Wuzhishan, Gas & Electric Problems, House Maintenance

May 13^th Woke up this morning with a swollen left foot. Maybe that’s because we didn’t walk yesterday. This morning Huan had some other business in town so I went off without her. I was able to walk a little faster than usual but I tried to keep myself reined in, just to please the doctor(s), Tim and Huan! I walked just over eight kilometres, my foot had gone down by the time I got home although my ankle was still a little swollen. Quick shower, A/C on and struggle into my Granddad stockings!

We still have no gas as explained above, today it was the turn of the electricity! It went off just about the time our spare ribs were finished in the hot air fryer. Good job we were having salad with it. It came back on about an hour later and then went off again while I was in the middle of learning. While we were downstairs talking to the ‘electricians’ I was pointing out all the wires that were not installed as we would think but just strung around haphazardly. They told us that way back in 2006 or 2007, when the inspectors visited, the building owner took them all out for a big dinner thus ensuring of course that everything was signed off and he could go ahead and sell his properties. Some time after that, and after we had already bought our apartment, the internal building wiring was found to be faulty, hence the wires just ‘hanging around’. My trade was not electrical but telecommunications. However, when I see the results of the work here I can absolutely guarantee I would have done a much better job.

Most people in the UK are aware of colour coding of electrical wires. I wonder what they’d think of this one. This is the ‘earth’ or ‘ground’ strip. Even if the Chinese colour code is different, all these wires should be the same colour!

May 14^th Shopping and ‘air fried’ fish. Yep, still no gas. Two breaks in the electric supply today. Nothing else to report.

May 15^th Huan woke me up at 3 o’clock in the morning, it seems I was having a bad dream. Usually, I can work out where the dreams come from; in this case I had no idea. Of course once she woke me, then she was awake. Not what you’re thinking you naughty people! No she had heard a mosquito, or two, so out came the ‘electric tennis racket. Needless to say all this mad waving around stopped me dozing off again so I went off to the kitchen balcony for a drink and a fag. Hearing a lot of voices, I looked down, and there were still two tables full of people sitting at the restaurant below. I thought about taking a photo of them but they may not have taken kindly to the flash. Lots of empty bottles around too so they were a bit wobbly. At least they weren’t so noisy. I wonder if they realised the time. They should have because I saw the first farmer on his way to market before I went back to bed around three-thirty.

Managed a nice walk this morning, came home, got on the PC, and guess what, the electric went off again. We had an ‘old people’s afternoon nap’ and when we woke up, power was back, well, for a few minutes anyway. I took the lift down to the second floor which is where it appears the problems are. The first floor has power which explains why the lift works. I took a lot of photos on the second floor, but this may explain some of the problems.

At least we got it back in time to cook dinner. It’s amazing what Huan can do with just a rice cooker! Great duck leg stew today, one of my favourites.

May 16^th Very lazy day, waiting for one of our old neighbours to come and bring me some slides for scanning. By dinner time she had still not arrived! Out to do the important work, buy the lottery tickets for Wednesday and Thursday. On our way we met the lady in question’s husband who told us she would be round later. Walk cut short. Well she did arrive, with negatives, not slides, but no problem. This is what I use. If you have ever considered buying one, definitely do it. The price seems to have gone up since we bought ours but at least your memories are saved before the negatives waste away to nothing.

May 17^th Out reasonably early this morning, working for all potential visitors. Well, almost. We decided to do a highway recce and see how far they have progressed since last year. If we decide to visit you, as long as you live up north, this is the way we will go.

Now for you coming south, you have no choice, you have to stop at Wuzhishan.

Never mind, it’s a great place to stop and you don’t have to struggle, there is an exit ramp. Just be careful because this is actually the ‘north entry ramp’ Where the other access points will be we have no idea.

