A couple of days of fiddling around at work. A few short edits, of various types, filling out an application, doing some sample edits, that sort of thing. It was not particularly satisfying work as none of it gave a sense of completion or at least of getting a decent payment for it. I’ve also […]
Day in two halves
Yesterday, Sunday, was a day in two halves. The first was a highly successful trip to a new farmer’s market, about 20 minutes walk away, with excellent and varied produce. It will be a regular stop, I think. I had some lovely drinks there as well – it was another hot day: first a watermelon […]
Far north
Saturday morning began with a very long overdue chat with an old university friend who, like everyone else I know, is in lockdown. She is an academic at a well-known US university, and it was interesting to hear how they, and her students, have been dealing with it all. This is one of those friends […]
Strange folks
Last night the GF and I went off to the soba place again for dinner. First I went shopping in Zhongshan, and bought myself a linen skirt I had admired before, and a top suitable for hiking in (or, more correctly, yoga in). I also bought a bubble tea and sat waiting for the GF […]
Test
We had our Mandarin test this morning. Both of us passed with exactly the same number of wrong answers, though slightly different marks as the weighting was different. We preened a little at scoring in the high 80s until our teacher mentioned that the pass mark was 75%. Well, it’s done. I haven’t had a […]
Sudden relapse
A catastrophic relapse into misanthropy yesterday afternoon, after a very pleasant morning — work finished early, a good Chinese lesson, a pleasant cup of coffee and conversation with the GF. I returned, remarking on what a good mood I was in, to find that one of the others had locked the front door from the […]
A partial recovery
I succeeded in putting myself in partial isolation today, at least until dinner when the Woodland Creature and the Boddhisattva returned home early so I made food for them as well (or at least for the Boddhisattva; the Woodland Creature decided to order in). Luckily the break was enough that I was fairly cheerful during […]
More people
After moaning yesterday about too much sociability, today was even worse: the GF and I both felt we had been in hiding too much and so we made a plan with our flatmates to go for a stroll and visit the national museum (not the National Palace Museum) and then meet our linguist friend for […]
More rarified
A slightly more rarified dinner than usual as it was a celebration day and we went to one of the small, expensive and experimental places for dinner last night. It was a nice dinner, and less blighted by the various dietary restrictions than usual. At the end was a souffle, which made me wish that […]
A simple pair
We were a simple pair at our Chinese lessons. It must have nearly driven the teacher mad. My most unfortunate moment came when we were practicing sentences and she asked us ‘what is your teacher’s name?’ and we had no idea. After staring at each other wildly for a few minutes I said “Liu”, trying […]