Freddy’s Flatulent Feast of Featured Monochromatic Fotografia

July 21^st “Who’s Freddie?” Well, the paranoid android is called Marvin so I thought the faithful Fuji deserved a name too, and what better than Freddie. Freddie is capable of far more than Marvin, unfortunately his operator, i.e. me, doesn’t have much idea how to get the best out of him. As promised a few weeks ago and again last week, this week’s photos will all be black and white, Fuji’s ACROS filter, with maybe some contrast adjustment from Picasa.

Today should have been one of Huan’s singing days and hence a long walk for me. However, Huan wasn’t recovered enough from yesterday so we had a joint walk around the river instead, staying mostly under the trees and out of the sun.

Walking round taking black and white photos got me thinking of all the photos I took back in the early sixties, I started colour around 1968. Those early pictures bring back memories, which is what you expect them to do of course and which is why they were taken. What doesn’t come back in those memories are the colours, just the occasional ones where an item of clothing may be remembered, or the colour of a car. It also cost a fortune to take pictures in those days, buying films and having them developed, I take more in a day now, maybe even discard more in a day, than I would have done in a month back then. Once I’m in my dotage let’s hope those memories, and the more recent ones can still strike a chord.

Places can also look a lot different in black and white, while the ‘dirt’ may still show it is far less obvious as can be seen by these two pics.

On the downside of course, unless you have an exceptionally good lens, detail will be lost. This can be seen in this macro of an ant.

SWMBO, who by the way, doesn’t like black and white photos at all, I think her family never had a camera, still looks just as lovely to me. In her younger days, and the same is true for many older Chinese people, photographs will have been a luxury expense and would have been done in a studio. Oh, how times have changed!

I managed to sneak up on another little birdie again today, here the use of colour didn’t really matter so much. This is one of the birds we keep trying to get closer to, but they are mostly black and white anyway.

I took some flower pictures next but I won’t bother showing you them. How on earth did horticulturists know what they were looking at in photographs donkey’s years ago? I know looking at some of my old photos I don’t even know what colour the trees were in the background. I guess the people taking the photos must have taken copious amounts of notes.

The last one from Freddie for today is a little bit of Chinglish. I don’t know what a ‘Snowflake steak’ is supposed to be but I’m guessing a ‘Philip steak’ should be a ‘fillet’.

Marvin was not going to be left out today, Huan stole him out of my pocket to take the next picture, and a few others besides. She took them in colour so I’ve had to convert this one to black and white with Picasa. I love it when animals look into your eyes, you wondering what they are thinking and who knows, they wondering what you are thinking maybe!

Marvin got his way again when dinner was ready. Fifteen years ago, or more, I cooked roast duck in orange sauce for Huan and it was terrible. Kermit would have been happy singing “Rubber Duckie!” Today’s recipe, “Slow-Roast Duck Legs with Marmalade” was an English one from countryfile.com worked a treat, you should definitely check that site out. Of course, the picture has been changed to black and white again, not very good for Instagram I suppose.

July 22^nd ‘er indoors wanted to be just that this morning, indoors, so we didn’t go anywhere I could have gone alone but I didn’t want to leave Huan all alone, there’s always other times to walk. I finished watching an Australian series called ‘Murder Call’ so a replacement was needed. That turned out to be another Australian one, ‘City Homicide’, thank heavens for Youtube.

Huan decided that an after dinner walk would be in order so I got the chance for some more black and white picture taking. The first couple were of Huan in the lift and they were terrible, the shutter stayed open far too long and my hand didn’t stay steady long enough! This next one had to be taken. We were passing the pet clinic when I spotted a forlorn face in the window.

Our next photo was another little creature that almost seemed to be watching me as I walked round the small pool it was in. Perhaps it was waiting to be fed.

Walking back through the outdoor market we did have a talk to a few geese who, as is usually the way with geese, gave me the evil eye. However, I guess you don’t need any more geese just yet. How about the evening sky instead? There are some lovely textures in those clouds.

