More Food, Another New Phone, A Silkie, A Lost Kid, More Insects

June 30^th Today was the day we decided that my feet are probably good enough to start increasing the speed and distance of our walks, slowly of course. Today was also the day I almost got a good picture of a bird outside the house; do you think he is surveying what he’s going to eat for breakfast? You’ll have to enlarge the photo to see.

It had been a while but I met a couple of my old friends on the way and an (almost) new couple but they turned out to be a bit shy. All these photos were taken on Huan’s new phone and to our surprise, they are fairly presentable.

Shall we stay with the animal world? Why not, here’s a gaggle in the back of a truck. I do like geese, I like the way they look at you. These poor babies were ¥90.00 each, I jokingly suggested to Huan that we buy three and take them home, one for us, one for Yu and one for the Jilin woman. Huan said she would only do that if they were ¥50.00 each! Thank God they weren’t, or we’d have had the hassle of someone doing the dirty deed again.

So how long and how fast was today’s walk? It was long enough, just over seven kilometres, not really fast enough for me though, it took us two hours and ten minutes. Still, any further or faster and the CMO would have been on at me again.

July 1st "Answer July, Where is the Bee, Where is the Blush, Where is the Hay? Ah, said July, Where is the Seed, Where is the Bud, Where is the May. Answer Thee – Me" (Answer July by Emily Dickinson)

Walking plans were binned today, Huan had a problem with her phone. When the choir has a new song to learn, as individuals, they practice at home, record what they’ve done and send it to the teacher. On her new phone she could record but there was no sharing option at all. Trying to find something half way decent in her android market didn’t work at all, probably because I had no idea what I was downloading. In the end I went to Google and looked for recorder apk files, I found many. The sheer amount of choice can be a little overwhelming but I narrowed it down by asking for free apps that were also ad free. Of the four or five I tried, some would not install on her phone and most of them told lies and had ads included. Now I know you don’t have to click on the ads but Huan is very good, (or is it bad), at clicking without reading thus ending up with loads of rubbish she neither needs nor wants. Finally I found one that suited both her and me and it uploaded with no problem. It even sounds pretty good!

Now that I knew all about apk files I set about trying to improve her camera. Similar problems occurred, unable to install, not ad free etc, but I was able to find an app, reputed to be one of the best and, I was able to install it. It had no effect whatsoever so I uninstalled it again. There’s no doubt about it, her camera is cheap and nasty.

Sorting out Huan’s phone had taken me all morning so after lunch I dived into Taobao for me again. My intention had been to wait for the new Nokia to come out so I had a look at existing Nokias for sale. There are hardly any, in the smartphone range anyway. Nokias come with no bloatware and so need access to Google for regular updating etc which I guess is why there are hardly any for sale in China. I could overcome these minor obstacles but then I thought about service and repair, that would be nigh on impossible here. Looking at the newer phones coming out and the way the prices are going made me realise that waiting was not doing me any favours. I narrowed my search to Huawei and Xiaomi and eventually, after lots of Youtube checking came up with two options, one from each manufacturer, around the same price range. How to make the final decision? Brainwave! Huan’s son must know about phones, send him a QQ message and then sit back and wait.

I didn’t expect to be putting any photos up today but Huan insisted. Yesterday I cooked a “Sweet Potato Crust Quiche” which was tasty enough but didn’t go from pan to plate in a way that would have made a good photo. I had a fake curry wurst with mine, garlic sausage with paprika and tomato sauce. We had the other half of the quiche today and Huan fried some fish to go with it, then decided it needed a photo. Again the taste was fine.

July 2^nd Not a far and fast walk today, we had both decided that we needed to get back to our indoor exercises two or three times a week which we had been doing until I bashed my foot. A sedate three and a half kilometres in an hour and a quarter suited us both fine. We checked in on our bridge engineers, they have removed the old (unused) stays and are now in the process of putting up the new ones. Let’s hope they get used!

