Chapter 107

I woke up around 9, well rested, and took a quick shower. The day’s festivities were to start only in the afternoon, so I looked for something to do in the meantime, preferably involving nourishing food. I messaged my Venezuelan friend from Nanjing asking if he wants to get bagels, and he said that he already got invited to brunch by other local capoeira peeps and I was welcome to join.

So I got a rent-a-bike and slowly made my way there. Those little bicycles appeared on the scene a few years ago and I love them, they cost a ludicrously small amount of money per trip, and can be found all over the place. The problem is my phone was on the 2G network rather than the 3G I’m used to, must be something about my China Unicom package that only gives me access to 3G when I’m in my home city. 2G is fine for instant messaging but is excruciatingly slow for maps or sending pictures or in this case accessing the bike app, and I let out some choice swear words as I tried to unlock the little fucker and the app kept not responding. I eventually got it and rode away.

I stopped at a pharmacy to get medical tape to mend my foot, yesterday I ripped a sizable chunk of skin from my big toe from the friction of doing spinning kicks on a wooden floor. There was a man of about 150 years old talking to the pharmacist in the Shanghainese language, which some refer to as a dialect but is so damn far removed from the Mando I know, so might as well call it a whole different language. It went almost extinct for a bit, with the only speakers left having a lot of grey hairs, but now is experiencing a revival apparently. Good for them.

The brunch place was in a courtyard somewhere in the French Concession, I got there early and sat down in the sun, reading my Kindle. Then someone from our party showed up, an attractive Chinese girl who goes by Borboleta “Butterfly”. A part of capoeira culture is that all practitioners receive a nickname in Portuguese, a relic from the turn of the century when capoeira was illegal and underground in post-slavery (but still extremely racist and segregated) Brazil, and capoeiristas hid behind their pseudonyms. There are people I’ve known for years but only know by their apelidos. We chatted for a bit and then the rest of the gang came, and we had a nice brunch like the urban hedonists we are. I had an open croissant covered with a poached egg and big slices of salmon, accompanied by a grapefruit juice (my favorite non-alcoholic and non-tea beverage).

One guy from the group was Russian, and noticed the Russian army badge I have sewn on my backpack.

“Where did you get that?!?!”

“At an army surplus store in Ussuriysk” The second-to-last stop on the Transsiberian, just before Vladivostok.

That confused him even more. “Why on Earth did you go to Ussuriysk?!” Russians are very puzzled by the fact some people want to visit their country. Hey, I had a great time there, though it was rarely above -35^oC.

We walked around for a bit and got to a subway station, where I had to fish out my dirty SLUGF (Stupid Little Useless Glass Fogger) out of my pocket to be granted entry by the 95-pound female security guards. As much as I acknowledge how efficient it is, I hate taking the subway, but now on this Saturday midday it wasn’t too crowded so it didn’t trigger my claustrophobia and misanthropy. I even got a seat, and the ride was quite short, just under the river to the Pudong side. Pudong is where the iconic skyline is, with two skyscrapers among the world’s tallest and several more enormous phallic ones, and the vibe is night and day compared to the vibrant streets of the French Concession, here the boulevards and sidewalks were wide but nearly empty, as it was a weekend and the office drones were away. We got to a huge tower and took the elevator to the 39^th floor.

Capoeira annual events are called batizados (“baptisms”), in which newcomers get christened with their nicknames and people of all levels who have been training well get graduated to a higher belt. About 100 people were present, first we had a warm-up with samba steps (there is quite a bit of overlap between capoeira and other Brazilian styles of music and dance), then two workshops held by instructors, and finally the graduation ceremony. Green belts were first, and then the level of skill and intensity kept going up, and at the end the roda was open to everyone and I got a few nice games in. Great energy and vibes.

The after-party was at a Brazilian restaurant back in the non-soulless part of the city. Some went back to their homes or their hotels first to refresh a bit, I just splashed water on my face and torso and applied deodorant. I wanted to go as soon as possible, I tagged along with a group of Chinese capoeiristas who proposed we take a bus instead, as it’s a more direct route than the subway. The problem is they misread the map and we went to the wrong side of the road, so we had to backtrack several hundred meters to cross it again, as there was a tall barrier between the middle lanes. Hakuna matata. I was hungry and aching for a cold beer, in that food desert with not even a convenience store anywhere, but life goes on.

We got to the restaurant, which was in some kind of dining/nightlife complex. Hundreds and hundreds of expats were sitting at the breweries, the taco stands, the pizzerias, there were more long-nosed barbarians there than the total number of foreigners in my whole city, even if we include the “undercover laowai” from the sizable Japanese and Korean communities. I ordered a caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink, made with cachaça (similar to rum but with a more, ahem, wild taste to it), lime juice and sugar. It was very strong and hit the spot immediately, on my then empty stomach. We got three drink coupons for 130 yuan and 10% off all the food, hardly the deal of the century, but still a nice little discount and no doubt the Paulista boss made a killing that night, with the size of our group. The food was a bit expensive but I just went with some of my favorites, the pão de queijo (cheese-filled tapioca bread balls), coxinhas (deep-fried little triangles of chicken salad) and empadas de camarão (shrimp pies). This is bus station food in Brazil, and all stuff I missed quite a bit, especially the pão de queijo. I ate a whole bag nearly every day when I was over there, it is pure crack.

The drinks kept flowing, everyone was friendly and having fun. Then a DJ came in, and the tables in the middle of the restaurant got removed to create a nice dance floor. I’m not a dancer but the vibe was too good, and at some point a roda de samba opened, a circle in which a couple dances under the hoots and hollers of everyone outside, until one of the partner changes. The only little criticism I had is that most of the music wasn’t Brazilian, more Latino and American top 40 stuff, but the DJ still put on some tunes that got peoples’ hips swaying. There were stunning female specimens left, right and center, even more so now that they changed from their baggy capoeira uniforms to more flattering clothes and put on their make-up.

At some point, a bit after midnight, I sat on a stool watching the crowd as my desire to get fresh air and quietude outweighed my FOMO and party mood. So I bade my farewells and retreated to the hotel. Some more Nanjing capoeiristas came, and they had an empty bed in one the hotel rooms that they offered me, which I gladly took. The shower felt good, and so was slipping under the bedsheets.

Chapter 106

I woke up at 6, a little sleep-deprived and hungover but I went through my morning routine anyway, with tai chi, cold water and a walk with the dog. I also got on the internet and booked myself a hostel bed in Shanghai for the upcoming night.

I had classes with the eleventh-graders in the morning, and they went well. The weakest class had some students ask me questions during the break, that’s good, oftentimes they just go ask a Chinese teacher instead to avoid speaking English as much as possible. I patiently expained the concepts they needed help with.

I also listened to the Lotus Eaters podcast, they talked about race grifters and racial hate crime hoaxes, which is a very puzzling phenomenon but hardly surprising once you realize that victimhood is now a valuable currency, so of course there would be some counterfeiters. They also broke down a newspaper article decrying how some of the black characters on BBC shows are in fact “not black enough” because they have mostly white friends rather than constantly surrounded by other black people, and don’t engage in stereotypically black behavior, whatever that means. Carl Benjamin and his sidekick pointed out how horribly racist this is, coming from those who center their whole identity and in some cases, their (very lucrative) career on being anti-racist crusaders. Total clown world.

At lunch I ate a burrito with melted cheese, pulled pork and sour cream, and packed my bag so I’d be ready to bounce right after work. I went back to the school, taught Attitude Class, came back home, got my bag, and rode my bike to the bus station. It was almost deserted, and I got a ticket for a Shanghai-bound bus leaving in 15 minutes. Just enough time to get the 12-minute package on a massage chair. Massage chairs are my favorite perk of inter-city travel in China, nearly every bus or train station has a row of them now.

