2016, Part 2

And so we continue with our walks. We have to have the obligatory wildlife don’t we?

We do however have a beautiful local walk. It is called ‘Wuzhishan Park’ but basically it is not a park, at least not in the sense we would think it was. It is a walk, up our local mountain. Well worth it if you happen to be visiting, but beware if it’s been raining heavily!

One of the things you don’t expect to see walking through this beautiful island scenery is a crab, what’s more, a crab in a tree. I decided I would play ‘eyeballs in the sky’ with it. For those illiterates among you may I suggest you research the ‘Perishers’ and ‘Eyeballs In The Sky’. In this particular case there was also a ‘ghost’ in the tree!

And that’s it for April, apart from letting you know what my wife has to wake up to every morning!!

One benefit of being retired, for me anyway, is being able to spend more time in the kitchen. I do like to cook, sometimes from recipes, sometimes just experimenting. This is one from a recipe, something I had never really liked in the past. I had also never tried baking, but this was so easy. It’s called ‘One Bowl Apple Cake’. Try it, you’ll love it.

Now when we bought our house, if I’m honest, it was raining a little that day. I had lived in Singapore as a child though, with tropical monsoons, in Hong Kong in my early twenties, with typhoons, and in the Philippines for a short while in my forties, again with its rainstorms and typhoons. I thought Wuzhishan would be similar and that we would have more sun than rain. That may have been true in 2015, but it certainly wasn’t in 2016. This was the river in May.

Remember those swimming pools I mentioned before? We decided to ‘take the plunge’ and visit one. It’s beautiful, it’s just the right temperature and we had it all to ourselves. Unfortunately, we both also developed problems from it. I suspect it is not cleaned as it should be.

June brought wildlife to our balcony. It’s not too easy to see but it is there, I promise!

July brought with it another wedding anniversary, so another visit to our western restaurant, where we found the menu had become more and more Chinese. We did enjoy the desert, although I do have to ask who puts salad with Tiramisu?

If I thought the river was in full flow in May, I was seriously mistaken. This is what it was like in July. Anyone falling in wouldn’t have a chance. Still, I suppose the good side is that a lot of the rubbish was washed further downstream.

August saw Huan disappearing for a while, off to Shanghai, to try and help her son find somewhere to live. Walking became much faster without her, and also longer. The irrigation ditch had filled up, pleasing the farmers no doubt.

Wildlife was out yet again. It looks a bit fierce this one. I do remember our Mum scaring us in Singapore about not running around with our shoes off because of the centipedes. Maybe this is what she meant. (She also mentioned something called ‘hook worms’.)

When I had told my students in Harbin about Wuzhishan, I always told them it was where ‘Monkey King’ was banished under the mountain. Well, walking through one of the (many) new building complexes, I found him, along with his compatriots!

In August I also foolishly took on the ’22 Day Challenge’. For those who don’t know, it’s a Facebook thing where you agree to do 22 pushups a day for 22 days, each day nominating one of your friends to do the same thing. The idea was to raise awareness for the 22 veterans who lose their struggle with PTSD everyday. I could barely manage any press-ups at all even when I was in the army! However, I persevered and although I didn’t do well, I did a hell of a lot better than a lot of my nominees, who were supposedly much fitter than me!

And that’s it for August, and also for part 2 of 2016. The rest will be up soon. I will leave you with this, which is not a photo I took, but I did receive it in August from one of my sisters, and I think it’s pretty good, apart from the subject matter that is!

Bye, for now, see you soon.