Rain Hiders, Bovine Buddies, Rude Tree, Suicidal Cow

July 1^st “There I was on a July morning, Looking for love, With the strength Of a new day dawning, And the beautiful sun.” (Uriah Heap - July Morning). Well, I had to find a song that had nothing to do with either the Canadian or American days of this month!

Restful day for us, shopping, (it’s Monday), completing and uploading last month’s blog, some more Taobao shopping, surfing for stuff I’ll never buy, you know what I mean. Huan is out dancing this evening, I’m enjoying my ‘day off’. Mind you, there could be a few this month, it seems that the monthly weather forecast is cooler, much more rain and even one, or more, typhoons.

July 2^nd We were ‘rained off’ today, no walking at all, no dancing for Huan in the evening either. It was just more PC, TV and online shopping. I did get my Endomondo summary for June though, quite impressive. I doubt we’ll get anywhere near that this month, the weather forecast is pretty miserable.

July 3^rd “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun”, or so they say. This ‘mad’ Englishman went out in the rain today. I walked Huan and her singing partner up to the OAP school and then carried on around the town. I had to; my left foot was quite swollen last night. If we had a bigger house I would consider buying a treadmill even though I think they are incredibly boring! At least the rain wasn’t heavy.

I saw this next photo on the wall where Huan goes. It seems it is a picture showing the photos of all the people who help to uphold the traditions and customs of the ethnic minorities here in Hainan, mostly Li.

Other than that, the only pictures I took today were of clouds, again. Huan did manage to get out dancing but I didn’t join her, I had managed to get my ten kilometres in this morning just going round and round in town.

July 4^th In the USA they have ‘storm chasers’, here in Wuzhishan we have ‘rain hiders’. That’s Huan and I trying to gauge when we can get out without getting wet. We succeeded today though and despite not going far from town we got ten and a half kilometres in. Near the beginning of the walk we passed last month’s car with the ‘football picture’. Do you remember that? Well today I took two more photos of the same car. The first one is fairly self explanatory even though the owner has nothing to do with the military.

Now I thought the second photo was also military but Huan tells me it’s something about the camera fitted on his car. The Chinese, 老铁我有98K, 你有八倍镜吗, actually translates as “Old iron, I have 98K, do you have eight times the mirror?” I know, doesn’t make much sense to me either.

On our way round, we sneaked into the back gate of one of the new apartment complexes, this one is very posh, it has its own ‘nostalgia cinema’, ‘old people’s club, restaurant, medical centre etc. It’s very much like a retirement home condominium. Well, as we were prowling around underneath we spotted many blast proof doors, like this one.

Once back outside again we found out that the cellars of this complex are part of Wuzhishan’s ‘Civil Air Defence’. They are quite common in China but this is the first time I’ve seen one being built into a new building. Should we be worried?

Now I know I gave you a snail last month but I feel I have to show you another this month. This one has another little friend in it so we’ll call it ‘Passing Strangers’.

Huan was off singing again this afternoon, so I was duty cook. Today’s fare was a sort of cream of vegetable soup. I fried up just a little pork mince first and then kept that to one side. The pan then got filled with potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, cabbage, squash, mushrooms, tomato, garlic, parsley, with salt, tarragon and thyme. Towards the end I added a little brown sauce and a little ketchup just to sweeten it a little. Most of the juice was then poured off so I could use my ‘whizzer’ and liquidise the soup, still in the pan. Some of the juice was added back in just to make sure it wasn’t too thick like baby food! I did forget one thing though, that was either some cream or some milk, it would have been just that little bit better. To serve, I put the previously fried minced pork in the bottom of two soup plates and then just poured it over. Success! The boss was well pleased and even had seconds!

She’s gone dancing again this evening while I relax and recover from all this hard work! Or, I could just be doing my Chinese lessons again.

July 5^th The ‘Rain Hiders’ were in luck today, the weather was fine. Huan chose the route, a little bit of countryside, only on the hard stuff, the soft would have been too soft after the rain, and then a little bit of the river on the way home. Here’s our first pictures where we went to prove we couldn’t go too far off the beaten track. It looks good underfoot here but a little further on we were proved right.

We passed my usual bovine friends where I took a few photos and Huan took a few. This cow would have been happy if I had tickled his ear for another few hours I think!

