Two meals at Luwen's and too much duck

The kids and Tan took the 10am train to Baise to Er Jie’s house, meaning they left home at 8am which is stupid in my book but my book contains lots of things that may be considered stupid too, like cryptocurrency. But also apparently there was some birthday in Baise which I slightly doubted as birthdays are not really celebrated here in the same way.

I had brunch at Luwen’s and he invited me to eat duck with him this evening as it’s still gui jie (not a single day celebration). Apparently everyone eats baked duck and chicken for this occasion, and judging by the copious pictures on WeChat this is true. Why I only learnt this after 16 years I really don’t know.

Luwen knows now to give me a half portion of fen but extra quail eggs but still won't let me pay

Then in the afternoon an ex-colleague called and wanted to discuss business with me so I said ok I may stop at Guangzhou on way to HK to talk face-to-face. It was something about my old work...he’s now based in China and trying to sell this product but as it’s cloud based no Chinese company will touch it unless the data resides in the country, so they are left to buy crappy equivalents that are home-grown. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to help this.

Well I worked till 6.15 then pinged Luwen and he said not to come to his place as it was too hot there so he went to his shop and I met him 15 mins later. It transpired that he had already had a family meal, which is a good thing, but he’d brought a feast for me. I was forced to eat two duck legs but my teeth really weren’t up to it so it took ages and only once I’d eaten what I could of the legs did he deem it sufficient to crack open a beer. I wasn’t massively in the mood but we get through a few cans anyway till I made my excuses at 8.30 to get back on with work.

A veritable feast for one

Which I did for an hour till I went to 3000du bar as Haiwei had invited me to talk with his elder son in English. I did this for two hours during which Haiwei spent the whole time watching programmes on his phone. Apparently the NBA has been banned on the TV because one of the owners of a team publically supported Hong Kong, and the league itself did not publicly disagree with him. It’s weird because it’s so popular here, yet Haiwei’s son didn’t seem to be critical in any way. It’s just accepted. Well maybe I’m the weird one for finding it weird - at least where I am now.

At least for the last 20 minutes it was a bit more interesting as I noticed a group of about eight ladies having some beers and one of them was taking a picture of the group. Of course I jumped in and offered to take a pic of all of them, and recognised one as a Shanghainese woman who had married a Pingguonese bloke, so we had something in common. It was much more fulfilling talking to them for a bit in Mandarin, but I felt bad for Haiwei’s son so I ganbei’d them and went off to finish talking English with him, and Haiwei said to come to his house for supper tomorrow and told him that work-allowing I’d be there thanks.

The ladies posing for someone else taking the photo so not noticing me

Early skate and late cai ma

Mainly work today as it should be and I’m grateful for them letting me WFH here. It was gui jie today, meaning some festival of the dead though I’ve never really understood it properly as they have some other special day in March or April to remember the dead. Took the kids to the guangchang again for 40 mins only as was so hot today, then worked till 10.30pm, having only eaten a little at midday and at 6pm.

Actually skating in the light for a change

I popped to see racist Huang but his wife told me he was back in Beihai till 15th, so decided to see if Boss Zhou was about. Indeed he was and he shouted to me to come over and have a bite, and I ended up staying till 1ish as more friends arrived during the meal so cai ma blah blah. Then, as going back, Zhang Hongping shouted at me from another place to have more beer and chat and didn’t leave till 2.30. A typical evening in the life...

I hope it's not serious but I have a need to take a photo of the mileage every time I charge up - I think I'm planning to make a chart to plot how badly the battery is holding its charge and help me decide when to change it