Chapter 346

I woke up around 9:30 and put the UFC on. Bantamweight legend Dominic Cruz survived some early adversity from Pedro Munhoz and won a decision, then after a close fight between featherweight bangers Dan Ige and Josh Emmett, it was time for the main card. I don’t know quite how to feel about Sean O’Malley: one one hand, he’s got the personality of an annoying teenager mixed with one of those TikTok rappers, and it’s a bit grating to see him pushed so hard by the UFC to be the next big thing while still facing nearly only overmatched competition, but on the other hand, he is damn fun to watch and more importantly, he’s just playing the game and getting as much money as he can. I would be a hypocrite if I sat there all day shitting on the UFC and how much they underpay their fighters while begrudging a young athlete who just does what he has to do to get his fair share. Still, after his dismantling of midcarder Raulian Paiva, I hope he gets someone in the top 10.

Then Kai Kara-France showed some serious power at flyweight by knocking out cold former champ Cody Garbrandt, and Geoff Neal edged Santiago Ponzinibbio. Now it was time for the championship bouts. Normally, Amanda Nunes fights have little hype to them other than being seen as an occasion to witness the greatest female fighter of all time slaughter another unworthy contender, and this one was no exception. After a strong start though, the champ just wilted and Julianna Peña took over with sloppy yet very aggressive striking, shocking the world. Biggest upset ever?

My Galaxy Brain Take is, what if Nunes lost on purpose? She was tired of all her fights receiving zero hype, so she thought fuck it, I'll make it exciting, have a guaranteed rematch that will get tons of attention, and my future fights will not be seen as only lambs to the slaughter but as interesting matchups because “Hey, OK, maybe Miesha Tate is 42 years old and 2-2 in her last 4 and already lost to Nunes and is just there because there are like 8 fighters in the whole division, but hey, remember what Peña did?!?!?!” But nah, she likely just got tired, and had overestimated Peña.

Then in the main event, I got proven wrong again. I thought Dustin Poirier was the uncrowned champion who just got sidetracked by those stupid Conor McGregor fights, and that Charles Oliveira was just the placeholder in the meantime. But nah, Olives is legit as hell, and dominated the Cajun boxer. He’s been in the UFC for 14 years now though he’s only 32, and I remember when he was just a midcarder who had problems making weight and would impress with his slick jiu-jitsu in one fight and dud in the next one. All hail the champ.

After that, I went to work on the car’s bed frame again. I listened to Harmonium’s first album in my earbuds, and when it was over, I put on the brutal deathgrind from Benighted. A long time ago I would have been narcistically amazed at my own eclectic musical tastes and how I can go from the most mellow to the most violent stuff but now I just see it all as music, if it’s good, it’s good. It took me a while, toiling in the wet, cold weather, and then the frame was ready. It barely fit, and by that I mean I had to kick it hard to shove it in the space while letting go of a few loud swear words, but it also means it won’t wobble. Now we have to get a plank of wood and a mattress, a pretty exciting project.

I went back home and took a hot bath, listening to Harmonium’s second album with a glass of sparkling wine, and then had a relaxing evening watching history documentaries and videos about weightlifting and playing a bit of Mount & Blade. A nice weekend, I guess.

Chapter 345

I woke up at 11. I like sleeping.

After eating a big brunch of pierogies with sour cream, a curry pie, and some baked fish, I went outside and started assembling the metal frame we’ll use for our small camper car. It was repetitive work, putting three bolts and nuts in every corner or T-junction, and I did it directly in the car, which meant I was often bent over in uncomfortable positions. Halfway through, I was out of bolts, so I drove off to a hardware store. I was faced with the all too goddamn fucking common “meiyou” (don’t have) with a drooping mouth and an idiotic hand wave, so what should have been a 10-minute errand turned into being ping-ponged from one useless excuse of a hardware store to another, until I just rage quit and drove to the gigantic complex by the highway, that actually stocks such simple things.

I got back, assembled a few more segments, and left the rest for tomorrow. I was hungry, so I made cream cheese bagels and ate them while watching some stuff on YouTube. Some American guy with a channel about obscure and interesting music did a video about Harmonium, a Quebec progressive folk-rock band from the 1970s, which was pretty cool to see. There was also a link to a documentary made during that time period about the band’s trip to California, and it made me want to listen to some songs of theirs again. I knew a few of their classics that entered Quebec’s culture, and now that I have more, ahem, maturity I guess you could say, I think it’s great stuff.

Then I went to the gym to train jiu-jitsu. It was quite the eclectic group of people on the mats: a 6-year-old boy, a 15-year-old girl, the Italian blue belt, and a guy who’s been curiously watching us and whom I convinced to come and try. So it wasn’t much of a one-size-fits-all training session, everyone trained something according to their skills and size and needs, and I was helping them out. The new guy was strong, but knew less than nothing, and my one year and a half of experience shone, I could control him at will. The Italian blue belt and I taught him a few moves he could implement to get out of some situations and attack, same thing with the kids, and a good time was had by all.

I rode home and ate the ribs the girlfriend had made, with rice and vegetables. We watched F is for Family, and then she wanted to watch videos about something she just read in the Chinese version of the Lonely Planet magazine she bought, the Kungsleden hiking trail, which spans 400 km in the remote and at times desolate but also strikingly beautiful northern expanses of Sweden. Can you tell we got a case of the itchy feet?

I did the dishes, and then played Mount & Blade Warband, attacking castles and generally ruining the Khergit Khanate’s shit. I stayed up a bit too late and felt stupid for it. I’m trying to build muscle, I need some solid restorative sleep.

Chapter 344

I woke up surprisingly refreshed, despite the five and a half hours of sleep. Then I went to work and taught all my classes. There were a few funny highlights but nothing that I could really describe here without knowing all the quirks of the personalities of my students.

In the afternoon I had a bit of free time and decided I should check out Cynic’s discography. Cynic is a metal band that got started in the early 90s, pioneering some kind of progressive death metal, and after a long hiatus, they just released another album. I checked out their 1993 debut Focus and... it was extremely boring. I didn’t even finish the first track. Then I put on an album by Icelandic black metal band Misþyrming, titled Söngvar elds og óreiðu. They sure love their weird letters there.

I got home, got changed, and got to the gym. I did my leg day, listening to some good misanthropic black metal, and then got home with heavy concrete in the lower part of my body. It will be worse two days from now. I chopped a big block of beef in small pieces, seasoned it, and made taco meat. I also prepared a homemade salsa, with leftover hot peppers, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, spices and corn. The girlfriend and I ate our tacos while watching the new episodes of F is for Family, an adult cartoon we like quite a bit. It takes place in the 1970s and is a tragicomedy about a family in some Rust Belt town, dealing with all sorts of problems. Then, after she did the dishes, she said she wanted to watch travel videos, so we traveled vicariously to Guatemala, Congo and Palau through some vlogs made by random people on YouTube. Soon, soon, we could travel the world like we used to, let’s hope.

