Rigsby’s Lament or More Trials and Tribulations for the Landlords

October 6^th “Eight Days A Week” the Beatles sang and this is our eighth day of being in Sanya. Will it ever end I ask myself. SWMBO has decided that there is no rest for the wicked and I must get started on the kitchen tiles as soon as possible. First a spray with the degreaser, followed by Jif to remove and extra gunk and finally another spray, a special one, that came with the tile paint.
 
So much for our new bed, I had a terrible night’s sleep, Huan not much better. I suppose her sleep could have been disturbed by my tossing and turning all night. After breakfast I had a respite from work as we had to pay another visit to the bathroom shop, Huan had decided the accessories and the mirror should be replaced as well, no argument from me. By the time we got back it lunch time, a quick walk to the Xinjiang stall, a couple of samosas each by the river and then home to wait for the toilet to arrive.
 
I fell asleep and slept all the way through the toilet delivery and installation only waking when the accessories were being installed. Here’s the new loo, which we are not allowed to use for twelve hours. That’s something I had to have clarified! We can use it, but we can’t actually sit on it for twelve hours so a #2 is out of the question!

After that we were back to the waiting game, two more deliveries due this afternoon, both in Sanya somewhere, just waiting for the phone to ring. Thank God for the burger shop downstairs, 鱼香肉丝 (Yú xiāng ròu sī, translates as fish like meat), for Huan and咖喱 (gālí) curry for me, with chicken but no crispy coating this time. Then once more to the waiting game, the courier left his depot at four and two hours later we’re still waiting!

Our luck was in today, the courier found his way to our place without returning to the depot for a night, he was here just before seven. The job was completed by twenty to eight, as usual Huan recording all the progress. Here are her results, one of me working and one of the finished job. #1 son and his good lady may recognise these curtains, they used to hang in the spare bedroom in Abu Dhabi.

The second delivery didn’t arrive, not to worry, that’s not important yet, I have to finish my painting job in the kitchen first. While Huan watched TV I busied myself downloading more chords and lyrics to have a go at when we eventually get home. Of course by then my guitar calluses may have completely disappeared!

October 7^th As is often the case, a change in plans this morning, instead of starting on the kitchen I had to take the curtains down in the bedroom and paint the wall there. The workman installing our air conditioner had made a mess of the wall and a big black boot print on the windowsill. Cleaning up his mess and repainting only the bad part of the wall would have made the rest of the wall look worse so the whole thing had to be done. The top of the front door also needed touching up so I did that F.O.C! Huan did try and take photos but I told her not to bother knowing that she would get me again later on anyway.

Later on came and we tried to make sense of the instructions for our tile paint. Spray the wall first with something they call cleaner but is called tile reinforcement on the bottle, leave for five minutes and wipe dry. Repeat, but this time leave for fifteen minutes, and then wipe dry again. Mix the reagent into the paint and start on the tiles, recommended two coats, in our case probably three will be needed. Huan caught me this time.

There is a waiting time of two hours between each coat, nothing to really worry about, but you also have use all the paint within twelve hours or it will ‘go off’. We did, or should I say I did, the second coat before we went out for dinner. Half a chicken for me with some green vegetables and a little rice, we must have asked them a dozen times not to ‘chop chop’ the chicken, just give me a pair of gloves! It went down very fast, all this work Huan is making me do is playing havoc with my appetite, sometimes I don’t want to eat at all and other times, like today, I just wolfed it all down.
 
Two more jobs after dinner, well three, if you include washing my hands with paint thinners. Guess who didn’t use the gloves provided for painting? The first was to put the curtains back up in the bedroom, the second was to put a third coat of paint on the kitchen tiles, yes, two coats weren’t enough. I’ll try and remember to take a photo tomorrow showing the difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’.
 
Because we can’t save the paint I did a first coat on the stone kitchen units, they now look a very badly painted grey. Once we have done the rest of the kitchen wall we will slop a lot more paint on the units to see if we can get them to look any better. Mind you, they already look a darn sight better than they did last week!

October 8^th As promised, the ‘old’ and ‘new’ side by side, just in case you can’t tell, the old is on the left. The new has three coats of tile paint and probably wasn’t prepared as well as it could have been, on top of which there was evidence of water ingress from outside behind some of the tiles. Still, we are reasonably happy with the result and would consider doing it in our own house and recommending it to other people if they have old or non-matching tiles.

