Nicholas Quirke was looking out at the teeming rain on 18 November 2020, described in China as ‘Middle scale Rain’ (zhong Yu) and felt reluctant to go outside. Sooner or later though he would have to venture into the drizzle as he was having to teach that evening, having rearranged his timetable to accommodate a weekend away to celebrate his swiftly approaching birthday, launching him into a new decade. The dismal weather meant he was happy to stay in spending the morning in cleaning and doing some work on the film script he was helping to develop with Lun. Somehow, he had agreed to write some dialogue which was proving a little difficult, as getting into the mind of a 16 year old Thai boxer, in fact, any Thai person was not easy. It would need to be translated and he guessed that anything he wrote would not have the colloquial edge that the film needed. However, Lun seemed to have faith in him and helping to shape the story and the scenes were something he was comfortable with. He was however feeling a little restless and found that he was easily distracted by Peng who asked him to review the presentation he was going to be giving for his business. The rain was still persistent by the time he left and he armed himself with an umbrella to combat the damp atmosphere. His transit card ran out of money at the station and he wasted a good 20 minutes trying to reload it. This meant he had run out of time to go to his favoured mall and Tearooms. But he decided to explore close by and found the ultra modern SoHo Mall and a tearooms situated right in front of. It had a fairly chic decor and he knew it wouldn’t be cheap, and paying the equivalent of £6 did feel like he was squandering his hard earned money but when it came with a dish of fruit and other tasty comestibles it didn’t feel like too bad a deal. Although when he finally left he was a little pressed for time, he had a notion that he could take a short cut and to his delight, despite one point where he had to turn back on this tracks, it was the right call and he turned up virtually outside the school. He enjoyed the class and his students seemed to get some satisfaction out of it. It was another evening where he had an online class to attend and he got back swiftly to make sure he and Peng watched the rest of ‘Greenland’, the viewing of which had been suspended the previous night. It was a thought provoking story and put him in the mood for his group discussion class with Terry on ‘Speciesism’. It was a stimulating couple of hours and he was able to hold forth on his own Vegan status. It ran over and it was nearly midnight before his head touched the pillow.







Very impressed that you took a shortcut and didn’t get lost! x
It’s so long ago I had to go back and see what the short cut was. It was great to actually revisit my day. The effort was worthwhile.