An astonishingly short day today but it wasn't my fault. Well, wasn't entirely my fault. Was there work to do in the morning? Even though it was only a few days ago, I actually don't remember. I know that I got out of the hotel room pretty late but I always get out of the hotel room pretty late and being forced to exchange perfectly good biking time for the money that affords me the ability to go biking has been a fairly consistent theme of these past few weeks¹.

Found out from the hotel owner that he's been running this place for more than 10 years now which serves to sufficiently explains why the last gasp remnants of it having once been a KTV simultaneously look like warmed over shit and appear to be high end. Exchanged contacts with him to see if he could find a 'removable from the wall without being destroyed' vintage Coors Light poster² like the one in my room.

Wander my way out of town via the most circuitous route possible. I'm delaying and delaying and delaying as the person that originally said I would have a place to stay in Yangjiang from the 23rd is now saying from the 27th³ and, even if Haikou is technically⁴ open again, it's not the kind of open that would be as enjoyable as continuing to sit this shit out on the Mainland.

I'm 14km from Kaiping. Via my efforts to go anyway but the right way and to intentionally get distracted by everything of the slightest bit of interest, I push it up to more than 20 by the time I arrive. Courier called me this morning to let me know that my package from the American Bakery had arrived and I'm assuming—even though I don't seem to have gotten a message from him with the depot address—that I'll pick up the package and continue onwards.

Silly, silly me.

"Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me".

Bearing in mind that I'm using my non native language with someone who is using his non native language, I try very hard to chalk up communications issues to anything but his being a goddamned fucking moron. However, by the time I actually get my package (at 3:55pm), I have to admit that it's probably because he's a goddamned fucking moron.

There are reasons why 'picking up my mail' has been one of my assistants' tasks for as long as I've had an assistant and those reasons aren't just because I generally can't be arsed to go downstairs to sign for something when I'm home⁵.

From the first phone call "hey, I'm at the depot and, since you've put an obvious public building as your address, I want to check where to actually take your package" (please leave it at the depot and send me the address of the depot) through to "you don't need to go to the depot (because I didn't follow your instructions to leave it at the depot), I have your package with me and I'll come meet you immediately" to the two hours that passed between "immediately" and the package being in my hands, I just wanted to shake him and yell "how hard is it to follow simple instructions??" and that's without getting into the parts where he kept saying"huh", "what", and "can you repeat yourself?"

While I was sitting around on the stoop in front of a closed store (no reason to go to one of the nearby cafes when he was going to be there 'immediately'), I was doing a deep dive into Maps trying to figure out where I should aim for the evening, could they be booked online, did they have a phone number.

And then I realized, the 72 hour validity period of my most recent Covid test would expire at 6:30. Went and ran that errand and was on my way back when Mr. Courier Man—who had last told me that I ought to know that a just shy of 2pm "immediately" meant "a bit after 4pm"—called to ask me where I was. 

It was 3:50 and I was still 5 minutes away.

With lots of dramatic sighing, this had him quite aggrevied.

I signed, went to the café I should have been sitting at this whole time, ordered an iced fruit drink, and paid for a night at the hotel I'd been sitting outside this whole time.

Then, I gorged myself on cookies.

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¹ Encompassing both the previous Covid outbreak that didn't produce more than a handful of articles and the still ongoing one, the current bill to the Haikou Foreign Affairs Office is just shy of 60,000 words.

² Despite my still really really really wanting one of those cloisonne style Rural Safe Electricity Usage mosaics, my sense of style is not so depraved as all that. One of my friends wants it.

³ If I get to Yangjiang and I don't have a place to stay, I'll just continue on to the slowest ever ride down the Leizhou Peninsula 

⁴ Covid tests every 72 hours in order to enter any public venue or use mass transit, most entertainment facilities remaining closed until at least midnight on the 26th

⁵ Part of what made the Incident as horrible as it was was that I thought I was getting a super awesome birthday gift from a friend who had left the country. I have no doubt that the post office called in advance to check "are you there and will you be signing for your mail" at least as much because they knew what I'm like as because the police wanted them to.