Getting up at 9am was probably not the right thing to do, except for visiting the toilet. So I tried my new-found Spanish counting trick and it bloody well worked again, but in shorter spurts than German did. So every 15 minutes or whatever, I'd start again until a dream happened. I once got up to 80 (ochenta), then try as I might, could not make it to 90 (noventa). Every time I'd restart from 80 I'd get no more than five numbers before I'd drop off. I wouldn't say it was the most refreshing sleep in the world, but it was way better than nothing, and I didn't get up properly till after 3pm.
I was still having serious issues getting the VPN to connect. I'd pretty much given up on the phone and the laptop could take dozens of attempts. Maybe the powers that be had finally found a way to block it off. It's ok as I can contact immediate family but imagine tourists coming here and being effectively offline for the duration of their stay. But I'm trying to be philosophical and become accepting that this might be the case in which case I'd be stuck a lot more to Chinese which at the very least should improve my Chinese in more ways than one. But also it would block off access to some learning I was hoping to do during this break. So I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for this worst case scenario.
Haiwei had called me around 2pm but I'd not answered, so I got back to him at 3.15pm and he was asking if I could come to speak to his son in English tomorrow or Sunday. I said I was pretty busy tomorrow (at least three people had invited me out) so we pencilled in Sunday at 3pm. Then he left another message to see if I could go for a drink and bite to eat this evening but I said I'd rebooked with a friend this evening so probably not. However, at 6.30pm it transpired that this friend was busy (would have been nice to be told about it earlier...hmmm), so I told Haiwei I was no longer busy and he got back to me to go to his boss's place which is one floor lower than A Wu's in the same building as we went to copious times in the summer.
Well that was dinner sorted then. And I was pretty hungry too, so took the bike there for 7pm where I met up with a number of new bosses, and one I did know but can never remember his name. There wasn't even a single token woman this time, and the food was not quite as brilliant as usual. I had mainly raw fish dipped in oil but I'd added too much of something or other and it was overly spicy. So most of what I had by volume was the lamb soup which was bloody delicious. Unfortunately though, as per usual, my first serving of it was accompanied by large bits of bone and it was quite hard to hold them up with chopsticks and of course once I dropped one while trying to nibble bits of skin off and got splashback. But once I'd removed the solids, the rest was mint (not literally).
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| Almost nothing to nibble on the solids in the soup...luckily the liquid was delicious |
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| Fishy meal with Bud |
Predictably, the beer was flowing...this time "Budweiser" but brewed in Guangxi so as local as Li Quan. As I didn't most of about eight of the bosses I had to do a bit more ganbeing than usual, and even Haiwei remarked that at 3.6% this was significantly stronger than the 2.8% we're used to. Finally something we both agree about (about 29% stronger actually but I didn't mention this to him). He reckoned he could only drink four cans of such beer but he'd definitely had more than that by the time we decided to leave.
I would have been happy to go home but he got on my dian dong che (as he didn't want to drive his car after a few drinks) and directed me to a place I think I went to with him in the summer. It was just a shop front, but apparently some sort of reunion with ex-schoolmates. There were a couple of people there drinking white alcohol but there was plenty of beer available too. And of course some food...tiny fried prawns that were delicious and some sort of spicy root that I believe is related to bamboo but they kept telling me it was something else.
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| Haiwei's mini reunion |
More people turned up and they all seemed to drink pretty quickly, so at one point I said I needed to go for a walk and spent 10 minutes walking round the block having a chat with Andge. Finally at gone 11pm Haiwei agreed that we had had enough, and got me to drop him off back at his office where he promptly got in his car to drive home.
Back home myself I realised I was still hungry, and found the bag of la tiao I'd bought the other day. Well they filled a hole despite being most unhealthy in terms of sugar and carbs but hey ho it's not every night. Although past 4am going to sleep is becoming so.
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