When my dad was diagnosed with myeloma I told him I didn't know what to say. He said there's nothing to say about it.

Rather than talk about our feelings, which my family never really did, we just continued shooting the shit and joking and sending each other the equivalent of cat pics for old people.

Despite myeloma being incurable, it's treatable and some people last a long time and you kind of cling to the hope that this case will be one of those. Despite the statistics.

When the melonomas appeared though, every conversation became incredibly weird and difficult because we both basically assumed we were just waiting for him to die, which he did quite soon.

Sorry for making this about me and again, I'm not really sure what to say to you. The death in life sucks. Not sure about your relationship with your mom is like, but I hope you can avoid my situation of being weirded out talking to each other.

CCP has everything locked down so tightly, outsiders generally will never know the extent of censorship and totality of clampdown exerted. There were no results searching for mentions of Sitong Bridge Beijing on weibo or anywhere inside the great firewall recently. There are hundred or thousands or more police posted on bridges across China...

And anyone who's spent time in China will be aware of the pervasive chàbuduō attitude.

A mixture of a very pragmatic response to a situation, combined with meh, good enough, but it goes a lot further. It's also a very sharp, double edged sword.

Cable won't reach? Drill a hole in the door, feed it through... very pragmatic|meh good enough. Can't afford to buy and process vegetable oil, gutter oil..., so pragmatic|meh good enough.

Can't be bothered to follow to strict chemical/biological waste disposal procedures, dump it in the sewer.

chàbuduō also means if you can get away with it, you definitely should.

Now I'm not saying they were so slapdash with their attitudes, that a dangerous virus being experimented on for gain of function, funded by the US (because they aren't allowed to) - only co-incidentally the very virus that caused a worldwide pandemic killing millions - could have been exposed to the outside world accidentally because some fuckwit threw a virulent bat's carcass in the dumpster out back that one time because Joe Chao mixed up the labels on the infected/uninfected cages, or someone tore their protective clothing, or spilt a vial and just used a mop to clean it up because ... chàbuduō.

But that is exactly what happened.

Then the CCP machinery kicks in to cover it all up, now no-one will ever know the difference ... chàbuduō | meh good enough

It does seem light, they could have appointed him to the supreme court and that's life.

It was my dad.

I'm glad I was born before the internet took off. It must be so incredibly hard these days for kids to get interested in books or for parents/teachers/others to spark the interest for long form reading.

My dad only had a small collection of books, but was an avid library member. I have so many fond memories of visiting the library every month. Even better when we moved and our house was on the same street as the local library.

Thanks for this post. I haven't read any "joy" books in the last 18 months, only technical, work related books.

Going to remedy that starting tonight!