After breakfast I started the rest of the wall, one coat before lunch then one after lunch, just before the first ‘doorman’ came to remove the old bathroom door. I was glad to be of assistance by lending him my drill to drill out the rivets on the hinges. Further assistance was provided by swinging my little axe to help get the old frame out of the doorway. It was fun being a destroyer for a change!

Third coat finished in time for the second, and ‘Chief’ doorman to arrive and fit the door. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find anywhere to park his car so today’s installation was cancelled. He suggested tomorrow at five in the afternoon but Her Highness has to go back to Wuzhishan tomorrow so a new date was arranged for next week.

No rest for me though, another two coats on the inside of the kitchen units, nowhere near as ‘professional’ as the walls but hopefully any tenants will not go down on their knees to check. Masking tape was removed from the kitchen walls and the floor cleaned so we could put the washing machine and fridge back in place. Here’s what the units look like after three coats of paint, check back to 29^th September for a comparison. The paint is ‘Bright White’ which the units may not be but they look pretty good to me! We still have one more tin of paint so when we come back next week we’ll decide whether another coat is required.

October 9^th I got back from breakfast shortly after Huan to find the apartment full of people. There was someone Huan knows and a couple of potential tenants. They wanted to pay monthly, which we politely declined, Huan told them the rent was yearly, even if they only wanted to stay for seven or eight months, I agreed. I would prefer this time that we rent to young working people but we’ll see how it goes.

Once they had left I finished off the floor and tried to clean the worktops, not so easy, that covering is difficult to bring back to anywhere near its original condition. Packed up our clothes and the computer, left the ladder and tools and headed back to Wuzhishan for a couple of days. Round two will start on Tuesday.

Leaving Sanya at the time we did meant we had to stop for a lunch break on the way, today was somewhere we hadn’t tried before. We had said no burgers for lunch but we thought that as this one appeared different, we would give it a go. Spot the error in the sign; it was all correct on the door though.

Was it different? I suppose the answer would be yes and no. It had all the usual spicy coated fried chicken stuff but with additions. There are lots roots, chicken feet and other assorted Chinese delicacies too. Huan had a fish burger, covered in spicy coating of course, but not as hot as the usual shops. I had a double beefburger which took me back to my younger days in the 1960s and reminded me of Wimpy burgers. Mine had more sauce on it than the ones in the old days but it was certainly palatable and made a nice change.

Once home work started again, Huan watering the plants first before washing our dirty clothes and bedding from Sanya, and me on the computer. The first job was transferring all the data from my portable HDD to the PC, followed by transferring all the dashcam videos. I could them make a start of fine tuning the photos for last week’s Blog, removing hundreds of bird pictures taken by Huan, with her phone, and making sure I had no rubbish left in mine. After that it was time for a nice hot coffee, only instant, but by golly, it tasted good after more than a week of only bottled stuff. We also felt that we needed it, coming back to Wuzhishan felt like coming back to winter. You’ll all laugh but the temperature had dropped to almost 20ºC and I even had to put a T-shirt on in the house!

PC work continued until dinner time when we went out to a most salubrious establishment. Our plan was to take photos of our dinners for you but we forgot so instead, we took a few of the surroundings. First is their new serving area.

We follow that with the pièce de résistance, the Sistine Chapel style roof, the photos of which took on a new life by using Picasa’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” tool. All you arty types can feel free to chip in with what you think these are and whether or not they’re any good.

Back to the grindstone of dashcam work when I got home with an hour or so break for some much needed guitar practice. It would have been pretty obvious to anyone listening that much more practice is certainly needed!

October 10^th Well that didn’t take long, by the time I went to bed last night I was sneezing like mad, had sinus problems and a sore throat! Huan put me on Chinese medicine straight away. I guess I was pretty run down after our nine days away. I woke up this morning just before she went off to a choir practice and to return her performance dress. The rest of the morning I caught up on my emails and FB and did some more dashcam work. The one I had left running overnight had failed; soon I’ll have to consider a graphics board and additional memory. Luckily for me, the two compilations this morning worked fine.

Out for dinner again this evening and I was wearing a vest, my jeans, a long sleeved shirt and even shoes and socks! It’s not supposed to be this cold and miserable at this time of the year.

