Nicholas Quirke was troubled by the news he woke to on 7 January 2021 of Trump supporters storming congress after being incited by the President. This seemed a clear indication of the west appearing to be in an utter shambles The predominance of China had long been predicted but he had not expected to see the birth of it in his lifetime yet from where he was situated it looked like the dominance of Western Culture was truly in deep decline and the image of Trump as Nero, fiddling while Rome burned came to mind. The Asian spectators of this chaos were raising eyebrows and hoping the mania might continue and the implosion be complete. The horror of the scenes he witnessed and the news of Covid ravaging London and the UK was terrible to him but they quickly dissipated on discovering the disappearance of his left AirPod. It was nowhere to be found and he could only link the abandonment of its home to dropping the case as he entered the building the previous evening laden with parcels. This meant that his planned trip to Joy City in Xidan was going to now include purchasing a new earpiece from the Apple store as well as looking for gloves and his Moscot sunglasses. The temperature was recording as Minus 17 degrees but with the need to replace his loss he was prepared to brave the cold which once again was belied by the blue winter sky. It was bitterly cold and he the cold was again tearing through his gloves and freezing his fingers as well as rendering his GoPro inactive. It was a blessed relief to get inside the mall and the Apple store where the were happy to help him replace his goods at the cost of 705 Yuan. He ended up having to wait as an engineer needed to link the device and that took over an hour.He was happy to wait as it was warm but it meant that once he was through, tried Uniqlo for gloves and found it closed, moved onto Muji and ended up buying a shirt in the sale, he could not be bothered to walk the 5 minutes to Lafayette Mall to look at sunglasses. It was also too cold and he already had to call in at Walmart to buy some batteries and some items for a Chinese style curry for tomorrows lunch and he really just wanted to be indoors and out of the freezing air. Once inside he pledged not to go out again made himself comfortable for the remainder of the day and worked on his blog, script, and Mandarin. The day indoors would not be complete without a film and the quirky Taiwanese rom com, ‘My Missing Valentine’ was a heartwarming treat to keep warm to before the onset of slumber which, took him into the next day. His agenda for 8 January 2020 revolved around his teaching which was not until 4pm. He had intended once preparing and cooking a lunch of curry for Peng and a clear soup for himself was out of the way to go for tea before work but he got embroiled in sorting out some flat issues including a new insurance policy. This proved to be something of a headache as the cover he previously had was not satisfactory and trying to avoid the imminent renewal seemed to be an impossible task. There was no time for tea and he went straight to the school and arranged the upcoming lesson. The boys had done their homework which ensured a smooth transition into the study period. Being completely familiar with the English language he was not used to thinking of the structure of words and when it came to ‘air’ ‘are’ and ‘ear’; sounding exactly the same when conjoined with a letter or two he was surprised by the quirk and even found himself getting confused when they were finding words that contained these three differing but same sounds. There was no film that evening and other than watching the end of the final episode of The Crown’ he found alternative ways to enjoy himself, including using the massage chair too relieve his cold aching bones. It meant an early night and as the chill seemed now to permeate the walls used an additional heater to aid the journey into sleep.