Up at 2:30 Friday night

Yes, as the title would have you believe, I am up at 2:30 on Friday night. Most people who know me would assume that means I'm out. Having beers with friends or meeting some new ones. Some who know me a bit better might think I have just arrived in a new country and am too busy drinking it in to hit the sack. Some who know me even better might think of my current situation and put the fault on the ever enterprising Chinese mosquito. And those who know me best might think I'm just watching sports that are being played at some godly hour in some godly country. But you'd all be wrong.

It's actually 3:30 now since I had to check Facebook and make TWO cups of tea before writing this. Though I just put an end to the parasitic lives of two mosquitoes with no less relish than I'd feel doing the same for a couple of their human counterparts in politics or the ESL industry, I was not awakened by high pitched whining in my ears. NHL playoffs are 5 hours away and as far as I know there is no rugby, curling, baseball, Olympics, golf or other sports of note happing at this time. I'm not even nervous, excited or stressing about a class I have tomorrow, which, might have caused the stress to compound with every hour of sleeplessness. This happens too sometimes, but not this morning. And I say, "this morning," because I have already slept a couple of hours. That might be all I get for a while.

It isn't all that uncommon in my new place for me to be up when I shouldn't be and for that matter, sleeping when I probably shouldn't be. I give at least some of the blame for this to the air here. Taiyuan can be a nice city to walk around in. Some days. Why, just yesterday the AQI was around 50 or 60 and I took a stroll down a very modern shopping road. It was mostly full of shoe stores and athletic apparel from huge name brands like Nike, Adidas and such. I was more interested in the shopper food that was available. It was just more of the wandering around I've done since coming to Taiyuan, and the fortification of the idea that there is nothing I am interested in buying here really. I mean, I DO need some running shoes, but I won't be buying them from a team of workers dressed in matching pastel athletic gear hawking overpriced merchandise made by companies that are already too rich at stores with spine-rendingly loud and popular music encroaching on any possible transaction and earning a dollar an hour if they're lucky. And thinking that is a fantastic wage! No, I just spectate.

But I've learned that when the AQI gets above 100, I probably shouldn't do any such wandering or spectating. Even when I stay indoors, I need to open a window or two and let some air into my apartment and I think that air, coupled with the fact that I pretty much seal myself into a small bedroom with an electric oil burning mosquito killer going the whole time, makes it so I need to wake up every couple of hours, open the bedroom door, replace at least some of the stale air with mildly better and cooler air, probably invite in a mosquito or two, then try to get back to sleep, is the reason I find the only time I am sometimes unable to sleep in Taiyuan is at night when I should be sleeping. Now, during the day when I can leave the bedroom door open without mosquito attack being a certainty, I can, and do sleep very well, thank you. My whole life I've loved the nap. I feel like stealing a couple hours of sleep in the daylight is like getting away with something. I've read that Taiyuan people are actually very fond of the nap too. The kids at school here get lunch from noon to 2:30 and almost all of them nap. I've got a couch in my office where I've napped and I have walked in on more than one teacher/cleaner/administrator/stranger using the couch for that same purpose. It's one of the things I see during my wandering as well. And it's one way I'm fitting into my new city.

This is a watermelon vendor in Taiyuan bagging some Z's between customers.

Here's a shoe vendor from Taiyuan doing the same. I have seen about 100 similar stores about town with the identical selection of shoes. NONE that I want. Shoes are difficult for me. They have to be wide enough, which rules out 99% of all shoes in Asia. Then if you find that rare shoe made for a man, not a Japanese geisha girl, you're really pushing your luck to hope it has ANY arch support to it. So generally, I HAVE to get my shoes from other countries. If I absolutely MUST buy them in Asia, I try to find a western shoe store, hopefully without brain-melting music and ten underpaid, hardselling students per customer sporting referee shirts or some other matching uniform.

Anyway, I don't think I'm the only one in this city who doesn't sleep the best at night. And even though I should be working tomorrow, (Saturday), but my Saturday student is sick, (yippee!), I won't feel like I've really had a day off unless I get enough sleep. And since I'm going to watch about 6 hours of hockey starting at 8 this morning, guess who has two thumbs and will be getting his main sleep at 2:30 PM instead of A.M.

It really is one of the sacrifices I have accepted for this job. I wake up at least once every couple of hours to cough, blow my nose, go to the bathroom, kill a mosquito, take off my sweaty shirt, let some cool, clean air into my sleeping dungeon, get a drink, or any combination of these. That's every single night. Not one time have I slept through the entire night since coming here. Not once. It isn't all because of the Taiyuan air, of course. The clogged head goes back years. I think the polluted air of Korea started that. I've tried medicine while in the drug pushing environs of North America, but nothing helped. I reckon I'm stuck with this for life. When I'm upright, I hardly notice but lie down and it feels like I've caught a cold. Usually when I get up in the morning it takes a while and a few sneezes and nose blowings to drain. So at night I'm a noisy, snoring mouth breather. Somewhere out there there is a gal who didn't marry me who is awfully lucky to be sleeping alone and in peace. I wonder if she knows...

