Radio, Rain, New Facebook, Falling Trousers, Groaty Dick, More Noise!

May 25^th Today was like a trip back in time, stood in the living room, doing the ironing, looking at the rain through the windows and listening to the ‘very loud’ radio. Of course it wasn’t really the radio it was streaming via the internet, a station called “Flower Power Radio”, playing, in their own words “Hits from the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s; chart hits from music’s golden age”. Once the ironing was finished (no photographic evidence I’m afraid), I carried on listening while I cooked tonight’s dinner. I suppose being busy indoors on a rainy day made a nice change from a long walk in the sun! PS If you want to listen to Flower Power Radio, and I certainly recommend it, whenever you were born, then follow this link - https://www.flowerpowerradio.com/

After lunch the weather improved, well initially anyway, so off I went for a walk. Huan was too tired to go with me so it was another solo effort, just around the river to avoid any bad weather. It started off well as you can see here.

About fifteen minutes later it was like this and I was trying to walk under the trees.

By the time I reached the outdoor gymnasiums the rain had eased off again. Mind you, there were no ‘customers’ enjoying the facilities.

Back through the town I spotted a nice ‘Muriel’ on the wall, yes I know the spelling is wrong, that’s a leftover from my army days. The artists were still busy so I couldn’t get a clear shot but I think you can agree that it’s very good.

As you can also see, it wasn’t raining where the artists were but about a kilometre away from home I got caught again. It’s not me I worry about, the rain can be quite refreshing here, it’s more my sandals and my camera, neither of which are weather resistant. I was fine after a shower and ready to warm up our dinner that I’d cooked this morning. “What was it?” I hear you ask. Since I still had curry stock left over it was a nice chicken curry, here is Huan’s plate, with the usual mix of different rice. Mine looked very similar but had added desiccated coconut and a handful of raisins. For a shop bought stock it’s not bad at all!

After dinner I loaded up the laptop with the data we use for travelling, created folders for editing photos and any Blog posts that have to be posted while we are not at home. Once that was done I installed the VPN and tried Facebook from there. Unfortunately, due to the repair, the laptop also had no history of being connected to FB before so it asked me for two factor authentication again, without sending me the required code again, of course. I’ll give them a few more days to respond to the email they asked me to send and if necessary, create a new account.

May 26^th Not a lot to report today, it rained on and off morning and afternoon so we both stayed at home. I set about creating a new Facebook account, with a different email to my usual one and without enabling two factor authentication. That was the easy part, the hard part comes in trying to find all my friends, rejoin the groups I’m a member of, or an admin of, find the pages I was following etc. In between sending out requests I got on with uploading photos, the drama ones that go into a ‘public’ visible folder. There were just over a thousand so that kept me busy. By the time I went to bed my friend list had grown from zero to twenty seven, not bad considering I had over two hundred before!

Strangely enough I had an email from Facebook saying that someone had reported my old account as being ‘someone pretending to be me’. A second email followed telling me that they had verified it was me but I still can’t get in!

May 27^th Rain stopped play yet again today. Every time we decided it was time to try, the rain came along. Huan did a lot of practicing; I did a lot of ‘surfing’. It was my turn to cook again so today’s dish was ‘Chilli con Bob’, nothing special, just minced pork, onion, garlic, celery, a large long green pepper, parsley and paprika. Apart from looking a little anaemic, it turned out well enough, here’s Huan’s. Mine had added parmesan cheese.

We thought we would try a walk after dinner, when we got downstairs the rain was just starting again. Muggins went back up for the umbrellas and when he got back downstairs the rain had stopped again. We managed to walk just over seven kilometres without having to open our brollies once. Did we see anything? Not much, just something that someone has decided to paint on top of the earlier Muriel. Huan tells me it is instructions for the new shops.

The rain did come back and attack in earnest but it was after we arrived home and as Huan was going out to the square for her hulusi practice. She came straight home!

May 28^th Hainan is in the middle of a heat wave at the moment with droughts being reported in some areas. Obviously nobody told Wuzhishan about this! For the last two days people have been basking in the sunshine north, south, east and west of us, but we’ve had rain. Today looked like it would be different. Huan was off to the OAP Cultural Centre, I didn’t escort her, I set off on the clockwise scenic mountain walk. Her Majesty didn’t really want me to walk that way after two days of rain but she relented and just asked me to be careful.

