May 27th Another week starts and we are looking forward to it, at least the
Before we even got through the village Huan was in her element, she had found her first lizard of the week. The magic finger was busy!
This route does have a hilly portion, part of the reason that I chose it for today. It is not that steep a hill and it would be good for me to exercise my bones.
It didn’t take Her Highness long!
Soon we were in the woods, one of my favourite places to be. Despite being not far from town it can be quite quiet making it a pleasure to walk there.
All too soon we reached the end, the fish farm wedding restaurant. I had taken a video of parts of today’s walk, a quiet one with no narration from me, https://youtu.be/3UPJA4Q9WkY
Inside the geese awaited.
Huan decided it was time to get her phone out as well.
What was I doing? Snapping the farm of course.
Meanwhile the geese were busy too.
Both of us were taking videos of the geese, at the same time as it happened. Too much work would have been involved in trying to edit the resulting two videos for synchronicity so I just joined them both together - https://youtu.be/KiqNPF5moOU
I think we’ll finish with the outdoor photos for today, don’t want to spoil you all now do we. There are indoor photos of course, today’s dinner.
Those are the instructions for the worker in the kitchen, me. These are the dishes presented on the dining room table for the Lady of The Manor. One must have rice, then there’s the fried dried fish followed by the bowl of soup from the recipe.
In front of us were two empty bowls that very quickly became full bowls!
Even better is that there was enough soup left over for us to have it tomorrow but with finely sliced and fried belly pork instead. Aren’t we lucky?
May 28th Today was a lazy day, all we had to do was go into town to buy some heart medication and some belly pork for this evening’s dinner.
We both enjoyed last night’s ‘modified dinner’ this evening, something worth trying again in the future. Huan even had spicy seaweed with hers. I am not allowed spicy foods until after my three month check up at least, and I am not a fan of seaweed.
My day should have finished on a high note but after another session of being ‘on hold’ with Aviva (over ¥100.00 down the drain) I was not feeling too pleased. When I eventually got through someone told me that they would call me back later…
May 29th Having got to bed so late last night I slept like a log but still woke up early. When I made my bleary eyed way to the living room I spotted that the river was full again. Not only that, the weather was fine too so a video was called for. Here’s a view after the ‘fish scale weir’.
To cross the river we had to find a way up to the road to somewhere, not easy.
From the bridge we took a photo showing how the new weir looks.
My prime objective today was to make the video and go to town. Huan had other ideas.
A little further on I paused my video to take this shot.
Soon Huan found another lizard for me, and I found a snail for her.
While I was finishing off the video Huan was looking over the dam and weir.
She then pulled a blinder with an excellent close up using her phone. I was suitably impressed.
We were early enough to walk into town, to the two ISPs we needed to visit. The first was Huan’s phone and our house phone. All I wanted to know was whether or not we had international access, in and out, and how much it costs. You would think that would be easy to answer but we spent ages in there. Second was my phone’s ISP, I had been cut off again last night, I could call but people could not call me. That was too busy so we just went home, had our well earned lunch and an even more earned nap.
Dinner was on me again today, simple stove top rice pudding. Usually we have plums in it, we made a mistake and bought the wrong ones so they were not used. Instead we used raisins and bananas. I used no sugar, not needed, no salt because the butter is salted, no vanilla or cinnamon because we didn’t have any and a little nutmeg because we did have some. If you are going to use this recipe, maybe increase the rice to one and a half or two cups and adjust everything else accordingly. Huan thought it was enough, but I gave her more than I gave myself!
After dinner, and when the time was right in the
May 30th These admin days are definitely mounting up! Today it was a visit to the bank and a visit to the ISP that I had planned, Huan added to it with a visit to the police station. She found her first lizard of the day on the way there.
In the station, her new ID card was not ready;
And then on the way to the bank we were on a roll, lizards and bugs.
When we finished, Huan found another subject right outside the bank.
From the bank we headed for the bap market to buy the weekend’s salad makings. Why didn’t we wait until tomorrow? Well, we hope to be watching activities related to the annual Dragon Festival instead, either along the riverbank or on Little Island. On the way, a bird.
Then it was my turn to spot a lizard, one that Huan missed, in a spot where we have rarely seen one before. More photos were taken, by both of us.
Our admin had taken longer than expected in both the police station and the bank so had lunch out, from the buffet style place. No rice for me, lunchtime.
Finally, a view over the river from our driveway.