We didn’t walk far before dinner but did manage about five kilometres afterwards; both of us are still feeling a bit worn out. Food helped, as it always does, today’s venue was not quite as salubrious as yesterday’s, but the food was fine. As you can see we were both on seafood today and in UK prices, that was around £4.00, exceptionally good value for money.

October 11^th You may be wondering why we are not back off to Sanya today, seeing as how we still have a fair bit to do there. Well, it’s that time of the month again and I have to go and get my belly punctured on Monday. We spent the morning sorting out tenancy contracts, I even made one in English just on the off chance that some foreign teacher would like to live there. Mind you, the advert I made in Sanya has somehow become corrupted so I can’t open it here and the laptop has packed up again, I think I may need a new mouse.

After lunch, everything was packed up and off we set for Haikou, I convinced Huan that it was better to stay a night in a hotel and go to Sanya from the hospital. Her plan had been to have me do the whole lot in one day!

Stopped off in our usual spot for a refill, 92 octane for me and coffee for the car, or was it the other way round? We like this spot, nestled as it is in the hills, on a sunny day it’s very pretty. Here’s what it looked like today.

This was probably the best weather we saw anywhere on our drive up to Haikou but at least when we got there the temperature was ‘nicer’. It was 27°C at around half past five in the evening, should be shorts again tomorrow!

On the way to dinner, and after dinner, we tried to find a new mouse for the laptop, should be easy enough we thought. Nope, not a computer shop in sight anywhere, not even a computer repair shop, but we were eventually successful in a stationery shop. Huan bought one; it cost her ¥38.00, and then saw, in the very next shop, one for ¥20.00, which brought a little chuckle from me, not too loud of course! At least part of the computer is working again.

October 12^th Last night we were given a room on the other side of the hotel, still with access to the enormous balcony for my fag breaks though. Here’s the morning view taken with me trying to hold the camera through the small opening that the window allowed. It’s not the best of views but it’s not so bad.

We had all the usual kerfuffle today with joining queues to pay before seeing the doctor and then afterwards to pay for the monthly drug hit but we were away from there before ten. Fisticuffs in the car again with Huan telling me to listen to the Sat Nav, which may or may not have been right and me wondering why we weren’t in the right place on the displayed map. Eventually we all agreed with each other and found our way to the Eastern Expressway. It was another rainy day, not the best for driving. Lunch was taken on the way, dumplings for Huan and some strange wrap for me. I hadn’t realised that the outside was not pastry but sticky rice covered in a thin layer of seaweed. It was tasty enough but I was bloated for the rest of the day.

In fact by the time we reached Sanya I didn’t feel too well at all, Huan had me on the Chinese medicine again. I guess being run down and having a cold is not the best time to be having hormones stuck in your belly! I would have delayed it if the injection was being done in Wuzhishan but not when it’s such a long drive away in Haikou.

Parking space sorted and bags left in the house we went for a walk, I needed the air. Down by the riverside we spotted lots of birds again so the ‘Director’ was busy. I only had my phone with me but this one’s not bad, the others will appear in the Sanya Apartment Area album when I have enough time to do the work.

We wandered around the shops in the evening, found a mouse pad, Huan insisted, I refused to have one that had the Apple logo on it. We settled on a cheap Microsoft one! Huan found a restaurant where she could eat, at my insistence, my belly felt like I’d eaten a Medicine Ball and my head wasn’t too good either. While she tucked in I had a can of coke, calculating that the extra gas in that may help deal with whatever was in my stomach!

On the way home we decided to check out Sanya’s new underground shopping streets. In Harbin they go shopping underground because it’s so cold above ground so in Sanya they have decided they must have the reverse. First off a bit of Chinglish on the way down, the second sign is fine, not sure who the ‘Land Creep’ is in the first though!

We didn’t stay down there too long today just dipped in to cross the road. We’ll try and do a lot more some time in the future. Here are the views towards both ends of the one we were down from our vantage point half way across the road.

And that was it for today, shower, PC work, ready salted crisps and more coke for me, shower and WeChat for Huan. Good news was received, the bathroom door installers should be arriving by nine in the morning. Fingers crossed.

Being in Sanya, with lousy ‘get over the wall’ abilities, this post will also be uploaded late. Please forgive me! See you next week, again.