An Admin Week.

August 1st Huan had another lesson booked for this afternoon so a town and river walk was planned, nothing too strenuous. Early on in the walk we spotted a little bird that neither of us thought would come out well in a photo. We were wrong, it’s not perfect, but it’s OK.

While I was wandering around looking for the lizard that hangs around this place, Huan thought a photo of me and the elephants would be nice.

Having been unsuccessful at finding any lizards, and also unsuccessful in buying any sausages, we continued our walk. Back along the river we went where I spotted two of our friends inside the closed door tea shop. The owner spotted us and let the pooches out. After a quick hello they both decided to go and lie in the sun.

Right next door, making the previous brown dog jealous was another friend. When we first met this one all he wanted to do was bite and run away. Now when he knows I’m around he comes out for a stroke and usually a belly rub too.

Next up we had Huan taking hundreds of photos of me again!

I was only doing what I had been told to do; Huan had spotted a lizard and had directed me to take photos of it. Naturally I could not refuse.

Nearing home we thought you should see what is going on around town at the moment. Almost every road has been dug up, electricity cables are being routed underground, new water mains are being added and storm and sewage drainage is being updated too.

If you look closely there is still access for us, on both sides of the road. All we have to do is be wary of motor bikes and mopeds using the pavements. I have to say though that the work moves on very quickly, most roads aren’t closed for too long. Some roads are will take longer though and the whole project is supposed to be finished before next Chinese New Year. I’m pretty sure that they will succeed too.

We headed down the RHS, passing in front of the school, not the way we usually go. We prefer to walk by the riverside but sometimes a change is good. In this case we found some school graffiti. I was suitably impressed! Mind you, I was absolutely hopeless at art and still am.

My turn to spot a lizard came next, it was peeping out over a tree trunk.

At home and after lunch, I sent Huan off for a sleep while I prepared today’s dinner again. Rain stopped play, or driving lessons, this afternoon so the rest of our day was quiet.

Our dinner didn’t quite turn out as I had planned. Here’s the recipe. I used sliced cheese and sliced Italian Coppa ham. The taste was good, the texture not so much.

Now after dinner, I had another look at the video. My mistake was putting too much mixture in the frying pan at one time. Lesson learned for next time, although I’m not so sure that Huan would like there to be a next time for this dish.

August 2^nd Having been rained off yesterday, Huan’s lesson had been rescheduled for half past seven this morning, another ‘alarming’ day. As usual, with only an hour to waste, my walk had to be very local to the training ground. First I went to check on the weir, there was no way I could have walked across it today even if I had been wearing my boots.

The village was very quiet this morning, all I could hear was a gentle dawn chorus, mostly insects and small birds. Being early also makes for a cooler walk.

The fitness app went crazy again today, it was working well until I stopped at the final rest place when it said, I think, that I had walked about 3.2 kilometres. Between then and stopping at the car, just a few hundred metres away, it jumped up to 7 kilometres. That is the first time the error has occurred since I switched off auto-pause, maybe it’s a temporary glitch.

Back in town, early, we decided to get the rest of the day’s walking done before lunch time. It did rain and we did get wet but then again it carried on raining both after lunch and after dinner. Walking in the rain can be quite pleasant here.

During our walk we both needed to use the public conveniences, (the loo), and on my side of the building I found a beastie on the wall. It was very low down and I could not focus on it so well but I think you can tell what it is.

The only other photo we have for today is a sign that we saw while sheltering from a particularly strong burst of rain. We were under the entrance of a night club when I spotted these rules and I got to wondering if they have similar rules outside UK nightclubs.

August 3^rd Rain stopped play, all of the day, and all of the night, but that’s OK, because I only want to be with Huan, all of the day, and all of the night! Hands up if you have any idea what I am rambling on about. Our morning was spent watching TV and PC.

After lunch it was time for a visit to the hospital to top up part of my prescription. One box of pills was almost completed while others are nowhere near the end yet. We have no idea what went wrong on our last visit, slowly we will sort it all out. Here I am in the cashier’s queue, not a busy place today, we were lucky. I chose the photo with four fingers showing and not just two!

Following our hospital visit we had a little walk around town, bought some baps from Baijiahui and then visited the snack shop. It is called Yummy Snack but it is not snacks as we would have in the UK, no sandwiches or Cornish pasties here. They do have an ‘Iceland’ though, it is three freezers near the window where our ice cream was ¥1 cheaper, and we bought five tubs. PS I doubt if anyone here has any idea what Iceland is in the UK.

