Chapter 304

I was in bed fairly early, all things considered, I hadn’t abused the dinnertime margs and then stuck to well-paced beers so I wasn’t too messed up when I got up at 8. We had a breakfast of won tons, fried dumplings, tangerines and green tea and then got on our way. When the girlfriend said she had to come to Hefei for the weekend to sit that exam, I thought I’d tag along and stop in Nanjing on the way back, and when mama-in-law heard of that, she proposed we go to the Nanjing Ikea. The Swedish furniture chain is ultra popular in China, but hasn’t opened a branch in Hefei yet.

I drove the car for a bit over two hours, until we reached the big blue building. I parked and we walked to the entrance, where we went through all the useless motions (scan some bloatware code, show the result to the expropriated farmer in uniform, put on a mask that will be removed immediately after entering the building) and got told that the dog can’t come in, to which I said “No problem” and walked in anyway, the animal cradled in my arms. Perhaps that’s why I’m hesitant at the idea of moving out of China, the kind of feeling of being able to treat rules as suggestions and constantly getting away with it (until I can’t).

The Ikea was packed, and instead of aisles, it’s set up as just one long uninterrupted line snaking through all the furniture showrooms. Most of it looked quite stylish, and the prices were more than affordable, after all I imagine most of it is made here. The dog was riding in the cart, and kids pointed at him, excitedly. I didn’t stay long, I went outside to walk the dog a bit, and eventually the girlfriend and her mom came out with a few odds and ends they had bought, and some hot dogs. We parted ways, me going to the subway stop, and them going to the train station to drop off mama-in-law so she can take the bullet train back to Hefei.

I derped and got three tokens for the subway instead of one, and then got on. I regreted it immediately. Being crammed in a fetid wagon with dozens of strangers and being forced to wear an irritating fayssah mursk is a shitty way to travel and I’m glad I don’t have to do it daily like millions of other poor souls. Plus, the Venezuelan lives just far enough from a subway stop that I’d have to ride a rent-a-bike anyway, so when I had to transfer lines, rather than doing that, I just got out and rode all the way. That’s something I should have done to begin with, on this beautiful day.

I made it to my Latino homie’s place, and we opened the beers I’d bought on the way. Then we walked to a park, stretched, put on some music from his Bluetooth speaker and did a bit of capoeira, something I miss quite a bit. We cartwheeled and dodged each other’s loopy kicks to some dissonant Brazilian folk music, attracting a small crowd of onlookers, and then sat around chatting and catching up. Nanjing has had a serious lockdown at the end of the summer, and that made waves. He lost his part-time job, and the small income he was getting from capoeira also dried up. We discussed future plans, I told him about some aspects of Quebec that make me drag my feet and delay my inevitable repatriation, like high rent and inflation and uncertainty, but it almost felt obscene to complain about such trivial things to a Venezuelan, given how much worse off his country is.

We then went for an early dinner, and since we had time, we walked there. We stopped for a quick beer at a new tiny microbrewery, talking to the excited and friendly owner, and then crossed the street to go to a Middle Eastern restaurant. His roommate, a young Kazakh guy, joined us, both eyes in the same socket, groggily moving around, hungover as hell. We had a big feast with shish taouk, hummus, falafel, and some kind of Turkish pizza. And mojitos.

I said goodbye and hopped on a rent-a-bike, riding all the way to the ghetto part of town where my American friend lives (I used to refer to him as “the American from Hefei”, but I need a better set of monikers, since there are several Americans from Hefei... let’s henceforth call him Super Mario). I dropped my stuff in his messy seventh-floor walk-up and then we grabbed some cold cans of Harbin beer for the walk to the venue where a metal show was about to take place, the main reason I decided to have this impromptu Nanjing trip.

“It’s Halloween, should I dress up?”

“Do whatever you want, I don’t have anything”, I replied.

“I have this Super Mario outfit, but I couldn’t wear it at school, the government banned Halloween celebrations. Fuck it, I’ll put it on.”

And it was a great idea. After reaching the place and getting in line, three Super Marios (well, two Marios and one Luigi) arrived, and they hollered at one another. There were a few other Halloween costumes in the (all-Chinese) audience, mostly slutty vampires in fishnet and short black dresses, or maybe they’re metal chicks who always put on black makeup and dress up like that when they attend concerts.

The show started at 19:30 on the dot, and I have to say I like this trend of starting on time rather than wasting the spectators’ time like it used to be so goddamn common. Iron Hörse took the stage, a power trio led by a guy dressed exactly like Lemmy (RIP) and who could imitate his raspy voice to perfection. Their set was half composed of Motörhead covers, and half hard rock tracks very similar to what Motörhead would do. A bit repetitive but good fun nonetheless. A tiny girl tried to start a pit, but rather than starting from the center out, she just ran around the whole room, to the point where I was wondering if she just had pooped her pants and was making a beeline for the toilet.

The next band played with dimmed lights, their backs to the audience, with a long and gloomy intro before their vocalist came in and started shrieking. Black metal, uh? They were not on the poster, and their logo was completely unscrutable, later I’d learn they’re called毁灭救赎. I think I saw them live at a Hefei music festival a few years ago. They were grim as hell and made us bob our heads.

Next up was Dog Släyer, a band I’m seeing for the third time in about a year. The Hangzhou-based quintet is getting better and better every time, led by their energetic frontman, and their 70s NWOBHM hits the spot.

The Venezuelan told me his new roommate is a metalhead, and that I should be on the lookout for a Latina with blue hair and lots of tattoos. Pretty easy to spot. I went to say hi, and we also had a chat with the singers from Iron Hörse and Dog Släyer. They were with a girl wearing a police shirt, and on the bottom, a miniskirt with a bunny tail and high heels.

“Are you a cop?”

“I’m a bao an (security guard)”, she slurred, already drunk and reeling.

“What are you protecting?”

“My pussy”, she said in English, erupting in drunken laughter.

She spoke some English, having gone to university in Texas. But she didn’t graduate, for some reason that she was elusive about. Then out of the blue, she leaned over and whispered: “I hate niggers!”

“Jesus fuck! Don’t say that!”

She went on some incoherent story about a conflict she had with a black guy in Texas. I said she shouldn’t judge one billion people based on the behavior of one. She agreed, and shrugged. No point arguing with racists though, and I excused myself from that highly intellectual conversation.

Ramblin’ Roze was next, some great stoner/psychedelic rock, complete with the 70s look of elephant pants, flowered shirts and shoulder-length hair. They played a set of the perfect length, not too short and not too long, and then we barely had time to grab another beer at the bar before the headliners, the mighty Explosicum, took the stage. Explosicum is one of the bands from the Chinese scene that makes the most waves at home and abroad these days, four long-haired balls of energy playing some of the most ridiculously fast thrash metal on the planet. Only Violator and Terrordome can play at that pace, as far as I know. A furious circle pit started as soon as they hit their first lightning riffs, and it rarely stopped. After the first song I heckled “Too slow!” and a bunch of people got in on the joke, chanting “Play faster!”

A great night, and as it was almost over, an incident happened. Super Mario and I were near the front, when the Dog Släyer frontman got on stage and motioned for people to come closer. I’ve been to a million shows so I know it means he’s about to stagedive, and I was like “Hell no!” so I moved out of the way instead, the crowd was way too thin for that and he’s a rather heavy fella. So he dove on a small group of people, landing on Super Mario’s face and breaking his glasses. I felt bad for him, he’s a normie I dragged to a show where he’s not fully aware of the etiquette and cultural habits, so I bear some responsibility towards him though he’s a grown-ass hairy adult. He was still in good spirits, with a “shit happens” attitude.