The first beastie of the week was also enjoying the break in the weather. I did try and get a shot of it ‘rearing up’ but it wouldn’t oblige me today.

Now I often give you a little bit of Chinglish, today for a change, I’ll give you some good English from the island park. The only thing that differentiates it from a sign in an English park is that it’s perhaps a little more verbose.

By quarter past nine I was feeling the heat too, and wishing that I had worn my hat today. Still, apart from the first part, I would be shaded for most of the way.

The next two photos show you what Huan was worried about, the ‘going’ underfoot. This is a nice level part of the walk but there are portions where there are steps covered in dead leaves, and wet to boot. It does make it a little treacherous at times.

Nothing else of any interest was spotted on my way round; despite making sure I got over ten kilometres in today. I did nearly lose my shorts though! My belt broke as I was walking back along the riverside into town. Now I have lost some weight since I bought these shorts so I had to hold them up with one hand. Luckily, right next to the Muriel, is a little row of shops where I knew I could buy another one. I didn’t think you’d like to see me shorts-less so here’s a couple of photos of the broken belt instead.

My timing was impeccable today and I was at the OAP Cultural Centre just before eleven to escort Her Ladyship home. However, the rain caught me about three hundred metres away so I did arrive soaking wet! Huan kept trying to share her umbrella with me, a pointless exercise, it wouldn’t have helped me dry off at all. Nothing else to report.

May 29^th Saturday night’s all right for fighting and Saturday morning’s all right for singing, which is where Huan went this morning. I went for a stroll around the market which, despite a lot of snowbirds having left, is still busy enough.

Quite a few of these flatbed trucks were in evidence today so I guess that pork must still be coming from the central government. We certainly haven’t seen many piggies on our walks in the countryside recently.

The weather stayed fine for me today; in fact it hasn’t rained all day. Huan did tell me that her phone said the hot weather was back. Thankfully her phone wasn’t too accurate and we still had a few clouds around to shelter mad dogs and Englishmen.

I thought I wasn’t going to see any of God’s little creatures today but finally I spotted two. One was too small though and the photos didn’t turn out well at all. The other was larger and much more colourful.

Having not left the butter out this morning I had to make sure I got back home early enough so that I could make the boss’s lunch when she arrived. This meant that I missed the 10k target and only managed to get 8.9k. Still, that’s good enough for me. Being Saturday I was also on kitchen duty this afternoon too, here’s the recipe. I liked the name so much that I felt I had to include in the post title this week.

Huan was reasonable pleased with the finished dish, I was not too impressed. The tastes were fine but it felt more like a thick rice porridge soup to me. The colour on the recipe is more red and brown, ours didn’t look like that. That may be because I substituted pearl barley for groats but don’t quote me on that. Anyway, here’s my bowl, Huan’s was fuller as she didn’t want any crusty bread with hers.

That was my day finished, apart from wasting half an hour trying to find the key for Huan’s bike lock. Eventually we found it on her key ring! She needed her bike to go swimming with Yú this evening. It’s been a while so when she arrived home it was with a grazed shin having fallen off trying to navigate round a small speed bump in our complex. I guess there will be no more swimming for a few days!

May 30^th Today was Huan’s choice of route so she chose the Landfill Mountain walk. I was a little surprised but then again it’s nowhere near as dusty as it used to be and a lot of the route provides us tree cover from the sun. Our first photo comes from the filling station on the road out, two more of those ‘secret’ cars. With the size of the radiator grills on these I think they are (红旗) Hóngqí cars but I can’t be sure. If you’re curious, Hóngqí means ‘Red Flag’.

Our next photos are I believe the tunnelling equipment used for the highway tunnel just after this location. They are obviously not full size boring machines.

Those machines were not on our route in fact, we had decided to explore a little and go under the highway to see where the new road led.

As you can see we had to go down to go under so on the other side we had to go up again. This was the view we saw and immediately Huan recognised it, I didn’t. She recognised the farm on the left and the road forking off to the left in the middle of the picture.

