Intercom issues

Although my darling baby came into my room at 2am to sleep with me I still woke up at 5am. Half an hour later I knew that was it so I got up and did a little housework. Tan had said that her work was nearly finished and instead of coming back on Friday she hoped to come back today. Not that that had anything to do with me doing the housework of course.

Xixi still not stirring at 8.30am, 3 and a half hours after I'd got up

I have found that the electric bike is dead. I charged it the day before yesterday and yesterday it was still charging, which was odd. So I left it another day and it barely moves. I'm hoping it's just the batteries as I understand they are the same ones I changed in 2008 at a cost of 400 kuai. So I rang A Hua and asked if it was possible for her to take Xixi to school with Nong Kaicheng and Leilei. She said no problem so we walked to her house where I found Leilei chomping on some "zhen zhu nai cha" which is cold sweet milky tea with sugary balls in it and a wide straw so you can suck them up. The four of them got on A Hua's electric bike and I said goodbye, got myself a bite to eat and went back home to work for the first time in two weeks. One of the best things about working from here is that during the day you are relatively free from emails and calls, so can concentrate on the tasks at hand; it only took me two hours to sort out the hundreds of emails that had amassed over the last 14 days. And then of course the more negative aspects arise such as 11pm meetings, but overall I'm lucky to be able to work like this sometimes and at least enjoy a late night nibble at the bbq and the weekends.

Going to school on A Hua's bike. Leilei was actually happy but I just caught him rubbing his eye - annoying as I somehow managed to delete a much better pic

At the base of our building are five entry doors. Ours is number 3 in the middle. The first week we were here I had to order a replacement water bottle for the dispenser as it had run out. Now normally doing that in Chinese is fairly straightforward but when you have to explain that you're on the 14th floor (as the deliverer has to take the lift) but that the number is 3-15A01 it gets a bit complicated; I simply did not know what number to tell him to press on the intercom thingy so I could let him in. Sure enough half an hour later I had a call from the water deliverers to say the poor bloke had been ringing without success. Now that I've looked at the intercom number dialler thing I understand...there is no number 4, but in place we have a "510" - what is that supposed to mean? Luckily, that day I literally bumped into the deliverer as I was coming back to the house so I was able to let him in but I still don't know what to tell people to dial to ring our bell from downstairs.

Our intercom at the base of the building - what do you dial to ring our house???

Hopefully I will know soon as Tan rang to say she'd be coming back that evening, although the flight had been delayed and she mightn't make it before the last bus to Pingguo, in which case she'd stay at Chen Mei's. Luckily I found a handy website at https://www.flightstats.com/ where I was able to search for live Shanghai - Nanning flights in order to work out which she was on and how late it would be (54 minutes). Armed with this information it didn't really matter as the last time she went to Nanning both journeys (over an hour each way) were by taxi so she could blooming well do the same again after being away for five days.

And actually she did. I got a call when she was less than an hour away and it dawned on me that I hadn't washed the floor. I have been married long enough to know that invisible dust is actually visible to married women, so I set about a sweat-induced 45 minutes of dusting and washing before she arrived at 11pm announcing she was tired and needed to go to bed. After all that...she didn't even notice my efforts (I even washed the sofa). I now know why people evolved to believe in an afterlife; it's sometimes just not fair if you only have one.