We walked back to his pad, took showers then promptly crashed. Great times.

Chapter 303

Up at 10, and I slowly started my day. The girlfriend was at the dinner table, her nose in her books, reviewing for the teaching certification exam she’d be taking in the afternoon. I drank tea and had a chat with mama-in-law, talking about future plans. She’s not opposed to us moving out of China for a bit in the upcoming years, bless her kind soul. Of course she’ll be missing her daughter but also understands our reasons, knowing I’d been away from my own family for so long. I didn’t really talk about the feeling of impending cold war scenario between the West and the East, I lack the Chinese vocabulary to talk about that delicate topic with the nuance it deserves, I mostly focused on the idea of doing something different for a bit and being back in my homeland. She said they’ll come visit, and also agreed to keep the dog while we’re away if the cost and hassle of flying him across the world are prohibitive. Anyway, we’ll see what the future has in store. I’m grateful to have such supportive family members (biological and adoptive).

We had lunch, a big spread of her fantastic rustic central Chinese cooking. Nearly everything she cooks is wonderful, and oftentimes very meat-heavy, when honored guests like us are there. I didn’t fill myself up until I was about to rupture, like I sometimes do, as I was going to exercise two hours later. I’d been talking to the British guy I ran into at the Hangzhou BJJ tournament, and he proposed we train together when I’m in town. The gym was about a kilometer away, which is almost a miracle in a city as gigantofuckingnormous as Hefei is, so I rode a rent-a-bike there in less than 10 minutes, and he came to meet me at the gate. We warmed up and then watched a chapter from an instructional DVD with a Polish guy showing attacks from side control, that we then drilled. After that we had a few sparring rounds, he’s been training also roughly for a year but he’s much better than me, having been at it non-stop with more commitment, while I’d been taking long breaks here and there. Still, my weight advantage negated some of his attacks and allowed me some moves I would never pull off against someone my size. A good time was had by all. We talked about upcoming UFC fights we’re both looking forward to, then I thanked him and went back to the apartment.

On the way home, I rode the rent-a-bike opposite traffic for a short segment. There were almost no other people in the bike lane, and it saved me a huge amount of time, because otherwise I’d have had to make a lengthy detour to cross the busy boulevard. An old man in a red sleeveless vest that read “Civilised traffic” waved a flag at me, but I ignored it and went to the intersection. As I was waiting for the light, an actual cop who had witnessed it started berating me, saying I wouldn’t do that in my home country. And... he’s right. Forgive me for not seeing traffic rules as mere suggestions after all those years among inept and psychopathic drivers. Still, for that same reason, I also have to appreciate the efforts made to wenmingize the population, and lead by example. Just not today, I don’t feel like going a kilometer down the road, wait to cross, ride a kilometer back, and cross again just to get to the exact same point, rather than saving myself fifteen minutes and just go straight without endangering or obstructing anyone.

Mama-in-law was watching Breaking Bad with subtitles, it was a gnarly episode where Jesse is kept prisoner by a couple of crackheads, and the woman ends up killing her husband by flipping over a stolen ATM over him in a fit of rage. Mama-in-law asked if such heart-rendingly pathetic and dangerous druggos are common in the USA and I said that yes, hard drugs have fucked up a lot of people. I’m fortunate enough not to have grown up in a place where meth or opioid addictions are common but I’ve heard all the horror stories, some of them first-hand.

I opened a white beer and watched the show with her, then took a shower and headed back out. I rode a rent-a-bike to the glitzy shopping mall, packed with people praying at the altar of consoomerism. I headed to the fifth floor, rented a pair of skates and did laps around the ice, by myself, listening to some harsh black metal. Bliss. I ran into the Slovak guy who coaches hockey and asked him how he got the job, I want to be a hockey coach too. “One of the Chinese coaches left, there’s a vacancy now” Too bad I don’t live in Hefei, and my city doesn’t even have one single skating rink.

My friends arrived, so I went to change my shoes and on my way out, I saw they had already separated the ice with plastic barriers and the Slovak was coaching two boys. They were pretty damn good. We went to the Tex-Mex restaurant, ordered a mountain of food and margaritas, and caught up. An American friend and former coworker opened an English school for young children with his wife and it used to go really well, but then the double whammy of Covid restrictions and the new legislation limiting the number of after-school programs hit them hard. They’re still operating, but who knows for how long.

The restaurant was packed, a far cry from a few years ago when middle-class Chinese people still had a revulsion for Mexican food, and the restaurant hadn’t yet diversified their menu with easier things like spaghetti and pizza. Still, the service was good and our food came quickly.

The American guy and I then rode across town on his electric scooter, the almost depleted battery somehow handling our two big bodies and getting us to our destination. What used to be mostly an expat bar was packed wall-to-wall with Chinese groups, but I saw some familiar faces. There was a rough-looking man covered with tattoos who used to be my boxing coach, he was surprised and happy to see me after all those years. There was also one of my friend’s exes, and a guy who vaguely seemed familiar, and he also said he knows me but can’t recall my name. We introduced ourselves. “Oh yeah, you’re my Eskimo brother!” We share a common ex, a Russian girl who was living in Hefei in those days.

My American buddy asked “How many people do you know here?!
”

“Not many, maybe five total? There’s also the old Canadian guy sitting at the bar there, remember him, we should go say hi”

“That’s more than I can say. I hardly go out these days. I hang out with my two kids, teach at our school in the afternoon, and watch baseball or TV shows at night.”

We had one more beer with the old Canadian guy then went a block away to see if the craft beer bar run by Africans is open. It was not. So we got some Lawsons beers and sat on the stairs, discussing various topics before I took a taxi home.

Chapter 302

Up a bit after 6:30, ablutions, walk with the dog, you know the routine. He’s also a creature of habits and routine, and pees and poops at the same few spots every time.

I had a double with the twelfth-graders, but a third of them were gone for a math resit exam. I gave the others exam practice and sat around doing some writing, answering questions when they came to me.

I spent most of my day compiling questions for the midterm exam. It’s a bit tedious, as I take bits and pieces from past papers but because they’re in PDF, I need to take screenshots, crop them and splice them. All the while, I listened to Chinese punk bands and Clown World news to drown the noise around me. Lunch was leftovers, and I packed my bag for the weekend. My afternoon went by like a breeze, and then I got home, ate a quick meal, and finished packing.

The girlfriend came in just as I was finishing my bowl and got angry since I didn’t leave anything for her. Woopsy. So she was pouting for the first 20 minutes of our road trip but eventually forgave me.

I drove all the way to Hefei, which took over four hours. Not much to say about it. I got a bit lost once we reached the humongous city and its convoluted system of elevated expressways, the GPS would sometimes tell me to get off and drive along a parallel road, and sometimes it would be all potholed and dilapidated. Eventually we got to the in-laws’ apartment, had a nice chat, ate some late night homemade beef noodles, and I had a passionfruit-flavored beer they had bought from an old man who opened a tiny microbrewery just downstairs. Thus ended our day.

Chapter 301

The girlfriend shouted at me from the bathroom. It was 6:20. “You didn’t flush the toilet! Now it’s full of 屎!” I groggily got up and went to investigate, turns out I had pressed the flush button, but it clogged and now it was full to the brim with soupy malatang. I poked the toilet brush in there and it went through in a brown maelstrom.

