Whoops - nearly another double date meal

I realised I didn't have much more time here so at 5pm made a spur of the moment decision to invite a couple of mates to go and eat at the Beihai seafood place. Normally such decisions work out well, and all was going well when I rang Uncle yellow, his mate the Cook, and Li Kun, and we all agreed to meet up there in 15 minutes. I swear nothing is planned more than a couple of hours away here. Organising a few beers in the pub for Thursday night on Monday would be frowned on here. But us dads in the UK need to sort out kiddy arrangements that somehow don't need to be sorted here.

As I was riding down to the seafood place I got a call from A Wu. I told him where I was going and he was invited too but he "reminded" me that Lu Wen had invited me to eat with him at A Ni's tonight. Oh shit. He quite probably had and it had escaped my mind. As it was only 5.30 and Uncle Yellow and the Cook had already turned up I thought it best to go ahead with this meal then turn up to Lu Wen's one - after all it wouldn't be the first time I'd had to do two meals in one evening. So we went upstairs to a private air-conditioned room as it was proper scorchio outside, and pierced our cling-film wrapped eating utensils as we waited for Li Kun to turn up. But I heard A Wu outside our room and went to tell him to come in. No, it had been decided that we would order some food here and take it to A Ni's to eat with Lu Wen. Actually that was a rather practical compromise.

So with significant help I ordered a few dishes and it came to 350 kuai. Not wishing to look cheap I then said "let's have two portions of..." and pointed to some shelled things. It came to 420 kuai and I only just had enough on me. A Wu was telling Beihai Huang's wife to round it to 400 but she is a born business woman and would have none of it and took the 420 from my hands. At least we arranged for it to be delivered for free. Uncle Yellow and Li Kun were coming, so at least I'd managed to get them an invitation in a roundabout way. The Cook said he would come a little later but sadly didn't turn up. Maybe he's not on A Wu's list of approved friends.

Good friends at a good meal - bonus that Li Kun and Uncle Yellow could make it

The meal was as good as it was predictable, with beers coming after the first twinges of appetites were sated. At least the addition of the seafood I'd ordered was broadly taken advantage of. I had to leave at one point for a breather so went downstairs and one of the mothers there was having trouble with her tiny daughter of six months. But as soon as I held her she just changed and hugged me like a baba. I held her for 10 minutes till she nearly fell asleep before giving her back as I could tell I was needed upstairs again.

Some of the aftermath of the meal

For some reason I had no urge to go out after this meal and even left the dian dong che outside A Ni's