Back to the guangchang

Up at 6am again! Dammit, or damnit, I did try to sleep but thought I might as well make use of the situation as Liangwen had just IM’d me that he was going for a jog in the guangchang. But my legs were leaden after yesterday’s effort so I made it a walk instead, and as he’d already run 11.64km he accompanied me to Lu Wen’s place for breakfast of beef noodles and insisted on paying.

The boring things in life happen here too, and I was obliged to pay the water and service bill, so went to the place downstairs and interrupted the woman from her brunch noodles. I said I could come back later but she was adamant it was fine. And a few minutes later I handed over 954 kuai. That paid for either the last year or the next - I wasn’t quite sure even though I asked. But whatever the amount it sounded reasonable for whatever it was. I really want to know more about utilities here; it seems I only hear about them when they stop. Like suddenly there’s no water because we haven’t paid the bill, or worse, no electricity. If I just knew what we owed it would be so much easier. To be fair Tan did say that the blue electricity book had our unique number on it and there was some way of checking what the balance was.

I'm not sure this was supposed to add up to 964.48 kuai...

It was quite easy in the end - prepend 040100 to the number in the book and the electronic display shows how much credit you have for electricity...at least it was easy when the person in the shop showed me how...and we had 354 kuai

We needed a couple of things from the supermarket, including a bath mat. Such a simple thing I thought I could get at a local market, but try as I might no-one had any, until I found one in a supermarket for 80 kuai. No way I was paying that much for one. I was at Guan Mart and since I’ve been coming here I’ve been tempted to buy a replica shopping trolley for what reason I cannot explain other than I can’t get one in the UK. One was 20 kuai and definitely less than a quarter useful as a bathmat but for some reason much more satisfactory.

Somehow we have ended up with an autonomous vacuum cleaner that we don't really need but Er Jie gave it to Tan when they went to Baise - hmm...

As darkness arrived I took the kids out for our first together trip to the guangchang this year. They both really wanted to go on the bouncy castles but I had to insist Leilei at least, at virtually 6 foot could not go. Xixi wouldn’t go without him so they both pushed me but I held firm. The average age there was 5 and I wasn’t having them increase that to 7. They were really bitter until I let them have a go on the guns to shoot balloons to win a prize. Then it was my turn to be bitter as after giving them a few goes each and spending a fiver during it I realised the red balloons appeared to be made of tougher rubber than the others that popped easily with the ball-bearings. I nearly had a go at the stall keepers but thought better of it, as we walked away without any teddy bears they’d been hoping for.

Shitty non-popping red balloons - we won't be going back there...

So far the night was a bit of a failure but then Xixi saw all the kids on roller skates. We walked over and women came up to her offering skates for hire and we found out it was only 5 kuai, so she got a pair straight away. She spent the next hour learning to inline skate, half the time holding on to me, and got 100x the money’s worth than from the shooting.

At last some fun on the in-line skates

Drenched in sweat, I had to take them home as Waterman had invited me out at 9pm for a drink at his shop. I duly obliged and had a great time until I was also obliged to meet Haiwei at 11.30 for a few beers. And then Li Kun contacted me for a few more after midnight. Gosh my social life is fairly busy at the moment - this should quieten down soon I think.

Keeping track of the kms on the dian dong che

More food at Li Kun's while the teacher was falling asleep

I probably would have been more annoyed at the lack of A/C had I been more awake and more sober but I made my way to my sofabed in my study and just managed to put on the sheet before slumber called to me in a way that my friends just couldn’t.