Then I took the dog out for a stroll, and rode to work. I had a lazy morning with no classes, a Chinese teacher took my scheduled lessons for herself, to catch up on all the classes that got cancelled because of the holidays and sports days. So I listened to the Metal Minded podcast live as it happened, two French grindcore bands got dithyrambic reviews, called “the best grind albums of the past two decades”. I listened to the Gummo LP a bunch of times already and it’s indeed excellent, but not quite to that level I’d say. And the new Blockheads isn’t out yet, the guys got a promo copy from the label, and I’m eager to put my grubby hands on it when it comes out. I love the Blockheads, they are grindcore royalty, and I have a big poster of them on the wall of my home gym like a teenager (well I am a teenager, albeit an overgrown one). I also listened to more of that war metal, a compilation of demo tracks and splits by an American band named Crurifragium. It was filthy and raw and felt like it was recorded with a Fisher Price toy, but weirdly enough I got into it. That sub-subgenre doesn’t get unanimous appreciation even among fans of the most extreme forms of metal.

A physics teacher asked me if I can cover one of her classes. About half the students were gone for a resit exam, so I just let the remainder self-study. Sometimes my job is pretty damn easy.

After lunch time though, I waddled back into suckitude. Crazy Class were dead asleep, and didn’t budge when I first turned on the lights five minutes before the scheduled start, then when I gently told them to wake up (as if I’m their goddamn mother) and then kicked their desks. Some gave me hostile glances and put their lazy-ass heads down on their desks, most didn’t move at all. Meh. So I walked out, confusing the two or three students who have their shit together. “Come and get me in the office when they’re ready”, and because he doesn’t speak English, I repeated in his language and he nodded.

When I got in, they were all upright, likely after a harsh yelling session by a homeroom teacher. I didn’t say a word, and wrote in Chinese on the board “review for the mid-term exam” and “be lazy little monkeys” and had a vote. Some jokingly voted for the second option, but the first one won by a landslide and we went over exam questions from last year.

Then later in the afternoon I taught the strong eleventh-graders, and it went wonderfully. It’s as if a cook tasked to make spaghetti carbonara would get better results if he was given farm-raised eggs, imported pecorino cheese, pancetta and homemade pasta, as opposed to a handful of Lego blocks, strawberries, paper clips and instant ramen noodles.

(Some might make a metaphor like that but talk about good ingredients versus rotten ingredients, but it’s the opposite of what I want to convey here. I’m not saying they’re bad per se, just unsuited to the task, and conversely, there are things you can accomplish with Lego blocks that you can’t with a lump of Italian salt pork. Like I said before, it’s a disservice to everyone involved, except maybe the tiger moms and the school administration, who’ll go “Yay! Mission accomplished” if and when some of those students manage to eke out a D or even a C through joyless rote memorization to overcome their academic shortcomings and inability to speak English)

Still, when all is said and done, I’ll do what I’m paid for. And I count myself lucky, I used to work in schools with not just one or two classes that were unpleasant to teach and gave me a “what the hell am I doing here” mood, but a whole schedule packed with them, including students with, ahem, undiagnosed mental illnesses*. Also, it could always be way worse, I could have been born in Mauritania, for instance.

I got home, uploaded a bunch of stuff on my mp3 player, and listened to some Chinese punk that an online acquaintance has sent my way. The Die Chiwawa Die! and Struggle Session split as well as the Hell City LP were pretty cool and will enter my ever-increasing rotation. Then I headed to the gym. I did deadlifts, I can one-rep about 350 pounds, I think it’s pretty cool but there are also people who use it as their warm-up, or bench press weight. I didn’t feel super good, but went through my whole workout anyway. Maybe I was sleep-deprived.

I bought meat at the stinky market, a big slab of pork for only 11 yuan, less than 2 dollars. Apparently in the West, dud to the bidenflation, you can now only get a pea-sized chunk of meat for that. I was ready to start cooking when the girlfriend asked if I want to come meet her at her school with the dog. Though I was a bit sore, I said why not, I had to go give him a night walk anyway, so we hopped on the longboard and went. I got there and understood why she called me, she was visibly drunk, after some kind of school function, and needed me to drive the car back.

I made dinner, by throwing in succession the pork, onions, potatoes, green beans and scrambled eggs in the wok, and seasoning the whole thing copiously. I also made a quesadilla. It was fantastic. I love food.

*There are no mental illnesses in China. The kid with the hanging jaw who can only produce guttural “GNUUURH” noises, fights with his classmates, is constantly distracted and has tremendous mood swings is completely normal, OK?! That’s what happens when the culture of “saaaaving faaaaace” meets with the one-child-policy and a general inability to produce a diagnosis to begin with, due to the confucian lack of critical thinking that afflicts even their medical personel.

Chapter 300

I woke up at 6:30 and started my day. I stumbled upon a discussion on Facebook about “war metal”, a loosely-defined subgenre of extreme metal that is basically black metal with death metal elements, very aggressive and chaotic as opposed to a lot of black metal which is cold and melancholic. So I spent most of my free time in the first half of the day listening to a bunch of suggested bands, some of whom only released a self-recorded lofi cassette recording that someone put on YouTube. One that stood out was Damaar, a band from Lebanon with a 19-minute demo of pure raw harsh violence, that I listened to twice.

I went home for lunch, and on the way back, I was dreading having to go teach Catatonic Class. The twelfth-grade classes go by like a breeze, but I don’t have much motivation to teach the weak eleventh-graders. The class went OK, though. Then I had Crazy Class later in the afternoon, and it fucking sucked. Why am I here? Why are they here? Not only are they unable to do much, they don’t even try, and now they’re becoming disruptive and even disrespectful. They know I can speak Chinese, so they almost all gave up on replying in English to my questions, and can you blame them, with the anti-immersive environment brought forth by the Chinese staff?

About twenty minutes in, a faint alarm sound came from the hallway. I wondered what it was about, and when I went to check it out, there were also a bunch of bewildered teachers and students outside the classrooms, wondering if we have to evacuate the building or not. Turns out we had to go back to work, and now they were completely unattentive. Ah well. What’s a boy to do?

I went home, cooked a burger and hard-boiled eggs, and took a nap. There was no BJJ practice, so I got ready to go play soccer, it’s been a while. The new pitch where the boys go is on the edge of the city, 7 km away. Doable by bicycle, but hey I’m a motorist now. After getting the approval from the girlfriend, I went to her school to retrieve the car, riding my longboard and bringing the leashed dog along so he’d get his exercise. Then I went home to drop him off and feed him, got my bag and drove west. The complex of basketball courts and soccer fields is under a highway bridge, covered from potential rain but at the same temperature as the outdoors, which is a win-win in my book. The pitch by the shopping mall is exposed to rain or sleet, and the indoors one has thin corrugated iron walls which makes it weirdly colder than outside on bitter winter days and hotter than a furnace in the summer.

There were sixteen of us, some of the usual pals from various countries, and a few Chinese guys. We played seven on seven with subs, a great time was had by all. I suck at soccer but aside from a few certified derp moments, I did OK I guess.

I drove home, dropping a Polish and a British pal home on the way. I had a protein shake and then took a shower, a warm one, the first one in months and months. I usually take cold showers, but now I wanted to mellow out and fall asleep easily. Well it wasn’t sufficient, I was still pumped from the two hours of soccer, and even after a nice glass of rum and half an hour reading in bed next to the sleeping girlfriend, I was wide awake.

