Exercise and beer

Awoke at 6.30 knowing I wouldn't regret it if I got up to do some exercise, but still lay about till 7 in case I changed my mind. No, I'd do it. I found my shorts and socks and badminton top, filled a plastic bag with two bottles of water, a towel, a half used pack of tissues that also carried some cash, and my ping pong bat and phone. Two minutes later I was at the old people's leisure centre but other than a couple of old ladies playing croquet on the newly laid plastic lawn, no-one else was. I'd like to have gone for a jog but I couldn't very well do so laden with stuff, so I went for a walk instead around the guangchang. But it didn't seem very tiring so I decided to climb the steps to the Chairman Mao statue - that did the trick in terms of sweat. I noticed a new path going down the other side of the hill and took it to find that more building had been going on in the last year or so - it looked like quite a nice peaceful place where elders might sit and talk of an evening but that would probably be taken over by smoking youths.

The view while waiting for the lift has changed yet again, but the style of scaffolding hasn't

Back at the leisure centre there was more life now and I was immediately recognised by a couple of people when I walked in, and ushered into practice. I had the good excuse that I hadn't played for two years, but I neglected to mention I'd played a little in the UK. The first bloke I played against was actually about as good as me, unless he was really holding back (which they often do), and we had a good session until my friend Zhang came.

I met Zhang a couple of years ago - he's originally from up North so a bit of an immigrant like temporary me. He's blooming good at table tennis but definitely toned down for me. I got some pretty good smashes in and only lost the first game 11-5 and the second 11-9. Then to my surprise I won the third game, but I'm sure he was doing a good job of letting me win as he easily won the decider to pinch it 3-1. At least I hoped it would be the decider but "best of five" means "five" here, so we had to play out the dead rubber which of course I lost.

Then another bloke who wasn't so good at toning down came - he used spins to great effect and beat me 3-0 but for some (appreciated) reason this time it really was best of five. I was pretty knackered by now but had to practise with another bloke I'd known for some time. And then finally one of the old women finished me off. I'd lasted nearly 90 minutes. But my back seemed fine. Pretty much the first time it has felt like this here in three years! I just hope it stays like that.

I woke the kids up at 10am to get breakfast, but by the time they were ready it was getting on for 11am and Tan said we were to go to Waip's to eat. We did at least get five cups of soya milk from the dou jiang place, and some you tiao. Which was a good thing as the kids didn't eat much zhou for lunch (which all in the house were already eating when we arrived at 10.45am). Er Jia and Lao Pang wanted to bring the kids to Baise and they seem up for it although they'll want me to go. I said we'd first go to the supermarket and Tan would sort their clothes. Obviously as soon as we were in the supermarket Er Jie called me to hurry up. We were on a mission to find pillowcases and ice cube trays though, so I said I'd be a few minutes. We were successful in finding the pillowcases to replace the old rotten ones that wouldn't wash out the years of neglect, and found one type of ice cube tray. I sort of find it strange that they don't do more in the way of ice cubes for such a warm place. Though on reflection, they just cool their drinks in the first place so probably don't need them. I guess if space was at more of a premium then ice cubes might be the practical way forward - worth buying shares in?

I also found fizzy soda water in this supermarket by the market, so got a couple for good measure even though they were 5 kuai each. I can't find the blooming top of the soda maker I got a couple of years ago so can't screw down the CO2 cannisters to pierce them and thus carbonate the water, which I'm pretty peeved about. So this will do to test the sugar-free tonic cordial I've brought with me this time. The dian of the dian dong che was just about gone by the time we got home so we went to the basement to charge it for the ridiculous price of 5 kuai - not that it's expensive but I still can't get used to the inflation - it was 1 kuai until 2014. Er Jie was ringing again and I said they could come round to pick up the kids rather than us going there. So she did and five minutes later was upstairs pecking like a chicken as Tan was getting the last things ready. I added some sun tan lotion, or suncream as it is known now, and waved goodbye to all, and noticed Tan did too. Ah, I thought she was going too. Actually it's probably a good thing; they're getting lazy with their Mandarin and need a spell where they can't use English so much. I think they'll be back in a couple of days.

About to leave for Baise with their newly acquired sunglasses

It was the afternoon and Lao Su had not come around to fix the hot water, so I gave him a gentle ring and he said he'd come around around 2.30pm. That was a little over two hours and could spoil any thoughts I had about a siesta, but I needn't have worried as I fell asleep a couple of minutes later and awoke before 3 to the sound of the doorbell. It wasn't actually Lao Su but some work bloke who had a spanner and some plumbing tape, plus a spare thing that controlled the water input. Well he changed it but it didn't do the trick. I was worried that it was the heater itself that was blocked but he seemed quite sure it was actually the part that plugged into the heater, rather than the part that plugged into the wall, that was blocked. So off he went to get a replacement and half an hour later it was changed and finally we had hot water! Or at least we had the means of making it as I needed to actually heat it first by turning on the boiler. I thanked the bloke and asked him how much - 50 kuai - I don't think there were any labour costs.

