Ping pang and ChatGPT

Lunch of jiaozi then trip to Guanmart to pick up some more an chun dan. 4.30 for a large bag was great. Then picked up my trainers from the cleaning place and handed in my black canvas shoes I left in the summer after they got filthy when we went "fishing" on the penultimate day of the summer. 20 kuai for effectively two pairs of new shoes seems pretty good value, even if it does take three days.

An chun dan is becoming part of my staple diet

I had a relatively rare free night in that no-one had invited me out, so planned to go to ping pong after I'd boiled the quail eggs and made six of them my tea. Except then Haiwei pinged me to go for a drink and bite to eat at his place but then said sorry but his boss had called him to work. Well lucky I had a plan B.

I got to the ping pang place and it was already busy. Doctor Ma saw me and grabbed me for a photo-shoot before spending the next hour making me practise my backhand. Blimey there is something about his bat that saps all the energy out of the ball and it just fell from my bat into the net nearly every time for the first few minutes. He kept telling me to lift my bat and eventually I managed to get a few rallies going. It felt completely unintuitive. Although it's been quite cold since Monday I did break into a sweat, and apologised at 9pm as I said I needed to go and see someone. Of course I was told to come back when I could.

Li Kun had asked me how to get access to ChatGPT 4.0. I told him it was $20 USD a month but you could get limited access for free via a browser plug-in, and I could come over to help him install it. So he said to come round at 9pm. I mentioned it would be more like 9.30pm so after a shower he sent a weizhi where to meet him. Strangely, it was just a shop and one of his mates was waiting outside and called to me as I arrived. Then there was another mate and we all got into the red car that had taken us to Tiandong last night and drove to a small bbq place right next to our house (having left the dian dong che at the shop). Yes this was typical Pingguo style - not knowing where you're going or who you're going with....

We sat at an outside table that already had the famous baked fish waiting for us. Presently, Li Kun turned up as did 12 cans of beer plus another box of 12 Li Quan should we need it. But it ended up being a relatively sober night (12 cans between four blokes), and we only added a portion of dofu balls to the fish. For once I was home soon after midnight, albeit without the dian dong che.