Poorly Printer, Distressed Dashcam, Menopausal Madame, Downcast Dog

June 2^nd We took the printer to the ‘doctor’ today, actually to three ‘doctors’. The first shop was extremely reluctant to even attempt a repair and kept trying to convince me that a new printer would be more economical. Obviously he wasn’t very good at maths! The second shop could only fix one specific type of printer which wasn’t ours! The third one took our little baby in and now we wait for the phone call telling us whether or not it is possible and if so how much it’s going to cost us.

As for the dashcam, a quick inspection showed me that I could possibly fix it with a dab of superglue but a repair that like that would only be temporary. It also has a long standing problem of the screen being permanently on, but blank. Time for an executive decision with the reluctant agreement of the prime minister, buy a new one. Would you believe that our wonderful city of Wuzhishan, with a population of over one hundred thousand, doesn’t have a single place to buy one. Ah well, that’s what Taobao is for I suppose, a new one is now on order.

It was Chef Bob’s turn to cook again today and we were back to the Philippines. This is my ‘healthy’ version of chicken adobo, healthy because of the inclusion of steamed vegetables As usual, I cooked enough for two days so we’ll be having a repeat performance tomorrow.

Huan’s singing teacher, or choir mistress, has given them all a new song to learn, it doesn’t seem to be a very easy one this time either. The poor lady has been trying all day, singing it, trying to play the notes on her keyboard and listening to it. We have no pubs or half way decent bars to escape to so I disappeared for a solo walk, my ears needed a little rest. I still got my instructions before I left, how far and how fast I could go. An hour later I came back having walked five kilometres! The MO’s initial reaction was to quite sharply bend my ear but, after having a good look at my feet which had no swelling at all, she seemed a little happier.

June 3^rd We have this wonderful app on our phones here called Weixin, (Wechat in English) that does almost everything except make the coffee. One of the things that Huan likes about it is the almost free video calls. I say almost free because of course we do use our Wifi at home and our internet costs us about ninety pounds a year. Anyway, it means that she can spend hours talking to her younger sister up in Dalian. This morning was one of those times.

I took the opportunity to escape, earlier than recent days, and alone! Instructions were given before I left, as usual, but I ignored them, also as usual. Well, I suppose I ignored half of them, I did keep my speed down but walked more than the prescribed two kilometres. Baps were needed, so I passed by the bread lady’s place to buy a few more, with the faint hope of the sausage man being there too. Even though I was fairly sure he wouldn’t be I was still a little disappointed not to see him in his little kitchen. Baps in hand I strolled home along the riverside where I took the only photo of the day. Nothing else caught my eye at all.

June 4^th Another, quite unexpected, escape day! One of Huan’s two choirs is back in action. I’m not so sure it’s such a good idea, lots of old people in one room, using their lungs and not wearing any masks. However, local people are absolutely convinced that Wuzhishan has nothing to fear. Mind you, I am still following the ‘real’ doctor’s orders to a certain extent so no fast or long walks. My first photo op this morning was a frog, unfortunately a dead one, so I’ll spare you that. The second is a view from the ‘second’ bridge back towards our house. I suspect that this bridge may have been the original and only one when Wuzhishan was much smaller. This is another stitched panorama made up of two rows of seven photos.

To follow let’s have that some splashes of colour to brighten your day. I took a slight detour through a small children’s park just for a change and came across a few soldiers, probably skiving off from their nearby barracks. Just to show them I wasn’t a foreign spy with a camera around my neck I took a couple of photos of the flowers in the park.

Walking back through the town more colours appeared. At a rough guess I would think that this poor man didn’t sell enough balloons on Children’s Day and is now roaming the streets trying to make up his losses.

My day then got even better. Do you remember a short while back when they were chopping down diseased trees on the main street? Well, they have replaced them.

Now many people, perhaps even you dear reader, don’t look up when they are walking through the town. I always tease Huan that she is looking down to find dropped coins! She was quite taken with this photo when I got home; it’s amazing how much nature is so close to us and how so many people miss it.

So, it was quite a pleasant walk today, not sure how far, Endomondo went wrong again. This time the error was the other way, I had been walking for well over twenty minutes when it piped up and told me I had walked one kilometres in that time. Obviously the time and distance didn’t start in the same place!

June 5th What busy bees we were today starting off with a bit of shopping. Yes, I know shopping is Mondays, but we needed something for tonight’s meal a la Bob. It did make a change strolling up to the supermarket and then sitting with a nice cold drink in the shade before setting off home again.

After lunch our new dashcam, or DVR as they prefer to call them, arrived via Taobao. The photo online showed English on the screen so we, or should I say I, assumed we would have a choice of languages as we did on the old one. I was wrong! We spent the afternoon with Huan typing Chinese, sending it to me via QQ, then me translating it with Google before entering it in an excel file. At least we have the settings in English now. We’ll sort out the full booklet another day.