Er Jie sent me a pic on WeChat to show the kids were having fun in Baise

By now it was getting on for teatime. I decided to call Li Kun, whom I've known since 2004, and guess what? He said he'd pick me up in 20 minutes in his new car. Well that was a welcome window to try the new tonic as the soda water had been in the fridge for a few hours now. It said 20ml of concentrate on the bottle for a litre of tonic, so I carefully poured 5ml into a glass. I added a splash of Beefeater gin from the quarter-full duty free bottle I'd thoughtfully left last year, and poured in some soda water. By golly it was strong, and that was the tonic rather than the gin. I took a couple of uncomfortable glugs and poured the rest of the soda water in until it became more drinkable. It was hardly Schweppes but it was better than the Sodastream equivalent I had a couple of years ago.

Li Kun called right on cue, and I picked up my bits and pieces to meet him outside our building. I'm not sure what brand it was other than it was Chinese, but it was a nice new automobile in the SUV format, though only two rows of seats. We drove to a new restaurant not far from his house on the south side of Pingguo, which specialises in fish (the restaurant, not the area of Pingguo).

We chose a nice non-private table and ordered. Li Kun told the waitress that there would be six of us, which was a bit of a relief. Then, breaking with tradition a little, he ordered a six-pack of the 500ml Li Quan 3.1%ers and cracked one open. We may be going to wait for friends to eat, but not to drink. As it was, three of the party were his elder brother and wife and son, and the other was A Wu, who arrived so late we'd already started eating.

But very nice it was too - there was a sort of large pot in the middle of the table where they cooked a smashing fish soup. Well they put the ingredients in, covered it, then put an egg timer by it, saying it would be ready when it ran out, which it duly did about five minutes later.

As the meal wore on, various blokes walked past - one was the boss of the place, another apparently was also the boss of the place, then a couple of blokes who emerged from the private rooms around stopped for a bite to eat and a drink. The beer was flowing rather too easily so I tried my trick of playing cai ma to slow it down, but this time, maybe as I'm still getting used to it, it backfired, and despite being only 3.1% I got rather tipsy.

Li Kun on the right, his big brother next to him greeting a boss, A Wu sitting down

A Wu's back on iphones after spending a couple of years on Android - with the genuinely first world problem of having to carry two around with him as iphones apparently don't do dual SIM versions as his Note 3 and 4 did

Of course we went back to someone's place for more drinks after then meal at around 10pm, but I wasn't back home that late in the end, but late enough to know I'd better stay in Leilei's room.

Return of the dian dong che, posh houses, and lovely grubs

Woke up at a normal 9am but there was no breakfast. Tan left late morning to eat with friends and I waited till midday for the kids to get up. Actually, we still had electricity, so the air con was working, otherwise they might have woken up earlier.

I pretty much had to prise them out of their beds though to go to A Ni's new Vietnamese steak place. I ordered a steak and chips, not because I wanted to, but because A Ni suggested it and I wanted her to be happy. I also ordered some Vietnamese spring rolls so the kids would eat something. Despite not having had breakfast they didn't seem that hungry - Xixi didn't like the rolls so had some of my steak (which was actually quite good) and both of them had smoothies, as did I, fresh from the fruit. The total was 71 kuai, which considering what we had was pretty decent even for here.

They were not easy to rouse

During the meal A Heng came with a new phone for Xixi that he'd promised yesterday. It looks like an iphone but is a cheap Android knock-off (and probably better too). She was very happy with her new toy and Leilei jealous. I had to remind him hers was a cheap one and his was real, plus he now had more time on the ipad. Neither of them have SIM cards though - there's enough wifi around now to make that not a problem. Unfortunately there's no Pokemon Go here either. I wonder if there ever will be as it uses Google Maps.

We got home and I left the kids playing as I was "kun le", meaning I immediately felt bloody knackered. So much for beating the jetlag - I lay down my head at 1.30pm and an instant later it was 2.30. I felt quite awake for no more than a couple of minutes before I was kun le again and it was 3.30. I decided that was quite enough of being kun le by then and got up. Er Jie was coming back from Nanning (I didn't know she'd gone) so we were to go to Waip's, as the kids say, to eat again. On the walk over I called Uncle Yellow to let him know I was in town again. He said we'd go to eat later and he'd call me - cool.

