Ordering water and another boss meal

I wasn't in the best of moods for eating so skipped Waipo's for lunch and just ate some dried squid instead. After a couple of evenings of excess I decided I needed some exercise. I did a "Seven Minute" one and it really took it out of me. Then I decided to justify bringing the extra Wii Fit board I picked up cheaply in a charity all this way for the first time since 2008. As I fired up Wii Sports for the first time in a long time on this Wii it scolded me that it had been 2029 days since the last time it had seen me. Later I took the time to search how long that was, and surprisingly I found it was February 11th 2011. As I'd not been here at that time, and it was incredibly unlikely that anyone else had managed to fire up the Wii and play as me, I looked again and saw that if I only counted weekdays the last time I'd played would have been a much more likely November 12 2008. However, I couldn't understand why the Wii would only count weekdays, and also I'm pretty sure that I was in Nanning that day (as it was Xixi's first birthday) or returned to Pingguo but with the flu so unlikely to have exerted myself so much. I'll have to look into this further to see what is going on.

I need to sort out when this was

But I spent well over an hour on Wii Fit. Who cares if it isn't HD? It's a great console with some immensely fun games, and I sweated out buckets especially with a 10 minute rhythm boxing routine. I called A Wu and for some reason he was in Nanning, but coming back later and he said we'd play ping pong at 8pm.

I doubt there are many in Pingguo, but annoyingly we weren't the only ones in 2008

We were out of drinking water but annoyingly the phone number I've used for the last few years (and indeed a few weeks ago) to order it was powered off. How can you run a business if people can't call you? Maybe they have a WeChat account or something but if they have it isn't attached to their phone number. So after a tad to eat at Waipo's I went to the water place by the jiao zi place next to our building to see what was going on. Apparently this wasn't the place I normally used, but the place I did use had now closed. I wasn't sure I understood, or even trusted this, but I needed water so ordered a tong to be delivered soon. I even ordered the expensive 22 kuai bottle, but not because I actually understood the explanation for why it was the most expensive.

The water arrived nearly an hour later in the form of a phone call asking me to come downstairs as the buzzer wasn't working or something. Typically someone let the bloke in as I got to the ground floor so we shared the lift up. He gave a little more explanation about the other company - apparently the woman was getting too old to be doing such deliveries. Fair enough I suppose but I'd recently paid a 40 kuai deposit for a second bottle. I happened to mention the deposit to the bloke and said he could give it to the woman but straight away he ripped it up and insisted on giving me the difference between the water and the receipt (18 kuai) and I thought that was quite reasonable. I suppose he won't lose any money on having the big bottle back and he's now got a new customer too, though it's likely to be the last water we'll order here this year.

I had hardly expected A Wu to call me at 8pm to go to ping pong but thought I'd check with him at quarter past as I might have plans of my own. Oh he was simply at A Ni's place and that was that - no mention of ping pong. Almost as if he knew, I got a message from a different bloke to go and drink beer with him this evening. I sort of lied and replied that I'd have to play ping pong first, and he said ok. But I didn't know who he was. Even looking through his WeChat album there was no photo I recognised, but I saw that we'd registered as friends last night at 11.32pm, so I surmised it must be Zhang Hua's father-in-law who likes beer and speaking English.

At about nineish I popped round there - after all they were sorting out a footy shirt for me. Well I got there and Zhang Hua was alone in the back with his wife at the front and certainly not expecting me. Nevertheless he immediately invited me to eat the nearly finished food and join him in a Suntory beer. As his father-in-law wasn't there I realised my logic must have been wrong; it was not him who invited me over, which explained why they weren't expecting me. But somebody was expecting me somewhere. Strangely enough that same somebody then texted me to say he was on the road to Pingguo. Zhang Hua and I shared a couple of beers over a nice chat where I learnt a few more words exactly rather than roughly, like "jiaoliu" as a formal way of saying "communicate", and "zhengshi" for "formal".

Then A Wu called and asked me to come over to drink alcohol. I wasn't massively in the mood, but I reckoned wherever this would be had a better chance of containing the bloke that invited me than where I was. Zhang Hua invited me to play football Thursday evening and I said I should be able to, and we shared a last glass. I realised the place A Wu said he was was directly upstairs from where I was and he looked surprised that I'd got there within seconds, but the other bosses looked happy as spiders who had just coaxed a rather juicy English fly into their web. Every one without fail was drinking red wine, but I insisted on beer. They pointed out there wasn't any then I pointed to the obvious beer can in the centre of the table. Then one of the blokes calmly picked it up and removed it and said now there wasn't any. But to be fair to A Wu he did ensure beer arrived and I only had a tiny mouthful of the horrid Australian wine that was probably rejected in its mother country.

To be fair it was a bit of a laugh. There was some great food on the table but within minutes we got to the serious business of cai ma. It was dictated that I was to challenge each of the 12 other bosses on the table in turn, with best-of-threes with each. I calculated that the worst that could happen would be that I drink 12 small glasses of 3.8% beer and would probably still be the most sober.

