Chapter 42

The fireworks squad has been ramping up its work, trying to create maximum disturbance around the clock. I was too inebriated to be affected much but I remember waking up a few times throughout the early morning.

I felt a bit stiff, especially in the neck area, so I stretched and drank a lot of water before sitting at the computer and finishing up yesterday’s entry. We needed to get another 20-L bottle of drinking water but they’re not delivering on this Chinese New Year day, so we drove there and picked up a bottle.

I ate R. n’ S. while watching UFC Embedded videos, about the fighters in the upcoming card and their preparation. The welterweight title fight between Usman and Burns should be a pretty good one, a lot of people hate on Usman for being boring but a lot of people are low-IQ mouthbreathers and their opinion on every topic should be discarded. A lot of fans and execs are praying that Gilbert Burns sends him violently out to pasture, like they did with Woodley and GSP in the past, the WW division has quite the history of invincible-looking dominant champs whose style isn’t really TV-friendly.

I played a bit of GTA V, as Trevor. I woke up in a drunken daze behind the dumpster of a strip club, stole a SUV and drove all the way to the airfield in a rural part of the state where I run a weapons trafficking ring with a partner. I had to go pick up a crate that had been air dropped, before a rival gang could get to it, I caught up to their pickup truck, and killed them with my Uzi as I was driving. Later, they sent a helicopter after me, I dismounted and shot it down with a powerful rifle. Nobody messes with Trevor Phillip Enterprises.

A German buddy messaged me, he is the next hare and needs the chalk I used to mark the hash trail a few weeks ago. I went out to meet him at the gate of my apartment complex. The hash is scheduled for Saturday, the weather forecast predicts rain but hey, that’s not going to stop us.  

Nursing my hangover with water and grapefruit juice, I did a bit more reading and writing, while listening to music. Jefferson Airplane played some bland 1960s hippie shit, and after that it was a rapper that I didn’t know called Juvenile, and it was just as boring. I do like a lot of southern hip-hop but his stuff left me flaccid. Then it was Manu Chao’s Clandestino, a pretty fun album, it played on the speakers while we ate a hot pot dinner and the girlfriend liked it. At number 468 it was The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls, an album from 1978 that I enjoyed quite a bit and is in fact still playing as I’m writing this.

I put the final touches to a travel story I wrote, about my first year in China (in 2008!). I got bamboozled to attend a dinner with a bunch of people who just wanted to have a white guy there for photo ops, but before they could take their photos, I pretended I had to go to the toilet and ran out, going home on foot and by hitchhiking. It’s on https://quesstuvascrisserla.com/2021/02/11/evasion/.

I also did a bit of Chinese studying, reviewing material from previous sessions and looking up new words I’m seeing on social media about the Chinese New Year. The in-laws videocalled, and we had a little chat. It’s a bit sad that we’re not going to the girlfriend’s hometown this year but we decided to stay home and not take the risk of getting stuck. Also I can’t be fucked going to the hospital and do the covid test upon returning like the policy states, there are reports of it being a total shit show, as expected. That’s got to be one of the dumbest things possible: due to the pandemic, they add up layers upon layers of bureaucracy everywhere, while also chaining up doors with big rusty bike locks to control the flow of foot traffic, which means people get bottlenecked and if one of them turns out to be carrying that benign but contagious virus, boom, now everyone has it.

That said, I’ve seen a report saying that there were very, very few new cases in the holiday period so far due to people traveling less. My dad sent me an email, saying he’s heard the opposite, but also saying that at times it feels like Western media reports about China are written by falun gong members or the Dalai Lama himself, this champion of democracy. I’m glad he acknowledges it.