Bad Dreams, Dogs and a Four Minute Mile

January 7^th SD card for music finished last night, we now have Chinese, Movie Soundtracks, Brass & Military, and some Gilbert & Sullivan. I can see some high volumes, especially if I am alone in the car. Dash cam work is still in progress.

As for me, I woke up like a zombie this morning, having been awake on and off since about half past one. “Why couldn’t you sleep?” you may ask. Well, I had killed a pussy cat, in my dreams I hasten to add. It was a very strange dream; the vet was stitching up the cat’s middle after carrying out a post mortem, no gore, just fur. The cat was supposed to be dead. Lying on my knee, it began to plaintively mew. Knowing that half its insides were missing I knew what I had to do. Floods of tears followed, mine, because I felt so sad. I found a small, cat’s head sized plastic bag and did the dastardly deed. Almost instantly, or at least it felt like that, I was wide awake. My first reaction was to make sure Huan was still breathing! For some reason, I could hardly sleep for the rest of the night. Usually, I can work out where my dreams have come from, something I’ve seen on TV, something I’ve read, something someone has said etc. In this case, I have absolutely no idea, and no idea why it stayed so clear in my mind either.

Huan wasn’t up so early, maybe I disturbed her a lot, so a long walk was out of the question this morning. Instead we walked up to the street market and managed to get a load of baps and a couple of sausages. We passed a little scenic spot on the way so that I could take a photo of Huan.

Not to be outdone, she also insisted on taking one of me. I think you’d agree that she looks much better than I do!

Next up on the photo agenda was a couple of my four legged friends. We have seen these two before but never taken any photos of them. One was a Miniature Schnauzer and the other I think some kind of poodle. I was quite taken with how intelligent the Schnauzer looked, so much so that I did a Google search when I got home. “"alert and spirited, yet obedient to command ... friendly, intelligent and willing to please... never overaggressive or timid”. Huan said it was almost as if he was trying to talk to me.

Although it wasn’t a long hard walk we still managed over eight kilometres which, according to Huan, is more than enough. I on the other hand, will need to pop out this evening to make sure I make the ‘ten’. Other wildlife spotted today, a rat, which unfortunately we failed to get a photo of. I asked Huan to go round one side of the bush and make lots of rustling noises so that it would come out on my side where the camera was primed and ready. The clever little monster scooted out her side and into some denser bushes!

The afternoon was taken up with more dash cam work. After dinner, a lovely dish of soft pork and cabbage, Huan had to go and collect a USB with dance music as ‘Teacher’ is going back up North. With all the problems in her life we don’t know if she’ll be back next winter or not. I took the time to make up my missing kilometres. Arriving back home I spotted our amphibian friend, we haven’t seen him for a while. I took dozens of photos, some with flash, some without, none of them turned out brilliantly. And ‘Froggy’ himself didn’t move a muscle through all the photography, just totally ignored me.

Once home the dash cam work was done but then Huan arrived home and I had to sort out her dance music for her. Quite a long day was had by both, should sleep well tonight!

January 8^th Today’s plan was almost kept to. Huan had choral practice so I was going the landfill route and then a little longer to join the main road further up. Just before leaving I was informed that we are invited out to dinner this evening, or should I say late afternoon, four o’clock. I changed the plan, just a little, and kept to the landfill route but with no extras. What I was looking for was highway progress and I found it. They seem to have accelerated their work recently. Half the carriageway now goes over the road and quite a few more supports have been completed.

Carrying on a little further you can see the big machine they use to move the road segments into place, the actual road was out of my view I’m afraid.

And then it becomes all dusty and horrible.

Now a Bob Blog would not be complete without some four legged friends so here are two that are trying to camouflage themselves.

They were still in a dusty area, before I had passed the landfills. Once the landfills were behind me the walk improved tremendously.

And then of course I was over the crest of the hill and on my way back into town, quieter and cleaner all round.

All that remained was a water stop in the village at the end and a chat to another friend.

Today’s target was achieved, ten and a half kilometres in two and a half hours. With the hills at the beginning I actually felt I could have continued today for fifteen or twenty but, that was not to be; another time maybe.

Our dinner date was fine, I avoided more than just a little báijiǔ, only had one bottle of beer, but probably ate far too much. I have to say it was a good spread for only eight of us. This is what it looked like before another four or five dishes were added!

It was a sad and happy occasion, sad because Hé huā and her husband are leaving, happy because we were all enjoying the food, drink and company. After dinner, the ladies went to the town square for some photos to mark the occasion, I stayed home, feeling bloated! We have received some of the photos, but none of a good enough quality to include here. Who know, we may receive more tomorrow.

