More Cooking, New Printer, Phone Camera Comparison, Gifs

June 23^rd The BOSS was out early today, the final rehearsal. I had thought the show was on Thursday but it’s actually tomorrow. By nine o’clock I was falling asleep in front of the computer again, I’m getting worse than my fathers, (yes, I had two). Forcing my eyes open with a couple of toothpicks I decided to cook this afternoon’s dinner this morning, thus leaving the afternoon free to go back to the Chinese Medicine hospital for the doc to check my chest.

As I was having my well deserved NAAFI break, around half past ten, I received a panicky phone call from SWMBO. “Where are you?” I guess she thought I was out walking somewhere. When I reassured her that I was at home cooking she told me that the printer had arrived and the courier company was waiting downstairs for me. That was fast; we only ordered it on Sunday!

After lunch I got down to it, with the supervising manager checking my every move and sometimes even trying to get her fingers in. I got mine into the box to remove the spare black ink bottles and they came out like this.

The printer itself was in perfect condition, the box was very well protected. Now if only they had put the black ink bottles in a plastic bag… Here’s the new (small) beast sitting on the window sill, it looks a lot more fragile than the old HP, feels it too. Still, you get what you pay for.

The white box on the side is the ‘ink tanks’ which are by now almost standard ‘extras’ on all printers sold in China. Setting up was easy enough, all the instructions were in English (French included too), I think it was originally meant for Canada. They even provide a special earth connection which it seems is mandatory in Canada, it would do no good at all here!

Next up was testing it to make sure all was OK, it was. Printing from the front tray or the back tray, scanning from the flatbed or the ADF, even the fax set-up was easy but that may take me a while to test. I need a friend with a fax. The ‘proof of the pudding is always in the eating’ as they say and so the final test for us was printing out a photo of Huan and her brother and sisters to put on our sibling wall. “It’s dark on one side” came the plaintive remark to which I responded “That is the fault of whoever took the photo, not me”. All the photos on the sibling wall are done in Sepia, just in case you wondered about the colour.

So, what did I cook for our dinner? Today it was a concoction of my own, not from a recipe. First boil some noodles, when ready take off, rinse and set aside. Second, boil some carrots and cauliflower, again set aside. Third, fry some onions and garlic, add some chopped chicken breast along with some Italian seasoning and cook. Once that was ready, add the carrots and cauliflower, simmer just a little, add some Greek yoghurt and cheese, simmer just a little more. Finally, add the noodles, stir like crazy and serve. The result was delicious!

June 24^th BREAKING NEWS! As reported by our chief roving reported, Ms (harangue the committee) Huan, there is news on the gas front. As the owner of the company we were dealing with died, (a long time ago, see previous posts), his family decided they don’t want the company anymore. Well, it seems, in the Chinese way of doing things, the onus now falls on the previous company who sold this part to this company. Lost? So am I, and I still don’t see how this gets us anywhere neared getting our gas problems sorted.

Reveille was early today, I was the chauffeur for Huan and Yu, and also their tame photographer. When we arrived I was told that I was expected and given a ‘seat at the table’. Not bad I thought, I’ll be able to get some good photos and maybe videos too.

Unfortunately, at least when the choir was singing, the position was not practical at all; the choir mistress was between me and the choir! I didn’t have the heart to move from where I was, not with all the other people with cameras and phones all over the place. Still, they had a lovely group photo in the other room before they performed.

Was it a good show? To say they had been rehearsing for less than two weeks I think they did a marvellous job. I did manage a few videos with the Keymission and the Fuji but ran into problems with both. The Keymission overheated and the Fuji ran out of power, both in the middle of different performances. Never mind, there will be many videos flying around for the next couple of days while they all share with each other. They were all very pleased with themselves and I had to take final group photos and promise to ‘perform’ myself next time!

The three teachers are on the left of the front row and they all sing very well. The gent second from the left has had a lung transplant after which, to help his recuperation, he taught himself to sing. If you heard him, you wouldn’t believe it, he may not have the power of a Pavarotti but he sings very well, so much so that he performs solos just like the other two.

