Spring Cleaning, New Year Haircuts, Back in Shorts, Needle(s)

February 2^nd As we mentioned last week, repairs are now all completed, (we hope), so spring cleaning can now commence in earnest. What do you need for that? Lots of elbow grease of course, brushes, mops, dusters and let’s not forget polish. Now I guess many of you in the UK are still staunch “Pledge” fans, I am too. However, mine is not called Pledge, it’s called “Glepgo”, I like to think it gets rid of ‘glep’ whatever that is. It’s made in China so I suppose they are to blame for the name, but it’s meant for export, to Indonesia I think. Whatever it is, it does the job it’s supposed to.

Once I had drawn the above polish from the QM’s store, the RSM put me straight to work. Polishing is always my job and it’s at these times that I realise why some of my female friends and relatives are not very fond of ornaments. This year I started in the office, here’s Huan’s side completed after what seemed an age.

Her bookshelf consists mostly of cookery books, (English and Chinese) and her music books. Needless to say, these days the cookery books don’t see the light of day very often! However, that is not a complaint, Huan is a good cook who doesn’t need books. Music takes up more of her time now and keeps her happy, that’s what counts.

Next up was my side which the more astute among you will realise is larger then Huan’s side. That is because I spend much more time in here while Huan has the TV in the living room. I do have books here as well but I’ll leave you to check them out. Suffice to say that the three on the right with Chinese characters on the binding are English speeches by famous people with a Chinese breakdown for English learners. I bought them because they were cheap and to my surprise, they are also very interesting.

The rest of my books reside in the bookcase, Huan has more in there too, down near the window. The first five ‘doors’ belong to me; the last one is Huan’s. Spot the filing system!

The office is the worst room for spring cleaning, even worse than the living room but, it’s finished now. The main and second bedrooms were also done today, boy, did I need a shower after all that. Too much polish aerosols on my body and even up my nose and in my ears! No photos were taken of the two bedrooms, you’ve had enough for one day.

Did I say you’d had enough photos for today? I lied! As well as being on cleaning duties I was also on cooking duty today. It was an easy one though. Huan had made some steamed bread in the morning so she put some potatoes in there for me. She also suggested heating the sauerkraut in the pork fat after the meat was done, something I would never have thought of. I couldn’t show you two plates, I was too slow getting the phone ready!

We both needed a relaxing walk after the day we’d had so we had a stroll around the town, in the rain for most of the way. Luckily for us it was very half-hearted rain and we’d have had to run around in circles to really get wet.

February 3^rd More of the same today, in the living room and dining room. For some reason it seemed to go a little bit faster than it did two years ago but it still took half the morning and nearly all the afternoon. Only two pictures for you, you can see why the living room almost takes as long as the office.

We forced ourselves out after dinner, I wasn’t over keen; exhaustion was slowly setting in. However, coconut milk for my cereal was required and a new mouse pad for my desk. As usual I left Huan dancing the night away before playing some of those hulusi blues.

I should add that I’ve had a smashing time doing the spring cleaning. First of all I broke a small frog in the office yesterday. Last night I broke the coaster that I use on the balcony, it was a slate one from my mother. Finally, today, I managed to break the glass ball in Huan’s water feature. I hope bad things do only come in threes!

February 4^th Good news, I didn’t manage to break anything today although I did give Huan a scare a few times. It was the kitchen’s turn for the treatment, harder than it looks because oil seems to get everywhere. By the time I had finished we had loads of space in the cupboards and I had managed to move things to more logical places for our usage. How did I do this? Mostly by throwing a lot of things away! On the food side we had Coffeemate bought in 2016 for #1 son’s visit, never opened, we also had out of date cocoa powder, one opened, one unopened, lots of those small milk cups you get in cafés, and a few plastic jars with remnants of various sugars, flours and spices at the bottom. On top of the food, we also got rid of a pile of stuff we never use. We had a mincing machine, to make our own sausages, used twice! We found it a pain in the bun and we don’t eat enough sausages to warrant keeping it. Yu took that, she was very happy. Various containers also disappeared to the rubbish bin. Two frying pans went to the neighbours, one stainless steel one, never used at all, and one ceramic one that is extremely good at getting food stuck to the bottom when you use it. This was the final result. (PS I learnt how to clean in the army when we had handover inspections before leaving our married quarters!)

After all that Huan decided to give me a break and take over my cooking duties for today! What a grand girl she is. Once dinner was over we both needed a walk, my bones are feeling the strain of all this hard work! We decided to go and check on the bap and sausage men to check when they were closing for the new year and then opening again. No worries, they are closing for a couple of days only. Just like most New Year holiday times, plants have appeared on all the traffic islands in the town. We reckon someone nicks them all as the holidays come to an end.

