Then Li Kun took us to his place by the market on foot and we had more tea and met his wife and daughter Eva (whose English name I gave her three years ago soon after she was born). Awl normally smokes roll ups but he accepted a cigarette from Li Kun that was more half-fag, half-filter, and apparently much nicer than most normal cigarettes due to this.
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| Li Kun's wife, daughter Eva and Xixi |
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| Half-fag half-filter |
Li Kun went with us to the supermarket there as we'd said we would look for fizzy water. Li Kun said they'd have it, but this was more based on some absurd belief people have here that does not require evidence. It seemed incredulous to him that there wasn't any (despite the fact I'd told him I'd looked for years) and he asked one of the assistants too. Then he said no, there wasn't any, and probably wasn't in Nanning either. It looked like my bet with Awl about not finding any was going to pay me my three bottles of gin.
Awl had said he fancied reading by a pool one day so we took a san lun che to the one in the south to look around with Xixi. But it was very hot, not to mention closed, so we went back and dropped off Awl at hotel before going to Waipo's. Now that they had the internet back I was able to reconfigure the old BT hub I'd left here years ago to give them all wifi again and felt I justified my existence a bit more.
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| Chuan Chuan, Tan, A Heng and Xixi all happy to have wifi back in Waipo's house (I think) |
Tan's second sister Er Jie was there as was first sister Da Jie, plus Waipo and Chuan Chuan. Maybe it was the combination of so much oestrogen in the same room but an almighty racket arose, a bit like some of the storms we've been having recently. I took it in my stride as I know they have a tendency to get over the top and talking in Bangxunese always sounds like arguing anyway. But this time it was particularly loud so A Heng called Tan to intervene as Chuan Chuan was crying. Tan came and calmed down the situation by smiling at them all telling them how trivial the situation was (my interpretation). I can't even remember the reason she told me but it was silly.
I left Xixi there as I was "kun le", which is a useful expression that means you've suddenly become tired and could you be excused for a short while for a nap? But I really was kun le and after going to BBC news on Tan's laptop I found my head on my pillow and when I opened my eyes it was just in time to see the screen saver kick in. I felt rather refreshed and checked the display options on the laptop, which revealed that it was set to turn on after 15 minutes of inactivity, so I'd had under 15 minutes kip but it really worked as a power nap.
I got in touch with Awl and we met at A Wu's office for a little wander. I heard a "baba!" emanating from a shop and identified it as Tan. She was in Da Jie's shop which is manned by Ling Ming much of the time. And his fiancée A Nong was there too. It's a women's clothes shop and Awl joked that everything was too small for him, which caused more mirth than I expected. I told everyone about our bet about not finding fizzy water and how the loser would buy three bottles for the winner and they looked somewhat bemused by this.
A couple of minutes later we stopped at the next supermarket, which I hadn't been to for three years or so, to see if there was refrigerated Coke Zero (as the local supermarket one is warm). We walked past the water aisle and I nonchalantly waved my arm and told Awl he could even look for fizzy water here if he wanted. The bastard immediately set his eyes on a dark can with the "Watson's" logo and identified it as soda water. Now I've seen flat soda water here before but this was the real McCoy. After years of searching it could have been under my nose all this time. So I'd lost the bet on day two and to make matters worse it was 4.7 kuai. We bought one (luke warm as not refrigerated) and confirmed it was fizzy and Awl gloated like a gloaty glutton of Gloatsville for the next hour.
We had been en route to the biggest supermarket to look for fizzy water, but that seemed pointless now. Nevertheless we walked down there and confirmed they not only had no fizzy, but no vodka either. So we went to the supermarket by the market to buy some Chinese "Fjord" vodka instead. We weren't allowed to bring our bags in and had to leave them in a locker. I liked the locker system whereby you push a button and a random (empty) locker opens and a ticket with a barcode is produced. When finished shopping you simply scan the ticket and the locker opens magically again!
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| Being overly excited about the locker system in the supermarket |
Hungry, we went to the dumpling place, which annoyingly was finished for the day. So we went to the bbq place at the guangchang for lovely fried noodles instead. Then Chuan Chuan called and came to drop off the kids as they wanted to be with me.
Awl and I took the kids to the guangchang and as Awl stayed with Leilei in the jumping castle Xixi and I took her new skates and went rollerblading. Inevitably I got a call, this time from Lin Hong, to go out. It was a friend's birthday and they had a KTV room at the opera house. As there were kids there we all got in to Lin Hong's car and drove up (Awl had the wisdom to pre-mix some DVDC). But it was pretty dull and the only interesting thing was the ladies on the stage below practising for some gala night (I assume practising as there was no-one in the seats watching them).
Awl finished his DVDC and I used this as an excuse to leave and we left the kids to go back to his hotel for a little bit. But it was 11pm so I walked back to the Opera house to pick up the kids, who by now were having a whale of a time. So another late shower but after the kids were with Chuan Chuan I managed to sleep at 12.30 which is relatively early.
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