Now; remember the #5 bus from last month, the electric one. We knew that they were charging them somewhere out of town, today we saw where. This is the water treatment and sewage processing plant. If you look carefully you can see a whole bunch of solar panels and a #5 bus. Who knows, they could be using the sewage gases too.

And so ends another day, this time with oven made pizza! It seems they have located the damaged gas pipe, and the person who damaged it. However, he is arguing about the cost to repair it! Who knows how many more days? Thank God we bought an electric oven!

May 18^th Great day. For the first time in a while we were able to go for a ‘countryside’ walk. Hopefully my ankle will hold up and we can start increasing the distances again. Today it was a mere eight kilometres. Now you’ve seen lots of pictures of where we’ve been so we won’t bore you with repeats. This one is worth showing you though. Do you get the idea he, (or she), wants to come home with me? Oh for a house with a garden. . . .

May 19^th An early city walk today, we had to buy the weekend lottery tickets. Good job we went early, it was a warm one! And it would appear, at a rough guess, that we weren’t the only ones who thought so!

In the evening I was very British and watched the Royal Wedding on YouTube. I can be patriotic at times. I loved every minute! Huan doesn't understand, pomp, pageantry, religion, 'Britishness', romance love etc. Good job she wasn't watching it with me though, she might have caught me choking back the waterworks now and then. Just as it was finishing there was an almighty ‘crunch’ from outside. Some poor chap had been knocked off his bike. It didn’t take the rubberneckers long.

As you can see the poor fellow had managed to sit up a few minutes later. It’s a good job I suppose as it took the ambulance nearly fifteen minutes to turn up. The police turned up five minutes after them, by which time of course he had been taken away. Only after the police arrived did we see the other vehicle in the incident. He was fifty metres further along the road. Whose fault it was we have no idea. There’s a lesson for you all here though, use a dashcam! You never know when you may need its record.

May 20^th Lazy day, Taobao ordering for Ledong and learning more e汉字. We also decided to order another one of these.

With having no gas we had been using this one, that we bought for the Ledong apartment. “It’s just a hotplate” I hear you say. Ah, but that’s where you’d be wrong. It’s an induction cooker. (How it works, from Google – “When you turn on the burner, an electric current runs through the coil, generating a fluctuating magnetic field, but no heat on the burner itself. However, once you set an iron or stainless steel pan on the burner, the magnetic field induces many smaller electric currents in the pan's metal”.) Verdict from us two – it works well, very well indeed.

May 21^st Weekly shop. Now some of you may remember the Lychee Stink Bug Nymph from last month. Well they are still there, on the same tree, in the same place. They look a little different now though.

As you can see the colours have changed, now white underneath and brown on top. The one in this picture will go a little browner yet. You can probably also see that they are much bigger than they were before. Well, I guess if I was stuck in a pub being drip fed beer I would be larger too!

May 22^nd & 23^rd Lovely couple of days walking. At long last we are back into double figures again. I won’t be doing it every day, got to look after the ankle still, but it was a really nice change to go a bit further than usual. Just a couple of photos, here’s Huan under the bridge in town. For some reason she wouldn’t go ‘back a bit’!

And instead of one of me, here’s another one uploaded to Jake’s page. It’s in colour there but I think I prefer it this way.

May 24^th More staying indoors. We decided to do some more Taobao ordering, this time for us and not for Ledong. Our fly screens on the kitchen balcony are in a bit of a state so we (by that I mean me, under Huan’s expert guidance of course) are going to repair them. Here’s one of the ‘before’ pictures, ‘after’ will come later.

May 25^th Nice walk again today, only around the riverside though, seven and a half kilometres. No special photos for you I’m afraid. However, good news came our way today. We received our induction cooker from Taobao. Guess what else we got today? The gas came back! Ah well, at least we are prepared for the next time.

May 26^th Lovely long walk today, twelve and a half kilometres. Might have buggered up my ankle again though. Mind you, it was worth it. We did one of our favourite things, fight through the undergrowth.

