A third Huang meal in a row - too much

Having gone to sleep at soon after 6am I would have expected to be awake around lunchtime but gosh no...it wasn't even 9am. I wouldn't have minded quite so much had I had something decent to eat in the house but I only had another boiled egg. Well I suppose that's breakfast. Eventually the VPN on the laptop connected again and I dozed a little to a science podcast. It's days like these I feel I'm not really making the most of being here. But trying to meet up with a mate for lunch would have been a jar feeling so tired.

Tan pinged me to say A Qiu had made a present for her that she hadn't finished when we were here in the summer, so she gave her my number as she wisely thought I wouldn't want her Weixin. In the afternoon A Qiu called to say she was by the main entrance, and luckily I guessed which one. She handed over a box that Tan had said may be too big to bring back but after having disposed of all the medicine Tan had got me to bring over I should have plenty of space. It's actually quite a nice tapestry-like thing but I didn't want to open it all out. A Qiu then invited me to tea at 6pm on Saturday and said an English teacher friend would be there and it would be good to communicate with her. I'm not sure why we said "communicate" instead of talk, similarly to when Haiwei wants me to "communicate" with his son. I guess it's one of those nuances that I'm hoping to pick up on more on this trip. The fact that both examples involved me speaking English to a non-native speaker is probably a clue as to why the emphasis was on communication rather than talking itself.

Tan also chastised me for wearing a football badge that said to "beat them up". Hang on, no I wasn't was I? I checked a new version of the badge I was wearing. The font was particularly hard for me to decipher but after some work with Pleco I managed to establish that it said:

平果哈嘹

无名球迷something

古跌

Which I translated to:

Pingguo Haliao

Nameless football fans

Ancient Times

Apparently the bottom two characters mean "beat them up"

Ah, but of course 古跌 is local dialect for "beat them up". Well, as if it actually meant that. There was also a large flag draped down saying "Welcome to Hell" - did they mean that?

A friend had messaged to go to dinner tonight but I didn't really fancy that. Also, Huang Zhongxing had said yesterday that we'd be eating at one of his friend's, which again I had no desire to attend this time.

Awl called late afternoon and we agreed I should not feel obliged to go to either evening meal so I postponed the one with the friend and told Huang I may not be able to make it. With weights off my shoulder I made a quick dash to Guanmart to get some provisions and knew I'd be safe for a while.

That while lasted till nearly 5.30pm when Huang sent a picture of the food that had been prepared for this evening. I felt bad but told him honestly that my stomach wasn't comfortable and if I could I'd pop over later. To which he replied "ok" and then sent me the location. A couple of hours later he called me again, so this time I called him back and thought I'd at least make an effort and show my face. So I had a couple of small beers and found the place on the other side of town.

Of course it was another sausagefest, and again I wasn't really in the mood. And Huang was in a worse state than I've seen him in before. But the owner of the shop we were eating at the back of was there, and he seemed to be a cool character. He was one of the few on the beer, and he wasn't feeling very well so it was pretty easy to keep the pace down. Huang had challenged another bloke to drink a can of beer to his glass of white alcohol, and in the end was rather red-faced. He even covered his glass when someone tried to top him up, suggesting he knew he was beyond his limits.

He said I could give him a lift back, and got up and walked into the front of the shop, well with the help of the wall he got there anyway. I told the boss I wouldn't take him on the bike as he would just fall off, and he agreed and booked a didi che. Huang staggered back to the back of the shop and the boss just told me it would be fine to leave, so I did, within an hour of having arrived, almost totally sober.

At getting on for midnight Li Kun pinged me to see if I wanted to go for a drink and I answered honestly that I wanted to but was suffering too much from jetlag. However, I still couldn't sleep till well into the early hours.

Another meal with Huang Zhongxing after finally registering, and a very late night watching City

I should have been knackered but was up early again. And I felt pretty crap after last night. At 10.30am I got a phone call but as usual in this room in the house I couldn't connect to the person who called me. I guessed it was from the police station and this was confirmed a couple of minutes later by a Weixin message telling me my passport was ready and I responded gratefully saying I'd be there to pick it up later in the day.

I wasted the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon before forcing myself to grab a shower and some nuts and an egg I found in the fridge that I must have bought three months ago. That kept me going for a while and enabled me to walk down to Jiang Bing Lu where I'd left the dian dong che last night. I might over-indulge now and again but I'm getting a lot better at knowing my limits when it comes to driving powered vehicles. The walk was slightly surreal though. It was not warm but not cold, but I broke into a slight sweat despite my rolled up shirt sleeves.

