Lack of sleep and making jiaozi at Zhang Yangwen's

Well watching the footy was ok...it's not the first time I've done a 5amer this trip. But bloody heck I just couldn't sleep after that. Maybe a few minutes listening to physics videos but even counting in German and Spanish hardly had an effect. By 9am I had that weird, slightly hallucinatory feeling you sometimes get when you're ill, and it must have been bad as I questioned what I was doing in China. I worried that the newly-fixed A/C was too noisy and tried to work out how to quieten it. At least now I understand a significantly larger number of characters, and could see that 风速 meant "wind speed", which meant "fan speed". But setting it to its lowest level didn't change anything regarding volume. But recognising some characters on a remote control gave me a bit of a boost though, although it didn't result in any sleep. At lunchtime I made sure yesterday's beef pasty that had been delivered but not eaten didn't go to waste, washed down with a yoghurt and supplements.

风速, third down on the left. I can now read about half of these characters...progress of sorts

At 1pm Zhang Yangwen pinged to invite me to his place at 5pm to make dumplings. I answered honestly that if I got a siesta I'd come round. But by 4pm it was becoming unlikely to happen, although I did set my alarm for 4.50pm just in case. The alarm went but I hadn't gone to sleep to appreciate it so let Yangwen know I'd make it. It was definitely time to brew a couple of cups of that Lavazza coffee that Tan asked me to bring. But what was that sound? Oh yes Pingguo's heavens had opened and it was a total deluge at the moment. Haiwei had also pinged me to eat with him but I'd told him it would be more like 6.30pm due to a prior engagement.

But there was no way I was leaving the house, even in my raincoat, without getting soaked, and even Yangwen told me to wait it out a bit. An hour later it was perceivably less delugey so I made a start at 6.15pm and only my trousers got soaked at least. We met outside his apartment building, waited one minute for a mate to come, and went up to the 6th floor to find a couple of women busy making jiaozi. Well I'm quite glad I didn't make it for 5pm then. Of course I helped out, but I was much better at cutting out portions of dough to be rolling pinned than actually making the jiaozi.

Preparing for supper

Enjoying supper

It was a relatively simple, but enjoyable meal of the freshly-made jiaozi and some greens, although there was no beer so I had to drink some white alcohol with them, but it came out of a glass jar where it had been aging for a while and was a bit yellow so not the usual foul stuff. I was under no pressure to get to Haiwei's as he'd pinged me to say a matter had arisen and he was no longer about, so after the meal we sat down to drink tea. Except everyone said they wouldn't take tea for fear of not sleeping. I didn't have that fear for once, but must have looked knackered as Yangwen said I needed to get home and get some rest.

So back home I duly fell asleep from 9.30 to 11.30pm, then went out to watch the football at a bar across the road. I came across a few blokes watching and was invited over for drinks with them. I was more interested in the Holland v Austria match, but they were focused on France v Poland as some of them had put bets on. When that match ended 1-1 one of the blokes told me he'd just lost 3000 kuai! Maybe the place would have stayed open for the England - Slovenia match but these blokes called it a night soon after 2am. Fair enough. I walked around a bit later but the places with people didn't have tvs and the places with tvs didn't have many people. It's been quite rainy recently too, otherwise there may have been more out. So rather than miss the match looking around, I came home and stayed up till 5am+ to watch the dross that was England 0 - 0 Slovenia. I'm trying to remember if I've ever seen a good England match while in China. I hope my being here isn't a curse.

I could see that Euro 2024 was available on our tv but the bloody remote doesn't allow you to go right!