July 13th It was back to singing class for the boss this morning so I did the usual and walked her there. A couple of birds were spotted on the way, just a little out of reach of the camera though. I dropped her off and she gave me explicit orders not to walk too far. Did I listen? Well I only did seven and a half kilometres today, that’s not too far is it? My only plan was to take a few photos with the X-T20, to restore my faith in it, apart from its zoom capabilities of course. This area is part of the landscaped gardens around the complex Huan goes to.
A couple of flower macros came next, nothing that you haven’t seen before though. However, this is a view I don’t believe we’ve showed you before, this is our main shopping street, one of my favourite streets. I love the trees growing over the top although I do wonder how long they can last before someone takes a saw to them.
I tried playing with the different photo qualities on the camera today, ‘normal’ jpeg (compressed a little), ‘fine’ jpeg (a bigger file, not compressed) and RAW. To be honest I couldn’t see a great deal of improvement even using RAW and the entails different software to process and convert the photos afterwards. Professional photographers would probably be able to get much better results than me. As our photos are memories and stories rather than art I can’t be bothered with all the extra work. Having said that, I may keep a RAW setting for occasional use. These next two panoramas were created from converted RAW files, using Microsoft’s ICE and then tarted up a little in the ever so easy to use Picasa. They look different because of the ‘stitching’ method, the first used ‘cylindrical’ and the second used ‘perspective, and the sepia effect applied in Picasa.
The next three show our restaurant, not really ours, we own the premises and rent them out to the restaurateur. None of these were RAW, they may all have been fine, the second is a crop of the first, the third was given the sepia effect for ‘atmosphere’. If you look carefully you can see the reflection of my knobbly knees!
I took one more just to finish off the walk, in fact I took three from the same place. No matter what I did with the RAW file though I couldn’t really improve on this.
Was I happy with today’s results?
As we are not professional photographers and mostly take photos for our, and
our friends’ and families’ pleasure I would say yes. All we have to do now is
try and get the X-T20 repaired. Apart from cooking dinner, I spent the rest of
the day trying to find a tutorial on how to replace the LCD display, with no
success. I wasn’t able to find one for sale on Taobao either. Well, that’s not
quite true, I found two or three supposedly for our camera but they all looked
different! In the end I bookmarked
What did I cook today? The plan was noodles, chicken, red and yellow bell peppers, garlic, onion, yoghurt and cheese. Our shopping trip yesterday didn’t yield either of the peppers we needed so I bought a red jalapeno pepper, (not hot) and needing more colour I saw a long green vegetable and asked Huan if we could use that. No problem she said, it will go well and it’s also good for you. After dinner, which worked well, and while I was writing this post I asked what we had eaten. The answer was丝瓜, (Sīguā) which translates as something you might use in the bath, a ‘loofah’. Googling loofah told me that, as usual, the head chef was absolutely correct. Had I known in advance I may have taken some pictures for you, maybe next time.
July 14th Huan has an easier time of things at the moment; she doesn’t have classes every day. That meant we could walk together today, just a walk around the river though. I thought the camera was set to RAW so I tried a few photos but getting home I found it was only set to ‘fine’. Not to worry, here’s the first macro.
The second one is an insect, I wonder if you can tell me what it is. Is it a cricket, a locust or a grasshopper? Huan thought the lump on its back was something trying to eat it. When it landed in front of us I took the photo and then tried to get it move again by gently touching the back end. It didn’t move a muscle so maybe Huan was right.
The route we took was one where we have previously seen a lot of lizards. Huan said we had to walk that way today because I wanted to take pictures of lizards! Translation, Huan wanted me to take pictures of lizards! Of course I was in trouble for missing the first one which I refused to take as the irrigation truck was bearing down on us watering all the plants. As it was I kept the camera dry but I got soaked. These two were less of a problem though.
Being the good commander that she is she then had me take these two photos on the grounds that ‘we haven’t showed people this street before”. That’s true; we haven’t showed you the street down at the far end of the river, again a pleasant shaded area to stroll around.
Our last one for the morning was a fisherman as we approached our house. Although you can’t see it well, he has caught at least one, he’s carrying it in a plastic bag in his left hand.
Lunch was some of that lovely Xinjiang bread with cheese and salad, plus red cabbage for me. We do like to make sure we get our ‘five a day’ you know. Following that we both had to have a little sleep. Most people would blame it on our ages but we blame it on the weather and the heat!
Another shopping trip was needed before dinner, a solo one. More
coconut milk was needed for my daily breakfasts, no fat content, better for my
cholesterol, or so they say. You’re probably wondering why we didn’t buy any on
Monday, our normal shopping day. It was on the list but they didn’t have any. Despite
our two large supermarkets being the same chain it’s often the case that one
has product when the other doesn’t. The one I went to today had only four
bottles left on the shelf so I nabbed two of them. Walking home I heard music
behind me and hurriedly put the shopping down so that I could use the phone
camera. This is something that happens a lot here, shops carry out advertising
campaigns using various vehicles and PA systems. Today’s was for electric
mopeds, they’ll give you ¥338.00 for your old one and the new one becomes ¥1,199.00.
