Kuldeep and Richardson Leaving

Up at 6:55, slept intermittently until 9:15. Got up and showered, put on my steroid cream that Dr. Shepard gave me yesterday, wrapped my right arm (the evil looking one) with the ace bandage I had until today been using for my foot, and got dressed for work. This day promised to be miserable.

My cab driver took a wrong turn, or at least missed the convenient turn, which sparked a 20-minute argument about which way to go. He was under the impression I just wanted to go to the subway stop GuoMao, not to a building next to it-- I told him where I wanted to go and he managed to find his way to the back of my building, almost as close to the door as one can get at from the other side. Good enough, I guess.

Work. Left at 4 at the insistence of my co-workers because my arm hurt like crazy and it was seriously impeding my work ability. Besides, my arm felt and looked like I'd been practicing Kung Fu with the Human Torch.

Had a failed attempt to meet up with Michael and Mingwei; when I finally caught up with them via phone they were well on their way to Mingwei's house to go swimming. I would join but I don't think my poison ivy'd arm, which looks like I fought a cheese grater, would go over well with that.

Hung out in the hostel until 6:45 when Maya, Cole and I went to get dinner at the Kro's Nest, as today is Tuesday and on Tuesday's the Kro's Nest has free beer for however long a keg of Tsingdao Beer lasts.

Since we showed up at 7, an hour after free beer started, we picked up only 3 free pints each - poor us. While we were just drinking, I pulled out a deck of cards to play with but, like at so many places before, Kro's Nest doesn't allow "poker," even though we were playing a friendly, non-gambling game. Gambling is very illegal in China, and I guess it's easier to say "no cards" than to differentiate between gambling and not. Instead of cards, then, we were given three penguin outlines, one per person, and a box of crayons to color him in. We enthusiastically took part in the children's diversion, despite a combined age of 69 years old. Besides, it wasn't much of a child-oriented distraction -- the penguin in the picture was holding a tray with a bottle and a can of beer, and was smoking a cigarette. China.

We got a half BBQ Chicken and half Meat Lovers pizza, and enjoyed our free beer.

After, we spent a little while in the hostel before Cole, Mia and I left to meet Mingwei and Michael at Smuggler's.

We arrived and Michael had brought his 17-yr-old brother, Eric (who's FAR cooler than Michael is), and Mingwei had brought Kelvin, the Kelmeister, the Kelvinator, or Kel (a friend of Mings'). The seven of us spent a good two plus hours drinking our fill of cheap beer and fun conversation.

A little after midnight we all departed and went our separate ways. Michael leaves tomorrow, but if I succeed in going to the Expo in Shanghai the weekend of August 6th I'll meet him there. If not, I'll be living with him this year at School, so I'm not exactly distraught over the parting.

Cole and Maya and I took a very amusing taxi home, where the cab driver, amongst other things, told us he was from Beijing USA, not China. He did teach me to say U-Turn, though - Diao(4) Tou(2).

Spent the next two hours with Kuldeep and Alex at the hostel. It was Kuldeep's last night here tonight. We played pool and foosball - I beat him in our last game. It was a win for the ages -- or at least until we somehow find ourselves together and at a foosball table again...

At 2 I bumped into Paula, who was taking care of Laura who'd gotten too drunk and had woken up BaoBao - the cute tiny puntable dog the hostel has whom I play with almost every day - to play with him against his will. Paula and I chatted for a bit but I was tired and my arm was hurting, so I went upstairs.

Around 2:05 I slept.