This time last month Tress Kiddo and I were on the highways outside of Hangzhou, in the province of Zhejiang in China. We left the city of Hangzhou early in the morning and was headed to Haining where the Qian Tang river was to undergo a very interesting phenomenon resulting in tidal waves. Thousands of tourists cramp along the banks of the river every year to witness this annual occurrence. It was supposed to be a spectacle and many in our group had made this trip to China mainly to see this. We came for a holiday and spend time with family but to these folks, the Qian Tang river tidal waves was supposed to be the main event.

There was only a small problem however – our bus driver. The little twerp decided to take a short cut and the usual 1½ bus ride ended up taking almost 6 hours and we still couldn’t find the river. It probably would not have taken that long had we surfed on the river to get there. We must have travelled on every inch of the highways circling around the city of Hangzhou and the detours and u-turns meant we saw a great deal of the highways and toll booths of Hangzhou but there was no river in sight.

The poor tourists in the bus were mostly elderly folks – mainly friends of Tress’ parents who were also subject to the merry-go-rounds – which compounded the problem. I know for a fact that with age, the bladder weakens. A stressed and panicky bus driver however, tends not to be aware of elderly passengers’ bladder problems. Some passengers began screaming for the driver to stop, threatening violence if he didn’t. I myself was ready to empty into any container I could lay my hands on.

We finally stopped at a toll plaza. The passengers made age defying sprints to a building next to the toll plaza, practically crying. We soon found out that the building was useless to us. It had only one toilet and there were about 20,000 old folks all critically needing a leak at the same time. The women queued up for the one and only toilet and the men busied themselves creating a dozen new ad hoc ones behind the building. I was one of those standing with our legs apart and swaying away, making sure we were not facing the wind. The initial cries accompanying the release slowly turned into laughter. The humour revealed itself only after the pressure is released, as always. We were more than happy to create our own tidal waves and weren’t the least interested, at least at that moment, in the QianTangRiver.

We gave up the adventure. We also gave up the driver. We made our way around Hangzhou and visited the city’s attractions with the help of another driver. We did get around to seeing the tidal waves the next day (with a different driver) which as a bit of an anti-climax. The story of the previous day however, was already created and it had nothing to do with the famous Qian Tang river or its tidal waves.

Rooney’s departure looks like a certainty now. If and when that happens it will leave a hole in the United team the size of a hangar. No one comes close to being a possible replacement. Of the remaining current squad, Nani and Berbatov are probably the most talented but neither comes close to being an intimidating and fearful presence in the opposition final third. If Scholesy doesn’t play, there is probably no one else who can whack one of those raking passes cross field to catch the opposition totally off-guard. This means SAF would almost certainly have to buy anew come the January transfer window. Karim Benzema has been tossed around as a possible candidate but he has a terrible reputation work ethics wise, which would be a problem in the United set up. I guess this will again be a good episode to flush out those glory hunters and leave United to be supported by genuine football enthusiasts as opposed to mindless celebrity. It will certainly test the pedigree of SAF yet again. This test will be a stiff one, by all accounts. Maybe SAF will start to think age has finally caught up and he should at long last, put his feet up.

We have now lived in our current home for three years. 20 Oct 07 was when we first moved in. I remember simply by looking at my past blog entries – that’s the advantage of keeping a blog. I mentioned this to Kiddo yesterday morning and she said we should celebrate. It sounded fun and Tress was in for it so we went to our favourite little Thai restaurant not far from our home last night and had a nice little dinner. The last time we went there a waitress messed with a very good bottle of wine I brought with me and left pieces of cork swimming in that precious bottle. I had to bring it home to put it through a sieve – it changed the character of the wine but at least it was save, somewhat. This time around, I was running late so Tress got a very ordinary bottle – one that I had already opened but didn’t finish it in a hurry. It tasted just as ordinary, good food and great occasion notwithstanding. I barely made my way through that one glad and brought home the remainder, still unfinished. When we got home I made us some “Pu-Err” Chinese tea which was eminently more enjoyable than that very ordinary red. I put my feet up as I sipped the wonderful tea. I must be ageing although no where quite as badly as SAF and I certainly have no Rooney-type of issues.