Again, the new philosophy applies. That gal might think she's got it bad being lonely and single but, hey, at least she doesn't have a husband who's getting up 20 times a night and snoring when he's not up. As for me, I'm up to my elbows in this job and this city. I just finished paying for the first half of my year of rent on this apartment. I have lost my great helper, Faith. She has been replaced by a girl who looks as though she's in over her head. She has until May 19th or so to get all the Z visa stuff worked out and I have serious doubts about that happening. That's right, I STILL don't have my Z visa! My first paycheck was half of what I expected because I was purposely not informed of the two week stagger in payday and cut-off day. Or maybe that was created on the day I was paid. Then the second payday was a week late and even though they can't pay taxes without the government finding out I don't have the proper visa, taxes were taken off. I've already made two visa runs while employed here, at my own expense, may have to make another, and will be paying for the Z visa run so my kindness is definitely being taken advantage of by my employers. BUT, at least I'm not THESE GUYS!

While, I must say, again, new philosophy, Robert Flower may think this is bad now, but I have seen so few of these Korean wives with western husbands situations work out, he can surely count the possible cancellation of wedding plans as ONE positive to come out of this whole mess. On the other, the MANY other hands, this has been going on forever. It's happened to me in Korea, Indonesia, and even sort of in Canada. It's never the teachers' fault, but they are almost always the ONLY people who suffer. The business and the ministry that probably conspired to create the sketchy situation in the first place won't even get slapped on the wrist. They'll be opening up fake schools and issuing improper visas again before these poor teachers get back home. But if you think Korea's bad, why were these teachers who are qualified to teach in Canada over there to begin with? Because things are even worse in Canada. Gone are the days of full time work, summers off, great salaries and benefits for new teachers in Canada. Fully qualified teachers are just barely scraping by doing part time ESL gigs. CRAPPY ESL gigs! And that might be what these teachers will be forced to return to. Some might return to Vancouver where they are way too late but FINALLY starting to plumb the depths of the fraud the government has been allowing in education since it has been corporatized. That's why I'M over here. That and I'm too "nice" to do anything about it.

But hey, at least they're getting their trips home and salaries till June paid by the school! That's a free holiday! When Lincoln International School in Icheon, S. Korea jacked me up, I got an apology and two week's pay. When Wall Street English in Indonesia got busted for hiring teachers on business visas I got the promise of help finding a new position, (which was bullshit), the promise of a flight home, (which was bullshit), an apology and no extra pay. I have STILL not recovered from that disaster!

So these guys might think they've got it bad, but at least the glass ain't totally empty! And, it just might not be such a bad thing to be getting out of South Korea right about now. I'll tell you, the entire time I was there I had people asking if I ever felt nervous about war breaking out. I never did. NOW, even though I'm not there any more, I feel more nervous than ever before. I fear for the safety of my many friends in Korea. I think Trump is just the whackjob to start something up over there. I've seen all kinds of signs recently and have been waiting for breaking news out of Korea. Still nothing, but as election day rolls around in the South, tests always happen in the North. What will the self-imposed king of the West do?

The unplumbed shallowness of the mind of Donald Trump being what it is, I wonder if on some level, conscious or usual, he isn't almost angry at South Korea for impeaching their president and giving America such a good idea! It did allow the sneaking of the THAAD missiles into Korea, where they are highly unpopular, while the country is between presidents. But I still think the Trumpster might not want any country getting the idea that ousting a shitty leader is a good thing. Or maybe he just wants to blow some more shit up.

Immigration officials, businesses, schools, and governments should be allowed to completely fuck up the lives of nice people with impunity, shouldn't they? Our acquiescence, no matter how reluctant, makes their occupational sodomy consensual in their minds.

Leastaways, that's what I reckon.

Think of nothing

Sometimes I wish some intellectual areas were as malleable as others. I mean for instance, science. Even though there are so many past scientific "certainties" that we now know are false, and everyone has heard at least a million times how people were killed for not believing the earth was flat, there are an awful lot of science bullies out there who are trying to force me to believe and not question the science they theorize to be fact. And the more insistent they become, the worse they are going to look when and if what they are saying is disproved by science. And chances are pretty good it will be. Then what will they do? Will they snap into a state of cognitive dissonance and just willfully ignore the truth? Or will they have the strength of character to admit they were wrong? The harder they push, the worse they will look whichever the case may be. But push they do.

How do you think this guy feels?

It is particularly distressing to me because I can think of two science bullies that I absolutely love! I really wish they'd stop doubling down their bets because sooner or later it's gonna cost them. I'm speaking of Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy. I watched Bill Nye's show. It was a bit after I was a kid, but I love science so I watched it anyway. That was his niche. Telling kids not to believe their parents, but to believe HIM is NOT his niche.

Okay, okay, it's quite unlikely that science will find irrefutable proof that the earth is only a few thousand years old, but, still, when you start targeting children's impressionable minds, it sure looks like a desperate tactic.

Then there's Neil Degrasse Tyson. This is a guy I have a ton of respect for! I bet he drinks beer. I'd love to have a beer with him! I've seen him on TV a LOT and he's always very interesting and I almost always learn and agree with him. But not just once, a few times, I've seen him take an all or nothing stance on the losing side. Yes, he's been WRONG about science more than once, but tell me who is going to challenge this man. Even if you're right, he can probably overpower you with the support of his many fans. And if you're wrong, well his legend grows. Here's a recent example.

