Chapter 98

Up at 6. Checking e-mail and browsing weird corners of Reddit while sipping green tea. Yoga. Walk with the dog. He wandered off and I saw he was chewing something, with brownish drool falling on his chin. Goddamnit. I brushed his teeth when we got home, he didn’t resist much, perhaps he likes it. Now that would be one hell of a plot twist.

In the elevator, an old lady said he’s ugly. Hey!!! Sure, he’s got a constant goofy expression, two ears that are not symmetrical, and an underbite that makes his lower teeth protrude out of his mouth, but only I can call him ugly. Chinese people have about zero filter. If I gain five pounds, twenty people tell me.

First double period was a lab, and it was from another past paper. The questions were much more difficult than the qualitative analysis we did yesterday and Tuesday, that surprised me, sure there will be exam papers that end up a bit easier than others, but in my humble opinion at least, these two were very mismatched. Luck of the draw, I guess. Then I had a double with Sloth Class (not sure if the nickname will stick or not, some of these twelfth-graders are slothful and lazy but it also has students who are much more engaged than even the most engaged in Attitude Class so I feel it’s a bit unfair) and as I’m writing this not only do I struggle to remember anything worth mentioning, but I have a hard time even remembering it happened without just looking at my schedule. Am I losing my marbles?! I’m only 35 years old.

Loss of cognition aside, my body is also falling apart. I recover more slowly, small injuries can overstay their welcome, and sometimes I get a pulled nerve that affects my quality of life. Still, I count my blessings. I could have been born a deformed midget, or in El Salvador. At lunchtime I went to eat a plate of Muslim noodles, and then got a massage. I used to get frequent massages but haven’t been going for a while (Ctrl-F “massage” on the now 123 000-word text file where I write this diary yields only one result, when the driving instructor suggested I go to a brothel, so I haven’t been going since the beginning of 2021 at least), the city has hundreds of parlors from the most decadently opulent palaces to moldy back alley shacks, and also ranging from therapeutic places to extremely seedy ones. I’m not interested in any of those extracurriculars and doubt the girlfriend would approve anyway, so I have to choose wisely. I got twisted and prodded for an hour, it cost 100 yuan (about 15 dollars) and I felt better afterwards.

I had two hours in the office, prepping my review lessons. The next Top 500 entry was Snoop Dogg’s debut solo album, a great, great piece of West Coast hip-hop. Though I ultimately prefer the gritty East Coast boom-bap style, the G-funk sound is a lot of fun. I almost sang along the “guess who’s back in the muthafuckin’ house with a big fat dick for your muthafuckin’ mouth”, that would have gotten my Chinese coworkers to look at me weird for sure. Then I checked out The Johnstones, Ryan Long’s band from before he became semi-famous for his stand-up comedy and his YouTube videos. He mentioned the band a few times on his podcast, and I didn’t expect much, but it had been a pretty prolific band, with four albums and quite a few well-done (but still very much in the punk DIY spirit) videos. Very fun catchy ska/punk rock.

I had a double with the weaker group of eleventh-graders. Some are really trying hard to improve their lot, with their eyes glued on the board and their pen always hovering over their notebook or aggressively taking notes, and some are over their heads and quite understandably check out mentally, as there are about 1 000 000 places they’d rather be at than at my lecture on carboxylic acids and esters. However, all of them are polite and have a positive attitude, which is the most important thing.

I got home and took the dog out, and when I got to the corner store where his little friend was tied up, I brought him along so they could run after the other. When I came back from the walk, the girlfriend had just come back as well and proposed we go eat Sichuan food. I was feeling a bit under the weather and was just looking forward to an evening of doing fuckall but the appeal of laziji and mapo tofu was too strong and I accepted.

“Let’s ride our bicycles”, I said.

“No! Let’s walk!”

We settled it like we do every couple’s decision, with rock-paper-scissors. I won the 2 out of 3 so we rode there, with the dog running at the end of his leash. We ordered all our favorites, plus a plate of deep-fried buns served with sweetened condensed milk, China’s answer to the donut. All the dishes came, no exaggeration, within five minutes of us ordering. Pretty incredible how efficient they are with their flash-cooking.

We got home and I fixed us some cocktails with orange juice, amaretto and tequila. The orange juice was shitty “orange-flavored drink”, much inferior to the real thing. Next time I’ll buy only 100% or GTFO, but this can be hard to find outside big supermarkets. I watched a YouTube video by Punk Rock MBA, another one of his tropes about how those edgy rappers are the future of rock. He makes compelling points and I like the guy, but I can’t help but being puzzled by those statements, it’s as if someone said in 1992 that Wayne Gretzky is the saviour of basketball. Then I watched a news video by MSNBC about the Derek Chauvin trial, it had an enormous amount of downvotes and scathing comments underneath. People really don’t trust the mainstream media these days, the faster they go the way of the brontosaurus, the better. Not that the alt media is always necessarily better: in an attempt to diversify my news sources and analysis, I checked out The Young Turks’ take on the recent developments, and tried, I swear I tried, to make it five minutes in. Anna Kasparian’s “just smelled a fart” smug face and constant peddling of debunked lies just leaves me dull at this point, but when they brought in some “race relations” expert I couldn’t take it anymore. Man oh man.