Chapter 165

I slept in quite a bit and had a hangover, such is life. Lunch was a spread of reheated food from yesterday and MIL’s delicious signature bone-in pork ribs, and they gave me a black beer they bought from a neighboring store, some old guy started a tiny microbrewery. It was pretty good, like a lot of German-inspired Chinese black beers it had a bit of a chocolate taste.

I sat around writing my diary and listening to Clown World news. The world leaders got together in England for a G7 conference with climate change as the main focus, and of course they are massive hypocritical cunts. A huge number of trees were cleared just so they can have their circlejerk in a scenic spot, and UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson flew there in a private jet though he could have gone by train or by car. Classic shit.

Then I watched the two UFC championship fights. Brandon Moreno was impressive as hell, I remember him as a middling contestant on The Ultimate Fighter Mexico and then he lost a few fights on the big show, which got him released and eventually brought back. You’d never know that watching his Saturday performance, it was flawless, and he dominated the God Of War, who seemed like he was destined to be champion for a long time, with his well-rounded skillset and ridiculous power at flyweight. Moreno ruined his shit and it couldn’t have happened to a better man. Then Israel Adesanya dismantled Marvin Vettori, stopping all his takedown attempts and piecing his up on the feet with his sublime striking.

In the afternoon the four of us went to the university campus where the in-laws work and where they used to live, they had errands to run so the girlfriend, the dog and I walked around and went to the tall tree under which the old family dog is buried. Then we went to a big glitzy shopping mall to meet friends for dinner, we were there one hour ahead so I went skating and the girlfriend went shopping. I hadn’t been skating since February of 2020 when I was in Quebec for the holidays and I love skating, I used to go quite a bit when I lived in Hefei. I paid, got my rental skates and waited for the Zamboni to finish. One guy put up a plastic fence to separate a small section of the ice for a hockey class, and while the small kid was getting dressed, I excitedly went to the coach and asked if I can play a bit. He lent me his stick and I skated in circles, dribbling a puck and shooting goals. Fuck I miss it. I’d give 10 000 yuan for hockey to be back in my life. After a few minutes the one-on-one hockey class started and I went back to the general section to skate laps for about an hour.

Then we had dinner at the Tex-Mex restaurant overlooking the skating rink. Some of my old coworkers joined, that used to be our Friday night hangout, we’d get the big table and drink tons of margaritas and rant. The girlfriend and I shared potato peels, a burrito and a big sizzling plate of beef fajitas. I thought maybe I ordered too much, but my Texas buddy said “No such thing as too much Mexican food!” and he’s 100% right. We had a great dinner and then went to the fancy imported supermarket on the ground floor of the mall. It was close to 9 o’clock at that point but the mall was still packed, with all this upper-middle-class flexing its consumerist muscle. It’s hard to imagine at times that Hefei used to be a third-worldy city, it took an astronomic leap in the past decade.

We got road beers and walked the half hour home. A great day.