A Plethora Of Progress

May 12^th So we start a new week still confined to barracks which means I have to find a photo to us for the thumbnail. How about a different view of last night’s little island walkway? This view includes the ‘Observation Deck’ from where the people can observe our apartments! That’s not the real purpose of course. We are fairly sure that music will emanate from that platform at times so it’s a good job our new windows are much more soundproofed than the previous ones.

“What about the workers?” “What about the workers, indeed, sir.” I of course am talking about our window workers, some of you may be ole enough to remember where the original quote came from, Peter Sellers. With all the kerfuffle in the UK that’s what came to my mind as I started this paragraph. I found it here - https://labourlist.org/2015/08/what-about-the-workers/ Anyway our workers turned up, much less noise, at least to start with.

I lost the boss for quite a long while. It seems that she went to the maintenance office to complain about bird’s nests somewhere above us, by the ninth floor windows, under the eaves. The eighth and ninth floors already have droppings on their windows. Good call Boss Lady!

Soon the noise started up again, and I started getting worried. Why were long lengths of our window panels being cut along their lengths? Surely that should not be necessary.

I was so worried that I found the window manufacturer’s website complete with phone numbers and web contact details. https://www.himolonwindows.com/ You can check them out if you also wish to have new windows fitted, wherever you are in the world. I asked Huan to call them or to call Window Man. She was very reluctant to do so I used the web contact form giving them our order number, explaining the problem and including the information about the delay. Straight after lunch Window Man appeared. While I had not received a reply, the factory had in fact got in touch with him. He was here to set my mind at ease, which he sort of did. Let’s hope that all goes smoothly from here on in. Work continued on the bedroom balcony.

There is one frame in amongst that lot which shows Window Man working in the living room. One of the other workers was busy in the second bathroom too.

That was it for the day. How do we two, who don’t actually have any work to do, end up feeling so worn out at the end of every day? If Huan had suggested take out I would not have argued at all. However, we do need real food at times so out we went.

May 13th Today was much quieter although the worker bees were still buzzing around all over the apartment. Here they are fitting the glass into the kitchen balcony frames.

And this set of photos show the anchoring of all three small windows, the two bathroom ones and the small one in our bedroom.

Rubber seals were being fitted all over the place; they don’t half make a big improvement to sound reduction. No photos of that being done though. Instead here is the destruction of the second bedroom windowsill.

Fly screens were next, I thought they might reduce the light by quite a bit, I was wrong.

In the afternoon I escaped for a while, ostensibly for a bit of peace and quiet and a walk. What I really wanted to do was visit my bank and draw out a little top up for Huan’s, I think the bill may be more than she had thought it would be. On the way I passed the first car made by Xiaomi, the people who also made our phones. It’s rather nice isn’t it? Please someone give me money!

Huan was happy that I also found our usual wall lounge lizard.

I took the opportunity to go and buy more soft drinks for the workers, baps for us, and some cake for our afternoon coffees. I also bought our dinner for today, a whole chicken and two portions of chips. There are no photos of that, only of the Baijiahui escalator.

More pleasure ensued for Huan when I found another lizard outside the nurses’ college.

When I got home the last work for today had been completed, the old PVC balcony windows on both sides of the house had been removed.

All that was left for me to do was to do the photo work and the Blog work before settling down for some more ‘Death in Paradise’. I do believe that part of the reason it is so popular must be the music, reggae is always so bouncy and happy.

May 14^th Doing my Chinese studying with the sound of a pneumatic drill is not so easy! The first job just happened to be in the office where the computer sits.

‘Big Man’ continued with the living room window sill.

‘Quiet Man’ meanwhile was still busy fitting rubber seals everywhere.

Someone was supposed to come and measure up for our new window sills this morning. After lunch someone else was supposed to come and waterproof the two balconies and the window sill areas prior to continuing with our tiling work. Nobody turned up!

Huan had duties to attend to this evening, depositing money in her bank, paying our annual internet bill, checking her Taobao account balance etc. Dinner was in a small hole in the wall in town, a very clean place though.

Huan chose Hainan noodles, I had steamed dumplings, or should I say bāozǐ. One was meat and the other was green beans, I must say both were very tasty, well worth a repeat visit.

