January 19th Yet another lazy day, for walking anyway. Shopping had to be done this morning, much to my chagrin, I don’t like it when the supermarket is full of snowbirds. Still needs must, and the Logistics Officer decided we would go in the morning.
Having not gotten anything ready for lunch, a cheat day was on the cards. Here is what we had, half each, shown clothed and naked. That was so that you could read the description and the price. Huan ate hers straight; I slathered mine with oodles of butter!
In the afternoon Huan transformed
into the IT Manager and had me working with Audacity to create more mp3 files
for her. She had the worst job though, holding her phone in front of her
computer to record the sound from videos. Taobao had some attention, just
shutter buttons for Freddy Fujifilm, after which I browsed some more phones,
not high end but not cheapo either. I’ll still have to wait until we have
visited either Sanya or
We treated ourselves to an evening walk, about five and a half kilometres, and went to check out if we were right about where last week’s billboards came from. We were, and we also noticed that a whole lot more have been moved from upriver and now adorn the walls of our river opposite the new park island. Photos will come, too dark today.
January 20th Well we seem to be getting even lazier! It was half past eight before I woke up this morning; I blame it on my dreams! Getting up for a middle of the night wee, as you do, I saw light through the crack of the bedroom door. Opening the door, wondering if we had burglars, I saw the light was coming from the second bedroom; one of us must have left it on. Once I returned to the land of nod the dreams started, dreams about burglars. At one stage I was creeping down the hallway, with a rucksack on my back and a snooker ball in my hand, to surprise two burglars in the kitchen. One was by the kettle, (maybe making tea?) and the other one was trying to hide behind the fridge. I wish I could use my imagination to write novels!
Huan mopped the floors then wondered why they weren’t drying very quickly. I pointed out that the weather was miserable again today! She then dyed her hair so our planned afternoon walk was binned. I pruned some friends off my Facebook list, and did a little more Facebook editing.
Dinner was on me again today, trying something a little different for a change. I’m pretty fed up with not having to use any oil so today was a stir-fry. The oil was healthy though, olive oil, and I didn’t use too much. Here are the ingredients for my half, Huan’s doing the rice.
Yes, they are tins of sardines at the back, and no, it wasn’t my idea although it could well have been. I was looking at the fish in the supermarket and Huan suggested I use it with the stir fry. I was a little surprised but not in any way displeased. Huan’s half was not just your normal rice, oh no, it was something special, she had 腊八粥 làbā zhōu or Laba Congee (also known as 八宝粥 Bābǎozhōu Eight Treasure Congee) for breakfast. It consists of all the different kinds of rice in the rice cooker along with some yams, and other stuff including peanuts, red beans etc. I’m not a great fan of rice soup but this one looks like it might be OK. I’ll try it next time it comes up on the Chinese calendar menu!
Here’s the end result of the stir-fry on a plate, I couldn’t show you Huan’s with the rice, she was already busy tucking in. I don’t have rice because I already have enough on my plate. Both of us were very pleasantly surprised, the sardine touch turned out very well indeed. Now if only I can learn to make a Stargazy pie for her…
We still had some light when we went for our after dinner walk so I took one of those billboards for you, the ones I mentioned yesterday. These are oval individual ones rather than the ones you saw last week. From a distance they don’t look too bad at all.
Finally, a chicken that isn’t dinner. This chicken belongs to the restaurant next to our gate but is not destined for the pot. It could be a tradition I suppose, we’ve seen it elsewhere too. It may look like it’s hiding from the cooks but in reality it’s hiding from the guests eating on tables at the back of the restaurant.
January 21st “All alone am I, ever since your
good bye, all alone, with just the beat of my heart.” It was almost with just
the sound of my snore! We were both woken at twenty to seven by a phone call
for Huan reminding her she has to attend a committee meeting at nine.
Foolishly, we stayed in bed, where it was warmer. Huan didn’t fall back to
sleep but I did, waking up just a few minutes before she left.