Dinner was courtesy of Chef Bob, noodle soup with a tin of fish with black beans, no photos.

August 4^th Today’s plan included one of those alarming early calls from my phone. As it happened, the alarm wasn’t necessary because ‘er indoors had woken up earlier and was in the kitchen cooking noodles by six. What with her moving around and the sound of the rain outside there was no way I could snooze until alarm time.

We were up early because today was to be an admin day, but an admin in Sanya day. Donald needed his brakes sorting out before China’s equivalent to the M.O.T. test this month, I needed to visit the bank to make sure my incoming pension payments are up to date, change some pounds and give Huan money for her next test and a few more lessons. The Boss also had admin to do, our Sanya tenant wanted to renew for another six months.

So, we dropped Donald off for his service and headed off in the direction Huan thought the mechanic had told her the tram terminus was. I thought we were walking 90⁰ in the wrong direction. I was right so eventually we got on a bus, can you tell how grumpy I was?

The bank admin was successful, not straight forward but everything was fine. Time was on our side so we could walk to our apartment to meet the tenant at lunch time. On the way we passed a car with no words, just a nice opera lady and some eyelashes.

We spent ages trying to find lunchtime snacks such as dumplings or fried bread sticks, but eventually we had to settle for burgers. Three mascots were on hand to help, 堡堡 bǎo bǎo, 乐乐lè lè and 派派pài pài. Translations are meaningless I’m afraid.

Our lunch was what we needed to fill an empty space, for Huan just a chicken burger and for me not a BLT but a BLC (bacon, lettuce and chicken).

I dropped Huan off in the apartment with the tenant and sneaked outside for a coffee. Huan caught me having a sneaky ciggy too. At least she didn’t beat me! Huan’s business done we took a walk past the marina heading for the tram terminus (town end).

This end of the tramlines was no problem for me at all; I knew exactly where to walk to. Arriving there, all control I had was lost and handed over to the attendant and Huan. Within minutes we were sat on the tram with me having no idea where we were going. Do I look like a grumpy old man, again?

The seat in front of me was missing; at least I thought it was. A closer look showed what looked like a seat belt hanging underneath the backrest and then I found some instructions on the carriage wall. Do they have these in the UK?

The tram terminus turned out to be Sanya’s main railway station which, checking on the station map, turned out to be about a kilometre and a half from the car service station, in the direction that I thought the mechanic had pointed. Me gloat?

En-route we found what looks like a possible future food truck area.

Passing this sign we pondered as to whether or not they would accept me as a member.

Almost at our destination we came across the railway fly-over, underneath which has been landscaped quite well. Not many people pass under here, certainly no pedestrians and not that many cars either. Still, we enjoyed it.

For our penultimate Sanya photo, we had to climb up the stairs at the side of the flyover so that we could have a look at the railway line. There were no trains unfortunately, but there was a nice view along the tracks. One day Huan will take me on a trip all around the island on the train, she promised me!

Finally, another car with something that we don’t understand, maybe you can explain? 我的球wǒ de qiú, my ball - 没有一个是巧合méiyǒu yīgè shì qiǎohé, none is a coincidence.

Back in Wuzhishan, without falling asleep at the wheel, (Huan was on tenterhooks all the way for some strange reason), it was time to go out for dinner. It was the usual buffet food place where we were the only customers, due to the work on the pavement outside I think.

Would you believe we found yet another car door on the way home, this was a Hyundai, although that doesn’t really mean anything. It says 下辈子不一定还能Xiàbèizi bù yīdìng hái néng - 遇见你yùjiàn nǐ - 所以我很珍惜不敢大意suǒyǐ wǒ hěn zhēnxī bù gǎn dàyi. If you translate it line by line it doesn’t work very well but put it together and you get “I may not be able to meet you in the next life, So I cherish it very much and dare not be careless” which almost makes some kind of sense.

August 5th Market day today and neither of us wanted a marathon walk so we stuck to just that, the market. The sky was predicting rain so “we” decided to leave the camera at home and make do with just our phones. Huan was first; she thought it odd that this chicken was submissively laid on the scales waiting to be sold.

As for me, I saw nothing in the market at all. However, I did spot yet another car with something on it. Huan was asking me if I knew what it meant. My answer was that I knew of Mariokart, that it was a computer game. I also added that I was a B.O.F. who had never played the game or any other games really, with the exception of built in Microsoft games.