Just before the fork in the road we detoured yet again and took this track through the woods. We had been this way before but I think only as far as the small stream.

We certainly hadn’t been to the end of the track before. Our hope was that the track would continue to follow the stream downhill. I was probably hoping that more than Huan because then I would not have to climb any more hills. Our hope, and my luck, ran out, just as the track did when it reached this lovely little farm.

The farm looked quite deserted apart from a few fish in the pond; there were no chickens, geese, ducks or turkeys anywhere. However, I went in for a closer look and found some piglets and a very protective mother. I’m sure if I had tried to enter the pen she would have gone for me!

Once back on the road, Huan, who was feeling stronger than me today, ‘suggested’ we walk up the left fork to where we knew there was a small reservoir. Being the ever dutiful husband and knowing that Huan’s suggestions are to be taken as orders, how could I say no? We did do a rapid turnaround at the top though.

Lots of bovine buddies were in attendance today, from the farm we had passed earlier. They were fanning out up the mountain road in search of greenery to munch on. These cows were not the talkative type at all though, they were all very nervous. Do you think they knew I’d been eating beef yesterday? Even the last bashful little calf we saw, despite letting me get close enough to take these photos, wouldn’t allow itself to be touched at all. In fact as I tried to stroke its head its mother started back down the road towards us voicing her displeasure!

Once back down at the bottom of that particular hill we started to make our way up again towards the landfill area. This was the time to give my Huan my soaking wet shirt. She quite enjoys wearing it, especially if there is a slight breeze; it’s like her own air conditioning.

Next up was a quick biology lesson for Huan, or a least a lesson in how some creatures get their names. Pushing its large load away from a cowpat was this Dung Beetle, I pointed out that it was using its back legs to move the ‘ball’.

By the time we reached the peak, before heading downwards into Wuzhishan, we had covered at least two kilometres more than usual on this route. Here we are looking not too much the worse for wear and smiling because it was downhill all the way thereafter.

Because we had added extra kilometres and because there are no places for water stops on this route, I was ever so happy to reach the village shop down the bottom. Two small bottles of water were bought, one to top up Huan’s horrible bitter tea flask and one for me to quickly pour down my neck. Tow medium bottles were also bought, one to drink on the rest of the way home and one ‘room temperature’ bottle to pour over my head.

By the time we got home I couldn’t be bothered with sandwiches so we had two nice large milk shakes, stuff the cholesterol figures for today! Only one of us had an afternoon nap, me as usual. Come dinner time I really couldn’t face what I had cooked yesterday so with Huan’s permission, I fished out most of the pieces of beef from her dinner, and then ate them with some Russian bread, tomatoes, onions and beetroot. It was a darn sight tastier!

May 31^st Today is the 151st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 214 days remain until the end of the year and it’s only 208 days until Christmas. There you go, information I’m sure you desperately needed to know.

Huan was out again this morning, I had a lazy day, surfing Facebook, watching ‘Callan’ and just generally doing nothing. My usual duty of making lunch for us both did disturb me temporarily but I was soon back to the computer again.

Taobao delivered before we went shopping and I’m pleased to say the contents of my box were well protected and arrived safely. There’s enough there to last me another year!

Unknown to me, Huan also had a box delivered. That also arrived with its contents well protected and now she has even more instruments of aural torture to assail my ears with! This is a 笛子 (Dízi), a.k.a. a Chinese flute and as I’m sure you’re aware, playing the flute doesn’t come easy to start with. I can see the office door being closed more often!

To relieve my ears for a while, being Monday, we had to go shopping; we just had to get out of the house! Seriously though, we did have to go shopping or Huan would have had nothing ready for tonight’s dinner. After less than an hour in the supermarket this was the temperature when we returned to the car. I bet you all envy us now!

What did Huan cook today then? More often than not, when it is her turn to cook, it is fish, and then, more often than not with bones! Today we had shrimp fried rice, which in Huan’s eyes is classed as fish. I’m certainly not complaining, I love shrimps, I love fried rice and I love having an egg on top of my fried rice.

And that dear listener, (I know you are readers but as I’m typing I like to think you are listening to my thoughts, just as if I was still on the radio), brings us to the end of another week. At least I am back in touch with some family and friends, the rest will take time. People don’t like to respond to friend requests when you’re already in their list with a slightly different name. We’ll be back again next week, same Google time, same Google channel, don’t go too far!

