Routine and a bite to eat with English teachers

Ok, the routine is settled. I take the kids for breakfast, then to school. I come back some time after 10am and I might go back to bed for a bit (ahem) or work through till 2pm or so before hopefully getting an hour or two of shuteye before the main stint of work when the UK wakes up. But there is nothing so productive as working when your colleagues are not up. The difference is amazing and I've got so much done. It's just getting dragged into the emails that start around 5pm my time when it all slows down.

Well anyway, I still picked up the kids and worked till nearly 10pm by which time as my 11pm meeting was cancelled I called A Wu and said I fancied a head wash so I met up with him at the place we have been going to for a few years now. I know the manager as her daughter used to go to the same nursery as my kids.

We had to wait our turn for a head wash

That night was rather popular, and we had to wait 20 minutes to get two women to attend to our needs. But the wait was worth it, as it always is. Once home I offered to get Tan some more bbq. She asked where I got yesterday's chicken claws from and I had to admit it wasn't from her usual preferred place. Actually she said they were better than "big sister's" place so I should get 10 claws from the same place as yesterday. This was slightly embarrassing as this time "big sister" was there and I had to walk past her and order from next door. Averting my gaze away from "big sister" I made eye-contact with a couple of people from a nearby table. They beckoned my over and I thought it best to go there rather than risk getting in eye-contact with "big sister".

This is not the first time it's happened. There were three blokes and a woman and her child. Two of the blokes were apparently English teachers, and the woman, one of their wives. I could barely make out a word of their English other than the normal "how are you?", but thankfully they were more than happy to slip back to Mandarin to enable something approaching a fluent conversation. They were nice people and I was happy to share a couple of beers until Tan's food was ready. In fact I'd ordered some stuff for myself that wasn't ready, so they bade me go and feed the wife and come back in a few minutes.... The last time I did this Tan wasn't happy about me going back to talk with some random friends at a table as she thinks everyone is from the mafia and will kill me. But this time I'd taken the initiative of taking a nice pic of them, including the wife and kid, thus proving that they were ok. Plus, the fact that the main bloke came from Bangxu should be helpful.

The English teacher, his son, his wife and a mate - components of a very friendly evening

Well, this time Tan had no issues with me going back at around midnight. Possibly this was something to do with the fact she had 10 chicken claws to enjoy in my absence. So I went back and spent the next hour in enjoyable conversation with my new friends, among others who visited the table. And we all laughed out loud when I told of my Bangxu wife, and spoke a few sentences in the local lingo. And again, it felt a bit like being in an English pub with mates. There's something very international about this. We all decided it was a good time to split around 1am and exchanged phone numbers as you do. I do expect to see them again this year.

I'm used to Chinese bogs by now, but they don't usually have a duck in them. I find it hard enough to wee with Tan in the same bathroom. This duck kept looking at me but I was nearly bursting so had no problem this time

On the way back I noticed that the battery on the bike was below "H" for High. This normally means that it will go right down within the next couple of miles. As it was a new battery I decided to drive around for a bit with the main beam on to try to kill it right down. Tan must have implanted some sort of radar tracker inside me as as soon as I was 500 yards from the house the alarm, sorry, phone, went off..."when are you back? blah blah blah..." so I made my way back with an even lower battery. When I got through the security gates I parked the bike to charge it up over night and then noticed I didn't have a charger. I must have left it at the garage the other day. Darn.