Chapter 299

I started my day the right way, with a loud dose of the good ol’ grindcore. Then I headed to school, and supervised a lab exam. It involved the use of powerful alcohol burners, those things scare me quite a bit, two years ago one of them made a huge fireball and mildly injured a student. There’s a law in China forbidding the installation of gas lines in high school chemistry labs, which is sensible in a way, but as a result we have to use those old pieces of shit. The exam went without any incident.

I went to the office, listened to Chinese black metal and read the news. Joe Biden did something hilariously senile again, but can we call it news at this point? There’s also more and more news coming about people resisting vaccine mandates in the West, and it confuses me. There hasn’t been a vaccine mandate in China, it seems like the whole process has been on a voluntary basis for the most part, yet we’re supposed to be the authoritarian dystopian tyranny? (and yes I said we, as in I and my fellow Chinese)

I’m not sure what my opinion is on the whole matter, on one hand, some of the anti-vax arguments I’ve heard are among the stupidest things to ever come out of a human’s mouth and another argument (if we need more) against democracy, but there are also some pretty legit concerns adressed by that crowd. The one thing I don’t really understand is why there’s so much pressure on individuals to get vaccinated, if they only put themselves in danger by refusing to do so. And conversely, if vaccinated people have their own health threatened by being around the unvaccinated, how the hell does that even work?

During the lunch break, after polishing off a huge bowl of R. n’ S., I recorded a presentation on Chinese black metal for the radio show. I’m looking forward to hear the final product. I also started putting together the outline of another music project of mine, I have millions of little such projects, none is going to make me rich or even be seen by that many people but I’m having fun doing it.

I can’t remember what I did in the afternoon. Maybe I have Alzheimer’s. I know I wrote yesterday’s entry but it certainly didn’t take that much time, did it?

At night I stayed in, rested, listened to a lot of music and read. It was very nice.

Chapter 298

I put my alarm a bit earlier than usual, as I wanted to go to school and catch the opening parade for Sports Day. Every class marches one by one around the athletic track, dressed in all sorts of costumes, usually patriotic stuff. You have soldiers in modern camo or olive drabs from the 1930s, whole groups of astronauts and scientists, construction workers, people wearing matching Olympic athlete tracksuits, etc. Then, once all the groups from seventh to twelfth grades have assembled, they stand at attention for the flag raising while the national anthem plays. I felt an electrifying shiver of 爱国主义 going down my spine.

So there are no classes for the next two days. Oh no. It meant I had to sit around the office, listen to music, and work on my own writing projects. Bummer. I listened to more Chinese black metal, and also checked out the new album by French grindcore/powerviolence band Gummo. I had listened to another LP of theirs and thought it was OK, not much more than that, but the new one is a serious kick in the teeth and all my homies are raving about it.

With the nod from the principal, I took that opportunity to do some bank duties in the afternoon. First I had to print some tax forms, but I still had to go hunt for the almighty red rubber stamp, a mainstay of Chinese bureaucracy, in the main school building I rarely visit. After a sandwich lunch at home, I rode the longboard to the bank, which has been completely renovated. I got ushered to a counter, manned by a young male clerk who opened his eyes wide and had a “Ho nooooo you motherfucker, I am NOT going to serve you today, hoooo noooooo I won’t” expression on his face. I foresaw the worst. He started asking me for a bunch of documents he doesn’t need, but I called every bluff of his and eventually he admitted defeat and was forced to do his job and change all my RMB into Canadian dollars in my foreign currency account. Then I went upstairs and did my remittance.

I rode the longboard on this very pleasant afternoon to the car repair shop. We now have a brand new headlight, but the other headlight, though functional, is all scratched up so we have one light that’s really bright and one that’s all dimmed. Tranche de vie.

Pretty damn tired, I took a nap and got up to go to the gym. I trained some X-guard wizard shit with the blue belts, then rolled a round against each. They’re all better than me of course, but I can do things against them that I used to not be able to. A good time was had by all.

The girlfriend and the dog came to meet me at the park, then we went home. I ate some fried rice she made, with rubbery meatballs, and watched a thought-provoking video by John Doyle about the false dichotomy between individualism and collectivism, something I’d been thinking about a lot, especially when I look at the pros and cons of the Chinese political system contrasted with American-style conservatism, the Quebec social-democrat model and my general desire to be left the fuck alone while understanding that pure hedonism leads to a lack of sense of purpose and the disintegration of society.

Before going to bed, I checked my inbox, and there was a mass e-mail from a former disgruntled teacher in my network of schools. It was a grievance letter about his principal being an unprofessional dick, with tons of juicy examples, and he even attached some sound files of the said principal recorded unwittingly. The reason he sent it to the whole e-mail list is because he was unhappy at how the corporate office buried the story, now, that’s what we call burning a bridge.

I went to bed and kept reading Le Plongeur. The main character is a dishwasher and prep cook in a Montreal restaurant, and all the kitchen stories remind me of my own few months I spent working in a restaurant, back in the day. I can’t say I miss it, it’s some real non-stop stressful fucken hard work and you’re paid peanuts, but it’s also fun in a way, and the camaraderie bonds with the other poor fucks toiling in the kitchen are strong.  

Chapter 297

I woke up at 9. I felt like sleeping longer but the girlfriend was already up and about, and I peeled my sore carcass out of bed.

She left to go study for her upcoming exam, and I listened to a lot of Chinese black metal, writing notes about each band and track. I really got absorbed by the task, maybe I should be a black metal radio host instead of a chemistry teacher. Too bad there’s exactly zero dollars to be made in that game.

My neck and shoulders were surprisingly pain free, after yesterday’s headbanging. I headed to the Church of Iron and had a push workout, alongside a bunch of middle-aged Chinese men. Then I drove to Metro, put on my useless fayssah mursk for the five-meter distance between the two sets of automatic doors, and bought all the goodies I need as well as a bunch of stuff I don’t but can afford, being an upper-middle-class doofus with plenty of disposable income.

For the first time in... forever, I didn’t choose the slowest moving checkout lane, in fact I was quick to move my cart to a cash register that just opened. The lady asked me if I want an upgraded membership. I declined. She went on a sales pitch in rapid-fire Chinese. I asked her to repeat. She went slower, and told me about all the benefits. For 199 yuan a year, I’ll get an 8% discount on all my purchases, and I’ll also get a complimentary crate of milk. Good deal, it seemed to me, so I scanned the code and derpedly entered my info. Then I scanned the code for the parking lot, and again took more time than reasonable. The lady behind me just wanted to buy a few items, and was now stuck behind an idiotic immigrant who took way too much time to accomplish simple tasks, I apologized to her and she laughed, seemingly unphased by the whole thing.

Then I went to the South African’s apartment complex to pick up the dog. He was all excited to see me, but also had a good time at his auntie’s, who always spoils him. On the way out, I was about to turn left and was waiting for the car coming down the street to pass me. It was a car from the driving school that took several months of my life, if you remember the early chapters of this diary. The car stopped, stalled, and the young girl behind the wheel had trouble restarting. After a few seconds, the car herky-jerkily inched forward, stalled again, and then eventually got in the groove. I don’t miss being in those cheap Volkswagens at all.

We went back home, dropped the groceries off, and then I hopped in the car again to go drop it at the repairs shop. One of our headlights is dead, and also we lost a hubcap, making our old beat up Nissan look even more like a broke college student’s vehicle. I rode my skateboard back.

