Chapter 314

I got up at 6:30, stayed under the warm blanket for a bit with the dog and then we went for a little walk. I started a Hardcore History podcast, about Alexander The Great’s mother Olympias. Those stories from the ancient Greek world are pretty sick, and well documented (albeit likely full of propaganda and exaggerations).

I had a few grade-12 classes in the morning and they went well. One of the classrooms had a defective projector, so I had to adapt and overcome and do an old-school white board only lesson. It was about the polymers nylon and kevlar, so I drew pictures of kevlar helmets and nylon stockings that got the students giggling.

I ate a tomato sandwich and a chicken breast for lunch, then I went outside to sit in the midday sun. I think I’m prone to seasonal depression, so I’ll try to expose myself to sun rays as much as I can during the cold months and the shortened days of winter.

In the afternoon I had Catatonic Class right after the lunchtime nap, but surprisingly they showed signs of life. Then, I had Crazy Class, and they were disruptive and annoying as always. I talked about the distance between atoms in a covalent bond, and when I said what happens if it’s too short, one boy quipped (in English, nonetheless) “Too short! Like his dick!” and got them all to laugh like hyenas, except the one who got targeted by the joke.

Between classes, I graded the mid-term exams. I dislike grading exams, but like German pornogrind godfathers Gut once sang, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it. I put on music, starting with war metal bands Kerasphorus and Wrathprayer, which were both awesome and chaotic and violent as hell. I really like this sub-subgenre of metal these days, fits my mood perfectly.

I also listened to Clown World news, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is currently taking place and one of the witnesses, some previously convicted antifa agitator who got shot in the arm by Rittenhouse, admitted he pointed his gun at him. That got the prosecutor to facepalm, realizing the case is all but lost. But who the hell knows what will happen? The jury might get swayed with unfounded shit about Rittenhouse being an evil white supremacist.

I stopped at the corner store to buy stuff to snack on, like raisins, almonds, cashews and dried fruit. It all comes individually wrapped, you’d open the big bag and it’s full of tiny bags. Such a waste of plastic, and a waste of my time too, having to cut them all to pour everything in a big Tupperware I keep by the TV. Then I went home and relaxed for a bit. I put on a live set by Malajube, an indie rock band from Quebec that was quite popular a decade ago. It’s OK, indie rock always feels a bit limp to me but in a live setting it’s fun enough. Then I headed to the gym and trained BJJ. I still get smashed, but now the Italian is increasingly whispering “Nice” when I escape out of submissions or positions I couldn’t escape from before. He seemed particularly impressed today, and added a stripe on my belt. Woohoo. Progress.

I got back home, took a cold shower that felt particularly cold now that it’s about 5 degrees Celsius in my poorly insulated Chinese apartment, then cooked cubes of beef and made tacos with large tortillas, lettuce and homemade salsa. It was delicious. I ate my vittles while watching a documentary about Jon Jones, the supremely talented MMA fighter who keeps shitting layers upon layers of diarrhea on his legacy.

Just before bed, I opened the softwares I use to make music and created a track for my cybergrind/noise project called Empty Calvins. It took me about 20 minutes, and I have to be careful, I can spend hours doing that, with only barely listenable shit to show at the end. I already produced a few tracks, and it’s on YouTube under the name The Galaxy Brain EP. Check it out so you can brag about knowing me before I became famous.

Chapter 313

Yet another day. I browsed the news and mindlessly scrolled down through social media, there’s been some municipal elections in Quebec, for whatever reason every major city does it at the same time. A lot of people were rejoicing in the fact that a lot of women and immigrants got elected, all over my Facebook feed. Very little was said about their policies or views, the thing that matters the most is that they have uteruses and/or they are of non-European stock. That puzzles me. There have been women in mainstream politics for longer than I’ve been alive, why is it such a big deal?

I looked at my phone, we got a message from the center coordinator, apparently someone at the school has been using the internet to mine bitcoins, and the police found out. That person could get in hot water, and he strongly recommended he/she stop doing that. He also said the police might come and inspect our computers, now that sounds a bit scary. I have nothing grossly illegal on there but I don’t want some cop putting his greasy fingers on my machine and browsing my folder of dank memes.