More Food, More Walking, More Facebook & IT Problems, Help!

May 18^th Withdrawal symptoms are setting in, or is one of the stages of grief, I don’t know really but I wish I had access to Facebook again. It is the way I keep in touch with my children, my brothers and sisters, my extended family and of course my friends from all walks of life. How easy life would be if only there was a helpdesk.

Life goes on though and today was a nice long solo walk, Huan was off the OAP centre in the town. I headed for Changhao intending to stay on the road all the way there to remind myself how far it is from our place. Some of my walking was done the wrong side of the crash barrier, not too dangerous; if I had slipped I would only have ended up in a duck pond.

Today’s weather forecast, and in fact for the next few days, showed lots of sweltering heat. Where we live temperatures were expected to be around 35ºC, still better than the north of the island where I think a high of 40ºC was expected. I was out before eight o’clock and luckily for me the mountains kept me in the shade at the beginning.

Soon the mountains didn’t hide me from the sun’s glare and neither did the trees at the side of the road. However, the clouds came to me rescue, hiding the sun for short periods now and then.

After an hour and a half I reached Changhao, you can see the turn off into the village where the bus is coming out. The distance is shown on my phone as 6.33km. I remembered it being between 6 and 7, the large differential is dependant on which gate we leave our apartments by. Today I left by the back gate, the nearest to Changhao.

Refreshed with some nice cold water I headed on my way back but decided to take a detour in a reverse way around the country lanes to the way Huan and I normally walk. Here’s the lovely lane at the turn off followed by the bridge into Caoban village.

The view upstream from the bridge gives you an idea of why we enjoy walking in the countryside so much. On this walk, we have the added benefit of wonderful leafy lanes where we don’t have to worry too much about the sun.

And here’s the view from the next bridge before I rejoined the main road, looking downstream this time. We are blessed with lots of nice scenery aren’t we?

The last one from me today is a selfie of me reaching home having walked fractionally over thirteen kilometres, enough for one day I think.

You won’t be surprised at all to read that I needed an afternoon nap today! My Youtube movie when I woke up was “A Brave New World”, I’m not actually sure if I’ve ever seen it before. After an intermission for dinner I carried on watching while Huan went out for her evening practice. She was home early today with beastie photographs for me. It’s a shame she doesn’t have a better way to take the photos because she has quite the eagle eye. Here, to feast your eyes on, are a frog, some kind of fly and some kind of spider.

May 19^th I seem to have got this week’s schedule mixed up, I thought we were walking together today but Huan had to go for a hulusi class at the OAP Cultural Centre. She asked me to walk with her so I did and carried her music stand! After a few minutes of the teacher trying to show me how easy the ‘number system’ was as compared to the ‘stave’ that we use, I set off. There was no ten kilometre target today because we had to go out again after lunch so I started by checking on the riverside food court progress. They have begun installing hoods over the cooking areas although as yet I don’t see any signs of extractor fans.

After a rambling route around the river, on my way home, I spotted a little friend, on the other side of a tree, on the other side of the flower beds from me. Pessimistically I set off to a place where I could turn back, a whole eight trees further on, and made my way slowly back. Luck was with me and I got quite a good shot before he scampered round to the other side.

Further along I did spot another one but I couldn’t get near enough for a decent photo like the one above. There was a snail on another tree but as it was hiding in its shell I thought you wouldn’t want to see that. In fact nothing else popped into my sights until I was almost home when I noticed that the irrigation canal is full again. We will have to go and check on the new section when her Ladyship is free.

Just as I entered our apartments something caught my eye rising from the river. I wasn’t as fast with the camera as I should have been but you can get an idea from these photos. It looks like it could be some type of bird of prey to me, if anyone can identify it, let me know. The photos are cropped as much as possible before losing far too much detail.

