Spain/China 2023, continuing (21)

[aadler]

Seventh day in China – July 18 Tuesday

Up after 10:30AM. Kevin had messaged us to say he was busy in a different district of the city, so we were on our own for lunch today.

I took Susan over to Baker & Spice for our lunch. We both had something with salmon, mine being with egg and avocado and hers being a kind of open-faced sandwich.

Rest in the afternoon, then Susan found herself dealing with increasing dizziness. She thought it was probably a side-effect of her blood pressure medication, but Mei‑li insisted Kevin take her to a nearby clinic to get checked out. I walked her down to the gated apartment community where Kevin and Mei‑li live (and where Logan and Laura have their own home in an adjacent building), and he wheeled Susan the rest of the way down to the clinic. The staff were quite thorough, eventually diagnosing an inner-ear infection: possibly a carry-over of the bronchial infection she started treating in Spain, possibly something opportunistic that took hold before her system completely recovered.

We had some issues: the Alipay app we’ve been using for purchases — including at lunch — got rejected at the clinic and at the pharmacy, and Kevin had to pay for both. Not encouraging. We went on to the Yins’ home for our standard evening meal. While we were there, Mei‑li got the word that we needed to make a rent payment for our apartment today, which could pose a problem under current circumstances.

Kevin went with us to the office, and it was again found that Alipay wouldn’t go through. He got the idea to see if there was any way to run Susan’s debit card directly … and the manager at that office was able to make it work. His system had a maximum amount it could process at once, so we made four attempts and had three of them go through, for a total of ¥‎7,000 (around $980). That didn’t cover the total, but was nearly half of it and was good for more than our current stay. We’ll see about paying more tomorrow, probably, and eventually it appears we will go over to Hong Kong to pick up some actual cash, since other financial transactions keep being chancy.

Kevin visited with us in our apartment for a bit before returning to his home. Susan found an international help number for our bank, and I put in a call after 8:00PM here (which was 8:00AM Eastern time in the U.S.). The bank representative looked through our transactions, and noted that I had checked and approved some that had been marked as questionable; once those processed, she said, the Alipay app should stop balking. Then, about half an hour later, we got an automated inquiry from the same bank, and I recognized the transactions listed there as well.

Susan took an early bedtime. I went down myself somewhat after 10:00PM.