I conducted a lab and then I invigilated a grade-12 math exam. I curiously looked at the content, it might as well have been written in an alien language. And yeah, I know I made the same observation in Chapter 15, but you can’t write a 300 000-word diary and not get a bit redundant at times. Speaking of which, I’m not sure if I should be proud or ashamed that I haven’t missed a single day since January 1^st, and am on track to publish Chapter 365 on New Years Eve.

So even though I couldn’t even understand what the hell the questions even meant (I think I recognized something about matrices, that’s it), the students were busily writing line after line on their answer sheets. I sometimes underestimate their intelligence due to how little they know about the world and how they’re unable to use logic but they must have quite high IQs to make sense of all that complicated mathematical mumbo-jumbo.

I went home for lunch and cooked bacon in a pan. The pack was labeled “Classic American bacon” but it’s more akin to ham than the fatty bacon we’re used to, it’s lean and doesn’t render much fat. A lot of expats constantly bitch about Chinese bacon and how it’s inferior to “real bacon” (among the endless list of grievances these pathetic losers constantly bitch about) but I like it. I also ate a bowl of seafood pasta we just took out of the freezer. It was delicious.

Before heading to work, I grabbed a stick of gum, and while I was riding my bike and chewing, I pinched a nerve in my jaw, by my right ear. It was one of the weirdest things ever, it didn’t cause pain or numbness, but it made a loud CLACK sound.  Fucking hell. Even my jaw isn’t safe from all this old-man shit my body is experiencing?! I know I’d had my face squeezed, sometimes very hard, in jiu-jitsu practice, and I would have to chew carefully the next day, but that’s a first. At least I don’t get the whole lower jaw misaligned like when I was boxing.

In the afternoon I had a few more classes, and exam watching. Quiet day. I have a lot of grading to do, and went through the pile during my free time in between.

I considered going to the gym, but my body was telling me “day off, pleez” and I have to listen. I’ve been nursing a mild cold for a few days now, and my shoulder was jacked from being in a leaning posture a big part of the day, hunched over the computer or a pile of exams to grade. I did one hour of yoga, and then floured and fried some chicken breasts to make chicken burgers. I found two burger buns from last week and thought they’d have gone moldy by now but no, weirdly enough they were good to go, they must be pumped full of weird preservatives. We ate them with steamed broccoli and a bowl of chicken broth while watching The Office.

I took the dog out for a spin, all bundled up because it’s getting damn cold. I watched a history documentary about the siege of some Anatolian city by Alexander The Great with a small glass of rum, and then was in bed early and read a few chapters from Apocalypse Bébé.

Chapter 312

I woke up at 6:30 and went through my morning routine. I started a Jocko Willink podcast, his guest was a former Navy SEAL dog handler, I was a bit surprised to read that various special forces units employ dogs, not just as guards or bomb sniffers, but also to attack and kill terrorists. Notably, there’s one dog who jumped out of the helicopter alongside all the armed men on the operation that led to Bin Laden being riddled with bullets like he deserved. I looked at my own dog and thought about how much of a NEET he is, staying at home all day doing nothing and not contributing to the finances of the household, while other dogs have various jobs.

I got to the school, and after dropping my bag in the office, I went to get hot water for my tea. I ran into a British coworker. “I saw a video being shared yesterday, some of that... fighting thing. You like that, don’t you?” Zhang Weili is getting her fifteen minutes of fame, and the highlights of her title match are making the rounds on WeChat. “It’s very... violent, no?” We discussed it a bit, I can’t say I disagree.

I had two classes with eleventh-graders, and watched some grade-12 midterm exams. I was also the unlucky invigilator for a resit exam, which took place during lunchtime, so I had a much shorter lunch break than usual.

In the afternoon, I invigilated a statistics exam. As soon as I had collected the last paper, the students all erupted in a noisy rabble about how difficult the exam was, most of it being extremely vulgar language. That’s something that puzzles me a bit about Chinese culture. You’re often condescendingly lectured about “harmony” and “how refined our Chinese peopur are, with our five trillion years of history, compared with you worthless foreign barbarians”, yet, without exaggerating much, about 20% of what comes out of teenagers’ mouths is “fuck your mother”, “stupid cunt”, and “your mother’s cunt”, mostly used as adverbs or punctuation. And adults don’t seem to be phased by it the slightest. Weird.

