A very, very expensive mistake

After one of the best night's sleep for several weeks I woke up unhungover at around 10am and then Tan called to say Leilei had said I'd changed the flight dates to the 25th. Well I had but I thought I could change it, and indeed she was adamant that I change it as we "had" to be back for GCSE results day on the 22nd. Well we didn't; Xixi had already emailed school to request the results be sent via email， but unfortunately that was a detail Tan didn't care too much about, nor the fact you can enrol online these days. So it was another call to Air China to change back to the Beijing flight they'd suggested a couple of days ago. But bloody hell I'd already used up my one "free" change, and now they wanted 7080 kuai to change again. Shit. There was nothing I could do. I'd made a decision on the spur of the moment a couple of days ago and thought I had an extra five days in Pingguo, and in the space of a few minutes I'd had those days, and £750 snatched from me for a reason I could argue against, but at the same time couldn't. Sometimes life sucks, as Americans would say.

So it was back to exchanging some crypto for ugly fiat, then sending the said fiat to Li Kun again and within 45 minutes it was sorted. I received an SMS with a link to pay from Weixin, and got a call from Air China (this time in Mandarin for some reason) to confirm. So now I was poorer, and would be getting the 7.40pm flight from Nanning to Beijing. Trying to be positive at least it meant another few hours in Pingguo, and potentially another meal, if expensive.

I made the most out of the midday checkout by staying till gone then (and maybe had a little bit of V as it was now nearly the last day), and walked back via racist Huang's place, where I saw him and his wife and younger daughter eating. Of course they bade me come over to join them, and having not eaten anything I was more than happy to. It does make a change to have a sober meal with him, at least in the sense of not drinking with the meal, and I knew it was likely my last time with him this year. These family meals where I'm invited mean the most to me; it's so nice to just have a normal chat and not have to ganbei or caima sometimes.

Lunch with Beihai Huang and family

Half an our later I was comfortably full and went home and had a quick beer before falling asleep for an hour or so about 3pm. I wouldn't normally have done so as I'd slept ok but maybe I'm becoming a bit more Chinese now (or maybe it was the drink). I must have needed the rest as felt much better when I got up. Zhang Hongping then pinged me soon after 7pm to ask what I was up to and if I could go for a drink. Well I had no plans so told him and he said to wait a minute then go for a midnight snack. He literally wrote that in English and it wasn't yet 8pm. And then said to go back quickly before my lover would scold me. I guess he was referring to Tan's curfew, at least I hope so.

So, a haircut at Lao Ma's later, he sent me a dingwei of the place we'd met up at before, and an hour later I turned up after first stopping off at the supermarket to get some last V for the trip back in two days, and trying to find some fabric conditioner but unfortunately failing as I'd not got it before at this supermarket. As I pulled up I found Zhang Hongping and A Hoc, together with the owner of the alcohol-selling place. It was a rather fun evening and I also invited Haiwei and Huang Lei to come around and of course we ended up caimaiing. I guess around 11pm people left (some people have work the next day), so I ended up going to Zhang Hua's bbq place for what might have been a last bite there.

Haiwei, Zhang Hongping, A Hoc, Huang Lei, and the boss of the alcohol shop for a nice drink

I didn't care too much about the time...Li Kun was there at least, and three women turned up too which made it a bit more fun. One of them said she wanted me to find her an English boyfriend...this is not the first time I've had such a request, and I still don't know quite how to deal with it, so I said I'd look into it. We stayed till around 2am and thankfully no-one had locked the door when I got back. So another delightful evening and again I didn't pay although I wanted to. So I resolved to go back to Zhang Hua's tomorrow for my last supper.

Back to Zhang Hua's bbq place for a late snack