Chapter 97

The usual morning routine, with a short tai chi session this time. First two periods were in the laboratory, then I had a free block doing random stuff in the office. I finished the Toots And The Maytals reggae album and listened to Sly And The Family Stone’s catchy funk, I can’t say I’m a big fan of that whole “Joe-Joe And The So-So” band name template, it’s a bit overplayed, innit? I then felt like listening to some good metal, so I checked out a Facebook group that often gives me excellent recommendations, and put on a death/doom album by Montreal’s Présages and then a blackgaze album by Russia’s Olhava.

I got on my bike at lunchtime, listening to a Ryan Long podcast. He talked about dominatrix prostitutes telling their clients to vote for Biden. What a world we live in. I got fried noodles from the neighborhood eatery, as always I asked for no mushrooms, and when I opened the container, wham, mushrooms. I irritatedly (is this a word? thefreedictionary.com says yes) told them to give me another one, and looked to make sure they don’t just half-assedly remove the biggest pieces from the original ruined portion.

I ate my noods in front of the TV and watched a bunch of videoclips by Quebec rapper Manu Military, they are all really well done, like short movies, and complement well his deep, emotional, erudite style. Some of them made me cry a little bit, I will admit.

On the way back, there was an enormous pile of garbage on the bike path. Some trashpicker overloaded his tricycle by a factor of at least four, and now all those stacks of cardboard and styrofoam and even half a rusty grease-caked stovetop were scattered all over. I knew I had to stop to take a picture. Two girls in their early twenties on bicycles also stopped... and went to give him a hand. Wait, when did the Chinese become altruistic?! The country truly is changing. I didn’t have a choice but to go help out as well, but it seemed to me the whole thing was a lost cause, even with the lengths of rope the guy was using to anchor all the recyclables to his vehicle, it was bound to fall again. I was running late and couldn’t stick around much.

One thing about Chinese people is they tend to take a nap at lunchtime. That’s fine in itself, but at previous schools I worked at, the students would go back to their dorms and catch a quick one before coming back, now they just sleep in the classroom. That also wouldn’t be a problem intrinsically if they woke up by themselves and got ready, there’s even a warning bell 10 minutes before afternoon classes start, but no, they’re still all deep in fucking slumber with the lights off and the curtains drawn by the time class is supposed to start. Very very few things infuriate me more than having to deal with that horseshit, I could go from hop-around-whistling-joyful to want-to-headbutt-windows-in-rage in 0.5 seconds, and last year I made it very clear that it’s not my job to wake them up and having to look at their grumpy half-asleep faces, and that failure to be ready a few minutes ahead would be met with a door slamming so hard it would sound like a shotgun.

So this year, when I got my schedule and saw that I don’t have classes immediately after lunch except one lab (which require them to walk down a few flights of stairs), I was very happy. But now, as of last week, I have this period with the twelfth-graders, that I decided to use for extracurriculars, talking about hip-hop music. What a dunce I am, thinking they can be motivated or engaged by anything. I walked in as the bell rang, turned on the lights, went to get water for my tea, and when I came back, 3/4 were still slouched on their desks. So I just shrugged, took my USB key out of the projector and walked out. I’m getting a bit tired of their sloth-like attitude, to be honest. A nice silver lining is that the A-level chemistry exam is among the first when the finals kick off in May, and then I won’t have to deal with any of that. I had a class with them later in the afternoon, going over the last questions of the mock exam. I don’t give a shit if they don’t listen, I’m not the one who will sit the exam.

I got home and took a nap for a bit over an hour. It wasn’t a deep regenerative slumber, most of the time I was in that weird sluggish in-between where you don’t quite know whether you’re conscious or living in a weird dreamy dimension. I therefore remembered my dreams when I got up, and they were all absolute nonsense. The brain is a strange, strange organ.

My mild cold was still lingering and I was wondering whether I should rest or go to BJJ practice. The latter won, it had been a week and I missed it, and also I knew it would make me feel better. There were seven of us on the mat, a good success, everyone had a smile on their face as we simulated killing one another with lapel chokes. Then I rolled one round with each of the four other males present, they all have their own style and I have mine, adapted to our level and toolbox of attacks and body type. I got a pretty strange submission, I mounted a guy and he tapped quickly before I could lock up my choke attempt, so I disengaged, worried he twisted something and got injured. Turned out his belt got untied in the scramble, wrapped itself around my foot, and crushed his balls. We laughed about it.

I got home, took Triangle Face out, and brought a liter of beer along. There was misty rain falling as it seems to be the case 50% of the time here, I sat under a pavilion watching the dog run around and drank half my dark Belgian ale before heading back. I browned sausage slices in a pan then made some couscous with raisins, garlic, peppers, spices. I hadn’t had couscous in a while, it hit the spot.

Music was Let It Be by The Beatles, it was OK, aside from the title track nothing was that memorable. Then it was a Smashing Pumpkins album, I really really like some of their dissonant and heavy riffs but Billy Corgan’s voice bugs me. Cherub Rock is a good alt-rock track but the rest of the LP didn’t do much for me.

I ate while watching indie wrassling on YouTube. An old friend of mine occasionally writes articles for wrestling websites, he penned one about a big fat guy named Jeff Cannonball so I wanted to see what he’s about, I put on a match that was half comedy and half hardcore wrestling, against Montreal’s deathmatch veteran Sexxxy Eddy. They first hit one another with pool noodles and other inoffensive weapons, but then the brutal chair shots and bodyslams on concrete followed, and they finished it up by doing gnarly-looking bumps in piles of Lego blocks, which can’t feel good. In the sidebar I was astonished to see Sexxxy Eddy fought Sabu barely a year ago, so I eagerly clicked, being a huge fan of the “homicidal, suicidal, genocidal” legend. He must be 60 now and was all held together with tape, so I was a bit apprehensive, but still he put his body on the line and did his usual dangerous dives. It took place in a small bar in Montreal on a tiny ring that looked like what I’d put together with the old tarps and construction scraps in my apartment building’s basement, quite the fall from grace compared to the height of his career in which he made the WWE, and threw himself through barb wire in front of big Japanese audiences for thousands of dollars a night.