Visa Wait And A Lot Of Rain.

October 22^nd There were no complaints about disturbed sleep this morning, from either of us! I guess we were both so tired that nothing could have woken us. Despite buying milk, fruit and sandwich meats in Haikou yesterday we still need the usual weekly shop so our rest was short lived. Back home my first job was to wash and dry a lot of the vegetables. They had been soaking wet when we bought them which would not have been good for storage.

After lunch I went for an early nap, Huan joined me after a while. When we awoke it was cooking for Huan and bringing last week’s Blog post up to date and then posting it. Yes, I had done nothing last night except my Chinese lessons. All done now though so I hope my enormous readership will not be too angry with me.

“Shall we have an after dinner walk?” asked the commander. “Not bloody likely!” replied the peon, “I just want to relax today and maybe sleep some more!”

October 23^rd We still needed a restful day today so a saunter around the town and river was planned. My first job was to find the first photo of the week, the one that will act as the Blog post thumbnail. We weren’t helped by the fact that we left the camera at home because the skies were threatening rain. Despite us feeling the odd spot, it never came.

Our relaxed walk also had an ulterior motive, buy a couple of sausages. That meant we had to walk past the spot where we sometimes spot lizards, none today though.

The last one for the morning is just a car, not even a special car, just a BYD. I was curious about its paint job (or wrap) though so I did a bit of Googling. It turns out that this is supposed to be Sherlock, a car from Global Unlimited Task Squad, which is a bit like the old ‘International Rescue’ from UK TV - https://ultra.fandom.com/wiki/GUTS_(Global_Unlimited_Task_Squad)

Huan was the chef today but for a change she wasn’t cooking fish. In fact she wasn’t even cooking Chinese. Because we had bought burger buns she was cooking burgers.

Home made beef burgers beat shop bought ones every single time, yummy!

October 24^th Laziness was still the prime mover this morning but we did manage to get out for another around the town walk. It didn’t take Huan long and she found this little fellow just over the other side of Little Island.

Passing by the ethnic Li/Miao shop on the upper street Huan spotted a class in progress and was gone before I could say a word.

I found a fake hut to go and stand in, Huan’s first photo was too distant and not so good.

She took many more photos of course so I made a little gif again.

I tried a few birds today; this was probably the best one although I don’t like it at all. For me it is not clear, not in focus correctly. Huan thinks there is nothing wrong with it so on the off chance that you have bad eyes too I have put it in here.

This one is for the engineers amongst you and the people who want to know what is happening in the river. This of course is the sluice gate construction site. I have no idea what will happen next, what machinery will be placed into these odd slots.

We wandered through the town square on the final stretch home just to see if there was anything happening. There was a jobs fair but they wouldn’t find a job for me or for Huan, something to do with being old and decrepit! I decided to just take a couple of photographs of the important bits of the square and Huan made me include the moon.

It was a beautiful sunny day today, Huan had her hat on, I didn’t. I planned the route to avoid the sun on my head most of the time.

Almost home and we came across someone who wasn’t at all worried by the sun.

Huan stopped off to pick up some pinduoduo stuff while I went upstairs to start on our lunch. She seemed to take ages to join me, it appeared that what she had ordered, sweet potatoes, was not good enough and she had to send them back. Also she found a skink, she tried…

As usual we had to take naps! I was duty chef today, only once this week, so I cooked a simple UK dish. We had fried pork, potatoes and carrots, and snow peas. The pork had been beaten flat and then marinated overnight in soy sauce wit cumin powder. It tasted fine, no additional sauces or mustard were required. No photos were taken though.

PS for today, Huan had a phone call from the visa office asking that we take our Wuzhishan title deeds book with us when we visit to collect my visa. Sounds like possible good news.

October 25^th Neither of us had problems waking up this morning, or even getting out of bed. However, we still left the house too late for any long walks so we stuck to the nearby countryside. First we both rather liked this electric MG roadster. When you are old, you can still dream!

Once again we had a beautiful day for it, even a slight bit of a ‘chill’ in the air. Well, you would probably not think so but we could feel it.

Hmmm, here’s a little lane that we have never been down before, it looks shady too.

The only life we found was chickens and dogs that we couldn’t get near and this dragonfly.

That’s not to say I couldn’t find any other subjects mind you, I loved the scenery.

Back on the main road towards Maodao we found another little turn off so we took that one too.

And on this road we found life, a farmer scoring his rubber trees and a little lizard.

Remember our des res covered in flowers, well; here is another view of it.

Soon we were on the other side of the little hill behind the filling station and on our way back home which meant that we had to shoot a little panorama for you.

Mere yards further we found these two who probably wondered what the strange creature was making even stranger noises in their general direction.

Huan managed to find yet another little lizard; I wish she would find some bigger ones!

That was the end of our photography exercise for the day, all that was left was to go home, eat dumplings and then have a nap. Huan was the chef today but I did get down to some cooking after dinner. For the weekend we are not having our usual meat and salad, instead we will be having this, Crustless Quiche.

This is what it looked like when it was finished. Ignore the little brown bits, they were my fault. As an experiment I thought I would use the ‘flour wrap’ that is used for Chinese pancakes 煎饼. This was to be a prelude to making a lasagna in a similar manner. It didn’t work; the 煎饼 sheets are so thin that they scorched where they stuck out of the pan. It is an appearance thing though and not a taste thing. We will let you know tomorrow how it tasted.

October 26^th For some reason we were both late this morning, even Huan slept until after eight o’clock. That meant we were late getting out for our usual Saturday market(s) walk and it ended being only the riverside one. On the way I tried for some birds on top of a road sign.

Huan then took one of me having a chat with two young boys. They look very worried although you can’t see that. I think they were struggling to understand my Chinese.

With it being such a short walk I was trying to find anything to show you!

Just at the other side of this little park I spotted a couple of rather tall chaps with cameras. I called out to them that they must be foreigners because they were carrying cameras! They turned out to be two German students from the University of Bielefeld so we had a little chat about Germany. They are only here for two nights but they will be back for possible two weeks. We hope to catch up with them then and show them some of our walking places.

Another reason for cutting the walk short today was the weather forecast, rain on the way. We are being threatened again, from a distance, by another typhoon, “Trami”. Mind you, that’s mostly what we get here, threats.

Our only purchase in the market today was for Huan, persimmons. Before we came here I had only read about them in various novels. I have tried them; they are not to my taste. Cheap as chips though, they cost only ¥7.00 for five.

Finally for today, here’s a queue. What are they waiting for? They are waiting for free vegetarian food provided by Buddhist monks. For the last couple of weeks there seems to have been some sort of service before the food is served.

And now really finally for today, we told you that we would let you know how the crustless quiche was. Apart from the use of the 煎饼, which we will not try again, it was very nice indeed. It was all I could do to leave some for tomorrow!

October 27^th Rain stopped play. Binge watched Hawaii Five-0 season 10 instead.

October 28^th Even more rain stopped play once more today. You might not be able to see the rain in the photos but I can assure you that it was bucketing down, just like yesterday. In fact it was even seeping through the apartment walls again.

While I was binge watching after lunch Huan was making baps, buns, cobs, bread rolls or whatever else you call them in your vernacular in your particular part of the world.

And after that? Why, she went back to her phone of course. I did make a gif of her playing goldfish but she banned me from using it!

And so another week ends, bit of a damp squib really. Never mind, we’ll have a change of scenery tomorrow, if not a change of weather. See you next week!