There were only three people on the bus, and despite a bit of traffic on the highway, I alighted at the south station two and a half hours later and took a taxi to my destination. It’s always nice to be in the giant metropolis, with its shocking infinite skyline, its perceivable economic turgid boner, and the tree-lined cute streets of the French Concession, a relic of the time when the Qing Dynasty clowns got punished for their pathetic attempts at disrupting mutually beneficial trade by handing over small swaths of land in a then-insignificant seaside fishing town to European powers (and Japan).

The reason I went to Shanghai is for a capoeira event. Capoeira is a rather esoteric Afro-Brazilian martial art mixing acrobatics, dance, rhythmic music and devastating kicks, all packaged in fun-loving and funky Brazilianness. I practiced it for a few years and though I don’t train regularly like I used to, it’s part of who I am and if there’s a workshop or an event I can attend, I go. So I made it to the third-floor dance studio where the opening roda was about to take place, just as it started. I slapped hands with and hugged some old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for five years, and then went through a warm-up session called the mata fome, “killing the hunger”, before we all formed a circle with the bateria of musicians at the front, banging drums and a cool-ass primitive instrument named the berimbau. People entered the circle in pairs, play-fighting for a bit, before some others would come in. Very fun stuff.

A late dinner was had at a restaurant a block away. I made a semi-conscious effort to not sit with my friends whom I see semi-often, in order to meet new people, capoeira being a very social affair. Plus, some of my pals were at the vegetarian table, no thanks. A pile of tasty Hunanese food was consumed, lots of beers were drunk, fun conversations in various languages were had. One Beijing capoeirista who’s known to be a hard-partying night owl got people to go to a bar, I declined the invitation, still a bit tired from staying up past my bedtime the night prior, and just rode a little rent-a-bike to the hostel a few kilometers away. I had a bed in a dorm, but it didn’t come with the possible drawbacks this deal sometimes entails, my neighbors were civilized and didn’t make much noise, and I had a curtain to give me almost total privacy. So, not bad for 90 yuan (15 dollars).

Chapter 105

So again I was faced with a mountain of inefficiency. I had to turn up at the test center at 7:30, where there was a huddle of 100 people around a table with an elderly employee yelling out names. I stayed outside, knowing that when it’s my turn someone would just figure that my very uncommon name is a giveaway. Then we got carted to the driving test circuit, and I was eighth in line, so I didn’t do the test until almost noon. I was really, REALLY hoping I’d get it over with and not have to go through the same waste of time and inconvenience of rescheduling classes, not to mention the humiliation. I visualized the circuit in my head, and every time one trainee got in the car and did the part that tests proper use of headlights, I’d stand nearby and look, reviewing all the possible options.

People were failing left and right, for the dumbest nitpicky reasons. One guy went past 25 km/h before switching to third gear, another one looked down at the stick shift and triggered the face recognition software, and one girl, during the headlights test, disengaged the bright lights by pulling the stick towards her but pulled a teeny bit too hard and turned them back on for 0.01 seconds. Immediate fail. God-dayum. There’s an instructor sitting on the passenger seat but he doesn’t speak or can be spoken to, it’s all done through a computer, he’s there to ensure safety because it’s a live road and to drive the car back if there’s an error being done in the middle of the circuit. So when the car would set off, it would either come back fifteen minutes later at a low speed, or it would come back much before, zooming past, with the instructor behind the wheel. And then everyone would go AWWWWW! in disappointment.

So I was nervous, but I also knew that I did everything I had to do, my fate was in the hands of my Lord And Savior, Satan Prince Of Darkness. The test started. “Turn on the headlights”, the robotic voice said. “You are overtaking a car at night”, and I had to give two flashes of bright lights. “You are stopping on the side of the road”, and I had to engage the four-corner flashers. And so on. Then I drove around, making sure to forgo any habits and notions of safe and courteous driving and ensuring I drive like a drooling derp and... I passed. I did a little victory dance when the computer said “100 points, success” and almost thanked the cunty little instructor.

I had to go back to the main center to sign a form, then haul ass to get back home, eat a quick lunch and then go to work. There were two girls from the middle school coming out of the dining hall, carrying a plastic bag filled with bottles of Gatorade and water. There were maybe twenty bottles in the bag, but with their insect muscles, they were struggling hard, so I stopped my bicycle and told them in Chinese to put their burden on my panier rack. They seemed terrorized by what is likely their first interaction with a foreigner, and I said “Come on! I have class in 10 minutes. Where do you want to bring those bottles?” “To... to the soccer field. We have a tournament” one replied sheepishly. I said I’d bring it there and drop it at the corner, they thanked me. My good action of the day. So perhaps when they hear their racist uncle rant about those no-good long-nosed barbarians next time they have a family dinner, they’ll just think “Hey that one guy at the school was alright”... or maybe their Confucian transactional mindset will be already anchored deep in their psyche, and they would just assume I’m a sucker for going out of my way to help total strangers with no direct benefits to my person. Ever a glass-half-full kind of guy, I’d guess the latter is quite likely.

I had a few classes and they went well, I was in a good mood after chucking that weight off my shoulders. I joked around with the students a lot, while still getting a lot done and keeping them interested, but not too distracted. At the end of the twelfth-graders class, I overheard them talking about Canada, and one of them asked me which universities have the best reputation, and which one is the best between Waterloo, Utoronto and UBC. I have 0% of an idea. I went to the closest university from where I lived at the time with my parents, and even my major was chosen a bit randomly.

“What about McGill? Have you thought about that one? It’s a good English-language university in Montreal, and one of my former students went there”

They were utterly confused, until one of them said “Oh, you mean Mai Ji Er?” They only use the Chinese butchered version of place names, which often can be almost unrecognizable, with the limited sounds and phonemes that this language has. A girl asked me where I did my bachelor’s, I told her, and pulled my old ID card I still have in my wallet twelve years later (that I still use to get student pricing at museums sometimes). They all huddled and giggled at the younger, clean-shaved me, and said I used to look like Mika. No idea who the hell Mika is, they pulled a phone and did a quick image search, it’s some effeminate-looking guy who looks nothing like me aside from being white. At any rate I liked that they seemed so interested, perhaps next week I’ll prepare pictures of Canadian cities I know.

I went home, poured myself a nice beer, ate crackers and watched some wrasslin’. The tag team champions, a duo of enthusiastic black dudes, were defending against some redneck and a terrifying and absurdly large black man. The hulking guy went in first but the defending champs coaxed the redneck to start the match, they isolated him and beat him up with colorful tag moves while the huge black dude watched from his corner, powerless. Eventually a tag was made and the 7-foot-2 giant made quick work of his two fellow African-Americans. I thought the two smaller (well smaller by WWE standards) champs would survive the early onslaught and find a way to victory, but they got smashed and lost their title. Then it was another match featuring a giant, a white dude with a huge beard this time, who was fighting Shane McMahon in a steel cage. Shane is the son of WWE owner Vince McMahon, so he’s already a billionaire, but he also wrestles, playing the role of the scumbag owner messing with his athletes, like his dad did in the 90s against Steve Austin and others. He always takes some incredibly scary bumps, and this match was no exception, as he got thrown by the giant dude from the top of the cage. Ouch.

At night I rode the skateboard downtown with the dog, I had a nice NEIPA at the craft beer tent (now just a craft beer trailer, in this nice weather), got some takeout from a cheap Sichuan restaurant, and went to the bar for pub quiz night. The quizmaster crafted some pretty cool questions about various topics, and my team won both the bonus tequila round and the final tally. Good times.

I’ll be going to Shanghai this weekend and I won’t bring the computer, so Chapters 106-108 will be published a bit late.

