Wii cleaning and Mario Kart

Up at a reasonable 10.30am to have a breakfast of a custard tart the kids had left in the fridge. Worked till the early afternoon but needed a break so played a game of Worms Armageddon on Steam that I remembered doing while living in Portugal 19 years ago or so but why not?

As I was in a sort of gaming mode I decided to sort out the Wii. For some reason before turning it on and making sure it worked I decided to clean it of its 10+ years of yellowing. I took a good 10 minutes doing this including the flexes and each passing minute I became more convinced that it wouldn’t work, yet I adamantly stuck at the task as though I had a speck of ADHD or whatever. But the nice clean Wii did turn on and I did manage a couple of games of Mario Kart which was half fun and half sad. I’d rather be playing with someone else. I’ll have to sort it to work online like I’ve done with the Wiis at our UK home.

I do like a bit of Koopa Cape - almost retro now the console is 12 years old

Then Haiwei reminded me I was going to his place in an hour so I did 20 press ups and a minute’s plank before showering after a quick beer. It was pissing down so I put on the blue overall for the dian dong che and managed to stay relatively dry this time.

When I arrived Haiwei was still cooking so I spent some time with his son speaking English which is really one of the reasons I was here. He spent most of his time playing an excellent looking game called PUBG and pronounced "Pub". It looked more like Fortnite for adults, as there was a bit more killing. I expressed an interest and started downloading the Chinese version only for the download to stop after a few minutes on the local wifi. Eventually Haiwei's son had the good idea of making me tether on his phone and within half an hour the gigabyte or so of data was downloaded. Great. Except I needed to register with a Chinese social media account that had KYC and basically my WeChat didn't have that so I was buggered. Still, it was interesting to watch him play with the thumb-thingies that made his phone more tactile. He said he would sort me out a pair for Leilei.

PUBG - Looks pretty good actually

The meal was a sumptuous family one though Haiwei and I were the only men, but that changed an hour later when some more people turned up. One of them was 2-1, who I remembered from many years ago, and we enjoyed reminiscing a while.

Another sumptuous meal

The fashionable Li Quan beer this year: "1998" Bill Clinton....

Despite the good meal I ended up having to go home to work as my clients were getting to the office on the other side of the planet. Not complaining though - just needed to send a couple of emails and IMs to show I was looking after them. I did prefer when I was on English/European projects working from home in China though….