Chapter 73

I woke up a bit before 9, and learned some bad news. When I lived in Hefei, in central China, the expat community was also quite small and there was an African guy (Kenyan, I think) I knew from around. He passed away after several months in the hospital, from kidney failure. My friend said some of his family members tried to come in for a transplant but couldn’t, due to anti-Covid measures. I didn’t know him that well, but we did talk a few times, he was a funny guy who went on stage twice during the comedy open mic nights at Shipyard Bar, and he was always super friendly to everyone. RIP Rydon.

I got a call from a delivery guy, the Pakistani food I ordered came in. I stumbled upon the ad on Facebook, the restaurant is located in Harbin, in the far north of China, but delivers all over the country. Intrigued, I placed an order two days ago and now I went to fetch it at the gate. It came frozen, in aluminium bags stacked in a styrofoam box. Funnily enough, the menu is bilingual but the “English” part mostly uses the Pakistani names, so I used the Chinese to know what it was. Like in the case of aloo palak, what the hell is that? Oh, 土豆菠菜咖喱, potato and spinach curry.

The girlfriend gave an online art history lesson starting at 10 so I vacated the main room and sat in the bedroom with the laptop, writing and listening to music. I put a pretty big dent in the Top 500 throughout the day, with albums by Charles Mingus, Rush and Run-DMC. I feel like hip-hop only really hit its stride in the early 90s, or late 80s if we want to include NWA in the conversation (as we should) and all this monosyllabic rhyming, simplistic stuff with repetitive beats from the very early period does nothing for me. Then it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and it was some pretty good dirty hipster rock n’ roll.

I heated some of the Pakistani food: chicken biryani, fried chicken pieces, paneer masala, and I also put some tortillas in the pan in lieu of naan or chapati or other such flatbreads. We ate while watching The Office. The food was good but a bit too mild, I like my South Asian food with a bit more of a kick.

The early part of my afternoon was nice and relaxed, I did some reading, video watching, cleaning, and calisthenic exercises. Those videos I’d been watching said it’s a bad idea to do handstand push-ups with the back against the wall, as it puts stress on the rotator cuffs, so I did them facing the wall. I can only do a few, so I’ll work towards that goal with pike push-ups.

Later I headed out for more of that driving practice. I sat in the backseat, reading my book and listening to Sepultura to drown out the crappy techno music that was playing. The annoying girl from yesterday was in the front seat, taking selfies and making stupid faces, at some point I noticed she was angling her phone to take pictures of me, and sent them to someone on WeChat. I told her to stop doing that. She laughed like the brainlet she is and did it again. I told her again to not do that, and that she’s being impolite. The third time, I reached forwards and slapped the phone out of her hand, sending it flying. It landed at the feet of the instructor. The laughter stopped.

I felt 0% sorry for her dumb phone but yeah, for sure it wasn’t a very safe move. Not that safety was really the theme of the day: he was driving like an absolute sociopath, changing three lanes at once, taking turns at breakneck speed, nearly clipping a mother and a young child at a pedestrian crossing. On one hand I could appreciate that we’d get to our destination earlier, but it also made me realize how fucking stupid the whole process is. The goal of this course is not to produce safe, courteous or even competent drivers, otherwise he’d be leading by example, wouldn’t he? I can’t begin to imagine a driving instructor in Canada or any civilized country with such a blatant “Do as I say, not as I do” attitude. No, the whole thing is just bureaucracy, just a few boxes to tick, just some hurdles put in place a bit randomly because they felt like they have to. Same thing with those incredibly stressful and all-encompassing college entrance exams that contain very little in the way of critical thinking or sustainable, applicable skills, and also why they can’t string three words of English together even though it’s part of their schooling starting in primary school. It’s all appearance, no substance.

Also, another thing that’s been dawning on me, nearly everyone I’ve seen at the driving school so far is old, well into their twenties or thirties, though the minimum age is 18. A lot of Chinese people start driving late in life, which explains their inexperience, and also the majority are first-generation drivers.

I scanned my face to clock in, and my morale skyrocketed when I saw that not only yesterday’s session was counted despite the faulty app that crashed at the end, but also that the extra hours I’d been doing after derping the first practical test were also counted for the total mandatory hours. I paid attention when the others did the circuit, and did two myself, making sure to pump the breaks herky-jerkily and not stop at red light right turns, no matter how much perpendicular traffic is coming.

The two hours came to an end, but we were nowhere close to going back to the city, as the other trainees are taking the test tomorrow and want to practice more. Nonplussed, I called a taxi. I was 7 km from the center, in the middle of nowhere, but a car was less than two minutes away.

There is a park by the driving school, with exercise structures. I did three sets of 12 dips and tried to do the calisthenics position called the “front lever”, hanging from a pull-up bar and keeping the body parallel to the floor. Even with my legs tucked in front of my stomach, I could only hold for a few seconds. On those YouTube videos, some guys can hold position with their legs fully extended and don’t even seem to struggle whatsoever, I have some serious crusts to eat, like the Quebec French saying goes.

I stopped to get groceries, and fixed myself a high-protein caveman meal with a piece of fatty pork and a steak in the pan. I fried minced garlic for a minute in the rendered fat and sautéed some broccoli in there with cumin, black pepper, salt and oregano. I ate it all while watching more inspirational/instructional calisthenics videos.

The girlfriend messaged me, she was out shopping with her friend and now they were walking their dogs back to our apartment. I hopped on the longboard and went to meet them. Our dog was socializing with his new friend named Chouchou, “Little Stinky”, an impossibly soft white pocket dog. Cute.

We got home, and I put on an album by Quebec black metal band Monarque while writing my diary. Thus ended my weekend.