Saturday night's alright for sweating...

Apologies to Elton John for misappropriating his lyrics there, but damn is it hot today.

It's Saturday night. I've spent a day teaching my adult students (without breakfast this morning to boot). I went shopping for some necessities (Lucas got his first taste of Lego-like blocks!). Now I'm sitting in my apartment at almost 11PM drenched to the core because it's 32°C (75% humidity – humidex calculation says it feels like 47°C!) and my apartment is being "cooled" by a single room-sized air conditioner off in the corner of a single bedroom.

Welcome to summer in Wuhan, one of the "Three Hells Furnaces" of China. (The other two are Nanjing and Chongqing.)

And it isn't even July yet!

Junior Problem Solver

(This is another Lucas story. Sorry.)

Short story, but true. Lucas and I are playing with the toy vehicles he's obsessed with. I get a little toy plane wound up and aim at at Lucas. He steps aside and lets it sail under the bed. Far under the bed.

I asked Joan to get the laundry stick (a thing used to get stuff on and off the high points where we hang laundry) but she was too busy to get it. I didn't want to try both keeping track of a hyperactive toddler while going out to the balcony to find the stick, so I just told Lucas "sorry, I can't get it".

Lucas, pauses, staring at me. He then trundles off to the corner of the room where we have a long-forgotten old mop handle leaning for obscure historical reasons. This mop handle is something nobody's even glanced at for over a year. Lucas, however, not only spotted it but figured out how it could be used to get his precious aeroplane. He stands pointing at it making eager sounds and sure enough, I go get it and retrieve the plane.

That's already pretty impressive in its own right. This gets better, though. My son has a mischievous streak in him and as soon as the handle was put back he took his plane and threw it under the bed. He misjudged the distance, though, and I was able to snag the plane without the stick. So he threw it again, much more successfully. He glances up at me with twinkling eyes full of mischief, laughing at my expression.

Of course I'm not a nice person so I had Joan take him from the room for a short time. In that time I rescued the plane and hid the pole. When Lucas came trundling back he made a beeline for the plane and, as expected, laughed as he threw it under the bed. Then, when I didn't immediately go pick up the stick to rescue it, he trundled off to where the mop handle used to be and, without looking, pointed at it making urgent sounds. I affected confusion. He looked. The most crestfallen face I've ever seen him put on without crying materialized. He was utterly baffled, actually touching the wall to make sure the thing was actually gone.

Merriment ensued.

Busy week

Well, anybody afraid that this is going to be another Lucas blog entry can rest assured that I will only be mentioning him once. Since that mention was in the previous sentence, you know the rest of the blog won't be quite as tedious as it usually is.

In September of 2006 Joan decided to do something she's wanted to do since she was a teenage girl: straighten her teeth. Her two front teeth were crooked, you see, twisted in place by quite a large amount. Nobody really noticed this, of course, but she knew about it and was very, very insecure about her smile as a result. Those of you who've seen my earlier (sadly non-digital) photos of her will know that it's rare to actually see her smiling in a photo (or, rather, when she did smile, it was always a closed-mouth Mona Lisa-style one). Which was actually quite a shame because when she's smiling (naturally, that is) her face lights up like a pinball game that's just hit the "free game" jackpot.

September of 2006 marked her decision to move away from this. She went to the dentist, got evaluated, got four teeth pulled and thus began a two-year (maximum!) process of adjusting her teeth. This week, on Wednesday, June 10, 2009, the work was finally completed. Yes, the two-year maximum process took just under three years. Three years of discomfort and three years of metal in the mouth. Sometimes sharp metal. Even with metal in her mouth, however, Joan already started to smile properly and naturally, wearing the braces almost as a badge of honour.

Finally, however, it's over. Above and to the left you can see what Joan's smile looked like on Tuesday and to the right you can see what it looked like Wednesday. Pretty big change over a day, isn't it?