Nearly nine kilometres was the resulting distance of my morning’s meanderings. After lunch we headed to the hospital first to arrange a fasting cholesterol test for tomorrow. Even before seeing the results the doctor was suggesting that I may need to take tablets. In no uncertain terms I let him know that I was not in agreement with him! From there we visited the mobile phone provider’s office to make sure that my phone did have international access, both ways. The lady helping us called the service centre who assured us my phone did have the required access but he said he’d turned it off and then on again just to be sure. After buying our lottery tickets we made our way home having added two more kilometres to today’s walking meaning the daily target had been reached. Just as well, because we’ll be too busy tomorrow.

Unusually for a Wednesday, it was my turn to cook again, this time one of Huan’s favourite dishes, noodle soup. Today’s ingredients were the usual onion, garlic, celery, mushrooms, a long red pepper of which variety I have no idea, some parsley, and a few of those store bought meatballs. We had also managed to find some beef stock, made by Knorr but in China, that made all the difference. Usually, if I show you two plates or bowls, they are the same size, but today they are slightly different. In accordance with the Chinese tradition of eating soup out of large or even humongous bowls, Huan’s is on the right. The soups are exactly the same but most of Huan’s solids have sunk below the surface of her extra soup.

After dinner, I tried Facebook’s two factor authentication again just in case the phone service centre turning my international access on and off had made a difference. It hadn’t!

May 20^th What a busy day we had today. Our first port of call was the hospital for my arm to be emptied of blood, yet again. As always I was only too eager!

From there we hit the road, the new highway to be exact, to drive to Sanya and get the car serviced. We were interested to see what the ‘longest tunnel in Hainan’ would be like. Here are the screen shots of us entering and leaving, taken from the dashcam through a dirty windscreen. Now I’m waiting for a text message to tell me I was speeding as I entered the tunnel. I was so busy trying to look at all the signs that I forgot to ease off the accelerator enough!

Rich cars were on show today, walking to the shop near the garage to buy a coffee I passed a sad Ferrari in a workshop and then driving home we were passed by a very throaty Lamorghini.

My plan hadn’t been to drive straight home, I had wanted to visit my bank, update my passbook, change some more money and maybe even withdraw a little. That would have been followed by a visit to Corners Deli to stock up on a few items, HP Sauce, beetroot etc. Both plans were however vetoed by the Minister of Finance. As a result we were back home before twelve making sandwiches for lunch. The new highway certainly cuts down the time; it usually takes us two hours or more to get to our garage, today it only took one hour and twenty minutes.

All that hard work took it out of us and an afternoon nap was needed, for her Ladyship too, even though she had slept in the car on the way home. After our nap it was back to the hospital to collect the results of my blood test, and how depressing they were. Despite having no alcohol for the last six months, no ‘Full English Breakfasts’, no chocolates, hardly any beef, no dairy milk on my cereals, semi-skimmed in my one coffee a day, lots of fruit and vegetables, fish three times a week and gallons of water, nothing has really changed. What to do? Maybe I should just forget about it and go back to enjoying what I eat and drink.

After dinner I needed a solitary walk, away from people to start with, so I headed for the silence of the countryside. Apart from some goats I saw and spoke to no one until I arrived back in the town, feeling a little better than I had done when I started out.

May 21^st Huan was off to the OAP Cultural Centre this morning, sans music stand as they were going to be rehearsing for their upcoming show. Her schedule had her out this afternoon as well, so after making sure she arrived safely, I strolled around the town walking only 5.8km knowing that I would be on escort duty again later.

Wee beasties from the pet shop were my first snap, don’t they look great. I love to see their inquisitive little faces looking up at me.

More rich cars today as I passed through town, this time Chinese made. This is a 红旗(Hóngqí) H9, quite impressive I think. Normally I am not much of a fan of two tone cars but in this case I’ll make an exception. Now which one of you is going to buy one for me?

Last minute change of plans, instead of walking Huan to OAP University I had to drive her and the committee leader to court. Today they were submitting papers to call the three different companies involved in the gas and pipe installation. Now we wait again for yet another call to court. Who knows we may even get gas before the year is out but I’m not holding my breath!

And that was our day apart from a walk around the town after dinner. Huan came with me and we managed to add enough to my morning’s walk to meet the daily target.

