Long Day.

Wednesday, my only day off this week, was a long one.  I have a lot to put on the blog from this day.  But it being Wednesday night, I don't feel up to it.  Suffice to say, I have two WTU's, studio portrait photos, and photos taken on the Qingming Bridge & Ancient Canal Cruisde to show you.  You will seem them eventually.  The first thing to be uploaded will be the videos to youku.com

People's Hospital #7

• I went to do a demo class at a company called Areva.  To get there from downtown, a driver took us (that be Summer, Lisa, and me) past Mei Yuan Park not too far from Taihu.  We took a different route on the way back going past a mountain on which Xi Hui Park was on the other side.  It was on the way back that I saw a complex of buildings about which I had to ask was their purpose.  I thought I was looking at a school.  My question caused giggles from the female passengers.  "Have you heard of Hospital Number Seven?" they asked.  I replied "Have I!  It is the hospital for crazy people and where the KoW spent some down time in his first years in Wuxi!"  They then pointed out a crematorium that was across the street.  "Is that smoke coming from the chimney, burning bodies?" I asked.  "Yes" they replied, and I thought to myself, the crematorium is across from the mental health hospital - you can go crazy and die there if you want.
• If Chuck Norris came to Wuxi, all children would be named after him, even the girls and the children whom he didn't conceive.
• If Chuck Norris came to Wuxi, Chairman Mao would be posthumously called Chuck Norris I.  The Chairman would hit hereto be referred to as Chuck Mao.
• If Chuck Norris came to Wuxi in summer, the sun would retreat a bit making the weather much more tolerable.
• Tony knows the meaning of the word "dance".
• Wuxi has an aquarium.  I never knew but an email correspondent told me it be so.  Jenny just confirmed it.  Admission is 80 rmb for Adults.
• I will finish A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.  It has already given me a working title for a WTU:  A Latvian Canadian in Little Emperor Jia Le's Court.
• I managed to make it home tonight before my electric bike ran out of juice and it started to rain.
• I took Tony for a walk Tuesday evening.  He played on the swing.  I am becoming more confident of his ability to hold on and so have been pushing harder and higher and faster. 
•  I have just introduced Tony to the joys of throwing stones in water.  Tonight, I went searching for rocks to throw in the canal near our apartment.  Having found one and letting Tony throw it in so he could laugh at the resulting plop, I saw Tony immediately run to the spot I had found a rock so he could find more.

What if Chuck Norris came to Wuxi? A Thought Experiment.

What would happen if Chuck Norris, noted political columnist, movie actor, and all around he-man came to Wuxi?  A question like this is not simple to answer, it would require feats of human thought similar to scope to the feats of strength that Chuck Norris has performed and is capable of.  So expect much speculation about this question from AKIC over the next few decades.

 

So, off the top of my head, here are a few things that would happen if Chuck Norris came to Wuxi:

 

• Wuxi, China would instantly adopt the three child policy.
• The moderator of http://wuxiguide.net and Chuck Norris would engage in a belching contest.
• The moderator of http://wuxilife.com and all his buddies would be drank under the table by Chuck Norris in a drinking contest.
• We would all be living in the Chuck Norris Dynasty.
• Wuxi would become the capital of the Chinese Republic of Chuck Norris.
• Some of my dumb students would at least learn one sentence:  "Please don't kill me!  Chuck Norris!"
• Wuxi would have to change its' Chinese name from "Without Tin" to "With Steel".
• Wuxi Life Magazine would profile only one Wuxi Expat:  Chuck Norris.
• The moderator of http://wuxiguide.net  would be calling himself the Queen of Wuxi.
• The current Chinese government would give Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan to Chuck Norris in hopes of appeasing him.
• The Solar Eclipse would happen on Friday, July 25 at 730 PM, just after Chuck Norris has finished his dinner.
• The locals would learn how to line up in McDonalds.
• Chinese society would become harmonious alright.
• The Great Wall would be moved to Xihui Park.