I'm sensing a very palpable desire during this entire video, almost more of a MIKE Tyson desire, to just thump the listener over the head and say, "Scientists are smarter than you, just believe what we say!" And you know what? That would be great! If science was the way science is supposed to be. But it's not. It hasn't been for a while. Like most areas, science, or certain parts of it, have been commercialized and corporatized to the point where the scientists don't publish, or study what they want, they study and publish what pays. Publish or perish is nowhere more apparent. Ask a scientist. Not a famous one like Neil or Bill, one who's still got 50 thou in student loans. Are they really trying to find new things? No. They're mostly trying to prove or disprove things they're told to prove or disprove. This breaks rule number one of proper science: Above all, remain objective. If you are given a desired conclusion, objectivity flies out the window.

From the facebook page of the very same friend I got the above video, I read one about why marijuana was illegal in the States. It was about a fella in a position of power in the U.S. way back when, who went to 30 scientists and asked if marijuana was harmful. 29 said no, but the 30th, who knew which side his bread was buttered on, said it was harmful. And they tied marijuana use to an axe murder committed by a dude who never actually used marijuana, but nonetheless, it worked. For practically a century, marijuana has been feared in the U.S. More tragically hemp, but that's probably got more to do with Randolph Hearst, Dupont and plastic than anything. A great shame if you ask me. But there again, the greatest crop ever, scientifically transformed into anything from clothes to fuel for a car, repressed. Scientists, who were well paid by the tobacco industry, proved for years and years how safe tobacco smoke is for us. Why, it's probably healthy! And the hardest scientific pill for me to swallow has been the pharmaceutical industry, which I have only a tiny shadow of doubt has cured cancer many times but would rather treat patients for a long, expensive time than cure them cheaply. There are several other areas I've gotten into on this blog before that could be repeated. How many times have you gotten frustrated with wires for every electronic device you own? If science were science, there'd be no wires. We wouldn't even be paying for electricity. But you can thank Westinghouse, Edison and I think J.P. Morgan for the expense and the inconvenience. They wouldn't have made a bazillion bucks if they'd allowed Nicola Tesla to give the whole world free wireless electricity. THIS is why, in my mind, we MUST question science, because it has been successfully repressed in the past and I have no doubt is being successfully repressed as we speak right under the noses of Tyson, Nye and all of us.

The video appears to use four examples of how people who don't know much about science are standing in denial of it. I just gotta include this vid of someone who doesn't know much about philosophy standing in dismissal of it. Anyhoo, there's evolution, which I have blogged about before. Micro-yes, macro-requires a healthy scientific suspension of disbelief to accept as fact. It's not made clear in this video, but I know from past experience with Tyson that he believes in the harder evolutionary theory to believe. Vaccinations, again, if you say vaccinations are bad, I would agree you are just as wrong as if you say evolution doesn't exist. But there ARE and have been vaccinations that contain dangerous ingredients, are not fully tested and are being $old and administered. The government of any country could just as easily decide to use untested vaccines on the general public as they did their armed forces. Maybe they have. This is something we NEED to look into, not just trust science on. It's a trick as old as Moses' shorts to group people into black and white categories that make derision easier. That's what's being done by the science bullies. I'm not an antivaxer or antivaccer or however you want to spell that ignorant word. But I AM against shooting people full of untested drugs so pharmaceutical companies can collect their pay without fully earning it. This makes me an "antivaccer!" Burn him! ANTIVACCER! I believe that various parts of the theory of evolution are still highly theoretical and in fact identical to the metaphysical quandaries innate to religious belief in God. Then I must be against evolution! Ignorance! BURN HIM!

So that's two strikes against Tyson. Global warming I definitely won't complain about that. I trust the science, not the politics in that case, but COME ON, Tyson! GMO's? You want us to literally swallow THAT science whole? I mean, I sure HOPE Tyson is suggesting that the science being done to find harmful effects of GMO's is the science that should be trusted, but it's not clear. I am not going to trust anybody who is making a paycheck to mess with something so physically intimate as my food, thank you very much. And, again, from past experience, I know that Tyson believes GMO's are perfectly safe and it's science that should not be questioned. Strike three, mon ami! It absolutely SHOULD be questioned because we put it into our bodies every day! "I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks." That's a quote from a scientist who worked with GMO's and doesn't share Tyson's ideas.

Tyson, bless his gullible heart, still seems like he believes in science. And good for him! But, like I said, he's been wrong before. This is science that demands PROOF, not science that treats theories like proof. Apples and oranges. Yesteryear we had the apples, today we get oranges. Respectable scientific journals have printed articles on how the definitions of "theory" and "proof" mean different things in today's science. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, and I've read, in these same respectable scientific journals, how the Higgs Boson has finally been discovered! YAY! Maybe you might have read that too! It's been printed. But the God particle, as yet, retains its elusiveness. STILL not discovered. But, if the science bullies are to have their ways, we are to BELIEVE that it has been! Well they're, like, almost, sorta, totally positive it's like gotta be true. You know? Go back to painting your nails, I want to talk to a REAL scientist!

Notice in the video how in the beginning Tyson talks about how science is questioned by other scientists and then others. That's the way it used to be and SHOULD be! But then later in the video he says you don't have the option not to believe the equation of relativity. (I can't type the squared). Yes, yes I DO have that option. In fact greater minds than mine have opposed it. Like Nikola Tesla. One of its pillars, if I understand it correctly is that the speed of light is the fastest speed anything can go, yet other scientists have shown, (Tesla demonstrated TO Einstein), that things can move faster. He also said that when you have an established scientific emergent truth, it is true whether or not your believe in it. BECAUSE proper science is a process of constant questioning, emergent truths are being disproved all the time. That's what I call scientific progress. Accepting something because science says so is not.

