May 26th Some semblance of normality returned, well for half a day at least. The plasterer would not be back before this afternoon and the rest of Window Man’s teams must have been busy elsewhere. Ideally, we should have taken Donald out, it’s been a while, but as I only finished last week’s post this morning, we were a little late for that. We took a #2 bus to Lizard Alley instead hoping that we could find some for Huan to see and me to photograph. I reserved this panorama for the first and thus the thumbnail of the week.
Huan tried to murder me by having me contort myself to try and snap this fellow.
Let’s have another panorama where the river bends away from town.
Huan found another lizard so I did my duty.
Last night it was maybe the lizards having fun, today it is a pair of insects. Right next to them was a grasshopper just minding its own business.
At the end of the riverside walkway we headed back up the main road, not quite in the middle though, we took the shaded area in front of the old army base.
This place is called森林湖, Sēnlín hú or Forest Lake to you and I. Pandas have become their new advertising logo, we previously showed you a pair at the other entrance. Why on earth they have a mama dangling a baby off a high pole at this entrance I have no idea!
Sometimes birds will only show us their (American) bootys. This one appeared to be trying to impress another one that we couldn’t see.
Today though we were lucky, these two deserve individual photographs and not collages.
We just happened to be in position to watch a NIO go through the complete battery swap process. Next time we will try and make a video for you. The last frame is showing the total time from beginning to end, almost as fast as filling up an ICE car.
We decided to eat out for lunch today and have sandwiches this evening. Here are our dishes, no complaints from either of us today. Not bad for less than three quid! PS The eggs were all mine but we showed them on both plates and I did give a half to the boss.
What am I doing here? Am I buying some strange soft drink that I do not know the name of? Nope, I am in fact just stopping the door closing on the owner while he stocks his shelves. I do like to do my little bits here and there, bring a smile to people’s faces, including mine.
The plasterer returned after lunch and naps were over so Huan took a few pics, less than normal. I guess she is thinking that we may have too much of the same.
May 27th Much the same as yesterday but instead of plastering the plasterer was sanding. Our morning was free again so went to the local countryside. Yesterday we met a guy who asked why we bought a house here, he was thinking of doing the same and wanted to know if the prices would go up over the next three or so years so that he could make money. If you take a good look through our Blog posts and our photos you will see why we bought our place here. It has nothing to do with the house increasing in value and everything to do with it being a nice home in a wonderful place to live! Rant over. We haven’t taken the Mansions on the Hill route for a while so that is where we went today, passing a butterfly on the way.
Up the hill we went and around the mansions to the irrigation canal.
Over the top we went and headed down to the river passing a damsel fly and an ant or two.
Of course a panorama had to be created.
Having gone down to the river we had to make our way back up again. Look at all those hills and no sign of the boss somewhere in front of me. Was she trying to lose me?
On our way through the village of罗博特, those who know, know, I found a dragonfly.
Huan then found a lizard under a truck, in an easy spot but not so easy to snap. Looking at the second photo we wonder if it may have eggs inside.
Let’s have another panorama, this time of the fields of Luó bó tè village.
We found some of those naked neck chickens again today, this time the little ones. Did you know that they can be prone to sunburn?
Soon we were heading back into town down squirrel alley, no squirrels though.
Today we decided to have a light lunch out and then to go out for dinner locally this evening. The bakery was the chosen venue; I suppose you would call these mini bread rolls or finger buns. I wasn’t very hungry so I just had one and Huan had the other two. They were quite tasty and on another day I would probably have all three!
We were home in time for naps before the plasterer returned. Here’s a few snaps from the boss, of the arches first and the other rooms second. When he did the office I escaped downstairs for an iced coffee and a fag!
As mentioned earlier we went out for dinner, locally again, an outside food stall.
We had an ‘everything soup’ each, Huan’s with rice and mine without.
Did we enjoy it? Well, what do you think?
May 28th Today is the seventieth day of dustsheets everywhere but slowly things are getting better. Today the plasterer became the painter.
I went out to buy our lunch, jiānbing.
When
the painter went home for his lunch, he’s a pretty good painter by the way,
much better than we are, then we sat down and had our lunch before naptime. For
those of you in
In the afternoon the painter finished off what little needed doing and then removed the masking tape everywhere. We are quite pleased, even though we know that later in the year we are going to have to repaint the whole apartment to look just as new and fresh.
Huan didn’t want to go far for dinner so we went local. Your mission today, should you choose to accept it, is to translate all these signs from the restaurant wall.
You can also translate these two if you want, the top one is a fish soup for Huan, the bottom one is a chicken dish for me. If you don’t want to translate then I can tell you that the first one is “Old Jar Pickled Cabbage Fish Rice” and the second one is “Braised Chicken Rice”
Did our dishes look like the pictures? Of course not, that would make life very boring.
We did enjoy our dinners even though Huan asked for ice cream after because hers was a little on the spicy side. It was even spicier than the green chillies I gave her from mine.
May 29th One step forwards and two steps backwards. Over a week ago the shower door was going to be delivered within two days. Two days ago it was going to be tomorrow or the day after. Today is the day after and still no shower doors. If Window Man doesn’t know the answer to one of our questions then why on earth doesn’t he just say that? We were both feeling a bit fed up and tired this morning so it was a #2 bus and a walk home.