Moory Harre. Where are you?

Long time, I heard from you, have not.   Email, please can send?

Henderson Scores for Canada! AKIC Friday!

• Henderson scores for Canada!
• Here is the miracle of all miracles!
• Both the above links depict events that happened in 1972.
• Tony loves to dance.
• Tony was on a boat near Nanchang Temple Market.  My wife wants to take this boat which goes on a one hour cruise around the downtown.  Maybe, Wednesday.
• It is Friday night in AKICistan!
• This Wuxi Expat site seems to be falling in the trap that the other Wuxi Expat site has fallen into.  It is going to be perceived as a Expat site for only certain cliquey portions of the Wuxi Expat community.  Especially if it starts talking about terrorist groups in Ronnie's.
• Search for the Trojan War Part 1  This documentary series is almost as good as Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.  And that is high praise coming form me.  If you are into more historical and literal tv dramas, you can watch The Fall of Eagles or I Claudius.
• Tomorrow afternoon.  Areva!
• The results of the photo shoot, which unfortunately resulted in me losing my keys, are ready for pick up.  You may seem them in this blog or the other or both.
• I have finished reading the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  It is a book I will reread and reread again like Kenneth Clark's Civilisation companion volume, With Charity towards None:  A Fond look at Misanthropy by Florence King, the Holy Bible, and anything by Evelyn Waugh.  Taleb has written the ultimate bullshit detector.
• The fading of Iran from the news seems to be a welcome relief for Obama.  He hopes many will escape the realization that:   The notion that appeasement is the only path to peace has always had great power over the minds of people who lack moral character. Like Neville Chamberlain and all the less famous freely-elected disasters of history, they think they are being very clever, and that they are morally superior to the Churchillian and Reaganite "peace through strength" types.
• "Eternity is in love with the productions of time."
  
  

Sunday Night Whatevers.

