After I dropped off the kids I gave Ma Laoban a ring to see if he'd eaten. He hadn't so I invited him to go for a bite to eat at the local breakfastery. I had a couple of meat-filled buns and a savoury pancake and he had some zhou and soya bean juice and wouldn't let me pay. He then asked me about how our house was going so I told him to wait a minute while I popped back and got the key, then we drove the whole 30 seconds to get there. The lift took longer to get to the 14th floor than we had taken on our bikes. When we got there the door was open and there were already a couple of men at work, and also Lin Hong was there, keeping her beady eye on them.
The only discernable difference from a couple of days ago was that the kitchen now had most of the cupboards and the sink in place, so at least that was something. While we were there inspecting the house, one of the workers built a sort of A-frame thing for cutting wood on. Why bother buying one when you can make your own for free in 15 minutes? After half an hour we left Lin Hong watching the work and Ma Laoban went to his computer shop and I went home. Tan was there and asked me to take her to the supermarket to get a notebook and a plastic tea container. We then drove up the road to look at sofas for the house. The one Tan wanted to buy the other day was no longer at a discount, and was 7000 kuai, so we decided against it, but I was interested in a sofabed for the spare bedroom (my office). I found one and asked the bloke to make it into a bed, which he did. Then I did the important test of sitting on the side of the bed and it slid around before depositing me on the ground. A good test. I didn't buy it. I left Tan to go to A Hua's shop while I went home and did some work before having a small siesta at 2pm. Small because Tan called me at 3pm to say she'd seen a leather sofa in a new place at 5000 kuai - a bargain at half the price. I didn't have the energy to ask the relevant questions so relented and said yes put it on Lin Hong's credit card and we'll pay her back in a couple of weeks.
Tan picked up the kids as I was busy with a meeting. In fact I'd been very busy most of the day so I decided at 8pm, when I found everyone had gone out, to go for a swift game of table tennis. No volleyball today as we'd had a couple of showers and were probably in for some more. Finally I got my first win against a half decent player. Having said that he was younger than me and wearing jeans and shoes and a teeshirt, as opposed to me in just shorts. I won 7-11, 11-9, 11-4 and even had some witnesses. So I hope I'm starting to become someone people want to play for the game rather than for the fun of playing a foreigner. I left by 10pm and spent the next eight hours working, broken only by a brief skype chat with And and Awl. Got to sleep at 6.30am.
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