Saving a tailspin

This was being such a bad day...

I ran out of money. The job I had today didn't have the cash on hand they should have had to pay me. It was ridiculously humid. Then it rained. I went to Sanlitun for cheap beer and food. I remembered why I hate Sanlitun so much. I was serially stood up by all my friends. I encountered the worst run of 'China bad service' experiences I've ever known in such quick succession. Even my old faithful bar let me down - owners away, no regulars in, barman entertaining the tourists....

But then.....

My dearest friend came through (if only for an hour).

And I discovered the cheapest Long Island Iced Tea in town (not very good: the barman didn't know how to make it, didn't know how to read the recipe, started substituting vodka for most of the other ingredients - but it was strong, and only 30 kuai).

I met one of Beijing's only radio hams. (Wow! They still exist in the Internet age? It hadn't even occurred to me!)

And then I got an out-of-the-blue late-night phone call from a delightful young woman (what is it about Eastern European accents that's so sexy?) who has rescued The Chairman's mobile phone from where he dropped it in a puddle of beer on the floor of some divey bar or other. (It's really not the titillation of the charmingly accented voice that lifts the spirits; it's the kindness and decency of the gesture of going to that much trouble to try to reunite a cheap mobile phone with its negligent owner. We don't get many such moments in Beijing, and we must cherish them.)

And suddenly I feel in much less of a mood-slump than I was at 8pm. Such is life. Such is Beijing bar-crawling. I suppose that's why I'm still here....