Chapter 104

I started the day like the man of culture I am, sipping green tea and listening to Rimski-Korsakov’s sublime symphonic works. The girlfriend asked me, in the pidgin Chinese-English we use to communicate “Are you drinking a jiu?” “It’s 6:20 and I have to work, do you think I’d be drinking a cocktail now?” “Ah, I heard the sound of an ice cube” Because yes, I put an ice cube in my tea cup before pouring the hot beverage in, fuck having to wait half an hour blowing on it like a spastic imbecile.

It made me want to listen to the rapper with the same name, one of the greatest of all time. So I put on a few tracks from Death Certificate after I finished yoga, while I was ready to go to work.

First two were a lab, I mostly stood back and gave them minimal guidance. Then I chilled for a bit in the office, one of my classes got taken by another teacher so I sat down and studied for the theoretical driving exam. It’s kind of fun, I get a rush for answering the hard questions correctly and it’s an engaging way to learn or review Chinese words or grammar points.

At lunch time I ate a tomato sandwich, watched some meme compilations on YouTube, and put pieces of pork in the slow cooker with ketchup and some of that reduced beer wort to make pulled pork. I also chopped some cabbage and half a carrot that I mixed with spicy mustard, mayo, rice vinegar, salt and pepper, that I threw in a big container. A few hours in the fridge should be enough for it to soften into a nice coleslaw and for the flavors to get to know each other.

I also watched a few videos about the driving exam, YouTube doesn’t have a lot of mainland Chinese content for some reason. I wonder why.

I took the dog out for a bit, it was a beautiful day, I stopped to sniff flowers, he stopped to sniff piles of shit, but didn’t eat any. Maybe he is learning.

In the afternoon I had a few classes spaced out, they must have been going well because I barely remember anything about them. I also listened to some music by blind-clicking some links of new metal releases on Facebook, the first was from a band with the charming moniker Abysmal Piss, playing the most generic goregrind/slam imaginable. As a 13-minute EP it was OK, enjoyable even for a freak pervert deviant like me, anything longer than that would have been way too much, with the same CHUUUU CHUCHUCHU CHU CHU CHUCHUCHU riffage and pig squeal vocals over and over. Then I checked out Fuzzthrone, a stoner/doom band from Russia, now that was pretty cool.

While I was going through the enormous bank of driving exam questions, I stumbled upon one that had a diagram of two cars coming to an intersection from opposite directions, one wanting to go straight, one turning left. The question was whether the guy turning left has priority and the answer is of course no, I screenshotted it and sent it to the cunty instructor, he must have been mad because later in the afternoon I asked him a question and he didn’t reply. Ah well. The girlfriend said he’s just a xiangxiaren (a not very flattering word that roughly means “country bumpkin”), like most driving instructors in China, so I shouldn’t get bothered by him and his rude cunty manners.

I got home and put on some music while I sat on the couch studying driving exam shit on my phone app. At number 325 was Jerry Lee Lewis with an album that was released in 1993, but sounded like it was from 1873. I think it was a compilation of sorts, which is weird for a Top 500 of best albums ever, but hey, I already said what I think about that. At any rate it was some pretty good country music, a genre I like quite a lot. Next up was Coldplay, and, well, it was Coldplay. I felt my testicles slowly shrink as that sappy shit was coming out of my speakers, who were looking at me with a “What the fuck, master?!” expression. I gave them a nice cleanse later that night with a Boot Camp Clik compilation I eagerly clicked on on the first page of YouTube. I already love Smif n’ Wessun and also really enjoy Heltah Skeltah and OGC’s stuff, so the mixtape from the whole collective didn’t disappoint, showcasing some excellent 90s NYC hip-hop.

The girlfriend arrived, with a new leash for the dog she just bought. It’s one of those extendable ones and I don’t like it much, it’s a bit annoying to use and not very safe to have the triangle-faced little spaz at the end of 4 or 5 meters of slack when there are cars around. I’ll keep using his old battered leash.

Then I got my ass to the gym, it was just me and the Italian blue belt. He taught me tons of sweet moves, like side control bottom escapes, something I desperately need. It was a great session, with good VIP class vibes.

I got home, poured a First Blood amber lager from Boxing Cat brewery (which is not as good as the Contender pale ale but still a tasty beer), showered, threw my stuff in the laundry, made thick pulled pork sandwiches and watched more Wrestlemania. There was a four-way tag team match with female midcarders I never heard of, it was OK, but the Seth Rollins vs Cesaro match blew it the fuck out of the water. Cesaro has this one move where he spins his opponent on his shoulders hands-free, it looks cool as shit.

I was in bed at 10. Tomorrow’s the driving exam, the bane of my sad existence.

Chapter 103

I did my tai chi, walked the dog, read the news. A black guy got killed by a police officer, in Minneapolis of all places. The bodycam footage shows him being told to exit his car, and as he’s being handcuffed, he spins around and gets behind the wheel, ready to bolt out of there. The female cop with the bodycam yells “Comply or I’m going to tase you! Taser taser taser!” but then shoots him point blank with a real gun. I’m no expert on tasers (though I’ve been hit by one before, a story for later) but it seems to me like police tasers are brightly colored and not black, and I imagine they don’t weigh the same at all, and also any half-competent cop would know which is which. So, what kind of blunder is that?!

Of course that sparked “fiery but mostly peaceful” riots, and of course the media was quick to whitewash the story, talking about how he was unarmed and not resisting arrest, nothing new there. The USA truly is a mess now.

I listened to The Who’s live album from 1970, it was some pretty good rock n’ roll. Up next in the Rolling Stone’s Top 500 was Prince, with some kind of synth-heavy pop music that sounds way too much like a cheesy 80s movie to me. I stopped after a few tracks and put on some Black Mass Pervertor instead, the old-school black metal band from some Finnish dude I know, that was some nice ear cleanser.

I had a double with the twelfth graders, I went over some old exam problems and then gave them free time to work on more of them. Some are showing serious cases of senioritis, and I can’t blame them, they’ve been in the joyless Chinese schooling system 350 days a year, 12 hours a day, since they were barely able to walk.

At lunch I went home, dropped my computer, and took the dog out. I had an errand to run downtown and rode my skateboard there, with my four-legged companion running along. I took a shortcut through “the ghetto”, one of those hidden alleys with old crumbling buildings that haven’t been destroyed yet, and as I passed a walled compound, a volleyball came flying over and landed in front of me. From a school, or from a minimum security prison, not sure, as it was a high concrete wall with electrified wire on top. Once could argue they’re almost the same thing anyway. I stopped and tossed it back, to cries of joy from the other side. My good action of the day.

There was a small park in the ghetto, I stopped and did five sets of dips before continuing. I went to the ATM and transfered money from my main bank account to the old one, which is linked to my phone, and then sent the girlfriend 1000 yuan for the electricity bill. That got me thinking, my main account is at Bank Of Communications, yet I can withdraw at Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China ATMs with no added fees. Chinese ATMs are pretty nice and have been ever since I arrived in the country, they usually have no fees or if they do, it’s negligible, like 2 yuan. Compare that to Canada or all the foreign countries I’ve been to, with at-times extortionate fees, especially Argentina’s scumfuck banks (may they all burn to the ground, and may the cunt who decided that fees of 263 pesos on maximum withdrawals of 4000 is not pure banditry die in the fire).

I went to eat a bowl of spicy, oily noodles at a Chongqing eatery. There were five other customers present, and all were watching videos on their phones with the sound on. Even the two guys sitting together were watching two different videos. The whole thing was pure cacophony. I don’t mind lively, loud conversations, but who the fuck can take a look around and not see how this is a shitty thing to do?! People, man... I didn’t confront anyone, I just put my earbuds in and tried to drown the noise of five shitty TV shows playing all at once. The little restaurant is mostly patronized by wage slaves from the neighboring shops, offices and construction sites, so I feel like it’s fair to let them enjoy some mindless entertainment on their short lunch break.