Back home and it was my turn to cook again, Huan has been just a little too busy. Today was another of Bob’s concoctions, this time a sausage casserole but with the left over noodles that we had bought on Monday. Fresh noodles don’t keep very well. So how was this one made? First the noodles were boiled and set aside, second I fried some garlic and spring onions, with the green part then added some chopped up sausages. Two types of sausage were used, one sweet dry Chinese one that I use instead of chorizo and three ordinary ones, but with pepper in them. Following that was a lot of chopped tomato and a little tomato sauce, simmer a while, add a tin of kidney beans, simmer a little longer. Finally add the noodles and heat through. As always, or nearly always, we were both satisfied with the result.

After dinner I did my usual and sat on the balcony with a little iced coffee and a fag and then did a double take. I have never seen so much traffic on our road before, it was so bad we had police controlling both the crossroads at one end and the entrance to the ‘council flats’ at the other end. Huan thought it was due to everyone being on holiday for the next three days because of Dragon Boat Festival. It did look a bit like a British Bank Holiday weekend after the lifting of Lockdown!

Huan was a happy bunny for a while, her new phone arrived. She wasn’t happy long though, it requires a ‘nano Sim card’ whereas her existing one is a ‘micro’ Sim card. As you know, Huan does not have the patience of a saint so she was straight out to the phone shop! That was the easy part. We had put the phone into English so that I could help her with the set up and installation of apps like Alipay and WeChat. Alipay was easy enough, WeChat was impossible. We did manage in the end by putting her phone back to Chinese. For some reason, which we haven’t been able to find out yet, the phone also came with no instructions. I am seriously reconsidering buying a cheap Android, I may have to splash out a bit more!

June 25^th Before we could do anything this morning Huan’s phone had to be charged! She had played with it so much last night that it was just about empty. We could have charged it overnight but we don’t like leaving things like that in the other room overnight and we also don’t like phones in the bedroom.

Before we left home we experimented with the camera on Huan’s phone which didn’t turn out so well. I had set the camera up last night for 16:9 and 8MB. Her first two photos of the scenery outside our bedroom were weird, almost soft focus. That could have been something to do with the ‘beauty’ settings but as it’s all back to Chinese now I’m lost. Her next photo was only 500kB, I have no idea how she managed that. At last we got one that worked, the colour is much better than her old phone but still not all that natural. This is it after a Picasa tweak.

By quarter to ten we were off to the hospital to see if the Chinese doctor was there. I didn’t believe he would be, after all, we do have three days public holiday. Huan thought that doctors always worked, even during holidays. He wasn’t there and won’t be back until Sunday, I got great pleasure out of saying “I told you so” even if it was a bit mean.

Another trip to the bank was next to put some more money into Taobao, yes, I have decided on which phone to buy. More on that when it arrives, but I can tell you, it’s as cheap as chips, just like Huan’s. Also just like hers, there will be no instruction manual as according to the shop, “All androids are the same and no one needs a book.” I told Huan she should have told him that we were not 20 year old nerds but OAPs!

Today’s dinner plans were spoiled, twice. My first choice was a quiche made without pastry but using sweet potatoes instead. The filing was supposed to be spinach but, just like Monday, none was available. Thinking on my feet I thought I’ll make Huan a Scottish “Stovie” but with lamb instead of beef and sweet potatoes instead of normal. This is the most common way to buy lamb here; supermarkets don’t sell it any other way, that would mean a trip to the wholesalers.

After lunch I spent hours playing with Huan’s old phone, it seemed like hours to me, trying to see if I could find English WeChat in the store and trying to install Endomondo from an apk file. I was successful on both points hence the order was made for my new phone. Wasting all that time though had put the kybosh on the ‘Stovie’ so a basic lamb stew was made instead. It looks like you’re going to get a lot of food pictures this week!

There followed a lazy evening for me while Huan went out for her usual walk with Yu. She had extra reason today though, she was going to ask Yu to help her with one of the capabilities of the Alipay app. Now as you would expect, the Alipay app is a way of paying for things, online and in some shops too. What you may not expect is that it also has a little subprogram that counts your steps when you’re walking and puts money into your account as a reward. Who pays for it I don’t know, possibly large companies and advertisers who would like to see where you go?

