Night blended into day with sleep nothing more than the odd doze, but at least the hallucinations had somewhat died down, though I was still achy everywhere. I managed the contents of the last wedding box of nuts and sweet biscuits I'd never normally touch but reckoned I needed the sugar energy, and a yoghurt for the same reason. I checked the flight and saw they were nearly half way through and interestingly going the "normal" route we always used to go over Russia. I guess relations between the countries are still ok, despite the departure airport.
We've pretty much run out of food and I didn't fancy going out in case I got taken short. The boys weren't up and any normal person here would simply order something online. But the risk vector for something going wrong was just to high with the Chinese characters, finding the right app on Weixin, inputting the address in the right format etc. I'd need to do this with a local first of all before I'd be confident enough to do myself. So I took the calculated risk of getting on the dian dong che and picking up a couple of portions of jiaozi as Nezha had told me he had already eaten. Back home I wolfed mine down with another yoghurt, then had a few more trips to the loo and finally while I was watching Computerphile on YT I fell asleep for an hour, feeling significantly better afterwards.
Just as well as I watched the ladies' plane touch down thanks to flightradar24, although it wasn't as accurate as it appears in the UK - something to do with the Chinese government insisting on obfuscating exact coordinates as I learnt from a previous employment. Well it appeared that on the flight they were told they didn't need landing cards, unlike us, and that the QR code to say they were covid-free would be fine, but when they arrived they were told the QR code was out of date. I was not going to argue, and they luckily could redo the covid-free QR code and manually write the landing cards, and it just took longer than it otherwise would have. I told Tan they had plenty of time which was true, and they ended up at the gate 90 minutes before it was due to go.... I said why not take advantage of the lounge but may as well have told them to levitate.
Feeling better after a proper hour's sleep I agreed to meet Zhang Yangwen, whom I'd been in contact with recently but couldn't meet in Tian Dong due to my illness, and nearly didn't go due to an umpteenth bout of la du near the time. But I ventured out and we went for a couple of rounds of walking round the tennis courts as we'd done in previous years, before going to the new ping pong place near the stadium. We had a short practice then he said we'd start a game. I knew he was not playing at his best, on purpose annoyingly, and I only lost 6-2 or so in games, but it was good to sweat stuff out after being bed-bound for nearly 48 hours. Haiwei was also around and told me to meet him for a couple of beers afterwards. Well beer was the one thing I'd avoided in the last 48 hours or so (maybe 40), but I said I'd contact him later.
But before I got home Li Kun said he fancied bbq and I should invite him. I didn't mind this in the least, and said I'd go after a shower. He sent a weizhi and half an hour later I turned up to the shout of "Peng Duoming!". But it was one of his mates, and the shop evidently his and his wife's. They got out a bbq and set it up with some coal and I realised it would be a homely affair. I told Li Kun I was already there and while the wife went to tend to something I sat at the bbq and did some turning as if to feel as though I was doing something useful.
The music teacher and his wife turned up shortly after Li Kun, plus some other guitarist, and we had a very pleasant meal of bbq, smelly tofu, and of course weak beer, without any need for cai ma. Haiwei had sent me a weizhi and rang me and I said I'd be "more than half an hour", which seemed acceptable. Then I pinged A Xia to see how she was getting on picking up the ladies, and she said she was waiting. Thanks to flightradar24 I could see that they'd touched down at 10.56pm, so let her know. Which meant I'd better go and see Haiwei and his ping pong friends before getting home to tidy up the house a bit.
So excuses were made, and I happily paid 220 kuai for the bbq that had fed seven people and still had a bit left, and drove on down to the guangchang to meet Haiwei and the people he'd been playing with that night. It was a nice evening with some people I didn't know until we saw two men leave the neighbouring bbq place, one much the worse for wear. It was classic drunkenness but while that might be funny on YouTube when he's trying to walk past you you worry about him falling on the table or something. He avoided our table but did one of those drunken circles where he managed to face the front all the time but do a semicircle backwards before one forwards then plunging between two dian dong ches narrowly avoiding domino'ing then all over. Somehow he got up and staggered a few more feet, before disappearing into a housing complex next door. One of the ladies at our table rushed to the bbq place to fetch his mate, who was also rather the worse for wear but at least able to walk, and he seemed to say someone was coming for him. I don't know how true that was but he did then talk to someone who looked like a delivery driver, and I hoped he would somehow be the person responsible for getting him home.
That would have been a reasonable end to the night but the drunk's less drunken mate then came to sit with us and said he knew I knew A Wu...well I wasn't going to deny that. But he wanted to call him and as it was midnight I suggested he didn't. He spent the best part of 10 minutes trying to find him in his phone by scribbling characters in his contacts page but coming up with nothing. But he was duly poured a beer and downed it when we had a third. You realise how much of a bore such drunks can be when they take over the conversation and also make you worried they may fall over or do some other unpredictable thing. A drink later he'd managed to find A Wu and rang him and passed the phone to me. I just hung up and said it was too late. Did he twig? A minute later he waited till A Wu had answered then handed the phone to me and an equally drunken A Wu confirmed the fact that he was and I said to talk another time and hung up again.
It took another 10 minutes and a couple of glasses of beer but we all agreed it was the end of the night and thankfully set off home. I didn't forget to get some water for the ladies and as soon as I'd mopped the floor of the kitchen I got a call from Tan on A Xia's phone to say they'd be arriving in a few minutes. Well it was nice to have the both of them back, and despite Tan criticising the state of the flat (what can you do?) they didn't look as tired as they might have done. Ultimately doing the complete journey in 18+ hours door-to-door can't be complained about. Showers were had, but not before Xixi had wifi sorted and and old VPN client appeared to work so she was able to ping a couple of friends.
While they sorted themselves I grabbed a beer then tried the massage chair. Wow, 15 minutes of slight pain but mostly pretty comfortable stuff. It won't sort out my back I guess but I'm going to give it a go. I had meant to catch the end of the cricket in the massage chair, but didn't even manage a sip of beer as it was too engrossing. Well anyway, one of those days where a few things could have gone wrong but the girls were back safely and that was the main thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment