Plants

Although I woke up at 4.30am, I was reasonably happy to extrude a small stool of non-liquidity for the first time in a couple of days, then fall back to sleep till around 9am. And the kids were up a tad before then. We breakfasted on the cereal bars, which are just a bit too convenient, and then we did some homework in bed. Xixi was doing maths alone, and Leilei was reading some science and I was testing him. We were revising photosynthesis and other plant life stuff, when it struck me it would be a good idea to get some plants of our own to make the homework more practical. One of the practical tests was to have three similar plants, and not water one, put one in the dark, and leave one in the light with water and observe the results in a few days.

So down we went, onto the dian dong che, and started looking for a garden centre. We could have asked but it's a little more fun to not know where you're going if you're not pushed for time. Slightly annoyingly, we found such a place not two minutes' away from our house. We asked where the small plants were and straight away Leilei found some cacti that he liked and Xixi had her mind set on some other small leafy plant. Well, it wasn't quite the experiment I was hoping for but houses are always the better for a few plants, of which we have none currently.

I then found some cheap-looking nondescript plants that looked suitable for our purposes, and each of us chose a suitable pot. The total for all five plants and pots did come to 90 kuai but all the plants were lovingly repotted, pots cleaned etc. The pots were rather handily attached to their saucer so there was no worry about them falling over when being picked up from beneath too. Back home the kids put their plants in Leilei's room and then decided whose would be what for the experiment. Of course mine is living in the dark in a wardrobe (Leilei's won't be watered). At least I promised we wouldn't let them die.

Leilei's (no water), Xixi's' (no problem), and mine (soon-to-be no light)

Leilei's cacti and Xixi's leaf-thing

We all went out for lunch; Tan with A Xia, I took the kids to Waipo's, and then I went to the supermarket to get some white rice vinegar. Talk about choice - there were literally dozens to choose from, which meant dozens of potential wrong choices. If I'd rung her up to ask it would have been showing some sort of failure. So I grabbed one that definitely had the character for "white" on it (百) and hoped for the best. Such is the plight of man.

This is what she looked like when telling me to get some soap from the Body Shop when back in the UK - you don't want to get her the wrong white rice vinegar!

I was actually hungry so called A Wu. He was in his office so I popped in. Surprisingly simply, they were having home-cooked noodles with a bit of pork. I think it was so simple because it was for the workers too. I joined in and had a little bowl, which made a change to some of the stuff I've been having recently. Then A Wu announced he needed to buy a pair of trousers. That was our cue to get in the BMW X6 and drive a whole minute to where the expensive clothes shops are. After a bit of flirting with the assistants (which I suspect is the main reason for going there) he decided against getting some, and instead would get a pair from Nanning as he was going there now. It may also have had something to do with the fact they were 2000 kuai.

I stayed in during the afternoon as I was expecting A Xia's husband A Dong to come to fix the electrics so we could heat up the water, but he never came as he was busy. I was due to go to Waipo's at 5pm as we'd arranged to go to the meal with the bloke who invited us yesterday - even Waipo was going to go. As I didn't want to be late, but was still working on my time sheet, I called Tan to check what time we had to be there. Everything had changed. Suddenly Tan didn't want to go as we'd have to give an expensive red envelope plus a woman was there that Tan didn't like. Apparently Waipo was ok with this too. I was happy to go but I thought it would be a little awkward just me on my own or with the kids so I acquiesced. Apparently they had given an excuse of going to a wedding meal anyway.

So it was back to the usual tea at Waipo's. I brought over the pack of duty-free Marlboros for A Heng, plus some full strength ibuprofen for A Xia, had our meal, then went straight back to wait for A Dong again. Haiwei called me on the way to ask me to eat at the same place as last time and I explained I might be some time but would come later. Later arrived but A Dong didn't. I tried to call then decided to go out anyway. I composed a text message to this effect but Haiwei called me anyway to come so I joined mostly the same blokes as yesterday help them finish off some squirrel and some dog, washed down with plenty of cai ma losses. For some reason I wasn't on form. Maybe it was the la du, which had come back with a vengeance since giving me a false dawn at dawn earlier today.

I called Chuan Chuan and she brought over the kids and after they had some bbq we said good night to the blokes and went home for a shower and relatively early night. In bed thought, Leilei had received a nice response to his email to his class at home, where they had plenty of questions for him to answer. And of course Xixi wanted to write an email to her class. Once again it wasn't long before midnight before they were asleep.