That’s pretty cheap and a lot safer then those scooters we keep reading about
in the
My additional walk gave me additional kilometres so the daily target of ten kilometres was easily reached. This could be a better way of doing it, easier for me and it keeps me out of the house at NAAFI break time, when I would usually stop for a coffee and a fag.
July 15th Today was another joint expedition and my plan was to do some playing with the camera. I set it take RAW and ‘normal’ photos at the same time which I could then compare when we got home. In theory the RAW photos should have been much higher quality then the ‘normal’ jpeg files. Crossing the island our first photo was of the damaged road in our complex. I cropped both photos by over 50% and there is no major difference. If you tried what they call ‘pixel peeping’ you may be able to see some difference but for normal work, full screen views (27” monitor) and printing (A4) ‘normal’ is absolutely good enough.
Huan took a lot of photos of me stood in front of a little waterfall on the road up to the scenic mountain walk. Only one turned out to be worth keeping and that wasn’t very good either. The shutter was opening longer than usual, I suppose RAW files need more detail and thus more light. The converted RAW file was no better than this normal jpeg.
When we reached the bridge to start our downward trek I decided to take enough shots to create a panorama when we got home. Having both types of files allowed me to create two panoramas, one from fifteen normal files, each about 8MB, and one from fifteen converted RAW files, each about 23MB. The results were not special; again the panorama created from the larger files was not noticeably any better than the one created from the normal files. That one is here.
This next one, which Huan spotted, my eyes are nowhere near as good as hers any more, the RAW file actually seemed worse than the jpeg. The RAW file was binned!
Next up are two vertical panoramas where I went through the same process as before but I’m sure you know by now what I’m going to say. You’re right, no need to mess around with additional software and file conversion, the jpegs are definitely good enough.
Next I took a lot of photos of a posed Huan, the results were much more of the same. I can’t show you though, I have been forbidden from sharing what I kept! Our last photo of the day, the last one we are sharing anyway, is new to us. Just as we were coming to the end of the mountain walk we came across this dietary advice sign. Here you can see the whole sign; I also took photos of the individual segments, cropped them at home, and got Huan to translate them for me. I’m not going to write all that here, you can either ask your local Chinese restaurant or Google image translation, whichever you prefer. Suffice to say that, according to the advice given here, we both eat healthily enough.
Did I say last photo? Well there is one more, but taken with my
phone. I am a member of a site called “Food Tribe” and today someone asked us
to share photos of any unusual glass or tableware we might have and how we came
by it. I shared these lovely little egg cups, but I have no idea where I bought
them from other than the fact it wasn’t in
Being Thursday I was on chef duties again but I cheated a little today, all I did was fry up a little minced pork in some olive oil and then add a previously frozen vegetable soup, once that was bubbling away some dried noodles. Huan had to go out before I cooked it, more committee stuff, but it was ready to serve when she returned. I added some parmesan cheese to mine, Huan as usual, emptied her plate and decided that instead of being a glutton and emptying the pan as well, she would have noodle soup for breakfast again tomorrow.
That was my day done but ‘er indoors’, no today she decided to some Percy Thrower on the balcony. Now if you know who that is you are definitely showing your age!
July 16th Thirteen years ago
today, way up north in
I gave Huan a conditional choice of where to go, the condition being
it wasn’t to be the ‘frog’ restaurant where we went for Christmas. She chose
the “Beijing Hotpot” restaurant, previously recommended to us by our good
friends from
First we had to have our photo taken by the orange tree at the door.
Then I had a look around while Huan browsed the menu.
As the menu was all in Chinese, with no pinyin, Huan ordered for us, our ‘ingredients’ were then delivered by robot.
I’m not a huge fan of hot pots but as it’s been such a long time since we had one I really enjoyed today’s, and ate far too much of course, especially meat. Here’s the pot bubbling away merrily very near the end, you can see that there are no more ingredients left to add to the pot.
As you can see, Chinese hot pot is very different to Lancashire hot
pot or any other
Well we enjoyed our anniversary, we also walked to dinner and back so despite having a lazy day we still got almost five kilometres in. Our day was completed with a lovely Skype call with one of my Aunties, one of her daughters, two of her grandsons and a great granddaughter. Where would we be without the wonders of modern technology?
July 17th No breakfast for me today, I think I ate too much last night! After my cup of coffee, with a spoonful of sugar for a change, I walked Huan to singing class before setting off for the Saturday market walk. Lots of the moped / motorbike shops seem to be having sales at the moment as well as refurbishing their premises. Here’s one having a grand re-opening, all the staff are to the right of the inflated orange archway.
Passing by the new shopping centre building I stopped to read the English on the signs. The first one has me completely flummoxed especially the “not against corruption” part. The second one has no great language problems and the sentiment is laudable, I like it. The third one seems to be some sort of advert for a new dictionary, an online one, with twenty million words! One thing missing though is the URL to tell you where to find this huge dictionary.
My route to the riverside took me past the front of our apartment complex so I thought I would give you a different view of the river, the island and one of the bridges.