I went back to school after a short detour home to drop off the dog, and supervised a lab. I told them to do it in silence, part of it was to simulate exam conditions, but also I didn’t want to hear their constant chattering. I warned a few of them, and eventually expelled one. When I gave him a last warning, he had on this dipshit “trying not to laugh” face and about 0.2 seconds later he was piat-piat-piating again so I kicked him out. I tend to be the laid-back teacher who doesn’t enforce strict rules, but there are times I need to put my foot down.

There was no meeting, so I sat in the office practicing theoretical driving exam questions on my phone. Some are very easy, but some are hard as hell. I remember taking the Quebec driving exam and getting 25/25 without preparation, like anyone with an IQ above room temperature, but the one I’m studying for now has questions like “Driver Wang is operating a medium-caliber passenger transportation vehicle with 32 people in it, he’s been behind the wheel since 19:00 until the first hour of dawn, and got a collision on Provincial Road 307 with Driver Liu, who was driving at 54 km/h. 21 people died, 9 got injured. What are the factors that contributed to the accident?” and then there are four choices, you need to tick all those that apply, not more. So on top of having to decipher that Chinese mumbo-jumbo, I have to be familiar with speed limits on different roads and the passenger capacities of vehicle classes. Fucking hell. And some questions are a bit ambiguous, for instance “If you get a flat tire, you should immediately stop on the side of the road. True or False?” and the answer is “False, you don’t stop immediately, you stop after you made sure it’s safe to do so!”

I passed the first theoretical exam back in December, in fact I was the only one in the room who passed on the first try, which led to the lady poking fun at all the people there who failed while the laowai got 91%. I hope I pass that one first try as well. Which means perhaps I shouldn’t spend so much time writing this stupid diary and study more.

First I need to pass the practical. The car was already out there at the practice circuit so I rode the 6 km there on my bicycle. I had to force myself to go, there are millions things I’d rather be doing but it wasn’t that bad in the end, the ride was pleasant and I was listening to Jocko Willink along the way, dropping nuggets of wisdom and motivation. I didn’t have to wait much, I did my two circumnavigations and left right after. The cunty little instructor was even cuntier than usual, barking nitpicky or even totally nonsensical comments. At some point, I had to turn left at a green light, and there was another driving school car coming the other way. “What are you waiting for?!?! Just go!” “What kind of bullshit is that? There’s a car coming” “But he’s letting you!” “No, he isn’t! He’s just slow! I have to wait!” And then I sat there, white-knuckling the wheel, trying to not talk back and escalate while I was being berated and insulted by an ugly man three quarters my size. Can’t wait for this shit to be over.

I got back home, opened a beer, put a steak and Guinness pie in the over, steamed some asparagus and watched the beginning of Wrestlemania. It was held in an open air stadium in Tampa Bay, before it even began there was a rain delay, so it was mostly promos, which were pretty cool and got me interested in the matches to come. First up was Bobby Lashley and Drew McIntyre, a good big man match with a sweet front flip over the ropes from the Scotsman. Then I went to bed and practiced the driving test questions a bit more.

Chapter 102

I had a dream, I was walking on a deserted street in Montreal with my laptop bag. I knew it was Montreal, because I had just crossed the Jacques-Cartier bridge, for whatever reason, and now I was being followed by a guy on a bicycle. I got a bit uneasy and looked over my shoulder, he seemed sketchy, and he himself was looking around to see whether there were other people around, like he was looking for an opportunity to jump me. I tried to cross the street but there were thick bushes blocking my way and then another sketchy guy walked from a bus stop as if he was trying to prevent me from getting away. Then the dream ended and I woke up. I sometimes have dreams like that, in which I’m about to get in a dangerous confrontation, and when I gain consciousness I wonder what did my subconscious have planned for when the shit went down. I don’t get into fights often if ever and don’t live in a ghetto-ass environment, though I’ve traveled a bit and did find myself in dangerous third-world shitholes more than a few times, and sometimes ask myself how I would handle myself if I got jumped or mugged.

I made tea, checked my e-mail, and got ready for yoga. As soon as I unrolled the mat, the dog got on it and emptied his bladder while looking at me with his beady eyes. What the fuck! I wiped it with tissues then rubbed his ugly triangle face in the stain, yelling NO! NO! NO! and threw him in the locked bathroom. I flipped the mat, it still smelled like urine, but I guess our whole apartment smells like urine now, we just got used to it. The rare times I have guests over (I’m a misanthrope) I ask them if it reeks of dog, some friends have told me there’s a faint but noticeable smell, like when I went to dog-owning friends’ homes in the past. I lit up an incense stick and tried to focus on my yoga.

I got to work and had four classes in a row. They didn’t go super well and I was already cranky. At times I do review and it feels like I have to reteach everything for the students who are too lazy or, let’s be real, not at an intellectual level high enough to do advanced science. Yes, as a teacher I have to do everything I can to get the pupils to succeed, but let’s not sugarcoat it by denying that some students don’t have what it takes, or in the case of those Chinese cram schools, are taken in despite the fact that they know about 50 words of English. I’m not dunking on their value as a human being, in fact I do root for them and feel bad that they’re shoed in such a rigid hardcore curriculum to their detriment while they would do better and even thrive elsewhere.

In the afternoon I had time to prepare my lessons and review periods, and I listened to three entries from the Top 500. There was a boring Rolling Stones album, an instrumental hip-hop piece by DJ Shadow that was OK, and then it was Vampire Weekend, some effeminate modern indie rock I had never heard of and will never listen to again.

I got home, dropped my stuff, and went to the driving school. I severely dislike the whole mascarade and the cunty little instructor, but dislike even more the prospect of failing that test again. So I went there, got driven to the middle of nowhere, which took almost an hour due to late afternoon traffic and making detours to pick up other trainees. Talk about efficiency. It wasn’t pure downtime though, I practiced theoretical exam questions on an app I downloaded on my phone. It’s very difficult. Some questions are dead easy, but many require you to study or rote memorize the answers. Again, all about show, no substance. And I have to do it in Chinese.

I did two rounds of the circuit. As I said before and will say it again, the test is absolutely retarded and unrelated to actual driving, I have to put the car in third gear, not press the gas pedal, and then let it chug forward at 20 km/h. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, if you’re unlucky and the light turns yellow and then red as you’re close to the intersection, it might be too late to stop yet you might be going too slow to clear the intersection in time.

I bolted out of there with a taxi rather than waiting for the other trainees to do their rounds. I had my gym bag with me and went to roll jiu-jitsu, I managed to get advantageous potitions on the Italian blue belt as he tried some esoteric new transitions he hasn’t mastered yet, or as he’d just give me chances. I got close to finishing him with an armbar I got in a scramble, well, as close as my n00b ass can get on someone who knows what he’s doing. He escaped, reversed the position, and I muttered “Oh no! Now he’s angry!” I still suck, and get smashed by the blue belts on a constant basis, but I’m improving and more importantly, I’m exercising and having a lot of fun.

I got home, opened a can of hefeweizen, threw my stuff in the laundry and ate a dinner of sardines, crackers and cream cheese while watching random YouTube stuff. I got to bed and did more of those theoretical exams, I can almost pass, key word almost.

Chapter 101

Up a bit before 10. I drank a lot of water and stretched my muscles now afflicted by a solid dose of DOMS.

