Inspecting the workers at the quarry and kids' birthday meal

The first half of today was a fairly normal affair with my doing the kids' breakfast before taking them to eat lunch with A Wu and a couple of bosses. It sometimes feels like living in Mario World here... Actually I knew one of the bosses from a few years back when him and A Wu were running an iron ore extracting factory that got closed down by...well, I never got to the bottom of that. But at the time when they'd asked me to invest 12k quid I had asked about the risks, e.g. what about if the government, or some mafia-like consortium decided that that patch of land was theirs? My concern was laughed off at the time, just a few months before his business was written off. I know there is a lot of money to be made here, as evidenced by A Wu's latest work - still going well after two years. But it comes at a risk. Anyway, A Ni was with us and took the kids to her mum's house to play with A Da, just after which Tan called to say they were going to Lin Hong's to play. I told her to call A Ni and sort it out, but I'm not sure she did as they've been a little cold recently.

A Wu, his mate and I then drove off to A Wu's stone quarry again simply to check up on the workers. It seems that that is all he does some days. Inspection over, we came back to town where I heard that the kids had been invited to a birthday party of one of their school colleagues. A Wu had dropped me home, and the kids were there too. Just before 5pm, A Xia came to pick up the kids to go to the party, but they were not prepared to leave without me, so along I came. We were early but a few other mothers were also there with their kids, every one chasing their loved one around with a bowl of rice or zhou. It was difficult with all the sweets around, but I managed to get Leilei to eat some rice, and Xixi to eat some sweetcorn and rice to cries of "I'm full, I'm full!" before they gorged themselves on the sweets, which I must admit, were very tasty indeed.

In typical style, there was a table in the living room for mothers and children and a larger table in the kitchen for the men. Tan had arrived by that time and we all tucked in to some lovely home-cooked duck, and once again everyone was happy to see me eat the the cheaper breast meat. There were only two or three bottles of beer for us six blokes, but when they disappeared, new ones turned up as if by magic. As is typical here, some blokes left the table, to be replaced by others, and we ended up having a few games of cai ma. Then I realised it was 7.45 and I really wanted to see the grand prix at 8. I made my excuses and left for home leaving the kids happily eating cake.

The kids about to enjoy yet more sugar...

It was a bit of a chore to find a stream showing the grand prix. Again, CCTV5 was showing swimming as there is still an international competition in Shanghai. Still, when I eventually did find a stream it was another cracking race - well driven, Button. Just after the race I got a call to say the kids needed picking up from Lin Hong's house. So I did, and brought them back for Tan to get to bed for once, before going out to get her some bbq and then watching the second half of City v Inter Milan - which we won 3-0 thank you very much. Bring on the new season!