Of course it's still not completely over. She has retainers she has to wear 24x7 (except when eating) for a year, then nights-only for another year. She's had to relearn how to talk because the retainers occupy quite a bit of space in the mouth, but they're visibly much less intrusive than were the braces before.

In other news, and the reason for my delay in posting any news at all, I have officially signed my new contract at my new workplace. I'm moving over to the Hubei Provincial Communication Technical College (or something approximately like that which I'll translate better when I get the energy) in under a month and will be starting teaching there September of this year.

The general run-down on the new place:

• The staff are friendlier and more communicative than my current school, not to mention better organized and better capable of communicating in English.
  
• The salary is a bit higher, but so are the teaching hours (the hourly remuneration is about the same).
• The students are going to be of much, much lower quality than the main campus (and possibly even slightly lower quality than the Sweathogs campus).
• The new apartment is a bit smaller, but much more nicely outfitted (it has an air conditioner/heater in each room, for example).

Also, again unlike my current school, they're willing to let me move in over the summer. One thing that I really didn't like about ISSWHU the first year I was there (albeit about the only thing at the time since I hadn't been introduced to the Sweathogs yet) was that they positively refused to allow us to move in over the summer. Instead I had to stow my possessions at a friend's apartment and live in Joan's apartment in Hanyang over the summer and then hastily move everything in while I was also planning lessons and getting oriented in the new location just before I started teaching. Why? They didn't want to be responsible for me or my behaviour over the summer before I started working for them.

So the move is a mixed bag that, in my opinion, slightly tilts toward the "plus" side of the scales when I measure them.

No other particularly interesting news to report otherwise. I mean it's damned hot, but I think I've been complaining about that loudly to anybody who'd listen since I first got to China. (How hot? Try 35C at 84% humidity.) I am going to really enjoy living in an apartment where I don't have a single room-sized air conditioner trying to cool down a sizable two-bedroom apartment.

An exchange on Facebook of the "truth hurts" variety.

Names elided to protect the guilty.

You're blocking XXX? How come?

Something she did on my blog a few years back made me decide I'd rather exist in a world in which she does not exist. Since the digital world is easily adjusted to allow the editing of life, I proceeded to make the world I wanted.

What exactly did she do on your blog?

Was it the time she described you as cranky and sexist, or the time when she said you were turning 52 on your birthday, or was it the time she called you an adult baby, or was it the time...?

I will let her guess which time it was.

Those North American women. When will they learn just how spoiled they are, and bow down to your genius?

;-) Do you still feel that way?

Yeah, XXX can be tactless. Like me. I suppose it's why we get along. She actually asks me now and then to read over emails she is sending, where she is trying to say something subtle and difficult.

I suspect she still has unresolved anger over arguments with you. You know, stuff you said about women and their periods and how feminism is all bullshit.

I'd like to think being married and reproducing has changed you somewhat. Mike told me that you seemed to understand your wife is the boss, as it is with nearly all partnerships, I suspect.

I've been in therapy for a year now. I am getting my shit together. I even applied for an art show with the city of Ottawa. But lately I find myself getting in touch with old rage. And I suspect that's the real reason I'm talking to you lately. No one I've met has ever been better at rage than you.

I don't know if I mean that as a compliment or an insult.

Take all of this as you will.

I feel that way more than ever about North American feminists. When seeing women who have REAL problems in life it's hard to take seriously the whining of Canadian and American women.

As to the tactless thing, you pale in comparison to XXX. At your most tactless people still mostly liked you. At her least tactless people mostly tolerated XXX. She was put up with because you were liked -- a sort of "take the good with the bad" approach.

I have an advantage over these people. I don't have to put up with her at all. Nobody can (legally) edit a person out of their physical lives, but my life with my old crowd is all-digital now. I can edit anybody out I care to without having to get my hands bloody.

Please edit me out of your life too.

Why? If you want out of my life you just have to stop inserting yourself into it.

He took this to heart and blocked me on Facebook like I blocked his girlfriend. Nothing ends a friendly relationship than telling a guy that his girlfriend is a total and absolute bitch with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.