Sunday 25^th July, 2021 1300

And guess what? The health code still doesn't work for me. The really weird thing is that I can get a green screen (these days one screen fits all so no need to specify cities) by asking Victor to update it on his phone, sending him the confirmation code which is sent to my phone, then he sends me the screen on Wechat! So for this holiday I need to Wechat him the day before I travel to get an updated code and hope he doesn't drop dead or lose his phone.

On Saturday I went for lunch with Adriana. She had pestered me for weeks so I felt I should, especially as it was her turn to pay. Once again, if we wanted to eat in the crab place we faced a long wait. And again I demurred, particularly as it appears to be more crab hotpot than anything else. I would like crab meat and claws with some salad instead.

So we ended up at Tom's Steak House. It turned out to be one of those places where nobody actually cooks, rather they heat things up and grill steaks. I asked for beef curry and rice but was told it was off. Why? Because they had no curry sauce!! Christ, how hard is it to rustle up some sauce? Had I known in advance I could have made some here and taken it with me.

They had burgers but they all looked far too big to me – I haven't been eating much at all lately – so I opted for a small steak and plumped for the one the waitress recommended as being the easier one to chew, handy when most of your teeth are either stumps or missing!

Well if that was the easiest to chew I would hate to see the hardest! After struggling through a third of what was in fact an 8oz steak, I gave up. They had no beer and if I wanted wine we had to buy a whole bottle at 300¥ so Adriana nipped out and bought a couple of cans of Yellow River lager. My turn to pay next time so I won't faff about, it will be straight to the Japanese place. Expensive but bloody good.

Today I had to get up at 0545 so Victor could collect me at seven. This is the logic here: I could have had by now my two Covid jabs simply by walking on campus to the medical centre when they were sticking the teachers but no, because I was old, not allowed.

Now, old people can get the vaccine so that includes me. Except instead of a simple affair on campus they send a teacher and car and take me to a hospital teeming with geriatrics all with the same purpose. The queue was supposed to start moving at 0730 but nothing happened until eight. Most of the time I sat on a wall as Victor queued in my stead.

Then he decided to disappear with my passports and money and leave me to wait in line. It's amazing how even the old farts jostle and jockey for position even after they have been issued a number. I was 51 and ultimately was ushered through before all the queue-jumpers. The initial blood pressure check was met with surprise because it was so low and when I got to the entrance and was asked for my passport Victor was nowhere to be seen. I just begged to be allowed in to sit until he came back.

When he finally did he brought a form and asked me if I had mental illness, was pregnant and various other things including hypertension. To that I had to say yes, so back to the BP check! Still lower than probably anyone else's.

And then the jab. Followed by a mandatory half an hour wait to ensure you don't peg out. The medical profession is the only one I can think of that gives you a form to say that they could kill you and then get you to sign it to say it's not their fault. From start to finish the process took three hours. God I hope jab 2.0 is quicker!

Finally we have had half an hour of rain which has cooled the air a bit. Most welcome and I am sure wherever it fell on the ground the parched earth will already have eagerly sucked it up.