July 23^rd Good news, Huan was back to normal today so off to school she went, with me to walk her there. I was too late for a long walk, I had planned the dusty road to Changhao village, alone, to save Huan from the dust. Instead, on the way to school, we passed the stairway to heaven, or, the lift and walkway to Shangri La, it saves the snowbirds walking up the hill.

I walked today down the main road to the traffic police turn off to come back by the river. There’s a public convenience on the corner where the ‘resident cleaner’ always had her dog with her. The last few times Huan and I went past, the powers that be had stopped her doing this due to ‘complaints from the public’. The little pooch was back today, all three and half legs and a big cheesy grin, he recognised me from afar. I took a lot of photos, all with my left hand while trying to keep him happy with my right. Only this one was any good.

On the bend of the river I tried a few landscape photos which turned out pretty good. Of course, in years to come, I may forget the colours I saw! For you though, another panorama, which I think came out reasonably well too.

Not much else lent itself to photography today so my last picture is of my route under the trees to avoid the sun. It is near a road, but not a very busy one so it’s quite a pleasant avenue.

July 24^th No singing for Huan again today so together we went, downriver and then back through the countryside. I thought I’d start with two photos of the bridge to nowhere, remember, Huan said it would have to be knocked down because of mistakes in its construction. Both of these are views you haven’t seen before.

Our walk started off well but before long Huan became the director, the producer and at one stage even had her hand trying to position my camera for me. What would I do without her? Some of what she was trying to get me to photograph would not have worked well in black and white, for example, some kind of jumping insect against a dirty sandy background. Sometimes I listened and sometimes I went my own way, like this one, I think it’s a wonderful shot.

We saw the ‘silkies’ again today along with a lot of other chickens, strangely, they were not running away from us. We think they may well have been looking for food. The goats were missing for a while and then we spotted them all in the middle of the river, they do like hopping around of those big boulders.

I was forced into taking photos of many butterflies next, for which I had to change the camera to colour mode, black and white would have been no good. That means you don’t get to see them this week, sorry! Shortly after that we got to the stairway (not) to heaven. My knees do not like going up things like this any more!

While I’m wandering around taking pictures of anything and everything, what does Huan do? Well today she was carrying a plastic bag she had found at the side of the road and filling it with coconut husks she was picking up here, there and everywhere. It seems they are good for putting into your plant pots and stopping them drying out so quickly. The things you can see on her arms are ‘sleeves’ to protect your arms from the sun. We got three pairs free with our hats; needless to say I will not be wearing mine!

Next up was a video of ducks in a field, they had probably just been let out for the day. In fact a few yards further on we bumped into some of their compatriots. They also seemed less wary of us than usual but not quite as brave as the chickens earlier. Look how cute the little one is.

Just around the corner we came to the byre, where some of my friends usually hang out. The farmer was there today and as they all came to the gate to see me he told us that they loved me! That may not be quite true but I do manage to get quite close to them. Here are two of them having a sniff and a lick, thankfully not a bite.

Another panorama of the countryside, it can look pretty good in black and white, probably not for the youngsters of today though.

As we approached home we passed one of the local schools with lots of coaches outside and more turning up while we watched. I surmised “School’s Out For Summer”. A lot of the schools locally do take boarders; it’s much more common here than it is in the UK. I was going to show you a picture of lots of buses but then thought I’d let you see this one instead. At least you know who he is and that he’s a cool guy. The writing says “Please add #” where the number is not specified, maybe the owner is supposed to add the octane rating there.

That’s it for our walkies but not for the day. I was cooking today, something else from countryfile.com, supposedly “Wild Garlic and Chorizo Tortilla”. I was wondering why it seemed more like an omelette than anything else and a quick Google showed me that this recipe had a mistake in its title. It should not have said ‘tortilla’; it should have said ‘frittata’. Not having any wild garlic available I substituted it for what we call garlic legs, it worked well. As is par for this week, the photo is definitely not Instagrammable!

