Trainers and unlaid eggs

Ahh...a little bit of precipitation...how refreshing. Up at a dreadfully late 1.30pm although was disturbed by the kids at 8.30am but I was lucky Jiuma took them out soon after. Then worked till around 4.30pm when Tan called to say A Wu had invited us out to eat at a chicken-speciality restaurant. That was music to my ears as I've had enough sitting in front of the computer for the last two weeks and it is indeed a Saturday. I just had time to put on some clean socks and put my dirty trainers in a bag before A Wu and A Ni came to pick us up.

We drove to a nondescript place near A Ni's parents' house, and picked up their kid, A Da, on the way. He currently spends most of the time living at a teacher's house with a few other kids during school holidays. It is this teacher's business outside of school hours. I asked what A Da was taught and I was told "good manners" along with how to wash dishes, wash clothes and other general tidying up. I suggested to Tan (in English so I wouldn't be understood) that that was what parents should be doing. She agreed and said she'd said that to A Ni but still...seems a little sad to me, to only see your kid on a few occasions as though he was a minor irritant. Well, the meal was particularly good - a large pot of chicken soup and a pot of some other soup that contained congealed chicken blood and - one of my favourites - unlaid eggs, absolutely gorgeous. Apart from some spinach that was, and some rice and yu mi zhou.

My favourite unlaid eggs

After the meal Tan went with A Ni to get a massage, and A Wu and I went to find Xixi. However I first had to put my trainers in to be cleaned. I pointed out the shoe-cleaning place I wanted to go to but A Wu said "no" and that we'd go to one 100 yards up the road as he had an account there. An account at a shoe-cleaning place? Why not? For future reference his account number is G186. He paid 20 kuai to the woman and she got out her book and noted the amount. I then gave her my pair of dirty sweaty trainers and she said it would cost 3 kuai, 2 kuai cheaper than the last place I'd been to so I guess the account makes sense. We then drove to the sports outfit shop that I got my last pair of trainers from as he has a discount card there. Not actually a discount card for the shop, rather for the brand "361 degrees". Ingenious. The brand name and the idea of having a discount for the brand. Over here we might have a store card but I've not heard of a brand card you can take to any shop.

My lovely new trainers with the 361° brand in Man City Blue

Anyway, in typical style the young lady in the shop pointed out a particular trainer and advised me to them as they looked good. I didn't care too much for the look as comfort is the most important for me here. I told her to find a size 265 (that is China size - 43 Europe size, or 9 US). As she sent her assistant off to look I grabbed a pair that looked identical to the pair I bought two weeks' ago except for the colour of the logo and asked her to find the same size in this style too. After ten minutes I enquired as to whether the assistant was having trouble finding my size. Oh, no, apparently they didn't keep that size in the shop and she'd got on the motorbike to wherever it was that had them. Eventually she did return, and the pair she had first suggested were ok, but slightly wide and a tad short. I told her so so she reluctantly opened the box of the other pair I'd chosen. Well these were a sublime fit, like gloves, and so light too. I knew that the pair I'd bought previously were still going strong so I was quite confident in the quality, so at 199 kuai I went for them. This was lowered to 159 kuai with A Wu's discount card!

The kitchen now has tiles on the floor

We went to pick up Xixi from Jiuma, but found her asleep. It was 7.30pm and she'd been sleeping for half an hour apparently. I didn't want to deal with a two and a half year old daughter as awake as a leprechaun at 2am so I tried to wake her up but it was impossible. So I let her sleep till 8pm then managed to prise her eyes open with the promise of taking her to the guang chang. She actually woke up slowly, and we got into A Wu's aging car and drove there. But as soon as we arrived A Wu had a phone call and he had to leave to pick someone up, whatever that meant, so Xixi and I got out and I told her we'd go for a boat ride.

So much for that. The boat ride I'd enjoyed last year with And no longer existed. The lake did, just not the boats. That was a bit disappointing for Xixi so I told her we'd go home and take the bike to the supermarket which cheered her up. We did just that and spent some time there buying a new pair of shorts for me, plus some nibbles. The shorts were a bit hard to buy. They only cost 20 kuai, but I had to give them to an employee who wrote out a quadruplicate receipt saying I had to take it to a particular till to pay. So when we'd got our stuff we went to this till, and put all our shopping through plus the additional receipt. We had to pay separately for some reason. 113 kuai for our shopping and then 19.8 kuai for the shorts. Once done we got our shopping bagged and then took it to the bike. It was nearly 10pm so after a few phone calls I fathomed out where Leilei was (at some birthday party) and went to pick him up. We all got home when I realised while putting the shopping away that I didn't have my new shorts. Bugger. I told the kids we'd have to go back to the supermarket which they were more than happy with. As I opened the front door one of our neighbours was walking down the stairs. I asked him what time the supermarket closed and he said 10 o'clock, already closed. Which was true as it was 10.05pm. But I had a call from A Wu asking me to go to a bbq place opposite the guang chang, and as the kids were ready to go out I thought fair enough we could go for a bit. I took the route past the supermarket and found it open, so we parked the bike and walked in. I asked the security guard at what time they closed and he said half past ten.

I found out that when I paid for my merchandise earlier I should have walked back inside the supermarket with one of the receipts to pick up my shorts. So I went back to the shorts place and they recognised me (however I'll never know) and said they wondered why I took so long to come back. I showed them the receipt and got my shorts as the kids ran havoc around the place, pulling toys off the shelves and playing with them as if they owned them. They have been spoiled rotten here and will have a lesson to learn when they get back. Afterwards we found A Wu and co. near the guang chang. He was acting ah so nice and daddy-like to the kids, who played into his charms and loved being picked up by him. The ladies around the table said how the kids liked him more than his own son did. Although not meant as a criticism I can't think of a more damning thing I could hear if someone said that about me and someone else's kids. He loves the attention he gets from them as they're used to him. Yet his own kid is staying night and day with an unrelated teacher. He was getting them to call him "A Wu baba", which was going a bit far in my book, but when Xixi fell over and hurt her knee she came running to me. And I decided to take them home as it was gone 11pm and I needed to shower them and get them to bed. Something that took till nearly 1am to do as Tan and her friends were home, and then A Wu turned up. Finally by 1.30am Tan and the kids were asleep.