Coming back from the meeting it seems it’s election time for the committee members so Huan has to do a house to house in our building to see whether they want her to continue or have someone else take over. That will be a pain for her, trying to get answers from fifty odd apartments some lived in and some not, some by the owners, most by renters.
When she eventually came home, having found less than half the occupants, we had a late lunch before an afternoon walk. I convinced Huan to ‘lend me some money’ until our next trip to Hailou and my bank. I need to order a phone before the New Year comes along and delays everything.
We walked along our riverside so we could show you our ‘new billboards’. You can tell they are second hand and could do with a good clean. I still quite like them there though.
After the bank bits were finished we went up the river to make sure we had a long enough walk today. Two hours usually gives us about eight kilometres. Along the way we spotted this fellow fishing, Han was very impressed. I wasn’t, I told her he wasn’t a fisherman, more a murderer! Spot the billboards along the opposite bank!
Coming back along the other side, a progress report on whatever they are building. The initial construction is almost complete now, we just have to wait and see what the roof will look like. Huan was wondering if it would be open for the New Year market. If that’s the plan, they have a fortnight to sort it all out.
Keeping abreast of the food pictures this week, here’s my dinner today, fish and a lot of cabbage! Huan wanted to give me rice or sweet potatoes as well, but she hasn’t got the hang of cooking smaller portions for me yet! It tasted a whole lot better than the photo looks.
After dinner Huan disappeared on her canvassing trail again, I browsed phones and confused my poor little brain even more. I know what I’d like; unfortunately my wallet doesn’t like the same as I do! Maybe I’ll ask Sheng Sheng, Huan’s son, again, he’s a fount of knowledge.
January 22nd More canvassing for the Prime Minister, more browsing for me. I thought I’d have a look for the Nokia 9 Pureview and see if the price had come down, unfortunately, it hadn’t. More Youtube videos didn’t really help either. Checking on Xiaomi’s own website I narrowed it down to two possible choices and sent the links to Sheng Sheng.
After lunch it was cooking time again for me, this time the first stage of tomorrow’s dinner. We will be having chicken stew this weekend and as always these days, to keep us healthy, we are cooking the chicken in advance to lessen the fat content. Here is one large leg in a pot, sans skin, with Italian herbs, star aniseed, ginger, salt, pepper and a little soya sauce.
The chicken was done before two as planned, so that we could have an afternoon walk. What I hadn’t planned was that Huan would be out again at half past two, more committee work! Never mind, more searching for phones for me. Of the two phones I had chosen, I could afford one easily, the other was a bit of a stretch. However, checking on Taobao, the bit of a stretch grew to be too much for me. In the meantime Sheng Sheng answered and told me either was fine but confirmed that the cheaper one would be OK for my needs. We ordered it when Huan came back, the “Youth Edition” for young Bob!
Today’s dinner had been started while Huan was still out, an unusual one for us that we haven’t had for a long time. Sometimes I wonder how I and my siblings would manage to eat this after a full dinner, yes, it’s a pudding. Rice pudding to be exact and we are having it for dinner. I read the recipe incorrectly so wondered why it wasn’t thickening after an hour. The first two ‘time measurements’ are in numbers and the last one is in words. I will edit that for future use. As you can see from the photo, it’s not quite done. However, that’s not due to my incorrect reading! I had realised my mistake and thus our dinner was going to be a little later. Fate then stepped in and decided we should have a power failure for half an hour or more. Just another fifteen minutes may well have sorted it out but we needed a short walk before Huan met her hulusi gang. It tasted fine, just not quite thick enough.
As planned we had a little walk after dinner, up to the first road bridge, over the river, down the other side and over the island bridges. We took a few photos, mostly rubbish but I do like this one. It almost looks like the backdrop for a stage production.
After dropping Huan off I did
another circle, a wider one this time to reconnoitre the riverside construction
and see whether there would be a Saturday market tomorrow. My opinion is that
it is highly unlikely and of course you won’t know if I’m right or wrong
because I won’t go and look in the morning.