Then I watched the UFC Embedded episodes for the upcoming UFC 269 pay-per-view, and then a whole card of King Of The Streets. It’s weirdly fascinating, and as a combat sports purist, it doesn’t get much realer than that. I cringe in fear a bit watching it, I can get behind the whole “bare-knuckle, KO only, no rules” format and the zero-frills presentation, but the concrete floor is just a matter of time until one guy gets a serious injury or worse. Still, the sad truth, like when we talk about more “sanitized” combat sports or other dangerous endeavors like stunts or football, is that some madmen are gonna do it regardless, whether there’s a camera or not. 

Chapter 343

I had the weirdest of dreams. It lasted a really long time, or at least there’s a long segment I remember somewhat vividly. I was living in the Arctic, in a settlement of a thousand people, and some weird shit happened. My dog was running around, and when he stepped on the front lawn (or front patch of tundra) of a cabin, an Inuit came out and threw a flatscreen TV at the spazzy little animal, missing him by inches. I started hurling insults at the guy, and he threw a car iron at me. I dodged it, consider chucking it back, but decided not to escalate and just walk away. Later, I was teaching a chemistry class, and the belligerent Inuit was in my lab, and awkwardly avoided eye contact with me. And after that, a Japanese expatriate got murdered in a research station, and a Chinese man got accused. What a wild, eventful life. Maybe I should move to Nunavut.

I supervised a lab, and then sat in the office listening to the Metal Minded podcast. They reviewed four albums quite positively, but the two I did listen to were a bit boring to me. Hypocrisy, well, it was Hypocrisy, and Ossuaire failed to tickle my black metal sweet spot.

I went home, and was welcomed with a paper tissue carnage. I didn’t close the bedroom door so the retarded dog got in there, grabbed the roll of tissue on the bedstand, and shredded it to a million pieces. “臭狗子!”, I yelled at him. He hid under the dinner table, and when I tried to dislodge him from there, he ran to the toilet, effectively turning himself in. I closed the door of his prison.

I ate leftovers and went back to work. Crazy Class were in the lab, and I had to yell at two boys for splashing each other with distilled water bottles. I’m all for them having a bit of silly fun in the lab but physical horseplay is off limits, too much dangerous shit around.

I went home, watched a crazy interesting video about Jussie Smollett made by a criminal psychologist, ate a big-ass meal of leftovers and garlic bread, and took a nap before going to the bar on my longboard. The dog came along, and as soon as we walked in he made a beeline for a table of patrons enjoying a plate of onion rings with their drinks and scratched their legs. He has no manners.

There was quite a big turnover for the pub quiz, with a total of five teams fighting for the cash prize and bragging rights. First round was Canada-themed and I aced most questions, but the following rounds were about pop culture, Christmas music, celebrities, and other shit I have almost no knowledge of. My team placed second, by one goddamn point, to our arch-rivals.

I stuck around for a bit longer, talking to a British pal of mine, the one who tried out jiu-jitsu the night prior. He said he really liked it and considered buying the gi and gym membership, but his girlfriend heavily, heavily disagreed, since BJJ practice coincides with their usual couple hang-out time. Ah well. We talked about current events, politics, China, the whole thing, and he came out with a brilliant spot-on quote about what it feels to watch the YouTube channel China Uncensored: “Okay... okay... hmmm, okay... oh, BOLLOCKS!!!”

I stayed way past my bedtime, then rode home. Worth it.

Chapter 342

Another day. I was running a bit late to school and walked in the twelfth grade classroom just as the bell was ringing, so I didn’t have time to review my notes and felt like my performance was subpar. Can’t win ‘em all.

I had another grade-12 class and it went OK, I guess. Then I went home to eat and hang out with the dog. I fried some chicken sausages and made fried rice with eggs with some leftover rice that’s been on the counter for three days and was getting quite hard. I read recently that leftover rice can contain bacilus cereus and make you sick, now that’s a bit harrowing, leftover rice has been a big part of my diet for years, everybody knows day-old rice is the best base to make fried rice or R. n’ S.

I had two eleventh-grade classes in the afternoon, with a long, long pause in between. I started to get a bit bored, after I finished the little tasks I had to do. I listened to half of the new Hypocrisy album, which was quite hyped, being the first offering from the Swedish melodic death metal outfit in years. I found it very boring and exactly the same as all of their latest albums. Then I looked at Clown World news, an old story reemerged, about the American actor Jussie Smollett (allegedly) faking a hate crime. He said he got assaulted by Trump supporters in Chicago who called him a “faggot nigger”, but there were holes in his story and it turned out he (allegedly) paid two Nigerian guys to beat him up. What a weird hoax, if it indeed happened in that (alleged) way. Now he’s in court, accused of falsifying a hate crime or whatever. When it happened a few months ago, I remember hearing a commentator say “When victomhood is such a valuable currency, no wonder there are counterfeiters” and that’s brilliant.

I went home, and soon after headed to the gym. A British pal of mine came to try out BJJ, and though the Italian blue belt taught him fundamental moves, he was also thrown in the deep end and tried out some more advanced stuff. Then we all sparred, he is quite strong but not used to the energy expenditure and conservation so he blew his wad quickly like beginners are prone to do (I consider myself to still be among their ranks, to be clear). A good time was had by all, he said he liked it all, except having the blade of a hand crush his trachea during side control escape drills.

I went home, took the dog out, went to buy some rice, and ate a R. n’ S.  dinner with the Sichuan food the girlfriend had ordered. While my laundry was spinning, I watched half a documentary called The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, about an extended family of hillbillies living lives of petty crime, drug consumption and idleness. West Virginia is one of those states you never hear anything good about, it’s got third-world levels of dilapidation and poverty. I crashed hard after 45 minutes I’ll finish it tomorrow or Friday.

Chapter 341

I woke up at 6:30, lazed in bed for a bit longer, and then took Triangle Face outside. I brought a bag of garbage down, and one of the old women washing their mops outside by the tap excitedly asked me to give it to her. She must have known with her sixth sense that there were recyclable materials in there.

I went to school and taught mass spectrometry to the twelfth-graders before supervising a lab session. At lunchtime I ate a Cornish pie and a bunch of hard-boiled eggs, and then went back to teach more classes.

