Chapter 48

Up early in the morning to go on a short bicycle commute and get the Covid vaccine. Now that’s a bit of a controversial topic and a lot of people are skeptical about “an experimental drug created by pharmaceutical companies with no liability and a track record of greed, addiction creation, and environmental and social destruction for a disease which I'm 99.9% likely to survive even though being vaccinated won't stop me from getting sick, being infectious, allow me to travel or not wear a mask”, to quote a particularly eloquent friend of mine but that’s really not a hill I want to die on. I’ll get the damn jab and get it over with, I foresee a near future in which it will be mandatory to travel and work in certain sectors, like the yellow fever vaccination and others.

We had to line up in the cold outside a dedicated wing of the hospital, and once inside, it was pelvis-to-butt with a bunch of nurses shrieking. We had to put on masks of course. Still, after registering, signing paperwork, getting the needle and waiting for 30 minutes to ensure we don’t have adverse effects, I was out before 9 AM and had the chance to catch up with coworkers and have a quick laugh or two.

I got home and relaxed a bit, I was a bit hungry so I made a small quesadilla to try my hot sauce, a tiny dab still burned the back of my mouth and had a pleasant mustardy volatile feel. Satisfying. I watched one Roman history video and then got out with the longboard and the dog to go meet the girlfriend at a restaurant near her workplace. She started working again, but only had a half day today. We ate noodles and flatbread at a Muslim eatery.

Then she drove to a florist, it was hidden in a creepy semi-abandoned industrial complex, one of those strange quirky things about China. We had to navigate rusty and crumbling husks of buildings until we found it behind an unmarked door. They had an impressive variety of beautiful flowers in buckets on the ground, and it’s cheaper that the florists in town, which is why she made the detour there.

I noticed the front wheel was slightly deflated, and we contacted the car mechanic, sending him a picture. In the afternoon she dropped the car there and yeah, the tires are old and long overdue.

Some friends in a chat group were asking who wants to go play pool at 2:30. I looked at the time, 1:30. Might as well go. So I rode the longboard there, listening to a hilarious Ryan Long podcast. There were four of us, we played 8-ball in teams and then a game of cutthroat in a pool hall filled with 14-year-olds with bouffant haircuts.

I got home and whipped up a quick fried rice while listening to more music from the Top 500, that had been playing on and off since the morning. Alice Coltrane’s album was some pretty cool jazz, and then it was something by prog rock band Yes. I saw that I had already clicked on the YouTube link in the past but not finished it, which is a bad sign. Now I listened to the whole LP, it is good music but I don’t like the overly high pitched vocals.

I took a nap and then went to play soccer. On the way, I listened to an album I hadn’t revisited in a long-ass time, Nattfödd by Finntroll. Holy shit it’s good. I have the weirdest relationship with folk-metal, I can’t stand the vast majority of it but there are two bands that I absolutely love, Finntroll and Nine Treasures.

The soccer complex was deserted, as most Chinese people are still too drunk or too hungover to play. It was insanely cold, hovering around zero Celsius, my hands and the tips of my ears were numb and we had a few game-ending injuries due to stiff muscles. We started 6 vs 6, but played 5 vs 5 at the end. I scored a goal, a very rare occurrence.

On the way back I listened to a history podcast about Pierre Gauthier de La Vérendrye, a French-Canadian colonist who went all the way to the Rocky Mountains in the mid-1700s to open up fur trade routes and try to find the Western Ocean. I love those stories of pure badassery. I had listened to half of it by the time I finished my half-hour bicycle commute, by that time La Vérendrye and his band of coureurs des bois were embroiled in guerilla wars with their Algonquin allies against the Sioux, and the foolish man was trying to teach them to fight in lines in open fields like “civilized” people. Though he was born in Canada, he went to France as a young man and fought in numerous battles in Italy and Flanders, getting shot and hit with sabers. I imagine his Native American friends were scratching their heads at that very strange idea.

I got home, took a steaming hot bath and called it a night after a late meal and a few YouTube videos. No beer; I’m not supposed to drink until the next Covid dose. Now that’s a bummer.