• I feel I should be blogging but I don't know why.  I will just type away for a hour and you can judge if anything happened.
• Obama is Forrest Gump with a Thesaurus.  I saw the comparison here.  I rather like it.  You know I agree with it.
• Two great BBC documentary series,  The Search for Troy and Kenneth Clark's Civilisation can be watched at www.youku.com. as well as this rare video.
• The wife bought a third a/c unit for the apartment.  This one is now in the main bedroom.  Only problem is that it took the workers three hours to install and at the end of the process, it was found that the electrical plug-in needed to be repaired.  My wife was pissed.
• I am chicken boy.  See previous entry.
• The VPN program I have on this computer (I am working at home) angers the wife.  She claims it slows down the computer.
• Tony likes dancing.
• Tony seemed to like watch episodes from Pee Wee's Playhouse.  I wonder if Paul Reubens ever went to Never Never land.
• Rare Readers may know that I like to fiddle around with titles.  For example, Tolstoy wrote Peace and War.  DH Lawrence wrote Lovers and Sons.  Orwell wrote 8419 and Farm Animal.  I have been working through Beatles' song titles.  So far, I have come up with: Man Tax, 8 weeks a day, Belle My Michelle, I wanna hand your hold, Madonna Lady (kind of like saying military intelligence),  and USSR in the back.
• It rained heavy at about five this afternoon.  We learned that a lot of builders in China didn't take drainage into account when they constructed their buildings.
• If I am any kind of boy, I guess you can call me Blogging Boy.  Tony I call Poo Boy.  The KoW I call Bullshit Boy.
• The solar eclipse is happening on Wednesday, July 22 at 800 a.m.  I will not be working that day so I will probably sleep in and miss it....   Not!  Instead expect one of the greatest WTU's ever.  And I mean ever.
• I like asking the students when they say never if they mean never, ever.   And if they yes to that, I ask if they mean never, ever, ever.
• The neighbors, I see, have a fridge next to their sofa in the living room of the apartment.  I am thinking to take a photo but the man is in his undershorts.
• On the way to work, when I take the bus, I see this outside poster of Deng Xiaopeng, the great reformer.   It is located in this factory that looks to have been constructed along the lines of worker communes.  Old and decrepit as these factories are, I would have to say they probably were built as communal places.
• Could I live in this country without the Internet? I doubt it.
• Reading the Black Swan book has provided me with some support to my contention that the Nobel Prize Committee is screwy.  Taleb, who does knock down Economics several pegs as a science, sees the fact that there is a Nobel Prize for Economic Science as a vain attempt on the part of Economists to make their profession have the certainty and scientific feel of Physics.  Many of the Nobel Prize winning Economists says Taleb are frauds (except for a few like Hayek).  In the Black Swan, Taleb  listed a few Nobel Prize winning Economists who engaged in the filthy habit of Econometrics on Gaussian terms.  I believe that one Taleb  listed was responsible for the horrible IS-LM curve, an attempt to graphically present Keynes's General Theory.  Whether I am correct in this assertion or not, the economist Taleb mentioned did managed to destroy the basis of Keynesian Economics which employed, Taleb said, an understanding of uncertainty.
• I always see people who should know better.  Every time I look in the mirror I see one as well.
• There is no bread and sugar in the house.  And there is nowhere close I can go to buy some.  I will just have to do without.
• The runner of this site seems overly obsessed with nationalities.  He has proclaimed the universal ugly tourist is no longer American but French.  I suppose he had to do after I pointed out to him that he definitely was an anti-American.  He tried to use the Ernst Zundel free speech defence to cover the fact.
• Does hanging out with people and Expats from all over the world make one more cosmopolitan or wise or something?  I suppose it depends on the people you hang with.  Many Expats assume they are world wise or something and so a joy for everyone else to behold... not.  I think it would be better to hang with a bunch of good sorts at something like a monastery than to hang with self-proclaimed wise guys convinced beyond doubt of their ineffable worldliness and big view.  All that this travel to another continent has taught me is that the world is full of assholes.
• I look at three Micheal Crichton novels with eager anticipation.
• As for students, I prefer teaching girls to boys.  Girls are just better behaved and make for better students.
• Says Taleb, if one has to resort to Ad Hominem attacks, one should realize that one is winning the argument.  One should in fact try to be attacked Ad Hominemly as much as possible, especially when make assertions of facts and logic.
• I haven't looked at the Papal Encyclical yet.

I am Chicken Boy!

I was doing a conversation class about food, and was trying to be jocular and affable with the young male students, of whom we have many in the Summer.  Trying to achieve jocularity and affability, I suddenly got it into my head to call the students "_____ boy.".  "So you like pork eh?  Okay.  You must be pork boy! 

 

 I had already called some of the kids: banana boy, apple boy, McDonald's boy, ice cream boy, egg boy, egg man,  broccoli boy, cauliflower boy, and yogurt boy when I got around to talking about meat.  "What meat do you like?" I asked one of the male middle-school students.  He replied "Oh!  I am chicken boy!" getting laughs from his buddies, the rest of the class, and me.

Wuxi Tony Update #366: The impact of a highly intolerable boy in China

This video is a tribute to the bestselling book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the HIGHLY IMPROBABLE.

Just a thought.

One on my majors in school, Economics, is getting whacked about these days.  Reading the Black Swan book by NNT, I am learning about how Economists are terrible at making predictions.  I am also hearing that Nobel Prize winning economists are on both sides of the fence when it comes to the massive spending of the Obama administration.  Some economists are saying that the massive spending is foolish; some are saying there should be more.  Some economists are also saying that the seemingly high unemployment in America would be worse if it wasn't for the stimulus spending!