January 9^th Not an early start today, which is what I had initially planned. Instead, as we were taking Hé huā and her husband to the airport, we were set to leave around nine o’clock. We were only a few minutes late and of course there were tears, mostly from Hé huā. Huan told me that she has been very emotional for a few weeks, bursting into tears for all kinds of reasons. Not least of these is that she has a dicky heart, her husband has some form of diabetes, he’s already had something fitted in his heart, something else fitted in his leg, and now he’s beginning to have trouble with his eyes too. In fact, he doesn’t expect to be around if or when Hé huā comes back to Wuzhishan. Having been there myself, I suspect she is in the throes of depression but I doubt very much if anyone else will see that or if she’ll get any help for it. I was able to explain to Huan once we were alone in the car and I think she understood. She knew where I was in my mind when I met her! Anyway, we had an uneventful trip to the airport and here am I, as you can more than likely see, parked in the wrong place for ‘drop-offs’. I think I may have been in the lane marked for buses but it was only written on the road, in Chinese. My ‘navigator’ was a bit too busy to navigate today.

I then had to drive round and round in circles waiting for Huan, she had gone to help Hé huā use the e-ticket machine and to make sure they were both OK. I only had to drive round the airport twice, hair raising at a couple of the roundabouts due to all the construction work going on, they are upgrading all the roads. I thought you might like this next one, something I have never seen before. Can you spot anything strange in this picture? Huan didn’t see it.

Perhaps I needed to be a bit closer. I’m sure you’ll see it here. Maybe the driver is not allowed pets in the cab! I know it’s not exactly safe; the dog is on a short leash on that little platform. He did look very happy though.

Once our friends had been seen off it was time for shopping, with the first stop being the bank. I wanted to check my pension ‘incomings’ were up to date, change some of it to RMB and draw some out for my other bank in Wuzhishan. The rate of exchange was good today, £1.00 got me ¥9.05, that’s almost a whole ¥1 more than last time. Next job was to find some new casual shoes for me. Of course, we had to argue about the price again. Most of the time in Wuzhishan I wear shorts and sandals, if we’re walking a fair distance I wear my boots. Casual shoes are worn once in a blue moon with my jeans so cheap and cheerful is good enough. At least Haikou has shoes in my size, and we were successful. No photos of my shoes for you, instead I managed, with great difficulty, to capture this amazing photo of a UFO just before it disappeared!

The next stop was the hospital for the needle. I was not looking forward to it, especially after last month when the nurse bruised me quite badly. Despite it being later in the afternoon the cashier queues were not bad and we were in to see the doctor in no time. The prescription queue was a lot longer but patience is a virtue, and I got used to having to have a lot of it in the Middle East. Thankfully there wasn’t much pain this week. I wonder what the various nurses think of this foreigner who has to cover his ears and his eyes whenever he has a needle. He also has to make a quick exit when the next in line is having a needle in his arm and thus is not behind the curtain.

And our last call of the day, before dinner and the hotel, was the opticians to collect my glasses. I was a little disappointed to find that despite costing a small fortune, the lenses are still made of plastic!

January 10^th Our trip was shorter than I would have liked, Huan had to attend a meeting for the residents New Year show. Still, we got our bread, butter, cheese, whipping cream and a fair bit of frozen stuff for Chinese New Year. Waiting in the car for Huan to sort out the parking fee on her phone, I tried taking some selfies to show you my new glasses. I failed miserably, obviously far too dark in the underground car park and I didn’t think to turn the courtesy light on. Dummy! If you’re wondering why Huan has to sort out the parking, it’s because cash is not really the done thing, you have to use your phone. My phone, being a Windows phone, will allow me to install WeChat, but not its associated banking app. Aren’t I the lucky one? No doubt I’ll be forced into buying a new phone soon. I’d much rather have a new telephoto lens for my camera.

What are the new glasses like for driving? I can certainly focus further away but I think it is going to take some time for me to get used to them, especially being graded lenses.

So Huan came back from her meeting with a request. Would I like to play the guitar and sing a song? I think she thinks I’m much better than I am. I said no, but who knows, I may reconsider nearer the time. Other than I had a lazy evening uploading all the dash cam videos.

January 11^th Yet another not so early morning and for me, one with achy bones again. Huan is convinced I am getting another cold and that I should be taking medicine to cure it. I’m just as convinced that I’m feeling just a little run-down and that even if it is a cold, I don’t nneed medicines to put me right.

Saturday again so no hills or mountains or very long range walks, just around the town and the farmer’s market. Within, I would guess five hundred metres, my phone told us that we had just walked a kilometre in five minutes! It’s been a few years since I could move that fast. Arriving at the market, after the first few metres I abandoned ship, I didn’t fancy the fight through the crowds.

We did go to the market of course, but after walking up and down the river and then approaching from the other end. Being a little later, it was still crowded but a little less so. What have we got to show you from there today? A couple of identical machines, one working a little faster than the other supposedly making something out of coconut powder and wheat, with ‘no added sugar’. Well, we had a taste and there was certainly no sugar. In fact it almost tasted like solidified talcum powder to me! Here are some screen shots from the video.