Finally we enjoyed a sunset on the way home; sorry it’s such a poor picture.

May 15^th Disappointment can come so quickly! Today we waited for someone to come, for anything to happen, all to no avail. Our original tiling team will not be available for another week, the window sill measuring team will come after lunch, windows can’t be fully completed until balconies and window sills are finished. More delays, not really what I wanted to hear. Just after lunch a new tiling team arrived, all instructions had to be reissued. The new team are not as young and laid back as the old team; I am not feeling so confident.

We had almost given up for today when the window sill measuring guy turned up. He measured four windowsills; Huan only took photos of three.

We went out in a better frame of mind for dinner. While we were waiting I gained a friend.

For dinner Huan ordered wonton soup and I had 鱼香肉丝, Yú xiāng ròu sī a.k.a. fish flavoured shredded pork. I was most impressed, I haven’t eaten Yú xiāng ròu sī for a long time and I enjoyed every last morsel of this dish.

I suppose I told a little lie up above, I didn’t eat every last morsel. I saved a couple of pieces of the pork for my friend; he had been sitting patiently at my side all through dinner. Don’t worry; I didn’t eat with the chopsticks after he did!

Baijiahui was our next port of call, a little shopping was needed and the old man needed a leak. The translation is far from perfect, but you can get the idea. 贴近文明 靠近方便, Tiējìn wénmíng kàojìn fāngbiàn - Closer to Civilization, Closer to Convenience.

On the way home we stopped off to buy tomorrow’s lunch, we like a change from sandwiches now and then. This one is called牛肉饼, Niúròu bǐng, for you and us, beef patties.

May 16^th Happiness returned! The new tiling team were ready to rumble! First the husband prepared the kitchen balcony.

And then together they mixed things up a bit.

Husband then got on with preparing the bedroom balcony.

His next job was to do the first coat on both balcony floors and to use some of the leftover gunk on the walls of both those areas too.

This was the scene when they broke for lunch. Unlike the last team they said they would be back later on today to continue the work. It’s pouring with rain outside so fingers crossed that they can still make it here and also do what they want.

The rain didn’t ease off early enough but the husband came back for a look see. The balconies were too wet to be worked on today so he prepared the windowsills instead.

What about us? Well when he went home we decided to stay in and have a sandwich.

May 17^th We had a surprise in store for us this morning, the wife of the first tiling team appeared. She had come to do the bathroom grouting. My suspicion is that the new team didn’t want to be responsible for half a job that they didn’t start. Anyway, she got down to it and Huan took pictures of the process. I took the ‘finished for now’ picture.

The husband of team two arrived to do the waterproofing of the balconies and window sills.

Here are the two balconies prepared for tomorrow, or the day after depending on drying progress.

Next he did the window sills.

We have one more pre-lunch photo, the bathroom after Huan had cleaned off the excess grout.

Out for lunch we went but first I needed to top up some of my heart medication.

Neither of us felt like a long walk so we found a little café, I had fried rice.

Huan found a wee bug on the way home; I was too full to eat it though.

No further work was planned for today; our naps were both deep and long! All that was left was to go out for dinner which was taken at the Hong Kong restaurant.

May 18^th Good morning for the last day of this week’s post. The tilers came again today, first they prepared the surfaces.

Then they got on with the bedroom balcony.

It’ll do but don’t use a magnifying glass!

The kitchen balcony was next.

This appeared to go a little easier; the errors are from me creating a panorama.

By now we were fast approaching dinner time and the window sills turned up.

I went out to buy takeaway beef burgers for the overseer and myself plus another half a dozen coffees for the workers needs tomorrow. When I came back three of the window sills had been done, for some reason the smallest of all has to wait until tomorrow.

At the end of this week we are two exhausted teddy bears, fed up to the back teeth with construction noise and dust but, we are also very happy with the progress. Stay tuned for next week’s episode when hopefully all of the minor details will also be complete. There are a couple of jobs on hold for a while but life should ease up considerably. As always, remember to click to enlarge, click to comment, click to subscribe or just click for fun! C U next time!