May 22^nd Another day, another walk, oh how I wish it was another dollar! Huan had to go to her singing class today so after I had walked there it was another solo walk for me. Not many photos were taken today but as I’ve already shown you cars this week I thought you might like to see an electric bike or two. They look impressive don’t you think, I quite fancy the yellow one myself. Well, I would fancy it if it were a little larger, they seem to be designed, quite naturally, for the average Chinese man who is normally a little shorter than me and definitely has shorter legs. Normal electric mopeds usually retail for between ¥3,000.00 and ¥5,000.00 this one, as you can see is more expensive at ¥8,300.00. Mind you they had one there last week that was even more expensive at ¥11,400.00, perhaps that had more power. Would I buy one? Not really, getting my ‘leg over’ would not be as easy as it was when I was younger! (Now then, you know perfectly well what I meant!)

Being a Saturday there were no boots and marathons, just sandals and the riverside market. Those extractor fans I didn’t see earlier in the week are now being installed. You’ll notice that there is a large yellow box, that is some kind of environmental filter and is now mandatory in all restaurants throughout the city.

On my way back into town I spotted a wedding car, which is not unusual at all, but there was something odd about this one. If you look carefully you will see that the driver is concerned about something behind him. An even closer perusal may lead you to the same conclusion as me, the soft top is trying to escape from its fastenings!

Passing through the town square, going towards the most important stop of the day, the lottery ticket outlet, I spotted this archway. Now my spoken Chinese is not so good but my reading of Chinese is almost non existent. I did know that whatever was happening was in relation to the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

A few yards later I saw the reason for the arch, there had been some kind of race, walking or running, from the square up to the reservoir and I presume back down again. Whether it was open to the general public or not, I had no idea. It was probably just as well we didn’t know about it, I might have been stupid enough to volunteer!

Only 8.2 kilometres was walked this morning, I had planned to walk again after dinner, but I changed my mind and just watched movies. “What about dinner?” I hear you ask, “Don’t you usually cook a two day dinner on Saturdays?” Usually you’d be right, but today I only had to cook for one day, we are invited out tomorrow! All I made was another noodle soup using minced pork, one lonely carrot, some left over stalks of celery, spring onion and parsley and of course the obligatory onion and garlic. To surprise Huan I also bought some curry stock while I was out this morning, it worked well. In fact we both enjoyed it so much that we had wolfed more than half of it down before I remembered that I had forgotten to take any photos. Sorry!

May 23^rd Another solo walk today, Huan was off to help the committee boss prepare lunch for us all. My aim was to do at least ten kilometres, hopefully twelve to make up for not doing ten yesterday. Huan suggested the mountain park walk, I considered the reservoir walk, but both of those required going up hills so I set off into the countryside instead.

Before long I came upon a new addition to the countryside, a water dispenser. You have the choice of normal water or mineral water and you can pay by coin or by phone, not bad eh? I bet it’s not cold though.

It was a beautiful day, perhaps a little hot for the speed I was going, not that I was being a hare, but I certainly wasn’t a tortoise! The scenery was absolutely splendiferous!

A wee many legged beastie was spotted, crossing the road in a hurry. You’ve seen ones like this before but this one appeared to have a problem at the back end, the right hand side of the photo. I couldn’t decide whether it was dirt from a hole, damage from some kind of accident, or perhaps something to do with young ones. Anybody out there know?

Being without Huan, and wearing my boots, I wandered off the beaten track at time. This was a route that farm workers had previously told us was not a good way. I decided not to listen, ended up with scratched legs.

After fifty metres or so on the road, I headed into the undergrowth again. I’m either a glutton for punishment or not a very good learner! The exit was a good place though.

On this route I’ve never seen bovine buddies before but I found some today. I the first photo they are saying hello, before #3 decided to lick my hand, what strange tongues cows have. In the second photo #2 is trying to eat #1’s ear and in the third photo they are saying goodbye!

At six kilometres, before I met the cows, I had found a shop, unfortunately the water there was not cold, they had only just switched the fridge on. It was another two and a half kilometres before I came upon another oasis, one bottle went over my head, one down my gullet and one was carried onwards. The little girl that was there was terrified and her Gran had to take her inside! This photo was taken as I was leaving; the water you can see running from the stool is the water I poured over my head.

