Dong Qiangqiang's Story of Leaving Germany

Chapter 1137. Silent Flood

"Then I'll tell the landlord later." Seeing Li Lei's miserable face and weak voice, Dong Qiangqiang was a little confused as to whether the other party was pretending to be sick, so he asked tentatively, "Have you seen a doctor?"

"No, it's not worth seeing a doctor for such a minor illness. The registration fee alone is fifty (Euros) for a quarter, not to mention the medicine. Cough cough, forget it, I'll just bear with it and it will pass." Li Lei said while coughing hard.

Dong Qiangqiang thought that if Li Lei had a doctor's diagnosis sheet or something like that to give to the landlord, he would be able to explain it quickly. But when he heard that the other party complained about the expensive registration fee, he knew that he had never thought of seeing a doctor at all. Since he couldn't afford it, either he really thought it was too expensive, or he was pretending to be sick when he was not.

"I do have cold medicine, but you haven't seen a doctor yet, and I don't know whether you have a cold or a heat stroke. I dare not let you take it carelessly. If you take the wrong medicine, it will be a big trouble." Dong Qiangqiang said with a double meaning.

"You are such a nice old classmate, but it's just a cold, I can get over it with a little bit of resistance. Hey, do you have anything else to do? If not, I'll go to sleep."

"Then you should go to bed early and go downstairs early tomorrow," Dong Qiangqiang suggested, "it will be hard to change it once you have left a bad impression."

"Hmm." Li Lei hummed twice perfunctorily.

Dong Qiangqiang turned around and was about to leave when he heard Li Lei whispering from behind, "Old Dong."

"Hmm?" Dong Qiangqiang thought, didn't we just say there was nothing else?
"Well, there was a lot of noise downstairs this afternoon. It seems the landlord is hiring someone to install broadband? Do you know anything about this?"

"Didn't you stay at home? How could you hear it so clearly?" Dong Qiangqiang teased him.

"I can see the operator's car from the toilet window. When they are busy, I go to the toilet. I accidentally overhear it while I am peeing. Hey, if the landlord installs it, can we use it for free?"

"It wasn't installed by the landlord. She was just responsible for supervising the construction."

Li Lei's eyes widened. "Oh my god, you are just pretending. But didn't you say before that she was strongly against it? How did you convince her?"

"Don't think about these things if you are sick. Just take a rest and we'll talk about it later." Dong Qiangqiang hurriedly checked his test scores online, not wanting to argue with Li Lei.

"Since you installed it, I'll just say it. I want to use it, too. We'll each have half. How much?"

Dong Qiangqiang waved his hand and turned away.

"Hey, don't go, don't go," Li Lei hurriedly reached out from the door and grabbed Dong Qiangqiang's clothes, "I haven't finished yet."

"We'll talk about this later." Dong Qiangqiang said in an unquestionable tone, and his eyes instantly became unfriendly.

The light in Dong Qiangqiang's eyes made Li Lei's heart shudder. He unconsciously loosened the corner of Dong Qiangqiang's clothes. His tone became timid and he said dejectedly, "The university called me and the interview with the class exemption is scheduled for Thursday morning."

"That's great, congratulations. How's your review going? Have you gone through everything?"

"Don't mention it," Li Lei said with a sad face, "I haven't even finished translating the Chinese book you gave me, and I caught a cold today. There's no hope this time."

"Since you haven't finished reviewing, didn't you arrange another time with the other party when you answered the phone?"

"The other party said that if this time is not suitable, it can be scheduled for September."

"That's it. It'll be fine if you change it."

"But when I answered the phone this afternoon, I was a little flustered, and I didn't hear clearly... I agreed without thinking. After hanging up the phone, I thought for a while before I realized it. When I called again, no one answered. I asked other classmates to help me run the trip, only to find that they were off work. Old boss, what do you think is the right thing for me to do?"

Seeing Li Leishuang lowering his head like an eggplant after being hit, Dong Qiangqiang didn't know how to praise this person for a moment: he dared to agree without understanding what the other party said, and he was completely ignorant and fearless. "If you don't have the confidence to talk to the professor on Thursday, you can only rush over early tomorrow morning. As soon as the office door opens, you should go in and talk to the professor about rescheduling the talk and waiving the class. If the professor doesn't go to school tomorrow, you must set a date for the talk with the secretary anyway."

"Well, okay, this is the only way. Old Dong, um... it's okay for me to go there earlier, but could you please come with me? I'm afraid I'll misunderstand and make a fool of myself again. I won't bother you with other things, but considering our friendship as classmates for many years, you must help me with this..."

Dong Qiangqiang didn't like to hear people begging him for help. Although he didn't like Li Lei, he still accepted the job after hesitating for two seconds.

Li Lei was quite surprised to see Dong Qiangqiang agreed so readily. He hurriedly thanked him and bowed, fearing that he would go back on his word. Dong Qiangqiang was afraid that he would keep nagging, so he excused himself that he couldn't stand the strong smell and had to take a shower, and then he withdrew from the conversation.

He quickly took a hot bath, rested for a while and then told the landlord about Li Lei's illness. The landlord was not surprised that people were prone to illness during the change of seasons, and did not ask for Li Lei's sick note. Instead, he asked Dong Qiangqiang whether he had seen the camera and why the picture was so blurry.

Dong Qiangqiang had been busy since he entered the house, so naturally he hadn't looked around. From the landlord's tone, he seemed unhappy. For some reason, he said a few kind words to appease him before following the landlord into the storage room.