We had a meeting in the afternoon. The principal talked about the upcoming Christmas celebrations, or lack thereof. Last year, we had a big talent show, we sang the Chinese version of Jingle Bells, and my Hells Angels coworker dressed up like Santa Claus, but now, Christmas-themed activities are banned or at least severely discouraged. I’ve been in China for almost as long as Norman Fucking Bethune so I’m very unphased by shit like that, one year the Chinese embrace the holiday period and all the kitsch and consoomerism that comes along with it, the next year some higher-up in a baijiu-induced stupor tells his minions to snuff the evil barbarian foreign influence on the masses, and thus the cycle goes.

We also normally go to the city’s fanciest hotel for a staff dinner, subsidised by the corporate office, but now they said they can’t give us any budget for anything done outside of the school grounds. The principal pushed against that and showed us the e-mail exchange he’s had with some head honcho in Shanghai, to no avail. I shrugged, it’s really not a hill I want to die on, I can take it or leave it and will just go along with whatever they decide upon, whether we go to the Marriott and fork the bill ourselves or we just order some pizza at the school or both. That also got people speculating whether the head office just used that as a pretext to save a couple thousand yuan, it’s a bit of a stretch but I can’t imagine those “education consulting” companies, who were racking up the rems like Scrooge McDuck only a few years ago, to be doing extremely well in the current circumstances. Whatever, they keep paying me handsomely and on time so I’m a happy worker bee.

I went home, got changed and quickly went to the gym to do my shoulder workout. Then I rode to a bar to the western part of town to meet some pals, and we went to the apartment of one of them to have a little barbecue. Well, little, there was a mountain of meat, way too much for the six guys that were there. I played two chess games while the charcoal was getting ready, lost them both, one of them in a rather embarrassing matter. Ah well. Then I manned the grill, flipping sausages and ribs and burger patties and chicken wings, it felt very primal and very good. We keep getting told by goody-two-shoes that we should go vegan or eat bugs to save the planet, but there’s something hard to replicate about grilling meat with a bunch of homies.

It was a pretty civilised affair, though beer was consumed and some vulgar conversations were had, and I was on my way home just before 11 to get to bed at a reasonable time.

Chapter 340

Woke up at 6:30 and started my day. On my way to work, I listened to a Jocko Willink podcast, he was discussing with yet another US serviceman who got blown up in Iraq. I have a certain admiration for the courage of these men and their sense of purpose, but also feel angry at the big wigs who decide to go on these very avoidable wars and sacrifice all this cannon fodder.

I had classes in the morning and can barely remember a thing about them. Maybe I’m becoming demented like Joe Biden (end of quote). I went home for lunch, ate leftovers and watched some UFC fights from the weekend. They were excellent, and apparently the co-main and main events were even better. I was looking forward to watch them later at night.

One student from a twelfth-grade class slept in my face and I kicked him out. Not being able to maintain consciousness is such a failure at life, back in the day you’d get gored by a sabre-tooth tiger or a rival Homo Sapiens for that. Other than that, the class went okay, as far as teaching low-energy teenagers go.

At 5, I went to the school gym for the badminton tournament. My grade-12 partner and I won our match 15-8, advancing in the bracket. Then I went home, dropped my things, and went to the gym to train BJJ. The three of us did some nogi things I learned Saturday, a good time was had by all.

I went back home, and was greeted by the tantalizing smell of ribs in the oven. After I showered and plopped on the couch like a walrus, the girlfriend brought me a plate with a mountain of meat and fries, and I devoured it all while watching the remainder of the UFC main card. Kyrgyz technical striker Rafael Fiziev kept climbing the ranks of the lightweight division, knocking out his opponent with a sweet spinning kick in the third round, and then José Aldo showed he still has it, completely dispatching fellow 135-pound contender Rob Font. If he fights TJ Dillashaw next, I’ll be a very happy panda.

Chapter 339

I woke up around 11, took a shower, packed my stuff and went to the jiu-jitsu gym. This time it was a gi session headed by a Polish purple belt, and it was really worthwhile, with a chain of sweeps from X-guard. I unfortunately twisted something in my shoulder during the live rolls at the end and had to sit it out a bit.

Afterwards I grabbed a quick noodle lunch with two girls from the gym. My fried noodles had mushrooms, and I dislike mushrooms, they make me gag. I still ate the whole plate. Then I bought some goodies at a small imported grocery store and rode to the train station on the leafy streets of Shanghai, a city that’s really growing on me. Everything went smoothly, there’s an enormous volume of passengers going through that station but they manage to make it work. I had a bit of time to spare, and saw that there were two Tim Horton’s in the station. I peeked in curiously, and briefly considered buying a donut, but I’m getting fat enough as it is even with all the exercise I do, and also the last time I had a donut I nearly couldn’t finish it, not used anymore to huge amounts of processed sugar. Weird to think the teenage me would split a dozen with a friend on a regular basis (and no, I wasn’t smoking the Devil’s lettuce).

The ride took an hour and 15 minutes, and upon arrival we all had to fill out a form saying which area of Shanghai we went to, and hand it to nurses dressed in plastic burkas. It’s weird that we’re all so used to that now, it will soon be two full years of that stupid pandemic and there’s still no light at the end of the tunnel.

I drove home, listening to the album Massive Killing Capacity by Dismember. It was pretty bland, run-of-the-mill Stockholm death metal. Then I got home, and the girlfriend asked me if I wanted to eat dinner.

“I ate on the train, like I always do, even if I just had a meal before. Do you know why?”

“Because you want to annoy people?”

“No... it’s because when I eat I can take off my mask!”

So yeah, life hack for you, and it applies to airplanes as well. Have an open bag or container of a given snack in front of you at all times (in my case, a box of raspberries), and nobody will bother you for not strapping a useless little face diaper in front of your mouth. I had to put it on for a few minutes when entering and exiting the train, which sucked balls, but hey, #weliveinasociety.

I did laundry, took a hot bath, watched a few videos, and went to bed early. And thus ended my weekend. It was a fun one.

Chapter 338

I woke up around 7, finished packing my bag, took the dog out and drove to the train station. I parked underground and got on the train to Shanghai, in a routine that was becoming quite familiar. I got a rent-a-bike to the same hostel I stayed at last time, dropped my bag, and then rode to Workshop Jiu-Jitsu. I attended the nogi class, where we drilled various sweeps from single-leg X-guard and other modern grappling wizardry. The class was very good and involved plenty of position sparring, and then there were free rolls. I went against a young Chinese guy and did pretty well, catching him in a mounted triangle. Nogi jiu-jitsu is very slippery.

