Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Fever and headache and girls on way

Not much more than an hour later at 4.30am I woke with a dreadful fever and headache. I managed to get some water and ibuprofen but it knew it was going to take more than that to survive the next few hours.

At 5.40am Tan pinged me as she couldn't log in to reserve seats. Luckily for her I was up if not very compos mentis. I knew you couldn't check-in online as apparently Heathrow doesn't support that (I highly doubt it), but I'd managed to reserve seats for us before. It's bloody frustrating when you've put in all the correct details to be told the flight number is incorrect - "304" is not something you're going to easily get wrong. So I tried "0304" to know avail and even adding the "CZ" prefix even though it was already there. Then I tried the e-ticket number instead of the passport, but the same error. I was about to give up when I tried the reservation number instead and it finally worked..."flight number incorrect my arse". How can they release such software? Luckily it would not be China Southern writing the software to manage the plane as they'd be falling out of the skies left, right, and centre. I booked the last two seats I could find together near the back of the plane, and told Tan that when at bag drop to ask if they could find any better ones. Also, based on our experience it should be area F at the airport.

Sleep wouldn't arrive, but hallucinations did. I didn't know whether to leave a podcast on or nothing, and opted for the former as it would at least pin me to some sort of reality. I listened to one on body regeneration again but my brain was struggling with some of the bio-electricity concepts of gap channels etc. Then it moved on to a quantum physics episode and the interviewee kept jumping between different subjects such as string theory etc. Each time he mentioned one of those I felt like I was picking up a white towel with the subject written on in and putting it on the pillow by my side, as if registering it, and the fact that some were repeated made me annoyed as I didn't want copies. I was really struggling and by 8am I took a couple more ibuprofen and I think they eased the headache a little but I was still hot so turned the A/C down from 26 to 25, and within minutes noticed the difference. I must have dozed off a few times from 8am-2pm with a few annoying trips to the toilet to remind me maybe I shouldn't have had the oysters last night, and lunch was a couple of yoghurts when my tummy was rumbling.

But by 4pm my watch hadn't registered any sleep other than the hour at 3.15am, and rather than become nocturnal like the boys, made the effort to get up by 5pm and grab a pot noodle. I'd had no calls inviting me out, and certainly wouldn't be accepting any should they come. Leilei did knock and ask for ibuprofen a bit later and I found I'd finished them so gave him aspirin instead...he hadn't had any oysters last night so I hoped he wouldn't suffer like me. At 9.45pm Haiwei pinged me to asked where I was and I told him where and that I had no intention of going out today and that I'd get back when feeling up to it.

I'd been in contact with Xixi to bring a last minute SD card, and when they were on their way I just double-checked they had their passports. Tan's attempt at humour by replying "oh no!" was not received well by me who could hardly think properly, and then she had a go at me for forgetting mine before (once, and I remembered 5 minutes after leaving home, and after having done so many more flights...). They got to the airport early and I told Xixi to try going to zone F as they might do baggage drop early. Indeed they did and by 6pm they were past security on their way to the lounge. Annoyingly, very annoyingly, they said they couldn't put the hold luggage all the way to Nanning so they'd have to pick it up in Guangzhou and check it in again, like we've had to do so many times before even when buying a ticket straight to Nanning. Well at least they seemed to have a decent bite to eat in the lounge and I dozed until gone 5am when I was able to track flight CZ304 take off 20 minutes late, then dozed off a little more to a podcast background.