January 2nd My usual remedy
for ‘the runs’ was not working so it was a nice slow walk to the hospital, just
up the hill. When we got there, we found they had moved to a new place half way
down the hill! I gave the doctor a print out detailing everything that had
happened since my biopsy, including a restaurant meal on the evening of 29th
December. He settled on a bad case of food poisoning the same as me. Sigh of
relief.
In the afternoon, I started getting worried again, blood was
appearing in my poop. Checking Dr. Google, it seems that 100% of men who have a
prostate biopsy have blood in their poop. Strangely, I didn’t until today.
Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
January 3rd Stomach seems to
be improving, had a walk to the supermarket for some probiotics based on advice
from daughter Sammy J. and various sites on the web. Managed to stay out of the
smallest room in the house!
January 4th It’s just one of
those days that you have now and then. I’m sure there’s a tune that goes like
that. First off, I hate the aftermath of the ‘runs’. I feel like there’s a ton
of concrete in my belly now. The doctor gave me ten sachets of ‘polyfilla’ with
no instructions. The pharmacist told me to stop taking them when I had stopped
running. I guess I took one too many! Anyway, enough of my health problems, at
least for now, or this will turn into an episode of ‘Emergency Ward 10’, (for
you younger readers think of ‘Casualty’).
Huan’s PC was playing up a lot today again, Windows 10 freezing on
start-up, so I decided enough was enough, and took it to the repair shop. We
had to leave it there because the technician, (loosely speaking) was out until
the afternoon. I got Huan to explain as much as possible, including the fact
that this PC has previously had an HDD problem, repaired by software. He called
us at lunch time and asked us to bring the cable as the PC was OK. “Which
cable?” I ask! I ended up taking the power cable, the VGA cable and the
monitor. Guess what, the technician wasn’t there yet again. The lady in the
shop told us the monitor was not working correctly. I spent a few minutes with
her and did some fault finding my way. She was right, but the VGA part of the
mother board was also not working. They had been testing using a VGA/HDMI
adaptor. Anyway, we ended up buying Huan a new monitor with an HDMI connection.
She is happy again now and that’s the most important thing.
January 5th No walks today, I think I’ll let my body get a little stronger
first. I spent a lot of the morning online with Microsoft Support. With all the
freeze-ups and repairs that had taken place on Huan’s PC I was no longer able
to network them. They eventually sorted it out for me. Yet again, for those in China
The rest of the day was spent putting all the data back into Huan’s
PC that I had removed before taking it to the repair shop. Photos take the
longest time of course. Some software had to be re-installed, Alipay, QQ, etc.
This time I installed QQ Interational for her, maybe it will stop half the
rubbish that seems to come with QQ locally.
January 6th Spent a
lazy day indoors again. I had left our two computers supposedly exchanging
information over FolderMatch when I went to bed last night, only to find out
this morning that I had made a ‘booboo’. Before going to bed, as usual, I
switched the wifi off, which, unknown to me, stopped any data transfer. Our
computers, for some reason, are networked through the wifi unit. (I should have
remembered this!) Anyway, that meant that today was more data transfer and
re-installation of more software on Huan’s PC. She’s now all singing, all
dancing again. All data there and the software to view it, Picasa, VLC, Libre
Office etc. In the end, quite a good day.
January 7th “Monday’s child
is fair of face me…” Shopping day again, not a very big shop though as we still
had a lot left from last week! Wandering around Baijiahui, our local supermarket,
I spotted three faces that definitely were a bit ‘fair’ and not local. My first
thought was “Russian tourists”. However, following them down the escalator I
heard English being spoken. Of course I had to get in there didn’t I? “English
Huan! They’re speaking English!” No shyness on my part! It turns out that one
was from the UK , one from New Zealand and one from Tunisia UK Beijing
January 8th Life is almost
back to normal now. We had a nice, steady, eight kilometre walk, down one side
of the river and back the other.
It seems that either the owner of the hotel that used to be adorned
with a ‘Holiday Inn’ sign has started work again, or someone else has taken
over. Can’t say I think much of the colour scheme though, and there’s no longer
a Holiday Inn sign.
And the last photo for today, (well you haven’t had any this month
so far). My son keeps making me jealous on Facebook by uploading photos of him
eating bratwurst. I wasn’t able to find any of that ilk, but here I am with a 哈尔滨儿童香肠 (Hā'ěrbīn értóng xiāngcháng) otherwise known as a Harbin
Finally today, back to Huan’s computer again. I couldn’t get the
Taobao chat app to work at all and I needed her to speak to the buyer to make
sure I bought the right battery for our laptop. In the end, it would appear
that Microsoft Edge doesn’t support the necessary pop-ups. Using Internet
explorer fixed it! Battery ordered, now all I
need to do is find some software.
