Saturday 22^nd May, 2021 2100

I got up early this morning, my body clock is attuned to early starts now and long gone are the days I could sleep for ten hours straight given the chance. Anyway, Jody was getting ready to leave for her side job teaching at weekends at the primary school but she lost no time in telling me there was a 7.4 magnitude earthquake at 0204 this morning.

Being a bit groggy from sleep I initially said I was in bed so I never felt anything. Then the brain kicked in – 7.4??? That's building collapse territory and fatalities. Turns out it was in the next-door province of Qinghai (where Xining is, I went there with the Peace Corps girls) and was located about 370 miles from here. No casualties either because it was more of a tectonic plate shift in the Tibetan plateau where nobody really lives. The day before there was a 6.4 magnitude quake in Dali where I am going with Alice in a couple of months and there were fatalities and casualties. Hmmm.

Roland in Shanghai has very kindly offered to be my proxy and apply for my passport. I had more or less decided to leave it to the end of July when I finish and take the chance of getting a quick turnaround but this now seems eminently more sensible. I courier the stuff to him and maybe before I even need to start booking flights I will have my new passport – hopefully a proper black one (I'll be mightily annoyed if it's one of those hideous EU maroon ones).

It works on a few levels, not least of all because a rough check of costs merely for hotels and flights for what I want to do looks like setting me back £3,000. Unreal basically when you think a family of four could probably holiday in Spain for three months half board for that! But I did say I was going to have a splurge this summer and so I shall. On the basis that retirement looms in one year it will be a case of saving money as fast as I can.

The damned students have asked me to come to their English corner. Next Sunday! Thank heaven for small mercies, it will be at 1400 so I have agreed and made it quite clear I have no intention of attending on a regular basis!

My students are all unhappy this week. They will be having mid-term exams. I said “don't look at me!” because I don't and won't do them. It takes me two weeks to test them all so to do mid-terms would mean losing four weeks of teaching instead of two. The other subjects, well they will be a written paper take on one day. Good luck to the teachers with extra work marking them! Grandpa ain't playing that game!