While this was going on I was also trying to get tonight’s dinner ready which shouldn’t have been a problem, I have cooked this before. It was an easy version of Greek moussaka, something I know Huan likes, it’s full of eggplant! As you might have guessed, there was, of course, a problem. The recipe calls for 150g of Greek yoghurt, which is quite thick. I knew we had some in the fridge so when the time came I went to start mixing the topping. Unfortunately, for some reason unbeknownst to us, the Greek yoghurt we had was strawberry flavour. Luckily, we had one small pot of normal yoghurt so we had to use that topped up with a little milk. The result was not what I had hoped for and doesn’t really deserve a photo. However, Huan insisted. It did taste a lot better than it looks!

June 6^th Lo and behold I was left all alone again this morning, Huan was off to choir practice again. She didn’t leave without giving me instructions though, not about walking today, but to make sure I installed the new dashcam along with the GPS unit. I discovered another reason why buying online is not always such a good idea. Because of the rake of our windscreen if I chose one setting of the camera mounting the lens wouldn’t come down far enough, the next setting makes it very difficult to get the cables in and out. Ah well, at least it works. When Huan returned she was happy enough with today’s work. She did suggest a test drive just to be sure but I convinced her that we could do that on Monday!

As I hadn’t been out there are no photos from me but Huan came home with another lizard one. This is a good one to show their camouflage, when I put her photos on the computer I couldn’t see the lizard at all. Only when I tweaked the software did it show up. See if you can find the end of its tail.

I had planned to go out after lunch for a stroll and to buy the weekend’s lottery tickets but after our little OAP nap Huan took a turn for the worse. She sometimes suffers with ‘morning sickness’, not through pregnancy of course but something to do with the menopause and the changes in her hormones. Normally it comes on first thing in the morning hence ‘morning sickness’. Today it came on after our nap. That put the kybosh on my plans to walk and I took on my duties of nurse which basically means hovering around doing nothing, just making sure Huan is still breathing when I sneak in the bedroom and providing glasses of warm water. After I’d had my dinner, more moussaka, I asked the patient if she’d like anything. “Rice soup” was her answer and so back to slaving over the cooker I went. Only joking of course, it’s very easy to do and as you know I like being in the kitchen. After that it was back to bed for her ladyship and back to Simon Templar for me.

June 7^th We had a touch of role reversal this morning, the ‘patient’ had recovered enough to become the ‘doctor’. She didn’t want to go out walking but made sure I got my instructions before I went! To be honest, she needn’t have worried, I am not going to break the rules that much, more than two kilometres yes, but not too far and still no speed. Perhaps in a week or so I will try and extend both speed and distance. My first port of call was to make sure that the new dashcam ‘sticky stuff’ had held up since yesterday and that the camera had not fallen down. Test one satisfactorily passed.

Next up was a walk across the river to check on any progress. There wasn’t much to be seen and I still don’t think we’ll see it finished by the end of the year. Even crossing is now not so easy, they are working on both bridges over the irrigation canal, one I couldn’t cross at all, it was completely blocked. Here’s the other where I had to do a little limbo round the side.

Next up is a little story of how we never really understand what’s going on with construction here in Wuzhishan. Before we purchased our apartment in 2007, ICBC used to have their bank branch in Wuzhishan in a round faded building just across the other side of the river. Ever since we’ve been here the bank has been located on the main road, right next to our only roundabout. Who did, (or does) the round building belong too? Why was it in such a state of disrepair these last twelve years? Perhaps ICBC actually own it, because they are back there now!

Now there is one problem when I go out alone, especially if I don’t take my keys. I walked all the way round to the front gate, having tried, and failed, to buy Huan some grapes on the way home. That failure was mostly because I couldn’t go into the big supermarket as I had forgotten my mask today! Anyway, arriving at the back gate, I couldn’t get in.

Never mind, I sneakily walked through our downstairs grocer’s shop, trying to appear as if I was looking for something which they didn’t have, their back door means we can skip both gates. As I arrived home I spotted our new four legged arrival. There is a new family in the downstairs flat and he adopted them from somewhere. They tell us that he was very badly treated before and also that he has fleas, hence the state of his fur. They have the medicine but he won’t let them near enough to apply it. That might change, I have seen him when they come home and his tail goes and he cheers up a little. Hopefully, he will accept more than just food and water from them. Just look at him, I feel so sorry for him.

Huan was a lot better when I got home, nice to see her happy smiling face again. Both of us then had a nice easy day, well, one shouldn’t work too hard on a Sunday, should one?

June 8^th Last day for this week, shopping it was, and another test of the new dashcam. Presently it is set up for the maximum resolution video wise, 1920*1080 @30fps, and I have to say I am not at all impressed. The video quality is far worse than our first ever, cheap as chips, dashcam bought in Harbin, many years ago. Still it worked, so I suppose it passed the second test. File sizes were very large though so a trip to Haikou would probably end up with me having to replace the card on the way. I guess I will have to change the resolution to minimum, the same as our old camera, 1280*720, possibly @60fps. We’ll see on Wednesday when we are next out in the car for our Chinese medicine hospital trip.

I spent the rest of the day trying to find a dashcam viewing software. You can of course view the videos with any old software, we usually use VLC, but I wanted one that could also use the GPS data. They usually come pre-installed in the camera. I don’t know if this one does or not, there is an exe file in there but Windows Defender will not let me open it.

The commander-in-chief is in tip top condition again so life is good! Nothing else to report so see you next week.