Science is becoming a subject I don't really want to talk about with friends because stances are becoming too strong. People are willing to go to the mattresses over theoretical ideas that Ray Bradbury wouldn't even include in one of his books because they're so implausible. The Chuang Tsu might say, "Our words fly off like arrows, as though we knew what was right and wrong. We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. We are caught in the current and cannot return. We are tied up in knots like an old clogged drain. And yet our opinions have no permanence: like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away."

Which brings us to an intellectual area that IS malleable and seldom if ever has caused me the stress of scientific disagreements. Philosophy. More accurately, Eastern philosophy. Or even still more accurately, the kind I'm most fond of, Taoist philosophy. Not the modern, Taoism of magic and mysticism, but the more Lao Tzuian concrete aspects of spiritual obviousness that are hidden in distractions all around us. The thing that I may like best about this kind of thinking is that the harder you try, the farther, (or further), away you stray from the "Tao." The way. The WAY or at least the Way, is something evanescent and unattainable without proper instruction. And as Lao Tsu says at the beginning of the Tao Te Ching, "The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao." Which pretty much negates the entire book. One of the best beginnings I think EVER in a book. He's just conditioning the student to expect negation, contradiction, irony, and complete opposition from life. Only in that way will you understand it. But he cannot teach you, (which made me wonder the entire time I read his book, why Lao Tzu wrote it), only you can teach you. "If one is true to one's self and follows its teaching, who need be without a teacher?" Your "self" is an "it" according to Taoism. It can teach you. It is the ONLY teacher that can teach you! I have found in my many years of teaching that the student learns best who thinks he/she is teaching him/her self. Give them hints but not the answers. When they do the work and find the answers, on their OWN, they remember. Everything we need is inside us. In the Bible, Luke 17:21 says that "Heaven is within you."

This is reminiscent of the idea of the Good that Plato talked about ages and ages ago. He said it is at once a creative and sustaining cause of the universe, the condition of all knowledge, and the Summum Bonum or supreme object of man's desire. And here's the part I think is most pertinent to my point here today, he went on to say, "Being a metaphysical entity, it cannot be perceived by the eye or ear of sense, and is therefore ridiculed by the inferior man of little intelligence." This, in my humble opinion, is possibly best illustrated by some men of science. The bullies. They fancy themselves intelligent, but they can't see the noses on their faces. They are like any normal thinking human being and can perceive things in the universe that require a measure of faith. Indeed, they have tried to dress that faith up in scientific garment as best they can, but what it comes down to is, like Plato's cave full of people who glimpse the wondrous light and still return to utter darkness, like Lao Tsu, who in great bitterness of spirit called himself a dullard and a clown for not being able to lead a careless generation to the Tao, which he venerated as the most precious thing under heaven, they cannot abandon their cherished, comfortable, stable positions of darkness.

Great minds of science have written and spoken about the firm place the metaphysical MUST have in a proper understanding of science. Tesla called it the Aether. Charles Darwin till his death was convinced of a "creative force" beyond human understanding. Even Richard Dawkins, as I have blogged, gave God a greater chance than evolution. Agree or disagree with any of this, when you start thinking about the VERY beginning, you get into some metaphysical areas that science would LOVE to claim, but never will. This, along with the growing number of examples in which science proves to be decidedly unscientific, behove us to question scientists. Even well respected scientists like Neil Degrasse Tyson although we may find it hard to do so when a guy has such a cool name. Neil Degrasse Tyson. Hard to doubt. I'll give you that! And, as I said, despite his very occasional wrongness, I love the guy! I just wish he wouldn't be so adamant about being right. I wish he could catch some Tao and just relax and look at what's in front of him and think REALLY hard about it. Anywhere you are you can do this. This is the first test of the Tao. Just sit there. Where you are. For hours if you have to. It'll come to you. I can't tell you what. You have to figure that out on your own. But it's there.

Someday Peter Higgs might say, "You bunch of clods! How can any field be EVERYWHERE? And even if it can, how can something pass through it? I can't believe they gave me the Nobel Prize for this shit!" Someday Satyendra Bose might say, "A particle with no mass? Absurd! I only invented the Boson to beat the thousand other dudes who were trying to save scientific method and make the impossible sound plausible." We don't know. But it could happen. That's why we shouldn't just trust scientists because Neil Degrasse Tyson tells us to.

Here's a fellow who knows a bit about Taoism you might like to listen to better than me. Go right to the end. It's there, it's all there. The key to the big box too! It's there! Just look long enough... lol. Anyhoo, it's what we all need to do. Slow down. Stop the distractions for a short time. Just sit there. It may take longer for some, but it'll come to you if you give it a whirl. Thing is, most of us are kept busy by people who don't want us to discover what's there. But it's there! And when you come to that great epiphany of self and world knowledge at the same time, you realize what intellectual masturbation a lot of people are engaging in. It's enlightenment. It's worth a try, isn't it?

Nice or Stupid?