We were on the wrong side of the river for this next shot, it shows a lot of photographers, I guess it could be a club; China is quite big on clubs of people with similar interests. Had we been closer I would have been able to get Huan to have a look through their lenses. I think they were shooting birds in the reeds on the other side of the river, our side in fact. They will probably have done far better than we would have, despite them being much further away.

A motorbike for you next, one which a quick Google search tells me is from a Chinese owned Italian manufacturer. It’s a Benelli TRK 502 and surprisingly, as the size of motorbikes in Hainan are reputed to be limited to 125cc, this one is 500cc. That means there is zero chance of me ever risking my life on it.

So the company is Italian, but Chinese owned, I wonder who created the warning sticker on the fuel tank. They obviously couldn’t find an English speaker in Italy or China. It seems they are talking about a crash helmet and high visibility clothing.

Huan was out practicing for the show again this afternoon. What do you think she did when she came back? She asked me yet again to sing for them. The show is going to be on the fifteenth of January, so not a great deal of notice. I tried to get her to understand that the audience, however many of them there may be, will not understand a word of what I sing, and also that any song I did sing would be completely different to anything they sing. It would not be patriotic or nostalgic for times gone by in China!

Dinner was different today. Although it’s a weekend, our planned fry-up failed. I was going to use a tin of meat but the one I opened for a sandwich yesterday was not what I had expected. I didn’t even know I had bought this one. The tin is the same size and shape as the processed meat we occasionally use for sandwiches or breakfast but it’s “Stewed Pork Sliced”. It was tasty enough though.

In the evening I had a fair bit of guitar work to do, having been remiss for two days. Well I don’t take the guitar to Haikou and I was far too exhausted last night. Surprisingly enough I was better than I thought I would be. Maybe I need to have a guitar rest on Mondays as well as a walking rest.

January 12^th “Woke up this mornin’ yeah, felt like I needed a new body, yeah.” Just a bit of blues to start the day. In fact neither of us was top notch today, whatever bug has been doing the rounds is not so easy to get rid of. We both agreed walking would be good for us. What a start we had, according to Endomondo, we did almost four kilometres in about four minutes! For some reason the GPS often plays up when I first start the Endomondo app.

We planned on no hills and some countryside today so that’s what we did. Passing by the end of the irrigation canal, before it hurtles through pipes to make some electricity, they have put a little bridge and a new warning sign. I loved the sign, can you see why?

Cows were on the agenda again, I love this bunch, although only one or two are usually brave enough to come and say hello. Today it was the darker one, the lighter one was a little more nervous. If I’d stayed longer she may eventually have come nearer.

As we are wont to do now and then, we headed off the paved surface and into the woods. After a while we recognised some of the path and carried on that way. I’m sure you can see why we like to ‘get back to nature’ at times.

Our memories were not as good as they should have been. If they had, maybe we would have taken a different route. This one brought us to a place we know quite well.

Unfortunately, it’s also a dead end so we had to retrace our steps which we did without the forest detour and ended up back where we saw the new warning sign earlier! Never mind, we got back to town and with a little detour around the river managed our (my) daily ten.

Huan had more dancing practice this afternoon. When the rain started that was my cue to get on with our Sunday fry-up, this time with the right ‘tin of spam’! She was ‘well pleased’ when she arrived home. I was ‘well pleased’ because the rain didn’t let up which meant she had no evening practice today. I had the pleasure of her company.

January 13th There isn’t a lot to report from today. Being a Monday it was a shopping and rest day. For us that was just as well because the weather started off badly. That gave me a good excuse to pop into the bath for an hour or so, I hate shopping in the early mornings, in winter, too many people. There was still a mob when we got there but thankfully, they had dissipated by the time we reached the cash desk.

When we left the supermarket to do our usual trip to the wet market, we found that overnight a one way system has been implemented on the town’s two main shopping streets. No advance warning was given, or if there was I didn’t see it. Don’t worry, I did see the temporary road signs they had out today. It looks as if it will be a permanent thing as the road markings have all been changed too. We now have parking on the left, cars in the middle and bikes on the right. Bikes here means motor bikes and not cycles. It’s something that has been needed for a while due to the increase in traffic that is now almost logarithmic. There is however, one major problem. While we drivers in our cars are obediently following the rules, the riders of the bikes and mopeds are neither sticking to their lane nor even going one way!

In the afternoon, while Huan was out, I got the amplifier out just to see if I could play anything passable for the ‘show’. When SWMBO returned I asked her to have a listen and she was full of praise. Her mouth tells lies! I have though, agreed to do two songs for the show which I’m betting, you already knew I would.

The plan had been to upload this Blog post at this stage, but the site is down for a day or two. I’ll just have to keep them separate on the computer. Bye for now!