The statistics exam was only 50 minutes, and then I had to stay in the classroom to watch them study. I knew they wouldn’t be silent, and I came prepared, with my laptop and headphones. I put on an epic black metal album by Minenwerfer called Alpenpässe, there’s quitte a lot of quality WW1-themed black metal coming out these days, from Kanonenfieber to 1914.

Then I got home, watched Clown World news videos, and headed to the gym. As always, there was just three of us. Recently, a new guy joined, he even bought the gi, but then he disappeared, or rather he comes to the gym but just goes to the weightlifting room. The big Kazakh, or rather the medium Kazakh now that he lost a bunch of weight, is mostly running on the treadmill and nursing his injury. Ah well. At least the training is worthwhile and both guys are better than me, so I can only improve.

I got home, walked the dog, and then ate a big meal of dumplings, stewed beef and scrambled eggs. I watched a Dark Side Of The Ring episode about a shady extreme wrestling promotion called XPW, infamous for that absolutely insane scaffold match where New Jack threw Vic Grimes 40 feet down and nearly killed him, and also for having an owner who also ran a creepy porn company that got prosecuted under obscenity laws. It was a pretty insane documentary.

Chapter 311

I woke up around 10 and put on the UFC. I started watching right as Michael Chandler was walking to the ring, and soon he and Justin Gaethje had their anticipated lightweight number 1 contender clash. Like every goddamn fight in which either of these two maniacs take part (especially Gaethje), it was a candidate for fight of the century, and they battered each other for three rounds, dishing out punishment that would kill 90% of us. Every time one guy looked to be on the verge of unconsciousness, he’d swing back and gain momentum, before almost getting decapitated again.

In contrast, the feathwerweight tilt between Shane Burgos and Billy Quarantillo almost seemed boring, though it was action-packed and highly technical and high stakes. Then Frankie Edgar got knocked out by a punt to the face from Chito Vera, as if his head was a soccer ball.

The card culminated with highly anticipated title rematches, first for the 115-pound championship, pitting former champ Zhang Weili against Rose Namajunas, who took her belt a few months ago with a head kick KO. I was rooting for Zhang, not only because she’s Chinese and she’s a great martial artist and a good person, but I also have to say Thug Rose is one of the few MMA fighters I dislike, I think she’s creepy and racist and not that it’s really her fault, but she makes all sorts of simps come out of their caves. She’s a terrific fighter though, and after five rounds of high-level action, she edged a close but deserved split decision victory, retaining her title. I made the mistake of looking at the comment section on the livestream during Zhang Weili’s post-fight interview and immediately regreted it, now I have racist cancer. Why are people such cunts?!

Colby Covington and Kamaru Usman were next, and their welterweight title fight was out-of-this-world violent and the skill displayed by both of them was incredible. Usman retained by a quite wide margin, but Covington was always in the fight. The two men had one of the most heated rivalry in the sport, and “broke kayfabe” at the end, shaking hands and Covington was heard saying “I was selling the fight for you, you know it’s all respect” and the Nigerian champ replied “I got you”. I knew his antagonistic, Trump-hat-wearing, bombastic, insult-laden demeanor was mostly a gimmick, but I didn’t expect him to unveil it in front of the cameras like that. Still, the fight spoke for itself, and I wouldn’t mind seeing those guys fight every year.

Then I went to the gym, and did my chest and shoulders workout. The sky was greying ominously, a storm was brewing. Just as I was about to walk in the building, an empty flower pot flew past me and almost clocked me in the head, carried by a strong gust of wind. On the way back, it was raining, and I took a hot bath upon returning home.

Most modern commercial hip-hop bores me to tears but it seems insanely popular, I must be getting old. I do like underground lyrical hip-hop though, and I put on a playlist of Grind Mode Cyphers, a collective of wordsmiths mostly from the East Coast. Then I wrote this diary, and also wrote something for my French travel blog. I talked about this summer’s road trip, but in fewer details than on here. I feel like my French prose is getting a bit clunky, writing in English most of the time has made it suffer in comparison.

