Friday turned out to be a great night for playing games – which I love. Firstly it was a card game I have been trying to get the hang off, it’s called Landlord or Landowner, the first time I played no one could explain any rules so I had to try and cotton on but on Friday I had a couple of people willing to speak up in English so knowing that the 2 is a top card really helped, after a couple of hours playing we all headed off to a Mojo’s, an open air rooftop bar in West Street. The view of the lit peaks were magnificent as usual but even at that time of night its was still stifling hot and a couple of freestanding fans for patrons to crowd around did little to compensate however there was a cute little poodle cross stealing attention and pats from everyone. The best bit of this place was the pool table, soccer table and dart board which all twelve of us flocked onto and immediately started to loudly compete. The bar in the corner remained untouched, this confused me a bit as the games were all free but besides two beers no one was buying any drinks. Even though it was too hot to drink alcohol I ordered a Cosmopolitan (25 Yuan) to celebrate watching so much ‘Sex in the City’ and then quietly ruled on the Foosball table – these people have no idea of my background in the Internet Software development culture and the iconic status of having a Foosball table in the office that was played at every opportunity. I guess they just think I am naturally good at it! They always seem so surprised when I’m good at something, or maybe that’s the way it gets as you get older, younger people don’t really get that it took quite a while to get this old and you have actually done quite a few things along the way, somethings repetitively so you just get good at it. They are always asking how I got so good at table tennis, I suppose that one is because it is a Chinese sport. So back to the bar with a dozen people hammering their games and they have sold 3 drinks, I suppose there is kudos in knowing that the other roof top bars can see that they have a crowd of people! I’m only guessing anyway to add insult one of the girls in our group pulls out a huge bag of snacks and starts to offer them around, this happened a couple of times – I quite like the jelly cups! I still feel the guilt.
After spending a lazy Saturday on my own, had a swim, got my nails done had a very late lunch of pizza I wandered over to the college for a game of table tennis and was invited to join a group for dinner, I said I would like the company but wouldn’t be eating as I just finished lunch, so it was arranged we meet at 7pm. Well something got lost in translation because to my delight I found myself at a very nice Hotel (The Green Lotus) heading towards the Karaoke rooms (KTV.) This is something I really wanted to experience. They have special rooms so groups can sing to each other – so it’s sort of private. After finding a suitable room we settled into the comfortable lounge and were presented with beer and snacks and the singing didn’t stop, everyone was fighting over the songs and microphones. Fortunately my song didn’t come up with English words so I couldn’t sing and then the second one was a song I had never heard of – so I didn’t get much of a chance, this suited me. I packed it in early due to the pounding in my head from the volume of the songs and one of the girls insisted on escorting me to the street even though I had reassured her that I was fine to find my own way home, actually it was quite good as she organised the motorbike taxi very quickly and it probably would have taken abit of bargaining for me to do it.
