Yet Another Needle, Beach Day, Visa Application, Christmas, Night Market

December 22^nd What a lovely way to start the week, more life force removed from my arm. I’m beginning to feel a bit like Eric Sykes!

Huan had an extra practice today, in the town square, so that’s where we went after my arm had been punctured. On the way we passed this sign, can’t believe we’ve never seen it before, it means Wuzhishan of course. I wonder if anyone else sees anything different!

We were earlier than Huan’s singing mates so while we waited I had some breakfast, a baozi and a bottle of coffee, and I was treated to my very own fashion show.

With time to spare still, even after the other singers had turned up, I took a few photos of people ‘relaxing’ in the square. You’ve seen the ‘walking stones’ before, today there was a little boy using them for bicycle practice. He had one of those bikes with no pedals, not that it bothered him, he could fairly shift anyway!

What were the adults doing? Well, see for yourselves. You can even play ‘spot the ball’ with last photo, no prizes though I’m afraid.

In the afternoon we called our printer supplier on Taobao to try and find out why we had air in the pipes from our CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System). He asked us to go through a ‘deep clean’ on the printer maintenance so of course I had to argue with him didn’t I. Turns out he was right, doing a deep clean did fill up the tubes. However, both the printer and the PC still tell us that we are out of ink. The engineer told us that unfortunately that’s just the way it is. There’s a chip in the cartridges that sends this message to the printer display and the computer and there’s no way to prevent it doing that because it’s based on a ‘count of how many pages you’ve printed compared to how many the cartridge says it’s good for’. When I asked how we would know when to refill the CISS he told us to ‘look at the results on the printed paper as we go. Ah well, at least we can print Huan’s music again.

We then had to go back to the hospital and collect my fasting cholesterol blood test results. Looking at them I wonder why we have spent the last few weeks trying to eat more healthily! There isn’t a lot of change in the numbers, some a little up and some a little down.

December 23^rd Up in the morning, out on the job. Work like the devil for my pay. That’s not quite true of course, we were up reasonably early, but not out on the job and I don’t get any pay anyway! Nope, we were off to Sanya, firstly to service the car and then to collect my medical results. The car service was fine, a few minor bits and pieces replaced, the whole job took about an hour. It should have cost us about £104.00 but with our insurance bonus and our discount from last time it only cost us £72.00. I can’t complain at that.

Having a lot of time to spare before going to the medical centre ‘Mummy’ took me to the beach via the shopping mall and Corner’s Deli, and lunch in a cheapo café. The weather was not great but much better than Wuzhishan’s so people were out in force. However, I managed to get a panorama where most of the people are on the ends you can’t see.

Next Huan found a tall dark handsome man that she threatened to run off with and refused to buy me an ice cream. She did let me lick one though!

We found a couple of beachside bars we hadn’t seen before, well worth visiting. Mind you, I was driving so had to stick to coffee while Huan had fresh pineapple chunks. If we hadn’t already eaten then the beach side would have been ideal for that too. Coming up to Christmas we had to pose by Christmas trees didn’t we, especially as ours is not up this year.

Normal trees weren’t enough for us; we had to find blue ones too.

Before leaving the beach, we had to take a photo of dinner. Well, it would probably have been far too expensive for us mere mortals but I wouldn’t mind trying at some time in the future. Mind you, I’m not sure if I’d want it looking at me first!

We picked up the medical results, nothing untoward there, and we were back in Wuzhishan in time for our dinner. “What’s the recipe today Jim?” We decided on individual hot pots, served by a revolving table of ingredients and a half kilo of lamb slices. Yummy!

December 24^th Roused early by Marvin again this morning for our trip to Haikou, visiting the visa office once again. Our plans were thwarted at the very beginning, we couldn’t get our car out, some dummy had blocked us in. Unlike most cars in our neighbourhood he hadn’t left a contact number on his dashboard.

Luckily for us the owner was up and about by half past seven so we weren’t too late setting off. That was our only hiccough of the day and by ten o’clock we were back on the road home having successfully completed the visa application. All we have to do now is wait, and hope.

December 25^th “And so this is Christmas”. Up early again, although not too early, had to make Huan’s Christmas breakfast before she went out for her show. (We’ve lost Christmas Day together again but she has worked hard for this.) As always, it was boiled eggs, this year with German bread, supposedly healthier.

