Summer nihao!

I stepped out this morning and it was cloudy and windy and rainy. Scottish summer, in short.

By lunchtime it had transformed into blazing hot sunshine, the sky a brilliant blue, the trees a gay green. As we had an exam that finished early, I managed to get half an hour perching on the steps in the sun before I had to go meet Vivien for lunch. One thing I've noticed with her is that before we almost always spoke English but now we only speak Chinese. Might I have made progress?

I went to the Shangri-La hotel to check out their desserts for Redstar. Normally when I do this, I breeze up at the restaurant with a friend and it's all relaxed. With the hotel I had to pretend to be a proper food critic. They served up something they called "raspberry" and something with apricots and mascapone. The raspberry thing was various mousses on top of a crispy base- note for when making something similar- walnuts in base an excellent idea. The rest was uninspired. As for the apricot thing, they hadn't let it defrost properly. As they are so expensive, they don't get ordered very often so are kept frozen ready to use...

The PR lady asked when the article would appear, I speculated July and she got very agitated. She wanted it for June but that doesn't look likely...

The internet in our flat had died which meant we had to deal with tradespeople. Or rather, I did. A man came to the flat. We agreed there was no internet. We agreed the rest of the building had no internet. As to what we agreed after that, I have no idea. But now we have internet. But I may have promised my kidney.

I was also randomly rung up by someone cold calling. I answered the phone in Chinese ("WEI NIHAO") and was given a stream of what I'm sure was very interesting information.

"Erm, I don't understand"
"...huh?"
"What you're saying, I don't understand"
"...where are you from...?"
"Britain"
"Ah. I'll send you a text"
"yes I think that would be best"

Didn't understand the text either.