Sunday 17^th December, 2017 0230

I shall explain the lateness of the hour later.

Firstly I should like to correct a “senior muddle” when I moaned that if I finish early a week on Friday I would still not get home till late. Not true, the English corner is to be on Christmas Day, I have the Tuesday off and will be cooking our festive meal that day.

Yesterday was a day I would rather not have had. Last night I lost the internet and it was far too late to expect anyone to be working at that time to fix it. No problem, watch some iPlayer downloads and it will be sorted in the morning.

Except it wasn't fixed in the morning. I waited until lunchtime before the thought of being offline the entire weekend consumed me and I tried to send text messages to ask what the score was.

In the meantime I discovered my kitchen sink was blocked. It's always a build-up of oil/fat and normally a boiled kettle or two sorts it – if I put oil down it I always run the hot tap. Not today, and neither did the plunger do the trick. I am not fond of DIY at all but today, with no internet, instead of trying to get maintenance to come, I dismantled all the plumbing myself. It took dismantling a coathanger and digging the mini fatberg out to get there but I did it. And it was indeed a mini one, it should have surrendered after five minutes of boiling water but it was tenacious.

It was then that I spotted my phone said “emergency”. I had no signal. Having been driving a truck in central London some years ago when there were terrorist bombings and having been unable to call my Mother to let her know not to worry, I was fine, and being unable to because Westminster ordered all the mobile signals shut down, you can imagine my thoughts. Mum always watched the news and particularly when I was in China if she saw news of an earthquake 3,000 miles from me she would call to ask if my home was still standing.

No internet AND no mobile? Were we in the middle of a terrorist incident or perhaps Trump had started war with Kim Jong Fatty? I had no way of knowing.

The phone signal eventually returned and Dean the IT teacher shed some light. CET6 took place yesterday, the national College English Test. The internet was shut down to prevent cheating and the mobile coverage was an unrelated fault. Thanks for telling the foreign teachers in advance as usual!

I actually think it's a liberty because I don't actually live on campus so all my neighbours were offline as well. Why in God's name they can't simply tell the students no phones allowed and frisk them when they enter the exam I know not. Failing that, jammers are freely available which when plugged in block signals for whatever radius you purchase. But no, deprive everyone for miles of internet and don't tell them why, leaving them to spend half the day trying to fix a problem they themselves actually don't have!

Anyway, it finally came back at 1830 so I was offline for maybe 22 hours.

However, Dean asked me to go for a drink. I didn't really want to but considering I cancelled on him a fortnight ago having already agreed (my shoulder suddenly became agony in the middle of the day for no reason) I felt obliged and said yes. Anyway it's not often I get to see, let alone drink gin here.

Six and a half hours later, at 0200 this morning, we got a taxi home. I could easily have stayed later because I persuaded Dean and the owner to play dou dizhou with me, a Chinese card game I particularly like. I can hold my own and even if you play for 10y a game nobody over the course of an evening wins or loses anything more than 100y in my experience. It doesn't half pass the time though!

It was a really good evening and made a change to the normal routine. All it cost me was the taxi to get there and back because Dean once again insisted on paying the bill. Not bad actually at 440y considering apparently I had nine double Tanquerays and he had three! I feel a little uneasy at being paid for every time even though he is happy to do so. I think (seriously) that he wants me to invest with him next year to open our own bar.

Not such a bad idea although he wants to only sell the local brew. I suggested theoretically that we should sell cheap and imported and also do western food – proper western pub grub. That was we could hopefully get the standard Chinese drinkers and also the wealthy ones and foreigners who would buy the imported booze. Food for thought.

I just hope I haven't knocked my body clock too far off because I really don't want to test students all day Monday whilst yawning – and the farmer ones will really send me to sleep!

Ah well, I am online.