Arriving back at our noisy little square I found it strangely quiet. Only Huan and three other hulusi players were there but there was a fair bit of noise coming from the island park. It appears that at least three of the ladies have bought saxophones and they were practicing there. I could also hear an amplifier with someone singing; maybe I’ll check that out again. I couldn’t hear any drums though so I’ve no idea where they went.
January 23rd Saturday rolls around yet again and Huan is off to her keyboard class. Because it’s not an official school and because there are only three to five of them at any one time, they don’t have to worry about any Covid restrictions. I of course, had a fairly relaxing morning, at least until coffee break after which it was cooking time again. Here are all the ingredients for this weekend’s stew. At the back you can see the chicken, precooked yesterday, and the stock, with all excess fat trimmed off the top. On the left you can see garlic, (yes I’ll use the whole thing), tomato and onion, on the right normal potatoes (for a change) and carrot, in the middle cauliflower, something green (I don’t know) and parsley. Just for a change the tools of the trade are also included this time.
I had planned to walk over the
mountain with the rubbish landfill this afternoon, to check on the highway.
Someone told Huan that it is now open to Haitang Wan, passing over the Eastern
highway, and that buses to Sanya were now using it. Just for a change it is me
who has to see to believe and not the commander. Huan didn’t think it was a
good idea at all so I stayed in and did a whole lot of nothing instead.
Here’s what our stew looked like at nosh time, mine on the left, Huan’s on the right, before second helpings!
Huan was feeling a little under the weather so didn’t fancy an after dinner walk. She sometimes pushes herself too hard but my pleas for her to try and relax and rest more fall on deaf ears. I had to go anyway, today’s Saturday so lottery tickets had to be bought. To make sure I got five kilometres in I popped by the river again to check on progress. There has been some, they have started installing strengthening across the tops. Maybe in a day or two we will find out if the tops are going to be aesthetically pleasing or horrible tin ones.
January 24th Confined to barracks this morning but I didn’t mind, I was waiting for Taobao, my new phone was due to arrive. Just as Huan was leaving for keyboard practice it turned up and as I was still in my jammies Huan did me the honour of going downstairs for it. I got stuck in after coffee break. Now on Youtube you can see many unboxing videos but as this is the written word, the video will have to be skipped. Instead here are some unboxing photos.
This phone is called the Xiaomi Mi 10 Youth Edition, otherwise known in the west as the Xiaomi Mi 10 Lite. You can tell from the box and the stickers that’s it’s aimed at the youth market. Just in case you are interested, here’s a composite of the box top and side! RUOK?
The phone I passed on to Huan was blue so another colour was chosen for this one. If I had known that we were going to receive stickers and that Huan was going to put three of them on the back of her phone, I wouldn’t have chosen this colour. Actually, it’s nowhere near as bad as the photo makes it look. Perhaps I should stick the ice cream sundae on the back of it.
Huan was out again in the afternoon so I spent hours trying to get a fitness app, any fitness app, to work with this one. The only one I (half) succeeded with was Sports Tracker. For some reason it doesn’t pick up any GPS on the phone but it does record steps, distance, route etc. I was even able to upload it when I got home but I doubt I will keep it. The maps for Sports Tracker are pretty hopeless, not all streets shown and no satellite views. If you want different maps you have to pay! I guess I can use the data for now and manually upload it to Mapmywalk.
Next up was a widescreen selfie which turned out reasonably well. I have only one complaint and that is, although you may think I need it, I don’t like the beautification of our faces.
On our way home we stopped by one of the shops to see if I could cope with using Alipay to buy something. That’s one of the apps installed on the phone, set up and tied to Huan’s bank card. I was planning on buying all sorts of stuff with her money. As it happens, we couldn’t even buy two tubes of crisps, the password Huan was asking me to use was refused three times! More things we have to sort out over the next few days. If we can’t get it to work then Huan will drip feed my WeChat account with enough to keep me going. I need it because some car parks in Hailou insist on electronic payment to exit. Usually Huan is with me, but I need to be able to go it alone as well.
