Tuesday 10^th April, 2018 1530

It's been a while. I must be fair to Adriana though. Sceptic though I am, I never knew she was on an internship up in the mountains. Remember Isabel and her mountain sickness? I can only assume they also get much more severe sandstorms up high than we do here. Indeed, from what Adriana said, she would have liked nothing more than to escape to civilisation for a couple of days. She seems most discontented with her lot, in fact she is now questioning her purpose in life. One good thing though is that she is seriously questioning the Confucian (ie Chinese) method of teaching by rote. Now that, I am all in favour of questioning!

I did have a miserable Qing Ming holiday, the abscess flared up again but I have persevered with the antibiotics which, touch wood, allied with my diclofenac seem to be besting the infection.

Cigargate has loomed large. Wang Guan cheroots are as accessible as dodo eggs in this city at present so I am having to pay over the odds for smokes I don't even like at the moment. If I wasn't trying to save for the summer I would fly down to Anhui Province and buy up five months supply.

The weather has continued to play silly buggers, lovely and warm one day and freezing the next. Unbelievably my flat continues to be bitterly cold and I have the fan heater on permanently yet when I go out I can often do so in shirtsleeves.

We had a western night last night, I made my first chicken and mushroom pie which despite my forgetting to use chicken stock, turned out so well there was none left at the death. I am waiting for my mince to defrost (it's been out of the freezer for seven hours now) so I can make sausage rolls – I reckon I will end up with enough for dinner tonight and lunches tomorrow and Thursday! Using scales to weigh ingredients certainly helps for pastry and I have to say that the ones I bought, whilst being identical to the free set I received a while ago and which packed up a week after receipt, are still working.

Alice sent me a message last night to say she had lodged her application for Heidelberg so we now need to hold our breath for the result. I in the meantime have seen nothing stirring regarding the renewal of my contract but then my phone also still awaits the notification of the credit Brenda said she would apply to it by way of reimbursement for the gas I bought six months ago! I have given her long enough and so will fire off an email later this week. It is obvious she feels she can take her foot off the accelerator now I am “established”. Well she can, except not when I need answers. I've been a good boy for a while and not troubled her but what strikes me is how the Chinese fail to appreciate, being on their “jobs for life” contracts, is that we foreigners must live under the shadow of annual renewals. If there was one thing I could change it would be to have a contract for the next four years to take me to my 66^th birthday, then I could plan my life without the caveats an unexpected upheaval brings.

Back to work again tomorrow, somehow having had to make up classes on Sunday psychologically seems to have negated the time off I have had – in fact currently I get more time off in one hit when there isn't a holiday than when there is! If I wasn't saving I would be flying off everywhere for a couple of days in a new city or even a new country.

I was going to go and get my drugs, buy some replacement tubes for my office light and get a new strap for one of my watches today but I can't be bothered. I can do that after work tomorrow. Early night this evening and just maybe I can feel human during my three working days this week.