Normally I would have gone with Huan to see the show but today I decided it was better to stay out of the way, for one reason or another. I was ready with her lunch when she came home. In the afternoon she was off to a different place to help them with their dancing, I guess hers must be improving. I walked her and Yu there and then bought double lottery tickets for the weekend, well it is Christmas, and some walnuts for me to snack on with my glass of sherry.

Once home I hopped into the bath with a good book and stayed there until Huan came home, threw me out, topped up the hot water and got in herself.

No cooking today, as our home based Christmas had been effectively cancelled I decided we would go out for dinner. Not only out, but out to the only European style restaurant we have in Wuzhishan for a slap up meal with wine, desserts and Irish coffee. I failed!

When we got the restaurant in question it was full to the brim, nay, it was overflowing with people. We would have had to wait twenty to thirty minutes, joining the queue of people already waiting. Ah well, off we went to try another place that at least has food different to the normal Chinese fare and burger shops, albeit no booze. Would you believe it, that was chock a block too! We were then reduced to burgers or cheapo restaurants until I had a brainwave. “Let’s try the frog place” I said. Huan agreed so here we are, sat at our table, frogs in between us, giving you all a Christmas toast. We hope you received it all right.

It wasn’t exactly what we had planned; in fact it was nothing like what we had planned. However, it turned out to be very enjoyable. As you can probably see we had more than enough food to feed the two of us, it was also very tasty. I had to buy a bottle of wine in order to get us a drink, even that was palatable, definitely good enough for me. We both ate too much, Huan drank almost a glass of wine, which in her case is ‘too much’ and I behaved with only three glasses. If you look closely you’ll see the glasses were small and I wasn’t driving.

Walking home, many children commented about Father Christmas, we still had our hats on. Even some adults were chatting behind their hands. When we passed the local college, almost at home base, we were chased by young ladies. It’s been a while since that happened to me I can tell you. Anyway, they asked my nurse, (a.k.a. SWMBO) and the love of my life if they could have their photo taken with me, en masse. We agreed and here’s one of the results.

December 26^th Onslow strikes again! Yep, I had a very lazy morning, and afternoon. All I had to do was cook the weekend stew and make the lunchtime sandwiches. I did write yesterday’s blog though, so not a complete wastrel.

Huan graced me with her presence after dinner and we had a little walk. I’m glad we did because it turns out there’s a night market alongside the river. It’s been there since 24^th and will stay until 28^th. How people know about these things I’ll never know, we didn’t see any adverts anywhere.

Happiness abounded, as you can see above and I must admit we felt a good vibe too. Not only that, we treated ourselves to some lovely ice cream, not quite up to Mr. Whippy standards but good enough for us.

December 27^th Another slob’s day for me, but with a purpose. I spent most of the day downloading karaoke songs from YouTube so that I can do something for our residents’ New Year show. I don’t think my guitar hand will be ready in time. I found a new software that helps you download from Youtube, it will even accept playlists. Not all can be successfully analysed but then, what can you expect for free. For anyone interested, the software is 5KPlayer. Having downloaded a lot, nearly five hundred songs, I then had to go through and rename most of them to follow my filing system, that was a long job.

Just like yesterday we visited the night market, today it was a planned visit though. Our Xinjiang bread friends had a stall there and we wanted to buy for tomorrow’s lunch. I was far too full for ice cream as was Huan. However, she did have a small tub of stinky tofu so that I could try it. It wasn’t that stinky but I didn’t like the after taste much. I won’t be trying it again!

December 28^th “The best laid plans of mice and men” again. I had planned three walks today, two without Her Ladyship and one with. The first one went by the wayside because I noticed the washing line was full of dry clothes that needed ironing. The second one, which should have been after lunch was also scrapped because the boss decided we were going shopping today instead of tomorrow. She has another show to perform in followed by lunch, I’m invited. That left only one, the joint after dinner walk which I decided to forego, partly because I needed a shower and partly because I was still downloading karaoke songs. There are over six hundred now, the next time it rains I’ll have lots of fun rocking the neighbours!

So, no photos for today and the end of another week. A tourist trip is planned for next week so we’ll see how that goes. Until then, bye bye!