Friday 5th August, 2016               2220

I was only thinking earlier that life had become dull recently seeing as the People’s Liberation Army hadn’t parked a tank outside my hotel room door and special agents hadn’t been poking fibre optics through the air conditioning vents. How stupid of me.

Foolishly I decided to make the effort this morning and get up early enough to see what was on offer for breakfast. I should have known better, gloop and dumplings really isn’t for the faint of stomach first thing so I gave that a body swerve. I will stay in bed for the rest of the duration.

Then I was told the signed contracts I had sent yesterday were too faint to read. The hotel has a printer which I reckon is older than me and they haven’t bought ink since the Falklands war. Off I went searching for somewhere - anywhere - to get blacker copies and a fax machine. China Mobile obliged, no fax but decent printer, take photos and email. Fingers crossed the FEC place accepts them and more importantly issues the document otherwise I am up a creek with a toothpick for propulsion.

More good news. I was also told there is a possibility that I may have to nip to Hong Kong to have my stay permit transferred to a work  permit! Great, I would love to have a couple of days in Hong Kong but I am not made of money. Apparently Lanzhou City University have said they will resist such a suggestion - I hope they have plenty of guangxi.

I have already arranged to spend three nights in Shanghai to visit Capt Orange and the girls, flying (or that was the plan) next Saturday. Joanna offered to sort me a hotel in Pudong, which she did and when I asked her how much I owed her she said she had taken care of it, not to worry. I am now a trifle embarrassed as wherever it is, it costs 749y a night and I will stay three nights. With the loss of face thing here the best I can do I think is to take a nice gift and treat her to the finest dining I can get in order to repay her.

So then back at the hotel the agency told me to hang fire on the Shanghai to Lanzhou flight to see whether I would get the FEC and/or I need to go to Hong Kong first. Ok, fine but I still need to get my flight to Shanghai. Now, I have no UK debit card (replacement still out there in post office land) and anyway not enough on it to pay but I do have a Unionpay Chinese card. Except it doesn’t work online! Argh!!!!

I am nothing if not resourceful and I found a company that advertised flight tickets cash on delivery to your hotel. Terrific. That is until I called them and they knew nothing about it! So now I have to go to the airport office near the hotel  and hope I can buy a ticket there but I have an awful feeling they might only sell bus tickets to get to the airport OR a trek out to the airport where I at least know I CAN buy a ticket with cash. Maybe I could go to the bank though and see if they can make my debit card work online - that would be so much easier!

Surely at some point things must go my way! I’ve had bad luck in my time but I don’t ever recall quite so much in such a short space of time. Who the hell needs Rio - I’m competing in my own decathlon, heptathlon and triathlon!