Chapter 256

I woke up at 6 and grabbed the dog to go for a walk. He was curled up in bed, comfy as one can be, and didn’t agree with my plan, trying to bite me in a non-playful way. I gave him a smack for not respectin’ my autoritah.

I wanted to go out early and walk to the demolition site to take pictures and videos before the workers arrive, as I didn’t bring my phone yesterday. But it was raining, so I walked the dog in the underground parking instead.

I rode to work and had pretty much a full day of classes, with only short breaks. The twelfth-graders are starting to give me a bit of attitude, as per their nature. Some of the weak eleventh-graders are doing OK but many are unengaged, and this will get worse as they slowly collapse under the weight of all the homework thrown at them by Chinese teachers for whom quantity trumps quality, and lag behind. The advanced eleventh-graders are angels though, and one girl came to me as I was gathering my stuff to tell me I’m an amazing teacher. That always warms my black heart. I gave them pointers for tomorrow’s lab, and a small quiz with the names of elements, which they nearly all aced. Then, they quizzed me on the names of elements in Chinese (the pronunciation and the written character), and I lost two half points. One of them was because I made a mistake when I wrote phosphorus, which is 磷.

I went home and relaxed for a bit before BJJ practice, writing my diary. Then I headed to the gym. There were seven of us on the mat, and I rolled with all four of the blue belts. I did OK, I’m improving.

Then I went to the park to meet the girlfriend and the dog and we walked home together. I cooked a chicken breast with a few spoonfuls of a spicy paste I made by grinding peppers in a food processor, which filled the kitchen with a noxious capsaicin gas that made me cough and sniffle, then ate chicken wraps while watching stupid memes and videos about MMA.

I showed the girlfriend Paul Joseph Watson’s most recent video, about China banning simping, limiting the usage of videogames, censoring degenerate content on brainless social media platforms, implementing measures to encourage family building and fostering nationalistic pride and a strong sense of masculinity among its men, while the West does the exact opposite. All this ethnomasochism tends to confuse Chinese people, and rightfully so, it’s very much against human nature, even if you’re not overly patriotic. And no matter which side you support, or if you’re just watching from the sidelines with a bowl of popcorn, you can’t deny that the 21^st century’s central narrative will definitely be frictions between a rising China and a decaying West, and that this diametrically opposed approach to internal politics will play a role in how it will all unfold.