Football - oh dear

Yay, no work. I brunched with Haiwei and some friends at 10am which was earlier than I’ve been getting up recently. Then brunch turned into lunch and a few beers were imbibed but nothing unreasonable. Despite this I was unable to grab more than a two minute siesta much to my chagrin as I’d accepted an invitation from Zhang Hua to play football at 5pm in the kit he’d sorted me out with last year.

5pm came around and although I knew where we would be playing I hadn’t had a message from Zhang Hua. But I couldn’t really feign ignorance as I could see the guys practising in the astroturf field near our place. I turned up 20 minutes later in high 30s heat and really wasn’t in the mood. It was people in our kits versus people in not-our-kits, but I understood everyone was pretty much from the same team. I asked what the score was and someone said it was something like 6-2, but I didn’t know to whom. I got called to come on but I was still trying to work out if it was already half time, as by now I’d been here nearly 45 minutes.

The view from our house - I had no excuse

So eventually I made the effort. I’m sure I was the eldest, and probably the least fit on the field but it was more a gesture to Zhang Hua who’d got me the kit in the first place. I played left back (I wish it was left back in the changing room ha ha) and immediately realised my trainers were not meant for Astroturf as they had little grip. I was pretty bad too...my teammates were calling out “bu yao jin” - don’t worry/take it easy, and I did. The job I’d given myself was to pass to teammates as soon as I got the ball. That sounds quite easy but in the sweat of the game it’s not so simple to follow the game-plan. I did at least make one good defensive header to get the ball out that received some polite applause so I’ll dwell on that.

My main fear was knowing that we were up by about four goals when I started and I just wanted to remain on top. I think we did in the end, but it was lower than a four goal margin.

They obviously needed some help before I came on...

I had been told that we’d go for a meal at one of the player’s hometown 20 km away, so I said I’d quickly pop home to get my laptop as I wanted to watch City’s game at Wolves in a bit. I was told we’d now be eating at a local restaurant which I was more than happy with as the match was starting soon. I nipped home to grab the laptop then popped to pick up Zhang Hua, but very annoyingly I’d not zipped up my bag properly and the laptop dropped out onto the cold hard floor and I feared the worst, but had no time to check as we needed to go to the restaurant.

Once there the worst was confirmed; the laptop didn’t turn on. Well, there was no time to moan - it was my fault and that was that. I made my apologies and hurried back home to get my old laptop and bade them start the meal. Ten minutes later I was back and turned on the laptop I hadn’t used for weeks. The restaurant wifi wasn’t working well so someone offered to tether to their 3/4G phone. Thank goodness for cheap 3/4G. Bugger. Windows needs to update in 15 minutes - please save any work...not even the option to delay. At least it was getting on for half time by now. We’d managed to watch a whole five minutes of the first half. To make things worse I found I’d forgotten to bring the AC adapter so once again had to make excuses and leave them for a further 10 minutes while I got that, as my now four year old Lenovo Yoga 2, as much as I love it, does not last much more than an hour on a single charge now.

Finally we had a stable stream and good food and most of the chaps were interested in the match, having just played a game. Disappointingly we played out a 1-1 draw but to be fair Wolves pretty much deserved it. It’s only the second game but losing points to a team that’s just been promoted isn’t the sign of champions. Liverpool on the other hand are looking great so far.

We moved on to Zhang Hua’s place after the meal for more beer. Most people left after a while but then the rest of us moved on to some other place - I took Zhuang Hua on the bike. I started gan bei’ing with another table too but even I knew when enough is enough so left at 2.30am and took Zhuang Hua back to his shop to sleep, and did the same soon after.

At Zhang Hua's

The rain

Wii cleaning and Mario Kart

Up at a reasonable 10.30am to have a breakfast of a custard tart the kids had left in the fridge. Worked till the early afternoon but needed a break so played a game of Worms Armageddon on Steam that I remembered doing while living in Portugal 19 years ago or so but why not?

As I was in a sort of gaming mode I decided to sort out the Wii. For some reason before turning it on and making sure it worked I decided to clean it of its 10+ years of yellowing. I took a good 10 minutes doing this including the flexes and each passing minute I became more convinced that it wouldn’t work, yet I adamantly stuck at the task as though I had a speck of ADHD or whatever. But the nice clean Wii did turn on and I did manage a couple of games of Mario Kart which was half fun and half sad. I’d rather be playing with someone else. I’ll have to sort it to work online like I’ve done with the Wiis at our UK home.

I do like a bit of Koopa Cape - almost retro now the console is 12 years old

Then Haiwei reminded me I was going to his place in an hour so I did 20 press ups and a minute’s plank before showering after a quick beer. It was pissing down so I put on the blue overall for the dian dong che and managed to stay relatively dry this time.

When I arrived Haiwei was still cooking so I spent some time with his son speaking English which is really one of the reasons I was here. He spent most of his time playing an excellent looking game called PUBG and pronounced "Pub". It looked more like Fortnite for adults, as there was a bit more killing. I expressed an interest and started downloading the Chinese version only for the download to stop after a few minutes on the local wifi. Eventually Haiwei's son had the good idea of making me tether on his phone and within half an hour the gigabyte or so of data was downloaded. Great. Except I needed to register with a Chinese social media account that had KYC and basically my WeChat didn't have that so I was buggered. Still, it was interesting to watch him play with the thumb-thingies that made his phone more tactile. He said he would sort me out a pair for Leilei.

PUBG - Looks pretty good actually

The meal was a sumptuous family one though Haiwei and I were the only men, but that changed an hour later when some more people turned up. One of them was 2-1, who I remembered from many years ago, and we enjoyed reminiscing a while.

Another sumptuous meal

The fashionable Li Quan beer this year: "1998" Bill Clinton....

Despite the good meal I ended up having to go home to work as my clients were getting to the office on the other side of the planet. Not complaining though - just needed to send a couple of emails and IMs to show I was looking after them. I did prefer when I was on English/European projects working from home in China though….