England beat NZ and City win too...still feeling rough

Up 9.30ish still feeling pretty shit, and nipped out for jiaozi at midday, where the area was buzzing with school kids. Despite feeling shit still I forced myself to do some work to prepare for Monday’s presentation in Bangkok. I worked through the England NZ semi-final of the rugby world cup, and I suppose I was privileged not only that it was at 4pm my time, but that it wasn’t 9am in the UK, as I probably would have watched it there. I’m no expert but it looked like we edged it although we were tiring towards the end. But then everyone else said it was the most wonderful game England had ever played. Oh well - hope they haven’t peaked before the final.

Haiwei, earlier in the week, had told me that today (Saturday) we’d be eating at his place as his older son would be home and we could speak in English. However, after the rugger it was getting on for 6pm and I still hadn’t heard from him. This was quite annoying as there was no way I was going to call him to remind him to invite me, and moreover I was peckish. Worse that that though was that I wanted to watch City v Villa at 7.30pm in the early game and could have arranged to eat before, then come back and finished off work while watching that. To add salt into the wounds Chen had pinged me yesterday as he’d seen a video of me in town and had invited me to eat at 6pm, which would have been perfect if it had meant just an evening meal. More likely he’d have wanted me for most of the evening so I wouldn’t have watched the match. I even charged up my laptop in case I had to go out. But as it was I told Chen I’d be available at 9.15ish and he was cool with that and sent me a Weizhi showing me where to go later.

I was glad that I didn’t go out at 6pm in the end but this time got myself some fried chicken instead of jiaozi after the rugby and made good progress on the demonstration work till 7.30, when I justifiably cracked open a beer that I’d left from the summer and found a stream for the match. Ok, I actually cracked it open before 7pm but it had been a long day. The stream in question was quite crap as I’m guessing 7.30pm is peak internet here, and I had to turn off my VPN, which I wasn’t happy about. It was 0-0 at half time and I feared losing yet more points but we picked it up in the second half, as did the stream and it was an enjoyable 3-0 win in the end to put a tiny bit of pressure on Liverpool.

Tea before the football

As I pulled up the dian dong che outside Huang Lidan’s beauty shop I realised although I was in the vicinity of where Chen was, I wasn’t sure exactly where he was. So I popped into her shop and showed her the photo of the place and she knew exactly where it was and gladly pointed me in that direction. Chen was as happy to see me as he always is and met me at the door of the new music bar that just two days ago I was at with Uncle Yellow and Boss Zhou. But first we left the place to go to a tea place across the way where his wife and a friend were, er, drinking tea. He told them to accompany us but they appeared to me more than happy where they were and said they’d come later.

A toilet door at the music place...

Gradually a few more friends arrived as did beers, and it was a palatable evening. I was allowed to invite a couple of friends, but then for some reason we left and moved on to another place nearby. I think the reason was that Chen knew these people and maybe wanted to show me off to them. Nevertheless it meant a few more beers and food that we just couldn’t eat. Finally we left at getting on for two so went straight home, where for some reason I was up till nearly 5am..