Sunday 28^th June, 2020 1630

I now hate going to teaching building four. They have state of the art computers that are actually part of the blackboards and with touch screens. You could be forgiven for asking why I hate them, in theory they are all-singing, all-dancing, right? They are bloody useless. One, the maximum volume is so quiet they have won awards from the Noise Abatement Society and even the front row can't hear and two – worse – no matter what I do or the students do, I cannot get the subtitles to work in portable VLC or anything else for that matter. And to cap it all, the films get deleted from my USB and I have to reload them all. I used to moan like hell about the old computers in building three, now I'm going to beg for all my classes next term to be there!

I went on the hunt for a China Mobile shop near BHG at lunchtime but couldn't find one and eventually caved in and went into China Unicom. Not only is the phone I have not suited to China Mobile sims but only Unicom ones and they could actually sell me one using my passport. They kept asking me through their phone translators if I wanted to surf the internet and I tried to get through I didn't even want to make calls, just get the green light for travel! It proved impossible to get a PAYG sim such as the one I have in my dumbphone so I had to fork out 200¥ from which they will take 19¥ a month to keep it working. For that I get so many minutes and so much data a month. What's that all about? If I make three minutes of calls a month that's heavy usage for me and as for data, that always meant statistics and the like! At least hopefully Jody can sort out what I need to get around. And show me what I have to do.

Didn't buy a scrap of food in BHG, just a box of wine, a pillow for Alice and luckily I realised I would need to buy another bath towel. By now I was getting that sense of deja vu, the one where this time every year I am trying to save and end up spending fortunes instead.

Then it was off to Burger King for a late lunch and Metro, primarily for the emergency tea bags. Of course, whilst there I had to buy all of the turnovers for Fanny because I have no idea which ones are apple and which strawberry, a load of croissants, tinned tomatoes for me (sometimes I like just having them on toast for dinner) and sadly I spotted Canadian maple syrup for the first time in years so bought a rather expensive bottle. Well, Alice likes my breakfasts and she likes eggy bread and maple syrup. Oh and I treated myself to a couple of madeira cakes. I could make my own (and better ones) but I just have no energy.

So all in all I spent about 700¥ today when I was hoping for a third of that. I'd like to say it's beans on toast until holiday time but the beans are expensive here! Chow mien and beef noodles are the cheapest options. Or starvation. Thank God I don't have to buy cigars for another six months.

Once I have paid for the remaining flights and hotels I should have over 1,000¥ a day spending money on our travels and as the food is included on board (and hopefully the hotel executive lounges will offer decent “snacks”) I should be able to scrape by. Praise be for the MN pension which will see me through to the bumper payday in September. Not being paid for August is a real bugger.