I saw a middle-aged woman at the street corner, wearing a sweater with WASHINGTON PEDSKINS on it. It made me smile. Chinglish misprint or subtle commentary on the rampant use of steroids in the NFL?

For dinner, I made hamburgers and poutine. The proper cheese curds don’t exist outside of Quebec and Franco-Ontarie, but by ripping mozzarella in chunks (not cubes; irregular chunks), generously salting them to draw some moisture on their surface, leaving them in the fridge for a bit and rinsing them to make them less sickly salty, you can make an acceptable substitute. With fries from the oven, chunks of sausage, and gravy made from a St-Hubert powder bag, it’s a nice taste from home. The burgers were also scrumptious, with mozz cheese, a slice of ham, ketchup, relish, hot sauce, lettuce, tomato, pickles and sauerkraut. Hell yeah.

Chapter 296

Woke up at 9, and slowly started my day. The girlfriend and I went to her school building to gather study materials, and once again I was shocked at how it looks like an actual high school, as opposed to mine, which looks like a medium-security prison. Still, though they have art classes and other things outside of a rigid humorless cram curriculum, her school is no better than a lot of the shitty McEnglish mills I had the misfortune to teach at in the past, and everyone I know who works there hates it.

I ate a big brunch of leftovers and then headed to the hash. I drove the car there, because I want to go to another city in the late afternoon, which meant it would be a dry hash run for me. I considered leaving the dog at home but he enjoys those long walks so I dressed him in the hash group sweater we had made for him and brought him along. About 15 of us gathered in farmlands about half an hour north of the city, and zigzagged on the shitty trail marked by the hares. Today was World Peace Through Beer day, and groups all over China and the world were on trail. The weather was nice, and a great time was had by all. After the circle, everyone headed to a restaurant in the mushroom city we ended up at after walking through rice fields, and I headed back to the starting point. A South African friend who had been babysitting our dog a year ago when we went out of the city volunteered to keep him,  and that meant I didn’t have to detour home and drop him off. Win-win!

I walked about 3 km on a country road, and considered hitchhiking but just walked the whole distance. Then I got in the car and went towards the city of Changzhou, stopping halfway at a village to get a big plate of Muslim noodles. I learned yesterday about a Nine Treasures concert happening in that city, so I drove the 60 km. I have to say, as much as I didn’t miss at all having a car during the past decade (I rarely even thought about it) I do enjoy it now, though I only use it once a week. And that’s the way it should be, no? Unless you live in a rural or remote area, you shouldn’t need a vehicle, and it’s the way the suburbs and cities are shabbily designed that create that need, with all the negative consequences that come with it. I recently read about collectivisation, basically the idea that instead of having suburbs full of bungalows with one or two cars per households, populations are a bit more concentrated and instead of needing their own car, they can work, shop, play without one and have access to a fleet of rent-a-cars. The problem with such an idea is that people like me who use their car once a week tend to use it on the weekends.

Anyway, I got to Changzhou after a very smooth and uneventful drive, parked in the underground lot, and took the elevator to the venue. There was a huge line-up, and I was a bit scared, but it moved fairly quickly and I got in. I went to talk to a group of foreigners gathered in front of the stage, and introduced myself to the guy who posted about the show in a WeChat group we’re both members of. They all seemed pretty cool, in that boisterous and elitist small-town laowai kind of way, unused to see people coming to their turf.

We didn’t have that much time to do much small talk, as the lights dimmed at 20:30 on the dot. Everyone in the packed venue cheered, there was an astonishing 550 people in there, a sold-out crowd bigger than the attendance in the last ten shows I’ve been to. Nine Treasures are very popular now, the Mongolian quintet has been touring nonstop for seven years and making a name for themselves. Their ultra-catchy folk metal is palatable enough for normies, while being legit as fuck and getting all the cred from actual metalheads. I’ve been a fan since the beginning, and this was the fourth or fifth time I was seeing them live.

They walked on stage under copious cheering, all dressed in normal clothing, as opposed to some of their shows in the past where they were wearing Mongolian robes and hats. After an intro, the drummer started a beat, and the frontman played a riff on his guitar... that was completely silent.

False start. They stopped, and people hooted. “The soundman is a cunt!”, someone yelled in English. The sound tech, who had been eating paste and picking his nose, flipped on the switch and the distorted riffs finally came out. The band started with Arvan Ald Guulin Honshoor (yes, I copy-pasted it), one of the catchiest songs in the history of mankind, and the whole floor went apeshit. It wasn’t a mosh pit per se, more a whole movement of people packed shoulder-to-shoulder jumping back and forth. You know people love your stuff when even though they don’t understand the words (which are all in Mongolian) they sing along phonetically.

Nomin Dalai was next, and once again I was ecstatic, pumping my fist, yelling “Hey!” and pushing around all those skinny Chinese teenagers. The whole show was pure joy, the band played a total of 18 songs, according to the setlist I could spot at the musicians’ feet. I’m now an old fart and can’t mosh like I used to, so with a parched throat and a t-shirt soaked in sweat, I made my way to the front and watched the rest of the show leaning on the fence. The sound wasn’t bad, but as always it was a bit hard to hear the Mongolian instruments (a square guitar and a vertical violin of some sort) when they were playing at the same time as the guitar, bass and roaring drums.

The band wrapped it up with an ultimate Hei Xin followed by Sonsii, which got everyone singing along. What a great band, what a great show.

The hour-long drive home was smooth, and I got home just before midnight. I chugged a bunch of water, took a shower and crawled into bed.

Chapter 295

Yet another day. It’s a bit eerie how the weather went from maple-syrup-sticky hot to hoodie cold in such a short time. It’s quite nice but it makes getting out of bed and getting in and out of the shower a bit harder.

I had been corresponding with the scribe behind the Nunavut-based black metal radio show, and he asked me to compile a playlist of Chinese tracks for a future episode. Challenge accepted. So I listened to a lot of good ol’ 黑金 throughout the day, and explored some newer and classic bands.

I taught my classes, and did a 40-minute invigilation period right after the lunch break. Everything went smoothly. I was ready to go teach Crazy Class when their head teacher told me it’s been cancelled, and the students were going to practice their parade for the opening ceremony of sports day. Great! So it meant my weekend was to start earlier, and I could just keep working on this black metal compilation and the description of the bands. I went to refill my tea bottle, and when I came back I was told that the class would be happening after all. The students were particularly crazy, but I got it done and at least it wasn’t boring.

I went home, walked the dog, and went to play badminton. I played for about an hour, which is enough for me. Most of them stay for two hours, but I get bored after a bit and also I just want to do a bit of cardio and active rest, not drain my muscles completely, already a bit sore from yesterday’s lifting. Then I went to a Xinjiang restaurant, with only a few customers at that late hour. They stopped making that meat pie I like so much, so I ordered a pile of mutton on some thick nang bread, and it hit the spot.