It's a long weekend of sorts here in the people's republic. It's a holiday called Qing Ming Jie during which the people tidy up ancestor's tombs and celebrate the dead. I hear that there also used to be a festival called Han Shi that coincided with Qing Ming, during which the people ate only cold food. I was out walking amongst the people of the people's republic today. It was a beautiful day. Sunny, not too smoggy, and warm enough to scare the locals with my white legs. I wore shorts outside the house for the first time today. I got some looks! One girl on a bicycle was so astonished that she almost rode her bike into a tree. I mean staring at my legs and pedalling by so that she was looking almost completely backwards. She was lucky her Mother was walking beside her and stopped her before she wiped out. Oddly, because of months of sock and pant wearing, my legs are largely hairless more than half way up the calves. Perhaps reminiscent of the plucked chicken skin on some of the food offerings at graves on this day. I guess friction has worn the hair away. A couple weeks of sandals and shorts'll take care of THAT sitch.

I didn't notice people eating any more or any less cold food today. Eating habits appeared as normal. But I DID see the paper flower and fake money offerings being sold all over the place. I just love the paper money! Just across the street from the cyclist I scarred for life, there was a small booth selling bills all the way up to a 100,000,000,000. A one hundred billion bill. I noticed no currency denoted on these bills. I suppose it's unclear what the currency is used in the afterlife. Look at the very first pic in this explanatory webpage. "Hell bank?" Is this just a(n) hilarious translation or is this an offering to some ancestors who weren't particularly nice? Maybe it's a sort of, "Thank you for being a bad person and leaving me a nicer house?" Or is the afterlife considered hell? I'll have to ask. Maybe it's a nicer hell than life was, so long as the living continue honouring you with sacrifices. Not sure.

I say the air was fairly good because the AQI, (air quality index), was 77 when I ventured out on my walk in the early afternoon. That's yellow. Not too bad, but not green, which is clean. However, tonight it's up to 109. That's orange and is described as dangerous for sensitive breathers. Take a look at the SECOND pic on that website I linked to this post. That's likely why. Over 1000 tonnes of paper products a year are burnt during this holiday. They're cracking down though because of fake money burning that has led to forest fires. It's funny the things a man recollects. I very seldom think of my Chinese girlfriend from my days when I lived in Hongcouver, but today I remembered her and her aunt going to a place in Vancouver where they burnt fake money. I never would have remembered that otherwise. What was her name? I wanna say Sophie or Sophia but it could just as easily have been Stacy or Selma. She wasn't burning any fake money to honour ME I'll tell you that. Just spending my REAL money. Meanwhile she worked three jobs and saved presumably so that someday somebody will be burning some fake money in her honour. I guess that's one of the horses on this old Chinese merry-go-round.

I actually saw a merry-go-round today outside the little shopping mall I walked to. Both were miniature versions of the real things they might have in Beijing, but I prefer the reality of the smaller city. I went off the main streets a little today and saw some of that reality. Narrow, bustling streets that looked as if they were dug up and patched by the locals, not the city so required that my concentration remain on the terrain and the motorists and cyclists and not so much on the earthy, Chinesiness all around me. Loitering. Lots of loitering. Some good smells of HOT food cooking and some bad smells of liquids being carried out of shops and sloshed down the sewer holes. And everything from the asphalt to the neon and non-neon signs to the vending tables seemed coated in a thin, grey film of pollution and cooking oil. I was looking for seeds, soil and pots so that I could do my part for Qing Ming. This is the time of year when farmers traditionally sow seeds as well. I saw no flower and bird shops, (Interestingly, this is the combination in the shops that sell seeds and pots and soil. They also sell birds, whatever the connection may or may not be...), but I did see quite a few other things. MANY fruit vendors that had bananas, strawberries, pineapples, apples, oranges and other fruits that were so obviously bought off the same trucks that I only really needed to look at one. Some of the fruit vendors had these tiny, pointy nectarines too. I was tempted to buy a few, but they were too hard. I saw variety stores everywhere; some slightly larger markets; barber shops; clothing stores; one tattoo shop that I looked in and saw someone getting a haircut; some coffee shops that, and I could be wrong here but judging by some of the young and sexier than normal pedestrians I saw, could have been comparable to the Korean "coffee" shops where you actually drink with young, available ladies. None of them were open yet. The girls I saw were probably just waking up and going out for breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I saw a guy pulling orange video gambling machines out of a literal hole in the ground ostensibly to be used later in the evening and put back at sun-up. I saw a few tiny restaurants with big pots of soup or rice on the boil outside and hopeful, mangy dogs and cats lurking nearby. I nodded hello to one young man who was just standing around with a few other young, what shall I say, uh, industrious, shinily dressed, overcalogned, but enterprising looking fellows and he grinned and gave a barely audible ni hao. I saw a filthy, matted cat on a two-foot chain meowing in complaint. I saw kids chasing kids. Two or three 8-year-old boys crowding around a small, weathered video game didn't notice the passing wei guo ren. That means "foreign person." I don't hear that even close to as often as I heard "waygook saram" in Korea! And, although I still expect it, when I am approached by groups of teens, they DON'T say hello in English and laugh their asses off when I say hello back. I've been greeted by some kids, mostly in my school, and when I said hello in reply, there was no laughing! Perhaps the Chinese have not yet tapped into this ENDLESS fountain of Korean enjoyment.

