Tuesday 25th April, 2017            0006

Not posting this now, merely jotting down before I forget.

Talk about embarrassing!

Further to my chat with Alice I indeed booked my flights and our hotel. About £130 all in, money I would have liked to conserve for the summer but I am ever the optimist and of course the summer flights can be economy instead of first class.

I sent the details via email to Alice so she can check in to the hotel early and come and meet me at the airport and after a brief chat on Skype after her workout, she disappeared.

Foreign teachers in universities here are required to inform the school if they are leaving the city. A bit like Prisoner Cell Block H but as long as they never say I can’t (they haven’t in the past 7 years and there would be hell to pay if it happened) then I am fine with it because it ensures my accident/medical insurance covers me. So I sent Brenda an email advising I would be away for two days next week.

Now the problem here is email addresses. I have so many of them in my contacts that are in Chinese that I am sure you can appreciate I have no idea who they are when they send messages.

So I got an email that I thought was from Alice, who wants to check in to the hotel prior to coming to meet me at the airport. No problem with that and I replied that she had to get a smoking room on pain of death and if she could get a twin room cheaper than a double I didn’t mind.

I sent the email to my foreign affairs officer in error.

Well it is either embarrassing or reputation-enhancing. Not sure which and to be honest I don’t care. I am doing nothing wrong. It does however give me pause for thought with Chinese email addresses. I really need to try to classify them in my folder a little better, particularly when certain emails may be misconstrued if context is not known. Luckily this time it didn’t and Brenda is apparently broad minded.

1530

Well I discovered that on top of the email I sent to the wrong person I also sent a Skype message intended for Alice to Georgina in Beijing! I can’t blame the lighting in here now I fixed it, if anything it was rather bright last night so no excuse for not reading the keyboard.

It does however tell me to investigate Chinese email addresses more closely and to go slow when I am having two Skype conversations simultaneously. I certainly can’t concentrate on two things at the same time.

I was going to go shopping but have instead been researching Xi’an in respect of attractions and restaurants. Whilst I am looking forward to the trip I have pangs of guilt over spending monies which really should be kept for summer. I can mitigate that a little by not eating out or going anywhere between Xi’an and summer and cutting right back on Taobao shopping. I can still cook dishes using minimal imported ingredients.

But of course when I looked at tourist attractions I discovered there is something that would be criminal not to go and see whilst in Xi’an. I never knew the terracotta warriors were there. I mean, how can anyone visit Xi’an and NOT see the clay army??? Well that’s not going to be cheap. There’s a bus to get there which is quite cheap (according to Google 5y each way per person) but admission is 300y for two. Ooops. No, I won’t be buying souvenirs.

Then there are two dinners to consider. Quite a few Indian restaurants and I do like a curry but when I checked the maps and Trip Advisor I found an Italian well within walking distance of our hotel and a little further on, one of the highest-rated eateries in Xi’an called The Three Sisters. Not exactly what I had envisaged but I think we may go. It is a dumpling restaurant and one that people rave about. If they do dim sum I will be very pleased because I have never seen dim sum in China, only jaozi and to be honest, one jaoza is much the same as another, a little like beef noodles - seen one, seen them all. But the praise from so many westerners (that and the fact that apparently it is cheap) has made me think that will be Tuesday or Wednesday’s sustenance.

I have booked an outbound flight at lunchtime. The cheapest tickets were for the first plane in the morning which I would have taken if the bus or train could have got me there on time but they wouldn’t. So now I am going to be in a situation where I arrive either 15 minutes before takeoff or two hours before! I foresee endless fun after check-in being had outside supping jing jo and smoking like a chimney. At least the flight is short.

I have also today emailed HMRC re taxing my pension. Their website states it would be paid tax free if you live abroad but the sneaky buggers don’t mention that you have to do something otherwise they take 20% automatically. I doubt I will be collared for tax in China but if I were then I would ask to be taxed under UK rules because all my combined income would be under the personal allowance anyway.

Oh yes, and in the excitement of agreeing to the upcoming excursion I completely forgot I had arranged my final Dragon catch up class for Tuesday afternoon! That has now been cancelled  and I will rearrange it when I come back.

And just before I go, Georgina proudly informed me that she had now learnt “couch a photo”. What? You can couch words, phrases or the like but potatoes?? Thinking it might be a computer game I asked where she learnt it. From an American. I said I hoped they weren’t a teacher and she asked why. Of course, Georgina had altered “couch potato” to Georginaspeak.