Sunday 9th October, 2016                          1830

Well of course, if I had to work on Saturday it stood to reason I had to work on Sunday as well! The odd thing was, today’s (normally Friday’s) class, the one that started out at 60 students then gradually dropped to 30, was shifted to my normal classroom because the big room wasn’t required any longer. Great for me as I didn’t need to go up, down, up and down, just up and down once.

Considering it was a Sunday, the class is voluntary attendance and it has been sodding cold today, I was surprised when 40 turned up, necessitating stools being raided from other empty classrooms! Oddly, it was quite a lively class so there is hope yet.

Yesterday afternoon I was peacefully minding my own business at home when there came a knock at the door. Four Keystone Kops aka the repair men. Had they come to sort out my washing machine? Don’t be silly. Central heating pipes.

I am guessing that being ground floor corner, my flat is the entry point for the hot water/oil or whatever they use, whilst the one next door is the outlet for the entire block. We are the only ones with tunnels dug underneath. Basically they needed to disconnect the old pipes and reconnect to new ones.

This had to be carried out in the bathroom, living room, bedroom, dining room and office. They proceeded to spend the next four hours hacking, sawing, banging and jack-hammering at walls, boardings and floors. Eventually and without so much as a “bye bye” they left, leaving me to wonder why it was so quiet and if I really needed to have my front door open in the cold weather.

They have very kindly left me all the rubble, boarding and dust to clear up and not only have they not filled in any of the gaps/holes but neither have they replaced the glass heat shields for the radiators, leaving screws and screw covers laying about everywhere. Affable chaps though they may be, I am not best pleased at having my home destroyed, disrupted and left like a building site. I can do that all on my own without their assistance. It’s enough to make one buy a heater and then when the heating does eventually get turned on (I believe next month) simply close all the valves so everyone else freezes.

But hell was I cold today when I left for the bus. I had the fleece on under a jacket and marvelled at locals wandering around with just a shirt and a thin top. I wonder how many years it would take me to acclimatise to that? Ask me whether I prefer cold or heat and I will say it has to be heat. I always used to say cold was better because you can always put more clothing on yet you can only take so much of it off. I now realise what an idiotic thing that was to say! And it’s still only October and the temperatures haven’t dipped into single figures - HELP!!!

Tomorrow is payday. I have sent the foreign affairs department a polite email requesting that they give accounts a jog seeing as I won’t be automated yet as I don’t have a Bank of China account and just in case, I have managed to shepherd my meagre funds so that if worse comes to worst, I have 50y for tomorrow - enough for a tin of cigars, bottle of wine and some burger buns + onion so I can make hot dogs for my dinner. I hope it doesn’t come to that because on Tuesday I am hoping to get Suzy and Sheila to come with me to RT Mart so I can do a big shop (CHEESE!!!). We shall see.

This afternoon whilst waiting for the school bus (Fittipaldi has been fired from early morning runs as he is always late so is now confined to afternoons and return trips where it doesn’t matter. The other guy is also late and drives carefully yet almost always gets us there early, figure that out?) I was reminded of something I have long despaired of here.

A chap in an army uniform walked past, plainly an officer but without researching insignia I wouldn’t know for sure, who I guessed, what with the amount of gold and number of pips and other regalia surely had to be a 3 star general in the Peoples’ Liberation Army at the very least. Very smart indeed.

However, as with so many hundreds of security guards, policemen, tax inspectors and other uniform wearers who have crossed my path in six years, a glance earthwards spoilt the illusion.

Instead of nicely polished black shoes there were white and blue training shoes.