July 25^th Today’s plan was not a long walk, Huan was off to singing school so I thought I’d walk the ladies there and then check out the Saturday riverside market. When I arrived I thought there was no market, the road was fenced off with a couple of policemen ‘on guard’. However, as I got further along towards town there were the usual stalls, just not as many. We had fruit, vegetables, chickens, ducks, pigeons, rabbits, pork, Chinese medicine and all sorts of odds and sods. Now I know you’ve seen the market before but I was busy clicking away to get you some black and white scenes. As I went back along the main street I even tried a three level panorama, in other words one made up of three rows of five pictures. I may have been to close to the subject for that to work though. I’ll never know because when I got home, all the photos I had taken were far too dark, in fact too dark for me to sort them out on the computer at all. The only problem I could find on the camera was that the ISO was not on automatic but on 4000. How I changed that setting I do not know, but I’ll check next time won’t I?

What this means of course is that we have no pictures of today’s walk at all. All you have is the ‘before’ photo of today’s dinner. I had arrived home early because Huan had decided today was to be another soup day and I was to be the chef. As you have seen many soups, I decided to show you the ingredients instead, although I forgot to add the tomato.

You wouldn’t think that so little food could do so much. We had a very tasty and filling bowl of soup each leaving enough for tomorrow and possible even for Huan’s lunch on Monday. Both of us thought that this was one of our tastiest yet, possibly due to the tin of stewed pork so we will definitely be doing it again.

Oh, I forgot, the other reason for the short walk was our planned TV walk, or ‘lockdown walk’ this afternoon. This month we are still on one mile, maybe next month we can get back to two.

July 26^th Did you know that today is famous for many things? I didn’t until I was looking for something to write about today and stumbled across a site called daysoftheyear.com. Just to pick out two of them, today is “Coffee Milkshake Day”, something that we both like very much but, we didn’t have one of those today. For some reason an insane bout of laziness hit our house this morning and neither of us really wanted to do anything so I was searching for “Couch Potato Day”. It does exist but it’s not today, it’s either in August, October or November. However, our second choice for today was “All Or Nothing Day” so that’s what we celebrated, not quite in the spirit of how it’s meant though, we just did nothing.

We did plan an after dinner stroll but just before we decided to get ready it started raining, that’s our first photo of the day.

Having taken that shot I decided to sneak into the living room and take one of Huan studying her new music book. She wasn’t, she was on her phone! She has become very adept at watching the TV and scanning her WeChat at the same time.

A few minutes later Huan got her revenge and took one of me playing the guitar. You can see how lazy we were, I hadn’t even combed my hair. If you look more closely you may spot that I’m attempting to play an ‘F Barre’ chord, the photo can’t tell you whether or not I was successful! Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not, much more practice still needed.

July 27^th Monday again, shopping again, no Freddie but Marvin was along for the ride. As you can see, this is one of Huan’s favourite days.

I tried to get some Chinglish on the way up the escalator but we were moving too fast for me to control my feet, the trolley and the camera all at once, another time maybe. On our way out I spotted this booth and I got the urge to leap behind it and be the salesman. It looks like the ‘formula’ is the wrong way round, Huan tells me that “if you buy a Baijiahui shopping voucher for ¥1,000.00 you get a phone card worth ¥129.00”. I didn’t get any ‘sales’, do you think the mask put them off?

I suppose the mask at least hides the wide open mouth! Despite the fact that there are no rules saying we have to, we still wear masks if we go shopping or to other crowded places. We read the news from overseas, especially the USA but increasingly in the UK now as well, where people are refusing to wear masks for all sorts of stupid reasons. I just see the world getting crazier and crazier day after day.

Anyway, that’s enough preaching from me, see you next week!

Fiery Lance, Poked, Prodded and Tested, Anniversary, Bad Bob

July 14^th Cleaning my teeth last night and I heard a dripping sound, water into a receptacle of some sort. It turned out to be coming from the ceiling and dropping into one of our bathroom mugs. Huan got out of bed and we both went exploring, there is still nobody living on the eighth or ninth floors and both of their water lines are turned off. We even went onto the roof for a look around, nothing to be seen there. We took a ceiling tile off for a look and the water is coming through the floor by the looks of it, but where it’s coming from is another matter. Nobody has the keys for the apartment above and nobody has their phone number either. The leak is very small so we don’t have to call the police yet like we did when our kitchen had a problem from upstairs. This morning I took a photo of it.

