Chapter 67

I got up at 6 on the dot, brewed some green tea, did my tai chi, had a cold shower, put on a button down shirt and got back in teacher mode.

I took the dog out for a walk, listening to Jocko Willink’s podcast. The man is hilariously intense, he was talking about “going on patrol with his kids last week-end... well, civilians call it hiking” and how they “set up a lay up point, or like they say, camping”. Pretty much any time he appears on the internet now, he spawns memes like “Once Jocko was pulled over, and he let the officer go with a warning”, “Jocko's blood type is testosterone” and “Jocko’s microwave automatically stops at 1 second to not annoy him”, among many others.

I made it to the office half an hour early to get my stuff in order and then did four classes in a row. The students have to learn organic chemistry mechanisms, and many of them don’t do the practice I tell them to do, which means they’re unable to answer my review questions. It’s always the dilemma, do I stop and reteach everything, or do I leave them behind in the dirt?! I have a rather tight schedule to follow, and the sad truth is that even if I redo it from scratch, they still won’t practice and the next class will be the same ordeal. Also that’s unfair for those who actually do the work.

In my third class, about half of the twelfth-graders didn’t do the very small homework I gave them. I expelled them and told them to only come back when it’s done. Gotta put my foot down sometimes.

Lunch was leftover sesame noodles and braised beef, browsing funny memes and politics videos on YouTube. Nothing very interesting. I took the dog out once more, we usually go for two short daily walks and one longer one.

I got back to the office, did a bit of writing and class prep while listening to an album by Glacier, an American instrumental post-metal band. It was good but when there are no vocals I feel like there’s something missing. Then I blindly clicked on an album by a Swiss band with the slightly silly name of Endark The Brightness and didn’t like their keyboard-laden black metal, after one song I switched to Put, the Russian atmospheric black metal band with a really cool album cover of a skeleton playing the accordion in the snow. Then I had a double with Attitude Class, and thus ended my work day.

I got home with about 40 minutes to spare before I had to head out again. I put on the prelims from the last UFC card, and they were all quick finishes so I had time to watch three of them. One guy particularly impressed, a skinny balding lightweight from Serbia who somehow now lives in Alaska, and who bulldozed through his opponent.

Then I went to meet my Mexican-American friend, and we took a taxi to the climbing gym. I hadn’t seen him in a month, as he spent the holidays in Shanghai, so it was good to catch up and exchange stupid jokes and anecdotes on the way. I climbed for about an hour, I still can’t complete route 3.5 but I beat my previous record by going a few pegs higher than before, I had a rush of endorphins when that happened. I tried again, with my friend coaching me, but the last holds are tiny and require some serious finger strength which I do not possess.

He showed me exercises one can do to improve climbing strength, mostly dead hangs and pull-ups. I couldn’t do any of them. I can do a lot of normal pull-ups, I’m probably in a very high percentile compared to the population (not that I’m that strong, just that the majority of people are fat tubs or weaklings) but the lower part of my forearms and my fingers aren’t as developed.

He stuck around for longer, climbing junkie that he is, and also wanted to modify the routes with the approval of the boss. He took a big Allen key and removed some pegs, replacing them or moving them around. I had to go home and cook dinner, plus my forearms were marmalade at that point so I bade farewell.

I almost never use taxis around town, but I have the Didi app on my phone and it works like a charm, within two minutes a luxury sedan with leather seats picked me up. The fare for that 4-kilometer ride? Barely above 2 USD. You can’t beat that with a stick. That’s the magic of China.

Back home, I opened a Pêche Mel’Bush, a delicious blend of Bush (not to be mixed with horrible pisswater Busch; we’re talking about the strong Belgian ale here) and Pécheresse Lambic. At 8.2% ABV, it clocks much higher than most fruit beers. 

I put on the new album by Abominable Putridity, a Russian brutal death/slam band. It’s far from my favorite style but that band and a handful of others manage to really reach me, and made me bob my head. Then I switched completely and put on a Mariah Carey album, at number 389 in the Top 500. It was OK, as far as pop music goes.

I took the chicken wings that had been marinating since lunchtime and made fried chicken. I used the flour-egg-crumbs breading station with the wet hand-dry hand technique, but towards the end all my fingertips were coated in batter. I fried the pieces in batches and finished just as the girlfriend came in, we devoured the poultry while watching The Office and drinking gin tonics.

While she did the dishes, I looked for something quick to watch on YouTube before bed and clicked on an analysis of the movie Martyrs. Though I’m really not a horror fan, I watched it last year and it’s the type of movie that makes your butthole pucker all the way to your belly button. Then I watched a wrestling match from 1994 pitting Terry Funk against Onita Atsushi, with twisted stipulations that could only come out of a deviant Japanese mind: the ropes were replaced with barb wire (and judging by how the guys would bleed after getting thrown in there, real barb wire) and would trigger explosions upon contact. Then, at the end, a timer went off, and five minutes later the whole ring exploded with the two wrestlers inside. I thought the “explosion” would just be noise and smoke, but no, they used pretty powerful pyrotechnics and it didn’t look very safe. I felt my IQ drop a few points.

Looking at the comment section, seems like the video surfaced because AEW did a similar match last week and it was nowhere near as good. I will probably check it out anyway, as bizarre extreme wrestling is one of my guilty pleasures, or I’ll ask some wrasslin’-obsessed friends about it first to see if it’s worth it.