Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Tea at Xiao Nong's

I first woke up at 8ish after last night's slight excesses. I was thinking about my waking algorithm from the other day in order to help me decide whether to get up. I input the relevant values into the formula: tiredness 60%, needing to get up 30%, value of getting up and doing exercise 70%, chance of siesta 30% etc. But before I could actually determine whether I should actually get up or not the mere task of using the algorithm tipped me over to going back to sleep. At the time it didn't matter, but only when I re-arose at 10am did it occur to me that the effort of calculating the algorithm was actually an input to the algorithm itself!

So I had now to deal with what was effectively a self-referential algorithm, as if the original wasn't hard enough. In fact I am wondering if this could be the world's first self-referential algorithm. Surely most algorithms calculate something entirely outside the space they reside, except perhaps for quantum algorithms. It's a bit like my algorithm is aware of itself, and therefore incurs its own uncertainty. It almost deserves a name - the Quantum Uncertainty Algorithm for Sleep - QUAS - just the acronym is soporific.

But it was a working day so no more time for algorithmic daliances. But it was also Chinese Valentine's day so after tea at Waipo's I found a local flower-monger and spent a ridiculous 130 kuai on a bunch of roses that were actually quite tastefully set up. I did ask a few times regarding various bunches how many roses there were and the modal answer was "11". I didn't hear a "12" so can only assume that's not a lucky number or something. I also asked where the roses came from and was told Vietnam, which may explain their cost, or not.

Tasteful roses for Valentine's day

Ling Ming had invited us to tea at his wife Xiao Nong's parents' place. I'd been there before last year and was quite looking forward to this family affair. Their house is actually a house, with a garden, and like others, if you have a garden you often have chickens too. Except they also had a pig.

We had a great meal but there were a fair few blokes who brought beer so I had to go more gan bei's than I was expecting. But I was quite good and ensured not every peng bei was a gan bei. Even Tan noticed, I think. But Tan and the kids went back eventually and I had to play mopai, which is a card game the last time I tried to play was also with Ling Ming. I sort of get the rules - you get five random cards each (from a double deck) - then throw out a card you don't want to count. The cool thing is that if your card is the lowest ranked of the chucked out cards you have to drink.

Xiao Nong's parents' garden and next door's for good measure

Then the actual game itself is based on two pairs, the strongest being actual pairs, then afterwards 9,8,7 etc, with 19=9, 18=8 etc. I still don't know the rules properly but it seems if one person beats all other with both hands then all have to drink twice, but if he wins once and loses once the losers only have to drink once. But for such a simple game there are other nuances that I still have to learn. It still seems like something exportable to the UK.


A decent hand in mopai as I understand it

Xiao Nong gave me a lift back at gone 11pm, and thought it fit to comment that I didn't smell of alcohol, which meant I'd somewhat succeeded.

Monday, August 08, 2016

Work and "tea" and more KTV

I forced myself to get a little more sleep after a 7am arising by doing my German  trick, but for some reason I had a 6' long hollow metal pole about half an inch in diameter where one end was sort of cut to a scoop shape, and that end had what looked like the flesh of mango in it, and for some reason that was preventing me going to sleep. Except that the pole itself was a figment of my imagination due to the German counting. I had finally got myself into a vicious circle of German counting causing me to be in a dreamful state that was preventing me from sleeping. This went on for some time until I thought about it and wondered if I was actually sleeping, and just dreaming I wasn't. This reasonably logical thought caused me to snap out of the circle but I wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not. After having a brief chat with Andge on WhatsApp though I nodded off as I was suddenly getting out of Heathrow Airport and was at an underground terminus, except it was overground, and I saw what looked like an underground employee run towards an incoming train that had nearly stopped and throw himself at the front of the now nearly stationary vehicle. He didn't get run over as the train had stopped, but he was injured and I ran over to him where there were a few other workers and I shouted at them for some angry reason but I'm not sure how they could have stopped some stupid suicidal colleague. Then the train had mysteriously disappeared and I was looking in vain for a bin at the end of the platform.

When I woke up properly I read one of the headlines of the day about a bloke who died in the Gatwick express by sticking his head out too far and getting hit by another train. A lesser mind might have seen a link between the two but not I.

One of the highlights was a cute kitten I passed on the way to Waipo's - a sign things are getting normal here

Today was mostly work, punctured by lunch and tea at Waipo's, but a bloke who tried to invite me out last night got in contact to invite me to drink tea at his new place tonight and he would pick me up when I called him soon after 7.30. He called me Jiefu, meaning elder sister's husband. I don't think Tan has a younger brother, so guess she was his figurative sister rather than blood one. I checked with Tan and she knew his wife so he should be safe. Soon after 7.30 he called me to say he hadn't eaten yet and would call me when he had. Soon after 8pm he called me to pick me up but I still had the kids with me. I took them downstairs but didn't want to take them as there would inevitably be smoke. Not that I think passive smoking as bad as it's made out - I've heard it said that a non-smoker in the same room as a smoker who smokes 20 fags smokes the equivalent of 17. That must be total bullshit - it's nothing like the same intensity as dragging from the cigarette itself. Still, it's not nice to come home stinking of fags.