I saw many of the same shops I see everywhere including in my own neighbourhood like video game places, hardware stores, dumpling, dimsum, noodle and rice shops, a couple mobile vendors of fruit, music, Chinese pancakes and wraps, and a whole lot of restaurants serving the same, more genuine, but less delicious Chinese food than they have in Canada. Other than the tattoo parlour and the possible girly bars, I just saw lots and lots of the same stuff that I don't want. Much like the fruit vendors, almost every shop has the same selection of the same stuff off the same trucks. But it was nice to see a new neighbourhood. Different vibe and different people. There were also four very nice, old and over the many years, badly pruned willow trees. I took some pictures of these beauties of nature overhanging the unnatural capitalistic hawking and haggling on this unseasonably hot afternoon, but I took them with my poop cam and that is incompatible with this computer so I can't share them.

When I reached the shopping area where two of my students, Krystal and Tiffany, told me I would be able to find what I was looking for, I had been walking for over an hour. The respite from the warm sun was welcome. Inside the dimly lit building were probably a hundred little privately rented areas where people had about 10 different kinds of shops. Not the first one of these I'd been to. Seriously narcoleptic patrons of shops were too tired to give me their hard sells. I took great pains to avoid eye contact and make their choices to remain in zombieville seem warranted. They weren't all totally idle, however. A few were talking with shop owners nearby, often with the identical products in their basically identical stores. Most who were not full on vegetative were lost in cellphones, which isn't much more alert. So it was fairly non-confrontational shopping. To me, that's a very good thing. I have a few rules when it comes to shopping in Asia. I detest shopping for all things except sports memorabilia and groceries. But since Asia has none of the former stores and so very few of the latter that are good, suffice to say, I detest shopping in Asia. Rules have made the experience a bit more, but not much more, bearable. Rule number one: if the store is playing loud dance music, local pop or even English pop songs, nothing good can be bought and no good price can be found at that establishment. Move on. I HAVE to give a beautiful example from today before we get to rule number two. I was walking down the long street that was almost all sports clothing and running shoes. Much like Korea, China has areas where they sell mostly one thing. Shoe areas, glasses areas, musical instrument areas, etc. So this particular shoe store had two athletically clad, high school to university aged girls either saving for university or paying for it with a job in which they pull down a couple bucks a day more than likely. They had to stand outside the shop and coax people inside. Inside where the song was playing, "Yo, yo, any you mothafuckas wanna rock?!?!" I smiled and almost accidentally encouraged one of the girls to approach me but I looked to the other side of the street.

Which brings us to the rule you've probably guessed by now: number two: don't make eye contact. That just encourages the hard sell. This goes with rule number three: If they try the hard sell, they've lost the sale. Even if I actually WANT what they're flogging. I don't want to encourage that harassment. Rule number four: Don't ask for help. Generally, whether you speak the lingo or not, the people in stores hovering over you as you browse are not there to help and CAN'T help. They know roughly as much about the store as you do. And if it's a store you frequent, less than you do. They're watching to see if you steal. And they're getting paid miniscule salaries, even in the richer countries in Asia, so don't expect expertise. Quite honestly, especially if you don't speak the language, the LAST thing they want to do is communicate with you and help you. And with their salaries, it's nicer of us to leave them the hell alone. Rule number five: No prices - no business. The shops that don't put prices on products WILL rip you off. Most countries over here have fairly standard rates for different races. There's the local price, the not local but same country price, the foreign white guy price, the foreign Japanese/Korean price and probably some others. If they put the prices on things, they can't discriminate. Some say they do this because it leaves the option of haggling open. This brings us to rule number six: I don't haggle. Okay, okay, I know it's our responsibility to do so in order to curb the cheating of our fellow foreigners, but rule number 5 discounts this. This is why I'm not generally excited when someone invites me to a market of some kind. Markets = haggling. I HAVE on occasion been known to outsource the haggling to a female Asian. Take your pick, whatever country in Asia, they're TIED for the best hagglers in the world. If you have a big purchase to make and you want to save some dough and aren't too worried about saving time, an Asian woman will save you money. It's a fact.

So employing these rules, I browsed the mini mall. It didn't take long because as I said there were 10 shops. Snacks where there were supermarket bulk bins full of nuts and sweets. Probably 10 of these with identical nuts and sweets. Toy stores where they had the identical cheap crap as the other stores. Stationary, houseware, salons, electronic knickknacks, cleaning supplies, bathroom and two floors of clothing. I avoided those floors. The first floor, every shop had the same items as every shop that sold the same stuff. I really didn't need to spend as much time there as I did, but because there were only the 10 different shops, it was very easy to get lost and I did. Luckily there were three shops that sold mostly fake flowers but some pots and seed. No birds though. I got some pots and seeds and then exited the mall. Of course the minute I stepped outside I sneezed. It was still bright and sunny out. I walked home down a few new roads. I went to about 10 or 15 stores in a printer neighbourhood I stumbled across including two shops that were Canon printer stores, but none could find me a black PG-945 ink cartridge for my printer. A few of them phoned other stores as well. They have what they have. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of what they have but no variety. I'll have to get it online. This is why Jack Ma is a gozillionaire! He's the guy who owns Ali Baba. The online megastore. I think he's bigger than Wallmart now. Jack Ma is no genius, lemme tell you. Well, he might be, but his business plan isn't. You give people what they want, not force them to want what you give, and guess what, you get rich! Especially if there are 1.4 billion of them.

