Reunion meal and guitar

I didn't get a call from Haiwei at 10.30 so I called him at 11 and he said to come over to his office in 40 minutes. 23 minutes later he called to come over again. Then on the way he called to tell me to hurry up. At the office we just chatted, waiting for people to turn up. His son hadn't eaten breakfast and neither had I, but that didn’t seem to be the spur for anything. Eventually an hour later enough people had turned up and I found out they were all ex-schoolmates. That was the precursor of a long meal that I hadn’t really expected.

It was a nice meal and good to have a reunion even if it was not one for me; it was at least a change from bosses’ meals. Haiwei had brought a guitar and bongo drums but it took some time before I accepted the former. I’m still rather out of practice but played out a few Simon and Garfunkel tunes to the delight (I hope) of the others. Eventually at about 3pm I used the kids as an excuse to leave to take them out. I really really tried to get a siesta but got no more than 20 minutes.

At the reunion meal prior to getting the guitar out

Haiwei rang me a bit later to say they were going for a couple of drinks but I chose to tell him “not now, but a bit later”. Earlier than a bit later he called again to insist that he pick me up in his car and we went to one of his friend’s place, where they were all eating (well by this time it was gone 6pm). I did manage a bit of beer and some cai ma but then had the (genuine) excuse of having to pick up the kids again. Not having the dian dong che it took me a good 15 minutes to walk back home but it was quite refreshing and I realised that here I actually make well under half as many paces per day compared to London except when I jog or do ping pong. Well worth noting that the exercise is that much more important here.

Once home we picked up the dian dong che and I allowed the kids to go to Yi Xiao to pick up some cheap toys. Ok it wasn’t the same shop we’ve been going to since Leilei was two but it’s the same area. They got two packs of fake Lego for 5 kuai each so that at least kept them entertained while we went to Haiwei’s friend’s house to continue the reunion festivities. By this time there were still people eating and drinking, but Haiwei was doing his clever job of being totally asleep on a hard, high-backed chair, oblivious to the rest of us.

A tad later A Wu called me to drink beer. I wasn’t really in the mood but as I’d left and got the kids to bed I went to this new German beer place for half an hour or so. The beer there was quite strong so I didn’t really fancy cai ma-ing, and managed a relatively civilised departure before 1am, and was asleep at home not long after.

Foreigners and Waterworld

Tan was taking the kids to some “Waterworld” in Baise. I was asked if I wanted to go and decided I would as it would be an experience out of the house after having worked all week, plus wanted to be with the kids. Surprisingly this visit wasn’t cancelled as most are here. I had to rush to get some food from the local supermarket and happened upon two Ghanains there. Apparently one is working in Pingguo, so he is one of my nemisi, and the other works in Baise but comes down most weekends. I bet they just love looking bloody different from the rest. But anyway we exchanged WeChat IDs and said we’d meet up soon, as if being non-ethnically Chinese was a reason to do so.

After grabbing money from the bank, and receiving multiple phone calls to hurry up, I got home and we took Chuan Chuan’s car for the journey and Tan took another friend’s. I was a little bit mortified to see the BCH was doing very well against BTC, and I’d bloody dumped my one when it was worth $500. Now it had crept up to $900. Because I was angry I decided to exchange some BTC for a few hundred MIOTA. Not a great decision as it was going for 90c but reason doesn’t work like that. In fact over the course of the 90 min journey I think I made three purchases of MIOTA as actually I’m quite interested in a non-blockchain distributed ledger technology and if it actually works it could render the former technology less interesting.

We got to Baise at 4.30pm, the most fiercely hot time of a ferociously hot day anyway. Just the walk from the car park to the entrance saw us leaping from shady place to shady place like crabs darting from pool to pool on a tided-out beach. Then we saw two black women walking past us. Gosh, two Ghanains in Pingguo and then this? Then another two white people walked past and I thought of going home. Then I saw that all the adverts for Waterworld had foreigners on them and I gathered that they worked here. Indeed when we got in the grounds and dumped our clothes and phones into the lockers we saw a trail of around 15 foreigners dressed up and doing what I suppose were foreign things in front of the locals who were happy to take snaps of them. The girls’ smiles looked particularly false here without too much effort to make it look real.

Tan and most of the ladies left at 6.30pm - so under two hours for 125 kuai and not even any swimming...it seems hardly worth coming especially factoring in the three hour drive. But I’m probably over-thinking it as usual and putting efficiency over...something. Then I bumped into Haiwei and his wife sunbathing as it turned out they’d decided to pop up here too. We agreed to meet up later for a bite to eat as they’re eating snails in Tian Dong soon.

