Yet Another Needle, Beach Day, Visa Application, Christmas, Night Market

December 22^nd What a lovely way to start the week, more life force removed from my arm. I’m beginning to feel a bit like Eric Sykes!

Huan had an extra practice today, in the town square, so that’s where we went after my arm had been punctured. On the way we passed this sign, can’t believe we’ve never seen it before, it means Wuzhishan of course. I wonder if anyone else sees anything different!

We were earlier than Huan’s singing mates so while we waited I had some breakfast, a baozi and a bottle of coffee, and I was treated to my very own fashion show.

With time to spare still, even after the other singers had turned up, I took a few photos of people ‘relaxing’ in the square. You’ve seen the ‘walking stones’ before, today there was a little boy using them for bicycle practice. He had one of those bikes with no pedals, not that it bothered him, he could fairly shift anyway!

What were the adults doing? Well, see for yourselves. You can even play ‘spot the ball’ with last photo, no prizes though I’m afraid.

In the afternoon we called our printer supplier on Taobao to try and find out why we had air in the pipes from our CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System). He asked us to go through a ‘deep clean’ on the printer maintenance so of course I had to argue with him didn’t I. Turns out he was right, doing a deep clean did fill up the tubes. However, both the printer and the PC still tell us that we are out of ink. The engineer told us that unfortunately that’s just the way it is. There’s a chip in the cartridges that sends this message to the printer display and the computer and there’s no way to prevent it doing that because it’s based on a ‘count of how many pages you’ve printed compared to how many the cartridge says it’s good for’. When I asked how we would know when to refill the CISS he told us to ‘look at the results on the printed paper as we go. Ah well, at least we can print Huan’s music again.

We then had to go back to the hospital and collect my fasting cholesterol blood test results. Looking at them I wonder why we have spent the last few weeks trying to eat more healthily! There isn’t a lot of change in the numbers, some a little up and some a little down.

December 23^rd Up in the morning, out on the job. Work like the devil for my pay. That’s not quite true of course, we were up reasonably early, but not out on the job and I don’t get any pay anyway! Nope, we were off to Sanya, firstly to service the car and then to collect my medical results. The car service was fine, a few minor bits and pieces replaced, the whole job took about an hour. It should have cost us about £104.00 but with our insurance bonus and our discount from last time it only cost us £72.00. I can’t complain at that.

Having a lot of time to spare before going to the medical centre ‘Mummy’ took me to the beach via the shopping mall and Corner’s Deli, and lunch in a cheapo café. The weather was not great but much better than Wuzhishan’s so people were out in force. However, I managed to get a panorama where most of the people are on the ends you can’t see.

Next Huan found a tall dark handsome man that she threatened to run off with and refused to buy me an ice cream. She did let me lick one though!

We found a couple of beachside bars we hadn’t seen before, well worth visiting. Mind you, I was driving so had to stick to coffee while Huan had fresh pineapple chunks. If we hadn’t already eaten then the beach side would have been ideal for that too. Coming up to Christmas we had to pose by Christmas trees didn’t we, especially as ours is not up this year.

Normal trees weren’t enough for us; we had to find blue ones too.

Before leaving the beach, we had to take a photo of dinner. Well, it would probably have been far too expensive for us mere mortals but I wouldn’t mind trying at some time in the future. Mind you, I’m not sure if I’d want it looking at me first!

We picked up the medical results, nothing untoward there, and we were back in Wuzhishan in time for our dinner. “What’s the recipe today Jim?” We decided on individual hot pots, served by a revolving table of ingredients and a half kilo of lamb slices. Yummy!

December 24^th Roused early by Marvin again this morning for our trip to Haikou, visiting the visa office once again. Our plans were thwarted at the very beginning, we couldn’t get our car out, some dummy had blocked us in. Unlike most cars in our neighbourhood he hadn’t left a contact number on his dashboard.

Luckily for us the owner was up and about by half past seven so we weren’t too late setting off. That was our only hiccough of the day and by ten o’clock we were back on the road home having successfully completed the visa application. All we have to do now is wait, and hope.