I went back to the hostel, ate two slices of pizza and washed it down with a Stone IPA, and headed back out. I had the idea of contacting the capoeira people I know in the metropolis, and as it happened, there was an open roda at 4 o’clock. I got in as the children’s class was finishing up, and the grown-ups slowly came in. A bunch of them were surprised by my surprise visit and came to give me a big hug. About 25 people were there in total, most of them at a high level, and we played for over an hour and a half. Normally I dislike the roda format of capoeira and how it leads to two people playing while everybody else just sits around and waits for their turn, but now it suited me, I was already beat from jiu-jitsu and was fine with something a bit lower intensity, and also the length of the whole thing made it possible to get in often. A great time was had by all.

I joined them on the group dinner afterwards, at a Japanese izakaya about 20 minutes away. It was great talking to old pals and meeting new ones, downing cups of sake, peach liqueur and beer and munching on all those kickass Japanese salty snacks. I had to excuse myself around 19:30 but was told by them all that I should come more often. That warmed my black heart.

I rode a rent-a-bike a further 2 km west, to the gritty Yuyintang livehouse, where I paid for my ticket and walked in just as Loudspeaker was getting on stage. I already talked about how much I love Loudspeaker, the no-nonsense power trio churning out a furious style of crust punk, after their excellent set I talked to guys I know who play in bands playing later on the bill and said that they better deliver, a hard task when Loudspeaker opens up the show.

To further complicate matters, Conch was up next, a band I was told not to miss. It’s another power-trio, and they played with their backs to the crowd, not even acknowledging our presence once, crushing us with a hypnotic doom/sludge metal. Sick.

Then it was Bad Treatment, a band with a mixed line-up of expats and Chinese, in more of an old-school punk rock vibe. A good breather before we got hit hard again by Demonslaught 666, a band doing their first live performance, all made up of youngsters emulating the black-thrash of Venom and other early days’ legions of Satan. The female bassist was wearing an Aura Noir shirt under her spiked leather jacket, now that’s a band I hadn’t heard of in a while. After their set I went to pee upstairs and hung out in the bands’ backstage area at the invitation of a pal of mine. The small guitarist from Demonslaught 666 walked in and I drunkenly slapped his shoulder, saying “Great show!” He smiled and started saying in halting English “I missed a part” but I interrupted him: “Who cares? Black-thrash doesn’t have to be tight, it just has to be evil!” The singer from Chimera Cult, nursing a beer next to us, nodded and confirmed it was indeed very evil.

It was getting late, six bands on a bill with 30-minute sets each, I’d have been fine with 20 minutes. I opened another beer I sneaked in from a craft beer shop across the street, and got ready for Rat King and the destruction brought forth by that expat five-piece. Violent as hell, and I couldn’t resist going in the pit a little bit. Chimera Cult closed the show, with their high-octane Pantera-style metal. A great show, six local bands in different subgenres and different approaches to their live performance, Shanghai has got a very healthy scene and I’m already looking forward to the next one.

I rode home on the quiet streets, and saw that Homeslice Pizza was still open. I got myself the same thing I always order, a Hawaiian and a spicy sausage, that I devoured before going to crash in my bunk bed.

Chapter 337

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 336

I woke up at 6:30 and got started with my day. I felt much better, and could go to work. In the morning, I had a lab with Catatonic Class, and in the afternoon it was Crazy Class’s turn. They were particularly crazy that day, singing and reenacting dance moves they saw on Douyin. As long as they put at least 80% effort and don’t do ANY horseplay with the chemicals or glassware, I’m all for them having a bit of fun.

I went to the office and there was a candy box on my desk. One of the economics teachers is getting married, and part of Chinese wedding culture is that everyone at the workplace gets a box. I ate one Godiva chocolate and one little wheat cracker and kept the rest for later.

Between classes, I sat around and graded homework. I listened to snippets of depressing Clown World news, there are black nationalists on social media whose chip on the proverbial shoulder is getting heavier and heavier, and some are explicitly calling for the genocide of whypipo. They use racial slurs that are frankly more comical than insulting, like “mayo monkeys”. That reminds me of when I ventured into yellow supremacist pages on Reddit back in the day, where the angry Asian-American losers who dwelled in that sorry corner of the internet refered to Caucasians as “cumskins”. Seems like a race war is brewing, and it’s hardly surprising, with how much the media is stoking the flames.

I then felt like listening to ultraviolent music. I put on a split by Capitalist Casualties and Hellnation, and then clicked on an album curiously titled Possessed to Skate, which turned out to be a great compilation of West Coast powerviolence pioneers like Charles Bronson and Spazz.

I went home and soon after headed to the gym. Chest day, hurray. I can now comfortably press 1.5 plates, which is miserable for a 190-pound man, but I’m moving there. Next two weeks will be the 5/3/1 sets, and then I’ll adjust my maxes.

Then I took the dog out, took a cold shower, and made dinner. I baked a dish of Brussel sprouts and bacon, that I got in the big box of imported food, and also ate one piece of Yorkshire pudding. I blindly ordered it, and was surprised to see it’s not really a pudding, more like a hollow piece of light fluffy bread. British people are so fucking weird.

I watched videos on YouTube of medieval warfare specialists criticizing or praising movies or TV shows for the weaponry and tactics displayed in them, and unsurprisingly, many were seen in a very negative light due to anachronisms, inaccuracies or pure retardation.

I was still hungry, so I ate some of the dumplings the girlfriend made, and a bowl of scrambled eggs. I received the tracks from a Belgian musician who wanted to do a split album with me, and uploaded the whole thing on my Bandcamp page. His stuff is much more in a harsh noise vein, and can hardly be called music, it mostly sounds like a glitchy machine with horribly distorted vocals, when it’s not just an uninterrupted loud buzz. I like noise when it’s used as an interlude between grindcore or doom metal tracks, but by itself, it’s not very satisfying. Still, pretty cool that he contacted me and proposed to release music together.

Chapter 335

I woke up in the middle of the night, with a serious case of the liquid shits. I went to do what I had to, and then went back to bed and slept uneasily. In the morning, I also expelled a bunch of runny curry, and as soon as I drank water my stomach grumbled again. No idea what caused it, if it was food poisoning it would have been much faster to hit, I reckon. Maybe a mild stomach bug. I called in sick.

I stayed in bed a bit more, but then had to take the dog out lest he’d pee on the floor. I bundled up in warm clothes and went for a bit of walk, then relaxed at home, reading, writing, and watching a bit of YouTube. I popped some Chinese medicine, drank a lot of hot water and had two little cups of yogurt, something that always helps me reestablish a healthy bacterial colony in my gut. For lunch I made spaghetti with the beef leftovers and the residual sauce.

