April 18th All alone am I, again, the student is still busy. I tried looking for a song that would describe the experience, but I can’t find one. Most ‘alone’ songs are about break-ups, even the one called “Driver’s License” By Olivia Rodrigo. I am alone, but not lonely! Anyway, sleep didn’t want to let me go this morning, so I ended up going out late. Madam had graduated to the dining room table, a much better place to study than the coffee table. I set off over the little island, which was surprisingly busy this morning.
My route, as planned, took me over the main road bridge over the river. Resurfacing was in progress so I thought I would let you see the various sizes of steam roller in use. The first one is the one that I had previously worried in front of our house.
The ‘bad boy’ inside of me then took over, and I left the pavement!
Back on the pavement I just had to take this one, for my #1 daughter, she has something of a phobia about them. This one looks to have been in the wars.
Walking home, having again been unsuccessful in finding any ox-tail anywhere, I thought I would pass by the aviary and say hello to the birds. They seem to have grown a lot since I last saw them, it made me wonder how big they would grow if they were not in captivity.
Back home it was make lunch for the boss, have a little nap, and then make dinner too. Huan had to interrupt her driving studies to go to her OAP hulusi class. Today was a Portuguese dish, Octopus Fricassé, which I learned today, only has one ‘e’ in the Portuguese language. It was tasty enough but not big enough. I had bought only two large octopus legs for the two of us, the rest of the ingredients were as per the list. Ours barely served two, never mind five. Lesson learnt! The recipe is below, and for those of you who are not sure, there are also instructions on how to cook octopus. Try it, you’ll enjoy it.
Big meanie that I am, I dragged Huan out after dinner, and not just to get some extra kilometres in. No, I was still trying to find the meat for Thursday’s dinner and I didn’t want to leave it until tomorrow, just in case. We failed to find any oxtails anywhere, failed to find beef, pork or lamb on the bone that would have acted as a nice substitute. In the end, we bought two chicken legs with breasts attached; they should do the job well enough.
April 19th I almost stayed in to keep the boss company this morning, for no other reason than I had slept very badly. Imagine you have to wake up to this sight every morning!
Anyway, my conscience got the better of me and I went for a stroll. My phone kept talking to me, in Chinese of course, words that I have not learned. Somehow yesterday evening I must have activated ‘auto-pause’ for the health app. The benefit is time taking photos is not counted and the average pace improves. I’m still not sure I like it though.
I chose the route as I went today; there was no real plan in my head. The first stop was the #1 motorbike shop in town; here I can drool but not buy.
This was on the main road towards Sanya so I continued in that direction until I reached the old three legged dog spot. I stopped to take a photo of the little stream that comes from Camelot and feeds into the main river where we normally walk.
At home we had been talking about how the weather seems to have abruptly changed and how we are now feeling hot and sweaty in the house. Turning the corner to the riverside you can see the result of said temperature change, there isn’t a single snowbird to be seen. At this time of the year they all start heading back north. We lost one couple yesterday, another one will leave on the 24th, by mid-May there will be none left at all.
Instead of looking for lizards along the riverside I took a short cut back to the main road. You know, I must learn to stop talking to all God’s creatures. This little bird was sat on the arm of a wing mirror, much closer than you see it here. I noticed and said “Well hello, what you doing there?” (I know, bad grammar.) That was enough to cause it to take refuge in a nearby tree.
Often we hear complaints through our WeChat residents’ group, Huan is on it, I am not. These complaints could be about all kinds of stuff, some important, some not, and most could be sorted out quite easily. All it requires is an increase in everyone’s annual maintenance fee. Of course, nobody is willing to even consider such a thing. If we paid a little more, everything would be maintained a little better, like this place.
Just outside the new Wuzhishan Central Hotel, and the new Bank of China, I spotted a not very remarkable car with a little soldier on the side. Of course I had to take a photo and then get Huan and Google to help me understand. 时刻准备着 Shíkè zhǔnbèizhe - Ready at all the time.