We tried to get some photographs of wee beasties but it wasn’t very easy.
Scenery doesn’t move so is much easier to capture and we still enjoy showing you where we live. Here are two views going home down river.
You’ve seen it before, here it is again, Bob trying to explain that he is neither American nor Russian and is fact from the UK. Huan does take ‘flattering’ photos of me!
And here I am again this time with a dragonfly that I could not point the camera at!
Knowing full well that the shower doors would not arrive this afternoon we decided to dine out for lunch and to have sandwiches this evening. Here are our lunches, Huan has more than enough rice, I have none, but I do have tatties under my eggplant.
May 30th Message from Window Man, the shower doors will arrive this afternoon. That meant we were free to go the market. First though, the boss had a job for me, to replace the old tap on the kitchen balcony ready for the new washing machine.
We then took the #2 bus and started walking back home. Huan found a lizard and took a fairly decent photograph of it. I was across the road at the time talking to four legged friends.
The market was easy enough to navigate today although there was nothing to photograph.
I spotted this kitty from a distance, a very worried kitty that I couldn’t get any nearer to. Perhaps it is homeless and hungry, although it was in a building square.
We bought lunch on our way through the general market; this was the guy who made it. I forgot to take photos while were at his stall. In case you are curious, they are scallion pancakes, very good with egg salad, cucumber and tomato.
On the last stretch it was my turn to find a subject, a pretty little caterpillar.
Did you expect Window Man to turn up this afternoon? I didn’t and I wasn’t disappointed. As usual there was no message or phone call to explain why. Going out for dinner is becoming quite boring, today was another visit to a spicy food place where we each asked for ;not spicy’. Here is my very own personal waitress carrying my dish.
And here are our two dishes. I managed not to take so much this time!
May
31st Huan sent Window
Man a message this morning, the shower doors would not be here today. How nice
it would be just to be told the correct information the first time! We decided
that we could not delay my
Dumplings were our lunch choice; these were on the table near the door.
And here is one of the very busy preparation ladies.
And this was our lunch, one bowl of wonton soup for Huan; both the other plates were for me. The toasted flour thingies were very nice with crushed garlic sauce on them. The only thing that would have made them better, at least for me, would have been a thick layer of salted butter.
On the way home we found another lizard, a skink this time. This is my attempt.
As
we are off to Haikou tomorrow I spent the afternoon emptying my ‘drama’ shelf.
At the tender age of seventy six I doubt very much that I will be acting again,
or directing or doing any backstage work so someone else may as well have the
benefit of the books and scripts. Dr. Tim’s wife does after school drama at her
son’s school in
Back home it was synchronism time; get the laptop ready for our trip up north. Would you believe it, my comms would not work and had to be uninstalled and then reinstalled. Google was then synchronised, my Chinese pages were brought up to date, email checked etc. Facebook did not work of course, I am banned everywhere, I must have been a very bad boy indeed. Strangely enough, Instagram works on the laptop; all I had to do was enter a new password. Entering that new password on the desktop magically brought Instagram back there too. At least I have a few different ways to talk to family now.
All that was left was to transfer updated files from the PC to the laptop, especially since tomorrow is Monday and that is upload the post day. A long time ago, with my old laptop, I had everything networked but I never succeeded with the new one. Lots of use of external drive needed and copious amounts of copy and paste. Still, I got it all done, I think…
June 1st Up at the crack of dawn is what they say, we were up before that!
We had time for breakfast before seeing the doctor, and I thought that, for being up so early and for driving so far, I deserved a coffee and a fag.
After breakfast we delivered a big pile of scripts to Dr. Tim’s office for his wife to use. No photos of that, we just forgot all about it. Back in our part of the hospital the nurses wanted to do their routine checks. They did my height and weight but having seen me coming in with our luggage they told me to rest before taking my blood pressure.
Huan forgot to take a photo of my BP, it was pretty good, 128/72. The staff then told us that we were free for the morning so we set off for a walk.
We hadn’t gone very far, about five hundred metres in fact, before we got a phone call telling us to come back, we had things to do. First was a CT scan.
From there it was off to another building for an ECG where we met a wonderful Pakistani family but we were in and out too quickly to get to know anything about them. Their children speak four languages though, English, Chinese, Urdu and Pashto, put us all to shame!
I had no idea what was next in my hectic schedule, it turned out to be lunch, to be eaten back in our room. Huan also insisted of taking a photo of me carrying water, I know not why!
Naps came easily today; I found it difficult to wake up for my monthly bobbyfilla.
And then we were free until tomorrow. After wasting a lot of time on a computer problem that seems hard to believe, we decided it was time to go out again. Huan found a lizard and I found a view. She did well.
After a little shopping, a new travel cup for the boss, we found a restaurant we hadn’t been in before. In fact, we found two but I guess one dinner is enough.
Dinner wasn’t bad, guess who couldn’t wait to get stuck in!
And there we are, the end of another week. Mind you this will be posted late, too tired for now. Tune in next week to see what my test results tell me and also how Window Man is doing with finishing off our apartment. See you then!