It’s Wrestlemania weekend, and a subsidiary of WWE called NXT did a pair of shows that were very well-received, so I played one of them. All five matches were cool as shit: a Mexican guy and an Irish guy backflipped off tall ladders, a female tag team championship had a really gnarly spot in which a girl with bright orange pigtails dove between her partner’s legs through the ropes but missed her opponent and rammed in a fence, an enormous Australian fatso moved with surprising agility and did feats of herculean strength before ultimately losing, and then it was Finn Bálor, a guy I’d seen before, who has a finishing move that makes me cringe everytime, where he jumps off the top rope and lands feet first on his opponent’s torso or abdomen. I guess he just lifts his legs to alleviate the impact and rolls forward but holy hell does it look like it could kill someone. The main event was a crazy brawl, with chairs and a length of chain and a bunch of tools, but it was a bit long and at that point I was ready to do something else with my life. It didn’t help that I had no idea who those blokes were and the whole storyline that led to the grudge match. Still, a great show, normally I have a hard time watching a whole wrasslin event in one go before getting a bit bored and pausing it, but this one caught my attention throughout. Apparently the other show they did the night before is even better, I’ll have to check it out, though it’s a bit unfortunate that I know some of the results already.

I took a handful of the leftover grains that had been seeping in water to make my beer, mixed it with flour, sugar, salt and water, and made bread. Between two wrestling matches I kneaded the dough, then let it rest a bit, and baked the loaf. When it was ready, I had a slice, along the leftover khachapuri from yesterday. It was OK, I’m not the best at baking and my attempts at making bread haven’t been disasters but nothing to shout all over the city. A similar lukewarm result was with the new batch of hot sauce, I experimented with adding a bunch of stuff to the chili peppers that had been fermented in brine with coffee grounds: black beer, Kahlua, coffee, brown sugar, some reduced wort from yesterday’s beer. The result is very salty, for whatever reason. Ah well.

I also cleaned the kitchen, taking advantage of all the disinfecting solution I kept from the beer brewing process. I put on a mixtape by Onyx, a 90s east-coast hip-hop duet. Good beats, good flows, good punchlines. I haven’t listened to much of their stuff and should check out their back catalog.

In the afternoon the dog and I went to the bike shop to get some loose pieces tightened and to install a new back rack. The one I had was all rusty and one of the arms tying it to my frame snapped, so I yanked it off. A fat teenager installed it at no extra expense, then I rode back home. It was raining, so I wrapped the dog in a towel when I got home.

I opened a Contender Pale Ale, a seriously delicious China brew. Boxing Cat is a Shanghai-based brewery I used to patronize whenever I’d go to the metropolis and have a bit of time, now some of their products have semi-wide distribution and I can buy them at Metro. The Contender is an excellent thirst beer, and I happened to be thirsty. Then I put on the UFC, Mackenzie Dern got a first-round submission, Sam Alvey extended his losing streak and likely got his walking papers afterwards, a British featherweight named Arnold Allen won his eighth fight in a row in what’s got to be the most under-the-radar win streak ever, and in the main event, a focused Kevin Holland was still no match for “The Italian Dream” Marvin Vettori, who won a wrestling-heavy decision. It was a pretty good card but nothing crazy.

I steamed pastrami slices, made a sanwich, and watched a YouTube video about the ruined legacy of Game Of Thrones. It’s the 10^th anniversary of the show that was once considered the greatest in the history of TV, yet there is very little fanfare about it, due to how much of a floppy rotten wet turd the last two seasons were. I didn’t watch it until after Season 7 aired and the girlfriend wanted to rewatch the series from the beginning, that became “our thing” when she’d come over before we moved in together. I quickly became addicted and thoroughly immersed in the universe, I didn’t care for the dragons n’ shit (and that’s likely why I wasn’t interested at first) but as a huge medieval history fan I loved how “realistic” the fictional version of feudal England and the peripheral world was, not to mention the intricate details and the stellar storytelling. I then read the book series, re-reading the first two as I rewatched the first two seasons, and watched tens of hours of commentary on nerdy YouTube channels. But now? I don’t give a fuck. I’ll never watch any of it again, so PTSD ridden am I from how fucking retarded the finale was, and the two clownishly dumb seasons leading up to the end (even season 6 was quite stupid). And I have very little interest in the prequels and spin-offs that they are apparently putting together. Fuck Game Of Thrones, and fuck the two brainlets that took over the writing in the latter part of the show. It seems like I’m far from the only one who thinks like that, based on the hundreds of rant videos all over YouTube.

I did the dishes and a bit of cleaning, listening to the next albums as I make my way down that Top 500 list. Elvis Presley’s debut was OK I guess, if you look at it more as an important cornerstone of music history than “wow, this is good, and totally doesn’t sound like it was played by people who picked up their instruments yesterday for the first time”. Madonna’s Like A Prayer was extremely boring, aside from the title track. Typical pop music bullshit, one single, and then a bunch of filler.

I went to bed a bit before 10 and read for a few minutes before putting my head on the pillow.

Chapter 100

And we’re heading in the three figures! I knew it would be possible and perhaps even easy to not skip a single day and publish a journal entry every day, but when I self-imposed this exercise, I didn’t set a word minimum and now I’m pretty happy to see that nearly all of the chapters have exceeded 1000 words. There is a lot going on in my mind and in my at-times very mundane life, it seems.

I woke up at 8:30, and for some reason I craved khachapuri, the Georgian cheese-filled bread. I’ve made it at home a few times and it’s always a great success, so I prepared the dough, shredded and crumbled the cheese, flattened and rolled the whole thing together, and baked it. It’s a bit of work, and as much as I love cooking I’m not the biggest fan of kneading dough and having sticky hands, but the result was fantastic. I scrambled eggs with leftover tudousi potatoes, got slices of salami from the fridge, made giant gin-tonics, and we ate our brunch while watching The Office. The show (the American version) can feel like a pretty normal sitcom about the mundanity of white collar work and the awkward and at-times unpleasant relations among coworkers forced to interact though they have very little in common, but sometimes it goes pretty deep, and shows Michael as a character much more multi-layered that the goof he is initially portrayed as.

Today is also a brewing day: first I crushed the grains with an old-school cast iron mill, the kind with a hand-held crank. The apparatus is loud as hell, which annoyed the girlfriend trying to get some work done on her computer, but more importantly it meant I couldn’t put on anything on the TV that required attentive listening. I watched the boxing match from 1990 between Mike Tyson and Buster Douglas, Iron Mike’s first loss and one of the biggest upsets in the history of boxing.

I checked my e-mails, I got one from United Airlines. I’m a member of their points program so once in a blue moon I receive a newsletter. This one was about their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Ah. I’m glad I got this clarified, before today I thought they were focused on homogeneity, injustice and exclusion.

A lot of music got played in the abode throughout the afternoon, as I went through the process of brewing my beer. I went through six entries of the Top 500, and there was quite a bit of overlap, with two almost consecutive Bob Dylan albums and one by Roxy Music as well as a solo album by Brian Eno, a member of Roxy Music. The excellent Abraxas by Santana and a Bill Withers LP rounded up this succession of albums from the 70s (give or take a few years each side) before I felt like listening to metal, and had the green light now that the girlfriend left for the hairdresser. I browsed Facebook for recommendations, which led me to a great new release by a New Zealand death metal/d-beat band called Bridge Burner, and then Shora, a French band which started with chaotic hardcore and then drastically moved on to play ambient instrumental post-metal. I had to Google the name to confirm that it was indeed the same band.

One of the girlfriend’s former students, now a freshman in university, came to visit. She just finished her first year in university in London, and gave us both pocket watches. Very nice of her. She used to come over quite a bit last year, along with other students, to work on their final projects or just hang out. I can’t even begin to imagine inviting some of my own students to my home or even to socialize with them outside of a school organized activity, not that I dislike them, but I feel like some professional distance is pretty important. The girlfriend has a much closer relationship with her pupils, it seems.

