Mario Land and a lizard

I took the kids to A Xia’s place but in the end they wanted to stay with me which I didn’t mind at all. As we were getting back on the bike a shiny white car bibbed me and nearly hit me then the window wound down and I noticed it was my mate Chen from a couple of years ago, the bloke married to the Nanning dancer with a son who likes to smile a lot but talks in a way I find very difficult to understand. Well we hadn’t met up last year so he invited me to a meal tomorrow. I didn’t think I had anything arranged so I said it should be ok thank you, and we exchanged WeChat details as his last one was no longer in use due to him forgetting his password. A slightly dubious excuse as these days you can get your friends to confirm who you are if you forget your password...but I certainly wasn’t going to enquire.

I noticed this pasted at the ground floor. Annoyingly at the time of taking it I didn't understand it, even though I could read 40% of the characters - progress of sorts, but lots still needed. Must do better.

I took the kids for a ride in the afternoon and found a really weird place with concrete holes like Mario Land. We stood there for several minutes trying to work out what it was but were nonplussed. Later, back on the road, we noticed a lizard crossing the road and made sure we missed it, but then turned around to see where it was going.This was actually more fun than expected and it dodged death several times and miraculously made it across to the other side of the road. We thought we’d lost it in the bushes but we found it again climbing a tree. Several minutes amusement for us to the bemusement of anyone looking. The kids then ordered me to take them to a shenme dou you shop… Leilei nearly bought a set of wireless headphones and tried them on and they looked a bit silly but I’m glad he did. Xixi bought some face mask stuff as she doesn’t seem to be able to leave a shop without buying something....not sure where she got that from..

The weird Mario Land-like holes in the ground

Modelling the face mask she had to buy...

Some other dubious wares in the shop I'm glad they didn't see...

The lizard that survived the crossing of the road and gave us more enjoyment than reptiles should normally do

I went to Haiwei’s for tea as his son was around and wanted to speak English and Spanish. I couldn’t tempt the kids to come with me though. Of course it was a nice meal and we had a couple of beers but nothing silly as I had to get home for a meeting at 8pm. It went better and quicker than planned but there was no point going back to Haiwei’s as his son had gone to his mum’s to sleep - he’ll be going back to school tomorrow at 6pm...grim.

I had to do more work later before deciding to do some guitar practice before realising I didn’t have my capo. Google translate makes the Chinese for “capo” look really bad but Li Kun understood and said I could pick it up. I came over to his place and there were loads of people there playing music. A guitar was thrust into my hands and I spent the next 20 minutes playing Scarborough Fair with Li Kun. Then I took my leave and called Haiwei, who had been calling me for the last hour. As I was checking the map location he sent me I saw it looked really close and then I heard a shout “Tom!!” and of course it was him and a couple of mates. They were right opposite Li Kun’s place! The next hour or so was quite a fun session of cai ma and talking about how lucrative being a middleman between China and Canada could be.

I offered Haiwei a lift as he was obviously pissed but he pointed to his car, so there wasn’t much I could do. I made my excuses and left for a relatively early night except I played World of Tanks with Mat for more time than I should have.