The landlord chose an independent monitoring device with a monitor. He sat in front of the monitor and used the mouse to control the angles of different cameras. The camera had low resolution and a strong sense of grain. The real-time picture was blurry, with occasional freezes and frame drops. Dong Qiangqiang was well aware of the poor parameters of these hardware when choosing the package, and was not surprised by this result. Anyway, the purpose of the camera was not to see how many cloves of garlic were on the kitchen chopping board, as long as he could see the landlord fall to the ground.

He explained to the landlord that the blurry picture had nothing to do with the dirty lens. The landlord was old and was unfamiliar with technological terms such as resolution, pixels, and real-time transmission rate. However, Dong Qiangqiang answered the question that concerned her most very clearly: if the landlord fell down again, Dong Qiangqiang would be able to see it as long as she was not in the bedroom or bathroom. Of course, if the camera's network address, username and password were given to anyone, everyone in the house could remotely see every plant and every move of the landlord.

Looking at the dirty clothes piled up in the washing machine, he contentedly picked up a few bottles of Hongshui wine and went back to the house.

He first took pictures of Hong Shui wine from different angles, and also took pictures of the wine's written materials and receipts. While importing the pictures into the computer, he opened the window wide, and opened the bottle of Riesling that he had dug out of the mud himself in the cool evening breeze. He didn't have a goblet, so he could only casually pour it into a whiskey glass and take a big sip. The chill penetrated into his heart. When he couldn't access the Internet before, he looked forward to being able to access the Internet freely at home every day. Now that his wish has come true, he doesn't care anymore. Looking at the icon of the two small computers connected that flashed in the lower right corner of the computer desktop, he felt that everything was no different from before.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

He quickly opened the university website, and after half a day, only one subject's results were released. The professor's efficiency in marking papers here was unparalleled, and he sighed in his heart.

There are more than twenty unread emails in the mailbox. The person who wrote the most letters is Duanmu, and each email is filled with grumblings about the formal report.

The Wine Queen, whom Dong Qiangqiang was interested in, never replied to his email. No reply meant no hope. He felt sorry about it, but was also glad that he had not told Lao Bai about it.

He did not use any image-editing software to refine the photos of the winery, vineyards and flood wine, but directly sent all the original photos to Lao Bai. At the same time, he went over in detail all the possible points of business cooperation with Le Bai during the afternoon's communication with Peter. He especially mentioned that Le Bai Germany had the opportunity to join the Wine Brewing Association. He even thought of a solution for Lao Bai, who did not want to disclose this matter: the association's membership would not be disclosed on the Internet and could not be found even with a search engine. Once admitted, there would be an opportunity to contact more wine merchants, and the "Wine Road" travel route that Lao Bai had been dreaming of would be just around the corner.

He was exhausted after running around for most of the day, but unexpectedly he felt refreshed after dealing with the emails. He glanced at the student forum, there were no new posts, except Zheng Chunhua reminding students to be careful of various infectious diseases that are very likely to appear after floods, there were only complaints from other students in the same major about the delay in their results. He was relieved to see that he was not an isolated case.

After reading the domestic news for a while, he found that the news related to SARS became less and less, and various reminiscence articles came in one after another. Seeing that SARS has become a complete thing of the past, Dong Qiangqiang felt quite melancholy.

With the inspiration brought by alcohol, he once again immersed himself in the report that Duanmu urged him to report. It was after midnight when he felt sleepy. Before going to bed, he reluctantly opened the website again. It was still the results of one subject. It seemed that the answer would be revealed tomorrow.

He slept soundly and in his dream he was traveling in the vineyards with a domestic tour group and leading the wealthy people to spend a lot of money in the winery. The Hongshui wine worth thousands of euros seemed to be just so-so when he drank it. It was so astringent and tasted not even as good as Sprite.

Before daybreak, Lao Bai called and praised the results and suggestions he had given. Before hanging up, he reminded him, “Don’t sync these photos of the vineyard and flood wine to the Le Bai official website. I don’t want everyone to know.”

Dong Qiangqiang was still asleep, and just as he realized that the other party was praising him, the other party hung up the phone hastily, and then he received the transfer from Lao Bai. To be honest, although Lao Bai has various problems, he has never made any mistakes with Dong Qiangqiang on money, and there is nothing wrong with him.

The long-lost morning light shone into the room through the curtains blown by the wind. Dong Qiangqiang lay lazily on the bed, staring with wide eyes at the floating dust in the air and the solemn tables, chairs, benches, beds, cabinets and walls in the house, all of which were coated with a layer of soft gold. The magpie flying by outside the window broke the tranquility of the quiet yard, and the roosters' biological clocks finally pressed the start button. In such good weather, there should be happy events, he said to himself.

When he finished brushing his teeth and washing his face and walked downstairs, Li Lei was already standing in the middle of the kitchen with a newspaper in his hand. Dong Qiangqiang was in a good mood and greeted both of them politely. Less than a minute after he came downstairs, he could tell from the landlord's face that she was dissatisfied with Li Lei. Not wanting to get involved, he quickly walked into the living room with the heated breakfast.

The news anchor on TV was straining his neck to report that floods across Germany were receding on a large scale, and rebuilding homes had become a new issue facing many German cities, towns and villages.

What Dong Qiangqiang never expected was that a flood in his life was silently pouring towards him.