Finally, as I was wearing my 49ers waistcoat from Abu Dhabi, Huan decided that as I was so handsome, (her words, not mine), that she had to have a picture of me.

February 5^th Today was the last day of spring cleaning, hooray! There wasn’t a great deal to do today though, only two toilets, two sinks and one bath. Huan had previously cleaned the walls and other bits, such as the mirrors. Luckily for you, Huan was feeling lazy today, watching TV while I worked, so she didn’t take any photos. I’m not sure you’d have liked to see me with my hands down the loo anyway! All cleaning was done by lunchtime.

After lunch it was time to visit the hairdresser’s. “Hair must not be cut during the fifteen day New Year festival or your uncle will die.” This is a common saying but the more likely reason is character similarities. Hair is 发 (actually 头发 – tóufǎ is head hair) and “get rich” is 发富 - fā fù, so by using scissors, or other sharp objects, you risk cutting off your good fortune. “The Chinese character for hair is the same first character in the word for prosper. This means washing or cutting it off is seen as washing your fortune away and dramatically reduces your chances for prosperity and good fortune in the year.” As Huan is a firm believer in increased prosperity and won’t go to the hairdresser’s anyway, and as I can’t trust Chinese hairdressers, certainly in Wuzhishan’ with my foreign curly/wavy hair, then we visit the hairdresser’s in our bathroom. This year Huan was first to go with me taking a photo first to show how much I would be chopping off then proceeding with the dastardly deed. We then swapped places and Huan did the same for me, with my saying ‘a bit less, a bit less, a bit less!

There’s no picture of my after because Huan had to redo it a little after she’d taken the photos. My hair is problematic, whether it is short or long, in fact it’s probably harder to cut when it’s shorter. Huan does a good enough job though so I’m happy with the result. Just in case you are wondering, that is my natural colour, I don’t use dyes. Not only do I not use dyes, I haven’t used shampoos for over five years now, my hair feels much better for it.

As usual an after dinner walk was needed, we both stopped here to look at our island and we both thought that this was a wonderful scene.

Down by the riverside the normal New Year market has begun and as usual lots of photos of lots of red stuff were taken. Instead of trying to pick and choose which ones to show you here’s a collage, even including three selfies which we are still not very good at!

Once under the main road the new construction had a few stalls as well despite not all the roofs being on yet. I doubt if any more work will be done now until the New Year holiday is over. Huan was trying to get me to take pictures of everything in site and yet again saying we must come down here and eat, maybe on Monday. I pointed out that on Monday we will be in Haikou filling my belly with something other then food!

We did try another selfie though, with pretty awful results, partly due to the light but mostly due to me trying to hold New Year decorations, Xinjiang bread and ice cream all while trying to operate the camera with one hand. It’s not very obvious but Huan’s ice cream is vanilla and mine is chocolate, in real life much darker than it looks here.

February 6^th My first duty today was to cook a full English. I know we are not supposed to have too much fatty food but the bacon has been in the freezer for ages so we (I) decided, last weekend, that it was time to eat it. Last weekend Huan had normal eggs and I had goose eggs. I wasn’t really impressed, they were much bigger but somehow more anaemic. This weekend we were both trying duck eggs, they were not much different in size to chicken eggs but tasted a little stronger. As for the sausage part, last week we finished whatever sausages were in the fridge, this week we used the sausage man’s chicken sausages, tasty enough.

After breakfast, Huan went off to her weekend keyboard class, today it was to be held in our little square. Within fifteen minutes she was back home with teacher Wang in tow, nobody else had turned up. I thought we’d be having a lot of noise in the living room, I wouldn’t have minded, Huan doesn’t get enough visitors. No noise though, they just sat and chatted, looked at some photos, and generally relaxed, while I got on with cooking the weekend’s dinner! They also joined me in coffee at break time, but unlike me, they had Bailey’s in theirs! I practiced my Chinese on Ms Wang, telling her that Huan had fun every weekend while I had to stay home and work! It took some help from Huan to explain but I am improving!

Our plan was to walk the scenic mountain park route after lunch but neither of us got off our backsides to rouse the other. I guess we’re feeling the effects of the last few days work and of course, I’ll be weak after my haircut! In fact we were so lazy we didn’t go out for an evening walk either, sometimes it’s good just to do nothing.

February 7^th Sunday is back and I have company today. No more music lessons for Huan until after the holidays now so yesterday’s planned scenic walk could be done today instead. We started off with a selfie on the bridge looking back at our housing complex, followed by a nice view over the river.

Today’s route was the easy one, the clockwise way round. Far too many photos were taken, even after pruning we still have one hundred. I guess we were really enjoying being our together in the fresh air again, I was happy to be back in shorts, at last! To start off then, four photos of the ‘up’ half towards the crossover bridge.

Next up the view down from the bridge turnoff and up to the hotel. We were thinking of going up to check on the roadwork progress but we’d already past the latest upgrade point before this. This is another panorama created from six different photos.

