Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Water man meal

Up at 10ish so no running or table tennis but not too bad. The kids still had the cereal I’d brought from my Canada Airbnb but that wasn’t that much so I took them out to the sweetcorn soup place that is one of the few places that we can all have something to eat that we like; the soup for Xixi and me, egg fried rice for them, and a sort of omelette for me. I had instructions from Tan to bring back some sour soup from the place next door but one and I duly did, with a spoonful of chilli and half a spoonful of salt.

I could have done with a siesta but managed to avoid it, mainly due to the fact that there was quite a lot of work on. I don’t even know if I’m on holiday at the moment. The Water man texted me to see if I was coming over later as I said I may be able to. Well, why not? I said it would be more like 9.30pm though due to having to play football later.

As for the kids I’d promised to take them to ping pong this evening. So I spent literally hours during the rest of the afternoon doing my expenses with some shitty new system. Bloody hell I could expense a £5 soft drink but not a £2 glass of wine. WTF?

Li Kun then called to see if we could practise Scarborough. We really should...I hired the guitar in Toronto for this, but I was already committed for today, so suggested we do it tomorrow. I did take the kids to the Golden Horse ping pang place but found it closed strangely. But the kids didn’t seem to mind too much so we just went for a ride and looked at some shen me dou you shops. Leilei got a remote control car for 55 kuai and a fidget spinner, while Xixi bought some drawing stuff for a friend at school.

While out I received a message from Huahua to say football was cancelled as there was no room on the pitches…. One would have thought they would have planned that...but who am I to judge? Actually I was quite happy with the news and was able to meet up with Water man earlier than I thought, though Tan did scold me for going out all the time (only two nights in a row and I’m on holiday...come on...). Anyway I found my way to the water man’s house and we had some good banter with fish I didn’t particularly like. Banter with mates, not the fish. I got back after midnight then chatted a little with Mat before stupidly realising it was 6am.