December 25^th “And so this is Christmas”. Up early again, although not too early, had to make Huan’s Christmas breakfast before she went out for her show. (We’ve lost Christmas Day together again but she has worked hard for this.) As always, it was boiled eggs, this year with German bread, supposedly healthier.

Normally I would have gone with Huan to see the show but today I decided it was better to stay out of the way, for one reason or another. I was ready with her lunch when she came home. In the afternoon she was off to a different place to help them with their dancing, I guess hers must be improving. I walked her and Yu there and then bought double lottery tickets for the weekend, well it is Christmas, and some walnuts for me to snack on with my glass of sherry.

Once home I hopped into the bath with a good book and stayed there until Huan came home, threw me out, topped up the hot water and got in herself.

No cooking today, as our home based Christmas had been effectively cancelled I decided we would go out for dinner. Not only out, but out to the only European style restaurant we have in Wuzhishan for a slap up meal with wine, desserts and Irish coffee. I failed!

When we got the restaurant in question it was full to the brim, nay, it was overflowing with people. We would have had to wait twenty to thirty minutes, joining the queue of people already waiting. Ah well, off we went to try another place that at least has food different to the normal Chinese fare and burger shops, albeit no booze. Would you believe it, that was chock a block too! We were then reduced to burgers or cheapo restaurants until I had a brainwave. “Let’s try the frog place” I said. Huan agreed so here we are, sat at our table, frogs in between us, giving you all a Christmas toast. We hope you received it all right.

It wasn’t exactly what we had planned; in fact it was nothing like what we had planned. However, it turned out to be very enjoyable. As you can probably see we had more than enough food to feed the two of us, it was also very tasty. I had to buy a bottle of wine in order to get us a drink, even that was palatable, definitely good enough for me. We both ate too much, Huan drank almost a glass of wine, which in her case is ‘too much’ and I behaved with only three glasses. If you look closely you’ll see the glasses were small and I wasn’t driving.

Walking home, many children commented about Father Christmas, we still had our hats on. Even some adults were chatting behind their hands. When we passed the local college, almost at home base, we were chased by young ladies. It’s been a while since that happened to me I can tell you. Anyway, they asked my nurse, (a.k.a. SWMBO) and the love of my life if they could have their photo taken with me, en masse. We agreed and here’s one of the results.

December 26^th Onslow strikes again! Yep, I had a very lazy morning, and afternoon. All I had to do was cook the weekend stew and make the lunchtime sandwiches. I did write yesterday’s blog though, so not a complete wastrel.

Huan graced me with her presence after dinner and we had a little walk. I’m glad we did because it turns out there’s a night market alongside the river. It’s been there since 24^th and will stay until 28^th. How people know about these things I’ll never know, we didn’t see any adverts anywhere.

Happiness abounded, as you can see above and I must admit we felt a good vibe too. Not only that, we treated ourselves to some lovely ice cream, not quite up to Mr. Whippy standards but good enough for us.

December 27^th Another slob’s day for me, but with a purpose. I spent most of the day downloading karaoke songs from YouTube so that I can do something for our residents’ New Year show. I don’t think my guitar hand will be ready in time. I found a new software that helps you download from Youtube, it will even accept playlists. Not all can be successfully analysed but then, what can you expect for free. For anyone interested, the software is 5KPlayer. Having downloaded a lot, nearly five hundred songs, I then had to go through and rename most of them to follow my filing system, that was a long job.

Just like yesterday we visited the night market, today it was a planned visit though. Our Xinjiang bread friends had a stall there and we wanted to buy for tomorrow’s lunch. I was far too full for ice cream as was Huan. However, she did have a small tub of stinky tofu so that I could try it. It wasn’t that stinky but I didn’t like the after taste much. I won’t be trying it again!

December 28^th “The best laid plans of mice and men” again. I had planned three walks today, two without Her Ladyship and one with. The first one went by the wayside because I noticed the washing line was full of dry clothes that needed ironing. The second one, which should have been after lunch was also scrapped because the boss decided we were going shopping today instead of tomorrow. She has another show to perform in followed by lunch, I’m invited. That left only one, the joint after dinner walk which I decided to forego, partly because I needed a shower and partly because I was still downloading karaoke songs. There are over six hundred now, the next time it rains I’ll have lots of fun rocking the neighbours!

