Life has been uneventful lately, apart from being dragged into a thoroughly sordid mess last week. I did not handle it with any dignity. Every inch of me radiated cowardice.
Once you're past a certain age, the sensible move is to dig a hole and climb in.
臭宝 sits her biology practical exam on 10 May, the one that counts toward her move into senior high. The school is taking it seriously enough that the newly appointed party secretary held a face-to-face meeting with the second-year parents himself. The biggest room on campus couldn't hold everyone, so he split it into six sessions.
A parent meeting that runs for six nights. Like a concert residency.
The whole point was to fire everyone up for the upcoming geography and biology exams. The secretary made an earnest case: the school does have a biology lab, but only a hundred microscopes. Three of the four practical questions require one. So if the children are going to get good at it, he'd like every kid to have a scope of their own — borrow from the senior students, or buy one online — so they can practice in the classroom and lock down those ten points.
In my mind a microscope was still an exalted object. One of our clients has microscopes as a core business line; they sell for eye-watering sums, maybe a dozen units a year. In my own junior high days we never touched one — the teacher set it on the lectern during class and that was that. High school had an actual hands-on lab, three or four of us to a single scope, with the teacher repeating please be careful, please don't break it, those things cost ten thousand yuan.
So I held my nose and searched online, and my jaw dropped: a student microscope, 138 yuan, shipping included. It arrived, we opened the box, and it came with slides, stains, culture medium, the lot. Fiddled with it — crude, imprecise, and entirely adequate for basic technique. Times really have changed.
A while back someone told me shingles isn't a skin disease. A few days ago I finally believed it.
My wife kept saying her eye still hurt, so I went with her to the ophthalmologist and ran through what had been happening. The doctor did a basic exam and said: "The lesion inside your eye hasn't cleared up. You need to keep using the acyclovir drops."
So the dermatology hospital really does only deal with skin.
Two new people joined our team from another project. One is a young woman born in 1995, X Nan. Everyone who started around the same time as her calls her Da Nan. I refuse, and call her X-san instead.
She must have felt it was a bit cold, because she came over and asked, "Zhi-ge, how come you don't call me Da Nan? I wouldn't mind."
"I'd mind," I said. "Have none of you read Slam Dunk?"