February 18th Cooking for Huan, dumplings,
stuffed slices of egg plant, home made flour crisps and steamed bread. More
photo editing for me. I use Picasa for simple photo editing, yes it still works
with Windows 10. If you mess things up it saves all the original files for you
as well. Checking my hard disk availability I thought it was about time I got
rid of those originals! We both stopped our work at ten thirty to have a go at
indoor exercise. Now, now, don’t be rude, we’re talking about “Walk at home 1
mile” with “Leslie Sansone” the creator egging us on. When we were done I asked
Huan “Are you sweating?” “Yes” she replied. I then asked her “Did you feel you
heart go faster? I did.” Her reply this time, “I wasn’t trying as hard as you”!
It’s certainly a bit of a workout, takes about fifteen minutes using as much
energy as if you walk three miles in an hour. We’ll make a video when we are
improving and show you a screen shot, don’t hold your breath though. Being
already sweaty after expending all that energy, I went straight into my guitar
practice; that usually has me sweating too, leaving my shower for later.
After lunch it was singing practice for Huan, sometimes she gets it
perfect and then goes way off again when she has another go. If I sing the
problem bit with her, she gets it right every time but her homework requires
her to sing it alone. I finished all the photos, definitely this time, and
removed all the ‘.picasaoriginal’ folders. It was well worth doing, I increased
my spare space on the photo drive to 156GB. It was a lot less before, when I
started checking it only 100GB and I had already removed a lot before that. I
may have to think about adding a hard disk, perhaps next year, and using that
one only for photos and videos. Duh, cleaning up the disk gave me even more
space; it deleted everything I had sent to the recycle bin today!
February 19th Hooray, it’s Wednesday, out for a little walk. Today we went and had a
look at the progress of the park in the middle of the river behind our house.
Initially it was supposed to be completed by the end of 2019. When we reached
that point they said it would be done by April. Looking at it today I very much
doubt if that deadline will be met either. Anyway, a few pictures of it for
you, the first one shows the old way across with the new bridge on the left and
the old ‘entrance’ on the right. The second is where they have demolished the
small house that was there before and started a shaded area. The third and last
is the only one of the three existing buildings that they are keeping. It looks
like they will put the public conveniences there. It would be nice if they put
a refreshments stall in there too but I very much doubt they will think of
that.
We had to go through the
town today as the Minister of Finance needed to go to the bank. The town is not
deserted but it’s certainly not as crowded as it usually is at this time of the
year. Almost everyone was wearing masks, as were we of course. Some of my four
legged friends were over the moon to see me, that put an extra spring in my
step. Our route home was upriver to the last bridge and then downriver the
other side but taking the shortcut back into town. We were rather hoping to
find baps and sausages, unfortunately we failed. I did try another panorama for
you today but I had forgotten the camera so it was a phone job. The Nokia
actually takes very good panoramas, it has a special program for it. There was
a minor problem today though, I couldn’t see the screen at all due to the sun
shining on it so a lot of guesswork was involved. I could just about make out
the two circles I need to follow to synchronise all the photos and this is the
result. This is taken on our way upriver from the ‘north’ bank.
Connection with the big wide
world is still very problematic, to say the least. Last night I managed to
connect for all of five minutes before I lost it again. This afternoon I had a
chat with them, the outcome of which was “our engineers are working very hard
to restore connectivity”. I was offered a month’s extension on my contract
which they offered last year but never carried through. Today I can see that
they have extended my contract as offered. Of course an extended contract is
not of much use if the service you’re paying for doesn’t work!
Lovely surprise this evening, a
nice Skype chat with my sister Gwenda and her lovely husband Robert. It goes
with the name you know, all of us Roberts are lovely! It was the evening for
surprises, later on my access to the outside world was restored and I was able
to not only check on my social media but also to watch another episode of
Taskmaster. Somebody in TV land loves us poor Brits overseas who can’t watch
these programs at the time they’re broadcast.