So anyway, back to the top when I said that this is "somewhat" of a holiday for China. Believe it or not, it's pretty common in China to have these holidays during the week but do make-up work on the weekends. Almost everybody worked Saturday to make up for the holiday. All the kids went to school on Saturday. So it's really NOT a holiday. Here's how that complicated MY life: I teach one or two hours on Saturdays. Zoe, the Chinese teacher I work with, originally said that she would teach 2 hours and I'd teach one but it has never been that way. I've been teaching two hours every Saturday and she's been teaching one. This past Saturday was cancelled and the one before I was in Korea so my students hadn't seen me for two weeks. Zoe tells me that two of the kids quit and I only have one student now. Then Zoe tells me that because our student goes to classes on Saturday, I'll have to teach her on Sunday. Well I've already been told that I'll be doing make-up classes on Saturday so now I'm only getting a 2-day weekend out of the long weekend. Pretty much like everybody in China. Oh well, no biggie. So Zoe says I'll teach in the afternoon. Then she asks if that's okay and I say I'd prefer the morning because it makes it seem like the weekend is longer. So she says fine and then we talk about what to teach but never really land on anything. So I go in in Sunday morning not knowing what I'm teaching exactly. Then when I get there, Zoe tells me I'll be teaching all three hours because she has to go to church. Then Zoe becomes like one of those university girls getting 3 bucks a day hauling people in off the street: I can't make eye contact with her. I KNOW she knew about church on Sunday when she was telling me about the schedule change on Friday. This is probably why she originally said we'd be teaching in the afternoon. But I think, well, she DID the full three hours when I was in Korea and it's probably not worth complaining. On the bright side, I was never officially told but it turned out that the kids studied on Saturday what they would have been studying on Monday. Since Mondays are days off for me, I didn't have to go in on Saturday. So I still got a three-day weekend anyway, if not consecutive.

The thing I wanted to blog about today before I got sidetracked on the shopping adventure and tips, was just this. It happens an awful lot to me. Because I'm a nice guy. And all you nice people know what I'm talking about. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since you could just scroll back to many other entries in this blog and find on several occasions where I've commented that to a Chinese person, nice equals stupid. I feel like I'm paying all the bills here so far because the school knows I'm nice. I feel like Zoe made that move because I'm nice. I think that maybe this whole Saturday class, for which I make zero extra salary, could just be a private class I've been thrown into to fill out my sched and make someone else more money. But in keeping with my new philosophy, at least I'm still employed. It could be worse.

That said, I've been thinking a lot this week about why we're put on this earth. All the students I get instantly see that I'm a nice guy and they're faced with a decision: do I still respect him and do what he tells me to do or do I take advantage of his kindness and goof off? The problem as I see it, and this goes back to the ancestors living in hell, is that making your life successful by the standards of an increasingly acquisitive world, requires taking advantage of the kindness of good people. So many people sacrifice their principles to screw nice people in order to make money. And it's not only an undiagnosed mental illness, it's encouraged! Being an asshole is not natural, it's not good and it's not honourable. If you make your way in the world by being an asshole to nice people, I kinda hope you get to spend the afterlife in hell and that no matter how much money your descendants burn, they're only doing it because you left them money or stuff, they didn't love you, they never loved you, because you were an asshole! I hope that just makes your hell a little bit worse, you dicks!

When you really give it a think, you will find all kinds of situations in our lifetimes in which we have this same choice and if you ask me, these are the situations that measure the worth of a human being. All your friends are bullying the new kid and he's too nice to fight back. The substitute teacher is nice and he/she can't control the students. The cashier in training gave you too much change. Some jerk pushes his/her way to the front of the line. People are constantly faced with chances to take advantage of nice friends, family, mates, authority figures, all kinds of people. And people are constantly faced with chances to do something about OTHERS who are taking advantage of kind people. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Even animals! It's been said that the way you treat helpless animals says a lot about how you treat people. Or the way you treat people who can do nothing for you, like homeless or poor. There are no grey areas either. No tough decisions. We all know when we are faced with these tests and we all know the right and wrong decisions to make. Nowadays we are much better at justifying the wrong decisions but I think only the truly psychologically damaged can't tell the right from wrong. This is not to say these decisions haven't been a part of life for time immemorial, however. Way back in Biblical times there were decisions like this and people taking advantage of the goodness of their fellow man. There were people who made good livings at it. And even Jesus didn't like them. What? That's not right? Jesus loved everyone, you say? Well, when he was telling us to love everyone, including our enemies, he expanded on that by saying that it won't do much good to love the good people, even publicans can do that! Even a lowly, scumbag piece of human garbage like a publican can love someone who loves him.

Let's get some perspective on this. What exactly was a publican? And why did Jesus, even Jesus, think they were all lower than snakes bellies in wagon ruts? Back in the old Roman times, the collection of taxes was the basest of all livelihoods. They were appointed by the "equites," the richest class of Romans, so extortion, overcharging, and outright fraud went all but unpunished. Since it made the rich even richer, they were all actually encouraged. And who are the people who can do such a loathsome job? People who care not a fig about their public perception. People who aren't out to make friends, just money. People who would rather have people fear them than love them. Psychopaths. Sociopath/psychopath, again, I'm not sure there is a difference and if you've read my blog enough, you'd know my feelings on this: I think a person using the mind to figure out the mind is just creating his/her own personal conundrum. A quandary inside a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. It's intellectual masturbation and far from scientific. The very well accepted "test" for psychopathy, even though it was devised by a Canadian, is a very good example of what I'm talking about. Most of us, through movies, TV, and some of us, books, know enough about sociopathic personalities and even various real life examples, to create as good a test or better. Just look at the test. To me, it's so simplistic, you'd save time by just asking ONE question: "Hey, dude, are you a psycho?"

