Sunday 6^th October, 2019 1900

The reason I should have been teaching on Monday has now become clear – tomorrow is a day off. Why do they have to make it so complicated? The reasoning allegedly is to give the students a clear week off. Well that gave them Tuesday to Monday. Had they done it my way they would still have had Monday to Sunday and I wouldn't have defaulted. Still, due to my miscreant behaviour I may have squeezed another day off for myself – if I am not rumbled.

I had my BK Whopper meal as planned, even almost finished the burger and ate a few chips but why do they insist on giving you “free” nuggets or ice cream? No way I could eat them, surely better to give me a cheaper price? And if you order a normal sized burger you don't get the freebies!

I spent about what I expected in Metro, 105¥ on 100 Twinings tea bags and similar for some cheese. Add on a kilo of self-raising flour for cakes and a few minor bits and I was done. I have a loyalty card but I can't find anywhere on the receipts where it says how many points I have amassed. I must ask next time, surely I have spent 2,000¥ by now and with a point for every hundred I must be due something useful – when I joined I never took the leaflet with the rewards, just noticed one point got you a packet of chocolate button things!

So, we had the water stoppage all day. Two hours later a power cut after dark for a few hours, prompting me to add candles to tomorrow's shopping list. Then yesterday afternoon, forget about being unable to connect to the UK, the internet went down and only returned 24 hours later! I found out about an hour ago there is an IT firm involved in trying to modernise the school system and I can anticipate disruption perhaps over the course of the next eight days! And there's me having been checking the Chizhou university website and laughing at their periodic water and power outage notifications! Provincial capital city? Bah!

One of the problems is that I am never quite sure if the entire internet is down or my router has given up the ghost, after all, it is nine years old now.

I did make good use of my time today in between watching my stored films for the thirtieth time. I finished ruling up my replacement attendance book, reformatted my big USB stick and reloaded many of the films I will show in class. Somehow it had corrupted so it has now been purged.That leaves me free to do another BHG shop tomorrow. Keeping the wine stocked up is in fact a major consideration here. A box contains six bottles, I drink one a day and there are seven days in a week. Take out weekends (I loathe shopping at weekends) and it means at certain times I have to buy two boxes with really only Tuesdays and Fridays to shop. Add to that some actual food, flour, milk etc and I am struggling to get from the shop to the taxi place. So if I go tomorrow and again after my only class on Tuesday I will have 16 bottles, meaning a couple of months before I need a “bumper” run again.

It is jacket weather here again already, in fact today had I been going to school I would have wished for a jumper as well. A while ago I finally remembered to research why we call it a jumper. I have a lesson wherein two girls buy a sweater and I expand on it by explaining it can be called a jumper or a sweater or a pullover. I also demonstrate a cardigan (No, before any comments, I do NOT have one!) but hitherto although I could explain pullover from the French pulover, I had absolutely no idea where jumper came from! I do now.

And if you are curious, do what I did and look it up. The one thing I do know about remembering facts is that if you ask someone and they tell you an answer you remember it for a little while. If you have to find the answer yourself then you remember it a lot longer, perhaps even forever.