Football - oh dear

Yay, no work. I brunched with Haiwei and some friends at 10am which was earlier than I’ve been getting up recently. Then brunch turned into lunch and a few beers were imbibed but nothing unreasonable. Despite this I was unable to grab more than a two minute siesta much to my chagrin as I’d accepted an invitation from Zhang Hua to play football at 5pm in the kit he’d sorted me out with last year.

5pm came around and although I knew where we would be playing I hadn’t had a message from Zhang Hua. But I couldn’t really feign ignorance as I could see the guys practising in the astroturf field near our place. I turned up 20 minutes later in high 30s heat and really wasn’t in the mood. It was people in our kits versus people in not-our-kits, but I understood everyone was pretty much from the same team. I asked what the score was and someone said it was something like 6-2, but I didn’t know to whom. I got called to come on but I was still trying to work out if it was already half time, as by now I’d been here nearly 45 minutes.

The view from our house - I had no excuse

So eventually I made the effort. I’m sure I was the eldest, and probably the least fit on the field but it was more a gesture to Zhang Hua who’d got me the kit in the first place. I played left back (I wish it was left back in the changing room ha ha) and immediately realised my trainers were not meant for Astroturf as they had little grip. I was pretty bad too...my teammates were calling out “bu yao jin” - don’t worry/take it easy, and I did. The job I’d given myself was to pass to teammates as soon as I got the ball. That sounds quite easy but in the sweat of the game it’s not so simple to follow the game-plan. I did at least make one good defensive header to get the ball out that received some polite applause so I’ll dwell on that.

My main fear was knowing that we were up by about four goals when I started and I just wanted to remain on top. I think we did in the end, but it was lower than a four goal margin.

They obviously needed some help before I came on...

I had been told that we’d go for a meal at one of the player’s hometown 20 km away, so I said I’d quickly pop home to get my laptop as I wanted to watch City’s game at Wolves in a bit. I was told we’d now be eating at a local restaurant which I was more than happy with as the match was starting soon. I nipped home to grab the laptop then popped to pick up Zhang Hua, but very annoyingly I’d not zipped up my bag properly and the laptop dropped out onto the cold hard floor and I feared the worst, but had no time to check as we needed to go to the restaurant.

Once there the worst was confirmed; the laptop didn’t turn on. Well, there was no time to moan - it was my fault and that was that. I made my apologies and hurried back home to get my old laptop and bade them start the meal. Ten minutes later I was back and turned on the laptop I hadn’t used for weeks. The restaurant wifi wasn’t working well so someone offered to tether to their 3/4G phone. Thank goodness for cheap 3/4G. Bugger. Windows needs to update in 15 minutes - please save any work...not even the option to delay. At least it was getting on for half time by now. We’d managed to watch a whole five minutes of the first half. To make things worse I found I’d forgotten to bring the AC adapter so once again had to make excuses and leave them for a further 10 minutes while I got that, as my now four year old Lenovo Yoga 2, as much as I love it, does not last much more than an hour on a single charge now.

Finally we had a stable stream and good food and most of the chaps were interested in the match, having just played a game. Disappointingly we played out a 1-1 draw but to be fair Wolves pretty much deserved it. It’s only the second game but losing points to a team that’s just been promoted isn’t the sign of champions. Liverpool on the other hand are looking great so far.

We moved on to Zhang Hua’s place after the meal for more beer. Most people left after a while but then the rest of us moved on to some other place - I took Zhuang Hua on the bike. I started gan bei’ing with another table too but even I knew when enough is enough so left at 2.30am and took Zhuang Hua back to his shop to sleep, and did the same soon after.

At Zhang Hua's

The rain