January 9th An improvement on
yesterday’s walk, just over ten kilometres today. We still went the same way
though, up and down the river but with a couple of extra bits to give us that
little more distance.
Some of you may remember previous blogs with views from our bedroom
balcony, some with a torrential river, some without, but all with a fairly nice
view. It’s not quite the same now! Hopefully when all the work is completed it
will look presentable enough but as you can see, it will definitely look a lot
more man-made than natural!
And lastly for today, Huan removing my power! She does like to give
me haircuts, far more than I like receiving them. Today I tried to make a video
of her cutting my hair and me cutting hers. For some reason my camera, instead
of recording a whole video, only recorded two short 5 minute segments at the
beginning of the process. I’ve asked on the camera FB page what went wrong, it
looks like possibly the SD card I am using is not good enough for 4K videos.
Anyway, here’s a screen shot.
January 10th The weather
forecast was fine, the weather was not! Ah well, lazy morning then. I also had
a lazy afternoon because Huan had another committee meeting to attend. It seems
that the existing maintenance company have been asked to leave by the local
courts, they have agreed to go in ten days. Who the new company is I have no
idea, neither do I have any idea if they will make any progress in getting our
gas put back on! I don’t particularly want to drill holes in the kitchen wall
and put a gas bottle on the balcony, but we could end up doing just that.
After dinner I had a nice fast walk. I was alone so managed eight
kilometres in one hour and twenty five minutes. With Huan in tow, it would
probably have taken an hour and forty eight minutes. “Where was she?” I hear
you ask. Well, some of the ladies in our buildings are doing a little 大妈跳舞, (Dàmā tiàowǔ), the literal translation of which is ‘Aunt dancing’.
We usually just call it ‘Dama Dancing’. In my view it’s time Huan had someone
else to talk to and have a little fun now and then so I’m glad for her. She
only started the day before yesterday so I was absolutely forbidden to make a
video! I did take a couple of photos though and I will get a video at sometime
in the future. (PS What do you think of Huan’s haircut?)
January 11th Nice long perambulation this fine
morning, nearly thirteen kilometres. We decided to keep it fairly steady
though, no ‘sprinting’. Huan wanted me to make a video of the street market
that we often walk through so being the dutiful husband that I am, I did. If
you want to see it, you’ll have to visit my YouTube page. Meanwhile, here’s a
screen shot, not of the market, but of us with me introducing “General
Dogsbody” and the “Prime Minister”. Can you guess which is which?
Evening time I was back on the
laptop again trying to get it to speak to me in English instead of Chinese. I
got there eventually although I’m still not over happy with it. I think we have
major problems with this laptop as it was bought new with a Chinese install,
which I got them to change to English. I think they did that with an illegal
version. Later on we converted it back to Chinese for Huan. Somewhere along the
way I think all the original Acer tools and stuff disappeared!
January 12th A lazy day today, cereal for breakfast, a
nice slow walk, full English for lunch, German bread and Italian salami
sandwiches for tea. It all made a pleasant change.
January 13th No people in our house this morning, just
two fat lumps of lard! Huan didn’t fancy walking, too lazy, and I hadn’t slept
well so I was too lazy too. It wasn’t much different in the afternoon although
this lardy lump did some more work on the laptop. I spent ages on the internet
trying to find a way to get the right recovery disks or software but as it was
bought in China Harbin
January 14th “Just another
manic Monday.” Well, not so manic really as Monday of course, as you all know,
is shopping day. We also seem to have found the best time to go, early in the morning
as soon as the store is open. Here’s the Minister of Finance at the checkout!
January 15th After a two day
hiatus neither of us really felt like walking but we went for it anyway. We did
fairly well, but we, or should I say I, was too lazy to take any photos.
Instead, here is the route we walked. Spot all the twists and turns to reach
eleven and a half kilometres.
January 16th Boots back on
today and a little longer walk taking in a little of the country side and our
mountain park walk. For me there is something really special about mountains
against a pure backdrop of blue sky and that’s what I was looking for today. I
didn’t find it but I thought you might like this one instead.
And just to prove we did the mountain park walk here’s one of each
of us nearly at the bottom again.
