Sunday 12^th November, 2017 1620 Remembrance Sunday

Of course, yesterday was a significant date in the western calendar but here it is memorable for a very different reason.

11/11 is singles day. It has become the world's biggest one day spending event which since inception has broken each previous year's amount in respect of money spent on online purchases. People sit and wait for midnight, keyboard fingers poised and ready to pounce to try and secure a bargain. The last I heard, the total spend this year was $25 billion. None of it was mine.

Last night Adriana asked if we could meet for a drink – she is the girl I met at the FLTRP contest. I agreed. I never knew the address she sent me by text was way downtown and not too far from east campus but I took a taxi and met her in a mall.

I wanted food and western food at that. The mall had a Pizza Hut, a Cafe Bene (no idea if they offer food), another Buddy's (maybe the owner actually puts in an appearance in that one) and a MoMo. Never heard of them but it looked interesting so we went in. the menu looked good so we stayed. A huge minus was that they don't serve alcohol so Adriana was despatched (after I failed to find it) to a supermarket to buy a bottle of wine.

The food was like the curate's egg but you only find out by ordering and trying. Had I thought I could actually eat a whole one, I may have ordered a T-bone but I contented myself with sharing seafood tarts, avocado and pate melba toasts and for myself a meat concoction with rice which turned out to be mostly fat and gristle. There were enough dishes available on the menu though that it will be worth another visit – with a pre-purchased bottle of plonk!

Afterwards we walked towards the bus stop (we had been 4 hours on the “date”). She was going to take a bus, I a taxi. On the way I suggested we both get a cab and I dropped her off en route.

That never happened, for whilst walking, an unlikely coincidence came about. Adriana's mum and aunt happened to be walking to get a bus after finishing some retail therapy and spotted us! She got the bus after all with them and I was left to try and hail a taxi.

This morning Dean sent a text to say my new laptop worked just fine in his home so I asked if we could try it at mine – I couldn't see why it wouldn't work here if it worked at his. I was dreading my 4.5 hour lunch break tomorrow with sod all to watch (and I may be able to log on to the school wifi now I have Dean's particulars) and was keen to get my BBC downloads back.

No thanks to the school, everything now works, although Dean has gone away with a photo of my passport to try and get me my own access and then set up my laptop to reflect that I am in fact the one using it.

Poor Annie meanwhile is still offline but I did tell her if she needed to check emails or whatever she could come here.

As for my phone, I don't need to splash out on a new one after all. The reason it wouldn't charge was because the lead was faulty. I found that out when trying to charge something else. I found another, older, one and voila!