 45-minute yoga session, and a walk with the little triangle-faced animal. The sun is finally out. Then I was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to listen to Testament, for an unknown reason. Probably just because Testament are awesome. I saw that in 2018 they re-released their album First Strike Is Deadly (under the name First Strike Is Still Deadly) and the more modern recording gives those classic thrash anthems even more punch.

The mock exams start tomorrow, so I gave all the classes a free self-study period and sat there finishing up the gargantuan blog entry from yesterday. When I started writing this navel-gazing piece of shit, I tried to finish it before midnight, but now I prefer putting the finishing touches and proofread it the next day, which allows me to have a relaxed evening.

I wrote on the board “study”, “ask the teacher questions” and something that could be roughly translated as “behave well”, with thumbs up or check marks, and “sleep”, “talk” and “play with your phone” with an X or a thumbs down. One of the eleventh-graders let out a burp, which echoed in the silent classroom and caused immature laughter, so I added “burp like [the student]” in the X column, to even more laughter. I wrote his name wrong on purpose as a throwback to an old inside joke at my expense: his name contains the character 宁 (ning) but for the longest time I said 宇 (yu), and I was always wondering why the little bastards were giggling when I called on him to answer a question or draw a molecule on the board. It took me months before I realized I’d been calling him the wrong name and nobody bothered to correct me. I’m not mad though, it’s all good fun, and like I said before I empathize with them being stuck in that cram school for way more time that is healthy so when their youthful spirit manifests itself (in ways that are not disruptive or grossly disrespectful) I’m all for it. I have quite the childish sense of humor myself and that’s one reason why I like interacting with snotty teenagers.

I bought some shrimp fried noodles at the corner restaurant, and this time they made sure there’d be no mushrooms. I got home and saw that the dog got into the girlfriend’s art supplies and made a huge mess on the floor. I yelled at him but gave him the silent treatment for the next hour, as I ate my noods and watched YouTube videos. Only when I was about to leave did I call him over and he came, his head down, his tail wagging apologetically. He might have abandonment issues when we leave for work, but I hope soon enough he’ll become mature enough to understand that unlike him, we’re not NEETs, we have day jobs.

I listened to a Ryan Long podcast, in which he astutely and hilariously broke down a newspaper article with advice for mothers who are concerned that their teenage boys are being “radicalized” by browsing the internet and getting exposed to right-leaning memes. He pointed out how in the article the writer “almost got it” but falling short of having sufficient levels of introspection, how a lot of this edgy humor is reactionary more than anything (with left-wing comedy being a combination of painfully unfunny, condescending and dominating the cultural discourse, which makes teenage boys totally unattracted to Trevor Noah and John Oliver and the like), how deconnected she is from the world outside of upper-middle-class white bubbles, how self-righteous those woke types are, and especially how if you want 14-year-olds to not spend all of their time in the admittedly putrid depths of 4chan, having their mom telling them not to is probably the most counterproductive approach.

I sometimes wonder about my own students and how much of that deep internet cred they have. A few years ago, I browsed Chinese message boards and meme dumps, and the whole thing was utterly incomprehensible, even if you can read Chinese. The level of slang almost made it another language altogether, taking advantage of all the homophones and the limited sounds that several thousands of characters make, and was evolving constantly to elude the censors. There wasn’t that much politics on there, mostly crude jokes, copypastas and memes that were long dead on the American internet and used the wrong way, notably a fuckton of rage comics. Most stories had an autobiographic twist to them but had Wang Nima (Nima = your mom) or his sister Wang Nimei as the protagonist, and an alarming number of them took place in middle and high schools, which led me to wonder if I’ve been a secondary character in one of them. It must have happened, by mere virtue of statistics and due to my at-times eccentric personality. Good fucking luck finding out though, with the hundreds of millions of Chinese internet users constantly dumping shit all over message boards. The gif game was on point though, and still something I use a lot in WeChat shitposting groups.

I spent a big part of my afternoon stapling and folding exam papers, an annoying and repetitive job, but one that can be done with music or a podcast on. The Metal Minded guys interviewed a solo artist with the cool name of Anna Pest, and it was an interesting conversation. Just before pressing play, I listened to one of her tracks, and it’s a truly eclectic mix of deathcore, tech death, slam, industrial, screamo... so, a bunch of styles I don’t care too much for, but I could only nod my head at all this originality and creativity.