 

Why is a Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Free Market, Libertarian economics type to say for himself?  Taleb does say good things in his book about Hayek, Libertarians, and F.A. Bastiat.  I can also recall William Buckley reporting that Milton Friedman did not make predictions.  I also say that if economists were good at predicting then Socialism and Communism would work.  They don't and economists shouldn't make predictions.  Simply put, there is too much going on and so much subjectivity in the world economy that no one could know it or control it.  As for all these Nobel Prize wining Economists disagreeing, I say that the Nobel Prize committee doesn't know what the hell it is doing.  After all, it gave a peace prize to Yasser Arafat as well as Al Gore.  Sure, they gave a Nobel prize to Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek, but that just goes to show that sometimes even bad organizations do correct things.  It may have also been a plot by the Nobel Committee to discredit the two in a strange attempt to confuse intelligent people.

Top Forty Tweeters to follow about China.

I am not one of them but here is the link.

Why China can't internationalize the Yuan.

For the benefit of readers inside of China, I will post the entire text of the article that can be found here:

 

China has a long way to go to internationalize its currency, Yuan. For one, China does not have a foreign exchange market for Yuan outside China and this would be troublesome for its trading partners to manage currency risk. Also, China's Yuan is tied to the US dollar. It can hardly offer any more stability than the US dollar.  Here is a short analysis from WSJ.

If the dollar's role in the global economy is under a cloud, the yuan isn't the cause. At least not yet.  China this week began allowing trade between companies in five Chinese cities and Hong Kong, Macau, and the ASEAN member countries, to be settled in yuan.  Starting just days before a G-8 summit at which the dollar's status could be a hot topic, the trade settlement moves are China's most tangible step toward promoting the international use of its own currency.
 
In reality, Beijing may find that its remit to mold market forces doesn't extend much beyond its own borders.  China certainly has some good reasons to invoice trade in yuan, not least as a way to slow the growth of its $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.  But for the practice to take off, key counterparties outside China must be willing to buy and sell using yuan. This is where the plan runs into hurdles.  Some trading partners may find they have no choice -- like those buying high-end machinery for which China's prices are so competitive it's in a position to dictate the settlement currency.

But with China's capital markets off limits to foreigners, firms dealing in yuan can only deposit funds in low yielding accounts in Hong Kong. The yuan isn't traded outside of China so companies won't have a way to manage their foreign exchange risk.  Beijing counters this limitation by trumpeting the yuan's stability. Given the currency's effective peg to the dollar for nearly a year now, it actually offers no more stability than the greenback -- the currency it would seek to replace -- something that won't offer much encouragement to Malaysian or Thai exporters, for example.  Certainly, being able to tap China's flush banks for trade financing is a draw but there's always the risk that avenue may dry up if Beijing tightens credit as it has in the past.  In truth, appreciation, rather than stability, is the yuan's only draw. China's currency regulator said as much in a recently published report, arguing that a rising currency is a prerequisite for yuan settlement.  These days, given the ongoing slump in Chinese exports, that's hardly worth betting on.

Time to get serious?

• Is it time to get serious?  I suppose.  But, about what?
• Reading the Black Swan book by NNT.  It is very interesting.  However, I wonder if 9/11 is in fact a Black Swan.  Throughout the book the event was used as a primary example of the Black Swan phenomenon.  My recollection of 9/11 was that before a big terrorist attack was always expected to occur in the United States.  How and when was the question.  The manner in which 9/11 occurred was novel.  But I remember later on 9/11 exclaiming "so that is how they did it!"  The attack itself was probable.  What wasn't highly probable was the manner in which it took place.  And the attacks have kept occurring around the world, not unexpectedly, like in the U.K. on 7/7.
• I am going to have to read the Papal Encyclical.  Some on the Left are gloating saying it puts the Pope to the left of Obama and Chavez.  But the chances are these types are cherry-picking.
• It is hot and sticky in the house.  I have to drag myself up to ready to go to work. 

