Up late morning and didn't fancy any of what was in the house to eat so went for a walk. I met Lu zong at his shop but he'd already eaten and anyway his youngest was having an injection, meaning he was on the drip. It looks like half the shops are now closed for New Year but there was one selling noodles so I picked that and had beef fen for 10 kuai. I then bumped into a mate with his two kids and spent a few minutes prising what little English I could out of them but it was much appreciated.
Back home I downloaded the sheet music to "The Easy Winners" and "Fig Leaf Rag", and walked off to get them printed off. The problem yesterday was that the paper quality was not high, and the paper kept bending and falling off the piano. So this time I popped into Guanmart to pick up a sort of folder with transparent pages to hold the paper in. Annoyingly it wouldn't scan at the till, so the lady told me to put it back and get another one. I wanted to tell her that wouldn't solve the problem (for the next person at least) but did what I was told and got another one that also wouldn't scan. It took about 5 minutes but I wasn't going to leave empty-handed so eventually one of the assistants got the label from the shelf and scanned that and all was ok.
So I had what I needed but suddenly I wasn't in the mood. It was one of those slightly "down" times again, maybe partly due to the realisation that there were only two weeks to go. But two weeks meant the train tickets should be on sale now, so I went home to check. Well no tickets from Nanning to the airport any more it seems, though you can go from Nanning East. I nearly bought a ticket but found that the Pingguo to Nanning tickets wouldn't be on sale for another 10 minutes. So I did what anyone would do and grabbed a cold beer. Then I heard Tan's brother arrive so stayed in my room for some time as he still slightly scares me.
But eventually the beer (or maybe the second one) meant I needed to go for a leak so I had to emerge from my room but he just asked me if I'd eaten and I asked him the same. It's almost the same as saying "how do you do?" only to be answered "how do you do?". It's quite nice in a way and reflects the fact that nearly everything revolves around eating here. Well he and Jiuma left shortly after and indeed I was getting peckish so heated up some duck and a bit of zongzi.
It was getting on for 7pm and finally I was in the mood for some piano practice, so took the dian dong che over there in case I was invited out somewhere afterwards, and indeed at 7pm when I sat down at the piano, Yangwen pinged me to go for a walk. So I said I would at 8pm and had a nice practice till 7.58pm when he called me to ask if I was on my way. So I packed up and 5 minutes later was at the tennis court place and he wasn't even there yet.... He arrived with a female friend I'd met before but I don't think is his wife. I was too embarrassed to ask though as I should know now after 10+ years of knowing him.
We walked and chatted for maybe 15 minutes before it was declared the walk was over and we said our goodbyes and that was it. I'd had no other invitations so just went home before 9pm。 Shortly after I heard the cackle of Bangxu women in the living room. Yep, Erjie was back with her friends and they'd probably be staying the night. Absolutely fair enough. Jiuma was cooking some sweet doughballs in sweet ginger soup, and I was instructed to have some. Well I'd not had much for tea, so I managed to eat a couple of them and they were really too sweet for my taste. Erjie was asking how many zongzi I'd be able to take back with me, as Tan had been asking if I was allowed to take them. Tan had asked me to take 5 but I'm hoping I'll be able to fit 10 as long as Erjie doesn't give me more stuff to take back like a load of mushrooms last time.
Then I remembered I hadn't booked the train tickets yet and refreshed the page to find them all sold out! Bollocks, they'd been on sale under 5 hours and the only ones left were far too late for my flight. It's ok, there'll be options, but the train is the far nicer mode of transport. I guess it's a symptom of the New Year period, when so many people are travelling. So a coach it may well be then, or worst case get there a day early and do a hotel.
At some time past 11pm I was getting peckish again, so went to leave the house. All the women asked where I was going and I said I was going for a walk as my back was bad, which was pretty true - it has been playing up today. I decided to go to Tan's uncle's bbq place and nearly made it before I heard a loud "hello!" and looked around to see someone I felt I should recognise. Well he recognised me and bade me to sit down with him and a couple of mates, one of whom was clearly plastered.
He grabbed me a beer as he knew I didn't touch the white stuff, and before long we were chatting away and eating cooked oysters as you do. I think they'd been planning to go home soon as they needed to take their pissed mate, but more beer was ordered and we ended up staying till 1.30am, during which time Tan's uncle from the neighbouring bbq place came over for a chat and a smoke too. The bloke opposite had just come back from where he works in Shandong, and was showing us film of the snow over there. The bloke who invited me was saying he'd been invited to work in Guangzhou for more money (he's a cook in the oyster place and can cook over 300 dishes apparently), but he had a wife and kid here, so preferred to stay put. I also mentioned that living here was nicer than living in a big city, and much cleaner air. Jeez, it was a rather banal conversation in many ways, but it made me feel good, and they kept saying my Mandarin was more "standard" than theirs which was clearly untrue but I'll take it as a compliment.
In fact six more beers were brought over at 1.30am but Xiao Nong had got in contact to say they were drinking at a friend's house and to come over with some beer. So I made my excuses and found my way over there a bit later. I picked up a couple of cases of Snowflake beer and joined the four of them in a small apartment quite near the centre of town. And it was an enjoyable couple of hours mostly playing cai ma as you do, before taking Xiao Nong back at some time after 3.30am.
I hadn't had that much sleep and didn't expect to be awake for the City match at 4am, but socialising really seems to pep you up. Probably for evolutionary reasons. But then Sisi called me to eat at a bbq place just outside Yu Jing Hua Ting. Oh well, people before football I suppose. But I couldn't find where they were, despite a video call and a wei zhi. I walked up and down and handed my phone to a couple of people before she walked up, clearly the worse for wear. She mumbled something about having a drink but she clearly needed to get home, and I decided it would be my responsibility.
I considered taking her on the dian dong che but even she didn't seem to think that would work, so I held her up as much as I could and we slowly shuffled to her place where I made sure she got to her front door. The whole process took over half an hour and when I got back to my dian dong che I couldn't find my bloody keys. They weren't in any of my pockets and for once I hadn't left them in the ignition. It was getting on for 5am and I think we have a second set at home anyway but just as I was about to walk back I spied a set of keys on the floor five feet away. Blimey, I really need to be more careful in the future.
Back home, I found a reasonable stream as the second half started and witness the great Phil Foden complete a magical hat trick at Brentford to keep in touch with Liverpool and Arsenal, and hopefully make it an interesting title race. Then somehow I fell asleep after 6am for just an hour. But my 7am wake up didn't last much longer than sending a few messages to mates.
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