Last night Huan and I both thought that there a lot more people around than usual, that feeling was reinforced for me today. Bear in mind that most of the snowbirds are still away and won’t return before September or October.
Once I was in the market I found that
some of the new food places have started opening up. This one is a bakery but
unlike ours back in the
I couldn’t find anything else of interest in the market today so I began a roundabout route back to Huan’s singing class to make sure I didn’t arrive there too early. I decided to have some breakfast on the way, a not very chocolaty chocolate ice cream.
My timing was good, I met Huan and walked her home and then, believe it or not, I didn’t have an OAP nap today. Well, it was my turn to cook again and Huan had requested duck stew this weekend. That took me most of the afternoon.
After dinner I conned Huan into going out with me for a ‘short’ walk to reach my daily total of ten kilometres. With 9.4 this morning and 2.9 this evening I think we can consider the target met.
July 18th Rigsby was on the road again, this time to Ledong. However, this was a different type of Rigsby. Instead of visiting the tenants to find and/or fix problems it was a benevolent trip. The boss, or should I call her “Miss Jones”, had decided to visit bearing gifts, 饺子 (jiǎozi) aka dumplings, 糭子 (Zòng zi) aka sticky rice dumplings, potted plants and a water lily. Our drive there was an uneventful one along the highway.
After we left we decided to have a little walk around the neighbourhood, where we spotted our first subject. "Nothing special here" I hear you say. Well I beg to differ. Huan and I helped the owner, a property developer, to buy this by giving him our well earned money when we bought the Ledong apartment from him. He drives a British Bentley now and I drive a Chinese Dongfeng. C'est la vie! No complaints from me, just a little envy perhaps.
Huan chose the park walk, very near the apartment, via the sports stadium.
It’s a pleasant park with lots to do for the children, climbing frames, the usual slides and stuff and things for the adults too, the outdoor gymnasium, quite a big one, and of course table tennis. We decided though to show you part of the walk.
From there we went down to the lake where they have a water feature show in the evenings and serve some pretty decent food. At the time of day we were there the restaurant was not yet open but to entice you to visit, here are a couple of panoramas.
The swimming pool should have been our next subject, it’s usually very busy with lots of children having fun. However, it was all closed up, whether permanently or not we don’t know. Instead we headed back into town, found ourselves a cheap buffet style restaurant and had lunch. Can you guess whose is whose?
Our last subject is one of our little friends again. Today this one jumped onto Huan’s water bottle first before I enticed it onto my hand. We were so engrossed in what we were doing that the people working in the hairdressers came to find out exactly what we were doing. Of course they also had to know where I was from, for some reason they never believe “Wuzhishan”!
Our return route was not the highway, I wanted to go via Maoyang and the mountain roads. My reasons were to check the distances and whether or not buses still travelled on the road between Maoyang and Wuzhishan. If we were to walk from home to the rest stop, uphill all the way, it’s twelve kilometres. There are no more buses on this route so to go home would either be another twelve kilometres back the same way or fourteen kilometres downhill to Maoyang from where we could get a bus home. Twenty four or twenty six kilometres half uphill and half downhill, Huan thinks we’d need a full day, she’s probably right!
July 19th And so we come to Monday, our restful, relaxing shopping day. It was to, at least to start with. There were no other plans today so we could take our time. All I wanted to do was to snap a couple of pictures on the escalator which I managed to do on the way down from the food section to the household section. The first one puzzled me, 小心碰头, Xiǎoxīn pèngtóu which literally translates as “be careful, bump head” but all together means “watch your head. How do they get “carefully meet” from that?
The second one had me puzzled too but with my ‘brain the size of a small planet’, I did manage to work it out after a couple of minutes. 禁止逆行, jìnzhǐ nixing, literally character by character, “ban, only, inverse, row”, in pairs, “prohibit retrograde” and all together “no retrograde”. What they mean is “don’t go the opposite way the escalator is going”. Of course I had to break the rules quite a lot to get this photo and the one above!
We were just coming to the end of a nice week, no real problems, and I was feeling good about life, when my phone rang. It was my bank in Sanya, again. The young lady spoke a little English but found my question “How do I know you are really calling from the bank” a little difficult to answer. She was also having trouble telling me what she needed from me, I could hear her using her phone for translation, and also speaking to her supervisor. She needed me to provide some sort of “registration”, which I suspect is not quite the correct translation. We went through all this last year and I told her as much. She said she was new and needed it all again. By now our conversation was showing the limitations of her English and my Chinese and with me pacing around the house trying to find Huan, the call either dropped or she hung up. She probably thinks I hung up. Unknown to me Huan had popped out for a few minutes to a local shop. I guess we will have to take another trip to Sanya this week to sort it out, again. How business people cope with moving large sums of money in and out I have no idea, it’s certainly not easy for us little people with our paltry amounts.
Enough of my grumbling, I’ll sign off now and let you know next week what happened. My guess is that it will be exactly the same as it was in August last year. In the meantime, take care, stay safe and remember to greet everyone with a nice big smile every day! Au reservoir!
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