So it was with not a little pride that I beat the first six in a row, to their and my delight. I'd just beaten the bloke who supposedly had studied in the US but wasn't really speaking much English to me when I came upon the tall bloke with glasses. I didn't mind losing the first round and having a drink, and wasn't too annoyed that I lost the second too. But on losing the third round, I found the rule was I had to move back anti-clockwise and play the English-speaker again that I'd beaten before. Well luck comes in clumps and my losing clump contined as I lost to him this time. Thankfully it only took one win to get back to tall bloke, but he bloody beat me thrice again and I was back to English-speaker. It took two goes but I beat him and then finally moved on from tall bloke with a nice "BET!" (eight) that he wasn't expecting.

The tall drinking bloke is where I first got stuck

But now that I knew that you could move backwards in this game I knew my supposed maximum of 12 beers became effectively infinite, and therefore my confidence took a turn for the worse. I tried to logic-up some confidence and argued to myself that the fact I had lost and drunk a few beers now ought to counter the confidence-drop that occurred to my recent understanding of the rules. This helped, and I managed to finally get to the end, smashing A Wu, but taking a few goes to beat the main boss sitting with me who seemed to be the main guy. There was also a rather pretty girl sitting at the table (a wife of one rather than something else) and she was the only one I didn't have to cai ma.

Well, apparently I'd made a good entrance with that stint of cai ma, and it used up a good 20 minutes or more. As the bosses got drunker, one by one they moved on to beer - I presumed I must have been somewhat of a sober figurehead that they appreciated, but it could just be because they ran out of wine. Towards the end the bloke who had studied in the US suddenly remembered a lot of his English - funny how alcohol does that - and insisted on talking to me at some length. It would have been easier in Mandarin but I was not going to language-bully him and I think he appreciated that. However, after five years in the States I would have expected just a little bit more vocabulary.

We left at well gone 1am, and downstairs outside I saw the father-in-law of Zhang Hua, who hadn't been there earlier. I left the drunken bosses talking on the broken pavement and stepped inside the shop for a couple of less-hurried beers and a wee chat. By the time I made my excuse 15 minutes later A Wu was still outside talking to a couple of bosses and it was decided that we'd go for Won Tun. Well I had the dian dong che outside and wasn't going to leave it so one of the bosses, who'd joined after me and was from Bangxu, and was now quite pissed on red wine, decided to go with me. It's not normally a problem with Leilei and Xixi but he was quite heavy and didn't make any effort to stabilize the bike with his feet as he got on and I nearly let it fall over.

We followed A Wu's car down to the river and found the Won Tun place that I recognised I'd been to before. Annoyingly, as it was served, drunken Bangxu boss poured half of his Won Tun into my bowl, even though I had no intention of finishing it. Of course he finished a couple of minutes later, so I repaid the compliment by giving him 3/4 of mine, in an exchange that had proved to be pretty pointless, especially as he finished mine.

Then a bloke and his young daughter came to talk to me. I recognised them as I'd met them the other day when going for a ride around here. He had stopped on his dian dong che and we'd got chatting. I had noticed that a few yards away there was a policeman and he was in one of the few parts of the road that actually had a gate separating the two halves. He suddenly stopped the driver of a motorcycle that was coming in the wrong direction, and I guessed that was one of the few traffic violations they may take seriously here. Well I wasn't going to go the wrong way, and after making sure that nearly all the other dian dong ches were driven by helmetless drivers (and I don't mean women), bade farewell and went that way too. Then I noticed that 20 yards past the single hidden policeman were about five policemen quite well lit up. Then a motorbike in front of me, on seeing them, made a 180° turn, presumably guilty of something, and I realised the hiding policeman was probably stopping all the 180°ers as they must be hiding something. Pretty sneaky, and I was concerned I might be stopped for some reason but my light was one and I was on the correct side of the road and I got through without incident. But yes that was the other day.

After we'd eaten we left, but drunken Bangxu boss insisted on me giving him a lift home, so we drove quite a considerable distance to his place, and when he got off he pointed in the direction I needed to go to get home. Bloody drunks. I drove a fair few minutes to the less and less populated suburbs of Pingguo before I came to a dead-end in the road. I felt a bit like I was in the Truman Show. I wondered if I tried to go beyond the concrete bollard, I'd hear a loudspeaker from the sky telling me to go back. Had it not been gone 2am I probably would have tried. Plus the fact that I didn't have great range on the dian dong che spurred me to think of a better course of action.

I could either go left or return, so decided to return as at least I should get to somewhere I knew. I found the bbq place I'd first seen last year and entered just to see what it was like, but apart from a handful of places open it was dead. I didn't go back the exact way I'd came but took a right trusting in my general sense of direction. Thankfully it ended up being a good decision and a few minutes later I could see traffic lights, meaning I must be getting closer to home. I was ever-so-slightly tempted to get invited to some of the late-night tables still eating and drinking but decided enough was enough for one night.