Chapter 104

I started the day like the man of culture I am, sipping green tea and listening to Rimski-Korsakov’s sublime symphonic works. The girlfriend asked me, in the pidgin Chinese-English we use to communicate “Are you drinking a jiu?” “It’s 6:20 and I have to work, do you think I’d be drinking a cocktail now?” “Ah, I heard the sound of an ice cube” Because yes, I put an ice cube in my tea cup before pouring the hot beverage in, fuck having to wait half an hour blowing on it like a spastic imbecile.

It made me want to listen to the rapper with the same name, one of the greatest of all time. So I put on a few tracks from Death Certificate after I finished yoga, while I was ready to go to work.

First two were a lab, I mostly stood back and gave them minimal guidance. Then I chilled for a bit in the office, one of my classes got taken by another teacher so I sat down and studied for the theoretical driving exam. It’s kind of fun, I get a rush for answering the hard questions correctly and it’s an engaging way to learn or review Chinese words or grammar points.

At lunch time I ate a tomato sandwich, watched some meme compilations on YouTube, and put pieces of pork in the slow cooker with ketchup and some of that reduced beer wort to make pulled pork. I also chopped some cabbage and half a carrot that I mixed with spicy mustard, mayo, rice vinegar, salt and pepper, that I threw in a big container. A few hours in the fridge should be enough for it to soften into a nice coleslaw and for the flavors to get to know each other.

I also watched a few videos about the driving exam, YouTube doesn’t have a lot of mainland Chinese content for some reason. I wonder why.

I took the dog out for a bit, it was a beautiful day, I stopped to sniff flowers, he stopped to sniff piles of shit, but didn’t eat any. Maybe he is learning.

In the afternoon I had a few classes spaced out, they must have been going well because I barely remember anything about them. I also listened to some music by blind-clicking some links of new metal releases on Facebook, the first was from a band with the charming moniker Abysmal Piss, playing the most generic goregrind/slam imaginable. As a 13-minute EP it was OK, enjoyable even for a freak pervert deviant like me, anything longer than that would have been way too much, with the same CHUUUU CHUCHUCHU CHU CHU CHUCHUCHU riffage and pig squeal vocals over and over. Then I checked out Fuzzthrone, a stoner/doom band from Russia, now that was pretty cool.

While I was going through the enormous bank of driving exam questions, I stumbled upon one that had a diagram of two cars coming to an intersection from opposite directions, one wanting to go straight, one turning left. The question was whether the guy turning left has priority and the answer is of course no, I screenshotted it and sent it to the cunty instructor, he must have been mad because later in the afternoon I asked him a question and he didn’t reply. Ah well. The girlfriend said he’s just a xiangxiaren (a not very flattering word that roughly means “country bumpkin”), like most driving instructors in China, so I shouldn’t get bothered by him and his rude cunty manners.

I got home and put on some music while I sat on the couch studying driving exam shit on my phone app. At number 325 was Jerry Lee Lewis with an album that was released in 1993, but sounded like it was from 1873. I think it was a compilation of sorts, which is weird for a Top 500 of best albums ever, but hey, I already said what I think about that. At any rate it was some pretty good country music, a genre I like quite a lot. Next up was Coldplay, and, well, it was Coldplay. I felt my testicles slowly shrink as that sappy shit was coming out of my speakers, who were looking at me with a “What the fuck, master?!” expression. I gave them a nice cleanse later that night with a Boot Camp Clik compilation I eagerly clicked on on the first page of YouTube. I already love Smif n’ Wessun and also really enjoy Heltah Skeltah and OGC’s stuff, so the mixtape from the whole collective didn’t disappoint, showcasing some excellent 90s NYC hip-hop.

The girlfriend arrived, with a new leash for the dog she just bought. It’s one of those extendable ones and I don’t like it much, it’s a bit annoying to use and not very safe to have the triangle-faced little spaz at the end of 4 or 5 meters of slack when there are cars around. I’ll keep using his old battered leash.

Then I got my ass to the gym, it was just me and the Italian blue belt. He taught me tons of sweet moves, like side control bottom escapes, something I desperately need. It was a great session, with good VIP class vibes.

I got home, poured a First Blood amber lager from Boxing Cat brewery (which is not as good as the Contender pale ale but still a tasty beer), showered, threw my stuff in the laundry, made thick pulled pork sandwiches and watched more Wrestlemania. There was a four-way tag team match with female midcarders I never heard of, it was OK, but the Seth Rollins vs Cesaro match blew it the fuck out of the water. Cesaro has this one move where he spins his opponent on his shoulders hands-free, it looks cool as shit.

I was in bed at 10. Tomorrow’s the driving exam, the bane of my sad existence.