So, no photos for today and the end of another week. A tourist trip is planned for next week so we’ll see how that goes. Until then, bye bye!

Another Visa Saga, Another Needle, A Ferret, Bob’s Still Alive.

December 15^th Up with the larks, Huan asked if we should pack an overnight bag so I said no, “positive thinking”. I should have listened! We had a fairly miserable drive up to Haikou, through the clouds a lot of the time. You couldn’t see any ‘rain’ but you could feel the water. Here’s what our usual coffee stop looked like.

There was a new display up above the conveniences, quite interesting. I did wonder though why the various ppm figures differed between the ladies and the gents.

Full of optimism we arrived at the visa office only to find out that this year we have even more hurdles to jump. The usual questions were asked about where we live and when I last left China etc. I explained that we lived in Wuzhishan and told the young lady about the file I had prepared. That was of no use at all, she just told me that the fact that ‘we’ own four properties makes no difference because foreigners (moi) cannot own properties in Hainan. She also needed my old passport yet again, why I don’t know. How do they expect me to sneak out of the country and back in on an expired passport with the corner cut off? At least I still have mine, many people won’t, they’ll have binned their old one when they received their new one. The next thing was that, despite not having left the country since 2012, I now need to have another medical. This could not be done today, it’s another office either in Haikou or Sanya and you must be there between 8 and 9 in the morning. Once that is completed it will take three days for the results which I then have to deliver to the visa office. As if all that wasn’t enough, Huan also had to write a letter inviting me to join her in China! It now looks as if we are going to Sanya on Friday for my medical. The plan is to kill two birds with one stone, perhaps even three. The car is due a service and I need to visit my bank to change and withdraw some precious loot.

We were back early enough to go shopping. I don’t normally take any photos when we do that but I felt you just had to see this. Could it be related to ‘Big Bird’ of Sesame Street fame?

No cooking fo either of us today, instead a visit to our friend’s burger shop. She isn’t there anymore but the burgers are. This was our dinner, one burger, one wrap, two chicken legs, a bag of 鸡米花 (Jī mǐhuā) which is small pieces of fried, flour covered chicken, a bag of chips and a cup of hot coffee. We could have had two cold drinks but the weather wasn’t conducive to that. The cost was less than a fiver, and well worth it I would say.

December 16^th Not much to report this morning, Huan went off to play the hulusi and I walked into town to get some passport sized photographs. At least they weren’t “eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs, With circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one”! If you need that explaining I suggest Googling ‘Alice’s Restaurant’. When they do your ID photos here they open and tweak them in Photoshop. I had to ask the young lady, more than once, not to try and beautify me as they were for government use. The end result is still horrendous and I’m not sharing it with you, so there!

Huan came home having spotted a lizard outside the school and taken a photograph of it to show me. Despite the camera on her phone being absolutely useless the photo is not too bad. Some cropping and tweaking has been done with Picasa.

After lunch I was extremely lazy and just sat with the computer not doing a lot of anything. It’s a good job I didn’t go out because the doorbell went at around four o’clock and I opened the door to see three policemen from the area police station. They had come to ask me to sign a form, “Visa Application Interview Service Form” and to apply my thumbprint. We managed to communicate reasonably well with my sub-standard Chinese and the younger policeman’s not so bad English. Again, this is something new on the Visa front.

December 17^th I like Thursdays, I have the pleasure of Huan’s company for my daily walk. You may spot something different in this selfie, yes, I’m wearing a cap. Wearing a cap doesn’t look so good when you’re wearing shorts and sandals so as you can probably guess I’m not wearing those today. In fact I was wearing shoes and socks, a long sleeved shirt and my cords. Who remembers them?

We walked anticlockwise around the river again, stopping to chat to my three and a half legged friend on the way, no photos of him, you’ve seen him before. Today, the water level was quite low so we were able to pop down for a closer look. As you can see, as soon as the water level goes down, the ‘farmers’, who are mostly snowbirds, get busy.