On the way back we took a detour through our “it used to be a food” street. We’re not sure why it died; it was well on its way out before Covid-19 came along. Perhaps the rents were too expensive, I remember we thought they were, or maybe it’s just in the wrong place. This is what it looks like now; the second picture is wallpaper for a café then never existed.

I played around with Taobao and Youtube for a while after lunch comparing phones, their camera results and their prices, why do we have so much choice! I needn’t have wasted my time, I ended up back in the same place!

There was a break from scrambling my brain and that was our indoor exercise routine. As we had not done it since the end of May we went back to the beginning, the one mile in fifteen minutes exercise. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be, perhaps because the A/C was on in the bedroom so the house was a little cool. We did work up a small sweat but no dripping on the floor! To be safe though we will keep up this routine for July and move back up to the two mile walk in August and then the three in September.

The chief cook asked me to take a photo of today’s dinner, I think because she wants to share it with her friends on Wechat. Remember the sweet Chinese sausage that I use instead of chorizo? Well, Huan managed to skin it and then make us a great fried rice with it. That’s a dish that I’ve never got bored with over the years, ever since I used to have it for elevenses in Hong Kong way back in the early seventies. This tasted great, the sausages really made it!

After dinner Huan’s son got back to me on QQ and to cut a long story short, he told me that the only two manufacturers he would consider were the two I had mentioned and that he was of the opinion that Xiaomi was the better one. He also told me that the main chips for these phones cost ¥500.00 or more so “what did I expect when spending so little on a phone”. I admitted I had been a bit of a dummy and told him that I would follow his advice. It’s good to know someone who has more inside knowledge of the technology world these days than I do. Good news came later, Huan got her money back for my cheapo phone, all we need to do now is top up her Alipay from my bank and we’re good to go.

“Coincidentally” (?) I received a text message this evening recommending that I buy a Huawei P40 5G phone. Now we never gave our phone number to anybody today, either in the phone shop we visited or on any Taobao site. I have been searching without being logged into Alipay so they don’t know it’s me but somehow, someone knows I’m in the market for a new one. The P40 is a good phone but checking on Taobao it would cost me a month’s pension where the two I’m looking at are only half a month’s! If I didn’t have to have my hormone treatment I would consider it, but that also takes half a month’s pension every month! Just had her indoors check the message and it wasn’t a sales pitch, it was telling me that I had won a Huawei P40 5G and I had two hours to collect it by following the link in the message, in other words, a scam.

July 3^rd Yet again the plans of mice and men, or should that be wives and mice, were tossed asunder, but it wasn’t my fault, honest! Huan decided she would add some dye to her hair this morning which delayed our planned departure to walk the scenic mountain park way. The weather also looked as if it was going to take a turn for the worse so we set off for a slow walk, and just on cue, like the last slow walk, we came across this.

Not having to walk around the mountain gave me the opportunity to suggest that we visit the banks today to enable the purchase of my new phone. I’m not so sure Huan was over keen on the idea but she realises that I do need a new phone and also that I was going for a middle of the road one and not a flagship model. That plan worked!

On our way home we passed Yu’s husband having his haircut, outside, by the gate, by someone who has probably never been trained, as you do of course. Still, who am I to comment, Huan cuts mine, once in a blue moon when I decide it’s getting too long. Anyway, he looked happy enough getting his hair cut and having his photo taken.

If you’re wondering what the box on the wall is, it’s a payment box for charging up your electric motor scooter. No actual money is involved, you use a payment system on your phone and plug in to the relevant numbered socket. It’s very low tech, just normal household sockets with very minimal weather protection, but it seems to work well enough.

Some of you may know I’ve always had a thing for cars, dreams mostly, whatever car I own I’m always thinking of the ‘next’ one. To that end I follow a group on Facebook, and am a member of its associated website, ‘Drivetribe’. They have an offshoot called ‘Foodtribe’ so of course I ended up following that too. Yesterday I was reading a recipe someone had posted when Huan popped up behind and asked what I was reading. It was a recipe posted by someone who hated eggplant as a child and his mother had got round his aversion by cooking it with chicken and peanut butter. I’ll have to make sure I’m not looking at recipes when Huan sneaks up behind me; I was told there and then that I would be cooking that dish today. “Luckily” for us both we had all the required ingredients. It turned out quite well.