Huan and Yu weren’t skiving today so I got to walk alone, over the landfill mountain and down the other side. First stop, our old, and future access to the highway, it looks like they have destroyed it completely. I knew they would have to some work there, the space between the on ramp and the southbound carriageway was not big enough to put the northbound carriageway in. It’s all supposed to be completed before the end of the year.

It was a warm day for walking today, we definitely need some rain down in these parts. A lot of China is suffering dreadfully with too much rain and floods galore whereas we have had nowhere near as much as we usually have at this time of year. A lot of the ponds I passed were much drier than usual and of course the road is dusty with construction anyway. Today I had to take a slightly different route and go under the new highway up to the first village.

I was just over five kilometres away from home before I found peace and quiet, where, instead of sitting down for a while, I took some photos for a panorama.

Another panorama now, one that I’ve been meaning to do for some time. This is the village almost at the top of the hill. As you can see, it is not an old village but one probably built in more recent times for all the local farm workers.

Next up, still not quite at the top of the hill, just to show you how the weather has affected the farms, here is a duck pond, where the ducks usually have plenty of room to swim around. There is still some water, but nowhere near as much as there usually is, at any time of the year. None of the vegetation you can see in the lower half of this photo, or the top middle, left of the building, would normally be there.

Most of today’s photos were taken with the Fuji; at least I can look through the eyepiece without having to put my reading glasses on! This one though was taken by Marvin. It is me, obviously, at the top before beginning the downward trek. Unlike last week’s photos Marvin’s can now be played with so this one is cropped and tarted up a little with Picasa.

At the bottom of the hill I stopped at our usual water stop where the old lady grilled me, asking why she hadn’t seen us for so long, where was Huan etc. Once all questions were answered and two bottles of water were bought, one for my head and one for me, I was back on my way again. My next stop was outside the apartment complex where today’s singing practice was. Being a lazy slob, I lay down and took pictures of my feet and the moon.

Once the gang were out, and after they’d almost walked past me without seeing me, they insisted I took a photo or two of them. In fact I took a dozen or more, but in most of them they were not looking at the camera. This is not a bad one.

Having slept very badly last night, so badly that I could have quite easily got back into bed after breakfast and slept till lunchtime, I needed an OAP kip this afternoon. Huan joined me and, luckily, I didn’t sleep too long. Why luckily? Well I had offered to cook today, steak, baked potatoes and broccoli with a black pepper sauce. Having no gas can be a problem and not trusting the house wiring gives me another problem. Everything has to be meticulously planned. #1 Put the oven on and cook the baked potatoes for an hour or more. #2, prepare everything else. #3 Turn off the oven so that the hotplate can be used to cook the broccoli. Leave the potatoes in the oven to keep warm. #4 Take off the broccoli, leave in the pan with the water to keep warm, prepare the sauce. #5 Put the sauce in a jug and fry the steaks. #6 Plate everything up and serve hoping her ladyship is impressed and that all the food is at a good temperature. It worked.

July 15^th Recent days have seen the CMO nagging me to go to hospital again and have my face zapped. Now I’m not very keen on that as it hurts but I bowed to pressure and went anyway. Here I am in the queue, under the fiery lance and finally back out in the fresh air.

Having been under the knife as it were, I planned a nice little bottle of iced coffee in the town square but, my plans were thwarted. I took Huan through the outdoor market on the way where she decided to buy some pork and have it minced, something we can’t do in the other market. Obviously walking around in the hot sun with freshly minced pork is not such a good idea so home we went. The dumplings that Huan made with the minced pork more than made up for my lack of refreshment in the town square though.

The only other news from today is that somehow I’ve got another traffic violation! We have no idea what it is, I received a message that I ‘did something wrong’ at 11:41 on the 10^th July. We were on our way back from Haikou at that time so I went to check my dashcam footage and would you believe it, we have an hour missing, which includes that specific time. It appears that when we started the car again after our highway break the recorder did not start, it only started again when we restarted the car after refuelling when we arrived in Wuzhishan. All we can make out from the message is 103kph and 20 metres, which has me thinking maybe it’s a tunnel approach. We’ll find out when we visit the traffic police!