Three snowbirds who weren’t farming were all fishing. Just in case the photo doesn’t make it obvious for you, they are all ladies The one who was sitting was on the phone to her husband telling him to start cooking their lunch while one of the others was saying they’d all be home soon to ‘drink some alcohol’!

Next up is a photo to show you that I could have been a mean dancer, given the chance. I had not seen that the dry path changed to a thin layer of very slippery stuff and as you can see, I almost did the splits. What saved me was reaching up with my left hand, the bad arm, and holding my entire body weight on the railing above us. There was not a lot of pain in my arm but my nether regions were feeling it and also thankful they hadn’t had to stretch any further!

And that was our day, another restful afternoon and evening for me, dancing in the cold for Huan. What do you mean “it doesn’t get cold here”? I’ll have you know it was 14ºC when she went out and will be down to 13ºC later on tonight. We’re not quite ready for water bottles yet but give us a week or two. There is one other picture, the beautification of our road continues. The pavement is finished, our two rows of trees have been planted and the road is in the process of rejuvenation. I had to take the photo today; by the time I get another chance the road will more than likely be full of vehicles again.

December 18^th Rudely awakened at half past five this morning and on the road before six. No coffee or breakfast for me because of my medical today, Huan joined me in fasting in sympathy. We arrived at the health centre in Sanya forty minutes before it opened, sat-nav can sometimes work out well. We were the first there, the office itself was locked.

I say we were the first but someone else seemed to have been there all night.

Despite being first in the queue, we ended being sixth once we got started. Most of the others were Chinese students going overseas and had already completed their paperwork before arriving at the health centre. My paperwork also seemed a lot more complex than theirs. Anyway, off we went on the grand tour. First was an x-ray, taken with my crucifix in my mouth to keep it out of the way, as suggested by the radiographer. Next was my least favourite pastime, another blood test, or several. At least it was only one needle. After that it was off to the more normal stuff, height, weight, eyes and all the rest of it. Downstairs was now complete so upstairs we went, first off for an ultrasound. I still have a fatty liver, there’s a piece of me missing, and I’m not pregnant. From there we moved to the next office for an ECG, I don’t know much about that. The doctor there then ‘allowed’ me to go the little boys’ room and produce the necessary sample, put it through a hatch into the lab and then return to her for the completed paperwork. Downstairs we went then and handed everything in for processing, we have to return next Wednesday at four in the afternoon to collect the results for onward delivery to Haikou.

After a short trip to the bank to be sure my pension was still coming in and to draw out some much needed cash, straight back home to Wuzhishan we went. Huan was back in time for an afternoon dance session leaving me to cook today’s dinner. Details are of course available on request; please send a stamped addressed envelope to…

December 19^th Today’s weather forecast had me ‘shivering me timbers’! We were to expect a maximum of 13ºC and a minimum of 11ºC which is what it was all morning. Despite having lived in Harbin, (sometimes down to -30 ºC or more), and enjoyed it, we find these temperatures a little on the low side to say the least. I stayed in all morning and got on with the stew. This week we bought what we thought was a potato type of vegetable, it was in the same place as normal potatoes, sweet potatoes of varying types and yams. We were wrong.

It turned out to be more like a weak radish or perhaps a turnip. Even after cooking for over two hours it wasn’t soft. Still, I suppose it added bulk of sorts.

After lunch when Huan went back to keyboard practice I took a walk, a desperately needed one. I set off with my hoodie on, flat cap, cords, shoes not sandals etc. To start with I kept my hands in the hoodie pockets. Nobody was wearing shorts today, all were ‘fully dressed’ as it were, some even had quilted coats on. I’d be willing to bet that many also had long underwear, especially the snowbirds. Mind you, they were few and far between this afternoon, I only spotted the odd saxophone player and a group of dancers.

Going through the town I bumped into Father Christmas, quite a few of them in fact. You can see in the second photo that the most realistic one is trying to escape!

Wildlife was also noticeable by its absence today; perhaps they’ve all decided to hibernate this year. Walking upriver I kept my eye on the undergrowth hoping to spot a lizard or two, all I did was almost go a over t when I didn’t see this. Had I been back in the UK no doubt I could have sued someone, if the fancy had taken me. Here they rely much more on common sense and I didn’t use any!