Huan took a few photos of me posing on the bridge in my shorts but I thought you’d probably prefer another panorama, this one created by Sprog, (the youth edition Xiaomi). It took me three attempts what with passers by doing what they do and passing by.

Coming down is much more scenic than going up, here’s the first two for you.

And here’s another home made panorama showing a small bridge on the left and somewhere on the right of centre, behind all the foliage, there’s a Huan!

No sun worries on this part of the walk, the trees provide more than enough shade. We only had out hats on because of the beginning and end of the walk.

Next up is me playing with Picasa. Huan thought that the shadow of the leaves on the blank white sign looked very pretty and who am I to contradict her. The first photo is only slightly corrected, the second is with a lot of shadow added and the third is with the colours inverted. I quite like all of them.

We had seen many snowbirds on our way round, more coming down where we were going up, they like to go out early. Luckily, there aren’t too many of them in the photographs. To my surprise, there were none in the gym at all!

Finally we came to the end; you can see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, and of course we had to try another selfie with the park sign to show where we had been. Unfortunately, the sign was vertical and we couldn’t get us and the sign in together. You’ll just have to take our word for it!

Huan insisted I take another photo as we wended our way home, remember the ferret? Well today it was eating its dinner, a frog. The photo was taken but it won’t be shared here. Instead of going straight home, worn out though we were, (or I was), we went shopping for New Year food. I told Huan that I’m happy with just anything, no need for a spread. We came away with duck, chicken, fish, prawns and pork!

Needless to say the rest of the day was us doing not a lot at all. Only after dinner did we rouse ourselves to go and have the car washed and tanked up ready for our trip to Haikou tomorrow.

February 8^th Roused from my slumbers at quarter to five in the morning again, all thanks to the Time Lord. I wanted to leave Wuzhishan later and spend the night in Haikou, Huan wanted us to go and return the same day. No stopping on the way today, the hospital car park fills up early. We were early enough and got in with no problem. Huan went in to pay while I had a relaxing coffee and fag in the car. When I went to go in I was stopped at the door, the security guard wanted to see the health code on my phone! A few minutes later Huan turned up, from the outside, having already been in and paid, now two of us couldn’t enter the hospital. After fifteen to twenty minutes faffing around we, or should I say Huan, succeeded in getting the health code on both of our phones so in we went. Outside the doctor’s surgery the second problem arose, his computer was down and we were #6 in the queue. Eventually a new PC was delivered by an orderly, followed by two patients lying on the floor trying to connect it all together. They nearly succeeded, they couldn’t get the outside monitor to work. This meant the doctor had to come to the door each time to call the next patient. No problems once he saw us, although he did ask if I wanted my liver testing again. Huan told me that he was looking at a previous test result from a visit to Dr. Tim. From there it was back to the cashier’s office, hand over half my pension again and head to the pharmacy. “Sorry, you have to go to the downstairs pharmacy today.” One day we’ll end up in the lady’s chamber! My first needle port of call was the blood test area, I looked the other way as usual. “When will the results be ready?” we asked, only to be told that they would be ready tomorrow afternoon around four thirty. I never had to get up early this morning at all! Back downstairs we went for my second needle, once again ears and eyes covered, although this month’s nurse did a fine job. That was it for the hospital and off to the hotel we went, luckily having no problems checking in whatsoever.

After a short time relaxing with another coffee each it was time to go out and buy the lottery tickets, visit the bank and have lunch. Somebody was feeling the weather! Having had such a beautiful day yesterday I had driven up in shorts and a short sleeved shirt, with a pair of longs and a long sleeved shirt in the bag. The weather was completely reversed from yesterday, at least Huan had had the foresight to bring her small denim jacket. Once we had fuelled up with some hot noodle soup we set off for Carrefour looking for something cheap for me to wear, again! It seems to be a regular occurrence in Haikou, perhaps we need to leave some warmer clothes permanently in the car. Carrefour let us down so Huan dragged me off to the morning market near the hotel where we found a cheap (¥60.00) Puma jacket, size 4XL. It will do for this evening.

So, did we take any photos today? Well of course we did, how could we not, there’s always something to pique our interest. This first one was not so much the car, it’s a small electric one again, but the words on the door. I doubt very much whether there is such an office within the Chinese government.

We didn’t forget to take lunchtime photos either, first Huan’s them mine.

And as we were leaving Carrefour we spotted this gem, can you see what made us take the picture?

No more photos for today, I couldn’t have photographic evidence that I had visited KFC now could I! And that’s it for another week, although this will be a late posting due to the fact that the only part of the Blog on this computer is today, the rest is at home in Wuzhishan. Never mind, better late than never. I’ll just sit back and watch “Olympus Has Fallen”, see you next week!