I started to feel a bit better, so I could go run some errands. I rode the longboard with the dog to the girlfriend’s school, but she hadn’t brought the car there, so I had to ride back. I was listening to a French podcast, an interview with a YouTuber named Antoine Daniel. He was pretty huge several years ago, with a series where he commented on absurdly funny and weird videos he found on the internet, I watched them all but then he started to publish only once in a blue moon before disappearing from the internet completely. He revealed he didn’t handle fame very well, didn’t like being recognized in public, and developed depression and anxiety. It’s always very interesting to hear stories like that.

I drove to the market and picked up all our construction materials. Back home, I started to assemble the frame for our mini-RV, just to get the hang of it, but that will be a weekend project for the future.

I took a nap, and woke up at 6. I wondered if I should go to BJJ practice but decided against, I was a bit weakened and still had the va-vite. It would suck to be squeezed like a tube of toothpaste. So I stayed home with the girlfriend, and had yogurt, carrot sticks and a bagel for dinner before crashing early.

Chapter 334

Yet another day. One more month and 2021 will be in the rearview mirror, and finally I will be able to focus on other writing projects.

I had a practical session with the eleventh-graders, it was a bit of a boring one on their side, they just mix the chemicals and wait, stopwatch in hand, for the color to change and then do calculations on the rate of the reaction. Then I went home, had lunch, and had an interview with another school, located in Nanjing. I’m happy at my current position, but sometimes it’s good to test the waters elsewhere, get some interview practice, and keep options open. Also, the girlfriend is as unhappy as ever in her position, and that Nanjing school has an art program so we’re looking for a couple’s position. I talked to the principal, a guy I met in the past a few times in an informal manner, and whom I get along with. So it was relaxed, but he still asked me the usual questions. It went quite well I think, let’s see how it pans out.

I taught more classes in the afternoon. The guy who runs the black metal radio show in the Arctic sent me a link to the episode I helped him with, and I listened to it between classes. It was really great, he played all the Chinese black metal tracks I sent him, with lengthy and detailed introductions. I realized though that he didn’t use the notes I wrote, and only then did I go through the e-mails we had exchanged and saw that I didn’t in fact send him those notes. Oops. I did send the Word file with all the audio tracks, but since the folder was too big, I went back and sent all the songs one by one and just forgot to also send the notes. He did a tremendous job as always though, researching the info himself and presenting it with his passionate and erudite style.

I went home, dropped my bag and immediately went to the girlfriend’s school with the dog in tow. We were supposed to go pick up the construction materials, but the guy texted the girlfriend and said he can’t stay at his shop late because he has to go pick his child up at the school. Ah well, change of plan. Since we were already there though, we decided on the spot to go to the pizzeria, it’s been a while. So I drove in traffic for a bit and got to the street where it’s located.

I parallel-parked, and a skinny man with a wispy mustache ran to my window, knocked on it, and said I just scratched his car. I didn’t feel anything, and thought there was enough distance, but he was all mad and called the police. Fucking hell.

There was the tiniest of tiny scratches on the otherwise immaculately white bumper, and he pointed at a scratch on my own bumper that he thought was the smoking gun piece of evidence. I scrolled through my phone a bit and found a picture of the car from several days ago, with the front bumper already damaged. We argued a bit, and then the fine representatives of the constabulary force eventually arrived. They went through the process of listening to both parties argue like they likely do multiple times daily, and one of them pointed his flashlight at my bumper, saying “Yeah, this is an old scratch no doubt, but here’s one that’s fresh. Look at the tiny paint chips. If you dispute it, we will tow both cars to do tests, but the culprit or false accuser will have to pay the fees” Better just admit that I probably grazed the guy’s bumper, and get it over with. They got our insurance papers and printed some kind of receipt I had to sign.

So I was in a bit of a bad mood even though the pizza was amazing. I did some kind of mock job interview for the girlfriend, since she will also talk to the Nanjing principal soon. She was a bit nervous but I gave her pointers and good buzzwords to use in her answers.

We got home and I made a bit of music on FL Studio while she kept preparing for her interview, then we went to bed and watched an episode of Foundation.

Chapter 333

I started my day with some good fucking death metal, a Thai band called Oldskull. They delivered masterfully, when death metal is done right there isn’t better music on this planet.

I browsed Facebook a bit, a friend of mine who lives in Shanghai posted pictures of her sleeping on the floor of her office in a sleeping bag. She had to quarantine over the weekend, amidst the new variant scare and a possible case in her district. The funny thing is, she learned about that on Friday afternoon, and was allowed to go home to get her stuff first. How does that make any modicum of sense? I guess they want to minimize people’s movements and facilitate monitoring, not stop them completely from living, but still, it sounds silly as hell.

I then had a class with the twelfth-graders. I do a lot of review with them, going through past papers. At times I can get quite impatient, wondering if I should review or reteach everything, when I get blank stares or mouth droops after asking simple goddamn questions about things we’ve already seen 834 times. I have to avoid using “or” questions, because then I just get 50-50 blind guesses, and also I get very annoyed at how they can’t read new words. Yeah I get it, English is messed up and has a lot of illogical pronunciation, but most of the time you can still read a word out loud and not be too far off, can’t you? Well, that’s not how a Chinese brain operates, if the word is not memorized in their database, it’s a no-compute.

I went home for lunch, ate leftovers, and opened a box we just received in the mail. I ordered a bunch of food from a delivery company, and was all giddy when I saw it all. Bagels, pies, sausages, steaks, a block of goat cheese, and various other goodies. I just went there to order a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie but before I knew it I had put 750 yuan worth of stuff in my cart.

In the afternoon I had a double with the other twelfth-graders, and then went downstairs to the lab prep room and mixed the solutions for tomorrow’s practical. It took me about an hour and a half. At some point, I heard a loud, shrieking, machine-enhanced noise that startled me (in a country where loud, shrieking, machine-enhanced noises are pretty much the national sport). I investigated where it came from, it was from the open door of a second-floor classroom, a grade-10 teacher was teaching with one of those headset microphones that amplified and distorted her voice. I can’t imagine being one of those poor kids, holy hell that must be painful. I quickly fished for my mp3 player and drowned the noise.

I got back to the office and chilled for a bit. Some friends on Facebook were talking about the Messe des Morts black metal festival, which just took place in Montreal. Good to see the world is emerging from that long Covid-induced hangover, though who knows what it got in store for us. I listened to one album from a band that was featured on there, called Délétère. It was some decent melodic black metal but nothing that made me go all “woah”.

I went home, put meat in the slow cooker, watched BJJ instructionals then went to train. We drilled moves from top and bottom half guard and then had some solid rolls, a good time was had by all. Then I met the girlfriend and the dog at a park and we went home together. I ate a giant pile of meat and then went to bed early to read a few chapters before crashing.