I bought some e-books, and annoyingly, some of them came with DRM protection, so I spent way more time that I would have liked browsing nerdy how-to guides and shady websites to find a way to upload the damn things on my Kindle. I wanna read some goddamn books, not play hacker. Eventually I succeeded and started reading Apocalypse Bébé by Virginie Despentes. It came out about a decade ago and won a literary prize of some sort, I had ordered it in paperback from France to China but it never got to its destination.

Chapter 310

I woke up at 11 and ate breakfast while watching videos about the upcoming UFC event, they’re holding a big pay-per-view tomorrow, the second in a row. Should be a good one.

Then the girlfriend, the dog and I drove to a village about 10 km away, to meet up with the hash group. We hiked a trail going through farmland, villages and wooded areas, then we had the circle. I was wearing my red baseball cap emblasoned with TRUMP 2020, KEEP AMERICA GREAT that the American from Hefei gave me, and the group being mostly composed of sad anti-Trumpers, I got forced to down four cups, with the chant of “Four more beers! Four more beers!”. Can’t be too mad at that. Then one of the hares got baptized, with the trail name of Puber-Teeth. He got showered with beer, and then ran around trying to hug everyone. A good time was had by all, and the weather was perfect.

The group then went to a bar, but the girlfriend proposed the two of us go eat Indian food, since the village we were in is already technically within the city limits of Wuxi. Why not. So she drove the 50 km there, which went by smoothly, and then we gorged ourselves with curries, biryani and flat breads. I also picked a beer from their rare microbrew fridge, a dark Belgian ale clocking in at 9.5%.

I did something I rarely do, but sometimes you have to put your foot down, as a paying customer forking out large amounts of money to have your dopamine spiked. I had asked for the curries to be extra spicy, and as nearly al-fucking-ways, they came in with the Scoville units equivalent of a glass of warm milk. So I politely but annoyingly pointed it out to the boss, and she returned the plates fifteen minutes later with an acceptable level of spice.

We got back to the car, after a small detour to a tea shop where I got a big bag of pu-er tea encased in dried limes, and then drove home. I was still bummed out I couldn’t go to Ningbo but all FOMO aside, it had been a good day.

Chapter 309

Another day of exams. I gave the twelfth-graders a self-study period, half of them immediately fell asleep as if they hadn’t slept for a year, and I invigilated some grade-eleven exams. Then after a lunch break and a bowl of R. n’ S., I got back to the office, and started grading the chemistry exam, starting with Crazy Class and Catatonic Class. Some did OK, but most of the performances ranged from piss-poor to completely blank papers. Is this a surprise? That’s like saying that I’d fare poorly at a figure skating tryout.

I got home and relaxed a bit. I looked for something to do, and a group of friends invited me to have dinner. The dog and I rode to the microbrewery first, where I had a tasty amber ale and waited for my pals. The Portuguese soccer coach came to meet me, and we crossed to street to a Japanese restaurant I’d never been to before, where we joined some Poles for a barbecue dinner. We had a small room to ourselves, all decked out in light wood furniture, with a bucket full of hot coals in the middle of the table and a grill where we’d put chunks of meat. One of the Poles made his own limoncello and another liqueur made from berries, and we downed a few cups alongside the Asahi beers. A good time was had by all, and some funny conversations as well.

Then I rode to the main expat bar, where I had one more beer, a peach-flavored thing from the Netherlands that recently arrived in the fridge, chatting up some other pals. I was home early enough, and watched another episode of Dave. It’s a weird show, with some serious star power as cameos or guest characters for how unknown it is, and the humor is offbeat and self-deprecating to the point that you wonder if Lil Dicky really has that big of an inferiority complex. A lot of storylines are about how comically racist black people can be, and how unreceptive they are to white rappers, but then the semi-fictional Dicky just goes and proves their point by being so goofy. I really wished he had stayed a mixtape rapper, using humor intelligently and in a calculated manner, but I guess that’s not where the money is, and he went on record numerous time saying he wanted to be a comic and have his own TV show, and hip-hop was just a means to an end.