I did end up back by the riverside, via the Saturday market route. Whenever I go back that way, as I pass under the bridge, I never cease to admire the trees; there is just something about them.
Then I ring the doorbell and I am even happier!
Only one of us had an OAP nap today and it wasn’t the student.
April 20th Like many people, I am not fond of dentists, not the people who become dentists of course, but their surgeries and visits to them. A few days ago one of my caps fell off again so a visit to the dentist for some new glue was needed. Huan accompanied me, supposedly to assist with any language problems, but really to look after the little baby! She held the camera while I was in the chair, not many photos though and not so good either.
Prices have gone up; it cost ¥100.00 just for some glue! Once done I gave Huan my house keys and she went home to study, I went walkies around the town. Looking at the roads in town, the work has been completed; mostly very well, we are impressed.
However, someone somewhere has made a mistake. There are little rooms under the road where electricity cables will be jointed, each of those rooms has two access hatched. I have seen hatches like this before but on the pavements where they don’t have to bear any real weight. The ones in the road appear to be buckling under the weight of the traffic.
All the other hole covers, square or round, and the drainage grids are perfectly fine, it is only these ‘double door’ access lids that have a problem. No doubt they will soon be sorted out.
I found yet another motorbike today and I had to take a photo of it. It was a name I had never heard of, Benda, and if you look carefully it has a model name as well as a number. The number is clear, BD300-15, it is a 300cc bike. It is a little more difficult to see the name, it is on the plate below Benda, and it is ‘Chinchilla’, although the logo looks more like a skinny cat. It seems it is a Chinese brand, one that according to the internet has quite a good reputation.
Approaching home I thought I would snap a little of the old days for you. There are quite a few of these around, most no longer in use. I know not whether this one is or isn’t.
Where I was walking this morning there used to be a few very old small houses. Today, for the first time, either seeing or noticing, I spotted remnants of one of the houses in amongst the tree roots. I guess this tree must have been part of the structural supports.
I wasn’t sure what was being dried here so the photo was not just for you, but for me too. It seems that it is the ubiquitous areca nut, also known as the betel nut, or here 槟榔 Bīnláng. Not only is it chewed raw for its stimulant and narcotic effects, it is also consumed in dried form.
Having walked far enough and bought a couple of sausages I decided it was time to go home and check on the student. She was doing fine!
Chef time for me again after
lunch and a nap, today was another dish from the
April 21st Duty called first today, Huan had to go to class and her musical amigo was still off sick. I was the standby escort. Having dropped her off at Yefeng I took the road behind there for the Landfill wrong way round walk. The first picture shows the beginning of the way up from the village at the bottom, the second shows a possible short cut out of Yefeng. Mind you, if I tried it I would either fall and hurt myself or be caught on the complex CCTV!
On my way I made a video, unfortunately there is no link for it yet. It needs stabilising and the free online method I found only allows me to do five short videos a day. I made nineteen! Once I was over the summit I took a few selfies with the phone, they made this.
On my way down I spotted a couple of cows so I wondered if they would like a chat. Of course they agreed, but with water in one hand and camera in the other I couldn’t find anything to feed them with. I needed Huan to be dietician and camerawoman!
Huan was disappointed when I got home, not because of the cows but because she missed seeing the lizard. Not only did it stay in one place for a while, it also moved to give me an even better view. Can you see it looking at me?
Lots of small detours were taken on the way home, no photos of them but they are in the video. I needed to reach my planned total for the day, and I succeeded.
As is often the case, the ‘girls’ had a pose and Huan sent me the photo.
April 22nd Today was a bit of a dry day for photos even though we went out twice. The morning saw us going for our usual market walk, sans camera and with umbrella, just in case. The rain did try but it never actually went beyond a spit. Our only photo from the morning walk was this, it always looks like a bit of material from a distance. It is in fact an ants’ home.
