Chapter 337

I had a dream, I was at a jiu-jitsu tournament, in a hard-fought match that saw a few sweeps and reversals. I lost 6-4, and cried.

I also noticed it had been a long time since I got awakened by fucknuggets blowing up bombs outside my window. Maybe there’s a new regulation against that sociopathic nonsense.

I had a double with the twelfth-graders, going through some exam questions about electrophoresis and chromatography, then some senior students interviewed me for the school magazine. They asked me why I started teaching chemistry, why I came to China, why I came to this school. The answers are all “I dunno... it just happened I guess” but I made up a more compelling story for each.

Then I went to play badminton a bit with some twelfth-graders, got back to the office for a bit of prepping, and then rode home. I was listening to a Jocko Willink podcast about Chesty Puller, the legendary US Marine general, and his son. Lewis Puller Jr got blown to bits in Vietnam and was dealing with his serious handicap, the anti-war sentiment in the USA, and the mental degeneration of his elderly father. Harrowing story. It ends in alcoholism and suicide.

I went home, ate a bunch of leftovers and played with the dog. I didn’t feel like going back to school but a good worker bee has gotta do what a good worker bee does. I had two classes, and in between, I watched a documentary about Franco-Americans, émigrés from Quebec who ended up in New England. It was in black and white and the French-speakers hanging out at a bar in Massachusetts were already old and talking about the “young generations” having lost their French. There was also an interview with Jack Kerouac on Quebec TV, he spoke fluently but with a bit of an accent probably unlike mine, after living abroad for so long. Who knows, maybe I’m a pioneer of an emergent Quebeco-Chinese community and journalists in the year 2060 will come and interview me.

I went home and didn’t do much, I still felt a bit under the weather and had to wake up early the next day.