It was muggy outside. It’s been a strange last seven days weather-wise – not a day without rain but also one day so hot I had to move my laptops to the air-conditioned bedroom to work one evening. And then there was one evening where there was almost a chill in the air while taking the kids back from school. It is not like a couple of years ago when Andge and Ailun were here and every day was pure relentless heat. Whether it’s due to the weather, or some other reason, we already have long yan fruit in the market a few weeks before they were expected. These are my favourite, though this year the huang pi guo (yellow skinned fruit) are a close second.
Possibly due to the fruit, I’ve put on weight since we arrived over five weeks ago, so I skipped tea and waited for the Arsenal – Liverpool match to start at 7.45. I was going to use the “Ad Rocket” that Ling Ming had left in the house. Tan says that everyone who uses it notices a difference after one week at 30 minutes a day. To me it looks like a lazy man’s sit up machine as it has a spring back to help you back up again. Well, I had to give it a try to see how my “ads” would fare. But after no more than 5 minutes of lazy sit-ups I got a call from Waipo saying Leilei wanted to go home. So I slapped a tee-shirt onto my sweaty body and picked him up and started again. This time I managed 10 minutes with Leilei watching before I got a call from A Ni. This didn’t surprise me as Tan had been on her phone for over two hours yapping on. Actually it was A Da who called using his mum’s phone, asking if Leilei could come and play. Leilei’s eyes lit up and he grabbed a couple of his aotoman toy figures and we went to A Hua’s shop where we found most of the ladies. In fact they had all been trying to call Tan as they were waiting for her to go and eat bbq. I told them I’d go home and give her a slap, and they laughed a bit more than I was expecting.
Back home I managed a few more minutes doing my ads, but Ling Ming had rung to ask me to come around to his house to eat and drink. I guess I can exercise any time so I told him I’d be around but after a bit as I needed to wash etc. I ended up getting there at 10pm, fairly famished after exercise and lack of food since midday. Ling Ming is a mean cook, so I was looking forward to it. I arrived at the same time as the beer deliverer. This is quite common here – you just pick up the phone and dial a beer as you would a pizza back home. He was delivering four crates of nine bottles but Ling Ming wouldn’t let me help carry them up the six flights of sweaty stairs. On the way I asked him how many people were there. “Eighteen”, he said, or at least I thought that’s what he said, as I could only count six including myself. There was food on the table, but we went to sit on the veranda to play cards. We played the ever-present drinking game “mo pai”. I finally understood the rules and it’s actually quite easy (I suppose it would have to be if it’s a drinking game).
After an hour it became obvious that they had already eaten and the table contained the leftovers. I pretended I needed to go to the loo and on the way back nicked a tasty prawn. On seeing this, Ling Ming brought the whole dish to the card table, along with some long yan and some huang pi guo, and I feasted on as many prawns as I could unshell in the next 15 minutes (about six). I knew I wasn’t going to get my fill here, but Tan had said they were going to two bbq places tonight and I aimed to meet them. I hit upon the sneaky plan of texting her to ask her to call me to come and pick up Leilei. But the text wouldn’t send. And neither could I make a phone call. I worked out I’d run out of credit, as I hadn’t received anything for a couple of hours either. So at 11pm I just said I needed to pick up Leilei, did a last gan bei and left the lads to continue their game.
As it was late I guessed Tan would be at the second bbq place by now so I drove the now nearly empty-batteried bike to the guang chang to find her. No such luck, but others who knew me were there and tried to get me to sit down with them. It was tempting, actually, but I thought I’d better see how Leilei was, so I drove down to the bottom of town to Tian Yang Po’s bbq, only to be told by her that the girls had just left. “What does ‘just left’ mean?” I asked, “10 minutes ago” was the reply. So back to the guang chang again, slower this time to find they certainly were not there. I could have done with credit in my phone at this time, and asked one of the women there if there was anywhere I could top up at this time of night. “No”, was the decisive reply.
But I was trapped – two women who recognised me called out my name, and then Yang Haiwei saw I was there and called me over where he was sitting with his wife and new baby, plus about three other women. I only stayed for 15 minutes as Haiwei was pissed and I couldn’t really be bothered. But I was starving and did take a little bit of their fei niu bbq before heading home.
Where I found Tan in a facemask in bed. Apparently they’d had enough to eat at Tian Yang Po’s so came home, and Leilei had gone to sleep at Waipo’s. I didn’t fancy going back again to the bbq place to get called over by all and sundry but I did just remember to go outside to charge up the bike. Unfortunately I once again left the keys in the bike but didn’t have the energy to go and pick them up – it’s not the first time I’ve done that, and the bike is under the watchful eyes of the security guard who isn’t always asleep.
Luckily I found a bit of chilli tofu in the cupboard and finished that in order to keep the wolf from the door for the night, and watched some of the Chelsea – West Brom game...unlucky West Brom, lost 2-1 again after going ahead, same as with Man U last week.
词汇 – Cíhuì - vocabulary
睡懒觉 – Shuìlǎnjiào – lie-in
感到内疚 - Gǎndào nèijiù – to feel guilty
幸亏 – Xìngkuī – luckily
面膜 – Miànmó – facemask
勇敢 – Yǒnggǎn - brave
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