After boiling the wort and adding hops, I took the pot to the sink and cooled it. I’m not very well-equiped for doing this, I have to constantly change the sink water as it warms, stir the wort, and use a handheld fan to blow the steam off the surface. Some nanobrewers have a badass setup with a coiled copper pipe they can run cold water through, in fact I have one of those but it does not fit my kitchen pipe, so I have to do it by hand. Then I siphoned it all to the disinfected fermentor and fit the airlock on top. Two weeks till bottling, and then another ten days before I can drink the fruit of my labor.

At night I went to BJJ practice, a good time was had by all. I rode back home, made some rice in the rice cooker, ate leftovers, drank a tasty black weizen, put my dirty rags in the washing machine, and had a Skype call with one of my good friends. He’s in Berlin now, stuck in his apartment, as most of Germany is under an endless lockdown. We discussed that, and then various aspects of the Clown World we live in, throwing handfuls of black pills at one another. That lasted about two hours, then I put my laudry to dry and crawled into bed.

Chapter 99

To get my tai chi instructionals, there are a few channels I check out a bit randomly on YouTube, one is by a guy who goes by Jake Mace, who seems to be quite the internet hustler with various video and Instagram ventures about the vegan lifestyle, living off the grid in a yurt, and of course fitness, tai chi and kung fu. After the 20-minute tai chi routine, I clicked on a related video of him at his yurt in the Canadian forest, doing calisthenics on homemade wooden structures, chopping wood and practicing kung fu moves.  I thought it was pretty cool but the comment section was full of vitriol and mockery, mostly about how ineffective kung fu is for self-defense or combat. There’s so much hater energy out there, especially when it comes to martial arts and combat sports. Some of it can be good fun banter and some is rightly deserved in the case of frauds and scammers and demonstrably bad people, but so much of that shit is pure toxicity.

It got me thinking about hater energy in general, which is observable in so many, if not all subcultures to some extent, including some I’ve been involved in. Music is definitely one, and just a few days ago I watched a short video by critic Anthony Fantano in which he advocated letting go of one’s strong opinionated attitude towards X artist or Y musical genre when among casual music listeners, which make up most of the population. Couldn’t agree more. And reflecting on that, one thing that might get the hater in me to emerge is travel, which has been my hobby for over a decade. I don’t hate on newbies or casual vacationers or people who don’t have the same adventurous (or as some might call it, recklessly stupid and masochistic) spirit as I do, which is very gatekeeperish and worse than being a hater, but I do harbor strong feelings of dislike towards the vast majority of the travel blogging/vlogging/instagramming grifters out there. Still, I try as much as I can to just ignore that shit and walk my own walk, like they say.

Speaking of walking, I got out with the dog, and he got into a bit of a staring contest with a leashed French bulldog. I started talking dogs with the granny holding the little pig-like creature, like dog owners are prone to do. She said she paid 25 000 yuan for a pure breed, and when I said our dog was free, she replied “But he’s ugly”. Second time in 24 hours!

I got to work and played what is alleged to be the 339^th best album of all time, Rhythm Nation 1814 by Janet Jackson. I didn’t know she was such a big fan of the Napoleonic Wars. The album was pretty cool, some parts really reminded me of her brother Michael’s catchy pop. My workday went by like a breeze, five classes, with a lunch break at home eating leftover hummus and leftover couscous. I got back home a bit after 4 as per our Friday schedule, and did a calisthenics workout from a YouTube channel dedicated to that kind of stuff. I couldn’t do all the moves, my pull-up bar is too close to the wall to allow front levers and I don’t have anything to brace myself against to do nordic curls, but I improvised with furniture and equipment in my home gym and it was pretty damn hard, my whole body was pumped afterwards. The way calisthenics work is it uses only your bodyweight, so there’s a progression for each movement, as after a while it gets too easy to keep in an optimal rep range. I can only do the beginner or intermediate version for each and they are still pretty difficult to do with proper technique.

In the background I put on the Lotus Eaters daily podcast, they talked about the Derek Chauvin trial and looked at the report on race relations mandated by the British government. Apparently it concluded that the UK is a non-racist country in which minorities have tremendous upwards social mobility opportunities and the disparity in income and socioeconomic status can be explained by cultural, familial and educational factors. I don’t know why they had to play millions to an inquiry committee for that, seems like you can come up with that conculsion in a few minutes with Google and a pair or eyes. Of course, race peddlers from the industry of victimhood were very unhappy with these findings.

I took a cold shower, ate a bit of chicken and crab legs that I bought from the lady selling snacks in front of our building, and had a Rogue Dead Guy Ale. The girlfriend arrived from work, was jealous when she saw my beer, and asked for a strawberry daiquiri. I put the ingredients in the blender and prepared the drink like the loving husband I am. Then I hopped on my bicycle and rode to a bar in a shopping district 5 kilometers away, the dog came along and ran at full speed the whole time. It’s rather impressive to see how much stamina he’s got.

I got to the bar and ordered a burger and a Brewdog Indie pale ale. Our local chapter of the Hash House Harriers is organizing a big regional hash weekend in May so we had a meeting over a few beers, talking about budget, scheduling and other odds and ends. Then I rode to the main expat bar, it was packed, there were a bunch of old pals I hadn’t seen in a while. A good time was had. I made it home a bit after midnight and promptly went to bed.

Chapter 98

Up at 6. Checking e-mail and browsing weird corners of Reddit while sipping green tea. Yoga. Walk with the dog. He wandered off and I saw he was chewing something, with brownish drool falling on his chin. Goddamnit. I brushed his teeth when we got home, he didn’t resist much, perhaps he likes it. Now that would be one hell of a plot twist.

In the elevator, an old lady said he’s ugly. Hey!!! Sure, he’s got a constant goofy expression, two ears that are not symmetrical, and an underbite that makes his lower teeth protrude out of his mouth, but only I can call him ugly. Chinese people have about zero filter. If I gain five pounds, twenty people tell me.

First double period was a lab, and it was from another past paper. The questions were much more difficult than the qualitative analysis we did yesterday and Tuesday, that surprised me, sure there will be exam papers that end up a bit easier than others, but in my humble opinion at least, these two were very mismatched. Luck of the draw, I guess. Then I had a double with Sloth Class (not sure if the nickname will stick or not, some of these twelfth-graders are slothful and lazy but it also has students who are much more engaged than even the most engaged in Attitude Class so I feel it’s a bit unfair) and as I’m writing this not only do I struggle to remember anything worth mentioning, but I have a hard time even remembering it happened without just looking at my schedule. Am I losing my marbles?! I’m only 35 years old.

Loss of cognition aside, my body is also falling apart. I recover more slowly, small injuries can overstay their welcome, and sometimes I get a pulled nerve that affects my quality of life. Still, I count my blessings. I could have been born a deformed midget, or in El Salvador. At lunchtime I went to eat a plate of Muslim noodles, and then got a massage. I used to get frequent massages but haven’t been going for a while (Ctrl-F “massage” on the now 123 000-word text file where I write this diary yields only one result, when the driving instructor suggested I go to a brothel, so I haven’t been going since the beginning of 2021 at least), the city has hundreds of parlors from the most decadently opulent palaces to moldy back alley shacks, and also ranging from therapeutic places to extremely seedy ones. I’m not interested in any of those extracurriculars and doubt the girlfriend would approve anyway, so I have to choose wisely. I got twisted and prodded for an hour, it cost 100 yuan (about 15 dollars) and I felt better afterwards.

