May 18th 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 19th 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
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 20th 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 21st 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 22nd 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 23rd 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 24th Monday is our normal
shopping day, usually in the morning, but the star of stage and screen was busy
today, at the
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.
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