January 17th Off the beaten track today and a
little exploring down paths and tracks we haven’t been down before. Sometimes
it makes a change and today we didn’t stray too far. Wildlife spotting was not
quite what I expected, no pigs, ducks or chickens, just a few dogs. Mum ran
away and one little black pup seemed to have been ostracised by the others but
these three were very happy together. I couldn’t get very close, they were far
too nervous. I guess if I had sat there for a while they would eventually have
sneaked up to say hello. Ah well, never mind, they are cute though aren’t they?
On our way home we heard music
coming from somewhere, a bit like a brass band. It took some searching but we
found them in the end. It wasn't a brass band, more of a saxophone one, with
the addition of some clarinets, flutes and a trombone. They might not have sounded
perfect but, bearing in mind who they are, I think they're doing pretty well.
They are in fact, all 'snowbirds', (retirees who travel to Hainan
in the winter months), including one of our neighbours. Nearly all of them have
taken up learning an instrument since they retired. They certainly put me to
shame! Check out my YouTube channel for the video.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQdDjjD_0qYthEuj9UwQeuQ?fbclid=IwAR168TTJfSjZiCsfs6qA8Jvl271YGfOxHmt2n3OzxLmwgJWlidiC_w73eDI
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQdDjjD_0qYthEuj9UwQeuQ?fbclid=IwAR168TTJfSjZiCsfs6qA8Jvl271YGfOxHmt2n3OzxLmwgJWlidiC_w73eDI
Christmas has been and gone as
I’m sure you all know but today we got a Christmas card along with a calendar
from my youngest brother and his family. Check out how it arrived, and what it
says on the envelope!
Lucky us, we also got another
pressie today. Our tenants in Ledong, despite our protestations, had asked
their daughter in Harbin
January 18th No boots today but a long distance! Well, no
walking either! Huan was busy for the first half of the morning making
dumplings and patties. Once she was finished and we’d had our morning coffee it
was downstairs to the car repair shop. Our car wouldn’t start again yesterday,
the standing voltage had gone down since Monday, (when we did have to have a
jump start) to 6.8 volts. While Huan was busy I had been googling and decided
that the battery definitely needed replacing. Should be easy, yes? Well, not in
Wuzhishan. It was not possible to buy another battery for our car anywhere here
so we had to drive to the dealership in Sanya. It seems because we have a 2.3L
engine our battery is special, the cost of the replacement was ¥800.00, (about
£90.00).
It doesn’t look very special does
it? Note to self – When this battery looks like it is on its last legs, look
for a replacement on Taobao! We also got some clarification while we were there
of the new rules about buying cars in Hainan .
As of the 1st March the sales of diesel and petrol cars will be
severely limited. Hainan natives, with their Hukou (household registration) in Hainan will be able to buy, provided they have won the
number plate lottery. Mainlanders and foreigners will not be allowed to buy at
all. So, if we win the lottery there will be no new car as I’m a foreigner and
Huan is officially a mainlander. Of course we could, as we are allowed to, buy
an electric car. Problems that come to mind are range, coming up the mountain
from Sanya or Haikou
January 19th Well we really motored today, five kilometres in fifty four minutes!
What’s more, that ‘little slip of a girl’, who says I walk too fast, was with
me every step of the way, at least until the last few hundred metres. She only
slowed down then because we met a neighbour so Huan walked home with her,
having a gossip. Our route was also ‘up and down’ not all on the level. Check
out the screenshots below.
January 20th Having broken the world speed
record yesterday we decided to slow down a little today. Huan thought we were
going very slow until I showed her the Endomondo readings. I think today it was
me trying to slow her down. She was also playing ‘director’ again with subtle
hints about the scenery and photos. Who am I to argue?
It was the leaves on the ground
that took Huan’s fancy, a touch of Autumn on a tropical island. What took my
fancy was a new hotel being built. Well, not being built, being refurbished. I
don’t know if it was an apartment block before or a hotel before, but here is
the sign of what it will be! Once it’s completed, I’ll try and do a Keymission
video there and report back to you.
January 21st “Gloomy Monday
morning / I’ll never make it to work on time”. (The Black Hollies – worth a
listen). Of course, I don’t have to make it to work on time any day, just to
the supermarket on Monday. An uneventful trip although a little worrying. For
some reason there was almost no milk left at all and what was there, was
‘skimmed’. Personally I can’t stand it, full fat is always the order of the day
for me, but beggars can’t be choosers! The rest of the day was scanning some
documents and then synchronising folders between Huan’s PC and mine. I quite
like Mondays really.
In the evening Huan came back from her D2 (re-read
previous days if you can’t remember!) and told me all about a planned OAP trip
on Thursday to a park somewhere near Sanya, a night in a hotel and a boat trip,
somewhere near Sanya. She asked me if I wanted to go, (Price - ¥80.00 each.) Do
you know, I’m pretty sure I never answered the question, but we’re going
anyway! Photos and report will follow!