I had two hours in the office, prepping my review lessons. The next Top 500 entry was Snoop Dogg’s debut solo album, a great, great piece of West Coast hip-hop. Though I ultimately prefer the gritty East Coast boom-bap style, the G-funk sound is a lot of fun. I almost sang along the “guess who’s back in the muthafuckin’ house with a big fat dick for your muthafuckin’ mouth”, that would have gotten my Chinese coworkers to look at me weird for sure. Then I checked out The Johnstones, Ryan Long’s band from before he became semi-famous for his stand-up comedy and his YouTube videos. He mentioned the band a few times on his podcast, and I didn’t expect much, but it had been a pretty prolific band, with four albums and quite a few well-done (but still very much in the punk DIY spirit) videos. Very fun catchy ska/punk rock.

I had a double with the weaker group of eleventh-graders. Some are really trying hard to improve their lot, with their eyes glued on the board and their pen always hovering over their notebook or aggressively taking notes, and some are over their heads and quite understandably check out mentally, as there are about 1 000 000 places they’d rather be at than at my lecture on carboxylic acids and esters. However, all of them are polite and have a positive attitude, which is the most important thing.

I got home and took the dog out, and when I got to the corner store where his little friend was tied up, I brought him along so they could run after the other. When I came back from the walk, the girlfriend had just come back as well and proposed we go eat Sichuan food. I was feeling a bit under the weather and was just looking forward to an evening of doing fuckall but the appeal of laziji and mapo tofu was too strong and I accepted.

“Let’s ride our bicycles”, I said.

“No! Let’s walk!”

We settled it like we do every couple’s decision, with rock-paper-scissors. I won the 2 out of 3 so we rode there, with the dog running at the end of his leash. We ordered all our favorites, plus a plate of deep-fried buns served with sweetened condensed milk, China’s answer to the donut. All the dishes came, no exaggeration, within five minutes of us ordering. Pretty incredible how efficient they are with their flash-cooking.

We got home and I fixed us some cocktails with orange juice, amaretto and tequila. The orange juice was shitty “orange-flavored drink”, much inferior to the real thing. Next time I’ll buy only 100% or GTFO, but this can be hard to find outside big supermarkets. I watched a YouTube video by Punk Rock MBA, another one of his tropes about how those edgy rappers are the future of rock. He makes compelling points and I like the guy, but I can’t help but being puzzled by those statements, it’s as if someone said in 1992 that Wayne Gretzky is the saviour of basketball. Then I watched a news video by MSNBC about the Derek Chauvin trial, it had an enormous amount of downvotes and scathing comments underneath. People really don’t trust the mainstream media these days, the faster they go the way of the brontosaurus, the better. Not that the alt media is always necessarily better: in an attempt to diversify my news sources and analysis, I checked out The Young Turks’ take on the recent developments, and tried, I swear I tried, to make it five minutes in. Anna Kasparian’s “just smelled a fart” smug face and constant peddling of debunked lies just leaves me dull at this point, but when they brought in some “race relations” expert I couldn’t take it anymore. Man oh man.

Chapter 97

The usual morning routine, with a short tai chi session this time. First two periods were in the laboratory, then I had a free block doing random stuff in the office. I finished the Toots And The Maytals reggae album and listened to Sly And The Family Stone’s catchy funk, I can’t say I’m a big fan of that whole “Joe-Joe And The So-So” band name template, it’s a bit overplayed, innit? I then felt like listening to some good metal, so I checked out a Facebook group that often gives me excellent recommendations, and put on a death/doom album by Montreal’s Présages and then a blackgaze album by Russia’s Olhava.

I got on my bike at lunchtime, listening to a Ryan Long podcast. He talked about dominatrix prostitutes telling their clients to vote for Biden. What a world we live in. I got fried noodles from the neighborhood eatery, as always I asked for no mushrooms, and when I opened the container, wham, mushrooms. I irritatedly (is this a word? thefreedictionary.com says yes) told them to give me another one, and looked to make sure they don’t just half-assedly remove the biggest pieces from the original ruined portion.

I ate my noods in front of the TV and watched a bunch of videoclips by Quebec rapper Manu Military, they are all really well done, like short movies, and complement well his deep, emotional, erudite style. Some of them made me cry a little bit, I will admit.

On the way back, there was an enormous pile of garbage on the bike path. Some trashpicker overloaded his tricycle by a factor of at least four, and now all those stacks of cardboard and styrofoam and even half a rusty grease-caked stovetop were scattered all over. I knew I had to stop to take a picture. Two girls in their early twenties on bicycles also stopped... and went to give him a hand. Wait, when did the Chinese become altruistic?! The country truly is changing. I didn’t have a choice but to go help out as well, but it seemed to me the whole thing was a lost cause, even with the lengths of rope the guy was using to anchor all the recyclables to his vehicle, it was bound to fall again. I was running late and couldn’t stick around much.

One thing about Chinese people is they tend to take a nap at lunchtime. That’s fine in itself, but at previous schools I worked at, the students would go back to their dorms and catch a quick one before coming back, now they just sleep in the classroom. That also wouldn’t be a problem intrinsically if they woke up by themselves and got ready, there’s even a warning bell 10 minutes before afternoon classes start, but no, they’re still all deep in fucking slumber with the lights off and the curtains drawn by the time class is supposed to start. Very very few things infuriate me more than having to deal with that horseshit, I could go from hop-around-whistling-joyful to want-to-headbutt-windows-in-rage in 0.5 seconds, and last year I made it very clear that it’s not my job to wake them up and having to look at their grumpy half-asleep faces, and that failure to be ready a few minutes ahead would be met with a door slamming so hard it would sound like a shotgun.

So this year, when I got my schedule and saw that I don’t have classes immediately after lunch except one lab (which require them to walk down a few flights of stairs), I was very happy. But now, as of last week, I have this period with the twelfth-graders, that I decided to use for extracurriculars, talking about hip-hop music. What a dunce I am, thinking they can be motivated or engaged by anything. I walked in as the bell rang, turned on the lights, went to get water for my tea, and when I came back, 3/4 were still slouched on their desks. So I just shrugged, took my USB key out of the projector and walked out. I’m getting a bit tired of their sloth-like attitude, to be honest. A nice silver lining is that the A-level chemistry exam is among the first when the finals kick off in May, and then I won’t have to deal with any of that. I had a class with them later in the afternoon, going over the last questions of the mock exam. I don’t give a shit if they don’t listen, I’m not the one who will sit the exam.

I got home and took a nap for a bit over an hour. It wasn’t a deep regenerative slumber, most of the time I was in that weird sluggish in-between where you don’t quite know whether you’re conscious or living in a weird dreamy dimension. I therefore remembered my dreams when I got up, and they were all absolute nonsense. The brain is a strange, strange organ.

My mild cold was still lingering and I was wondering whether I should rest or go to BJJ practice. The latter won, it had been a week and I missed it, and also I knew it would make me feel better. There were seven of us on the mat, a good success, everyone had a smile on their face as we simulated killing one another with lapel chokes. Then I rolled one round with each of the four other males present, they all have their own style and I have mine, adapted to our level and toolbox of attacks and body type. I got a pretty strange submission, I mounted a guy and he tapped quickly before I could lock up my choke attempt, so I disengaged, worried he twisted something and got injured. Turned out his belt got untied in the scramble, wrapped itself around my foot, and crushed his balls. We laughed about it.

I got home, took Triangle Face out, and brought a liter of beer along. There was misty rain falling as it seems to be the case 50% of the time here, I sat under a pavilion watching the dog run around and drank half my dark Belgian ale before heading back. I browned sausage slices in a pan then made some couscous with raisins, garlic, peppers, spices. I hadn’t had couscous in a while, it hit the spot.

