May 25th 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 26th 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 27th 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 28th
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 29th 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 30th Today was Huan’s choice of route so she chose the
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 31st 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!
No comments:
Post a Comment