At home, once the photos were uploaded, I could not keep my eyes open and had to take a nap. Huan didn’t she was fine. In fact she was more worried about me being so tired. I guess the body takes a while to recover from the effects of the radiotherapy treatment. All that was left for me was financial admin, bringing my excel files up to date with my bank passbook. Another bit of, hopefully good, news, Aviva will contact me within six days, or so they say.
May 31st OK, let’s go and see if we can find out what is happening for the Dragon Boat Festival today. Publicised information refers to three days, today and the 1st and 2nd June. Down at the market nothing seemed different at all.
Huan wanted a photo of sesame seeds being turned into paste, a bit like peanut butter.
The only sign of dragon boats was this figurehead. However, it was on the front of a sit-down boat for tourists and not a sleek and powerful canoe like vessel. Not only that, but it was still in preparation and would not be in use today.
I tried for bird photos, not very successfully, but I thought I should share them anyway. Why? Because if you look carefully at the second picture you will see a fish in the bird’s claws!
Huan found a lizard. Neither of us spotted the ant until we got home. Was he lunch?
On Little Island it was time for me to ‘have a go’. The last time I rowed a dragon boat was in 1972 or 1973 when, due to rather copious amounts of alcohol I had consumed I managed to row myself right out of the boat. It was fun though! This time I just got a wet bum because I did not check the seat before sitting down.
Huan wanted to get in on the action so chose to pose alongside some 粽子, zòngzi – “rice dish made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo leaves”. Certain occasions in the Chinese calendar require粽子 to be eaten, today was one of them. Sometimes I join Huan in having some, not always though as I am not really a fan.
On the last stretch Huan found what she said was one of my little yellow friends.
There was a possibility of something happening on the fish scale weir later on so we headed up the roof after dinner to have a look-see. It didn’t seem worth the effort of getting dressed up and heading out again so we were lazy instead.
While we were there I decided to take a panorama. Maybe next time I will go to a different part of the roof to get the fish scale weir in too!
June 1st Today is not only the second day of the three day Dragon Boat Festival but it is also International Children’s Day. I know, it is not exactly international and there are many other children’s days but according to Wikipedia it is true, at least for forty one countries. Not having any young children our plan was to go and see the dragon boat races. Huan still had her eyes out for other things, such as these two.
When we reached the river we discovered that actually seeing anything was going to be a little difficult. Also there was no way to cross to the other side without a very long walk.
Some people had the right idea!
We did eventually see enough to make a video. For me it was a little disappointing, I have raced in a dragon boat before and we put a lot more effort, and fun into it. Huan hadn’t seen a race before so she enjoyed it, you can see it here - https://youtu.be/32WX6uysKiw
Luck was with us today though, an opportunity for another unplanned video turned up. It was a lion dance, which was not bad at all. Huan filmed it on her phone, her vantage point was much better than mine. You can find that here - https://youtu.be/2tKtTYO-WNE
That was it for our daytime, back home we went for our daily nap, lunch and dinner. In the evening we were out again to see ‘iron fireworks’. The sun was setting…
On the way we found a new little bar, it may well be worth a visit because we only have to buy two bottles of beer. Some places insist you buy six, too many for a gentleman of my advanced years, especially accompanied by a wife who does not imbibe.
Here I am asking the barmaid if she knows anything about her wall, in particular the most famous British group in the world. I guess I should have added the English speaking world.
Down at the river spectator space was still at a premium but it was a little easier than this morning. The video is here - https://youtu.be/7tQEL7_Onj4
Excitement over we debated whether or not we should go on a tourist dragon boat. With a cost of ¥68.00 each and not a great deal to see, plus the fact that even I can be a tight git at times, the decision was no. In the daytime, for a bit longer than 30 minutes, maybe.
Just as well that we didn’t go as the people already on board were still there waiting to depart nearly an hour later. On our return journey we had been met with yet another pleasant surprise. Added the advertised ‘iron fireworks’, there was also a ‘real’ firework display. It went on for a long time, well over ten minutes. Our vantage point was not all it could be; the trees were blocking our view a lot. You can see a short video here - https://youtu.be/j3338C3i-u4
Going back over Little Island we found that we had missed the musical fountain show. The times for that clashed with the times for the other river based events. Ah well, next time…
June 2nd After going to bed very late last night, due to video editing and uploading, it was very nice to not have to do anything strenuous today. Well, I did have to carry the shopping I suppose but I don’t mind that. No photos for today, we’ll see you next week.
P.S. No more updates for either pension yet!
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