Next up is possibly a cricket. We both wondered why it wouldn’t move. Huan tried to shift it with her foot and it ended up on her shoe. Now, it may have had a problem with one of its legs but I think the reason it wouldn’t move was that it was watching the other little creature in the top left of the photo. You may need to enlarge to see what I mean.

Once back in town and approaching the riverside I gave Huan the option of going home. We had done seven kilometres by then and after all, her little legs are shorter than mine. She happily accepted and I carried on for another few kilometres. Somewhere along the way I became a murderer! I had just taken a couple of photos and set off again when I heard a ‘crunching’ under my left foot, I had stepped on a poor little snail. I did say sorry! The last photo for today is a cute little puppy dog where I stopped to buy my last bottle of water. Don’t let this picture deceive you; two minutes later, it was all over me but unfortunately, all those photos were out of focus.

The rest of the day was pretty normal, lazing around, surfing FB, watching YT etc. Huan went dancing in the evening but having done over twelve kilometres this morning I gave it a miss. I did my Chinese lesson and dreamt about guitars again.

July 6^th Out early today, we both slept fairly well and woke up early. By twenty past seven we were on our way. It’s been quite a while since walked up to the reservoir so that was today’s little bit of exercise. It took us a while, an hour and thirty six minutes to walk up the seven kilometres, but we weren’t absolutely exhausted when we got there. I do still wonder though how I managed to do it in seventy minutes once last year! We spotted our ‘finger’ through the trees and another nice bunch too.

And just to prove we actually went up, here’s a screenshot of the route and an analysis showing the ‘up’ and the ‘down’.

Finally, here’s a photo of Wuzhishan from up above. Bonus points for you if you can spot our apartment! P.S. I can see it.

As we walked so far today, fourteen kilometres for Huan and sixteen for me, I didn’t bother with an evening walk, too lazy. Huan did here usual dancing though and I did my usual studying and surfing.

July 7^th Today was another of those ‘will we, won’t we’ days. We were surrounded by clouds, all around, in fact 360º worth. In the end, we decided to go but to take care and not go too far. Of course the clouds never became rain and the sun even showed its face for a while. We had a pleasant enough walk though and took some video on the way round. It’s quite a long one and if you wish to see it you can find it here - https://youtu.be/MYZ0ReZ5MlE. Other than that, there are no photos from today, the Fuji stayed at home because we thought it was going to rain!

I spent half the afternoon trying to find a way to convert my karaoke CDs to mp4s so that we could put them on USB and join some of the snowbirds with their nice new little machine. It was all to no avail because my CD contains ‘dkd’ files which it seems are unique to Asia. Ah well, never mind, at least I won’t have to fight over the microphone.

The rain still hadn’t arrived by the evening so I was able to go out and make up today’s distance while Huan did her usual dancing and little walk on the bridge to nowhere.

July 8^th “Lazy days and Mondays never let me down.” (Poetic licence.) Well, it wasn’t a rainy day and they don’t always let me down anyway. Being Monday it was shopping day followed by lazy day. Nothing else to report and no photos.

July 9^th Today was a stroll rather than a walk. We’re off to Haikou again tomorrow and initially thought we were going to stay the night so a new rucksack was needed. My old one had finally given up the ghost. Here I am modelling the new one. Yes, I know the sales tag is still on, I found that out when we got home.

Walking back home along the riverside we came across what was left of a tree. There were a few ants on it so perhaps they ate it. There was no sign of any other little creatures.

Although it was only a stroll this morning we still got seven kilometres in which means I can take it easy this evening, not too much ‘making up the distance’ to do.

When we got home our last Taobao delivery arrived, at least for this batch of shopping. It was our new shower curtain and thankfully, it was a material other than plastic. We think it’s pretty, how about you? The advantage of this one is that it can be taken down and stuffed in the washing machine now and then.

Expecting visitors in the evening so out for an early walk, bought some beer, (just in case), came home just before Huan went out dancing. I christened the new shower curtain! The visitors came, Patrick and Jake, but were very boring and refused beer! Next time. PS, I had bought them so I had to have one to make sure they were OK!

July 10^th “Early one morning, before the sun was rising, I heard my phone alarm calling now we must go.” Up early, half past three again, to make sure we can get into the hospital car park in Haikou. Our first problem was getting out of our own car park. It’s not quite so clear here but I only had a few centimetres in front of the car as well. It wasn’t easy but with Huan’s assistance we got out without having to wake somebody up. Reginald Molehusband would have been proud of me. (You’ll have to Google that one.)