Chapter 308

I woke up at 6:30 and put on the 2021 album by Slaine, a Boston-based rapper who has had a pretty prolific career in the underground. I didn’t like it, too many sappy choruses, I like my hip-hop a bit more raw and old-school.

I rode to work, relaxed, I didn’t have to teach today. I invigilated a math exam for 45 minutes then went to the office and spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the internet and stapling, folding and counting the chemistry papers. I could do that while listening to the Metal Minded podcast, the boys reviewed four recent releases from the Quebec scene and they were all positive. In the afternoon I did listen the albums or tracks from them and they were okay, but nothing that made me go “Woah!!!” First Fragment was a richly layered tech death album with surprising flamenco and neoclassical bits, Outre-Tombe was some solid Stockholm-style death metal but not as good as their previous album, Épiphanie was quite interesting in its proggy, post-metallic way, and Hak-Ed Damm was some violent and intense black metal similar to Anaal Nathrakh but it didn’t tickle me, not my prefered type of black metal.

I went home, got changed and headed to the gym. I did my deadlifts and my accessory exercises, going home with a gigantic pump in my biceps. I downed a protein shake and then rode the longboard with the dog to go meet the girlfriend at the end of her evening study supervision duties.

We had a chat in the car, she was asking me to reconsider my plans for the weekend. I wanted to go on a road trip to the coastal city of Ningbo, to visit friends, attend a death metal show and train a bit of BJJ at the academy there, but now she was saying that if there’s an eclosion of Covid there, it could seriously come and bite us in the ass. There has been a handful of new cases in the past weeks, in various cities, and people who might have been in contact with them have to quarantine or do tons of testing. I believe that my job would protect me if this unlucky fate fell upon me, but her, being Chinese and thus subjected to the bullying whim of her cuntfucian bosses, could lose her job even if she stays home, for merely living with me. So yeah, how bullshitty is that, that even one (1) unconfirmed case in a city of 10 million where I’d happen to be within two weeks, of a disease with a 99.99996% survival rate, for which I’m vaccinated, could cause such an uproar? Still, I accepted the compromise, after all she went to great lengths to accommodate me and my wanderlust recently, and I had been gone out of the city three weekends in a row already. Notably, she didn’t give me shit for staying in Nanjing on the way back from Hefei, even if it implied that she’d have to drive three hours by herself. So as much as it sucks, I’ll just cancel the trip to stay safe.

We got home, and I ate a giant bowl of R. n’ S. composed of white rice, Sichuan food leftovers, spicy peanuts and eggs. It was glorious. I watched a few videos on YouTube then I went to bed and started a novel titled Mukbang, by Fanie Desmeules. It’s about a young internet addict who starts her YouTube channel, first talking about make-up and vegan diet and yoga and other basic white girl shit, but then she sees how popular “mukbangs” are, an abomination coming from Korea in which people eat disgusting amounts of food live in front of a camera. I only had vaguely heard of it, and it’s revolting.

Chapter 307

I woke up at 6:40, and it took me a while to even remember that I was paranoid at the idea of going to war just a few hours prior. I’ll browse the news during the day, a lot of people speculate that the government encouraging people to stockpile food isn’t necessaily because of anticipated upcoming armed conflict, but it could still be ominous as hell, being a sign of economic hyperinflation to come. It could also be in case of lockdowns, there’s been a small eclosion of cases, including in the neighboring city of Changzhou. I hope having been there 10 days ago won’t affect me.

My day went by normally, and I struggle to find anything interesting to talk about, compared with my eventful weekends when I can easily write 1500 words a day. I had Catatonic Class in the afternoon and I was dragging my feet going, but it went really well. They’re decent students when they’re not catatonic, and reviewing for the exam got them out of their slumber.

At night I went to the gym. The Italian couldn’t come, so it was just me and the 40-year-old stocky Chinese blue belt. We practiced a few moves we’ve learned recently, and then had a few old-fashioned deathmatches. I did better than usual but the motherfucker is strong. A good time was had by all. Then I went home, walked the dog, did laundry, showered, ate a big meal, and watched a bunch of Paul Joseph Watson videos. I like PJW. He’s a very angry British man and he says funny things.