I had a double with Attitude Class and let them study, they have a math exam tomorrow. So all in all it was a pretty relaxed day. I ran into my British coworker on the way out, his day was much more stressful and tedious, since he was giving speaking exams to the tenth-graders. I don’t envy him at all. From what I keep hearing, the school had a hard time recruiting students because of Covid and the level of the tenth-graders is pretty low.

I got home and praised the dog for being a good boy and not destroying anything. We went on a walk, and then I took a taxi to my last driving practice. It lasted three hours and now that I know what it’s about, it didn’t suck as much. I know the circuit by heart at this point and expertly drove like a retard to fit the exam stipulations, which gave very little to the rude cunty instructor to yell about. The rest of the time I enjoyed sitting on the back seat, listening to Crucified Barbara and reading my Kindle. I started a book called Everything Is Fucked, about sense of purpose and anti-nihilism, and it’s pretty good so far. The author Mark Manson, of The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck fame, does a good job at vulgarizing behavioral science, psychology and philosophy, I just wish he’d refrain from throwing in stupid jokes every second paragraph, or maybe make funny ones. Most of his humor falls flat and makes me cringe.

Finally I’m done with that dumbass course, time to celebrate with a nice beer. I got home at 21:30, famished, cracked open a Pacific Amber Ale, and heated some Pakistani food from an aluminium bag, chick peas and paneer in a curry sauce. I ate it with tortilla bread toasted in the pan, it was absolutely delicious. I also pan-fried slices of tempeh, tempeh is some kind of vegan foodstuff made with beans and it’s pretty good, like tofu it doesn’t have much taste but it’s nice to dip it in hot sauce.

I watched an episode of the new Netflix series about samurais with a cup of sake. It’s well done, but I can’t get into it as much as I’d like to. I never manage to remember who is who, or really care about what’s happening. As much as I’m a huge history buff, Japanese and Chinese history has very little appeal to me. Does it mean I’m a racist? Nonsense; it’s been established a long time ago that I can’t possibly be racist, I have a black friend.

Chapter 80

Sunday, day of the Lord. I woke up at 8:30 and checked my e-mail, my dad approves of my opinion regarding that fuckface immigration consultancy and its Quebec-bashing. He’s a proud Quebecer and always has been, and I have adopted this trait from him. Nowadays it seems like in the gangrenous western world nationalism and patriotism are seen as dirty words, but what’s wrong with having respect for one’s community and culture? It ain’t about being exclusionary or hateful, you can be cool towards people of every creed and ethnicity and culture but at the same time being proud of where you come from.

(I did originally write “proud of your own” but amended it because I don’t give a flying fuck about my ethnicity, I have very little tribal affiliation with white people, but I do care about being part of a vibrant albeit imperfect community of North American French-speakers)

Maybe “proud” isn’t the best word, in the sense we usually give it, since it’s not as if it’s something you accomplished, but all this talk of “white guilt” and ethnomasochism you see nowadays makes me cringe. I’ve traveled the world, and it would be a pretty bland place if there wasn’t a sense of nationalism and pride in the distinctive culture of a place.

I put on the next Top 500 entry, the first post-Beatles solo album by George Harrison. It was pretty nice. I cooked myself a big brunch with the leftovers from the Sichuan food the girlfriend ordered yesterday, that I scrambled with eggs and rolled into a hybrid breakfast burrito. I also ate shrimp dim sum and strawberries, and washed it all down with a gin tonic.

The UFC was on, I caught it as the main card started. Hulking Australian Tai Tuivasa threw some of that Pacific Islander power at a last-minute journeyman newcomer, flattening him in 49 seconds. Two Mexican bantamweight newcomers had a high-level scrap until the better striker of the two, Adrien Yanez, got a picturesque walk-away KO after a lightning quick right counter in the third round. Truly a guy to follow, it seems like he could make waves in that aready exciting weight class.