We had to fill up the car first and luckily for us the petrol station attendant was there just having a little snooze in a chair. Not too many criminals here you know. Rather than go back through the town to pick up the highway we decided to carry on through to Maoyang and pick it up there. Our next surprise was turning a corner in the mountains and meeting a cow. If I’d been alone, and probably driving much faster than I do with Huan in the car, I think I would more than likely have had an accident!

Today Huan was through the ‘cashier’ fairly quickly but then we were kept waiting quite a while for the doctor. Bear in mind that these are repeat prescriptions and a long appointment is not really necessary. Today the consultant had different ideas. I did ‘jump the queue’ to get my prescription signed but then he decided to ‘go over my case’. He thought I should be having a daily pill as well as a monthly injection. I didn’t see why as nothing had changed since my last injection and I’m not due for another PSA test yet. Now, if they had told me that from the beginning, or after the last test, I would probably have accepted their decision with no argument. This time I told him I would consider his ‘recommendation’ when I got the result of the next PSA test in early August. I don’t really fancy having more drugs and seeing ‘all of my pension’ going into medication for the next three years.

After all the usual hopping about from cashier to dispensary afterwards we got down to the nurse who wasn’t busy at all. This was the most painful injection yet for a poor little softie like me. Next month Huan has promised to make a little video of it.

Shopping followed, a slightly disappointing visit to Corner’s Deli. It is smaller now, with no bakery section, no meat section so were limited to the freezers and shelves. Disappointingly there was no marmalade, no beetroot, no parmesan. As usual, we didn’t come away empty handed though. That was followed by a trip to RT Supermarket to make sure we have enough sandwich bread for #1 son’s visit in August. We were also lucky enough to find fillets of fish, most unusual in this part of the world.

In the evening yesterday’s visitors returned so had two or three hours on the balcony with a beer or two to keep us company. I do enjoy visits like that!

July 11^th Well we both slept well last night apart from Huan being disturbed by a mosquito. It’s strange how they go for her and not me, but I’m not complaining! We had a nice long walk today, thirteen kilometres. First we went up the scenic walk to the ‘limpid pool’. Only one man was sitting on a rock when we arrived but three others had obviously been in for a dip. It’s not exactly a ‘swimming hole’ so I wonder if they are just doing to balance their ‘yin and yang’ or if they are just too tight to pay to go to a swimming pool.

Once home I found two photos on my WeChat account, shared by Patrick. These have been taken by Patrick and Jake using their drone camera and give you a much better idea of the town we live in. Patrick and Jake do a lot of stuff like this and you can see much more by going to https://www.tropicalhainan.com/category/the-haikou-guide/ or their YouTube site, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_PODgp4WUpjlGywKqcx8nw These two were taken around sunrise and I really like them.

After dinner, fish fillets of course, Huan went off dancing again and asked if I was going walking. I said “Sorry darling, I have some scanning and filing to do. Well it was true!

July 12^th A soft shoe shuffle was on the agenda today. I’m not sure why but I didn’t fancy getting my boots on so it was sandals and a walk along the main road and back by the river side. I even made sure I didn’t do ten kilometres to force me to go out again this evening. Nothing jumped out and said ‘photo me’ but Huan found a butterfly when we arrived home. I couldn’t get very near without scaring it off. Here’s a very heavily cropped photo from my phone to give you an idea.

Come evening time and Huan didn’t pester me to go walking! She wasn’t going dancing today because her dancing buddy was helping her husband tile their balcony. I went anyway as that had been my plan this morning. On my way out I saw this next photo and thought to myself, “I should include that in today’s words”. Now, as you know, we live in an apartment, and as a consequence of that, we pay an annual maintenance fee. It’s not unusual I suppose anywhere in the world. Our fee isn’t even very expensive, ¥1662.00 which is about £193.00. However, many of our apartments are empty and I suspect the owners aren’t paying their fees. We’ve no way of knowing of course, there is no transparency in accounting here. Anyway, here is the photo. It is the CCTV pole near the gate. Now the CCTV either doesn’t work very often or isn’t switched on very much. Just to see how our money is spent, look at the lamp shade for the light.