January 22nd Boots back on this morning and a
walk down the country roads towards Changhao village with a detour through some
smaller lanes and tracks. No really steep hills, and no speed either so we both
really enjoyed it. Not having taken photos for a while we went a bit berserk
today and took thirty two. You won’t want to see them all of course so we’ll
just put two here. The first is a gaggle of geese. I actually took a short
video of these for the noise they were making. No wonder people use them as
‘guard dogs’.
The second is a little piggy who
didn’t go wee wee all the way home, or anywhere else for that matter. Its
relatives ran like mad but he / she didn’t. We weren’t sure why but looking at
the way it was holding its tail I thought it may have been a little
‘constipated’! Anyway, we didn’t want to get too close on this occasion.
January 23rd Lovely weather this morning, not too chilly and definitely not too hot,
so we decided a countryside walk was in order. It is nice to get off the tarmac
roads and take the tracks through the trees now and then. We don’t live in a
big city but like all towns, there is always noise of some sort. Getting out
into the countryside takes us away from all that and gives us some wonderful
scenery to boot!
Another video of the local
‘wildlife’ taken today, not half as noisy as yesterday. The ‘parent’ was very
quiet indeed and just tried to subtly keep us away from the brood. They were
cheeping away like mad but very quietly, so much so that they are difficult to
hear on the video unless the volume is turned right up. They are cute though,
aren’t they?
January 24th Day one of our
Snowbird tourist trip or perhaps I should say the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’
because we never seem to know where we are going. Here we are on the bus.
Our first port of call turned out to be Betelnut River Hot Springs, the
driver got lost going there, it’s not so easy. We had to do a couple of U-turns
on the highway (where allowed of course) before we eventually found the place.
Our immediate need, or at least the “team’s immediate need” was food so it was
straight to the restaurant. Now if you go alone you probably get a choice, we
didn’t. It wasn’t bad though and enough for me, I don’t like to eat too much at
lunch time.
After lunch we were left to our own devices until four PM when we
had to return to the restaurant for dinner. We took that time to sample all the
various pools and of course I was busy testing out my Nikon Keymission in the
water again. Here are the ladies in the Green Tea pool. I’m not sure why they
weren’t drinking it!
One thing we always do in these places is go for a fish supper! That
is, you are the supper and the fish eat you! Here’s me being nibbled, including
in my ears!
Those pesky little blighters managed to draw blood on my chest,
where, according to the hospital in Haikou
We had no choice at dinner again but it was a pretty good meal and
most definitely filled the rather large space in my insides. We had no food
choices because we went with a tourist company, two days, including all meals
and one night in the hotel, ¥80.00 per person. I would recommend a visit,
maybe, more details, including (individual) prices, phone number and map, can
be found in my album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gM8E1C2CtJ3FmPML6
Our second ‘activity’ was to be an evening boat trip. True to type,
the bus driver got lost trying to find his way out of the hot springs
We then had a two hour drive to our hotel, in Xinlong. No photos
from there, it was too dark. The hotel didn’t even have a name outside and no
business cards either. On the surface it was pretty good. All the walls had
been freshly painted and it appeared quite new. Looking more closely told a different
story though. The rubbish bins in the entrance were overflowing, a bad omen to
start with. Once we got to the room, we had to use the key to open the door.
The card didn’t work, and the ‘slot’ for electricity was disabled. The deadlock
on the door didn’t work, the balcony door didn’t lock. The glass shower ‘wall’
had disappeared. There was no toilet paper. The A/C had gone yellow with age
and lastly, the kettle lid was broken. At least the beds were OK and we were
cream crackered enough to sleep all night.
January 25th We had to be up
and out by half past six to be taken somewhere for breakfast. Why don’t Chinese
hotels serve breakfast? It wasn’t far, but for me not worth it. No choice of
course, just rice soup and bread with a little pickle, not even any boiled
eggs!
Then began our second day which turned out much different to what we
had been expecting. We knew there would be some shopping involved but we also
thought there was a trip to a park somewhere. We were wrong!
Our first port of call was a mattress outlet. The tour guide gave us
all a long speech explaining that we had no choice but to ‘follow the leader’
as this was how they made money and kept costs down. Fine, but three hours of
lectures and people trying to sell you foam mattresses? They weren’t cheap
either. The one you can see here costs ¥10,680.00 which at today’s rates is
£1,200.00. I haven’t lived in the UK
I got fed up after a while and managed to escape to the attached
shopping mall, ‘Capital Outlets’. Being so early, I had almost the whole place
to myself. I found a nice little boat but at ¥810,000.00 I decided Huan
wouldn’t let me have it. I thought she might let me have this though, two
seats, space for shopping and 4WD. Only problem, foreigners can’t buy cars in Hainan anymore!