It was that time of day where you sort of see what normal people do when they are not asleep due to the heat. Still so many young people making earphone sets I can only assume are for aeroplanes even though I've not had a set in the last 10 years or so. But anyway I picked up the bike and somehow found my way to the police station. Well in fact it should have been easier but all my VPN apps on the phone have stopped working so Google Maps didn't want to show me how to get to this place that I'd saved in the summer. However, it did show me relatively where it was so I had a good clue and made it in 15 minutes. So again I was finally official in Pingguo! I felt like celebrating but couldn't really justify it so went home to pick up my shopping bag to go to the supermarket instead.

I'm not sure how official or acceptable it is to sign with my Chinese name - probably neither

Li Kun pinged me to see where I was and invite me to drink tea, so I told him I'd pop round after shopping. Then the bloke from yesterday pinged me to see if I was about but I ignored him until he called me, at which time I said I'd call him back a bit later if that was ok. Tea at Li Kun's really was tea and we had another reasonable chat. I let him have a look at my passport and he rifled through it and seemed genuinely impressed about the number of stamps there, and countries I'd visited, but I had to explain that since Brexit now all European countries stamp me in and out but nonetheless due to work in the last few years I guess mine is a lot more worn than most. Shortly later the bloke I ate with yesterday called me again to go to eat, and I said ok, and Li Kun invited me to go back to drink tea later in the evening. I have since found out he is called Huang Zhongxing (the other bloke, not Li Kun).

Well the place to eat was within Yu Jing Hua Ting so it was pretty easy for me to pop round after picking up a 12 pack of beer first. I was about the 10th person to arrive but by no means the last. Unfortunately the food had quite a lot of skin to deal with, and by now my teeth are starting to suffer from the tough meat that is preferred here. But I soldiered though until cai ma started and a couple of other blokes moved to the beer too. One of the blokes beat me pretty badly. But one of his fingers was more of a one inch stub and it was really hard to tell if it was "out" or not, so I had to go by others' expressions as to whether I won or lost. It seems like a bit of an unfair advantage but I wasn't going to complain (or maim myself to have the same advantage). By about 9pm I'd had enough, and made my semi-genuine excuse of jetlag and they were ok to let me leave.

On the way home, which lasted all of one minute, Beihai Huang video-called me to go over and have a drink. As I was full I wasn't massively in the mood but said I'd go over later. And about 40 mins later I walked out of Yi Jing Hua Ting and immediately two of the blokes I'd recently been eating and drinking with drunkenly called over to me "Yingguo lao!". I felt rather guilty about using my jetlag excuse to leave them earlier as I was clearly going out again, but they were drunk enough not to remember and I left them with a smile.

Huang had had some of the brown alcohol I can sometimes stomach but had no intention of tonight, so a couple of beers were cracked open and we had a relatively (for Huang) sober chat, without him giving me those annoying hand shakes with the middle knuckle pressed in. And it was cool to see his younger daughter and wife again. But I really was flagging now, so for a second time tonight made my excuses and went home.

I was in bed by midnight, and normally would have been asleep very soon after, based on my good schedule since arriving in a time zone eight hours ahead of what my body was used to. But jetlag decided this would be the time to introduce itself this visit. However, this time I had a little bit of a plan to take advantage of it. The Man City v Young Boys Champions League game was to be on at 4am, and if I couldn't sleep I had that to look forward to. Knowing my luck I'd probably fall asleep bang on 4am, but in fact I was still awake and the VPN was holding up, so I found a pretty good stream to watch it with. It seemed that the jetlag was coming for me from the other direction, i.e. barely letting me sleep. I've done this in the past when having to wake up an hour after the match to take one or both the kids to school but felt so tired I couldn't see it happening. Then it was 2am, and I wondered if it was too early or too late to have a beer.

Andrew said "neither" (as in too early or too late) so I thought my usual Chinese thought of "sod it" and cracked one open as the match started. And tamely made the one can last most of the first half. Most of 45 minutes is 30 minutes and one second though, so I was on my second well before half time. But I appreciated Foden's beautifully and deftly crafted goal just before half time with a whelp I wouldn't have been able to give at 4.45am back in the UK.

Somehow I managed till 6.07 before I crashed out.