Chapter 332

I dreamt that I was in Papua New Guinea, traveling by bicycle. The problem is that there were no roads, only narrow jungle paths and rivers full of coffee-colored water. I wasn’t having a good time.

I rose around 9, and enjoyed a lazy morning. I ate four eggs, three pieces of toast, and the last of my homemade salami while watching Gavin McInnes videos on YouTube, did a bit of writing and cleaning, and then headed to the gym to do my deadlifts, good mornings, leg raises and shrugs. I listened to the album Better Off Dead by Sodom, one of my least favorites from their extensive catalog of badassery. It’s leaning a bit too much in the mid-tempo heavy metal style, with covers from Tank and Thin Lizzy. Still, a mediocre Sodom album is a pretty damn good album, like everyone knows.

I went back home and ate Sichuan food leftovers, and soon after the girlfriend came back from getting her nails painted and we headed out. First, we dropped the cat litter and a bag of cat food to the Eccentric Ukrainian, who just rescued a feline, then we went to a massive outdoors market to buy rods to build a frame in our future mini-RV. The Chinese are probably the least concise people in the world, and the shopkeeper and the girlfriend talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked forever, in what could be summarized as “Here’s what we need, it’s on this piece of paper” “OK, it’s getting a bit late now, but I’ll cut them tomorrow morning and you can come pick them up any time. Please pay a 50-yuan deposit” “Thank you, bye bye”

We got home, and she made a chicken soup in the new clay pot her mom sent us. I watched a few videos by 7 jours sur Terre, one was about the demographic disaster happening in Africa and overflowing into Europe, and the other one was about North Korea, and why the USA and China are both willing to maintain the status quo. Short answer: it gives an excuse to the former to station over 100 000 troops at the edge of the Pacific Rim, and the latter has a strong buffer that prevents a land invasion through the most viable route.

We ate the chicken soup and some thick noodles while watching The Office, then I did the dishes and soon was in bed, reading with a small glass of whiskey.

Chapter 331

I woke up at 11, ate a bowl of scrambled eggs and a slice of my homemade salami, and put the final touches to a travel story for my French blog before publishing it. It’s about one of last legs of last summer’s road trip, when we all went to the Tibetan village of Zhagana.

In the afternoon I went to clean up the inside of the car, and make measurements with my tape for the eventual frame we’ll put our bed on, if we want to turn it into a cool micro-RV. That will take a bit of creativity and ingenuity but it’s quite exciting.

There’s a new South Park that dropped on Thanksgiving, a one-hour special. Seems like they won’t really do seasons anymore, just irregular specials like that one and the few they made last year. It was set in the future, with the kids being now middle-aged, the adults becoming elderly, and the state of the world a bleak, dystopian mess. I loved it, and am looking forward to the next one, it’s a pretty damn interesting arc and a way to keep such a long-running show from going stale.

Then I went to the gym. The Italian blue belt sometimes teaches kids but now he’s out for the weekend, and asked me to step in. It was a one-on-one with a boy of about 5, and he was great, it was a lot of fun. Then I rode my bike to the kickboxing gym, and practiced grappling with the Eccentric Ukrainian. His judo and wrestling and aikido background make him do a bunch of moves I’m not used to, and I’m slowly trying to implement them in my game, especially stuff about shoulder movement to avoid and break collar grips. A good time was had by all.

We went to the tiny microbrewery, where the girlfriend and the dog were waiting. The place smelled great, they were in the middle of a wort boil and the humid aroma of cereals filled the whole room. My first sip of IPA felt heavenly, and my companions had the cherry beer and a coffee stout. I ordered food from the Sichuan restaurant next door and it hit the spot.

I briefly considered going to another bar but I nahed. I’d rather go home and chill there. A small group chat on Facebook was active, two of my boys were talking about reggaeton and other current Latin music. One of them lives in Suriname and works with Mexicans, so he’s really into that stuff. I also generally like Mexican music, though a lot of it can be a bit repetitive, it’s high energy and catchy. He sent us links to videos of a new hybrid style called corridos tumbados, which is a bit of a mix between folky banda music and hip-hop, and I sat there listening to all that and shooting the breeze with them.

I watched a bit of political analysis and history videos then read in bed a bit, I finished Apocalypse Bébé and just now started a novel called Tout est Ori, taking place in a fishing village in eastern Quebec. 

Chapter 330

Another day, another dollar. I walked the dog, shit-showered-shaved, went to school, taught my classes. Not much else to say.

During the twelfth-graders’ PE class, I went to play badminton with them. Some of them play OK, but overall it’s not much of a challenge.

In the afternoon, two students came to the office to ask questions about the stuff I’d been teaching recently. And then one said “We saw a video of you in some kind of judo match! It’s on Bilibili (some kind of buggy Chinese video-sharing platform)”

“How did you find it?!”

“We searched for your name on Baidu!”

I did just that, and yes, the first (and only relevant) link was John Guotong vs Some Chinese Guy at my first BJJ tournament, last year. I didn’t even know it had been filmed and uploaded.

That reminds me of a story that happened several years ago, at another school. Some students with a VPN searched for all of our names on Google. Some teachers had names that were way too common to yield anything, mine had only a link to my Facebook page and an antiquated site with my teenage cross-country skiing racing results, but the physics teacher was somewhat of a public figure. He had ran for public office in his American city, and calling him a “libertarian conspiracy-minded kookoo” would be an understatement, if anything. I was already aware of his rather radical political views and general eccentricity, though I liked him as he was generally quite nice, and didn’t constantly talk about racial hierarchies and how we should ditch the dollar and use only silver and gold and how Barack Obama tried to poison him because he knows the truth about global warming. But now, our more advanced senior students had stumbled upon a video taken from an ABC news report in which they talked about death threats he made to doctors going to vaccinate children in schools, and told me and another teacher about their worries.

(That was years and years before Covid, and refering to the meningitis vaccine if I recall. I’d be hella curious to hear that guy rant about Covid, I haven’t kept in touch since he left that school)

I had a bit of time chilling in the office and doing class prepping, I listened to Clown World news and an album by Skeletal Augury, a Chinese raw black metal band. Then I went home, and shortly after that headed to the gym. I did my workout, got back home, walked the dog, refueled, and spent a relaxing evening reading and watching stuff on YouTube. I also indulged in a few cups of sake, and went to bed a bit later than I dare to admit.

Chapter 329

I had another weird-ass dream, I was in some kind of gritty warehouse covered with graffiti and Spill Your Guts were playing on stage. I stood on the sidelines, watching the band play and the hardcore kids mosh, when some policemen said it was too violent and ended the show. A big metal garage door slowly descended and blocked the view from the stage, and then we all had to exit through the creepy pastel-colored staircase from Squid Game. Weird.

