Biting my lip not asking questions

As Xixi stayed with Jiuma I took a lazy Leilei there at 9.30 on foot again as Tan had taken the bike again. Actually, she happened to be there because for some reason the instructor hadn’t turned up. This is not the first time; last week she found there wasn’t a lesson because he was having his car serviced. I try to force myself not to ask questions in these situations, but I was bursting to ask “Why didn’t he call you/you him?” “Had you actually planned the lesson for 9am?”. But I think it all boils down, yet again, to how people’s time is cheap here; all it was was Tan’s wasted time (and getting up earlier than necessary). In the UK that is one of the worst things you can do, and would certainly lose you business. It is also the hardest thing I find adjusting to living over here.

Well, her loss was my gain of the dian dong che so I took the kids to school (Xixi’s turn at the front) and got back to another productive morning’s work. For lunch, rather than eat more jiao zi I went for a walk to find somewhere to eat out and ended up having rice and sweet sausage with bamboo washed down with sweetish herbal tea. A Wu had called before my pot had arrived and told me to leave it and come to eat goose with him. I thought about it but decided I needed to get back to work soon, and the goose could wait for another day.

Then Tan rang as I was walking back to say she was going to eat goose with A Ni and A Wu anyway. If it had been the weekend I would have come along for a second lunch, but I declined again and went home to tempt a siesta. Tan also came back, and we beckoned a siesta, but it didn’t want to happen, thanks in part to Tan not putting her phone on silent and receiving a call from A Xia about house buying. Apparently her husband’s uncle (already sounding dodgy) works for a building company that is currently building a new complex somewhere just North East of Pingguo, I guess half a mile or more away. Tan said we could “buy” a place there, or rather he could and we could pay him back over four or five years. There is some sense in this, in that property is a good investment, though I’m not sure we have enough cash to do it, and there are the various legal questions that I have over ownership etc that some people seem happy to ignore (until something goes wrong).

So I said we could have a look over the weekend. I’m also not so keen on the area; it means you really need a means of transport to get into town, something that you don’t need living where we are now. I think the main reason Tan is interested is that A Xia and A Ni are buying properties there.

I also learnt why apparently we suffered from electricity cuts recently, and not other places close by. Apparently we are served by “country electricity” and other places by “town electricity”. The town variety takes precedence over country in times of need, which is why country sometimes gets turned off. That makes a modicum of sense, but just leaves more and more questions that if I were to have asked would have just turned into an argument. So I didn’t ask, but changed the subject to something more interesting….

Refreshed, though not through sleep, I made a coffee and worked through the rest of the day until 6pm when we were due to eat with A Wu and some friends. Xixi was at home after I’d picked her up, but Leilei was with A Da again – Tan and I had allowed him to go home with A Da’s Waipo where he could stay the night. So Xixi, Tan, and I got on the dian dong che and drove the one minute to the restaurant, next door to where we ate tea yesterday. We’ve worked out a better system for Tan and I being on the bike together; instead of Tan behind with her arms around me, I sit at the back with Tan sitting in front of me, this time with Xixi perched in front of her. It’s more practical for everyone but I think we get even more stares that way (I am still doing the driving though).

There was a Nanning-based, Guilin friend at the meal, which also comprised A Wu’s Sechuan friend and his wife, A Hua and A Ni. Unsurprisingly the Guilin friend worked at a bank in the loans department. A Wu had brought three bottles of cool red wine – the same brand as we’d had before. Again, after a slow start, we managed to finish them off by the end of the meal, but the women did have some too. I had invited Chen Hong (or “Brandy” as he likes to be known) to eat something at the Bei Hai seafood place tonight, but as it was barely 8pm we decided to play pool.

I didn’t play that well but beat A Wu twice (the first time I should have won 20 kuai and the second time was double or quits but I never saw any money). I also beat the Guilin bloke before we decided to leave around half 9. A Wu’s VIP card had run out of money, so I paid 100 kuai for the 29 kuai we were charged. I didn’t receive any change as A Wu asked it to be put on the card, and then gave me the card as a “present”. Coupled with the 60 kuai I should have won at the pool I made a fair old loss but it was a good laugh and I suppose I did have a free meal.

I had invited Mr Rong, the Guilin friend based in Nanning, to eat out with us tonight, but he had explained he needed to get a taxi back home. So I was not totally surprised when on the way to the seafood place, instead of dropping him off at the taxi rank, we stopped at the Pingguo International Hotel where A Wu had arranged a room for him. While waiting for him to have a wee, I got out of the back and into the driving seat of his brand new Camry. It was indeed comfortable to drive, and the rear-facing camera quite an interesting experience when backing up in the dark. A Wu got back and just sat in the back seat, which was my cue to drive us to the seafood place, which I did quite uneventfully as I did not want to take any chances bruising his new set of wheels.

I’d also called Boss Hu, who turned up 15 minutes later, and eventually Brandy turned up with a couple of mates too. Around the table we had Boss Hu, A Wu, Sechuan friend, two of Brandy’s friends, then Brandy himself, Mr Rong and me. We didn’t have an awful lot to eat, but there were three portions of prawns, including the fried variety that you can eat the shell of, plus some shell fish I had no idea of the name of. Much “Li Quan 7 du” was poured (the 3.1% variety, i.e. the more expensive one), and much gan bei’ing was done. Everyone was in particularly high spirits and I lost count of the number of bottles we got through until around midnight when Waipo rang to say that Leilei wanted to go home…. So much for staying the night at A Da’s Waipo’s…apparently A Da hadn’t shared a computer game so Leilei wanted to go back to his Waipo’s. Then he wanted to go home home so I picked him up, with Brandy giving us a lift in his car, and took him back to the seafood place for a few minutes so the blokes could see him. I then had a good excuse to leave, as I didn’t really want more fizz in me, and was feeling rather tipsy anyway. But I didn’t forget that it was me who had invited people, so I went to pay the boss’s wife. It was 430 kuai and embarrassingly I didn’t have enough as Tan had taken a ton from me earlier. In view of the relatively little food we’d consumed I thought it a little on the expensive side till I realised we’d had more dishes than I had counted, and more beer bottles than I could count. She wouldn’t accept more than 400 kuai anyway, and for 40 quid, keeping eight blokes entertained with food and drink for two hours is pretty good going – especially as we were eating outside.

It wasn’t hard to get Leilei to sleep as Tan was there, but he did take my place again. I was happy to take his bed tonight as I probably stank a bit. But I had the presence of mind to call BT as I’d arranged an engineer visit for Saturday, and my confirmation email had said they would turn up at our old address…. Why did it take such a long time on the phone? And then just to be cut off…. So I emailed them that I hoped they would turn up at the correct address because I would not be paying a callout charge.