July 16^th Alone again, naturally! Huan was singing so I got the chance for a solo walk again. I had planned a walk up to the reservoir but slept too late. Going there and back would have probably taken me four hours as it’s so long since I did it. That walk is seven kilometres up and then seven down so I walked a different way making sure I could be on time to meet Huan from her class. It’s been a while since we walked up this road, I think before the Covid-10 problems, it’s amazing how things can change, this truck for example. It wasn’t there last time we walked this route and now it’s almost overgrown.

The next change was the fish farm restaurant area, they have begun landscaping along the roadside, maybe they’ll actually open this year. This is another panorama created with MS Image Composite Editor, beats messing around trying to create panoramas either in the camera or on the phone. This one is two rows of six photos.

Having a little time to wait for the ladies I took a NAAFI break, coffee, water and fag. I know, I should give up, who knows, maybe I will one of these days.

Walking home we suddenly stopped at the local health clinic. “What are we doing here?” I asked, the ladies responded with “Free health check of course.” Our last one had been in November so I have no idea why we should already need another but, since it was free, I was dragged in. The free health checks are actually tomorrow but we could save some time by doing part of it today. First off we had our hearts checked.

This was followed by height, weight and blood pressure measurements. At least I was taller than 1.6 metres this time! Huan’s BP was fine, 110/84 with a pulse of 61, mine not quite so good. I was 134/89 with a pulse of 86. However, in my defence, I had just walked nine and a half kilometres in the hot sun before meeting the ladies!

Today was our anniversary, we have been married a grand total of twelve years, and unusually, I managed to drag Huan out for a meal. We agreed that we wouldn’t go to the only “Western” restaurant and we’d try the DoReMi replacement. The new name is DuoXiAi, other than that and new décor, it’s not terribly different to what it was before. Starters were off the menu because they were too busy! No alcohol was available, which is the norm for many restaurants like this in China. I guess it’s classed as a fast food place. Both of our meals came with a soup so starters weren’t really needed anyway. The soup wasn’t up to much, but a spoonful of Huan’s coconut curry improved it. I wasn’t allowed curry, (real) doctor’s orders, until my chest heals, instead I had sliced pork and chicken wings. Both of our meals were very tasty, very filling and we had no complaints. Here they are.

‘Puddings’ weren’t up to much so we just had ice cream, or something that vaguely resembled ice cream. That’s one area in which the western style restaurant ‘Coffeeprinz’ comes out on top, it is a lot more expensive though. We paid less than ¥80.00, (less than ten pounds), for both of us, very good value for money. Here we are, replete, relaxed and happy.

July 17^th As mentioned yesterday, we were back to the clinic this morning, where, despite getting in early yesterday, we still ended up queuing to have our blood taken, hand in our ‘wee wee’ and then have our organs scanned.

Once finished they gave us all a bag with bread or cake, water and six raw eggs! I guess Chinese people aren’t happy with it being free, they want goodies too! We stopped for breakfast on the way home, soup noodles for Huan and fried noodles for me which, as it’s been such a long time since we’ve had breakfast out, I really enjoyed.

After we got home it was check the upstairs bathroom time, yes, Huan had managed to find someone with the key who turned up with the maintenance company boss. Initially they tried to say it was our problem and that all we had to do was repair the little U-bend. We pointed out to them that the only reason there was water under the U-bend was because it was coming through the floor above it. So now, we are all agreed that the problem is under the tiles on the eighth floor bathroom floor. Nothing can be done until they return, if they ever do. We should be OK as long as nobody turns the water on to that apartment.

And staying on the subject of water, we had finally emptied our water cooler last night so I took the top off today and had a good root around inside. I couldn’t find any signs of a leak anywhere. Before lunch we put a new bottle on, poured a glass out of each outlet and then left it for a while. After dinner, with still no signs of leakage, we switched it on again, fingers crossed.