Of course it would have been better had I worn some decent boots, (instead of sandals), and some long trousers or jeans, (instead of shorts)! We met someone who was as happy as a pig in ****! If the water had been cleaner maybe I would have joined him, (or her). Mind you, that could have been dangerous; these Hainan piggies can be quite vicious.

We also came across a very unusual flower. I wonder if any of you budding botanists can identify it?

Our guess is that someone put it there to dry and then went home with their child, with one shoe, and forgot this one!

You saw the highway in progress earlier, well Wuzhishan will also be gaining a couple of bypasses. This is the western one under construction. At the moment, like many here, it is a bridge to nowhere!

And finally for today, a selfie. Here’s a pic of me and ‘Daisy’. Getting close to cows around here is not so easy, they are very, very nervous about people. I think I got close enough though. Unusually, I also managed to give this one a pat on the head before I left. It was a very swift pat; just to be sure I didn’t disturb him too much.

May 27^th & 28^th My Achilles tendon was swollen again where I had previously ruptured it so no walking. Does anybody know how long it really takes for an Achilles injury to heal completely? And don’t tell me not to walk for weeks on end, I couldn’t cope with that.

So, instead of walking, it was resting and learning on Sunday, shopping and learning on Monday. I’m up to 450 characters now and my average score for these two days was 99%. Fairly pleased with that although a short time off causes that figure to drop again!

May 29^th Huan was ill this morning, probably menopausal troubles again, so I was off for a lonely countryside walk. I kept the speed down a little to protect my ankle. Took a few photos and a few videos. I wanted to play with Lightworks again, hence the videos. I guess I’m learning slowly. The photos weren’t anything special today, just some mist in the mountains and some clouds in the sky.

The Eastern bypass was being worked on this morning, perhaps things are progressing. I still reckon it will be at least two years.

May 30^th After a walk out to buy today’s and tomorrow’s (we’re going to be rich one day) lottery tickets it was down to work. The fly screen repair kit had arrived yesterday.

I started with gloves but found I couldn’t really cope with them so ended up as you see below. My apologies for the show of ‘belly’ but Huan seemed to take a lot of photos of it today! Towards the end she asked if she could cut some of the extra screen on the side. Well, who am I to argue eh? As you can see the gloves fitted Huan and she cope with them better than I did.

We’re not so sure if we did everything right, I guess only time will tell. However, the results look good enough.

After our ‘old people afternoon nap’ we discovered a visitor on the balcony. It looks like the Lychee Stink Bug Nymphs may have grown up and left home. This one was busy trying to spread its wings but was having a bit of trouble. That was probably because Huan had given him/her a shower!

May 31^st Huan was feeling better so it was walkies again today. I told her we’d do about eight kilometres. I lied! We did eleven and a half. She does it enjoy it though. I’m lucky to have someone who enjoys wandering as much as I do. Today we were off over the bridge to nowhere and through the first village.

Just after the village we passed this small, shallow cave. I wonder if this is what you see before mountains start falling down? Not too many worries here though.

In the next village, another picture for World Street Photography. We have walked this way many times and of course we saw them resurfacing and widening the road last year. Why they did it like this though we have no idea!

Sometimes you just have to take a photo as you know you’ll never be able to explain what you saw. We spotted sunbeams shining through the trees at the side of the track we were walking on. I took a few pictures but this one is worth a view. No, that is not a CD dangling from the trees, that is a spider’s web. I must admit I’ve never seen one quite as small, quite as closely woven or quite as beautiful before!

And we finish on a sad note this month. There are a lot of these snakes around but we’ve only ever seen one live one. They’re about 30 to 40 centimetres in length I would guess. We often come across dead ones, as this one is. I think they must come out in the evening to ‘bask’ on the warm roads and then get run over by people returning home to their farms. I believe the brown is the upper side and the stripes are the underside. Ah well, that’s life I suppose.

And that’s it from me, and from the Prime Minister, see you next month!