t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i went to bed last night at around 11:30, which gave me 7 hours of sleep. first thing i did was to boil a pot of water with an egg in it before i went to go use the bathroom, shave, and shower. i ate my hard-boiled egg before leaving the apartment. there was a little misty drizzle this morning, but not enough to use the umbrella. i want to explore my breakfast options besides meat buns. i bumped into fengya, who told me about the recently-opened (a few months) rice porridge place (RMB$3 for a bowl to go) that also sold mantou buns and meat buns. they also had soy milk but no yiuo-tiao, a chinese breakfast staple.

i had a meeting in the later half of the morning which made the day go faster. it was a meeting with the fiery spaniard in charge of the same department on the owner's side. nobody wanted to sit next to him because he can be very demonstrative when angry, but i wasn't scare. we really didn't have to be in the meeting but mr.lee wanted to bring as many "troops" as possible to reinforce his position during the discussion, which sometimes got pretty heated.

fengya asked if it was okay if she gave me QQ chat number to my not-so-secret stalker (apparently they're friends). i was too polite to say anything but yes but i'm kind of not interested and i'm afraid i'm giving renewed hope to my stalker. we chatted briefly, i was cordial but terse. i heard my stalker is an english major as well, but her english isn't very good from the little i read.

the final few hours of work i wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. i don't usually drink coffee but i'm seriously thinking about investing in some instant blend to get me through the day. i drink a lot of black and jasmine tea, but they're just not strong enough.

the sky cleared up in the early evening, enough to restart thinking about exercising again. my afterwork plan was to go visit the gym on the top floor of the chongbai department store to look into getting a membership. then i would go to the basement to the supermarket to pick up some high stools, followed by a purchase of duck feet and an evening of television watching. but then loren asked me if i wanted to go play badminton and i said yes.

we scheduled to meet at 7:00 but he didn't show up until half an hour later without any apology. we were playing with some of his former coworkers from a different company, all middle-aged. one guy couldn't keep his shirt on despite having a body that can best be described as trapezoidal. i thought we were just going to hit the shuttlecock around, but they immediately started a serious game. these guys were not playing for fun. i went up for a second match, but was told to sit down when i failed to serve the shuttlecock correctly on 3 tries. "maybe you can practice on the sideline," one of the guys said to me. that should've been my cue to leave, but loren was playing a game at the time and out of courtesy i waited for it to be over before letting him know i was leaving. "i'm so embarrassed," he said, "these guys don't play for fun."

in hindsight, i would've had a much better time had i gone running in the track field next door, which was opened tonight since it finally wasn't raining for a change. that's why there are rarely ladies playing badminton these days, because these man boys take what should be a children's game way too seriously, spiking the shuttlecock and being overall dicks. i will never play badminton with loren ever again!

it was too late to buy some duck feet as a consolation prize, but i did have turkey leg moon cakes waiting for me at home. i ate the more expensive of the two, kunming-imported jindian moon cake (RMB$8.90 昆明市金联邦火腿月饼). it was pretty good, not at all like moon cake, more like a pastry stuffed with smoked ham on the inside along with sugar, honey, and some sort of flour-based filling. i would definitely buy it again the next time i'm in the supermarket. i ate my moon cake while watching last night's episode of breaking bad. unresolved shoot out!