July 18^th Up nice and early today so took a risk on the weather, it did look as if we might have some rain. I was out by half past seven on the ‘Tàipíng shuǐkù’ walk a.k.a. the reservoir walk. The local bridge is coming on well, they have begun the cross members and longitudinal members for the walkway.

This next photo shows roughly where I was headed and why I was just a little worried about the weather.

Recently we have noticed a lot of foundations being laid at the side of the roads. We thought they were for additional cameras for monitoring the movement of cars and people until we noticed some were quite close to existing cameras. Our next guess was that they were replacing the road signs, many of which were hidden behind the trees. We were right, but the end result is not what we expected. I took the photos from the ‘driving seat position’ in the middle of the road. Hopefully, pruning will be next on the agenda!

At the bottom of the steepest part, near the police station, I bumped into the army, well quite a few of them anyway, enough to fill a coach, a truck and a riot control vehicle. They were on their way back into their vehicles, perhaps they had been having an early morning run, or march, up the mountain, something I remember well! They didn’t look too sweaty though and some were happy enough to exchange pleasantries. For obvious reasons, there are no photos!

This next one is at the end of the first, and worst part. There are still another four kilometres to go from here, all uphill, but not as steep as this part. It’s not so easy to see where I walked up but there is a winding road in the middle of the photo.

After an hour and a bit I had reached just over five and half kilometres, reaching a new bridge, built to avoid landslides, I paused to take in the view.

I reached the top much quicker than I thought I would. I have done it in the past, maybe three years ago, in an hour and seventeen minutes. A lot has happened since then and a lot more practice would be needed to get anywhere near that again. Still, I had thought it would take me two hours today so this time was very acceptable. I wish the calories were more though!

One of my main reasons for taking this walk was to check on the water level, to see if what people are saying is right, and if that’s why parts of Wuzhishan are facing water problems. It would certainly appear to be the case, check these two photos out. The water level is usually up by the tree line. Where is our rain this year?

And so back down the mountain I went. I did meet a snake, a live one, but unfortunately I have no photo, ergo no proof. I came round a bend in the road and it was in front of me, going my way as it happened. I leapt backwards while it shot forwards and then in my panic to try and switch the camera from stills to video it slithered into the ditch. I missed my opportunity. It was a huge snake as well, much bigger and better than any of “Donald’s snakes”. Well, OK, I guess it was about fifty centimetres or so.

To my surprise I was early enough back down the mountain to be able to meet the ladies from school. I did have a little lay down on the steps while I waited for them but no NAAFI break today. I also managed to sneak a couple of overhead photos while they were walking behind me but, SWMBO insists that they are not for publication. That’s just as well, because the quality was terrible, I should have used continuous shooting.

How long was today’s walk? I’m glad you asked, it was a lot longer than any I’ve done recently, just over sixteen and a half kilometres. I definitely needed my OAP kip after lunch!

Once home the water cooler was checked, no leaks, switched on again, and as I write this everything still seems hunky dory. That’s more than could be said for our electricity this afternoon. Not long after we roused ourselves from our afternoon nap, Taobao came a’calling, down I went and collected our new hats to protect us from that good old midday sun. I hadn’t been back on the computer more than a few minutes before the power went off and a few minutes later, there was another Taobao delivery. I don’t like going down the stairs at the best of times, after this morning’s walk I didn’t fancy it at all. Needs must though, so off I went to collect Huan’s breakfast this time, and her arm bag for her phone. Maybe I’ll get a photo of that when we’re walking some time.

July 19^th No extra-curricular activities for Huan today so she wanted to walk “through the countryside”. I had to disappoint her as my weary bones were still feeling stiff from yesterday plus which I had also succeeded in cutting one of my toes. A walk round the river it was then. Our first photo was just to show off our new hats and it was taken by Marvin. Huan looks quite fetching in her reversible hat which will match most of her clothes, at least better than her previous Japanese hat. Mine is not reversible, I have two hats instead, one black, which you see here, and one khaki so my colour coordination is also taken care of.