June 26^th So today’s plan was an easy one, go for a short walk around half the river, it’s been a while, and on the way take some photos with my old phone, Nokia Lumia 1020, and with Huan’s new phone, Little Chilli Mate 30 Max, for comparison purposes. In each case I have chosen only the low resolution from the Nokia and not the higher version. I won’t show you all of the photos we took, there are too many. First, right by our gate, an electric scooter with many colours, not a bad test subject.

If you guessed the first picture was the Nokia you’d be right. It will also be the first photo in all the other comparisons. Little Chilli isn’t too bad here but the colours aren’t quite right. These two were cropped to get the scooter in almost the same place, none of the others have been cropped. No Picasa adjustments have been made to either Huan’s or my photos.

Next up was a normal picture of the men on the bridge again, we were stood almost next to each other, and no zoom was used.

Here the difference is more marked, the Nokia looks better. The photos have been resized for uploading to the blog but before that, the Nokia was 1.9MB and the Chilli was 6.2MB, just goes to show that size is most definitely not everything.

A zoom from the same spot was the next test; those little men are up on the near support today.

This was a real disappointment. The Chilli is abysmal, it’s a terrible photo. Whether or not we did something wrong with Huan’s camera we have no idea. It’s set up on automatic to take 16:9 at 16MB, Huan doesn’t think she changed anything on the shutter controls. Both phones were zoomed in by ‘pinching’ the screen.

Next up we took a normal street scene.

Again the Nokia is a better photo but the Chilli doesn’t fare too badly here. If I use the “I’m feeling lucky” function in Picasa it improves it dramatically. In other words, it can be tweaked, even by amateurs. The zoomed men on the bridge couldn’t be improved much at all.

We stopped at the weir to take some snaps and videos of the water cascading over the inflated dam. The snaps were not too bad and although the Nokia was better, Little Chilli did well enough. In the videos though, the focus on the moving water was much better with the Nokia.

Something I often do when I’m out is take photos of signs and notices so that Huan can translate them for me when I get home. We found one today.

In this case, although the colours are not quite right on the Chilli, the words are well in focus, to my weary eyes, almost more in focus than the Nokia.

We compared a few close up shots of flowers, not so easy to compare where we both made errors with our focussing, but for the most part, Little Chilli’s colours were not as vibrant.

For our final comparison we thought we’d try a selfie. Now Huan’s phone has all the usual beautification buttons but as far as we know she didn’t use any of them. She also had problems pressing the shutter button although she later found out that the volume button can be used as the shutter when in camera mode. Now if we’d had a manual, we’d have known that!

The photo was taken with the sun shining directly on us, which I think is far more obvious on the Nokia than the Chilli. There was no one click fix for the Chilli photo in Picasa, but it wasn’t too difficult for me to improve it with the use of ‘warmify’ and ‘saturation’.

So what do you think? Let me know in the comments. As for me, now I’m getting very worried about the phone I have ordered, for the hugely expensive price of about 75 pounds, a Genuine Hengyu P40 pro. Still, I can always use the Nokia as a camera only, if I don’t feel like taking the Fuji out with me. It even has a camera grip accessory which improves battery life.

I’ll bet you think that’s enough photos for one day don’t you? Well, it’s not; I have to include today’s dinner. I was the chef again. I suppose that’s not quite true because I didn’t actually cook anything today, I just heated it up in the pan. As is usual for my cooking, we had enough left over yesterday to feed us again today but I modified it. Last night before putting it in the fridge I gave it a good old whiz, practicing for when we have no teeth left. It worked well, reminded me of being a child and always having just soup and bread for dinner on Saturdays. Mind you, that soup came from a tin; this was home made and thus better for us!

June 27^th No comparison photos for you today, in fact no photos at all. Our daily walk was a little better, just over five and a half kilometres in an hour and twenty four minutes. Huan still thinks it’s too much and that my feet will swell if I walk further or faster. It’s actually the other way round, if do walk further and faster my feet swell far less. Anyway, my plan was just to pass by the Bap shop and then come home again. We failed, neither the owner or his wife were there and there were no signs of life today. Our intital thought was that we were too late and they had sold our but then we decided that they must have disappeared for the three day holiday.

We did take a few photos on our way round, mine were just to give me a record of where we walked today. Huan took twenty five pictures of the cats that you saw last week, June 19^th, but none of them were worth reproducing here!