Time was on my side so I was able to add a little extra distance and still be home in time to shower and change for our lunch. The twelve kilometre mark was reached and just to prove it, here’s a photo of my phone. PS Ignore the fact that it says running, I chose the wrong option this morning, it doesn’t make much difference except perhaps for the estimated calorie count.

So how was our dinner with the committee? Not bad at all, here is what the table looked like before a lot more food was added, including what seemed like hundreds of dumplings.

And here are the dumplings being prepared by Huan and Yu.

My only problem is the idea of drinking as much as possible as fast as possible! I do enjoy a good drink now and then but not at speed! Even Huan had to join in and have some ‘black beer’. It was supposed to be from the UK but was actually made in Shandong in northern China. The men like it because the front of the can says 11º so they believe it to be strong. That number is of course the ‘proof’ number, on the side of the bottle the ABV (Alcohol by Volume) number is considerably lower, less than 4.5 in fact, which puts in the same range as most other beers. When they poured it out it was more red than black, it didn’t look like stout at all. Now I’m not a stout fan, far from it, but I had a taste of Huan’s, it was horrible, even worse than stout to my palate. Apart from a glass of Baijiu as a toast at the start I stuck to normal Chinese beer. By the time we got home we both needed one of those afternoon naps again.

My laptop arrived back from repair while I was out this morning so that was job number one when we awoke. We have no idea what they did to it, I suspect they may have formatted the disk as drives ‘d’ and ‘e’ were completely empty. At least it came back in English! The next job was to put it on our network and add some files which didn’t work at all. However, the problem was not in the laptop, but in my computer, and in Huan’s which I switched on to double check. Neither of our computers were showing up in the ‘Network’ part of file explorer, not even on our own computers. The printer was though. After the usual rabbit warren of Google and Youtube I used the option I should have used first, the “Get Help” option built into Windows 10. Within a few minutes I was chatting with an agent who then escalated the problem to “Tier 1”. The chap there then took control of my computer and within minutes we were all back to normal again. On my computer, for some strange reason, all my drives had become ‘unshared’, not something that you can easily do accidentally. Huan’s was a slightly different problem but was cleared just as fast as mine. We suspect that the last Windows 10 update, perhaps a week ago, was the cause of both of our problems. Once Microsft had left my PC, Folder Match came out and Huan’s was updated with all my latest files and photos. The laptop was left until the morning.

On the subject of IT problems, I had an email from Facebook last night telling me that my ID was not clear and asking me to reply to that message uploading it again. I did as they asked, explaining to them that British passports are designed not to be photographed easily, included my Chinese driving licence, the ‘full’ photo from 1991, from which I cropped my Facebook profile photo, and a screen shot of the email notifications from Facebook themselves. I added a couple of my friends, some detail about what’s in my profile page and the fact that I am also an Admin for a group. Finally, I explained how I logged on from China, queried whether this could be a reason for the two factor authentication not working. They definitely have enough information to confirm my identity now, so I just have to sit back and wait again.

May 24^th Monday is our normal shopping day, usually in the morning, but the star of stage and screen was busy today, at the OAP University. Their afternoon rehearsals have been moved to the mornings because of the heat. What did I do instead? Absolutely nothing, and that was all I planned to do. That was until Huan phoned me and asked me to put on my Chauffeur’s uniform, in other words, to get dressed, and do a return trip to the court once again. The committee boss had to visit to change a word in the latest submission, Chinese courts are even more formal than British ones. I guess it was nice to get out of the house for a while.

Shopping was done after lunch, you would have thought it was three o’clock in the morning by the absence of customers. I much prefer that to the other extreme of overcrowding though. Back home I was soon watching movies again.

This evening, my spirits almost perked up when I saw that I had another email from Facebook. I should have looked more closely at the subject line! Yet again it was a ‘notification’ email, a screen shot of it is below. Isn’t it strange that they say they need to confirm my identity but still send me these emails. It’s useless to me of course, if I go to “View Notifications” or “Go to Facebook” I get stuck on two factor authentication again. I do wonder what would happen if I clicked a reply to “Was this email useful” but I’m not going to try.

If anyone knows a way back into Facebook, or perhaps has Mark Zuckerberg on their friends list, I’d be most grateful! And that’s our lot for this week, see you next time, take care and stay safe.