I rode to the bar, which had recently undergone renovations. The look was a bit more sleek and streamlined, compared to the more gritty decor of yesteryear, with people signing their name in chalk on the wall, and an assortment of national flags hanging from the ceiling. The new face will no doubt please the increasing and encroaching Chinese clientele, and we can’t really blame the owner for (intentionally or not) making the bar more attractive to these big spenders, compared to the notoriously penny-pinching laowai crowd. I got myself a Guinness and sat with a British pal, and as usual, we talked about history, a topic we’re both passionate about. Then he and his girlfriend left, I paid my bill and was about to head out as well just as a bunch of the guys came in, so I thought what the hell, might as well stay for another drink. One guy I work with told me a story I wasn’t even aware of: last year, a young female economics teacher got involved with a tenth-grade boy, and they got caught after being sighted in Starbucks and posting things on social media together. She got fired, or rather her contract didn’t get renewed, and the student is still there. That’s creepy as all hell, and it’s not the first time I heard of a story like that in China, always involving a young female teacher and a male student. At another school I worked at, they even got caught fooling around in the office at night by the big boss principal, and the student jumped out of the second-story window to escape, shattering his ankle. I heard of the story only months later, but I did remember vividly the student limping for a few days.

(Whether or not I also did things with that young cute teacher around that time, which makes the whole thing even more disturbing, is something I will only talk about in the presence of my attorney)

Anyway. We sat there shooting the shit a bit longer, and once again I paid for my Maker’s Mark and was about to leave when a bunch of guys waved at me from a corner table. They had a bottle of Laphroaig, and the peaty, smoky scotch vapors emanating from their glasses was very appealing, so I sat with them. The Pole who had given me a bottle of homemade limoncello poured me a glass of his new concoction, a coffee liqueur that was a bit too strong, but I imagine ways you could make it a great drink by mixing it with milk or cream. The Portuguese soccer coach was also there, and he told me about the word “saudades” and how it doesn’t have a direct translation in English. That’s one of the biggest clichés I always fight against, not a hill I’ll die on, but one where I’ll reinforce my machine gun nest with sandbags, get extra ammo and supplies to mow down any Portuguese or Brazilian assailant with bursts of “Yes, it’s nostalgia” or “Longing, caralho!”

A great time was had by all. I made it home barely after midnight, and wasn’t very drunk. I slept well.

Chapter 294

With the cold temperature setting in, it’s getting harder to emerge from the warmth of the blankets. I was still in my cocoon at 6:45 and the dog kept poking me with his triangle face and almost ripping my nostrils with his prominent lower teeth acting like a fish hook. “Five more minutes”, I pleaded, uselessly, and unable to hold it in, he peed a giant yellow puddle by the front door. Sometimes I wonder how I still manage to be a somewhat functional adult.

I still took him out and he ran around for a bit. Then I went to supervise lab periods. The students were doing titrations, a supremely boring analytical chemistry method, and one that requires them to be meticulous and careful. Some got the hang of it already, and realized that by being sloppy, you don’t save time but rather you waste time. Others got results all over the place. At any rate these weaker grade-eleven classes are doing much better when they’re in the lab, it’s almost as if there were different kinds of intelligences, personalities, aptitudes and interests, that make some people nearly damn incompatible with the “sit in place for 10 hours a day and memorize high-IQ shit” lifestyle. If I was the king of the world, I’d have a lot on my plate in order to make this fucked up gangrenous better, and one of my priorities would be to revamp the education system to make it less one-size-fits-all.

(And yes, I’m aware that there are already many avenues, and our English-language advanced program is just one of many. Therefore, the blame isn’t just on the system. Don’t the parents of these kids consider the possibility for half a second that maybe, just maybe, their child is not thriving in such an environment? I have ideas regarding the matter, and it goes beyond the scope of this humble diary.)

I listened to the Metal Minded podcast, with album reviews. Deviant Process’s album was compared to the golden age of Quebec metal and bands like Quo Vadis, Martyr and Augury, and I couldn’t agree more, it’s a fucken great slab of tech death. The other albums didn’t tickle my interest.

I went home for lunch, the dog had shredded some of the girlfriend’s construction paper. I put him in jail and left him there all afternoon. One day his tiny brain will learn. I ate fried noodles and a bowl of gumbo and watched political analysis. Young conservative John Doyle was talking about the old guard of Democrats and how they push for pragmatic no-nonsense social-democratic measures to support the working class in concrete ways, contrasted with the new breed embodied by Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez, with a much more radical far-left-wing agenda. He says that the latter could doom the party, but I’m honestly not sure about that. It seems like A LOT of people love AOC and her petulant 15-year-old white girl demeanor and political views, and with the amount of media attention she gets, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see her as being groomed for an eventual presidential run. Now that would be a weird timeline.

I had another lab in the afternoon, and a class with the strong eleventh-graders. They’re way ahead of their counterparts, because of that glitch in the scheduling that gives me three periods a week with them instead of two. Consequently, I just went over the homework and gave them free time.

Then I rode home, relaxed for a bit, and went to the gym. I’d been feeling a bit down recently, perhaps my body is craving those endorphins released when lifting heavy-ass shit. The problem is my mp3 player had been malfunctioning, and didn’t charge when I plugged it. Damn. I wanted to listen to black metal. At least the gym doesn’t play shit-awful music, all I heard was the rhythmic humming of the treadmills and people loudly counting reps. My workout was great, and I walked out of there satisfied.

I had a big meal of leftovers and watched a few history videos on YouTube. Then I started reading a novel called Le Plongeur by Stéphane Larue. I saw a thread of modern Quebec literature recommendations the other day, and I bought a few e-books already.

Chapter 293

Another day another dollar. After the girlfriend left, I cranked some Lunachicks, a female punk rock band from the 90s that kicks incredible amounts of ass.

I rode to work, listening to one of the Boyscasts I’d been uploading in my mp3 player, alongside Jocko Willink podcasts and tons of misanthropic music. Ryan and Dan were talking about stories from the polyamory subreddit, things like “My wife’s boyfriend is a Trump supporter, should I talk to her?” All this cuckolding thing is very strange and hilarious.

I taught my classes, and I had a break of about an hour to sit in the office and read Clown World news. A Danish man converted to Islam killed a bunch of people with a bow and arrow, a British politician got murdered by a Muslim, and all over France and other European countries, churches are vandalized and desecrated. Nearly all my encounters with adherants of the so-called Religion of Peace have been positive, and I’ve traveled to many of their countries, from Indonesia to Qatar, from Western China to Turkey, and lots of areas where they live in significant numbers. Still, can one look at the current situation and wonder about the negative effects of mass Muslim immigration to countries with a culture incompatible to theirs? Half of the USA was on fire last year after a few African-Americans got killed by policemen, yet hundreds and hundreds of innocents have died at the hands of militant religious zealots and people pussyfoot around the issue. Sad. But what do I know? I’m probably a nazi.

I got home and ate gumbo and rice. I gave the dog some innards from the chicken, he didn’t like it, so he peed on the ground and snarled at me. He’s got a lot of attitude for a 12-pound animal I could crush with one stomp.

Speaking of attitude... I rode back to school, Catatonic Class was all dead asleep so I turn the lights on five minutes before class was about to start, and after I went to get my stuff and walked in, ¾ of them still had their heads on their desks. I slammed the door as hard as I could, went to get water for my tea bottle, and walked back in. The message has mostly passed, and the students were now upright and gathering their books, but one girl still had her head down. I poked her with my cardboard periodic table and she lashed at me with a “有病呀!”, which translates roughly as “What’s your problem?” so after class I talked to her in the hallway. She apologized for sleeping, and I told her that’s not exactly the line she crossed. A Chinese teacher walked by, I called her.

“How would you react is a student said 有病呀! at you?”

“Who said that?!?!?! She did?!?!?!”

The student sheepishly nodded.

“Are you stupid? This foreigner understands Chinese!”

