Dog and Mouse

Tan had said it wasn't really appropriate for me to stay in Waipo's house as she (Tan) has recently fallen out with Jiuma about paying the bills. I don't understand the details but last night I came back here without thinking about it as it was so late. So when I woke up to a phone call from a friend I found I'd had nearly 5 hours' sleep which wasn't too bad for a first night. Now I remembered about the house and decided to book a hotel for a night to give me time to sort out lodgings for the next month. I had had a conversation with a friend of Zhang Hua's in the summer who said she could sort out some sort of hotel room where it's not serviced and you only pay 800 kuai a month but I have my suspicions.

Luckily, before 9am they had a room for me and oh those beds are so much more comfortable than the normal ones in Chinese houses. I considered trying to get some more sleep but ended up getting a shower and feeling very refreshed, so I did some exercise till lunchtime and felt much the better for it. I ended up getting some xiaolongbao and nuomi rice things which were better than expected as I'd not had breakfast. I took them back to the hotel and unguiltily washed them down with a beer or two. I managed to do a bit more exercise before realising I'd better get some kip even though I'd not been invited out anywhere this evening, probably because I've so far only let a handful of people know I've come back (though word will get around).

It took till 4pm to get to sleep according to my watch and app, and I was woken at 8pm to Huang Lei calling me. I missed his call but texted him I'd get back, and he replied with a picture of the dog meat he was eating together with A Hoc and mates. Indeed A Hoc had also sent me a message to come over. It took me over an hour to get things sorted but eventually I turned up to the place I'd been on my last night two weeks ago. I wasn't quite sure where it was though, so video-called Huang Lei who was on his bike with his younger son who he was taking back to shower. Damn, I'd missed him, but maybe he'd come back. Anyway, pointed me to the place I thought I remembered but there were just two blokes sitting there I didn't recognise, but then A Hoc jumped out of the kitchen area and bade me sit down with them.

Best dog meat I've tried

I keep promising myself this will be the last time I eat dog, but I'd not had any tea and was really hungry, and it was the only thing on the table other than greens. But A Hoc had cooked it perfectly and there wasn't loads of tough skin and broken bones as per usual. As the others had had their fill and gorged on the lovely stuff and commented it was the best dog I'd ever eaten. I was the only beer drinker of course and they got out a crate of non-chilled Snowflake bottles for me, and I'd barely got through one bottle when A Hoc challenged me to caima for the first time this year.

Dog and Mouse - it almost sounds like the name of a pub

A bit later Wu ge called me to invite himself over. He must have seen one of the films A Hoc had shared of me playing caima, and he knew A Hoc as he'd been at that meal with him on my last night last year a couple of weeks ago. So when he asked if he could come over I said that A Hoc said "no!", which the blokes found funnier than it really was. Of course he could come over, and indeed not 10 minutes later he was sitting with us, already a tad for the worse, but it was good to be with another friend.

After a bit, A Hoc disappeared to the kitchen again to make another dish, and a bit later came back with a mouse dish. I really tried to understand if he really meant rat, but he was convincing while describing it as only being 2-3 inches long, so he was probably right. So I guess that's another animal ticked off, not that I'm keeping a spreadsheet for this. And yes, I managed to pick up a tiny paw but didn't really want to put it in my mouth. A Hoc asked if I could manage a crate of 12 beers and I said quite honestly maybe in the past but not now. I'd got through 5 of them by now and was bloated, so I made my excuses and left a bit later.

I wasn't sure the dian dong che would make it back as I'd planned to charge it up while I was charging up myself in the hotel but never got round to it. On the way home I passed by Li Kun's office and saw the light was on. He was there with the small man, so I stopped for a couple of beers as you do. Li Kun was working on a piece of music using FL studio, but I knew he wanted to use the pro version of Suno. Last week, from the UK, I'd sent him the APK of Mullvad, which he'd installed and got working as all his other VPNs no longer worked. He was so happy when he successfully connected, and I was glad they allowed 5 devices as I saw he'd also installed it on his desktop so that's 4/5 used up. He'd managed to register a Google account and use that to log in to Suno. Last week he had to use my UK number to send an SMS but now he'd managed to create a Google account and was able to get the SMS sent to his Chinese number, which was lucky as I didn't want to have to keep swapping SIMs every time he wanted to log in. But in order to upgrade to pro he'd need to pay $10 a month which is fair enough but they didn't accept his Chinese bank cards. Of course I offered but I didn't have my cards on me so we said 改天 (another day) as you do. I'm more than happy to pay $10 a month for this, given the amount of time I spend here.

We then sat down to a few more beers and a chat and I finally left before 1.30am as the UK lads were starting a Zoom call. I just managed to get home and plug in the dian dong che before grabbing a change of socks from the house and walking to the hotel while chatting with them. Although it was nearly 2am we ended up chatting till about 4am when I crashed out.