Badminton, pool, KTV, bbq...

Got up at 8am due to the noise. It's not just the traffic noise that gets through, it's more the beeping and occasional loud speakers playing music from cars advertising things. But you can get used to that - today it was the sound of drilling from not far away. Even though our place was opened two years ago, not all the flats are decorated yet, and here decorating means a lot of infrastructural work like doing the plumbing. I had hoped this wouldn't be the case as this year, unlike last, the lifts have had their protective wooden boards removed from the walls and floor, meaning that it is not expected to be bringing building materials inside. But I've noticed that one of the flats next door has yet to be decorated, as is the same for a few more around us.

Leilei had slept at A Da's place last night, so was not to be seen. Tan pottered about with Xixi and I was able to fall asleep again, despite the noise, till 11am...luxury. Then I took Xixi to Waipo's to have lunch. She would hardly touch her zhou, even though Waipo poured sugar into it, so I took her and Leilei out to a place I know that does a nice sliced sausage with greens and bamboo on rice, and offers free warm tea to customers. Neither of them seemed that interested in eating so I only ordered one portion and bought them a can of sweet tea each. Eventually Leilei had some sausage and rice, and Xixi a bowl of soup. I'm not one for forcing kids to eat - they will eat when they are hungry and I don't want them to associate eating with being told off. I think I'll be fighting a losing battle with that one - if they had their way they'd only eat sweets, but actually that might be ok in a way as we lose our first set of teeth anyway so maybe that's how we evolved.

I needed to register our presence in Pingguo so we picked up our passports and drove to the police station. As we were arriving (and noticed it was closed) Lin Hong rang me to tell me to bring the kids around to her house and play with Tian Tian and Pei Pei "big sisters". I duly did, but Leilei didn't want to play with the girls which is fair enough, so we went home. It didn't take long before A Da called me to ask where Leilei was. I said he was here and that he could come around if he liked. However, I had started to get a feeling in my bottom I'm only too familiar with and left my phone with Leilei and quickly made a move to the toilet. In the few minutes I was there A Da had called again, and Leilei had let him and Nong Kaicheng in. It was good to see the boys playing so nicely, even if it was just silly computer games on the Internet.

A Da, Nong Kaicheng and Leilei being a bit geeky and looking very silly

I conjured up my newly found dozing skills and managed forty winks or so while the lads played in the living room. One of the ways I sometimes manage to let myself fall into the arms of morpheus is to count each exhalation of breath in German. Not that I can speak it but counting is ok. And the fact that it is not a language I speak I suppose makes my brain concentrate on it rather than more exciting things. I find I can rarely get beyond 25 before either I forget where I am or I nod off. My one concern is that I become so familiar with counting in German that it no longer requires brain work. But I am prepared...I will just have to learn to count in another language. Logically that will run out too but if I become insomniacal in the future at least I'll know I can count to 25 in 200 languages.

My office (that bloody balloon has travelled all the way from London)

Tan called me to ask to bring the kids around to eat at A Hua's at 5pm. This I duly did and it was nice to see the house we lived in four years ago when we were here for three months. A Hua and her family are now living here full time and have done it up a bit more and it looks really nice. I said goodbye to the kids and then Tan asked why I was leaving. Apparently A Hua had invited all of us, not just the kids, though Tan hadn't explained that part to me. I said I'd arranged to play badminton (in English, so as not to embarrass A Hua, and also because I remembered it was Saturday). Tan asked me who I was playing with and I nearly said A Wu, but remembered that A Wu had gone to play with A Dong who is A Xia's husband, and I thought that would go down better. When I told her she changed her mind and told me to go and play badminton instead. Cool.

I got to the badminton place by the guangchang and went upstairs. It was like before but now instead of painted lines on the wooden floor they had laid special badminton court-rugs. I played a couple of games with A Wu, who has been practising for the last few years and lost 21-10 and 21-12, and then had to play the maestro A Dong. I was sopping sweating wet and tired due to lack of exercise but forced myself anyway. At 13-0 down I was in danger of being whitewashed but I clawed back to lose 21-3. The only moral victory was getting back to the bench in one piece to finish my water. A Wu wanted to go to play "snooker" but I said I needed a shower first, which he didn't look too happy about. But I took the one minute journey home and grabbed myself one anyway. When I got to the security man at the gate of our block he asked me if I'd been drinking alcohol, and I realised my face must have beed that red after the exercise. When I got out of the shower I had a missed call and a text from A Wu telling me he'd decided to do the same and would pick me up in a bit to go and eat duck.

We drove to another place we frequented last year that specialises in duck and goose, and ordered a half of the former and some greens. Surprisingly this was a simple meal with just us two and no private rooms. That was until we realised we'd never finish the huge portion of duck so we invited the Nanning blokes around. Well they'd actually eaten so we bagged the quarter duck that was left and drove to the snooker hall.

