Even More Covid Tests!

August 9^th We were still confined to barracks today, this was the view around eight o’clock from the kitchen balcony. At that time the road would normally be busy with lots of people going to work from the flats across the road. Most people are following the rules.

As for us, well more music for Huan and more “Scott and Bailey” for me. In fact I finished the whole lot and started on DCI Banks. Unfortunately many episodes of this one are missing, shame really because it is another good one.

August 10^th No messages received this morning but as we have enough food in and as the roads are still quiet we decided to stay put for one more day. All was going well until the internet failed completely. It has been intermittent for a while but today it just vanished. Luckily we had the phone number of the engineer and before too long he was here He thought he would do a professional job and try to use the existing cables and pipe work.

As I expected he had to give up in the end and follow the route the initial installers had used, over the roof. Here you can see him fishing for the new half of the cable from our apartment and then splicing it to the old half that goes to the telecoms cabinet.

Here is another view of him splicing the cable, in the background is half the reason we had a problem in the first place. The couple with the roof garden thought our cable was in their way so destroyed it with a large stone. It should be pointed out that our cable was installed long before they decided to act out ‘the good life’.

The engineer picked up an apprentice on the roof, a small bird belonging to ‘the Goods’, who in this photo seemed very keen to learn and was studying hard.

Huan took a lot of photos of the little birdie although she could not get him to come and sit on her hand. I dare say if we spent some time on the roof that would change. He did initially try and follow us downstairs but then decided to stay with his Dad.

Internet back on I went back to binge watching TV again, not DCI Banks, I had to give up on that, no good when the second halves of episodes are missing. Instead I started on Broadchurch and managed the whole of series one, another good one.

August 11^th Today we escaped from the house and went shopping. I had been asked to make a short video of our experiences through this ‘lockdown’ so I made a video of today’s shopping. I was only asked yesterday and we still haven’t been out walking yet. Here are three screen shots, at home, in the car park and back home again.

You can see the complete video here if you like, https://youtu.be/g8ES9F6N9Qw it took over twelve hours to upload! I spent the rest of the day watching season two of Broadchurch, the final episode will have to wait until tomorrow.

August 12^th Last night we both had another message telling us that a fourth test would be required today, between three and six in the afternoon. For Huan and I it would in fact be our fifth test. Just our luck, the weather changed and we had to go and queue in the rain.

Huan was going shutter crazy again, it was all I could do to keep her in the line. In fact at one stage she left me and went off to take a photo of one of the ‘staff’. This lady turned out to be a teacher, whether shipped in or not we don’t know. Her ‘heart’ says “In the war against the epidemic, my teachers are with me”. You can see that she is smiling and happy to be here.

She could also be smiling because she remembers telling Huan and I to keep our one metre distance to which I had responded by “saying we can sleep together but we have to stand apart?”

On our way home we marvelled at how low the clouds were over the mountains.

August 13th We’re back to Saturday again and out for a walk. We correctly surmised that there would be no market today but Huan needed to go on a multi-bank run. She does that now and then and when she does I am her security guard. Using bank locations as an excuse I managed to make sure we still had a nice long walk. Between banks we came across an old friend, one we have known since we first arrived here. Unfortunately he has put on a great deal of weight!

In the past he would have been jumping up to say hello, there is no chance of that now. His owner says it’s because he likes to eat meat!

Since we haven’t been out for a while we needed to have some photography, just to prove to ourselves when we look back in years to come. Here are a couple of the river.

Slowly the shops are opening up again and today the indoor market was back to normal. That is they had all the usual things to sell but not a lot of customers.

How about another one of the river just before we got home?

We reached our apartments just as a couple on a moped were going around with a small loudspeaker telling everyone that more testing would be required this afternoon. Yes, we had our sixth test today; the first one was on August 4^th. We are doing well aren’t we?

August 14^th Ah, Sunday, the universal (almost) day of rest, don’t you think so? Of course being retired, for us Sunday is just like any other day. However, there was no rest for us this morning, the truck was going up and down the street telling us we should go and be tested between eight and twelve. That takes us up to #7 now.

I managed to get Huan to keep her phone in her pocket so there are no more pictures of queues or us being tested. I guess there’s always tomorrow! After our test we had a little walk down the road just to get some exercise in, we went as far as the highway on ramp. There we noticed that cars leaving the city are being stopped and the occupants tested. I would hazard a guess that they may be checking people coming down the off ramp too.

We managed to snap some wildlife today, here’s a lonely dragonfly.

Needing a few extra metres as we arrived back home, I dragged Huan off to check on dam and steps progress, she was not very impressed.

I have to say that I agreed with her, no work has been done here for months now.

I thought I would finish off with a snap from the edge of the unfinished dam, looking down river. At least you get to see something nice this week.

August 15^th I had one of those very early mornings and I was up before half past five. When Huan got up an hour later she picked up her phone and found a message saying that we had to go for another test this morning.

Being a Monday we set off for our usual shopping trip only to find an empty car park.

It turned out that the car park was empty because the store was closed. Not only was Baijiahui closed but almost every shop in town was.

Luckily we still have enough of the basics in the house as well as food in the freezer. Huan was able to buy some vegetables at a small shop nearby so we should be OK for tomorrow too. Once home we thought we would walk to the hospital to restock my meds only to find that we were not allowed to walk that way and that the hospital is in fact closed today, except for emergencies. It seems that yesterday’s suspect case had been a visitor there.

After dinner, around four o’clock, I thought I would take a photo of the rainy day for you from the kitchen balcony. What I found was another empty street!

Not long before I finished this post and began the upload process Huan received yet another message. We have to attend an eighth round of testing tomorrow morning; that is #8 for most people but #9 for us. We only have eight stickers though!

Well what a week, a dearth of news and a dearth of photos. I guess it is just as well we don’t have a new camera yet. The way things are going I can’t say that this next week will be any better. Mind you, we can’t really complain, we have it a lot easier than the big cities on the mainland. Wherever you are, take care! Until the next time, it’s good bye from me and it’s good bye from the prime minister too.