Monday 10th October, 2016          1445

It’s difficult to get your body clock finely tuned when you have to get up ridiculously early two days of the week and not the other five. There’s no way I intend to start a regime of waking at 0500 every single day so I have to accept that on the days I do I am going to be tired, having slept possibly six hours. I can handle that.

That’s fine but not when those precious hours are constantly interrupted so the best you can manage is a ten minute snooze at a time. “He can’t have been tired” I hear some of you say? I was certainly tired enough to sleep but I was sharing the bedroom with a mosquito. Here they are twice the size of the Chizhou natives although as there, they don’t have me for dinner. What this little swine did was make intermittent low passes over my head so I had sporadic buzzing in my ear - loud enough to drag me back from the abyss of sleep. We’ve all been there, that halfway house where you KNOW you should get up and do something about the disturbance but stupidly you think you will drop off. It never works and I never got up to exterminate it. I did however exact revenge when I finally had to rise by obliterating him and three of his friends in the bathroom.

When I left home I went to check my bank balance en route to the bus, intending to contact foreign affairs to expedite my salary. I was stunned to find not only had I been paid but on Saturday! In the last place it was never done until the Monday if payday fell on a weekend - even if the weekend was a catch up so after Friday I never suspected I should check. I suppose I should be annoyed at having had to scratch around for money unnecessarily but the truth is it was for the best. I have already spent 1,000y today alone and will probably spend the same again tomorrow in RT Mart and hopefully also getting a pair of shoes/trainers. It’s astonishing how everything adds up, from coat hangers to a mop, colander to extension lead etc. Some items will need to wait another month. I am only glad I brought a lot of stuff with me.

So tomorrow I will treat Suzy and Sheila to dinner for helping me shop after class tomorrow afternoon and then the class want to treat me to a western lunch (probably pizza) at Wanda Square in the city centre on Thursday. There’s no chance I shall treat the entire class to a dinner by way of repayment, although I may host a party at home at Christmas - mind you with my little oven I will have to think hard what I can make in any quantity by way of food. Probably a huge cauldron of chilli with French bread plus a load of nibbles. If only I could buy vol au vent cases! By then though I will be producing ham and with luck, sausages. I feel a plan coming together!

I have cleared all the worklmens’ debris and am still awaiting a reply regarding covering holes and replacing the shields. I could do the latter myself but that would involve buying a screwdriver  and I have enough to fork out for as it is this month. And I need a haircut.  

Regarding the utilities here, I reckon everyone else gobbles up gas yet uses little electricity. It is apparent I am to be the exact reverse. The reason of course is because of  my appliances - oven, chip maker, bread maker, toaster, processor - and the fact I cook very little on the hob. I use about a cubic metre of gas per diem (most of that goes on showering) yet have used a third of the 400y of electricity we topped up with not two weeks ago! I will have to be careful to top up just before spring festival otherwise I will run out. Come to think of it, without the pets, in Chizhou a bottle of gas lasted about four months.