Back with Beihai Boss Huang and gan bei's

Thanks to my relatively early night I woke at 6.30am, then 7.40am, and then properly at 11.30am. Nice. I ate a portion of local jiao zi for lunch, and hoped the boss of the place might be a little bit more excited to see me. But thinking more about it why would she? I represent maybe 10% of a year of her clientele, even including the kids. I suppose I’m sort of hoping my skin colour means something but of course it doesn’t; I get charged the same as any other person.

Anyway, as it was a Monday I had to go and do the yearly ritual of registering myself and the kids. You would have thought after years of doing this it would be down to a fine thing. But of course it wasn’t. I even brought last year’s papers with me to expedite the process to no avail. The “big mama” policewoman of the last couple of years wasn’t here this year, so it was left to a couple of younger ladies. Like previous years I was invited behind the desks where the common people don’t generally go, and was offered grapes as per before. But this time they pointed to a camera in the corner of the room trained on some of the desks and suggested I moved closer to the wall to be out of its view. I happily agreed but wondered what video they’d already taken of me. It took an hour, but eventually they registered us, and the girl confirmed she had my Wechat account from last year so she would get in contact with me in case of any problem (very official I’m sure, but she showed my out messages from last year).

Yang Haiwei rang me again to invite me out to eat with his family. He is really keen to get his 17 year old son talking better and to be fair over the last couple of years he’s really come on, hopefully thanks in some small part to me. So we had a great meal in an unceremonious place, which I always prefer. Haiwei and I ended up cai ma’ing, and then I did so with some others from another table, which is not unheard of.

I had to complain at one stage that my glass was much bigger than others' - only when I did this did they accept it

Tan had a dance class from 8-9.30pm, so I had to pick up the kids at 7.30, but they didn’t really want to come with me so I started to take them home, but on the way stopped off at Boss Huang’s Seafood place, as I’d not yet seen him. He was incredibly happy to see me, and at once laid out plates etc. For once the kids actually ate something, which made me happy, while they also wolfed down canned tea. By now Haiwei was calling me asking where I was, so I took the kids home as Tan had finished her dance class. I got back to Haiwei and he and others were in high spirits and I gan bei’d more than I might have done on a normal school night. Eventually I left but for some reason at 1amish whatever it was I went home via Boss Huang’s again and stopped off for a couple more gan bei’s. Bloody hell, I want to make the most of my short time away from work and this was doing it. I got home 2ish shattered and didn’t wait long for sleep to engulf me.

Cai ma'ing with Haiwei's mates