Next up was a very bizarre fight in the women’s strawweight division, seven-times Mexican wrestling champion and heavily-tattooed gangster-lookalike Montserrat Ruiz repeatedly took down her opponent Chayenne Buys and pinned her in a scarf hold, causing minimum damage but a lot of frustration. When the 15 minutes were over, Buys was restrained by the ref as she still tried to swing at her and yelled “I’ll follow you home, bitch!” So you can get pinned down on her kitchen floor? You already had three rounds where you were literally allowed and even encouraged to fight, so you can’t save face now by throwing threats around like that. The replay alleged that Ruiz spat at her with a few seconds remaining, but turns out it was an illusion, and what she did was calling her a puta, a not very sportswomanlike action but less illegal. I didn’t care for those trashy antics, but I unironically liked the fight overall, sure it was a very one-trick-pony affair but there’s no denying she was dominating. The fights I dislike are those in which nothing happens or there’s some fuckery in the officiating.

Chinese welterweight Song Kenan got murdered by Max Griffin in the co-main, which makes Chinese fighters named Song 0-2 in 2021 and saddens me. I always root for my fellow Chinese no matter what, they had a pretty good run in the past two or three years culminating with Zhang Motherfucking Weili capturing the strawweight title and defending it in 2020’s Fight Of The Year, as well as Yan “Kicking Rainy” Xiaonan going 6-0 in the same division and likely being one fight away from contention, but now it seems like most of them have a ceiling around the middle of their weight classes. At least The Leech is still delivering unorthodox violent bangers, and our eyes are all on skinny Tibetan striker Alatangheili in the 125-pound division.

The main event was also a bizarre one. Kevin “Trailblazer” Holland endeared himself to the fans and the UFC brass with his active schedule, being one of the rare fighters to win five fights in a year, as well as his highlight-reel KOs and especially his wacky personality. He is known for constantly, and I mean constantly, talking during fights, no matter if he’s the hammer or the nail or if it’s between exchanges. Now he was fighting the ultimate middleweight gatekeeper Derek Brunson. Brunson dominated the first few rounds, spamming takedowns, getting the better of most of the striking except once when the fast and technical Holland put him on his ass with a flurry, and keeping a game face at all those weird out-of-place attempts at humor by the Trailblazer. Recently retired lightweight champion and smasher of worlds Khabib Nurmagomedov was sitting ringside, not as a cornerman but merely as a spectator, and Holland would be talking to him as he was in the bottom position, asking him what he should do now. The more the fight went, the wackier Holland became, which led to a lot of people criticizing him for not taking the fight seriously. Yeah sure, maybe he’d have done better and possibly even won if he was more focused, but the way I saw it (sitting on my couch rubbing my beer belly) is that he just realized he was overmatched by the underrated and always game Brunson, and he wouldn’t let it get in the way of him having fun in there like the obviously fun-loving guy he is. Browsing Reddit, it seems like a lot of people hated his antics and the overall slightly underwhelming match, but being a glass-half-full guy I liked it quite a lot, I must have watched tens of thousands of fights across all combat sports by this point, and I like when it stands out in one way or another.

In the early afternoon I got my racquets and went to play badminton with the city’s club. I didn’t play that well, and got repeatedly clowned by my opponents, some of whom were middle-aged chubby women. I’m at a weird place, being too good to play against normies without finding it very underwhelming while not being good enough when pitted against those lean mean badminton machines. I had a few moments, notably a Hail Mary dive to get a seemingly hopeless sneaky drop shot that got everyone hooting, but all I can do now is keep playing and get my hours on the court, like they all undoubtedly have a fuckton of.

I didn’t go home, as I was scheduled for more of that driving practice nonsense dogshit and the driving school was near the municipal gym. I had about 20 minutes to spare so I went to the cute park by the canal and did sets of dips and hanging levers. I was scheduled for four hours, which means I’ll be done tomorrow but I was bracing myself for a serious dose of unpleasantness, then the car arrived, with shitty techno blaring and shaking its windows. The car we used on other days didn’t have a stereo, but now there was an aux cord, and the instructor has seriously terrible taste in music, like about 99% of Chinese people. Boy, it’s gonna be a long day and a test of my stoicism, I told myself, channeling the zen buddhist in me.

