Chapter 71

Father forgive me for I have sinned, I did a double snooze button hit, and didn’t get out of bed until 6:10. I felt like I could indulge a bit, after staying up so late. My mouth felt all dry and I thought it was due to the hangover, but it’s more likely because of the whole bag of saltine crackers I ate before going to bed.

I made green tea and did 20 minutes of yoga like the hippie I am. Then I put on a YouTube video with my Clown World news of the day to listen to while I did my ablutions and got dressed. It was something about gay police officers in London wanting to march in the gay pride parade, but BLM activists not wanting them there because all cops are literal KKK members in their minds, and some gay rights organization threatening to boycott the parade if the race agitators have their way. A classic game of “Who’s more oppressed” like all this intersectional fuckery always brings to the forefront of a societal debate that just shouldn’t be taking place. Also Joe Biden did something pathologically senile again, but that’s hardly news at this point. All of this shit simultaneously depresses me and entertains me to no end.

On a friend’s recommendation, I listened to an album by Breach, a Swedish post-hardcore band. It was pretty good but not as much as he hyped it, but then again I’ve never been much into hardcore so I’m not the guy to ask.

My three morning classes went by like a breeze. I have a hard time even remembering anything worth saying about them, which is like I said before a good sign. I aspire to a tranquil life.

Lunch was a gimbap roll and a rice patty filled with mystery stuff, that I got at Lawsons on my drunken bicycle ride home yesterday. This stuff is fast food for Japanese students and salarymen, the equivalent of gas station sandwiches, except that it’s ten times more delicious, filling you without making your stomach all bloated and queasy, and quite nutritious. You have to appreciate the Japanese (and their colonial vassals, the Koreans) for bringing it to my corner of Asia. There used to be only one corner shop that stocked those sushi-like snacks, not coincidentally in the Japorean ghetto around one of the big hotels, but now Lawson branches are mushrooming all over the city, destroying their inferior competition like they’ve done in Shanghai a few years ago.

I watched a few YouTube videos about MMA, travel and stupid memes, knocking on wood while the internet worked. In the African overland travel memoir I’ve been reading, there’s a lot of talk about the stoic mindset that a lot of Africans have: instead of getting mad when there’s no electricity or a shortage of gasoline, they just get happy when they get a little crumb of modern convenience. For a while, I had gotten to this mindset, downloading enormous amounts of stuff to watch offline and not have to rely on the shitty censored Chinese internet where everything is blocked, but I’ve been spoiled in the recent months with my VPN working like a dream. Now it’s wandering around with a dim-witted look on his face, scratching its anus and only occasionally doing its damn job.

Jocko’s podcast number 40 was mostly about jiu-jitsu. What a cool sport, and one I wish I had started earlier and could pursue more seriously than the once-weekly open mat we’re doing now. But hey, the best time to start is yesterday and the second best time is now, like they say. My passion is re-ignited, I think I’ll start watching more BJJ videos and fewer Clown World news segments, it’s better for my psyche.

I went back to work, drank a lot of black tea, and exchanged messages with friends in our shitposting group on WeChat. We talked about a video from some kind of vlog showing a German girl living in an old crumbling row house in Shanghai rather than an apartment block like a normal person. “I’m zee only foreigner in the whole compound!”, so what, so am I, and so are nearly everyone I know. Yet her (likely very overpriced) hipster hovel is dead in the center of the French Concession, the biggest laowai ghetto in all of China, with at least ten little “bodegas” stocking more imported food variety than the Metro branch in my city. In the video description, she is described as a “photographer and authenticity coach”, which made myself and my cynical friends laugh quite a lot. What the fuck is that?

Speaking of insufferable hipsters, next up in the Top 500 was an album by Tame Impala. Jesus. For once I was glad the internet crashed, and I cleansed my ears with half of Fuck the Facts’s Pleine Noirceur before I had to go earn my rice.

I had a double with Attitude Class. We went over some past paper questions and had a bit of time to spare at the end, I gave them free time to start on this week’s assignment. Half of them put their head down and fell asleep within seconds. It’s been a long week, like every week of their lives since they turned 4 and entered kindergarden, drowning under piles and piles of useless rote memorization homework and living on unhealthy low amounts of sleep.

I went home and watched more UFC prelim fights. They all took place in the flyweight and bantamweight divisions, so they were fast, technical and exciting. The girlfriend came in as soon as the Dominick Cruz vs Casey Kenney bout ended, and she wanted to eat Sichuan food. We headed to the restaurant we like but it was packed, so we went to another one right across the street, it was also busy and lively but we got a table by the window. We ordered all our favorites, I asked them to make the food spicy, I did a double and then a triple take to really make sure the message went across. “It will be done to your satisfaction”, the chubby lady said with a smile, and I added, with a fake stern face, “You better, otherwise we won’t pay for it!” and she laughed.

Sichuan cuisine varies from quite peppery to seventh circle of hell, but more often than not in eastern China where I live, where the locals can barely handle a few grains of black pepper, they tone it the fuck down and I have to make preemptive quality control. The first dish came, slices of beef and stomach served cold, and it burned my face. The mapo tofu also packed a nice punch, the way it’s meant to. Satisfaction achieved. I would have tipped them, but I’m in China, and there’s none of that fucktarded North American mandatory tipping culture ‘round here.

The girlfriend rode her scooter home because she was horribly tired, I went with my longboard and the dog to a bar, where I had a pint of Guinness and talked to my friends. One of my coworkers was there, he asked how I’m doing with Attitude Class and the other grade 12 group. His question seemed a bit loaded, and I told him I’m actually having a great time, because I stopped disciplining them except for chit-chat and coming in late (things that cause disturbance) and try to foster a certain sense of autonomy and knowing what’s good for them. Oh you didn’t do any of the practice I gave you? You’d rather read an e-book in class? Well tough shit, you’re the one who will suffer from it when exams roll around. I feel like in a way they respect the fact I don’t treat them like children, and also, like I told him, I have been teaching them since grade 10 so I established a rapport with them, something that helps tremendously when dealing with the twelfth-graders.

One guy was wearing a hilarious t-shirt he got at the Propaganda Posters Museum in Shanghai, a highly recommended visit if you ever swing by the big metropolis by the eastern seaboard. During the 1960s, some commie artwork was commissionned by the Powers-That-Be to promote Sino-Russian friendship, representing a Chinese man and a blond-haired Slav in various situations: at a factory, in a peach orchard, in a farm with indentured displaced workers shoveling manure in the background, all that. The result is hilariously and unintentionally homoerotic. A gay American guy at the bar said he bought several prints of that and has them on the walls of his apartment.

There was a party at the bar to celebrate its 4^th anniversary, so people started pouring in, some were dressed up to fit the Carnaval theme. I left early and made it home before 10, made a cocktail with pear juice, bourbon and crème de cassis, and watched the new South Park episode about the Covid vaccine. It was... very South Park. Multi-layered, incisive, hilarious and shooting at all targets. Even after almost 25 years, Parker and Stone still innovate, putting in a very bizarre segment where they break the fourth wall and assume the role of the “Hollywood elites” that QAnon conspiracy theorists talk about. Also I have to appreciate that it mostly focused on the four kids, rather than the Randy-heavy episodes of recent years (as much as I like Randy). I’ll have to rewatch it, those double-length South Park specials pack a lot in.