Difficult English homework and more guitar

Happy Birthday Xixi! Oh my my beautiful baby daughter is now an adult and I'm not there for it...but we did talk about it and are in touch regularly.

I've been lucky with the weather here and indeed it's been highs of low 30s. But tomorrow it's due to be a high of 15° and a low of 11°. In anticipation of this, half the people are already in long sleeves and/or coats. Even in the mid-afternoon. Even I'm not that sensitive. But in my anticipation I put on my clothes to wash in the early afternoon in order to do what drying I could before the cold set in.

Haiwei called me at 3pm to see where I was and I was honest and said I was putting out the clothes to dry, and I'd come over in 5 minutes. That turned into 15 as I hadn't noticed it was now pissing down so I had to sort out the coverall for the bike while not getting soaked myself, so I ended up arriving at 3.30pm after another call to see where I was.

True to my word I spoke with his son for a while before looking at his English homework. Crikey, it looked pretty complex for a 13 year-old. One particular question asked to find the odd one out in terms of the sound of the final "s" in the following words: A. books, B. keys, C. oranges, D. pens. The son had left this one blank. I first thought it was pens, as the "s" sounded more like a "z", but then they all sounded zeddy except maybe for books. So I sent the pic to Mat and he reckoned it was oranges it it was more of a "z" sound and I was confused, as he saw a case for books too (a book case if you will). So if a professional English English teacher is not sure, how is a 13 year-old Chinese student expected to do? I hope I do find out the answer.

Question 17 was particularly hard

Anyway, bar the homework (he was doing complex maths too), we talked till the food was served shortly after 5pm. For once it was all lovely; cha shao and pork ribs, with cabbage and other greens, and lots of it. Sweet in more ways than one. After the statutory 10 minutes or so some cold beers were opened. The owner of the house then arrived to join us, followed soon after by another bloke and the woman who was there last week who was good at cai ma. Every hour or so the food was reheated on the hob as the beer continued to pour and the mas continued to be cai'd, until gone 10pm, when I explained I needed to be somewhere else. Indeed it was true as advertising friend Nong had invited me to eat and play guitar at some other place.

The pork was wonderful and went down quickly

More cai ma silliness at the meal

I had no inclination to eat or play guitar, but it was a reasonable excuse to not get any more bloated where I was, and got to the place at 10.30pm. It was a busy private room with about 20 people who all cheered as I entered as they'd been drinking for as long as me probably. I managed a few ganbeis while listening to the semi-professionals playing and singing, until I had a guitar thrust into my arms. Well...I was reluctant but I'd searched the words to a couple of S&G songs lest I forgot them, and did a rendition of Mrs Robinson, before a few more ganbeis and then the guitar came my way again and I finished off with The Boxer and Sound of Silence. Well maybe it's Sounds but I prefer the singular.

I made my excuses around midnight as I wanted to watch the Chelsea City game, and this time I managed to connect to the VPN no problem and got a cracking stream for a cracking game. Of course I'd have preferred Palmer to miss the last-minute penalty to draw 4-4 but for the neutral and the title race I suppose it was a great result.