After a bit more dithering on Youtube and Taobao, my new phone was also ordered today. Late in the evening Huan received a message to tell us that the phone was on the way, from Haikou! It should be here tomorrow. If it is, it’ll be the fastest delivery we’ve ever had.

July 4^th And it was the fastest delivery we ever had, the phone arrived just before coffee time this morning. It looked good, it felt good and by golly it did me good. Anyway, first things first, try and go through the set-up in English, it started well, but I got stuck. Thinking that, unlike Huan’s phone, I needed the SIM installed before going any further we wandered off to China Mobile, our network provider. First my old SIM had to be cut down from micro to nano size and then the lady there had to put the phone back into Chinese. Within a couple of minutes the set-up was complete. She and Huan then had to try and put it back into English for me, it’s funny, I can change it from English to Chinese easily enough, for them to change it back, not so easy. They got there though. I took a couple of photos in the shop just to make sure that I hadn’t wasted my time and money again, they weren’t bad. In my opinion, my Nokia still takes far superior photos but this is way better than Huan’s and the cheapo one from last week. All I’ll show you here is an official GSM Arena picture. I’ll take all of next week’s photos with the phone camera after which you can decide if I was a dummy, or not.

Once back at home the real work started, trying to transfer the information from old phone to new phone. It should be a piece of cake! Tying the two phones together with Bluetooth worked, apart from the fact that no data interchange between them was possible, one Windows and one Android. Connecting both to the computer I then tried moving files from one phone to the other, again with no joy. Eventually, I had to enter contact details one by one into the new phone. Once they were all in I had to find a way to get the thumbnails in, again phone to phone copying via the PC would not work. Then I remembered I had copied an apk file from the PC to the new phone, so I started again. Number one, copy all thumbnails from Nokia to PC, number two, copy them from PC to Redmi, success! One good thing about transferring contacts like this is that the list was pruned quite considerably.

Next up was installing WeChat, no worries there, and because this phone is an Android, I have a very much more updated version than the one I had on the Nokia. A ‘recorder’ check showed that I could record and share with Huan so no need for another recorder installation.

Running an apk was the next job, the one for Endomondo, again no worries there. We will see how well it works tomorrow when we really must go for a walk.

Next I went through a lot of the apps, or ‘bloatware’ and was able to uninstall quite a lot of them, far more than I could on Huan’s phone. So, first impressions? I’ll be able to live with it, despite the picture quality still not being up to Lumia standards. It will certainly do me until such time as we receive a large cash injection from the lottery! Maybe I should give this phone a name, how about “Marvin”? You know who he is don’t you, the “Paranoid Android” from “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”.

July 5th Yahoo, a trip to the countryside, but not too far, it looks like rain. We set off over the bridge to nowhere which now seems is actually going nowhere. Huan tells me that they are going to knock it down and build a new one, because it failed the tests. I assume they mean stress and/or weight tests although we never saw any.

Next, ladies and gentlemen, I give you a pair of chickens, which, in this case, are most definitely not twins. I guess you’ve seen a lot of the one on the left just like we have. This is the first time I’ve seen the one on the right and some Googling was needed when we got home. Huan said it was a 乌鸡 (Wū jī) which translates as “black chicken”. Of course I took the mickey until my Google search turned up “Silkies” which are chickens with black skin believed to have originated in China where they are known as 乌骨鸡 (Wū gǔ jī) which should translate as black boned chicken but, would you believe it, translates as “Silkie”. If you want to know more, or are planning on raising your own chickens, go here - https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/silkie-chicken/

The director was in full swing today, look at that, look over there, take a photo etc etc. If I showed you all, you’d still be reading in a week’s time. Instead, I’ll tell you what we saw and choose the odd picture here and there. Butterflies were next, seen by me and not the commander, here’s one just landing or taking off, not sure which.

