Chapter 152

I woke up at 7 and went outside with the dog to stretch and do a bit of tai chi. I was listening to Ryan Long’s Boyscast, it’s been a while, for some reason I thought he had stopped but I was looking at a YouTube channel that wasn’t uploading them anymore. He was as hilarious and astute as ever, though the topics were a bit dated (the episode was from January and the main things on the news were Biden’s inauguration and the Gamestop stocks).

I had an hour in the office before the day really started, I wrote my diary while listening to a new album shared by a friend on Facebook, United In Chaos by Summoning The Lich. I didn’t hate it completely but their Black Dahlia-style blend of tech death and deathcore is not my favorite subgenre by any means, so I don’t think I’ll relisten.

The lab exam was happening, a busy and somewhat stressful day for us chemistry teachers. I filled up bottles of chemicals for individual use, made sure every station had all the apparatus and chemicals for the exam, and supervised two two-hour sessions. It was tedious as hell at times but mostly went smoothly. There was liquid ammonia involved, which has one of the strongest and most pungent of smells, I had to be careful not to sniff it when I was refilling the small bottles, it feels like getting punched in the nose.

I went home and the dog was all excited, I didn’t have time to go home for lunch (I quickly ate a packed lunch just before the exams started) so I took him out. I thought I might as well do my calisthenics workout in a park, the way it’s meant to, so I rode my bicycle there, the dog happily running by my side. I did my pull-ups, pistol squats, hinges, dips, push-ups and rows using the bars in the cute riverside park. I had to adjust my routine to make up for the fact I didn’t have my kettlebells with me, which is why I did one-legged pistol squats, I forgot how hard that shit is. I’ll be sore tomorrow.

Halfway through the girlfriend came to meet us there. We went to eat at the roast fish restaurant, one of our favorites we hadn’t been to in a while, in fact it’s just about everyone’s favorite, and tends to have long line-ups on week-ends. I thought we’d be fine on a Tuesday night, but the place was full, and our waiting ticket said there were 16 parties in front of us. We couldn’t sit outside either, as it started raining. The weather sucks shit in this city, seems like it rains half of the time. We considered just eating elsewhere, but we both were craving the fish, so we just waited around. I got a beer from the neighboring craft brewery, that opened just last year, I remember finding it very mediocre the first time I went but now with my expectations very low I liked it for what it is, a decent enough white beer that is not bad value for how cheap it costs.

“Did you watch the news? Chinese couples can now have a third child”, the girlfriend asked me. The one-child policy was not without societal problems but it solved more issues than it caused, notably it stabilized the population while China crawled out of the abject third-world hole it was rotting in. Now that it’s a prosperous nation, they amended it to allow some exceptions, then everyone was allowed two kids, and now three, as they’re expanding their population to prepare for world domination. I for one welcome our new yellow overlords.

“Do you want to have three children then?”, I replied.

“Hell no! I don’t even want one”

After twenty minutes or so, we got let in and ushered to our table, and less than five minutes after we ordered, our fish dish was there with all the sides. It’s a very efficient operation, and the fish is seriously amazing.

We stopped at the pet shop to get a jumbo bag of dog food, that I lugged on my bicycle rack. It’s always a bit of a bittersweet experience going there, seeing all the incredibly cute puppies and kittens and bunnies looking all sad in their cages. There was a whole litter of kittens meowing at us, and the boss said we can have one for free if we want. The girlfriend was seriously considering it, but we have to be realistic, one dog is enough, especially since we want to travel and need to find dogsitters from time to time.

The rain intensified, so I just went ahead on my bike with the dog running at the end of his leash. The girlfriend followed on foot, with her umbrella, I didn’t have a raincoat on so she told me to just go to avoid catching a cold. I got home, gave the dog a shower and took a hot bath. I then relaxed a bit with a negroni and some random YouTube videos. Internet Comment Etiquette was lampooning the bathtub streamers on Twitch, the platform doesn’t allow pornography or nudity and only allows swimwear if it’s at a pool or a beach, so a bunch of female streamers are exploiting the loophole by putting kiddie pools in their living rooms or streaming from their bathrooms. The whole phenomenon is so strange to me, and I’m always wondering who the hell are those simps who donate money to random girls to watch them play video games or just sit around pretending to be interested in them.