I sent a picture of my grandfather, circa 1940, to the group chat I share with the girlfriend and her parents. Mama-in-law said he looks like me (something she says about nearly every Caucasian person) and asked if he’s the one who emigrated from France. I said no, he was the 10^th or 11^th generation, my first ancestor having arrived to North America around 1645. “Woah! That was during the Ming Dynasty!” And... yeah, a lot has happened in China since. I once wrote a short story, some kind of “historical what-if” in which I speculated what the world would be like if the Ming Emperor didn’t burn the imperial exploration fleet in a fit of autistic rage and instead encouraged the mighty admiral Zheng He and others to keep exploring, leading to their eventual arrival to America before the Spaniards and other Europeans. My fictional scenario led to a world roughly split three-way by the Ottomans, the Bengals and the Chinese, with medieval Europe being various vassal states of these empires, and eventually Chinese hegemony on the whole world. We’d be all speaking Chinese nowadays, and aside from a few improvements in the military or navel sectors, we’d still be living with 15^th-century technology, due to the Chinese cultural inability to innovate and their racist refusal to adopt inventions made by peoples deemed inferior to the GYR (Great Yellow Race). *

*If you think it’s racist to point out how racist the ancient Chinese were, I suggest you go take a look at primary sources from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. They were cartoonishly racist, and in fact that’s what led to their extremely isolationist policies and their near-downfall.

I wrote a whole bunch of essays and short stories, but they still sit on a hard drive, unpublished. I’ll see if one day I wanna put them out there.

I browsed the news, a high-profile tennis player named Peng Shuai accused some big honcho from the Communist Party of sexual harrassment, and now her social media accounts are scrubbed and her whereabouts are unknown. What the fuck?! This is cartoon-villain shit right there. I said it many times in many ways, but I like China. China has been good to me, and yes, I’m talking about both the people and the government. I admire how they went from third-world shithole to superpower in a span of time that’s barely believable. I think a lot of the criticism they get are unfounded, exaggerated, dated, or based on pure bullshit. I like the fact that a lot of problems that are just seen as “part and parcel of living in a Western country” are virtually absent here. I like and respect the Chinese patriotism and commitment to build their country even further, compared with the gangrenous western ethnomasochism. I see people who criticize China for taking an ever-increasing place on the world stage as huge fucking hypocrites, especially if they’re Western Europeans, doubly so if they’re Americans.

And I do see a lot of merit to the Chinese political system. But stories like that make me want to vomit. Even with all the above in mind, I could never fully get behind such a system, in which there’s damn nearly zero accountability. Yes, dictatorships can accomplish great things and bypass the grotesque inefficiency of democratic systems, but it can also very easily devolve in tyrannical abuse. Hell, I even feel weird putting this opinion online, and I’m under no illusion whatsoever that doing it anonymously protects me in any way. Fuck.

Aside from that, I went through my day like a good worker bee, teaching Catatonic Class and Crazy Class. They were a bit more attentive than usual, as I went through the answers of the post-lab reports. In the afternoon I had Strong Class, but when I walked in, they were all gone except one guy still hastily gathering his stuff. He said they have some activity and the last two periods are canceled.

“What activity?”

“A science fair”

Nonplussed, I went back to the office. My coworker also walked back with his stuff. He seemed a bit more peeved than I was about the lack of communication, and the quasi-insult that is not inviting us, science teachers, to a school-wide science fair.

So I chilled in the office. At some point, I clicked on a link to a ten-second video that got me laughing out loud, which is always a bit embarassing in an office. It was of a haggard-looking Joe Biden saying “Time is money. As one computer said, if you’re on the train and they say Portal Bridge you know you better make other plans.” I played it a second, and then a third time, and still have no fucking idea what any of that means.

I went home. It was a rest day, and the girlfriend wasn’t there. I looked for something to do, and ended up watching documentaries about pro wrestling. I also unwrapped the sausage I made and cut a slice, it was good, but a bit bland. I salted and peppered the outside, brushed it with liquid smoke and let it air-dry on a rack. I also made chicken broth with leftover bits of carcass, onions, celery, carrots and garlic, and after two hours simmering, I drank a bowl. And another one.

I rode the longboard with the dog to go meet the girlfriend at her workplace, and she drove us back. She was all alarmed, apparently there’s been like three Covid cases reported in Shanghai and now she thinks our lives are all gonna be flipped upside down. My fate is in the hands of Jesus Christ and Xi Jinping, and I submit to Their will.

We walked the dog to the mailboxes, got the package of wine, gin and whiskey I had ordered, and then watched an episode of Foundation together. It’s entertaining but also a little stupid, and the Israel Adesanya-lookalike main character gets on my nerves. I heavily dislike the cliché trope of the young but misunderstood character placed in a position of power and who is communicating exclusively in sassy, sarcastic and brusque one-liners. I was ready to go to bed when it finished, with the help of a tasty glass of whiskey, but I had a Skype call scheduled with my dad. We discussed new possible or confirmed developments in our respective lives, it will soon be two years since we met in person and will likely extend into much longer, with the grinding halt on easy international travel and what not. Still, he is very supportive of my endeavors and I appreciate that a lot.

We also talked about current events, he’s slowly waking up to the shenanigans orchestrated by malicious actors pulling the strings and causing all the western ethnomasochism, notably in that cringeworthy circus act of “apologizing for being on unceded Native American land”. But he doesn’t seem to understand how this extends to the racist terrorist attack that happened in Wisconsin two days after the Rittenhouse verdict (coincidence?), in which a militant black nationalist plowed through a crowd with a truck, and the media pretty much covered it up, obfuscating the rather undeniable motive and thus ending up protecting a black man. Perhaps in 1965 that would be an absurd idea, but given how hell-bent they are now at pushing the narrative that “white supremacy” is the most dangerous thing in the USA now, it makes a lot of sense. (See also: Timothy Simpkins)

Chapter 328

I started my day normally, and browsing Facebook, I saw someone posted a link to the Tales From The Hood soundtrack. No idea if it’s from a movie or whatever, but it was a nice compilation of hip-hop from different sub-genres and scenes, including a real banger by a hitherto unknown Bay Area rapper named Spice 1. I looked him up, and he’s got a huge discography, I shall investigate. It was unfortunately followed by an Ol’ Dirty Bastard track. I do not like Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

I taught grade-12 classes in the morning. I use the same materials I prepared last year, and the dates on the PowerPoint presentations I’m currently using are in the mid-December range. That means I’m way ahead compared to last year, since I have more classes per week and also because Cambridge removed big chunks of the curriculum. Conversely, for the grade-11 classes, I’m lagging behind compared to last year, because I only teach them twice a week, the curriculum has been beefed up, and well, I already talked about the academic abilities of two of the three groups I teach. I asked my former Hells Angels coworker if he’s on track to finish in time and he said “No fucking way”, we might have to cut some lab sessions and give them more practice to do at home.

