Chapter 120

Small change in my schedule. Usually I go:

1- Boil water, make tea

2- Look at supid memes on the internet and antagonize people on Facebook

3- Take a nasty shit

4- Do yoga

5- Walk the dog

6- Get dressed, go earn my daily rice ration

...but today I switched 4 and 5. The girlfriend leaves earlier than I do, so we walked the dog together and when I came back home, it was 7:15. The yoga YouTube video was 35 minutes, so I went “Oh perfect, it will be over at 7:40, just enough time to get ready for work”. Maybe I have brain damage. I hauled ass and made it a few minutes late, thankfully I didn’t teach first period.

I taught classes to the eleventh-graders, reviewing the oxidation of alkenes. A bunch of girls were absent, they were outside practicing some kind of choreography, gyrating to K-pop, I could hear the music coming in through the window. It was a bit annoying, but I’ve been through worst than that.

Lunch was reheated paneer in a thick savoury brown gravy. Apparently paneer and ricotta are two types of cheese that are very easy to make at home, I should try it soon. I dipped the leftover naan breads in the bowl and wiped it clean. I also cracked open a huge green coconut, it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world but I wacked it hard with a heavy cleaver and only made a small mess. I drank the water inside and ate the flesh, I gave one piece to Triangle Face but he spat it out, there’s not many things that omnivorous little fucker won’t eat.

I watched the news, more hypocritical racist bullcrap coming from wokels. A black Republican senator gave a speech urging people to unite and stop fighting on the basis of race, and got called an “Uncle Tom” by left-wingers. It seems like everyday there’s more Clown World nonsense happening, I’m wondering if it’s worth my attention. I do find it entertaining but perhaps I could use my time better. I’m going away for the long weekend, that will be a detox of sorts.

I had a double with Attitude Class and let them study, making myself available if they have questions. Most of them worked on chemistry or math problems, some fucked around or slept, and I’m cool with that. They’re at the tail end of their servitude in the Chinese secondary education system, and it’s quite admirable they made it to the end, like the guy in Shawshank Redemption in his tunnel. I put on my Beats headphones and listened to Spectral Wound’s album, perhaps it’s not as good as my first impression gave me, it’s solid black fucken metal of the “trve Norwegian early-to-mid 90s second wave” but I must have been smack dab in the mood when I played it the first two times. Then the internet died and I put on the Testament remastered best-of. I feel like I could play this in a loop.

I finished my rather easy work day, went home, changed, got my bag and took a taxi to the bus station. I had a ticket for Wuxi Airport, and I was the only passenger in the minivan. Can’t be mad at that. I was pretty excited at the idea of going to the Nash Hash, the All-China national Hash House Harriers event, three solid days of hiking and colossal beer consumption, this year it’s taking place in Kunming, a city in southwest China. First I had to go through the always slightly unpleasant ordeal that is air travel, having to line up with peasants, go through endless security checkpoints where you get your testicles fondled, walk long distances through a sinister airport and sit around for ages. I got a few cheap gimbap rolls from the Lawsons before security but didn’t buy beer obviously, and there was no Lawsons or even any store selling anything useful by the boarding gates. I went around the whole damn terminal trying to find beer, the snack stores didn’t have any but the xiaolongbao restaurant had cans of Qingdao hidden somewhere, and they were cold. I cracked one open to celebrate the beginning of the trip, and to wash down my Korean snacks.

Another shitty aspect of flying in China is that the flights are always delayed. Always. Their trains are impressively on schedule, in over 10 years I’ve only had a few small delays even in the old days before high-speed railways, but I’ve had way, way more domestic flights that were late than those that were on time. Tonight was no exception of course, and I sat there for an extra hour in limbo. I sent a message to the Beijing hasher whom I was supposed to share a taxi with since our flights were scheduled to land roughly at the same time, his was also delayed (surprise) but less than mine, he was boarding and I told him to not bother waiting. In the meantime I ran into another hasher, I had met her at my very first hash a year and a half ago in the city of Suzhou, she proposed we ride together.

We finally got on the plane and the three-hour flight went OK, as far as being crammed in such a tight space and constantly being told how to sit goes. I started a book by Tim Ferriss called Tools Of The Titans, in which he talks about different habits of successful people. Some parts were interesting, but some were really blowhardy. Like “Bobby Shabadadoo always travels light, but no matter where he goes, he brings a Japanese titanium tea set and an enormous stack of Tongxinglian loose leaf oolong from Taiwan, the only tea he drinks”. Am I supposed to think “Wow, this guy has extremely high standards!” or “Hmmm, he sure loves the smell of his flatulences”?

The Suzhou hasher has an old friend from school who lives in Kunming and picked her up at the airport, so I got a free ride downtown. Very nice. She went to the hotel, which was right across from the hash bar. It was nearly 2 AM at that point so most hashers had tapped out for the night to get ready for the long hike tomorrow, but I knew some hardcore partiers would still be there. I walked in the beer garder and there was a table in the corner with about eight drunk hashers around, at first they didn’t make much of an effort to make me feel welcome, the whole thing felt a bit cliquey in fact. In hindsight, they must have been pretty tired of socializing all night or even since the afternoon, and also some of them were obnoxiously drunk, slurring their speech and clumsily knocking down glasses. It’s always a bit weird being stone cold sober around super drunk people, I ordered a glass of IPA and eventually the ice broke and we had a few quick conversations before everyone left.

I rode a rent-a-bike to the hostel I booked, went through the long annoying check-in process and crashed, looking forward to the festivities of the next day.