And that was the end of our Saturday. We both needed the proverbial afternoon nap and after that we couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere or do anything. Sometimes, just being retired feels good. Mind you, at other times I still wish I could work and that I had planned my pension better!

August 6^th The Queen was in her counting house, counting out her money! Well, not exactly, Huan had bank admin to do so as we left our apartment complex she set off clockwise towards the bank and I headed off anticlockwise. The plan was that we would meet somewhere on the way and then return home.

I thought this photo might interest you. When someone mentions “The Party” you probably imagine loads of men in identical suits all doing exactly the same and keeping the people in line. This building is the local party community service centre. It’s a very long winded name but basically if you have any problems you can visit there. It also has a 24hr free library, with ice cream and coffee, a climbing wall for children, and other leisure and relaxation facilities.

Passing by the Bob-Eating fishpond I stopped to say hello. Is it only my imagination or does it look like the fish actually knows who, or what, it is looking at?

This next photo is not really good enough to include here but as it’s a first then I have to. It is the first time I have seen a lizard ‘in’ and not ‘on’ a tree. It also looks more like a skink than a tree lizard. Unfortunately I only had enough time for one quick shot.

By the time I had almost finished my circumference of the town and reached the bank, the Minister of Finance was still in the queue. So much for meeting each other on the way round. We did continue home together though and would you believe it, (I’m sure you probably would), Huan found another lizard, posed much better and for longer allowing a few photos.

Many of you, dear readers, may also be long in the tooth, as I am. This question is for you and not for the younger set. Why do old people sleep so much in the afternoons? It certainly can’t be because we eat too much at lunch time and neither can it be that we exercise too much before lunch. I guess it is just an age thing.

Most weekends, as you know, are salad days for us, except sometimes in the cooler months when we often have stews instead. Salads are not something we bother taking photos of normally but as I took some photos to show the belly pork sales woman you get to see this week’s too. We do have the salad bowl on the table so we both top up our salads from there.

After dinner I left Huan at home and set off to add a few kilometres to this month’s total, it was looking a bit bleak. Almost immediately I found what I thought was a rather large mosquito so a photo was needed. Of course I didn’t have the camera with me so the phone had to suffice. At home it became obvious that there was no long sucker needle at the front so it wasn’t a mosquito after all. I think, according to Google, it may have been a crane fly.

Further on I came across two cute little signs that I thought probably had to do with ‘keeping off the grass’. Huan and Google showed me that I was right. The first one was 小草微微笑, 请你绕一绕 – (Xiǎo cǎo wéiwéi xiào qǐng nǐ rào yī rào) – Grass smiles slightly, please go around. The second one was 小草正睡觉, 请你勿打扰 – (Xiǎo cǎo zhèng shuìjiào qǐng nǐ wù dǎrǎo) – Grass is sleeping, please do not disturb.

Let’s finish the weekend with another bit of Chinese that is translated well enough but doesn’t make a great deal of sense. 海南 第一楼 – (Hǎinán dì yī lóu) – Hainan First Floor). Maybe one of my Hainan readers can explain it.

August 7^th Apart from shopping today was also an admin day, but for me and Donald and not for Huan. Of course I do need Huan when I have admin days. Our first stop after shopping was the traffic police office to check if I needed anything from them before going for my annual ‘medical’. After checking their computer they decided I didn’t need any extra paperwork and sent us on our way, to the Chinese Medicine Hospital. Now with computers and the search possibilities of databases it should be easy to find me but it never is. Passport number, licence number, telephone number, car number, Chinese name, one of them should work, surely. The doctor did manage to find me, eventually, and then after a few questions gave me a clean ‘bill of health’ to take back to the police station. Back there, more time was spent on the police computer before I was given a paper telling me when to come back next year. I never had one of those before. The young policeman also wondered why my visa was so short and reminded me that I had to get it renewed again in November.

Donald’s turn was next; he needed a clean bill of health too. His last test was two years ago so we thought that maybe we would need to visit the workshop again this year for another one. In years gone by that would certainly have been the case but as the quality of cars has improved the rules have been changing too. Donald now has a green sticker taking him up to 2025, one less thing to worry about.

So, a mostly admin week comes to an end, hopefully this week Huan will have some more driving lessons and I will get some more walking in. Stay safe all, see you next time!