A not so good surprise was on the
cards for Huan, she had a QQ message from our tenants down in Sanya. Because of
the Covid-19 problems they are asking for three months free rent! They are not
a restaurant or a type of business that has to close down; it could be that
they left for the holiday. If that is true then they will have been away less
than a month so far and there is nothing to stop them returning. All they have
to do is self isolate for two weeks. If it was easy, I would drive down there
tomorrow and see if they are in fact still there. P.S. Chatting to Huan before
we went to sleep it seems they are still in Sanya, the complaint is because
business is slow. In that case they should be approaching the business premises
owners for a rebate and not us. If we gave them three free months, added to the
cost of the new door we had to fit last year then our whole years rent would be
equal to just over three month’s rent. As it is they are getting a much cheaper
price than others in the same area. Roll on end of contract time!
February 20th Today is a special day! Well, not really, I suppose it would have been
if I was younger or perhaps if there was anywhere to go and celebrate. Yes,
I’ve reached the biblical three score years and ten today. Huan prepared the
usual Chinese birthday breakfast for me, eggs and noodles for longevity. I was
going to ask her to cut them short so that I wouldn’t live too long but I
decided not to, it would not have gone down well at all.
I spent most of the morning
browsing the web in between trying to help Huan with her singing homework. It’s
amazing how much time we are spending on this one song which I know she can
sing well enough is she has the choir or me to sing along with. We even tried
recording it together on the PC and then letting her listen to that while she
sings. Eventually I had to make her stop for lunch, prepared by me, because it
was easy. It was open sandwiches made with German bread, (Jason
Roggenvollkornbrot), Irish cheese, Chinese cucumber, New Zealand
Because I was a lazy slob
yesterday, two guitar practices were required today so I did the first one
after lunch. Huan was still busy singing in the other room. My ‘birthday suit’
was next up, in a nice hot salty bath to be ready for dinner, I even had a
shave! By the end of the afternoon Huan had sent her homework in, let’s hope
it’s OK so she can rest her vocal chords for a while. Mind you, I’m fully
expecting her to be given another song to learn starting tomorrow!
Restaurants are still closed here so Huan cooked
me a nice roast chicken instead. Onions, garlic and mushrooms were hiding in
the body cavity. Huan had the neck, on the left, and I had the ‘parson’s nose’
on the right.
Here’s the birthday boy
holding the bottle of wine that we opened. What do you think of the name? It’s
apt for today I suppose. I’m also wearing my ‘George’ pyjamas by ‘ASDA’ and a
home made, (by Huan), badge showing my age.
As we are not getting out
much these days you can have another two photos of us enjoying our dinner. Yes,
we know the wine glasses are small, but they do for us genteel people.
My fingers are feeling it today,
two guitar practices in one day is hard going. I guess I shouldn’t be so lazy
but at times I just need a day off playing. After that a restful evening for
both of us.
February 21st Here we are again, putting
ourselves in self isolation. You know the old saying, “better to be safe than
sorry”. Our first job was translating the rear of my driving licence, my
‘entitlements’ changed when I reached seventy yesterday. We’re still not sure
but we think I am no longer allowed to drive manual cars. Hopefully the police
station will be open for us to find out on Monday.
Once that was done it was Taobao time again, to
stock up the cupboards. It was only a short list though, Nescafe coffee
granules, baked beans, (not Heinz or even HP, but Chinese), Lipton’s tea for
Huan, (cheap) and Tetley’s for me, (not so cheap). Why two different teas? Well
Tetley’s is much stronger than Liptons, better for my taste. Whenever I mention
Tetley’s I always remember a training course I went on with the R.A.F. Our
classroom had no windows, for security reasons, and we were a small class. Our
instructor got us ready for the day the same way every morning. He had the
Tetley’s song written on the board. For those of you who can’t remember, it
goes “Tetley’s, Tetletley’s, Flavour happy as can be, Tetley’s make tea bags,
Make tea bags, Make tea.” He would then conduct us through the song with his
board pointer. It was all good fun and certainly put us in a good mood to start
the day. Maybe you should start your day with Tetley’s!
After lunch, and after my
guitar practice, we took the plunge and did another bout of exercise with “Leslie Sansone” and “Walk at home 1 mile”. Once again we were both
sweating and this time even Huan felt a change in her heartbeat. We’re still
not ready to make a video of it yet though and we forgot to take any photos.