But, this, believe it or not, is what we have. It's the best tool we have for spotting the psychopath. Yet, within the test itself lie its weaknesses. If a person is manipulative, charming, a liar, intelligent and versatile, he or she could easily see through this test and reverse it so now he/she is in the head of the shrink who's administering it. Look at my earlier post with the vid of Bundy being questioned by Dr. Dobson and see who you think is testing who.

So why bring this up? It's just because of what I see in our world. The number of suspected psychopaths is presumably 1 in 100. With this Hare test as our gauge, I'd suspect higher numbers, since most psychopaths should be intelligent enough to sidestep detection with so obvious a test. But even if the numbers were as high as 2 or 3 in 100, I agree with the thinking that they are the vast minority. Most people have normal emotions and empathy. Most people are NICE.

So why are so many psychopaths in positions of power like CEO's of large corporations or politics? Why are the minority of assholes running this gong show we have on Earth? BECAUSE we're nice and they are just taking advantage of us.


Psychopaths do bad things and some of the nice people go along with them because it's easier to be a dick than to stand up for what's right. Psychopaths lead and nice people follow, making it appear that there are more amoral jerks out there than there really are.

Nice people need to protest! We need to fight back. We need to kick some sociopathic ass! But we're too nice.

At least that's the way I see it.

Safe or UNsafe Zone?

Another chemical attack on the most geographically unfortunate people in the world and this time not just a threat, but an actual attack by the U.S. on Syria. Well, not so much an attack but bombs dropped on Syria to protect it. Or was it in retaliation? Where they were dropped was ostensibly the origin of the chemical attacks, but it is also a Russian military post that has grown in importance recently. But since Russia can't admit to beefing up military presence to protect its interests in Syria, this attack can't technically be called an attack on Russia. But don't kid yourself, both the U.S. and Russia know what's going on here. My question is, does the president? Or is he just some buffoon who wants to build Trump Towers and golf courses in a Syrian safe/no fly zone that will make him rich, but cost the American tax payers a billion a month?

First, let me remind you all of the situation. The government of Syria is a minority telling the majority what to do. Some believe it was purposely set up this way to create war and weaken the country. The religious tension between Shia, Sunni, Alawite and what have you, is not really the main issue in Syria, however. It's just what keeps them fighting and drives the real estate prices down. Syria is much more significant because of oil and natural gas pipelines. I will refer you to a very well written article from the past when Obama was THINKING about doing what Trump just did.

We know what Trump wants to do in Syria. He's talked about it before in his exceedingly non-presidential patois. He wants to "do" a, "big, beautiful safe zone" in Syria. In fact he said exactly this:

"What I like is build a safe zone in Syria. Build a big, beautiful safe zone and you have whatever it is so people can live, and they'll be happier. So you keep 'em in Syria. You build a tremendous safe zone. It'll cost you tremendously much less, and they'll all be there and the weather's the same. And the weather is the same and then when this horrible situation that is so horrible run. We don't know what we are doing. When it's all over they move back and they go back into their cities, and they rebuild there, (or their?), cities. And they start out and they start over again."

He's pretty sure the U.S. will be able to buy a "swatch" of land, and, says Middle East master Trump, "Believe me, you get it for the right price, okay? You take a big swatch and you don't destroy all of Europe."

Trump says he has a(n?) HUGE heart. He cares for these people and doesn't want them to learn new languages. He doesn't want them to go to new climates like in Minnesota where they'd freeze. He doesn't want them to disrupt the good people of Europe. He just doesn't want them... to...

Okay, all fun aside, in context, this bombing was an attack on Russia whether the president was complicit or just an agreeable dolt. The Russians will not stand for the safe zone because it will likely be a strip of land that can be used to connect Turkey to the very valuable Israel/Jordan stores of oil and natural gas, IF that "right price" Trump mentioned includes pipeline building rights. This will allow the massive natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean to be sold in Europe, weakening the stranglehold Gazprom has had for so long. Gazprom, that Russian company that was at one time the richest company in the world. That little company in which Putin owns stock. Billions of dollars worth of stock.

There are all kinds of other scenarios with oil and natural gas that make the "rolling back" of Syria through civil war a very profitable industry for the nations like the U.S. and Russia who, I'll just hazard a guess, aren't quite as saddened and upset as they are letting on.

Still, I wonder if we'll ever find out if Trump knows about all of this or whether he's just being played like a fiddle. This will be interesting to watch.

In the mean time, safe zones don't work. They didn't work in Iraq or Bosnia, it probably won't work in Syria. Any attempt to set up a safe zone will more accurately be a "pipeline safe zone," and it won't be very safe. There will almost certainly be resistance from Russia. Possibly even other countries such as China.

But I guess all we can do is watch...


Here's a couple of oil pipelines that Russian and the U.S. need to build through Syria:

Here's one of the proposed natural gas pipelines. You see how key Syria is.