Sadly, and it was really sad, I had to do my expenses. Nearly £6k of them that I absolutely needed to after the last trip to Toronto and the recent booking for a few days’ time. It bloody took me all day as there is a new system. It’s supposed to be “intelligent” as you take a picture of the receipt with your phone and it works out what it was you were paying for. Somehow it took 2018 for 2008 and underestimated one receipt by shedloads, and I realised what a load of bollocks having separate currencies per country is. Luckily I noticed this one and updated it by 10 years and saw how much more the Canadian dollar was now worth against the UK pound. And that’s another thing...for an “intelligent” application, how come after scanning umpteen CAD receipts it still “intelligently” thinks you're scanning USD? The whole palaver took until evening meal time….
The kids didn’t fancy going with me to get food and I didn’t blame them as it was still peeing down, so I took the umbrella and walked to the jiaozi place. Tan could have ordered some takeaway to be delivered for 70 kuai but there is always far too much and it gets chucked away and costs four times what we want. So I got the usual three portions of jiao zi for 15 kuai and the kids happily ate them up for what was around £1.70 all in.
While I was getting the jiao zi I met the water man next door, who said we should meet up at 9pm as you do. By 7.30pm I’d done what expenses I could be bothered to do and texted him to say I’d be up for it (partly as due to the rain I couldn’t really go much further). He said cool, we could meet up when I was ready at 9pm. So for a rare occasion I did a personal “7”, which consisted of 20 pressups, 1 min plank, 10 pressups, 20 squats, 10 pressups, 30 second plank, 10 pressups, then finally 20 squats. It actually takes it out of you in this climate and I was glad I finished it. That was the only reason I was 20 mins late. That and maybe pouring a quick drink before the last set of squats.
I was really glad to see the water man as some of his mates were there too who I recognised from last year. I felt a bit bad not bringing something but it wasn’t noticed. They were more interested in catching up with me. We don’t even speak that much about the difference between our cultures...it’s more men’s bollocksy chat that sometimes after a day’s work you just need.
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| The water man on the left, and four other mates I should really know the names of (as I should the water man) |
I tried to get them all to say "Hello Andrew" so I could send him the video but it turned into Chinese Whispers....well Chinese Shouting anyway
As I was ready to go, Li Kun contacted me to go to a bar to play guitar. Well, what could I do? Well I could certainly say I wasn’t going to play the guitar, but after making my excuses with the water man and friends I rode over there anyway. Most of the people there were a little the worse for wear, but it was great fun to catch up with Li Kun and play some cai ma. The woman who seemed to run the place was in good spirits and despite the “No Smoking” signs in her establishment flagrantly ignored them, as did almost literally everyone else who was male at least. She also played cai ma with me, which I was a little uncomfortable with, as the sexist inside me doesn’t like beating women. Unbeknownst to me my sexist had to hide behind a gallstone as despite her apparent inebriatedness, she metaphorically swept the floor with me, and had I spent a few more rounds it might not have been metaphorically.
Being the sensible soul I sometimes can be, I realised when enough was enough, and performed another round of gan beis, which was effectively my leaving do for tonight. Lord knows I’m still jetlagged but when I got home after 3am it didn’t take much for me to realise that my promises of coming tomorrow to play the guitar were not going to get much practise before sleep set in. Shit. Did I really promise I’d come back tomorrow to perform??
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