Passionfruit alcohol

I realised I was running out of money. Tan had sent me 500 kuai when I arrived in Hong Kong to add to the 400 or so I still had from the summer. So I've not really spent much at all, though others have on my behalf. So I sent Li Kun £227 and asked him to send me 1500 kuai of the 2000 he received thanks to Wise (and yes I had to "explain" that the money was effectively remittance for "family"). It only took a matter of a few minutes before I received the 1500 from him, then another message saying what about the other 500. I told him it was the least I could do to let him have that but a couple of minutes later he sent me that 500 too. Well, I didn't accept it, and within 24 hours it will be back in his wallet.

In the afternoon a friend pinged me to invite them and two friends to eat beef at the place around the corner. Oh well why not? They would bring some passionfruit alcohol as is quite normal here...there doesn't seem to be the concept of corkage luckily. So for 188 kuai you get a meal that is pretty much enough for four people. Having said that, it was mostly nei zang (innards) and despite me starting to identify with being culturally a bit Chinese I'm still not a massive fan of intestines. Liver, fine, lungs, why not? But there's something about the taste and texture of intestines that doesn't go down too well with me unless it's bbq and from a duck. So we ordered an extra dish of "normal" beef too. The passionfruit alcohol was stronger than I really expected, and after two hours the two litres were pretty much gone.

Nei zang in the middle with "normal" beef to follow up on right

Then Feng di pinged me to go to a meal tomorrow evening...wow - more than 12 hours' notice! Ok well that looks to be Friday night sorted then. Then somehow I got in contact with Haiwei and found myself back at his place a bit later to help finish some food. I ended up taking his friend Xiao Nong back home. Ended up being a cracking evening and somehow didn't get home till 4am.

Ping pang and ChatGPT

Lunch of jiaozi then trip to Guanmart to pick up some more an chun dan. 4.30 for a large bag was great. Then picked up my trainers from the cleaning place and handed in my black canvas shoes I left in the summer after they got filthy when we went "fishing" on the penultimate day of the summer. 20 kuai for effectively two pairs of new shoes seems pretty good value, even if it does take three days.

An chun dan is becoming part of my staple diet

I had a relatively rare free night in that no-one had invited me out, so planned to go to ping pong after I'd boiled the quail eggs and made six of them my tea. Except then Haiwei pinged me to go for a drink and bite to eat at his place but then said sorry but his boss had called him to work. Well lucky I had a plan B.

I got to the ping pang place and it was already busy. Doctor Ma saw me and grabbed me for a photo-shoot before spending the next hour making me practise my backhand. Blimey there is something about his bat that saps all the energy out of the ball and it just fell from my bat into the net nearly every time for the first few minutes. He kept telling me to lift my bat and eventually I managed to get a few rallies going. It felt completely unintuitive. Although it's been quite cold since Monday I did break into a sweat, and apologised at 9pm as I said I needed to go and see someone. Of course I was told to come back when I could.

Li Kun had asked me how to get access to ChatGPT 4.0. I told him it was $20 USD a month but you could get limited access for free via a browser plug-in, and I could come over to help him install it. So he said to come round at 9pm. I mentioned it would be more like 9.30pm so after a shower he sent a weizhi where to meet him. Strangely, it was just a shop and one of his mates was waiting outside and called to me as I arrived. Then there was another mate and we all got into the red car that had taken us to Tiandong last night and drove to a small bbq place right next to our house (having left the dian dong che at the shop). Yes this was typical Pingguo style - not knowing where you're going or who you're going with....

We sat at an outside table that already had the famous baked fish waiting for us. Presently, Li Kun turned up as did 12 cans of beer plus another box of 12 Li Quan should we need it. But it ended up being a relatively sober night (12 cans between four blokes), and we only added a portion of dofu balls to the fish. For once I was home soon after midnight, albeit without the dian dong che.