I didn't eat too much at Waip's, and neither did the kids, which was a bit worrying, but it's early days. Then Er Jie and her husband Lao Pang took us to see the expensive new house they bought recently. It was a good five miles outside the centre of Pingguo, and actually a very pleasant complex of houses, with many apparently having their own gardens, something I'd not seen in Guangxi till now. Her house is quite lavish by most standards, and we were told we could stay here if we liked as she was often out of town, and even if she wasn't there were enough rooms in the three-storey building. We politely declined, but said we'd bear it in mind. Our place pales in magnificence, but wins in terms of proximity in my opinion. Anyway, the main purpose of coming here from my perspective, and the kids', was to get the dian dong che.

View from the third floor to the patio on the second in Er Jie's new house on the outskirts of Pingguo

Xixi practising taking photos on her new phone with a background of what the houses look like here - actually very tasteful but a pretty penny at around 1,000,000 kuai each

I asked if it was charged up and of course was told it was. We got the keys and turned it on and it looked like it had around half a charge, though you can never be sure as when you accelerate the power meter goes down. And it had 875km on the clock, which means it had done around 600km since I left it last year - I'm glad it was used. We got on in the usual combination: Xixi at the front, me, then Leilei behind, and I was immediately glad that Chuan Chuan had exchanged the broken model in 2014 for a much bigger version, as we only just about fitted on the seat.

10 seconds after we set off we heard shouting from behind us - Tan and Er Jie were motioning to their right, and it became apparent we were going in the wrong direction. We went back but continued to make wrong turns and got lost in this complex for a good 10 minutes, me being the obstinate male and refusing to ask how to get out. But of course we did eventually. I was disappointed that the dian dong che only got up to 28kph and I suspected the battery was shot, but at least we had some wind in our hair to cool us down on the longish journey. We'd got half way before I remembered the damn thing had gears and as I pressed the button to move to 2 we accelerated quite sharply and Leilei remarked he was glad we had a rear case thing or he might have fallen off. By the time we got home the odometer read 885km - was Er Jie's house really 10km away?

At home Lao Su, A Xia's husband, called me about the hot water and said he'd be around in a bit to take a look. As far as I can tell there's no pressure, and I'm guessing an air block. He came around and told me it wasn't an airblock but the inlet to the heater was blocked - he'd sort it in the morning. Oh well, another cold shower tonight - first world problems (or maybe not). While letting Lao Su out I noticed a small white box where the tv would be if we had one. It had three green lights on it and I finally worked out where the "ZTE" SSID was emanating from - Ling Ming must have changed Internet provider and this was the new router. I traced the cable from the router (interestingly it wasn't your typical RJ45 connection) along the wall, outside the back of the flat, along the exterior wall where it entered the building again from the window by the lift. From inside the corridor I traced it along the wall past the lifts and into a metal box attached to the wall on the other side of the corridor, which I presumed must be a communications hub - probably a competitor to the service we had before. I would love to have asked more questions about this set-up, but thought better of it for the moment.

Then Uncle Yellow called to say we'd go to eat near Waipo's house, where we'd been once before. I said great, but I'd have to take the kids though as Tan was of course out. This time finding the location should be no problem as he'd send it via WeChat. Of course that didn't stop him calling us to ask where we were when we were in the supermarket. We'd just got some washing powder and fabric conditioner, and I'd looked in vain for fizzy water or indeed anything fizzy that wasn't sweet or alcoholic or Coke. I decided not to take the stuff home and to go straight to meet Uncle Yellow. The location he'd sent by WeChat was pretty cool, except it only showed a blue dot representing me and a red dot representing the destination - no other detail. I guessed the English version of WeChat was using Google Maps, and therefore had the Pokemon effect. Well at least we had something to work on - I got Xixi to hold my phone and tell me if we were getting hotter or colder as we drove about. Indeed going towards Waipo's was hotter, and we found the place with relative ease at the end of her road.

Rather than eating outside, Uncle Yellow had an air conditioned room on the first floor, with a couple of mates, one of whom was nearly as inebriated as Huang from last night, as he'd been drinking since teatime. Uncle Yellow ordered some really great food, but the best was the fried "insects" as it translates. More like beetles I would say. But gorgeously crunchy and full of protein. If indeed we need to take our protein in this form rather than beef and other animals that take a lot of energy to grow, then I'm certainly ok with it! The drunk bloke couldn't take his eyes of Xixi and repeatedly said how beautiful she was - "Leilei's handsome, but Xixi is so beautiful". It got a bit boring but after a few drinks even he quietened down and stopped drinking, or maybe it was because his wife and son arrived. I used the genuine excuse of needing to get the kids back to leave, and although wanted to simply couldn't finish the beetles. I wish the kids had had some though.

Xixi found three chopsticks in her chopstick pack and I told her it was the Chinese equivalent of finding a four leafed clover

Lovely grubs!

We actually went for a little drive around a slightly cooler Pingguo before going home, which pleased the kids as much as myself, but sleep beckoned. At least it did for me...they didn't sleep till 12.45am, and I followed not long after.