I woke up after 3 hours' sleep at 8.30 and confirmed with my Zepp app that that indeed was the case. I went out but wasn't hungry so ended up coming back and managing maybe an hour and a half more sleep before it was lunchtime, which was the usual portion of xiaolongbao. More rain meant I didn't get out in the afternoon, so tried to sleep again, this time with a couple of beers. It did the trick, although I chased them with a wee V and cola while chatting to Awl as he was up early after a horrid three cases yesterday.
So I'd managed to sleep from about 4.30-6pm, meaning a grand total of six hours since 5.30am, not too bad. Tan and the kids got back around 7pm after having had a cracking time in Chongqing by all accounts, and spending a lot of money.
A couple of days ago I found out that our Nanning to Shanghai flight had been cancelled on 21st and I'd been in contact with trip.com but they said as the flight was so soon I'd need to call Air China myself. Fair enough, the internal flight two months ago was also cancelled and trip.com were useless then anyway. So I called Air China and sadly chose the "English" option as I didn't want to risk screwing up stuff. The lady suggested we could take an evening flight to Beijing instead, and then a 3am flight to London. Actually that would probably be better than the original 11.15am flight to Shanghai, despite it being too late for lounges. But then I had the idea of asking if it would be possible to change the date, and indeed it was, so I asked to move it back two days, which she did, and then I realised Pingguo were playing on Saturday at home and could we move it to Sunday? Yes. Wow, I may have "bought" a few more days here! Except I told Xixi and she said no she wanted to get back and see her friends and also do her 6th form induction. Bollocks, I guess I need to call them back tomorrow to go for the Beijing option.
At 7.30pm I realised I still had the bottle of Gordon's gin. In previous years it wouldn't have lasted nearly two months at home, but I've mostly been avoiding anything stronger than beer recently. I had planned to give it to Huang Lei but the two or three times I'd seen him were with other mates and it may have been a bit awkward giving something to him but not them. So I pinged him to say I had this bottle and he asked if I was drinking. Well I may have had a beer but I said I wasn't, and he said he'd just arrived at Li Jun's house and could I come over? Well yes I could, though it was next to the police station where I register us, and Leilei had taken the bike. But as Tan was home I sent her the location and got her to order a didi che, and was there 10 minutes later.
I do like these unexpected meals, and they do like my company, but again, did it have to be me to trigger the invite. Yes, I suppose so. Inviting me to every meal might look a little desperate or something, probably why they normally wait till they're drunk and don't care so much. I called Huang Lei when I arrived and he turned up to take my bottle and put it into a car, before leading me to a newish complex where we took the lift to the fourth floor. Inside were about four families, the wives and kids as usual in the living area eating and watching tv, while the blokes were around the table. A Ning was there, as usual, as was a kettle of gongwenbao in which there were actually two types of gongwenbao - mostly a white one but with about 10% brown one. I still find it quite funny that regardless of the colour, they always call Chinese spirits baijiu, even if they're dark brown.
The owner only had one bottle of beer in the fridge, but by the time that had gone down, one of the wives opened the front door with a crate of more. Strangely, I don't recall playing caima for once. And I was feeling a bit more tipsy than normally, despite checking the beer % (3.7% for the first Russian one, 2.5% for the delivered ones). Maybe that was because we weren't playing drinking games. Li Kun then pinged me at 8.20pm to ask where I was, so I told him and he said he was taking Leilei to have bbq and for me to come around. I thanked him and said 等一下 (wait a bit) I would, but I'd barely been with Huang Lei for 45 minutes. 40 minutes later Li Kun pinged me again simply to say Xiao Bai de Tian, so I guess that's where he'd taken Leilei to eat. I said I would 等一下 go over there.
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| Huang Lei and A Ning at another unexpected meal |
50 minutes later at 10pm the other blokes had finished their second kettle of gongwenbao and we all decided it was time to go and take the kids back too. For once I sat in the back of a car with Huang Lei, as A Ning's wife took the wheel with A Ning in the passenger's seat. I asked Huang Lei to come with me to Xiao Bai de Tian but he said he didn't like the boss there. Fair enough. At least I got a lift, and found Li Kun with his wife and two younger kids, his actual younger brother with his wife, and his fun colleague Haiyang.
Yet more ganbeis were had and I must have been more tipsy than usual as I can't remember if I table-hopped or not. Either way, Leilei wasn't there anymore so I didn't need to act too sober. One way or another we made it to well past midnight before deciding to call it a night. I think I got a lift home, though I'd have preferred to have the 5 minute walk. And then once back it was another little drink with a chat with Awl, and somehow I didn't sleep till 4am.
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| Li Kun's colleague Haiyang, his second daughter, his actual little brother's wife |
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