Snooker was actually pool, despite all the pictures of snooker players in the hall. I'd played last year and remembered to bring back the VIP card A Wu had given me then. There are about 20 tables each about 8' long and they are very fast. A Wu wanted to play for money - 20 kuai to the winner, so I said make it 30. Then I thought I'd better check the rules...well actually I ended up picking them up as I went along, which was a bit of an advantage to A Wu. It's similar to British pool except if you foul you have to take one of your balls out of a pocket and put it on the black spot. If there are already balls there you just push them down a bit until your ball goes on the spot (I suspect that is an A Wu rule). Instead of reds and yellows it's 1-7s spots and 9-15s stripes with 8 being the black. There is no 'D' so when the white goes in it has its own spot, and you can only shoot down the table.

I learnt just about all of these rules during one shot; A Wu had fouled but the black had come up the table to just below the white spot. As there was no 'D' I had no choice but to hit the black and foul straight back. But I got my own back; A Wu's only ball was on the black spot (the one he'd just had to replace due to sinking the white) so I left the white just above the black spot. He would have had a relatively easy shot but of course I had fouled, so had to retrieve one of my balls and place it neatly in-between the white and his ball, thus snookering him. I got the last laugh as he fouled his next shot and I ended up winning the game.

He didn't like my thoughtful approach to the game and leaving balls hanging over pockets - his idea was to just whack the easiest ball and if it doesn't go in hopefully it would go in another pocket. However, the same kept happening to the white too, so although he was down to the black he ended up with about five balls on the table by the end of the game. Having said that he fluked the next game before we started the third. I then got a call from Li Kun, whom I'd called earlier in the day to let know I was in town. He had said he'd meet me later but I wasn't expecting to go just then so I said I'd be about 10 minutes. What happened then was the longest bloody pool game in history. I didn't want to keep Li Kun waiting so I tried to see off A Wu quickly, but it was a case of more haste, less speed. So I tried a different approach of trying to lose, but couldn't play as badly as my opponent. I had another call from Li Kun asking where I was but A Wu said not to worry he could wait. Finally I beat him and rang Li Kun to tell him I was on my way. A Wu stayed in the snooker hall so I walked the five minutes to Old Tree cafe where Li Kun was waiting outside.

I hadn't realised he was going to book a whole booth, or that his wife, daughter, brother, sister-in-law and their daughter would be there and I'd held them up from ordering. Actually I should have expected that. Anyway we had some nice nibbles and a few Li Quan qi du beers before I got a phone call from Tian Tian saying Xixi wanted to go home. I told her to bring her to Old Tree and I would look after her. Xixi was a bit cold to Li Kun's two year old, and the other 10 year old girl at first, but eventually started talking to the latter about the menu before announcing she wanted the purple juice drink. I still don't know what it was, but she liked it before putting ice cubes in it and announcing it was too cold. Then, as kids sometimes do with cups with straws, she tilted it as she was drinking and I had a nice big purple cold spillage down my shorts.

At least she went off to play with the others for a bit while the dads talked and the women smiled. Not that long after though she refused to ask where the toilets were and the consequences were more see-through than purple and less fragrant. That marked the end of the evening, which, being 11.30pm was not such a bad thing. We said our thank yous and goodbyes and walked the two minute walk home for a shower.

As Xixi wasn't too tired I took her to the Ming Dian hotel where A Dong, the bloke who killed me at badminton, was having his birthday party. It was a busy affair with quite a few kids and I didn't really fancy staying. I didn't really fancy going to karaoke either but A Wu had texted me asking me to go as the blokes we met in Nanning were there. So I made my excuses and headed off home where I was picked up by A Wu three minutes later.

We went to the same place we went for Tan's birthday last year (not to be repeated this year I hope). It was incredibly noisy and most of the inhabitants were rather the worse for wear, including one girl who was plastered and could barely sit up. As I was very sober I had to gan bei with everyone with my least favourite beer sold here: 2.5% Pabst Blue Ribbon. And then the old cliche of singing the two songs I know in Chinese, plus Hey Jude (to the accompaniment of the aforementioned girl vomiting on the floor).


I was quite glad to leave but instead of going home we stopped off for some bbq outside the guang chang, which has become our local because the previous favourite, Tian Yang Po no longer works. For some reason I was completely crap at cai ma and had to drink copious amounts of Li Quan until 3am when even I was glad to hear Tan calling me to ask where I was. We all decided to call it a night and the Nanning blokes drove off in their nice new car, as did A Wu in his. I was probably the soberest and insisted on walking the 200 yards back home to find Xixi asleep with Tan in our bed. Apparently Leilei was sleeping at Nong Kaicheng's house so I took his room and went straight to sleep.