City win 4-0 and I learn 5 words

I was grateful to wake up at 10am today. I was willing to take the kids to school as I hoped to be up late tonight to watch City kick off their season against Swansea. However, Tan said she'd get them breakfast and take them in. I didn't argue as I've done this 90% of the time so far. As the game wasn't until 3am my time I was hoping to be able to take a kip first. No such luck it transpired. I had a lot of work to get through and managed a very productive day. But as a manager was back it was important for me to attend a late meeting again.

No worries I called home and France and had a chinwag with the parents and siblings, by which time it was getting on for 2am. A couple of small gin and lemonades kept me up till the time of the match and I found a reasonable stream online as my satellite doesn't seem to have the channel that provides football unfortunately. After half an hour we were the second best team by a mile. But we finally clicked and it was only a matter of time until we scored after 57 minutes. That opened the floodgates and we won easily 4-0 thanks to Aguero coming on after an hour...here's hoping he's going to prove as influencial in the coming years. I missed the last couple of minutes as Leilei woke up at 4.50am and I needed to tend to him. Finally got to sleep after 5am.

Apart from my meetings, and Tan on the weekends, and the kids, and of course teacher Lu, I've realised I've hardly spoken English. This should mean my Chinese is improving but I've noticed no particular difference. I'm in a rut, language-wise. It happens when you know enough to get by, and the mistakes you make rarely affect the meaning of your communication, so no-one corrects you. In fact the only correction I've received this year is Tan telling me when I've used the wrong tone, normally in front of everyone at a meal. Maybe it is considered rude to correct someone here, as I suppose it is at home too. One of my least pleasant experiences here (not involving poorly tummy) was two years ago when Andrew was here and we went to the you er yuan (kid’s nursery/school) to pick up Leilei. The teacher remembered me from the previous year and we had a conversation as you do after not having seen someone for nearly a year. Then at the end she said my Chinese was worse than the previous year. Crestfallen, I was.

So I'm going to try to learn five useful words per day, based, if possible on my experiences of that day so that they have a bit more meaning and will therefore stick in my mind:
杜松子酒 - Dù sōngzǐ jiǔ - gin
奎宁水 - Kuí níng shuǐ - tonic water
怪不得 - Guàibùdé - no wonder!
水龙头 - Shuǐlóngtóu - tap (as in water tap)
纠正 - Jiūzhèng - to correct