Chapter 306

Another day, another dollar. I didn’t have classes in the morning, the lab sessions got canceled due to the upcoming midterm exams, and the strong grade-11 class is so far ahead that I feel it would be unfair and unneeded to do more review and practice. So I gave them free time.

During the lunch break I started the second season of Dave, the semi-autobiographical comedy TV show featuring rapper Lil Dicky. I thought the first season was flawed but had some hilarious moments and a very original self-deprecating current throughout, so I started the next one. It was pretty damn good.

In the afternoon I had a few more classes and also a staff meeting, and it was my turn to write down the minutes so I had to be attentive. There was minutiae about the exams and professional development sessions soon to be given by the corporate office, and also comments on the grade-10 students, who are immature, disruptive and also refuse to speak English. Oh, no shit?! You’re saying that an anti-immersive environment where English is treated as a dead language to study like a found mummy and where the foreign teachers are used as props at best and annoying naggers at worst will lead to students not being engaged in learning the language? I’d have never known.

I got home, and the girlfriend came in soon after, for a change. She proposed we go eat at a Sichuan restaurant, so the three of us headed there. I got beers from the microbrewery next door and we ordered all our classic favorites: fried chicken, julienned potatoes, mapo tofu, beef slices cooked with green peppers, and chicken gizzards with sour green beans. Heaven.

The restaurant is a tiny mom-and-pop affair, and their kid is usually there. Sometimes they sit him at a table with an iPad at full volume, but now he was playing with a piece of scrap metal and a piece of wood, embedding them in one another and banging them.

The girlfriend asked me “Which one do you think is more annoying? The iPad or this?”

“Definitely the iPad! I don’t think he’s annoying at all now, and he’s developing his creativity and doing something with his hands. When he’s plopped in front of a stupid cartoon with the sound on, not only he’s annoying the whole room, but he’s becoming dumber and fatter instead of being a curious energetic child”

We walked home, and I did a bunch of writing, catching up on my diary after the weekend spent traveling. I browsed some WeChat groups and discussion forums, and some people seemed quite alarmed. One guy sent me a government notice urging people to have enough supplies of food and water at home, in case of disaster like flood or typhoon or earthquake, and in another group, people were forwarding videos showing movements of troops in the cities of Hangzhou and Wenzhou. And then mama-in-law asked me what does the Western media say about the situation in Taiwan now. Six PLA planes were caught flying over Taiwanese airspace, and when I tried to dig for info, the VPN was malfunctioning for what is in my case the first time in months. I could get it to work for a few minutes at a time, and I accessed a website from the Ministry of National Defense of the ROC (Taiwan) saying “CAP aircraft tasked, radio warnings issued and air defense missile systems deployed to monitor the activity”

So, holy shit, are we heading to war?! I sure as fuck hope not. I wanna train jiu-jitsu, listen to music, read books, travel, hang out with my girlfriend and my dog, all the while working a job that finances my simple life and is not too taxing. I don’t wanna go to the gulag or dodge American missiles.

I went to bed, a bit stressed. When I’d hear something outside I’d go “What was that?! A jet plane?!?!?! Oh no, it’s just a car leaving the parking lot... or wait, is it a police truck rounding up foreign residents?!?!?! Are they about to bang on the door?” I thought about packing a bug-out bag, but where would I go? Should I bury a bag of supplies 10 km from the city, in a place I can easily reach with my bicycle or on foot on secondary roads?

Keep following http://john-guotong.blogspot.com/ for more updates.

Chapter 305

Up at the ungodly hour of 4:45. I drank water and then headed out in the crisp cold dawn air, grabbing a rent-a-bike to go to the train station. I made it with time to spare, the way I like it, so I sat in a massage chair for half an hour before boarding the bullet train heading home.

I was still tired but didn’t want to sleep and miss my stop. I read the book about the history of Franco-Americans, a chapter on conspiracy theories about plans to annex New England to Quebec and Acadia to form a catholic French-speaking independent state, which led the northern Ku Klux Klan chapters trying to intimidate that race of badass descendants of lumberjacks and coureurs des bois, to no avail. Then the last chapters were about assimilation, how the textile industry moved elsewhere and those mill towns turned into ghost towns. Franco-Americans then migrated to bigger cities like Boston or further afield, losing their language. I do think it’s a bit sad, but it’s also fairly natural and even desirable, after all I do want immigrants to whatever land (including my own) to learn the local language and not form enclaves.

