Thursday, November 07, 2019

No 3000 du but KTV instead

Got up a little late for work but luckily my Thai clients hadn’t been pinging me, and spent the rest of the day in meetings until 10.30pm, when I pinged advertising friend, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, to go to 3000 du bar but she said she didn’t like it since the new management had taken over. I wanted to disagree as I think it’s great, but thought better of it. But then she invited me to go to sing song so who was I to turn this down?

It was the usual mates there (does she even have any female friends?) and we had a good old time except I still had a bit of a nasty cold and couldn’t really sing (not that I can anyway), but had to turn most songs I did know down an octave. But that wasn’t the point...there was merriment and that was all that mattered (although the “Budweiser” was as weak as the local brew). I made my excuses at 1.45am and although we’d had scraps to eat was still hungry when I got home at 2am so had the very easy task of finding a bite to eat then.

There was not really any other option than the 4th floor

Wednesday, November 06, 2019

Caught the Lambo and caught up with Zhang Hongping again

Not the earliest of starts, but a normal day of work until cabin fever forced me out of my study and into the warmish night. I had no plans so biked down to racist Huang’s place again for a chat and to see if I could make him hate the Japanese less. As it was he was stone cold sober and slightly boring. I only stayed for five minutes as had other things to do but was slightly disappointed that the sober Huang was not as interesting as the drunk one.

I sometimes hear a strange noise and today decided to investigate a little. It was like some ice cream van from a horror film (I should evolve my language to say movie). But this time when it went round I made an effort to find out what it was and it seemed to be a van spewing out smoke, but from which intake I had no idea. This is something I'll definitely need to check out soon...


Interesting whisky I had no interest in buying

Got a snap of the local Lamborghini

So I got home and had a bit of fun before I remembered that Waterman had pinged me so I knew I had to make up for not having been much of a personality the last time I turned up at his place. I met up with him and his mates and had a much better time than last time as I was actually feeling like a human. It was a relaxing evening...I knew the guys and knew that there would not be a token female that would make them act like bosses, and we would chill and eat fish-related produce.

It made me think about how lab-produced meat will evolve....it has to become exponentially less energy-intensive in the short to medium to long term. Assuming there’s enough fat in it to make it taste good, if not indistinguishable from a steak or whatever one is used to. This is why the first strides are being made with mince meat.

But I for one would be totally willing to buy lab-grown meat if only because it was safer than shitty killed meat with all its injected hormones. Yes it may be some time yet, but surely not that long. When I think of automation taking over most jobs I like to think that humans will be much better employed in working out solutions for this and other problems that affect our species.

Man, there is an organisation SENS that is dedicated to finding out and potentially “curing” ageing...imagine if they “fix” things….telomeres no longer shortening etc….it’s not beyond the realms of fantasy any more. If people don’t die other than by accident (so unlikely with self-driven cars/buses/planes) then maybe we’ll need to find another planet or spaceship to live sooner than we thought.

But at some time after midnight I came back down to earth and somehow met up with Zhang Hongping again….I wanted to explain telomeres to him but thought better of it and just enjoyed a chat and a couple more before going to bed.

Zhang Hongping and a mate

I didn't end up talking telomeres to them

Tuesday, November 05, 2019

Racist Huang's wife is due

It was more work but I so looked forward to my lunchtime hour walk before Europe woke up. This time I came across a tangerine orange (or maybe orange orange) Lamborghini parked among the various dian dong ches and other cheap Chinese cars and very much out of place. It looked very much like a toy car, but a pretty one at that.

When I chucked in work for the day I needed some human intercourse so went to see racist Huang before his bedtime. He was incredibly drunk and kept telling me to call him tomorrow for some reason. It was one of those times where an English person could have stayed half an hour embarrassingly entertaining him. But I realised he probably wouldn’t remember this episode so kept it down to 20 minutes before taking leave of him. The sad thing is that I found out his wife is due to give birth in a few days….

Monday, November 04, 2019

Yang Zhangliang points me to new supermarket with interesting beverages

Back to work. Not much fun but I could have been on a plane to the UK so I wasn’t complaining. I didn’t finish till 11.30pm in the end. But I did make the time to have a walk around 2pm when the weather was a beautiful 28 degrees without clouds. I had to do this...no bike just legs and a nice hit of sun I wouldn’t normally get at this time of year. No sooner had I left the house when I heard “Duoming!”, and saw Yang Zhangliang on his bike approaching me. I was honest enough to say I hadn’t been getting up early enough to join him for a jog in the guangchang, and he was honest enough not to care, but we had an enjoyable chat, mainly because he is the one person I seem to understand every word of in Chinese. He pointed me to his local supermarket as I had told him I needed to get some shower gel and shit, and I was quite happily surprised to see they also had Absolut vodka albeit at 180 kuai a bottle, not that I got one.

