My own table tennis bat, and la du

Slept till 1.30pm after the disaster that was England Algeria.

Went to eat late lunch with Awu and Boss Yang and a couple of others, then Awu went to have a rest and I went with Boss Yang to get my table tennis bat. We went to a shop that sold sports equipment and he looked at the bats without any rubber on them before deciding on one that was about 250 kuai, or getting on for 30 quid. He explained that it had two layers of carbon in it but I didn't quite understand how that made it better however I'll take his word for it. He chose red and black rubber skins, and left it with the owner to sort out.

We then went to "Number 5" coffee shop, which is a nicely decked out place that serves coffee along with tea and various alcoholic drinks the likes of which I'd rarely seen outside of Shanghai, such as western whisky. I was talking to the boss and saying it was a little similar to European style drinking places, which I meant as a compliment. I said in Europe you would often get free wifi in such establishments as people could work there and would stay longer and order more drinks. He then told me that there was wifi and he proceeded to give me the password for it. I suggested he may like to advertise the fact he had wifi - I'll check when I go next time. And there will be a next time as the place was pretty dead and I would be able to get some work done from there if our internet goes down as I'm sure it will. While we were enjoying a fresh coffee someone came in with my new bat in its new cover. 300 kuai in all and it's lovely...very comfortable to hold and I can't wait to use it. Boss Yang wouldn't let me pay for it saying it was a present from him! I estimate that China is on average four times cheaper than the UK (hard to generalise but I do my best), down from 4.5 times last year. That would mean my bat would have cost 120 quid in the UK.

Unfortunately my tummy was starting to get a bit funny. Not in the ha ha sense unless you find diarrhoea funny (I should have learnt to spell that word after so many times in China). I can't normally squat but in cases like these I make exceptions and made my excuses while walking quickly to the squat loo in the cafe. I came out feeling better but knowing that was not the last time today by a long shot.

A bit later we went to Boss Yang's office to drink tea but tummy troubles continued. After a couple of trips to the squatter I explained I'd better go home. I had intended to go to the supermarket to get some milk and cereal for the kids but once outside I could not even face going there and just went home feeling very sick.

I told Tan about the tummy and she told me to go to A Xia's clothes shop where A Ni would get me some medicine. This was in the form of vanilla flavoured dust in tiny packets about the size of a light tampon cover. I don't know if it did any good; it certainly didn't help instantly.

Later could not eat tea but had to go to KTV (Karaoke TV) for A Hua's birthday celebration. I had very very few beers, just enough to be polite, and my cai ma is good enough to not get drunk on. Later at home I was not tired, so took the bike outside at 2am to see what I could see. There was a large screen with a projector just opposite our house showing pre-match build-up of the next World Cup game so I decided to sit down at a table and have a quick beer. I asked the waitress how long they would stay open till. She pointed to the table with the most people and said "until they leave". That table happened to be next to mine and as soon as my bum had hit my seat I was invited over to have a beer with them. It transpired that two of them were Tan's mum's sister's sons and we were quite close relatives. That was more than an excuse to have a few beers, and we ended up eating and drinking till 3am, when I pointed out it may be a good time to get home. It was agreed that at this time it was a good idea, so we exchanged phone numbers and I hope to catch up with them soon.

What finding relatives at 2am might look like