Late bite with ping pong players from Long'an

I was up at a reasonablish time considering last night, but I don’t quite recall where I went for lunch. Haiwei had invited me for tea this evening, as well as a late drink with ping pong friends from Long'an, who had come to Pingguo for a tournament this evening. I so wish I was good enough to compete...going back five or six years when I’d regularly play for a couple of hours in the morning and maybe the same again in the evening I might have started approaching entertaining this possibility, but it seems I don’t have so much time now, and in a way my back probably prefers things like playing music and going for longer walks than the stress of table tennis. But having said that most of the people playing me in the old people’s leisure centre are a score or more older than me.

Tea was the usual affair at Haiwei’s mum’s place, and in a way I feel I’ve become somewhat part of the family...a cousin who is away most of the time. It’s really nice because it’s nothing to do with Tan’s family so I’ve come about it more out of choice, not that there’s anything wrong with her family. I did my duty of speaking with Haiwei’s eldest son until he had to leave to go back to school at sevenish, but we didn’t do too many beers as Haiwei was about to go to the ping pong tournament, so I took myself home for a bit.

I must have gone out in the interim but made sure I was back to watch the start of the City match against Southampton, but got called by Haiwei later to go to a really local place I could get to in one minute in the dian dong che so already into the second half I took my laptop and arrived to great cheers of drunken men who just a couple of hours earlier had been sober and using tip-top reflexes to play semi-professional table tennis. I was a bit embarrassed to say I needed to watch the end of the game but they seemed to understand as I got out my laptop, plugged it in, and asked for the wifi password. It was worth it as we beat Southampton in the 87th minute. Then I could relax more and play a fair few rounds of cai ma and chatted with the guys from the next town down.