So we left in the other car at 8.30pm and got back at 9.30pm. We found an expensive and crap bbq (well, 61 kuai and the fei niu didn’t turn up - won’t be going back there). I took the kids for a quick ride and some exercise outside before getting them to bed, before going out at midnight to see Beihai Huang who was drinking and happy to see me, so I stayed for a late tipple. Then some other mates turned up at a neighbouring table so I joined them for a bit, then what do you know? Haiwei turns up at 1am. He said something about meeting up at 10.30 tomorrow morning as it’s his son’s something-or-other, and we’d be eating at midday. Ok.

Mates at Huang's Beihai place

Work, Beer, Insects

A bit of a typical Chinese day here. A Wu told me to go to Lu Wen’s beef noodle place so I did as I didn’t really have anything else to do other than work and food was a good option. He arrived quite a lot later which is unusual as normally I’m the one told to “hurry up!”. By the time he turned up it was time to get the kids to feed them, so I did and when I got back 10 minutes later he’d finished his food. So much for manners! But maybe I was being a bit presumptory. He then said he wanted to invite me for an evening meal but I had to turn this down due to work.

Later on we apparently had planned to go to a local hotel buffet for tea (so much for turning down A Wu), and I explained that due to work I could go at 6pm, but I would need to dial into a 10 min meeting at 6.30. That wouldn’t have been a problem (well I didn’t get confirmation I’d get a quiet room in the hotel) but I was told that that 6pm was now too early and I suggested 6.45 which would be perfect. Of course I got a call at 6.40 to say that the place was too crowded and too noisy so we weren’t to go.

I got another call from A Wu during my meeting to say they were eating at the usual bosses’ place, so as I needed to feed the kids I got them some jiao zi and pancake thing I knew they’d definitely eat. I did more gan beis than I should have done in the hour we were there but sailed through the next meeting I had that evening for some reason.

The kids seemed happy enough

Pouring some bitter berry alcohol out of the largest hip flask ever created (I only tried a little)

Later, at the Nan Cheng Bai Hua supermarket I had significant progress in my ongoing quest to find 0 calorie fizzy drinks: sugar free 7-up! I was so happy I didn’t mind the fact that my old Nectar card wasn’t working and I had to transfer the piddly balance to a new loyalty card. So far I think the only value is to remove a few mao from the total to make it a rounder number to pay.

The Water Man IM’d me to ask me to go for a drink and I answered non-committedly, as first I had to drop of the kids then go and get some shampoo. But I did go there for a couple of beers before meeting Haiwei and his family in bar 3000 Degrees for a small bite. And finally A Wu called me to go and eat insects in a place a good 2-3 km away. But it was easy to follow the location sent via WeChat as this year the map works ok. This seemed to be a friend’s house and you could tell they’d been drinking for some time. I did quite like the various insects though...I can’t wait till they become a cheap enough form of protein that they’re not considered to be a speciality.

The insects were very good

Finally got back at 1am but the Water Man was still out so paid him a quick visit for a last beer before turning in for the night.

Barcelona...

Up too late for breakfast so took the kids to the Muslim place for lunch. Although we only got two portions we still didn’t get through more than half of it. Then it was same old work.

Teatime was to Waip's to eat although I’d already eaten Tan's leftover bbq from yesterday so wasn’t hungry. It seems a sin to bin it as it’s quite expensive, but we don’t have a microwave, let alone a frying pan. Seems a bit of a waste to have a gas supply fitted as we did eight years ago...well, you never know. Although I still had work to do I took the kids back with me as they wanted to be at home with me despite the lack of attention they’d get.

Then at 8pm I went to play some ping pong before taking the kids back to Waip’s to sleep and I took advantage of a lack of responsibilities by going out and having some bbq with the friends from ping pong in a local bar, a bit later than I would normally have done. Back home it was shocking to see the Barcelona attacks on the news and I stayed up later than I should have to follow it.

I will reach a new level of Chinese when I work out what this receipt was for...

10 iphones

In the morning I went out with A Wu for some reason I’ll probably never understand. I noticed he had a bag of about 10 large iphones in the front of the car and asked him why, but got an equally unsatisfactory explanation. Life’s just like that sometimes and I turned off my more inquisitive side. We stopped at a residential area and he told me to wait as went to do something. That was fine by me. There was a local shop by the entrance so I walked inside, bought a bottle of water, and started chatting with the boss-woman. In the end it took a good 20 minutes for A Wu to get back, and then we were to go to ping pong. But I was incredibly tired so we agreed to sort it out later and I went home instead to work.

Spot Leilei

Leilei

Getting older

Later we did indeed manage some ping pong before going to another meal at his boss-office place where they poured red wine from a ladle filled from a large bowl. Again, I didn’t ask, I just politely declined it. But Bak Sec Zhai was there, the fourth or fifth most important person in Pingguo, so I did have some beer instead. Then, for good measure we ended up in a KTV and I realised my work day was over slightly earlier than anticipated.

Meal with Bak Sec Zhai

I politely declined...