New supermarket with a bit of foreign booze

...but they don't seem to know much about shampoo

On the way back I made a long detour to spend a bit more time in the sun but also to stop in the electricity grid place. I wanted to check how much dian we had but both the machines inside were not working. The security guard told me there was one outside which I duly went to but after three unsuccessful attempts at keying on our number with the prefix 040100 I gave up and went to the counter where I was told within 30 seconds that we had 147 kuai’s worth, which I reckon should last me more than this week.

One day this will not be a problem for me...at least to understand

After work I went to see racist Huang but his place was already closed...it seems a long time since I first met him in 2008 and would regularly go to see him after work at gone 1am. But I did bump into some mates nearby for a beer or twelve, and lost badly at cai ma for a change.

Apparently I knew the owner so was invited to have a bite with some mates...who was I to say "no"?

Sunday, November 03, 2019

Meal with legal boss then disco at my age?

Ah, just a nice relaxing and fun day in the house without any stress of work. At 5.30pm I realised I needed to call China Southern as I was due to take a flight tomorrow at 8am from Nanning due to them cancelling my flight planned for the early evening. So I called them on the five-digit number I’d been given at the airport a week ago and I got a response that thankfully gave me the option of English. I got through to a bloke and I explained that the cancellation of my flight tomorrow was very inconvenient, and that I wanted to take the equivalent flight next week. To my surprise he was understanding and gave me the options which indeed included my original plan, but put back one week, for no extra charge. I booked it there and then, but when I gave my passport details I made sure to say it both in Mandarin and English...in the former there is much less chance for getting it wrong. But basically I had “enforced” another week in Pingguo for me. I was told that if I wanted to make another change it would cost me though….

I let my PM know and he didn’t seem to be so happy mainly because it was a “change of plan”, and PMs don’t like that. But I explained I’d be able to communicate with my Thai colleagues far more efficiently in this way as I’d be in their time zone. It made total sense in every way, and he was forced to accept this.

Zhang Hongping then IM’d me to go for dinner and fortunately I had no plans so thought why not? He pinged me to meet him by the guang chang and eventually after a couple of calls I found him by the roller skating place Xixi and I frequented earlier this year. I saw the purple pair of skates she used most times and it made me feel really sad she wasn’t with me this time.

About to go to the guang chang

Xixi's purple boots in the middle...I sent the pic to her and she missed them too

But there was not much time for sadness as a car rolled up and we got in with another bloke. Apparently we were to go 10km to somewhere to eat then I guessed it was the Pingguo Aluminium place I’d been to a few times before but not recently. It’s not as far as 10km but maybe they were trying to impress. Anyway it was a Didi che, the Chinese equivalent of Uber and as cheap as a san lun che.

We arrived at a normal looking place and of course went straight to a private room. There was some legal boss there who appeared to be the host, and as I arrived he gave me his business card made of some shiny silver card with Chinese on one side and some sort of English on the other. He got out two bottles of white alcohol but I politely refused and no offence was taken as a crate of beer was ordered. The meal started but after half an hour a bloke and two women turned up and I recognised the pretty one as having been with Hongping a couple of days earlier, and it was clear that not only had they already had something to imbibe, but they’d already eaten too.

Where we ate

Legal boss on right, he put away a few glasses

The legal boss insisted on drinking a mouthful every minute, and  the predictable happened as he eventually flaked out in his chair. I was able to keep the conversation going and the woman named Si next to me for some reason thought I was intelligent because I could work out what she was going to say before she said it.

I suppose I am getting used to seeing this sort of thing in the toilet...

A bit later a Didi che was ordered and five of us got in, not the legal boss, whom I guess was based in that area. I said I had a bit of business to attend to and they said “ok” but I was to meet them again a bit later. As good as my word I did indeed ping Zhang Hongping a bit later and he bade me to come to some place that was just a few mates in someone’s shop. This was perfect - no hassle just good-will and beer. And there was a catwoman-like woman too who was literally dressed like her but also a bit scary. I tried not to pay attention to her and to be cool and I think it worked as she didn’t stay too long. There was a large aunty who was in high spirits and made me play a few rounds of cai ma with various people I apparently had met before, before some of them said they were going dancing. Dancing? It was gone 1.30am so I was having none of it, and told them I was a little tired. So after a few more gan beis they let me go.

Back home it was 2am and Si then sent me a message telling me to come over to some place really close to our house by the guangchang. I pretended I’d already showered but curiosity got the better of me and I ended up going anyway. As I arrived I could tell it really was a loud disco. I parked the bike and IM’d Si and she thankfully came out to find me. We had to go through security a bit like an airport except the buzzer went off and no-one searched me.

What ensued was just too loud and too young for me to really appreciate, but I stayed a good hour and a half. Jeez I’ve not danced in a long time and it sobered me up despite the beer that was plied into me. But I’m white and over 30 so I should be aware of that. At least here it didn’t feel so embarrassing. It wasn’t hard to sleep at 4am….