Back on the bus after more than three hours, it took longer for us
than all the other coach parties because one of our party spent ¥20,000.00 in
the mattress outlet. Time for lunch then. For me, a bowl of rice and a little
egg plant. I had to keep reminding myself how cheap this trip was.
Next stop was ‘pots and pans’ or what they called a European
Utensil’ outlet. This time I refused to go in and had a wander around what is
called in English ‘Xinlong Bar
Street Xinlong Style Street India
Third stop was a ‘Health’ outlet, probably Chinese medicine. I
stayed outside again, lay on the grass and looked up at the sky!
Was it over yet, were we going to visit a nice park? No, our fourth
stop was a ‘Jade’ outlet. Here’s a photo of Huan giving me the (not quite evil)
eye for mumbling and grumbling again. I didn’t go in here either.
It still wasn’t over, and by now I wasn’t the only unhappy teddy.
One of the other passengers was trying to get the coach to go back to Wuzhishan
when the guide told her, we have one more place to go. It should have been two,
but we spent too much time in the mattress outlet!
So our fifth, and last outlet, was Xinlong Coffee. This time I
agreed to go in. I didn’t stay in long though. Like all the outlets today,
photography, stills or video, is not allowed. Of course all those with mobile
phones, doing it sneakily, were fine. I had my camera around my neck so was
singled out. If you can avoid the lectures this isn’t a bad place, a little
history to see, and a lot of tourist paraphernalia to buy. I’m still wondering
though which tourists buy dishcloths. Question for you, recognise the wallpaper?
No dinner today, just the coach back home now. Our guide left us
here, I assume ready for her next bunch of tourists tomorrow. We went back down
the highway to Lingshui, turned off for Baoting and then carried on to
Wuzhishan. Five lots of shopping in one day is enough to wear anybody out, and
Huan is no exception!
January 26th & 27th
Lots of work going through
videos, converting, combining etc, then the photos too. Not so easy with three
different cameras to work from. Lightworks especially was a problem when
combining MOV and mp4 files. Still I got there in the end. You can see the
videos of day one on my YouTube channel. Day two videos will stay with me! Last
job, update the blog and sync folders from my PC to Huan’s.
January 28th Just a bop bop
bopping a shop shop shopping along! Yes, it’s Monday. The weather was also
pretty miserable so that was it, at least until nine in the evening when the
electricity went off. It was only our building, again! Someone eventually
realised that no one else was going to call the maintenance company so they
did. I was in ‘grumpy old man’ mode of course and was busy saying that China Europe is
banning the use of the 500 Euro note”. Now what that had to do with anything I
have no idea! When the ‘electricians’ arrived we had ‘Christmas’ lights for a
while, on then off, then on then off while they tried to narrow down the
location of the problem. You’ll never guess where it was, the flat above us,
which not so long ago had been leaking water into our kitchen and balcony. The
electricians just removed their breaker completely so they’re in for a shock
(pun intended) when they return.
January 29th Miserable weather again today! Binge watched
‘The Bill’.
January 30th Beautiful
weather this morning so, not before time, we had a stroll around the river.
We’d had six days of no walking and I think we were both more than ready for
it. Not far from the house we spotted our first ‘wildlife’, maybe spring is in
the air. This looks a lot different to the slugs that I have seen in the UK
Now you may remember me saying that I particularly liked the
mountains when they are set against a clear blue sky. Today they were!
January 31st Last day of what
seems to have been a short month, probably due to ‘something on my mind’. We
took a walk around the town today, Huan decided that a leg of lamb would be
fine for Chinese New Year. I have been trying to get her not to bother this
year. I failed but at least she has agreed no ten course meal! As it was the
last day, I was looking out for photos, without much success I’m afraid. All I
could find was a little flora, no fauna. First it was the ornamental flowers,
these are all over Wuzhishan for the Spring Festival holiday period. This is
the display we passed today.
Second, it was a tree. “What kind of tree?” I hear you ask. Well,
I’m afraid that is one for you to answer because I have no idea, other than it
is not bananas!
So, that’s it for this month, not as long or varied as usual for
which I do apologise. Next month’s missive will either be posted very early, or
very late, I haven’t quite decided yet. From me, and from the C in C it’s
goodbye until then!
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