Chapter 158

I woke up at 6, started my day slowly and did half an hour of yoga. I rode to work, listening to Jocko Willink telling me to GET AFTER IT. Despite being a discipline machine and a proponent of constant self-improvement, he also has a good sense of humor, and is aware of all the memes about him. He was reading some of the funny comments about the white tea he sells on his website, like “Since my wife started drinking Jocko tea, her deadlift has improved to 1200 pounds” and “Our fire station has purchased hundreds of gallons of Jocko tea, since it’s three times more wet than water, it extinguishes fires much better”.

I had three classes with eleventh-graders in the morning but let them study for their economics exam that was taking place at noon. So I sat there, writing my diary, listening to kickass music, and once in a while answering a question. The last chemistry exam is tomorrow, and some students came to me through the day, whether I was in the classroom or in the office.

I listened to live sets by grindcore bands Convulsions and Ona Snop, and then, following what YouTube suggested me, a classic album by shrieking grindcore outfit Discordance Axis and a split by Excruciating Terror and Agathocles. I love grindcore and am clearly in a phase where I listen to a lot of the stuff, but then I felt like something different and put on a black metal album on a blind click. It was by a Norwegian band called Djevel, in a melodic/epic vein, and it didn’t disappoint. I rounded up my day with a Sacramentum album, a Swedish black metal with melodic death metal elements that sounded like a carbon copy of Dissection.

In fact now would be as good of a time as any to comment positively on something about China that’s been good recently. I like China and my life here but at times perhaps I can sound negative, since when things go well, you either don’t notice it or don’t feel like taling about it, while if something bad happens, it impacts you. One thing that’s been frustrating me to no end in the past is the restricted internet and how it can turn into an unusable crock of dogshit at times. Even with VPNs, there would be crackdowns that would mean days without internet access. It usually happens when there’s a political event, or if the Powers-That-Be are scared that their proletariate will disseminate information of a certain nature, and it’s been a fixture of early June periods in the past few years, as we get to the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square events. Well, knock on wood, but the internet has been behaving recently and not acting like a drooling derping retard, so there’s that.

Halfway through my day I went home and did the calisthenics routine, sweating buckets in the heat. I listened to Clown World news, migrants arriving in the UK used to be placed in military barracks but they were complaining, rioting, burning down buildings, and now they’re placed in hotels. It seems to me that if I were a refugee fleeing a war zone and awaiting asylum, I’d be happy with whatever they give me, but as anyone with half a brain knows, calling those people refugees is a complete lie. Who can blame them for gaming a system that’s so dead easy to game?

In the afternoon I wrote a story for my French travel blog, about my visit to Egypt in 2013. It was right during the Arab Spring protests, so I had the pyramids nearly for myself and then, after being told I shouldn’t have any problems with my personal safety, I went to Tahrir Square among the protestors. It was quite surreal. I got carried away and the whole text ended up being over 3500 words. It can be found here: https://quesstuvascrisserla.com/2021/06/08/tahrir/

I got home, took a nap and then went to train BJJ. A good time was had by all. After three rounds of rolling I was completely drained, but after a bit of rest and some Gatorade I walked over to the ring where guys were sparring. I got in and people were hesitating, I don’t know if they see me as the big bad evil foreigner but eventually a young guy came in and we got a few licks in and then another one. Even though we didn’t go that hard and I don’t remember getting hit in the face that much, I had a sore jaw after. Boxing is fun but I don’t want to spar more than once a month or so.

On the way home I detoured to the ATM to get cash and then to a bakery. I bought bagels and slices of cake, the girlfriend has her monthly stomach pains and some chocolate cake would get her morale back up. I showered, did laundry, ate a cream cheese bagel and a sausage and R n’ S leftovers and watched a short documentary on a 1972 music festival that ended up in absolute disaster, it was quite interesting. Then I went to bed and finished the novel Haute Démolition by J-P Baril-Guérard, all of his four novels were pretty damn good.