Hardly the point, but she did confirm that it’s very impolite. I gave the student a 300-word essay to write as a punishment, and she was resisting, saying that’s unreasonable. “Do you want me to change it to 500 words? Or 1000? Or go talk to the principal?”

I was bracing myself for having to kick her out of class the next day if she doesn’t give me her apology essay, but amazingly enough she was done an hour later. The extracurricular period got canceled because of rain, so she wrote it at that time. Perfect. I don’t like to stress about all that discipline shit, but I still have to put my foot down sometimes.

I rode home in the shitty cold rain, sat around for a bit, then went to the gym. We trained BJJ for an hour and a half, a good time was had by all. On the way home, there was a massive traffic jam, due to absolute intellectual manlets driving in a backed up intersection. When the light turns red, they are still stuck in there, blocking perpendicular traffic, who start honking and trying to make their way between the cars. The whole thing was a massive clusterfuck, and I stood at the corner watching with schadenfreude in my misanthropic heart for a few minutes. What astonished me if how there was not really an end in sight, you’d imagine people would just realize it’s a waste of time and energy to try to get in and would wait for the intersection to clear completely but... no.

I took a shower, washed my dirty rags and ate a big bowl of rice and gumbo while watching a Dark Side Of The Ring documentary on Luna Vachon. I went to bed and was uncomfortably full of gravy, meat and rice.

Chapter 292

Woke up, took the dog out, started my day. I looked for some chill music and clicked on a live set by a British DJ called Mala, playing a compilation of old-school dubstep. Good stuff.

I got to the school grounds. The tenth-graders were wearing the school uniform tracksuit top, with camo pants. They’re spending their afternoons doing some kind of military training, with PLA sergeants teaching them how to march. It looks a bit LARPy but overall I approve of it, anything that gets them out of the joyless rote memorization cramming classrooms and gives them a bit of exercise and fresh air is good.

I had a few classes, and in between I sat in the office, proof-reading the letters of recommendation I wrote last June, and listening to music. A friend suggested I check out Backxwash, a rapper with extremely dark aesthetics and industrial elements in his sound. It’s OK, reminds me of some of the old horrorcore pioneered by Three Six Mafia and the like, and apparently this fusion of trap, industrial and metal is quite popular among Gen-Z kids nowadays.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, I took off my headphones and took the call. It’s a delivery guy, who said that my package has arrived. I said “OK, thank you, just leave it at the gate, I’m working now” and all my coworkers went “WOAH” as if they’d never heard a white person speak Chinese before. Their expectations are incredibly low.

I rode home and had tacos with the meat I cooked yesterday, and ate quickly. I had to go back and invigilate an exam during the lunch break, about twenty twelfth-graders wanted to take the Chinese language A-level exam. I told the administration they shouldn’t do it, even though they are guaranteed an A* score, it won’t do anything to boost their university application, and in fact it’s a bit counterproductive, because now the students won’t be able to take Chinese as their second language credit once in university. I looked at the paper, they had 90 minutes to write a 250-word essay on a topic of their choice among five options. Most of them were done in 20 minutes and fell asleep on their desk.

I browsed Clown World news. Quebec is falling deeper and deeper into a pit of self-flagellation and ethnomasochism, and more and more corporations and government bodies start every public event they hold by acknowledging and apologizing for being on an unceded Native American territory. The whole thing is so dumb on so many levels. The more I see shit like that, the less I want to go back and the more I consider getting plastic surgery to become Han-passing enough to be given citizenship by Xi Jinping.

I went home, slightly depressed, and also feeling a bit off, physically. I considered going to the gym but I know my body enough to know when exercising will make it worse, not better, and I’d rather rest now and be in a better condition for BJJ tomorrow. So I stopped at the stinky market, which is becoming less stinky now that the cold weather has arrived, and bought vegetables. I spent an hour in the kitchen, browning meat, rendering the fat out, making a roux, frying carrots, onions and peppers, and then adding chicken broth and the browned chicken and sausage. I let that gumbo simmer for the rest of the evening.

The live set from French black metal band Regarde Les Hommes Tomber (a name that fits my constant impending doom mood) was almost done when the girlfriend came in, and she requested a change of music. Fair enough. The gumbo was still simmering, so I heated a seafood chowder, two corndogs, and made a quick tomato and cucumber salad. We ate while brainlessly watching The Office, the debut of Season 6. Then she did the dishes, and I watched two UFC fights. It’s harder to get excited for MMA when there’s a card every week and most are very thin in terms of talent and names, but I really wanted to see what Manon Fiorot is capable of. The Frenchwoman has caught the attention of fans with her karate attack, and after dispatching two lower-level opponents, she was facing a game midcarder. She won quite handily, impressed with her bottomless cardio and showed she can grapple, but her striking was a bit monodimensional, with the same 1-2-3 combos and side kicks spammed over and over like me when I play Mortal Kombat.

I was in bed at 9, exhausted.

Chapter 291

I woke up in the middle of the night with a jacked up shoulder, and couldn’t sleep on my left side. It woke me up a few more times through the rest of the night. Weird, I didn’t feel much, if anything, before going to bed. I popped some pain pills and the girlfriend applied some kind of ointment on it, soon the pain and stiffness disappeared. I must have twisted it during a match and the adrenaline numbed it.

I went through my work day without much worth mentioning, especially after such an eventful weekend. I did my classes, collected homework, caught up on the diary, and listened to music. I listened to an album by Batyushka, a black metal band that caught the attention of fans of the genre with a killer album featuring orthodox christian chants, and with some controversy and conflict about who should get to keep the name after the musicians disbanded. Now there are two Batyushkas, and I have no idea if the album I listened to was the righteous one or the thieving one. At any rate it was OK, but I much prefered Liturgiya. I also started listening to a long stream by The Amazing Atheist, I used to enjoy his rants but now I find him annoying more than funny, and full of shit on a few issues he comments upon, but quite astute on others. I do want to listen to more left-leaning social and political commentators though, lest I get accused by NPCs of being in “a right-wing echo chamber” (pot, kettle, all that shit)

I went home, and relaxed for a bit, watching stuff on YouTube. My left shoulder still annoyed me a bit, and it didn’t seem judicious to go train BJJ or lift weights, but I still felt like doing something. So I went to play badminton, thankful that it’s not my right arm that’s jeopardized. I played for an hour and a half against some lean mean badminton machines, a great time was had by all.

I rode back, and took the dog for a walk. It was super dark out but I could see he was sniffing at something in the grass. Then it moved, and I saw it was a hedgehog! Where the hell did it come from? I’m just thankful the dog didn’t stick his nose in the ball of spikes.

I took the pieces of beef that had been in the slow cooker, stewed in milk, hot peppers and orange peels, crisped them up in the oven, and made tacos with homemade salsa. It was heavenly. I also opened a bottle of homebrew, but it was flat, so I poured it down the drain. Can’t win ‘em all.

A friend had suggested I watch a wrassling match between Minori Suzuki and Bryan Danielson (AKA Daniel Bryan). Suzuki must be around 60 years old now, but he still has this sadistic and tough-as-galvanized-nails aura about him, and the two men engaged in a compelling strong style and technical match that had the fans cheering and chanting throughout.

Chapter 290

Up at 6:30. I tried to “cut weight” but only small nuggets came out, despite all my pushing efforts. I was still a bit stressed about my weight, and didn’t drink any water.

