Sunday 29th June, 2014                     1930

Well this time I have just been either plain lazy or enjoying my holidays!

Wednesday was Joanna’s last time at school (and who knows, maybe the last time she will be in this city?) as she collected her paperwork for her degree and tidied her affairs. I couldn’t let it all come to an end without taking her for one last meal and so took her to the Lotus Branch. She could have ordered anything she wanted but she chose pizza. So did I because it has always been half-decent there.

Not this time.

It was horrible and I left half of mine. Thankfully she had also ordered some desserts for herself so at least she didn’t go hungry but it wasn’t the ending to her university life I had envisaged. We had gone early because her classmates were having an evening in KTV singing and croaking, so rather fortuitously Kevin came at 1930 on his way back to school and gave me a lift.

On Thursday I was really missing her and so turned to my other good friend Yvonne. Despite being in the midst of her exams she very kindly cheered me up by coming to the sweet pork place for dinner with me. She also came to town shopping on Friday. I promised I would buy her a late lunch/early dinner and she expressed a desire to go and try the pizza which I so disliked the night before. It transpired that she just fancied pizza so I took her to a place near McDonalds where I had one once before that was passable. It was edible but nowhere near so as on the previous occasion.

Once back on campus I collected Pepsi and went for a beer. At about 1845, and having thought all day it was Thursday, I looked at my phone and it told me it was in fact Friday. My brain went into overdrive. I was supposed to be doing something! At seven o’clock!

Then I remembered. Georgina, one of my ex students, had invited me for dinner in town. Panic. Not only was it impossible for me to be there on time but no way could I eat again, so knowing her phone number has changed I frantically looked in my phone for her new number - from which she had sent me texts.

Of course, a couple of days before my text repository had reached its limit and I had deleted the lot! I had no way of telling her. Praying that she would call me rather than simply getting the hump, I waited for that call. It came. I can’t recall ever having done that in my life and was mortally embarrassed. Happily she took it in good stride and I insisted that now I must take her for dinner and foot the bill. Having already committed to Saturday lunch with Kevin and his friend Cassandra, I asked if we could do it on Sunday but she was off to Hefei so it had to be Saturday. I can’t eat lunch and dinner the same day - no idea why but I haven’t had a big appetite for some years now. I had no choice though if I was to redeem myself and so on Saturday I was a busy chap indeed.

I went for lunch as planned at the BBQ restaurant in town, ate sparsely but then I wasn’t that hungry anyway. Came home tired and went to bed, hoping to get some stomach space before seven. Yvonne had declined my invitation due to revising her history so I took one of her classmates Kate instead. The three of us went to the Sichuan restaurant for me to make amends. Unbelievably, as big as the place is, we had to wait for a table, that’s how busy they were. However it was a good evening, neither of the two girls had been there before and they enjoyed all the food with the (unusual) exception of the pickled cucumber in soy sauce that I particularly like. I escaped with a bill for 200y and in return have some photos from Georgina’s camera (I forgot to take mine) which is an expensive piece of kit. Sadly I can't upload them to the blog as they were in a strange format for me, for which I had to download software to even open the file.

I am now turning my attention to my finances and what I want to do over the holidays. I am having a week away at the end of June (there will be no blog then) and I also want to go to see Air in Huainan in the north of the province, possibly also Yvonne in Anqing for a couple of days plus maybe a couple of days in Shanghai to see Joanna. Flights to the latter seem to have skyrocketed since I went in 2011 so I am investigating the trains. The outbound one (there is only one a day either way) is fine, leaving in the morning and arriving late afternoon but the return leaves at 2330 and arrives at 0700. I could book a sleeper but I will also get someone to check out the buses.

For now though, there is a pig heart boiling for the brood, following which I will make myself a nice salad with bologna, cheese, egg and the like. I just don’t know whether to have salad cream, picallili or Branston though. A pork pie would be perfect.