Chapter 162

I woke up at 7 and got ready for my last day of work. I had nothing to do so I just sat around the office listening to some black metal albums: Glaciation from France, Forteresse from Quebec, Drudkh from Ukraine, before switching to the death metal side with an album by a Czech band named Sněť. What’s up with the weird accents? No idea. Czechs be Czechs. It was a pretty good mix of old-school with a bit of that atmospheric dark sound that got popularized by Dead Congregation and a few others in the past 10 years, at least that’s what I got from it.

I went home and did the calisthenics routine. It was so damn hot I felt the sweat seeping through my skin in real time. Then I ate leftover pasta and garlic soup while watching some UFC embedded videos. Aside from the fights, a big part of the UFC fan experience is looking at the individual fighters’ personalities and their work leading towards the grueling and ruthless competition they undertake. At times this leads to a big contrast, like in the case of the Moreno-Figuereido rematch, the former being a happy-go-lucky kid who likes collecting Legos and the latter acting like a meathead thug, which can come out as weird given that he’s around 4 foot 7. And then you have Israel Adesanya spouting all of his usual uncharismatic clichés.

In the afternoon we had a meeting. The principal thanked us all for our hard work, especially over the past few weeks that had been particularly hard. I was wondering what that was about, as I did very little since the exams started, but yeah I did go to my boring invigilation sessions and had two stressful days with the chem lab exams. He talked about a few pieces of minutiae regarding the graduation ceremony, vacation time and when we have to be back, then had a few nice words for the Croatian who’s leaving for another school in our network. He then talked about something that’s been on my mind for a while: apparently the school didn’t request corporate office for a replacement, they’ll just get a “bilingual” teacher (read: a Chinese person with 75 words of English), and the principal said it’s a trend in Chinese school programs for rich kids to go study abroad like ours. I’m often wondering, in fact, how I’ve been able to suckle on the golden cow’s teats for so long and why schools want to hire people like me as opposed to Chinese staff that command one sixth of the salary, don’t need expensive and complicated visa paperwork, can be bullied with cuntfucian intimidation tactics and threats of how expandable they are, and don’t try to do stupid barbarian shit like teaching to think critically and learning English through immersion and relevant practice rather than rote memorization of vocabulary lists. I’m not even sure if the cynical common explanation of “they need white faces for marketing” applies that much, at least it weighs little compared to the results of how many alumni have been accepted in whatever prestigious universities.

Either way, as long as they wanna keep me around, I enjoy the work and I think I do a more than decent job. After the meeting we had an early release, I went home, changed and hopped on my bicycle. I rode to the train station, 17 km away, it took me a little over an hour but it was pleasant, it was damn hot but I had a bit of a breeze in my face and I listened to a compilation of Quebec hip-hop tracks that got my head bobbing. I got a ticket and five minutes later (just enough time to freshen up and change my t-shirt) I was on a Shanghai-bound bullet train. I got a rent-a-bike to my hostel and then rode to meet my friend about 7 km west through the cute tree-lined streets of the former French Concession. Along the way I stopped at an ATM to withdraw cash, and left my card in the machine. Fuck!!! A hundred meters out, I had a bit of doubt, and when I looked in my wallet, it wasn’t there. I rushed back, there was an old man at the teller I used but he said the machine had already swallowed it. I checked my phone, where I receive notifications of transactions, and there was only the bit I just withdrew so at least there’s that. I’ll deal with it later, it will be a slight pain but for now better just enjoy my night out.

My friend told me to meet him at the Xujiahui intersection, one of the biggest and busiest in the city, with huge malls and thousands of pedestrians everywhere. I had to leave the rent-a-bike and cross the street by going through the underground subway station, and here he was, noticeable from far away due to being a blond-haired 6’6” Russian-Canadian guy. We met at the metal gig in Suzhou a few weeks back, hit it off, and when I told him about the rock show taking place tonight he said he’d tag along.

He chose that spot because he thought I was coming by subway and apologized for setting up such an inonvenient place to ride to, if he’d known I’d come by bike he’d have chosen another place. We walked the 45 minutes or so that separated us from the venue, stopping to get road beers along the way, and got there just as the first band of the night, a four-piece named Airsfx, started their set. It was some good dissonant rock n’ roll, and so were the other bands. I saw Ctrl Shift last month and again there was a teeny something missing, with only a bassist and drummer on stage and a pre-recorded guitar track, though they now have a singer who was there for the second half of the set. Still, it was groovy, catchy and heavy. Trash Panda brought some punk energy, a newer band formed with four expats whom I’ve seen in other bands, notably their Dave Grohl-lookalike bassist is fronting the Faux Fighters.

Between two sets I talked to a guy with an Expos cap, I asked him in French if he’s from Montreal but he’s an American guy who lived there for 10 years and only picked up broken French. Still, we talked about that amazing city and its old baseball team for a bit. My Russian homie had left at that point to go open the door for his roommate who forgot his key, and I left after a few songs by the closing band Cloud Mirror, not that they were bad, but I was damn hungry. I checked the Didi app (Chinese Uber), I’m the 72^nd in line. I guess I’ll just take a rent-a-bike then.

I stopped at the complex of bars and restaurants to get pizza slices and Brazilian pão de queijo to go, but there was a fucking line-up to get in. A relic of those anti-covid policies, or one of those dogshit “let’s make the peasants line up outside to show how hip and cool we are” retarded things that nightlife venues do, not sure, either way I bolted immediately. I went to a Chinese restaurant by the hostel, ate stewed chicken and stir-fried julienned potatoes with a cold beer and crashed.