We got in the car and drove to the sports center. I weighed in with a good enough margin, and finally could gorge myself with raisins, nuts, granola bars and dried banana slices, washed down with water and lemonade. My scheduled match was only happening in four hours, so I stood by the barricades around the mats and watched the nogi tournament. The Eccentric Belarusian put on his rashguard with a comical drawing of a tuxedo open on a muscular hairy chest, and got in there against a young Chinese guy who bullied him around. He lost on points but it was a valiant effort. Then the gi tournament got underway, and he won his first two matches by outpositioning his foes, advancing to the semis. Good start! I was in the waiting area, and met my soon-to-be opponent. He was a kid in his early twenties, nervous as hell, and he told me he’d been training just for a few months and has an injured back. “Relax” I told him, patting him on the shoulder.

The ref summoned us, and we engaged. He pulled guard, I passed to half, and he locked me in as if his life depended on it. I couldn’t break his tight bear hug, and everytime I’d free my foot, he’d reel it back in. We stayed in that position for a while, I’d try to advance, he’d underhook my leg, I’d pull it back, he’d underhook it again, I’d free it, and eventually he swept me. I swept him back and ended up in a similar position, except I caught his neck under my armpit in the scramble. “Lâche pas son cou! Lâche pas son cou!”, I’d hear from the sidelines. Fellow Quebecer and head coach of Nanjing BJJ was there as a referee, but between his duties he coached his students and guys like me, and I heard his French instructions through the noise of the crowd. I knew I wouldn’t get a submission from that angle, but could use it to advance or at least stifle his offense. We made it to the five-minute mark, with 2 points each, so we went into overtime. Again, he pulled half-guard, and I aggressively tried to pass and get the points and the sudden victory. Maybe too aggressively... he posted his elbow on the mat and I went to push on it to flatten him, but took too big of a swing and it felt more like an open-handed hit. He protested “Fuck! He hit me!” and... got disqualified for talking during the match.

So my first victory ever, by DQ, after a dick move, against a slightly smaller and more inexperienced opponent I should have beat. Well, shit. I didn’t feel good when my arm was raised. I went to apologize to the kid and his coach, they were cool about it, though a bit bummed out.

It meant that in our 3-man bracket, he was going to fight against the third guy to decide who will be matched up against me in the finals. I watched attentively, and the match was over quickly, with the kid suffering a back injury that got him writhing in pain. He got attended to by nurses, and carried out, I hope he’ll be OK. The other guy and I met on the mat, and he got the better of me, getting side control and mount and chaining submissions that I’d defend adequately but couldn’t find opportunities to counterattack. That is, until he went for an armbar but I yanked my elbow out, shook my head in a “No!” gesture, stacked him, got out and stood up in his guard. He had good hips and stopped me from passing, and when the bastard went for an ankle lock, I grabbed his errant foot and went for an ankle lock of my own. Rewatching the tape, I feel terrible at how I squandered that opportunity, as I was in a much better position to finish than he was but didn’t place my forearm deep enough by his Achilles and didn’t use my hips to put excruciating pressure on the joint the way the Italian had taught me. Now that would have been a sweet come-from-behind victory. Instead, he disengaged from his failing leg attack, pushed his own leg out of danger, and ended up in top position. Ah well. Silver medal.

I was in great spirits, and I enjoyed the vibe there, being in a competitive but also convivial environment, and everyone was friendly. You’d be there shooting the shit with your future and former opponents, your friend’s opponents, some random guys you’d make eye contact with while waiting for your match, some people you met at other tournaments, some people wearing a t-shirt that catches your eye for some reason. There was a British guy who came to me, arms outstretched, asking “Hefei?”, and I remembered drinking with him watching a World Cup match in 2016. It was a really nice atmosphere, yeah it could get intense at times but most people there were just hobbyists united in their love of pyjama-murder-simulation.

One cool example was with two girls I met when I went to their gym in Shanghai back in April (see Chapter 114). They were the only two purple belts there, so they fought each other, though they’re in the same gym and then fought again for the openweight contest. They got one win apiece, so they had some pretty funny pictures taken on the podium, with one getting gold, the other getting silver, and then they’d switch positions.

I had a bit of time to eat and catch my breath before the openweight bracket. My opponent was a very familiar one, the boulder I competed against two weeks ago (see Chapter 274). We smiled at one another, but obviously my confidence wasn’t at an all-time high. As always, I didn’t have much of a game plan other than avoiding being on the bottom with such a unit outweighing me by 15 pounds crushing me, we wrestled a bit standing up, trying to get grips, and he eventually pulled guard. I tried to pry it open but he kept his legs closed, and I listened to my corner’s instructions, avoiding his sweeps. I eventually opened the guard and tried to pass but he swept me first. The rest is history, he slowly advanced, went for sub attempts that I defended, and unsuccessfully tried to buck him off me.

Something happened of note, at some point we were on the edge of the mat I was clinging to a low half-guard and I heard the ref say “Paro!” (stop) so I relaxed and got ready to reset in the middle. The boulder got into mount, asked “Why did you stop?”, and only then did I see our ref give him points. Oh so he didn’t stop it? I heard the ref from the contiguous mat! It wouldn’t have changed the outcome but it’s still something to be careful with, don’t stop until the ref clearly tells you to.

So I lost, but this being a five-man tourney and having been given a bye to the semis, I still had a third place match on the horizon. I watched the other semi, featuring a tall skinny Canadian I’d talked to before. The guys fought to a stalemate, and at the end of the long overtime, the Canadian got a takedown and got awarded the win. In the period between our matches, he came to me, and said “Man, what am I gonna do against that big guy?” We talked a bit, none of us was that bummed out about losing, as long as we put a performance to be somewhat proud of and don’t get injured. He also gave me intel on the guy he just beat, and whom I was about to lock horns against.

The match started slow, and both of us got a penalty for stalling and doing mostly fuckall on our feet, trying to take the other down unsuccessfully. I reached over his back, grabbed his belt and tried to do some kind of judo throw I saw on YouTube, which ended up just being a sloppy guard pull. He immediately started spazzing to get out of my closed guard, and worryingly enough, he kept sniffling and coughing. I hope I didn’t catch Covid. I knew he’d get tired, likely still exhausted from his long match with the Canadian guy, and when I saw an opening, SLAP I threw my legs up for a triangle choke. He tried to stack me and I held on, hoping I wouldn’t burn my legs out, and we were in that position for a while, with his head and left arm stuck between my legs, and my body upside down folded in two like a lawn chair. The triangle wasn’t quite locked, more like a leg scissor, but I pulled his head down and... he tapped. He tapped!!! I won!!! My first real competition victory!!! I asked the guy if he’s OK, I didn’t think the submission was fully locked in and I was wondering if he tapped due to injury or something, but he was fine.

I watched the finals from the sideline, the tall skinny Canadian had his moments at the beginning but got manhandled by the boulder, who must have outweighed him by 40 pounds and snatched a nasty kimura shoulder lock that got him to tap verbally. Then we got our medals, and I got changed, said goodbye to my pals (the Belarusian had already left) and got in the car. I drove home, which took about three hours, and I was in a great mood, the stress of the upcoming competition replaced by a feeling of acomplishment. There was a small traffic jam due to an accident, and some fucknuggets blinding me with their high beams, but they couldn’t ruin my good spirits.

It was good to see the dog and the girlfriend, and she had cooked dinner already, some pieces of mutton baked in the oven. It was fantastic, just what my body craved at the time. I also had a can of black beer to wash it down. Thus ended my weekend.