Once I was home I synchronised the contacts from Huan’s phone (my old one of course), to the new one. That was easy, Bluetooth is a magical tool. Getting the photos from one to the other was not so easy, took me another two hours but I got there in the end.
January 25th “Shall we go out this morning?” asked the boss, “Too lazy.” said the serf. Instead w stayed in and did not a lot of anything, even Huan managed to relax. I did confirm for her that all her financial and private stuff had been removed from Chilli Pepper phone, a factory reset sorted al that out. Our lock screens and wallpapers were also sorted out this morning so we now both have what we had before, instead of Huan having mine and me having Xiaomi’s choice.
After lunch we weren’t so lazy and set off to ramble through the country side and take a few test photographs with the new Xiaomi. Did I say a few? I suppose I meant a lot, I took over one hundred and Huan took nearly a hundred on her phone. A great deal of work was needed when we got home, sorting out the comparison shots between the two phones, deciding what to keep and what to bin, cropping and tweaking a little here and there. All done now though and my verdict on this phone? I wish I was rich enough to get a flagship phone! This one, the “Youth Edition” is definitely better that the Chilli Pepper, way better, but it’s no better than Huan’s Redmi 10 Pro. In fact I would have been better off buying the same one again; hers has a bigger battery and better specifications. Ah well, maybe next year when I’m richer.
So how did the photos turn out? The first attempt was a butterfly just over the island bridge, this one stayed still long enough for me to catch it, without my glasses on. If I had tried to get them on I would probably have lost it. This is quite a severe crop of the original.
Remember our piggie? He, or she, is still in the same place, probably feeling quite warm these days, the weather is on the up again. The first picture is 5x zoom and the second 10x. 5x is not so bad, 10x is not too good!
Geese and goats next, both at 5x zoom, both not too far from the camera and in sunlight. In this case the results are OK.
Next up was the first ‘test’ of the day, 1x, 5x, 10x and 50x from a distance. As expected, because all budget phone manufacturers tell lies, or exaggerate the truth, the 50x is pretty rough. Here they are in order, 1x first.
Next up is a panorama from the app on the camera. I am not sure if there’s a setting I missed but I had to create it holding the phone in the portrait mode. The end result has then been cropped in the computer to 16:9. It looks good though.
The next two are the same scene but taken with the 48MB camera, the first one 1x and the second one 2x, the most you can zoom with that camera. Again these look quite good, certainly good enough for memories which is what we mostly take pictures for.
Next Huan spotted bird out in the river so I tried 5x and 10x without success. This was followed by some geese in a pond where we did a camera comparison. At 1x, Huan’s came out better, 5x not much between them and at ten by, below, at last I had a better one. Huan’s is first.
And so we continued with comparisons of ducks, chickens and turkeys, with very similar results. There isn’t a lot to choose between the two cameras. I did a comparison at 1x and 2x using the normal camera and the 48MB with Huan as the subject. The first is the normal camera, the second is the 48MB.
Next up are a couple of photos using the classic B&W filter. They’re not bad but I’d get a better result taking colour photos and then using Picasa to convert them to black and white.
And that’s about it really; we did a couple more zoom tests with the same results. Distance wise, if you are shooting landscapes, better to stop at 5x or even less. Close up subjects are not too bad at 10x. Anything above 10x, for any subject is very hit and miss.
Another week comes to a close. Stay tuned to this frequency, we will use only the new phone for next week’s photos and go back to using Freddy Fuji more thereafter. The weather seems to be on the up so we may get ourselves into the countryside more. Just think, only another year and hopefully, I can stop spending half my pension on my health and we can perhaps travel further afield to tourist places again! See you next time!
P.S. Sports Tracker failed 260 metres from the house, it stopped for no reason and we didn’t find out until four kilometres later. Another one uninstalled. Tomorrow I shall try the Xiaomi health app, hopefully that will record.
P.P.S. Huan’s canvassing was successful; she is still on the committee!
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