Gym and Tan's birthday

Happy Birthday Tan!

I didn't have a present for her as I thought it would be nicer to have a meal with friends later (obviously unplanned), but A Xia is away and Tan wasn't really in the mood. Well I guess 51 is not a major celebration anywhere...

At least, for the first time in too long, after a tiny bowl of noodles and yoghurt (not mixed) I finally forced myself to go to the gym just before 2pm and made it an hour session. With only just over a week to go I need to make the most out of this. Back home I was hungry after my shower so probably shouldn't have cracked open that beer, but it felt rather justified.

Still don't trust the distance on the elliptical

There was precious little to eat though, and I didn't really want the carby zongzi, so I opened a pack of sunflower seeds and snacked on them while I pinged Li Kun about the order of the suits in the nine-grid card game last night. I had remembered correctly, it was 黑桃、红心、梅花、方块 (Spades, Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds), and probably applies to other Chinese card games. I also found out he didn't get home till 4am, but he is on holiday this week so fair enough.

At 4.45pm Xixi arose to tell me to get mama a cake. Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that. She said she was nearly ready to go so half an hour later we rode down to Guanmart to pick up some stuff for their journey tomorrow plus we ended up buying two small cakes at the bakery as they didn't have any big ones (we should have ordered days in advance really). Then, once back we decided to go to Xiao Tang zong for our meal, except for Leilei who'd decided to go to Li Kun's and eat elsewhere. It was a nice spicy dish and afterwards Xixi decided to go home with me while Tan went to see Laoma for a chat.

Shopping with Xixi and her coloured hair

Stroppy birthday! It's ok, we're all on our phones while waiting for food...

It can't have been much of a chat as she was home 20 minutes later, but at least it meant we could do the cake. And they do do good cakes here, that even I can eat. So light and fluffy and not even that sweet. I had one slice of each. As they had booked a didi che for 8.10am tomorrow they needed to try to get an early night though I have a suspicion most of the sleeping will be done on the train. An although I was tempted to go to get some bbq I decided at 11pm I'd stay at home and not disturb. I'd done my job of sending GBP via Wise to Li Kun's WeiXin and he'd sent it to me in time for me to send it to Tan before sleep. Although it took a worrying hour or so to come through, as recently it's been as quick as 2 minutes. First World problem ultimately.

Taking a photo of taking photos of gorgeous Chinese birthday cake