We passed the bridge as usual and the construction walls had been taken down so we were able to get closer and have a chat with the workers. They were happy to be snapped but I didn’t manage to get one where they all smiled at the camera at the same time!

A macro fly was next but when I checked when I got home it was out of focus. Ah well, here’s some pretty flowers growing parasitically on a tree instead.

And here’s another attempt at a birdie. No, I haven’t taken up golf, I’m neither a retired bank manager not rich enough! No, this was a normal feathered bird and today, I didn’t bother with the viewfinder, or the screen, I just pointed the camera in the general direction and kept snapping as I slowly walked closer. The result is not too bad. Huan wondered if I would have been able to sneak any nearer if my phone wasn’t making continuous burbling noises!

Why is my phone making continuous burbling noises? I don’t know yet, but I have ascertained that it’s not Endomondo as the noise continues even if I switch off the audio coach and all notifications. It must be coming from some other app that Endomondo uses, hopefully I’ll find it one day.

Huan had me taking photos of flowers all over the place today so let’s have some of them. Although we live on a sub-tropical island the variety of flowers isn’t as great as you would think so if you’ve seen these before, I apologise. They are pretty though. When I come to think of it, we are not likely to see a lot of variety around the city as the flowers have been planted for landscaping purposes.

Our last picture of the day is food, yet again. This weekend we had no ‘full English’ as there were still vegetables in the fridge. Huan was going to do a soup today so I said I would take over. Our vegetable soup ended up being only one onion, half a garlic, one tomato and half a tin of sweet corn. Whatever the large green vegetables were in the fridge, they had gone off. I still managed a reasonable soup though, adding a bit of Italian seasoning and a little milk and then giving it a whiz we ended up with this. It did the job filling us both up nicely.

July 20^th “Bad boys, bad boys, Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do When they come for you?” Well, they didn’t come for me; I had to go to them. It was in response to this text message that we received earlier in the week. “【海南交警】您的小型汽车琼D08302于2020-07-10 11:41在省直辖县级行政区划海屯高速公路103公里20米乌石互通海口往琼中方向，被交通技术监控设备记录了『驾驶中型以上载客载货汽车、危险物品运输车辆以外的机动车超过规定时速10%以下的』的违法行为。请于收到本告知之日起30日内接受处理”.Google translates it as – “[Hainan Traffic Police] Your small car Qiong D08302 was recorded in the direction of Qiongzhong on the Haitun Expressway 103 kilometers and 20 meters from the Haitun Expressway on 2020-07-10 11:41. It was recorded by the traffic technology monitoring equipment "Driving a motor vehicle other than a medium-sized or larger passenger and cargo vehicle or a dangerous goods transport vehicle exceeding the specified speed by 10% or less" is an illegal act. Please accept the processing within 30 days from the date of receiving this notice.” We ended up being in the police station for quite some time. Using my licence number, my car number, my passport number and my visa number took them a long time to find me in the computer. They blamed it on a recent update, which is possible I suppose. Anyway, the photograph was produced, it was me, and the speed was 126kph. All we can think of was that it was as we rejoined the highway after our coffee stop and before I put the cruise control back on, we always set that to 117 or 118 kph. Lots of paperwork was done, my photograph was taken, again, and we were presented with the results. To my surprise, there was no fine and no points, at a guess because I was only 5% over the limit. In other words, I had my hand slapped, again! Here I am tentatively awaiting the result of the proceedings.

While Huan was sleeping after lunch, she’s a little bit out of sorts today; I had to pop downstairs three times for Taobao deliveries, two dresses and some plants. I took a photo of one of the plants because Huan says it’s like one that a student gave me in Harbin. That one really grew in the time we had it but of course we had to leave it there when we came down here. To see if this one will grow as much and as well, I will record its progress every month.

Other than that, just a little house maintenance, replacing the back on the water cooler, only eighteen screws. I had put it back in its normal position last night and there were still no sign of any leaks. Maybe the bottle was faulty? The bathroom ceiling tile was also replaced, hopefully it will not have to be removed again soon.

And so we come to the end of another week, stay tuned for “black & white” next week!