So I carried on with my evening walk and did another seven kilometres giving me a total of just over fifteen today. Some people think we walk too far, (mostly Chinese people), some people scoff at our walks, (mostly Facebook people), but how far should we walk every day? Well, here’s an interesting quote from an article I read today: - “Because our evolution tells us that we can walk for almost 30km (19 miles) per day.” It rather puts our efforts to shame. If you want to know more follow this link, it is a very interesting article: -

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190610-how-modern-life-is-transforming-the-human-skeleton.

Oh, I almost forgot, I met another foreigner tonight. How could I forget such a momentous incident? He was Cuban, tall and fit, so I asked if he was staying at the “Sports Hotel”. He seemed surprised to hear about such a hotel and told me that he wasn’t staying there, he had a bar in Wuzhishan. Unfortunately my brain wasn’t thinking along the right lines or I would have exchanged phone numbers or WeChat with him. He could tell me the English name of the bar, AA, but the Chinese name wasn’t clear for me and I’m not so sure it was clear for him! It sounded like APAC. He also couldn’t tell me the exact location, just that it was about twenty five minutes from where we were. That would put it in the centre of town somewhere. Basically, I failed miserably! It doesn’t open until ten in the evening but Huan and I will have to do a daytime search and see if we can find it before #1 visits.

July 13th Boots on this morning but not such a long walk, we weren’t up early enough. I did decide to do a ‘dog leg’ to make sure we got up to eight kilometres and I’m glad I did. It looks like Huan found the bar referred to above. Note the ‘A8’, I heard the English name as AA, perhaps I was wrong. In Chinese A8 is ‘A 八, (A Bā), perhaps I heard that wrong too. All I have to do now is get Huan in there one night to check it out. Wish me luck!

Our reason for keeping the walk a little shorter is that today is another weekend day which means a fry-up and it’s good to rest before. I have to say that Huan is doing far more of the cooking than me, I really miss the gas hob. I think we may end up doing what we really don’t want to and drilling holes in the wall to put a gas cylinder on the balcony.

I had to have a nap in the afternoon, that’s two days on the trot. Am I getting old? Please don’t answer that!

Dancing as usual for Huan in the evening and she ‘ordered me’ to stick to two kilometres for my top-up walk, so, I did. Well, only slightly over anyway. Just as well, I needed to be home early enough to update the Blog and to do my daily Chinese lesson.

July 14^th Something strange happened last night and we were both awake early. I told Huan to set off after me, in another direction, to meet me at the other side of the landfill mountain. That way I could get a bit of speed up and she wouldn’t be bothered by the dust of the construction trucks. Construction, of the new highway, is in fact quite slow but I did see the ‘bridge making machine’ through the trees today.

Nearing the ‘water shop’ on the other side I spotted this happy face coming to meet me.

And what did I look like? Well I had done almost seven kilometres and it is quite a steep walk, at least for the first five. Here I am.

And here I am again being prevented from leaving said water shop by this little pooch. Every time I moved, he stuck his paw on my foot to stop me. The children were very amused.

We had a small detour on the way home and went part way up the scenic route to see what was going on up there today. You may remember the last photo from there was the whip cracking snowbird. Well today there are two more photos. The first is a couple of gentlemen playing Chinese chess, (象棋 – xiàngqí). We have a set in the house, one of these days we really must try and learn how to play it!

I’m not quite sure how to describe the second one, “Chinese Morris Dancing” maybe? The man in the photo was certainly having fun and his watching wife was not in the least embarrassed by him. In fact she seemed very proud!

I think that’s probably enough photos for one day! So, how far did we actually walk this morning? For me it was 14.70 kilometres and for Huan it was probably five less. We still managed to be home in time for coffee, iced of course, and a nice long rest before Sunday’s ‘Full English”.

Once again, our afternoon was spent shopping online, on Taobao, this time looking for window cleaning tools and granola breakfast cereals for next month’s visitors. Oh, and we also ordered some more of those little orange peelers as some dummy threw ours out with the peel last week sometime. I bet you can’t guess who? I also convinced Huan to buy a metronome to help her with her keyboard learning. She is woman of perseverance and I’m convinced she will teach herself to play.

Today I didn’t have to go out for an evening walk, the boss suggested I stay in so I did. In fact I stayed in the bath for a couple of hours! I did have to do a little work though, unblock the toilet bowl! Of course. my day wouldn’t be complete without Yoyo Chinese, especially this month. I haven’t ‘broken the streak’ yet!

July 15^th Monday, shopping, Huan dancing, otherwise NTR.