A little further on I was stopped by a gentleman on a small electric scooter, he was trying to sell it to me. The more I declined his sales patter the cheaper it became. Perhaps he nicked it round the corner? Maybe he ordered it off Taobao and decided it was too small, even for him. Eventually I told him I had two feet and didn’t need two wheels, especially two wheels that small. Can you imagine me perched on this driving around the town?

I bet you never knew Huan and I were models did you? This is a sign they created using us as the inspiration and our silhouettes.

Sod’s law, as I reached home the sun showed its face, it had been hiding behind the clouds all day. It had gone again by the time Huan came home though, complaining about how cold it was outside. It didn’t stop her going out to practice hulusi and dancing in our apartment ‘square’ this evening though. I was a coward and stayed in. Checking tomorrow’s forecast, I may well be in all morning again, it’s going to be 10 ºC most of the morning. At this rate we may even see single figures this year!

December 20^th Being a coward I stayed in all morning, and all afternoon! There was enough to keep me busy though. Once Huan had gone out to her keyboard practice I got on with the ironing while listening to (very loud) Christmas music. After a break for coffee it was then into the bathroom to scrub down all the white bits, not mine you dummies! By the time all had been completed the boss was back and ready for her sandwich.

I have no excuses for the afternoon; I just binged on Danger Man and Facebook.

An evening walk was definitely needed today, not too far, only just over seven kilometres. As I often do I guided Huan to where I sometimes see some of my canine friends and I’m glad I did. A new friend was found today, not a dog, but a ferret. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before and certainly never touched one. It was incredibly curious and didn’t mind being handled at all. At least I didn’t end up like Richard Whiteley. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, check out this link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9xHEj3Gk4Q&ab_channel=Coecludd. The third photo is the ferret back in his bed with his dinner outside. I didn’t think he’d eaten anything until Huan pointed out that the frog was missing a leg!

December 21^st The temperature was up today, a glorious 13ºC, so a walk was called for. The first stop was the workshop man, I gave him our old kettle, it still works but it was time for us to have a new one. I also gave him the remote control from the bedroom hi-fi unit; it hasn’t been used for more than twelve years and may or may not work. As usual, he was all smiles and pleases with our cast-offs.

Wandering about aimlessly I ended up at the bap and sausage market, so decided to stock up. Three times on the way home I was queried about the quantity and three times I explained that it was ten days worth for two people’s lunchtime sandwiches. Twice I had to explain why I was in Wuzhishan, being a foreigner and all that and once I had to deny being Russian. I was thinking to myself that after five years how can there be so many people who don’t know me. I guess we must have lots of different snowbirds every year. Anyway, here’s what the shopping looked like, chicken sausages on the left and garlic pork sausages on the right.

Huan came home for lunch and told me she was free this afternoon. Yipee! That gave us time to visit the local hospital and see if I could have my fasting cholesterol checked here in Wuzhishan. As usual we had a hard time in the hospital. The first part was easy, pop up to the fourth floor and check if the local laboratory carried out such tests. They do. Next we had to find a doctor to prescribe the test for me. That was the hard part but we got there in the end. Tomorrow morning, no breakfast or coffee for me, straight to the lab for yet another needle.

Walking round the town to do a bit of shopping we spotted some transport variants, the old and the new. Here’s the old, I told Huan this was our next car, she said it wasn’t fast enough.

This was the new variant, being charged from a normal 240v socket. We did spot a strange box between the extension and the office though which we were informed is necessary if you don’t have an ‘earth’ on your supply. That made me laugh, there’s no earth wire into our house never mind in the sockets. This particular model takes nine hours to charge on a domestic charger and is then good for a maximum of 170km. If we had one, and drove it to Sanya, we would have to stay all night charging somewhere before driving back!

So we come to the end of another week, a cold one, for us. We hope life is treating you well enough and the dreaded Covid 19 stays away from your door. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, we’ll see you again next week.

PS That was Christmas 2015, there’ll be no Christmas dinner again this year!