Wednesday 30th March, 2016                     2120

As you may have guessed I haven’t felt much like writing of late. That was (and still is a bit) a humdinger of a cold. I lost most of my weekend sleeping, only ate half of the already small meal on Saturday and then besides a bowl of tomato soup (which I also never finished) and one slice of bread, never ate again until Tuesday evening. Fresh salmon - and half of that even ended up going to the furry fiends.

Colds at my age usually go from me feeling a bit off colour, to the runny nose to the cough. Sore throats seem to be more for the younger generation, at least in my case. This one had a new addition - a bad stomach. On Monday afternoon I came the closest I ever have here to cancelling a class because I felt unwell. I just wanted to stay in bed.

Yesterday was a little better, just as well because although I had no classes and had put any thought of going to town out of my mind, I did manage to catch Anthony to help me with this campus pass thing for the bike. What a palaver!

First he had to come to my home to fill out the form online, then we had to take the memory stick with the form on it to the library along with my passport, then take the copies to the foreign language department and the head of the CPC for his signature and then finally to the administration block to get my sticker. Feeling weak and breathless due to not having eaten and the cold being on my chest I found it a struggle made worse by the new exclusion zone in which vehicles are banned.

However my bike now looks as if it’s a contestant in a marathon because the sticker is as big as the numbers they get for their shirts. Andrei and Juliette had been to get theirs on Monday but unbeknown to me had failed in their quest. They didn’t have a purchase receipt for the bike to prove ownership. As it happens, they bought it from Richard who in turn bought it from a student, who does have the receipt so I see no reason why that plus a bill of sale signed by the boy should stop them being “campus legal”. Someone however had informed them that mopeds were to be banned completely soon, something I had not heard and indeed think is hogwash - the only difference between those and e-bikes is that they are a bit faster.

I saw on the uni website today that as of Friday unlicensed bikes are prohibited from entering the campus and presumably after a warning, any that are already on campus may be removed by the authorities. Hopefully they will try again tomorrow, if not it seems they will have to park it outside one of the gates. That will be inconvenient seeing as they get up at 0530 every day to go to town on it for Tai Chi classes. With only about 350 bikes registered as of yesterday it will be interesting to see if we end up with a sea of unregistered ones all parked up outside south and west gates! Kevin reckons it’s to hold owners responsible for accidents on campus and I reckon he is right - it gives the vehicle a number (I have gotten away with never having a number plate on all my five bikes here, (although in Shanghai the police do apparently occasionally scoop them up and destroy them) which can identify the culprit  or at least the person who lent it out. Cars have no such requirement because they have number plates. Which begs the question - what about when someone gets a brand new car? They don’t come with plates and the owner has 6 months to get them, much as in some states in America. That’s how Steve Jobs never had plates on his car, he simply bought a new Mercedes every six months. Nice if you can afford it.

Qing Ming festival is upon us this weekend and due to my rota I get four days off this time, Friday to Monday. I would dearly love to go away for a couple of days but commonsense says no, unnecessary expense is foolhardy considering ere long I may be watching every yuan. Instead I will just use the time to try and kick this illness into the tall grass. If Joan can tear herself away from her books I might get to take her for dinner though. All I see of her lately is a fleeting visit for a shower, chuck her clothes in the washing machine and then bugger off and leave me to hang her laundry up to dry when it’s done.