Yesterday, I had warned Huan that we would be taking a photo of her cooking efforts today, it was fish, vegetables and sweet potatoes. Guess what? I forgot all about it…

June 28^th Taobao can sometimes be a bit of a hit and miss affair, especially when buying clothes or footwear. A few days ago we ordered some shorts for me, neither of us could really understand the sizing so we ordered the largest pair available. On this occasion we were very lucky, the seller called Huan on her phone and told her that the size we had ordered was good for someone who weighed a hundred and fifty kilos! He suggested a size to her, they arrived yesterday and here’s me trying them on this morning.

As you can see they fitted well enough so we took them out for a drive, back to the hospital. We almost couldn’t get in to see the doctor, the hospital wanted to see Huan’s “Health Check” and she had left her phone at home. Eventually, by convincing the nurse / receptionist that we had not left Wuzhishan for a long time, and by filling in all our contact information, we got in. Huan was not very happy about all this kerfuffle but I explained to her that it was probably because of the three days holiday just gone by.

Anyway, once we were in, the doctor seemed reasonably happy with the progress of my chest so I thought we’d be off home. No, the CMO had other ideas! She had translated my minor worries but now she became the doctor’s boss and told him what we wanted! The outcome is I have another week’s worth of brown gunge to smear on twice daily. Bless her little cotton socks, she only has my best interests at heart really.

With the extra time we spent in the hospital today I managed to get us to Woye Café again, the owners were quite pleased to see us; we were the first, and probably the last, customers of the day. They are also having water problems at the moment, worse than ours; theirs is only working twice a day. I think our rooftop tanks save us from that. They told us that the reservoir, Tàipíng shuǐkù, is very low on water. They had bought stacks of bottled water so were still able to make drinks, for me a cappuccino and for Huan and iced tea, very nice they were too.

After lunch, because I was not going to be able to ‘wet my chest’ for the next week, I hopped into the bath and took with me “Kings of Albion” which is a tale of “a bunch of tourists from the East looking for a missing kinsman during the Wars of the Roses”. It’s not a bad read.

June 29^th What a boring morning, staying in waiting for a delivery. According to Taobao, my new phone had been in Wuzhishan since yesterday so we thought it would be delivered this morning. It wasn’t.

A lot of my friends have, quite rightly, have been posting pictures of themselves on Facebook wishing the Royal Corps of Signals a happy 100th. To alleviate the boredom I thought I would do the same. Unfortunately, I have almost nothing left, no bits of uniform, no beret, not even any photos in uniform of those days, no memorabilia on my walls etc. Come on, let me hear you say "Aaaaaahhhhhh..." So, I dug out what I do have, a cap badge, two collar dogs, (not used), a veteran's badge and two ties, one Corps tie, one 27th Signal Regiment Hong Kong tie, a track suit, (bought when I was 24 for an upgrading course, called a T1), and of course a bottle of port! Putting all of that together I made a nice little gif again and shared it on FB. Happy Birthday to the Royal Corps of Signals, "Certa Cito"!

By lunchtime we still hadn’t heard from the delivery company so we went off and did our shopping. They eventually turned up as we were eating our dinner, fish, chips and some green vegetables. Now I wouldn’t say I was excited but I was looking forward to unwrapping a new phone, learning how to use Android etc. Within minutes I had decided that this phone was going back, no matter how much I had to argue with the boss about it. The photographs taken with it were horrendous. If they had been as good as Huan’s old phone, I would have accepted it, but they were even worse than her new phone. At a rough guess I would say that the camera lenses are just cheap imitations of real lenses, very cheap imitations. Anyway, Huan agreed with me so back it goes. Taobao is not bad like that, it is possible to return goods. In our case, we have a good ‘customer reputation’ so a return address was given to us almost immediately. You do have to pay for the return shipping but on small items that’s not worth worrying about.

So, what to do about my need for Android? I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, when we need to use a health card, I will use Huan’s old phone, until I have saved enough pennies again and we see what comes out in the next few months. Her camera, while not on a par with my Nokia, will at least do for ‘emergencies’ and if we are going somewhere special, we can take the Fuji camera and the Nokia, with its grip, as a camera. Problem solved.

Another week comes to a close, see you soon!