Time for more fluff......
Alright folks, time to catch up a bit.
First of all, a happy shout out to the newer countries/places
for following my blog:
Aruba….(keeping up with this blog on the beach, eh?)
Congo, Zambia, Qatar, Croatia, Iran, New Caledonia(yep),
Ukraine(glad you guys have time to read), and Moldova!
I’m still waiting on North Korea.
My overseas readers now upon occasion surpass my American
readers. At one time this was a 80-90%
US dominated blog….but not anymore.
(One thing I really wish I could do is filter my American
views by State, but I don’t know how to do that.)
As you may have noticed, work has kept me from keeping up
with the frequency of posts that I’d like to maintain. For example, I did some consulting work for
a major telecommunications company a few weeks ago, and as you can imagine,
this type of thing, with the revenue potential involved, really commands my
focus.
My feeling however, is that I do have over 100 posts on my
blog….(around 120 or so), and they are ALL relevant. Our natural habits force us to browse/read
posts from only the past few weeks or so, while ignoring the stuff I wrote 6
months earlier, etc. So I’m always
happy when I see someone reading something from a year earlier.
Even though you all have plenty to read(reread?), all the
same, if I don’t write frequently enough, I get “the shakes”.
Still, the funny thing is that since I last did a “fluff”
post , I’d reckon my readership has probably gone up 15-20% or so….while my
comments on newer topics have quite frankly been pretty low. Without question the feedback I get from
folks tends to address older posts.
My slow march to the Pulitzer
As for my upcoming topics, I'm abt a month to six weeks behind. That is, I have enough to fill that timeframe. One in particular that's been on my mind for at least a year, but it's quite weighty, and the weighty ones always take TIME.
Why the mystery??
Thanks for further enlightening me of the following
websites:
Bloglovin.com
Feedly.com
Getpocket.com
Semalt
Secretboy(blog?).com
Why some of you use the above sites to hide your identity is
beyond me. Or are these host sites used
via VPN in China? I confess I’m not
sure. I do get a daily dose of the
above, however.
My kids music, and the wife’s FACE
My oldest daughter came home from piano the other day, with
watery eyes, telling me her piano teacher yelled at her again. This type of crap really, really annoys
me. I know you are tired of hearing me
bring it up, but the point of “teaching” music is for the student to “enjoy”
it. Right? I have no ambitions of either of my daughters
playing Carnegie Hall. I don’t
care. What I want them to do is be proficient with
an instrument, and to have the “will” to continue to play music once they’ve
left the house.
Constantly telling them they “suck”(my words) will not keep
them willingly engaged in music.
My wife’s focus is on my children playing well, and
finishing their assignments. If my
daughters do not do this, and the teacher is upset, fair enough. But a balance needs to be kept. The teacher has to remember that the student
needs to “enjoy” the subject. Problem
is Chinese people want Chinese teachers, and that means learning from composers
who have been dead 200 years.
Relevance
goes out the window. Contemporary pieces
an 11 year old may actually like? Uh- oh.
It’s also reflective(in my view), of how
ignorant of child psychology a teacher can be.
I seriously doubt the 60 year old teacher of my children
even knows what Lady Gaga looks like.
This obsession of Chinese wanting to use Chinese music
teachers is silly. Both of my daughters
have to travel 25 miles for violin lessons.
I really don’t like this. There
are half a dozen good teachers within a 5 mile radius of where we live….no wait
a second…none of them are Chinese, so they must suck.
I find this obsession is more for my wife’s benefit than for
that of the child. While my wife needing
to communicate with the teacher is important, it only re-enforces my wife’s
need for face when lessons are practiced.
I see no consideration of student enjoyment taking the forefront.
Tiger mom concluded
Tiger mom’s daughter finally gets a college….(see my earlier
post about Yale).
This poor girl, while being the valedictorian of her class,
was rejected by Yale, Harvard, Princeton…you get the picture. She was accepted by Duke, though….and just
when mom was about to lose hope, Columbia came through! With a full scholarship!(?)
