While Jacob gets slaughtered at ping-pong in Cuba , life goes on as normal in 106 .John works, Florence works ,I work and then we sit down to dinner with our Taiwanese students . We start off full of questions ,where have you been today , what have you seen , what did you buy at the shops , what did you have for lunch etc etc ? ( to them ,not each other ,we’re not living on Walton’s Mountain )..and then we give up .Conversations are hard to maintain ,when there’s only you talking .Then later on it’s bedtime …and they leave their big light on all night .I work with a Taiwanese guy, and he put me right on the food -they do NOT eat cold food ( explains why the salad on the first day was not such a hit ), but even he was puzzled by sleeping under a bright light ,I can’t even bear it if there’s a chink of light under the door
My flatmate used to have nyctophobia and he slept with his light on . but he ate potato skins ,apple cores and the mushy end on the end of a cucumber