Music was Let It Be by The Beatles, it was OK, aside from the title track nothing was that memorable. Then it was a Smashing Pumpkins album, I really really like some of their dissonant and heavy riffs but Billy Corgan’s voice bugs me. Cherub Rock is a good alt-rock track but the rest of the LP didn’t do much for me.

I ate while watching indie wrassling on YouTube. An old friend of mine occasionally writes articles for wrestling websites, he penned one about a big fat guy named Jeff Cannonball so I wanted to see what he’s about, I put on a match that was half comedy and half hardcore wrestling, against Montreal’s deathmatch veteran Sexxxy Eddy. They first hit one another with pool noodles and other inoffensive weapons, but then the brutal chair shots and bodyslams on concrete followed, and they finished it up by doing gnarly-looking bumps in piles of Lego blocks, which can’t feel good. In the sidebar I was astonished to see Sexxxy Eddy fought Sabu barely a year ago, so I eagerly clicked, being a huge fan of the “homicidal, suicidal, genocidal” legend. He must be 60 now and was all held together with tape, so I was a bit apprehensive, but still he put his body on the line and did his usual dangerous dives. It took place in a small bar in Montreal on a tiny ring that looked like what I’d put together with the old tarps and construction scraps in my apartment building’s basement, quite the fall from grace compared to the height of his career in which he made the WWE, and threw himself through barb wire in front of big Japanese audiences for thousands of dollars a night.

Chapter 96

Up at 6, back in the routine. We brought back a pillow-sized bag of tea from the farmhouse, the tea that’s just been picked and roasted. It’s in fact mama-in-law who bought it, but as she had to leave early to tend to her broken wrist, we’re the caretakers of the dried camillia sinensis for the time being, and will send it by express mail in a day or two. Till then, I took a handful and brewed myself some, it was excellent.

I drank a cup, did yoga, drank another cup, took the dog out, and then finished the pot. I rode to work and made more tea, lime-encased pu-er this time. I finished yesterday’s entry while listening to a livestream about the fall of civilizations, and prepared my review lesson for the twelfth-graders.

I read the news, apparently Quebec is entering its... third lockdown? Or fourth? What a shitshow. The mayor blames some gym owner with the bizarre name of Dan Marino (like the quarterback) who stayed open despite the government mandate, and didn’t respect hygiene and health regulations. My dad sent me an e-mail about this, and said sarcastically “At least we have democracy”

My double class went well, we went over the mock exam questions. I barely remember anything worth mentioning, as I write this eight hours later. Perhaps I’m turning senile like Joe Biden.

I got home, fried some bacon, drained the grease in a small bowl for further use, and made a grilled cheese sandwich in the grease that was still coating the pan. I ate it with a side of leftover green peas, and spread some hot sauce on the grilled cheese triangles. I’m very proud of how my homemade mustardy hot sauce came out, it burns real good and is quite layered as far as the flavors go.

I watched videos about calisthenics and stuff from a channel called Wisecrack, in which philosophy experts break down movies or TV shows, analyzing the philosophy within and finding out whether they are “deep or dumb”. Their video about Jackass surprised me, equating that most retarded prank and stunt show to “meta-commentary on the culture of the post-war American suburb”. Apparently there’s a new Jackass movie coming out soon, now that is sad, I did enjoy the over-the-top and crude and original nature of their MTV show and the first movie but eventually it just got weird and forced, as the guys were now in their forties.

I had a lab in the early afternoon, they did qualitative analysis of ions. Whoopdeedoo. I printed the wrong marking scheme and didn’t bring my computer, so I went on my phone and tried to download the PDF. Chinese internet fucking gargles donkey shit so I couldn’t accomplish this otherwise painfully simple task. Baidu is a bad joke of a search engine, even if you look stuff up in Chinese, after a few tries and my browser constantly crashing due to all the malware it was blocking from every side, I wanted to throw my phone in the chemical waste barrel. I eventually just asked a colleague to send it on WeChat and thankfully she was online.

One student was heating a solution in a test tube and it splashed in a big jet, his neighbor got some in his hair and came sheepishly to ask permission to go to the toilet and wash it off. “Of course you can go! Don’t take the time to ask!” I went to reprimand the culprit, I told him to remove the tube from the flame when bubbles start to rise, but he said it just splashed out of nowhere. I doubt it but the other students confirmed, even the guy who got some on his head. Either way he shouldn’t be pointing the opening of the tube towards somebody. Damn it, if somebody gets injured in my lab it would be hell to pay.

We had a meeting, the principal talked about the upcoming final exams and holiday time. I plan on staying in China anyway but the coworkers want to go visit their families, and now the country is slowly opening up. We’ll see what will happen with that, and also if we got vaccinated for nothing.

I had last period with Attitude Class then hopped on my bicycle and rode home. I stopped to buy vegetables and was in a good mood, so I joked around with the people there, starting with a grandma leading two tiny twin girls along as they were leaving the shop. Like nearly all twins in China, they were wearing the same clothes, same shoes, and had the same haircut, which I always found quite hilarious if not a bit creepy. “Which one is the evil one?” “That one right there!”, granny pointed. The cute three-year-old took a bite of her banana and looked at me all puzzled. “Say goodbye to foreign uncle!” and they clumsily waved. Awww. Then there was a woman with a leashed poodle at the counter. “How much per pound?” “Not expensive! You try” “Nah, he’s too skinny, he doesn’t look delicious” That got everyone in there talking about me, and the shopkeeper volunteered all the info he knows about my workplace, my nationality, the fact that I come here often, sometimes accompanied by a girlfriend or an ugly dog, the food I usually buy and the food I dislike, all that. My existence in his periphery gives him a lot of face, like the Orientals call it.

“How much money do you make?” he asked, wanting to add to the list of trivia related to me. This question is not impolite in China the way it is in the West, still, I never feel very comfortable answering it. Sure, there are people born with a silver spoon in their mouth doing fuckall except having costly dinners due to all the embezzled money they chanced upon when the government privatized all those commie programs, who spend more money in a day than I make in a year, but there are several thousands times more who break their backs doing ingrate work for a fraction than I make. “One yuan a month” was my deflected answer of the day. “Woah! I’ll have to give you discounts then!”

I opened a homebrewed spiced ale, got in the kitchen and made hummus. The first few times I attempted to make hummus it came out dry and not nearly as satisfying as the one you’d get at a supermarket or a Middle Eastern restaurant, but now I know the secret: adding a ton of olive oil, to obtain that decadent creaminess.

When the girlfriend arrived, I put together a huge feast: hummus, tortilla bread, pickles, olives, feta cheese cubes, carrot sticks, and mutton kebabs from the Pakistani delivery service. We watched The Office, and then while she washed the dishes I put on some more music from the Top 500: some effeminate shit by Arctic Monkeys, then a jazzy LP by Bruce Springsteen that had its moments but wasn’t very memorable (like 90% of what I’ve heard from him) and finally a reggae album that was, well, a reggae album. I like reggae but the criticism about being the most repetitive genre didn’t appear out of nowhere.

The girlfriend had an online lesson at 8, so I turned off the reggae album halfway and took the dog out. I let him run around freely and he munched on a gigantic stinky turd, turning his breath into poison gas. I hate when he does that and showed him my disapproval with a slap up his triangle-shaped head, then brushed his teeth when we got home, before locking him up in prison. One day he’ll learn (hopefully).

I had a bit of a cold, probably due to the fact that I only wore a hoodie when I rode across town to go play badminton, and didn’t bring a dry t-shirt to wear afterwards. So I made a soothing potion with hot tea, rum, sugar syrup (because we ran out of honey), cloves, cinnamon and a dash of lemon juice, then went to bed at 9:30.