More disjointed recollections

• Sleeping in Summer in Wuxi with a two-year old boy is not a continual seemless activity.  Nights are filled with constant interruptions.  Tony, like many other children his age, flops around a lot in his sleep, adopting many positions other than the simple, head on the pillow, feet at the base of bed, position we all eventually adopt.  If you want to sleep with your children, you will have to get used to being kicked in the head.  I wasn't expecting however to be slapped in a manner that didn't make it seem an accident.  Tony looked to take his arm from his side, slap me on the cheek with his hand, before returning his arm to his side.  Awoken from an uneasy slumber, I gently slapped him back but it didn't upset him in the least.  I also had vague recollections of Tony wanting to watch television at 530 a.m. to which I made him formula and put him back to bed.  But I then vaguely recall falling sleep on the sofa at 730 am. after having put on the DVD for Tony.  I think I also slapped him on the feet a couple of times but I can't recall why.
• The parents sent us some Smarties in the care package.  Smarties are candy coated chocolates, like M&Ms, only better, way better.  I remember the Smarties jingle I always heard growing up.  "When you eat your smarties, do you eat the red ones last?  Do you stick them up your asshole and try to make a lot of gas.? Do you stick the green ones up your nostrils and pretend to make a sneeze?  When you eat your smarties, do you eat the red ones last?"  Or something like that....
• I saw this expat I hadn't seen in a while.  Thankfully, I saw him from a distance because I didn't want to do a "stop and chat".  Not that he would have either.

More Randoms

• With so many other things intruding into my waking hours, and now having Tony intrude into my sleeping hours (he dragged me out of bed at five this morning), I will have to do blog entries in this bullet form.
• Yesterday, I received a care package from my parents who live in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.  The package, they sent, was full of books and other things.  Tony got a whole lot of children books which I eagerly await being able to read to him.  I received three Michael Crichton novels, a Holy Bible (King James Edition), and the non-fiction work The Black Swan:  The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  I read about fifty pages of The Black Swan last night.  The first thing I turned to in the Bible was the Psalms.  We also received chocolate which may be all consumed by this afternoon.  I also received a pair of trousers which I desperately need.  I have had five trousers become fit for retirement in the space of two weeks.
• Many students told me of having watched the Michael Jackson funeral on the Internet.
• The students don't seem all that interested in the solar eclipse which can be viewed in Wuxi on July 22 at about eight a.m.  One student told me that if forced to make a choice, they would rather watch the MJ funeral than the solar eclipse.  But that is not so astounding when you take into account how cloudy and smoggy it is in Wuxi.
• I shouldn't but will also mention that I received a stick of Deodorant:  Speed Stick with odour of Irish Spring.  It is getting these things that make life bearable here in humid Wuxi.  I don't how many times  a stick of deodorant in the backpack has been pulled out to restore my confidence.   I don't want to be like the many stinky ex-pats I have had to experience.  Whooo!!!!
• Thanks now to the extra books coming in, I now can say I have four books on my currently-reading plate.  I am in the midst of this translation of the Iliad, the Mill on the Floss, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and now the Black Swan book.  I suppose I will plow through the Black Swan book before returning to the others.  Although, neglecting the Iliad and the Mill on the Floss may mean getting the characters mixed up.
• (Exclusive to Blogspot readers outside of the PRC)  I asked the students about Xinjiang but there really wasn't anywhere I could go with the topic other, than to ask them if they had heard the story and had any opinions.  The students had heard about it and were following it.  Though some said they were more interested in the Michael Jackson funeral.  I asked them how they thought the Xinjiangren in Wuxi would be treated and one student expressed a fear of them saying they were always trying to steal bags and wallets (this I have witnessed myself).  No idea if the Wuxi locals would go to Xinjiang Noodle houses of which there are many in the city.  Another student told me he had to Xinjiang for two years around 2001 for business.  He said the place was beautiful but he didn't tell me anything about how the Xughurs treated him.  I finally asked the students if the events in Xinjiang would impact Wuxi and all seemed to agree that Xinjiang was too far away to worry about.