I got off the train and took a taxi home. I had a few hours left before going to work, the principal had given me the morning off since there was no way I could go to that show and come back in time. I was honest when I asked him for that favor and said it’s for strictly hedonistic personal reasons, and he said it’s cool as long as I find someone to cover my classes and teach those groups at another time during the week. That’s nice, and fair, I feel like. Some bosses would just make a sour face and say “No!”, just because, and those are the bosses that coincidentally have their subordinates cut corners and be unwilling to do anything extra. Now, conversely, those small favors make me more likely to volunteer for additional tasks and enjoy my job even more, and also some open communication like that is better than calling in sick or lying.

I whipped up a quick pasta dish, ate and took a nap. Then I got to work and taught a grade-12 double and a grade-11 review period. Between classes I compiled questions for the mid-term exam, and when I went to refill my tea, something caught my attention. The Srilankan economics teacher who’s still quarantining is teaching online from his apartment, and I heard his voice coming out of a classroom. When I peeked in, half the students were gone, and the remainder were dead asleep in the dark, nobody paying any attention to the Zoom lecture playing on the screen.

“Should I do something?”

I didn’t do anything.

I got home, and watched the UFC. I just skipped three or four cards, but Saturday’s event was too big to miss. I watched the first four fights, all of them won by a Russian or Russian-adjacent. Magomed Ankalaev outpointed Volkan Özdemir, tower of power Alexander Volkov did the same to Marcin Tybura in a slow and forgettable battle of heavyweights, but the most memorable fight was the return of Khamzat Chimaev, the most hyped fighter to drop on the scene in a long time. The Chechen-Swedish wrestler won three fights flawlessly in a short succession last year but then caught Covid and was out for a year. Now he was set to fight Li Jingliang, an exciting welterweight gatekeeper, and he slaughtered him, taking him down immediately and dominating with a varied and smothering grappling attack until he choked my fellow Chinese out. Choo-choo, the hype train is now at full speed.

Another practitioner of Caucasus-style wrestlesmashing was next up. Islam Makhachev has been climbing the ranks of the lightweight division and many see him as a future champion, picking up the trail of destruction where his longtime training partner Khabib left. He totally dismantled highly-regarded New Zealander Dan Hooker, taking him down, smeshing him and finishing him with a nasty kimura armlock. He used to have the personality of wet cardboard but now hopefully with his mentor’s guidance he will embrace the role of the extremely confident yet humble badass with bone-dry humor, like he did in his post-fight interview. He mentioned that he should be next for the title, since most of the other top contenders have already lost and now are only there to “do business”.

Seeing all those incredible displays of fighting prowess pumped me to go to the gym, where we trained submission setups from X-guard. Then we sparred and I got smashed pretty hard, but hey, life of a white belt. My beard is getting annoyingly long, to the point that not only my hairs get tugged at, but they often end up in my mouth. I should trim it soon, I’m starting to look like an Amish.

I got back home, took the dog out, and ate the barbecued mutton the girlfriend had made, along with a small portion of spaghetti and some steamed asparagus that was going bad. I watched the rest of the UFC card. Piotr Yan has been absolutely impressive in his UFC run culminating in the 135-pound title, but then lost it in one of the derpiest in-cage moments of modern MMA, when he threw an illegal knee on a downed Aljamain Sterling he was dominating. They were supposed to rematch but Sterling got injured, so an interim belt was set up against Cory Sandhagen. Great. I hate constant immediate rematches, even when they’re necessary I’d rather have a fresh matchup. Yan once again impressed with his relentless angry Russian little man boxing attack, in an action-packed fight.

Then Glover Teixeira won the light heavyweight belt in a frankly strange fight, the champ Jan Blachowicz and his Legendary Polish Power™ didn’t seem to be in the fight at all, and the 42-year-old Brazilian won in the second round, becoming the second-oldest champ in UFC history. Good for him, though that probably means he’s fighting Jiri Prochazka next, and that’s not a fate I wish on my worst enemy.

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.