The market provided us with all we needed for our normal weekend salad. No meat was bought because I found some pizzas in the freezer yesterday. I hasten to add that they were not shop bought but made by Huan and then frozen. After dinner, and after we had enjoyed our pizzas, we set off out for another evening stroll. I took one snap, of a furry caterpillar friend; unfortunately it was out of focus. Huan went crazy, nothing odd there, and took thirty four photos of me and a couple of kittens on leads.
And that was the end of our day.
April 23rd Someone interfered with my sleep patterns last night and I woke up this morning as if I had not had any sleep at all. Huan was busy with her studying so I left her to it and just did a lot of nothing in the office. She had found a lizard on the balcony before I woke up though. Did you know that they moult, especially when they are young and growing?
My afternoon was much the same as the morning, a whole lot of doing not a lot. However, after dinner, Huan agreed to go out with me, I think she decided I needed to get out and exercise. She was probably right. We headed off to the old home of the three legged dog where, just a few metres further on, we had recently spotted this.
“What does it mean?” I hear you ask. Well, with the usual capable help of the Minister of Education and Google I can tell you that the bottom line says “Elderly Leisure and Entertainment Centre”. It does have the odd bench and a sort of chess table.
Someone has also been busy with labels for some of the trees. This one is called the ‘husband and wife banyan tree’. We decided that you should decide for yourselves why this should be so.
These next two are called the ‘twins banyan tree’. From the other side there are no bricks but I couldn’t get a decent view of both trees from there. Anyway, it will also show you that when houses are knocked down sometimes the walls stay as part of nature.
We then carried on along the riverside where both of us wondered why we seem to never have noticed the blossom on many of these trees. We have lived here nearly eight years now and often walk along the river. How did we only notice this today?
From there we headed to the town square to see what was going on for the Sanyuesan festival. My brain was working at its usual slow pace so I didn’t realise until later on that this morning Huan had inadvertently changed the camera settings. These lights should be red.
The broth looked OK though, shame we had already eaten.
It was while taking the moon shots that I realised the camera settings were all wrong. I put it back on iA, intelligent automatic and tried two takes. The first is from right next to the square with light all around; the second is from twenty minutes later, in our much darker car park. Which do you prefer? PS I gather from various news photos that this is the moon and Venus.
April 24th Monday is shopping day and the Minister of Finance decided she would accompany me this week. Did I exceed the budget last week? I left the computer working, trying to upload another video file to be stabilised. When we came home it was stuck in exactly the same spot so I started it again. After dinner, just like yesterday, in her capacity as the Minister of Health Huan forced me out for a walk. Murphy’s law struck again. Yesterday we took umbrellas and the expected rain never came, today we didn’t take them and the unexpected rain did come!
Huan asked me to take a photo of the skyline as we were approaching home. For some reason, the phone did a right hand swerve first!
Within minutes we also managed a fairly decent sunset.
Arriving home, on our walk from the gate to our building, we found a plague of frogs, there were hundreds of them! Well, maybe I exaggerate just a little; we found four. Only having my phone with me I failed to get decent pictures of any of them, but here are two for you. I know, the second one looks more like a Star Wars toy!
Once home, and after finishing my Chinese homework, I had to wait for Madam to finish her Highway Code studies before she would come and check photos for me. In the meantime I made a booboo and ‘refreshed’ the uploading file page on the internet. Ooops, it had been showing 100% for an hour or more and my refreshing it just deleted it. Ah well, start again. Eventually the boss turned up and I could then complete this post. It looks like I will still be doing a lot of solo walking, at least for a while. Huan is now regularly scoring over 90% on her practice tests but Yú isn’t; and they agreed to go together for the real test when they are both ready. I’ll survive, and; I’ll walk faster! (Cue#1 son.) I will behave and I will be careful. That’s also the advice I will give to you this week, behave and be careful! See you next time.