I questioned how an applicant could not get into Princeton
but could still get a full ride somewhere else within the same strata….and I
think her mom is lying. I really
do. Not about going to Columbia, but
about the scholarship. But this is all
I will ever think of this.
Snowden
I’d mentioned he’d probably not get very far if he was
Chinese. I believe I’d said he’d be
tried for treason and then executed.
Now, after his latest revelations, is there any doubt he’s
crossed the line?
Snowden probably did a public service by revealing how the
NSA spies on Americans(or how it could if they wanted to)
How does Snowden help America when he reveals which foreign
leaders phones we’ve tapped? And now
he’s revealed that America had tapped into Huawei….(pretty impressive). The unspoken implication being that it seems
to have been within a “hairs breath” of being able to tap into
Zhongnanhai.
I think it is very much the goal of America’s NSA to tap
into everybody(if not already). In my
view, there is no question that the most feared organization on Earth should
not be any countries particular military, but the American NSA. They have the budget, the talent, and that’s
that. No matter what you hear, it will
always be “cool” to work at a place with an unlimited budget. These guys are doing things that no other
place is doing. Why? Because if a private company attempted to
mimic the actions of the NSA, it would be illegal, and ironically enough,
people could go to jail.
Not with the NSA! Snowden only revealed what he knew. I don’t
think anyone has said Snowden knew “everything” that was going on.
Back to Snowden, does his revealing who America spies on
overseas make him a hero? It’s pretty
obvious that he’s revealed so much, that should he ever come back to America,
he’s looking at life in prison. He would
be deluding himself into believing that
he will be given whistleblower status in America. No way.
This guy will never see the light of day, should he return. (Nevermind his revelations of domestic
spying. ) Once he gave away foreign
intelligence he was crossing the line.
I’m not sure how anyone can justify Snowden’s actions in this
regard.
My Qi
Now I’m referring to a post I wrote some time ago, when I
decided to get myself “fixed”. That is,
have an outpatient procedure that would preclude me from no longer
participating in anyone getting pregnant.
(you’ll recall my wife was so upset during this process she actually
cried)
I find it is culturally unacceptable for Chinese Men to
undergo such a procedure. The husband
of one lady we know actually ran out the door moments before his procedure was
to begin. (Frustrated by her cowardly
husband, she actually had to undergo the procedure herself. )
It’s been a few years now since I’ve had my “procedure”, and
I find it quite liberating. I’ve had
absolutely no regrets, as I knew I would not, and I recommend it for any man
over 40, who already has “a nest” at home.
And let’s be honest….having an overactive libido while in
China can get one into hot water. How to
avoid? (Get fixed!) As a result, I’ve simply one less thing to
worry about. All that matters is that
“My Drive” is still intact. In the interim I’ve told my wife should she want
another child, for the sake of having a son, she should look elsewhere.
The Rabbit and the Snake
And lastly, a bit of disturbing news from the same Tiger Mom
mentioned above.
We here in our neck of the woods have lots of animals. The usual: moles, snakes, rabbits, chipmunks,
etc. I’m a bit of a garden enthusiast,
and every spring try and plant a few things.
However, the rabbits in our area tend to eat most of our vegetable
plants, and my luck is usually as a result much to be desired.
Turns out the above Tiger Mom had the same dilemma and as a result
came up with a solution: her family’s
solution was to simply create a rabbit trap, (whatever that is), to avoid their
garden from being molested. (let me say
hear, yes I know that I can create a fence to keep the bunnies out, but quite
frankly, it’s too time consuming and my wife has no interest in gardening.)
Well, what they did next I found quite disturbing(no they
didn’t cook the poor thing).
Upon catching the rabbit, they simply kept it alive in its
trap, until it starved to death. That’s
right. Just kept it there.
Is this not illegal? Should
it be? This is so far beyond my cultural
experience I didn’t know how to react when I heard the news.
In my view they treat the snakes better: upon catching a
snake they simply cook it for dinner.
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