February 22nd Yahoo! We were out in the big world today, it’s still there! It was
nice to get some fresh air for a change and to see people, animals and insects
as well as hear the birdies. Here’s our first little insect found very near to
our area. Huan was warning me not to get too close as it would “hurt me and
make my skin red”. You’d have loved the photo after this where it reared up
with at least four, maybe six legs off the ground but unfortunately the camera
operator failed and that was out of focus. Mind you this one’s not bad.
Our route for today was the
mountain scenic walk. The first deviations came when we realised we couldn’t go
our usual way, that takes us through someone else’s apartment complex where we
will be barred from entry. Still we have another less used way, through some
waste ground with a couple of abandoned buildings. We could get in there OK,
the abandoned buildings had been demolished and there was no way out the other
side. None of this stops us going on the mountain route; it just makes it a
little longer. Quite a lot of people were doing exactly the same as us today,
most with masks on, some without. It is a lovely feeling when you have no
people and you can remove you mask!
I tried to take extra photos for my lovely
readers today and even remembered to take the Fuji
Our four legged friend was
absent from her usual spot but I found her on the steps up to her home. She looked
happy enough to see me, tail going like mad but she wouldn’t come down, I had
to go up to talk to her.
We think she may have babies up
at the farm house hence her reluctance to stray so far. She has a new friend up
there, a little too far for me to get a decent photo and I didn’t want to upset
the farmer, especially at this time. I think the new friend is a Tibetan
Mastiff, an all black one. Maybe I’ll be able to get closer sometime in the
future.
I think I may have been there just at the time
for letting the chickens out too. They were all making their way to different
parts of the forest, some uphill, some sideways and some downhill. This one
stopped and gave me a look while I took its picture.
By this time Huan was a
long way in front of me, she’s not over keen on this particular four legged
friend. I sped up, just a little, to catch up with her and then we walked home
through the town, just window shopping though. The only shop we went into was
the farmers’ store where the rabbits had had babies again! Cute aren’t they?
I wasn’t too lazy today and
managed my two daily practices. Huan was quieter than usual, her homework
having been sent. With being in touch with the outside world again I was able
to carry on with “The Bill”, keeping “Starsky and Hutch” in reserve for now.
February 23rd Spent the morning cleaning up my FB timeline. I know not a lot of
people do this but I like to know what’s there and how long it’s been there.
Some things I remove after a day or two, others after longer periods of time.
As an example, my birthday is now done and dusted so all birthday greetings
have been removed. Huan had an hour’s homework with her team on WeChat. The
teacher has split them into teams to help each other, they must have an hour
together every day, Huan’s team are going for two. It might stop her killing
her larynx if she only uses these two hours!
February 24th Monday again,
day of rest and shopping. I can’t remember what we got up to this morning so it
probably wasn’t much. Shopping was after lunch as usual, not many people at all
today, a perfect day for it. There were no shortages to speak of, none of any
importance anyway so we’re good for another week.
Huan disappeared a few times, into the second bedroom, where she and
her WeChat team tried to get their song sorted out. At times it drives me crazy
but at least with the bedroom door shut my ears are not assaulted too much. God
knows when they’ll all be singing together in person again.
We both had to go out today, down to the back gate, Huan the first
couple of times and me after. Deliveries from Taobao now come that way, they
are handed through the fence to us, the delivery drivers are not allowed into
the complex at all. So what goodies did we get today then? First off was rodent
repellent, something to spray outside the front door, I think it’s some kind of
peppermint stuff. Let’s hope it works. Second and third were both mine I
suppose, Nescafe and Tetley’s, that will keep me going another six months at
least. Fourth was also mine, one hundred guitar picks. “What?” I hear you say,
“Why so many?” Well, these are very thin picks, 0.46mm and good for beginners
to practice with but, being so thin, they do break fairly easily.
Huan gave me a job this afternoon, not an easy one. Her phone would
not allow her to open her WeChat account, instead giving her a message “not
enough storage”. I did eventually get her back ‘online’ again but it wasn’t
easy. I dread the day I have to move to an Android phone, I find my Nokia,
which is a Windows phone, far easier to manage. I don’t think I’ll be able to
hold out much longer though, phones are required for more and more things in China
And so, at the end of another day, another week,
another episode, I’ll wrap this one up and store it on the PC. I still have no
idea when uploads will once again be possible. Never mind, just think how much
you’ll have to read by then. TTFN
No comments:
Post a Comment