I was pretty damn familiar with the circuit at that point, but would still commit errors that are apparently immediate failure, like stopping before turning right at a red light, failing to pump my brakes like a spastic retard when passing a bus stop with absolutely no one in sight, or have my foot hovering over the clutch pedal even if I’m not pressing it. That mannerless cunt of an instructor would bark at me when that happened, and at some point I asked “Who does that? Who pumps the brakes at a green light?”

He looked extremely confused, and I repeated my question. “Those are the exam stipulations”, he replied matter-of-factly.

“Yeah but nobody does that in normal traffic”, I gestured at the cars wildly swerving around, operated by goldfish-attention-span drivers with one eye on the road and one eye on their phones. I wanted to use the word “unrealistic” but didn’t know how to say it in Chinese.

“Those are the exam stipulations”, he repeated. Because like I said before, the course and the test has very little to do with preparing people for actual driving. He’s right though; don’t hate the playa, hate the game, and hate the game as much as you want (it’s a dumb fucking nonsensical game and I feel stupid for playing it), at the end of the day my goal is to pass and get it over with. So if I have to forgo any notions of safe driving or common motherfucking sense just to get my pawn move a bit further forward in some rigid bureaucratic system, I will.

I sat on the back seat most of the time, reading. I finished Camp Of The Saints, and started a series of horror short stories, to fit my own horrific predicament being stuck there on what could be a nice Sunday early evening going to the park with the girlfriend and dog and enjoying a sushi dinner. The coach was watching Douyin videos on his phone, 10-second bursts of mind-numb superimposed with the most annoying music tracks. I fished out my mp3 player and switched from the Chewjitsu podcast I was listening to to some loud metal that would drown out the noise. I hadn’t listened to Bosse De Nage in a while, one of those newer black metal bands with a lot of shoegaze and post-rock influences. Then I put on Coffins, I love me some Coffins, and the mid-tempo crushing doom-death metal went well with the stories of demons and serial killers I was reading.

8 o’clock rolled around, I asked if I can go and was given my freedom, at least there’s that, the whole thing lasted exactly four hours, not a minute more. Here’s a funny thing: my mp3 player is embedded with a speaker that can play at low volume if the headphones aren’t plugged in, and when I took out my earbuds, I saw that the jack wasn’t completely in, which meant that while the music went through the earbuds, it also came out of the shitty tinny little speaker. I wonder how long all the other passengers had to put up with my death metal. Yet nobody said anything or even looked at me weird. China has a culture of non-confrontation, which gets people used to deal with all the uncouth antisocial shit around them, but also in a way enables it or even exacerbates it, by putting them into some kind of revenge mode (I know I feel that way often). Call me an old-fashioned imperialist westerner if you want, but I kinda prefer a more open approach in which you get called out for your shit and therefore tend to lead by example and act the way you’d like your fellow humans to act. But hey, when in Beijing.

I took a taxi back home, with the Didi app (Chinese Uber). This is pretty fantastic and far superior to ordinary taxis, plus, there would be absolutely no way I’d be able to flag a taxi on that remote road. Didi drivers are required to drive a car of pretty high standard, oftentimes a brand new car with comfy leather seats, and drive safely. In contrast, a lot of chain taxis are old rickety pieces of shit and their drivers swerve around as if the world is made out of sponge. Yeah, I guess there’s a phone number you can call and report unsafe driving, but it’s unlikely to do anything aside from getting lost in a bureaucratic pile somewhere, unlike the star rating from Didi that can end a driver’s account if he gets just a few shit ratings.

I got home, and there was a truck parked in front of our complex, selling potted plants. I bought as much as I could carry on my bike. The girlfriend was in her fluffy pyjamas, doing embroidery. She was an art major, and is always drawing, painting, sculpting, or doing other artsy things. I love her so much.

Four of the eggs I had just bought got cracked on the ride in the bike’s basket, so I made scrambled eggs for dinner that I ate with a few slices of Spanish salami and a cold hefeweizen. We took the dog out and let him run around on the patch of grass behind the postboxes, and he ate a dog turd he found. I brushed his teeth when we got home. I fixed myself a double negroni and we watched The Office in bed before sleeping early to start the week right.