Sunday 21^st June, 2020 1930

No, nothing to report from the weekend, all I did was laundry and bake an apple pie today. The latter might not be too good, I used the dumpling flour the supermarket woman insisted I buy and I am not impressed.

A couple of moans though – what's new???

On Saturday morning we finally went close by to get a sim card for the smartphone so Jody could set up whatever needs to be done. The nearest place was China Telecom and after thirty minutes of showing my passport, paying over some money and the saleslady doing her thing we left minus a sim card and a refund. It seems it will only work with a China Mobile one. No rush due to the next moan.

Alice who just graduated called me on Friday from another province. Months ago she signed a contract to take a sales job and only told me when it was too late to advise her against it. She is not enjoying it one little bit. So my thoughts of still taking her to Xining are out. I thought the coming weekend I could take Jody instead, the room is paid for anyway.

No, she can't come, all the teachers have been told they are not allowed to leave Lanzhou until (maybe) term ends! All the teachers except one of course but as I won't be getting the green thingy any time soon, I won't be flouting orders I was never issued in the first place. No point in creating a battle when you don't need to so I am staying put.

Next moan. Thursday is Dragon Boat and a day off. As usual they are making it a four day break by “giving” us Friday off but then making us do Friday's classes the following Saturday! Ordinarily I have no problem with this odd system, it gives the students valuable time to go back home for a few days.

But.

The teachers aren't allowed to leave the city. The students aren't allowed to leave the campus! The complete lack of logic beggars belief. A four-day continuous break and not a soul can use it so why in God's name are we not working on Friday and then we can all finish the Friday after instead of Saturday???? I have long since learnt that questioning such things in China merely elicits an equally imbecilic reason by way of an answer so no longer bother.

I see Reading had a bit of bother although for the life of me I can't see the thinking behind a terrorist attack there. Then there's been a major “outbreak” of Covid on Anglesey so nobody's going to eat chicken any more and Trump's best efforts to increase the infection rate in Tulsa were dampened when he suddenly found out he's not popular any more and hardly anyone came.

Any of my readers going to stop eating chicken? I'm not and occasionally I still buy meat from the now-infamous wet markets. I have been a lifelong believer that even diseased meat is fine to eat provided it is cooked long enough and hot enough.

No BLM protests here and precious Greta hasn't been to the Forbidden City so thank you very much.