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last night after dinner we decided to walk home instead of taking one of the shuttle buses, since the phoenix hotel wasn't that far from where we lived. i was drunk, but i thought still good enough to walk home by myself. xiao wouldn't hear of it, cradling my arm with his as he personally escorted me home. being drunk is a weird feeling, i don't experience it often enough so the novelty hasn't worn off yet. i found myself stumbling, and words hard to say without slurring. in my mind i felt lucid, but my body just wasn't cooperating. i don't like it very much. why couldn't i just stick with the fake juice and coca-cola?

xiao brought me all the way up to my room. i was still coherent enough to take off my shoes, managed to remove one sock, and turn off the lights before going to sleep in my clothes. all seemed well.

until the vomiting. it happened so fast, there was no time to grab the trash can. i was smart enough to puke over the side of my bed. i was still too out of it to do anything about it though, figured i could clean it up in the morning. i puked twice, at least that i remember. around 4:00 i did turn on the light to see the damage. two pools of maroon-colored puke, with my shoes in the middle, which miraculously seemed to be puke free. around 5:00 i finally got out of bed. still groggy, nursing a hangover, i began the cleanup. somehow there was puke on the bed as well. not a lot, but it meant i'd have to wash the sheets. there was dried puke on the collar and shoulder of my shirt. i checked my shoes. puke in one of the shoes.

i used two plastic fans to scoop up the vomit, then wiped down the floor with paper towels and cleaning spray. i only needed to wash one of my shoes, but was concerned how long it'd take to dry. i then laundered the sheet as well as my shirt. i got puke on the one sock i was still wearing, not sure how. the puke stain didn't penetrate to the mattress, thank god, because i slept on a thick cotton mat. there was some puke on the duvet cover but not enough to penetrate to the blanket. while everything was in the wash, i went to go take a shower. what i saw in the mirror was horrifying. dried puke all over my face.

once laundry was done, i relocated all my still-drying clothes to the far ends of the double dry racks and hung up the sheets. by then it was almost time to go to work. i seriously thought about calling a sick day. but i knew people in the office were waiting for my sports meet photos, so at the very least i had to drop those off. afterwards, maybe i could come back home early.

the only other shoes i have were my blue boat shoes and sneakers. i would never wear sneakers to work, so the boat shoes were my only option. and because they don't match with black pants, i wore my only pair of khakis, praying that it wasn't raining or muddy outside. i left without eating breakfast, figured i could eat the emergency sweet congee i had in my desk at the office. i didn't make any tea, but filled my tumbler with just hot water. i was already running a little late, but came back to the apartment because i forgot my id badge.

back at the apartment i'd already copied all the photos onto my netbook, so i just brought to the office along with a 32GB flash drive. about 4700 photos, it took nearly half an hour to transfer, and i left with just minutes to spare. at the office i copied the photos onto the thumb drive and gave it to the resident photo guy (who's normal job is a project scheduler). the thumb drive was still hot from just receiving 32GB worth of data. after he was done, he gave me a copy of his photos. at about 1.2GB, there was less than 1000 photos. i looked them over when i had the chance. i wanted to see the relay race photos, which was the one event i was actually kind of interested in participating if i wasn't assigned to be the company photographer. races are fun to photograph if you can chase the runners.

i was ready to go back home but the problem was how would i do it? the office is about a half hour drive away from town, in a remote industrial park where there's nothing else around but other factories. even if there were taxis roaming the area, the cost to get back is around RMB$50. i guess i was secretly hoping that there'd be a company shuttle back to town in the middle of the day, but that kind of service doesn't exist. my only hope was the 107 which i see from time to time, but nobody i asked knew where to catch this mysterious bus. so basically i was stuck at the office. my korean company counterparts yuwei and herbert took the day off since our boss was on vacation. i really should've done the same thing.

i was in no mood to work, and the only constructive thing i did was to input some man hours into a spreadsheet, which took all about a minute. i spent the rest of the day doing what i did when i first started working, which was too look busy while doing nothing. rereading e-mails, discretely surfing the web (a great article on galipoli in slate), etc.

sunmeng came to my desk to talk to me today, which almost never happens. fengya was there as well, which creates all sorts of awkwardness. she asked me if i drank too much last night and told me about her own drinking prowess. apparently alcohol seems to have no effect on her, something which the guys from HSE (health and safety) tried to test one evening when they honked their car horn outside her apartment to get her to come out and drink with them. she ended up drinking everyone under the table, and taunted them as they later puked out in the alley.

later shirley came to talk me about drinking as well. i told her i have very low alcohol tolerance, and she said being able to drink is a good quality (i think abstaining from alcohol is a better quality).

it shows how little time i've spent with fengya the past few weeks, but she was going on her vacation today and i didn't even know it. because it's been 3 months since her last vacation, she was getting 10 days off instead of 7 days. she was in no mood to work either and spent a good part of the day coloring in the white lettering of her company-issued backpack with fluorescent markers. i gave her the rest of my pork jerky as a traveling snack and told her to have a good trip before i left to go eat dinner.

eating office food on a saturday night is depressing. people usually go out to dinner to kickstart the one day weekend, but i was in no mood to issue any invitation nor did i receive any. there was only a handful of employees in the cafeteria. the food wasn't very good either, what seemed liked leftovers from earlier in the week. afterwards i caught the 2nd bus back into town. my long day was finally about to be over.

i forgot i had to recharge my phone and left the apartment after dropping off my bag. the china mobile office was about to close, the guard told me to use the automated phone recharging machine outside, i told him i could read chinese, he came out to help me. it's actually pretty easy, but maybe because the guard was walking me through the process. one day i'll have to try it on my own. i added RMB$100 to my number, but only actually half of that went into additional minutes as i overdue on late payment.

i got in touch with my parents saturday night after i got back from work. i told them about what happened late last night, sparing no graphic details. my mother was mortified, my father thought it was pretty funny. he told me that baijiu works fast, while red wine has a delayed effect. mixing the 2 is naturally a recipe for disaster. it could've been worse. i only got a little puke on the bed, and ruined the one shirt that was already kind of ruined (pen mark on the back courtesy of chehong and badly altered sleeves).