Further on we passed a gent with his head almost under water, a photo that I definitely wanted, but by the time I got the snap he was just a fisherman with a net in his hand. More ‘normal’ chickens were seen hiding under the trees by the irrigation canal, which we walked to the end of before keeping a lookout for my friends. Some mooing from me soon had them looking over the wall, Huan is convinced they remember me.

A silhouette is next, of a dragonfly, it was a black one anyway so you’re not missing any colours. I loved the way the light shone through its wings.

Remember the ‘bridge to nowhere’; well this is where it is eventually supposed to lead. The first photo is looking back towards the village at the end of the bridge; the second is looking where the road is supposed to go. It is a planned by-pass, not really sure if it’s needed, the highway will do a good enough job of bypassing us anyway.

A few more bugs and insects were spotted on our way round and then we came across this poor little mite. We think it was possibly a newborn, struggling to keep up with the rest of the tribe. This photo was taken just before I reached him, gave it a tickle and then started videoing while trying to shoo it towards the tribe.

It seemed like we may have been succeeding but then the whole tribe was shooed off by a woman working at the local rubbish depot. They all flew past Huan and me leaving the kid behind again. I gave Huan the camera while I picked the kid up and gave chase. It was no use, the nearer I got the further they ran. In the end I just had to put it down and hope its family would come back for it later. Here I am doing my best.

Nearer to home we took some more photos of the bridge construction, they have started installing the ‘droppers’ now, pretty soon we may be able to show you the completed project. Walking along the parapet wall after that the director was off yet again, this time asking me to take videos of insects, tiny little white ones. I put all three of today’s videos on Facebook, geese, which I forgot to mention above, goats and insects. There were not too many good screenshots, here’s a couple.

These two are not related to each other as far as I know, in fact the white one appeared to have come out of the shell of another insect, shown below, not very clearly. There were many of the little white insects but only one of the coloured one above.

There is bad news from today, of course! Endomondo does not work well on my new phone, it lost the GPS after one and a half kilometres and never found it again, and the audio coach doesn’t work at all. I spent hours trying to find out why, with no success. The problem could be from so many different places, the fact that the operating system is Xiaomi’s laid over the top of a standard android, the way location services work on Chinese phones in China etc. I have sent a message to Xiaomi’s help centre and Endomondo’s but I can foresee me having to change apps. I do so love the name Endomondo though.

Dinner today, with no photographs, was bratwurst hot dogs. Huan had mustard and onions and I made mine into a currywurst with just a few onions. Quick, easy and tasty!

July 6^th A productive morning today, starting with a selfie test. We managed to find out how to remove all the beauty filters, one of which was on by default, so here we are, warts and all! I have to say that in Selfie mode, with all the beauty filters off, Marvin is much better than the Nokia was.

Next was Huan’s phone, she needed a couple of photos for her home screen and her lock screen. We managed to find one of the two of us dressed quite nicely for her home screen but her lock screen will have to wait. I decided that the best thing was to let Huan look through all the photos on her computer and then tell me which one to use, less hassle for both of us.

Then it was back to the world of android for me, trying to find out why Endomondo is not playing right. It seems a text to speech app is required and enabling the Xiaomi one wasn’t doing the job. I told you he’s a paranoid android! I decided to try and download the Google version on my computer and then install the apk in the phone. I surmised that although we can’t access Google, the app wouldn’t need to do that anyway. It seems to have worked, the ‘Audio Coach’ test button now speaks to me anyway. As for the GPS, so far I’m still fishing in the dark. What I tried today was enabling auto-start on the compass, which seems to be the only location device I have access to. I’ll find out tomorrow if either, both or none work.

Right, that’s it for another week, remember, all next week’s photos will be taken by Marvin so tune in again then to be impressed, or as I suspect, not impressed!