The problem is that many of these students don’t have autonomous study habits to say the least, and that’s something I adressed in the short parents’ meetings we had on Monday. They’re not little kids anymore, they need to be a little responsible.

There was another parents’ meeting scheduled for the second half of the lunch break, which is a bit unpleasant but you gotta do what you gotta do. I didn’t go home, I rode my bicycle downtown to buy a huge bag of dog food, we ran out yesterday. Then I ate a quick plate of Muslim noodles, dropped the bag of dog chow at home, and went to meet the parents and give some tough love to the members of Crazy Class.

I had two classes in the afternoon, then did some class prepping in the office. I checked out some Clown World news, and saw what is likely the clowniest shit I’ve seen in a long time: a bunch of universities in the USA offer therapy sessions for students who get anxiety after hearing that Kyle Rittenhouse got acquitted. No shit. That’s the state of young western adults now. Should we laugh or cry?

I went home, renewed all the stuff in my mp3 player and headed to the gym. It was leg day. Leg day sucks, but there’s no way around it. Then I went home, walked the dog, and ate some leftovers while watching a documentary about the early years of Pride FC. The Japanese organisation was huge, at a time the UFC was in its dark ages stateside, and like a lot of old MMA fans, I remember it fondly.

Chapter 327

I had all sorts of weird-ass dreams, in one of them I was a passenger in Kim Kardashian’s Mercedes and she was crashing into other people’s cars on purpose to get revenge on her boyfriend who dumped her. The thing is, I don’t even know what Kim Kardashian looks like, so in my dream she was just a generic dark-haired attractive woman. And why was I even there? Then I was walking in a dark parking lot of some shithole third-world country, and some sketchy guy tried to sell me something. He only spoke Spanish, and though I speak I guess what would be called lower-intermediate Spanish, he was speaking fast and I couldn’t understand what he was saying. So there’s a subconscious part of my brain that can recreate Spanish better than my conscious brain can?! I often wondered about that, when I make dreams involving foreign languages. The sketchy guy tried to grab me, and I saw he had something in his hand, maybe a syringe. I ran to a bus stop and some pot-bellied cop shooed the scumfuck away, before saying something about kidnapping and slavery. I then woke up, and thought about it for a while, the world can be a bad place, full of bad people.

I took the dog out, and then rode to work listening to Traumaturges, a hip-hop crew from Montreal that dropped a gritty as fuck album in 2000. The first two tracks are some serious boom-bap bangers reminiscent of the NYC golden age and talk about developing a distinct Quebec sound rather than imitating French rappers, but there are also a few tracks that are lazy both in production and lyrical content. I appreciate and even love hip-hop even though the political orientation of a lot of “socially conscious” rappers is much more to the left than I am, but in one verse talking about racism, one MC of Haitian descent says something like “my parents should have never moved here”. Oh really?! You’d rather be in Haiti? Well, what can I reply to that other than the painfully obvious?

I got to the office, and listened to a few country music tracks a friend suggested on Facebook. We discussed country a bit, and that reminded me I’d been meaning to check out Superjoint Ritual, the Phil Anselmo-fronted hardcore/metal band in which Hank Williams III played the bass. I listened to an album called A Dose of American Hatred and it was pretty much exactly as expected, some dirty Louisiana metal that makes you want to get in a beer bottle fight with a bunch of bikers.

I had a few classes that went well, and then ate a quick tuna sandwich lunch at my desk before heading out to the sports field. There’s a soccer tournament, last year myself and a few other teachers played in teams of students but this year I was asked to be a coach. So I stood by the sidelines yelling nonsense, and aside from that and being in a group picture, my role was quite limited. The game was quite hilarious, aside from a few kids, most players were clumsy and there was even a sequence in which no less than five throw-ins in a row were made, all of them illegal due to the player jumping or not throwing the ball over their heads. My team won 2-0.

In the afternoon we had a professional development session, conducted over Zoom since the big wigs from the corporate office are not allowed to leave Shanghai due to Covid. So they could come off the clock, lick every door handle in the whole city, and get back on the train with nobody stopping them, but they are stopped from coming in a professional capacity by the Education Bureau. Weird. It was a good session nonetheless, centered on “reflective teaching”, with discussions and strategies to implement. They opened it with a quote from some academic journal, which I paraphrase here as:

“Teachers should reflect on their teaching practice (Grumble and McPumpernickel, 2003). That helps them improve and optimize the outcome of their lessons (Ingleburtonberting and Facedesinge, 1981)”

That got me thinking, do we really need to refer to so-called experts for statements that are, well, pretty goddamn obvious? It’s as if we wrote:

“In winter time, it’s a good idea to wear a coat (Bubblegut and Plunknugget, 1993). A thick coat can help you maintain your body heat in cold temperatures (Van Den Schlafenbing, 2004)”

The whole thing reminded me of my post-graduate teaching certification and all the pseudo-intellectual drivel I had to write in my essays, supported by quotes and sources and a beefy bibliography. I’m a teacher, not a crusty academic. So as much as I do enjoy professional development sessions, it’s mostly for the discussions with fellow teachers and the ideas I can get to improve my craft. One strategy that was mentioned was “writing a diary or blog”, hey, it means I’m a reflective teacher!

Then I taught the twelfth-graders. The topic was chromatography, and the concept of “retardation factor” came up, which led to a student pointing at his neighbor and say “Hahaha, you’re a retardation factor!” I was impressed by his vocabulary.

I stopped by the stinky market and bought the whole tray of Harbin sausages. Yeah, baby. Then I got home, ate one, with a mango-flavored beer. I started drinking during the week again, but only on days I don’t exercise. And moderately. I browsed YouTube, watching whatever caught my eye, and when the girlfriend walked in two hours later I was pretty damn deep down the rabbit hole, and I was watching dambe matches, some kind of boxing done in Nigeria in a sand pit, with one bare hand and one hand wrapped in rope.

“Help me put the meat my mother sent us in the freezer”

“Wait, wait, I want to see who’s gonna win, Dogon or Buhari!”

We ate fried rice and meatballs for dinner, and then watched an episode of Foundation. The trope about the three clones of the same guy, but conceived at different times, ruling as a triumvirate is quite disturbing and original I’d say.