So I called Tan and as luck would have it she was walking back from Waipo's so we waited a couple of minutes and I dumped them off with her and let her be sure she knew who I was going to drink tea with. I didn't know what to call this bloke so put him down as "bu zhidao" in my phone book, literally "don't know", and mean to rectify that soon. We drove a little bit around the guangchang and I realised he could have just told me to walk there and it would have taken less time that it did to fetch me but it just doesn't work like that. We parked and entered a rather nice teahouse, called a chaguan, and it genuinely did have rooms on different floors that served tea. Apparently he owned, or was the boss of, or both this place, and we found a nice room on the first floor where he put himself in the master tea pourer place.

Of course tea is a euphamism after 9pm. It wasn't a lie as we did drink tea - the supposedly really expensive flower tea that I discovered with Ma Si last year. But after 15 minutes Don't know ordered six small cans of 2.5% Snowflake beer. I could deal with this. Then a couple of ladies entered and of course we had to gan bei with them. It transpired they worked for him and for one of them it was her first day. Then another, rather pretty, lady arrived but I can't remember who she was introduced as. She asked for water rather than beer, and that alone struck me as being rather sensible. But she was served tea rather than water, then went and opened a beer and poured herself one and did a gan bei with me. So much for sensible.

As the evening wore on a couple of blokes arrived before apparently two of the most high officials of Pingguo made an entrance. I think this was meant to be the highlight of the evening but these two were as pissed as tadpoles. They sat themselves one to my left and one to my right so I was a little trapped. The one to my left gan bei'd me but the one to my right, although looking just as far gone as left man, seemed to acknowledge his state, and stick to tea. Then it was time for a group stand up gan bei and no sooner had I stood up as the bloke on my left dropped his glass on the floor. The glasses were unfortunately not the thimble-sized glasses, or even the bbq sized glasses one normally gan beis from, but rather beaker-sized, holding, I estimate, 175ml of liquid. Well sadly for me, the trajectory of the escaped liquid from the newly dropped glass was a curve that soaked the left side of my teashirt from armpit to hip. The perpetrator was blissfully unaware as the ladies quickly tidied the broken glass away and poured him a new one, which was successfully gan bei'd.

My right side boss/government official declared himself as the other party at Baksec Zhai's yesterday evening and I then recognised him. If he'd been less comatosed I might have recognised him before. He then stood up, tea in hand, to do a group gan bei and befell the same fate as his mate but luckily the scalding contents of his broken glass did not hit me. I suspect both of them knew it was time for bed as they left soon after. And indeed I made signs to say I should get back. I'd already had phone calls from A Wu and Yang Haiwei asking me to go out with them and I would have preferred it quite frankly. So after a bit of cai ma with the pretty girl, Don't know gave me a lift home some time after 11pm.

Drinking tea with Don't know, pretty woman opposite

I probably shouldn't have, but when he was out of sight I gave A Wu quick call and he said to come to the KTV on the opposite side of the guangchang from where I'd just been. Well why not? Rather than take the dian dong che, I just walked the couple of minutes and by the time I got to the second floor there were already people ushering me into the room. Yes there was some party in full swing and I had to do a few more gan bei's, but it was slightly more comfortable in the company of someone I knew. I ended up singing Ni shi wo de meigui hua for the first time this year. And then A Wu put on Pengyou - one I should know off by heart after nearly 10 years but I always fall back to reading the pin yin Cantonese on my phone. But horror, I didn't have it on my Note 4! Well I would have, if Google Drive worked, or if I'd marked it as available offline before I'd got to China, but I hadn't. So I had to get A Wu to help most of the time, and made a mental note to learn this one properly so it will always be offline in my head.

I made my excuses and left just before midnight, like a manly Cinderella without a prince/ss, or glass shoes, and A Wu left as well. As we were leaving the building we saw A Ni entering. Apparently she had to go for someone's birthday and I guess she had to close down her cafe before leaving. She didn't have too much to say to A Wu and I wished her a good time. I refused a lift from A Wu because a) he was drunk, and b) it was only two minutes walk away. But I thought to myself, "in for a penny, in for a pound", and I gave Yang Haiwei a quick ring in case he was still about.

Yang Haiwei was still about, in a KTV somewhere. And he sent me a "location" in WeChat. Again, the map showed nothing so I had to guess where he was and the map showed me "warm" or "cold" but it became clear it was the same KTV I've been to eat behind a couple of times recently. I didn't need to call when I arrived; the girls at the reception magically knew who I was, or at least where I was going, and we went to the fifth floor to see Haiwei and some friends. Yes I had to do Ni shi wo de meigui hua once again, and a few gan beis too. It was the birthday of his younger son's teacher apparently, which in the UK wouldn't justify such revelry but who was I to argue? I left with Haiwei at well gone 1am and when home decided to sleep in the office until a bit later where the lure of the bedroom and its more comfotable bed brought me around 4am.