Back To Being Lazy!

November 25^th It’s good to be home again with nothing to worry about for a few days. Sleeping Beauty was away with the fairies so I was the first one out of bed this morning. I had another good feeling looking out at our view from the second bathroom, here it is, uncropped!

Having only returned yesterday, today became our weekly shopping day for this week. Nothing notable to record other than an Aston Martin Rapide S. The write up is scathing for the rear seat space and comfort but, there are only two of us! Mind you, apart from us not being that rich, they stopped making them five years ago.

November 26^th Checking the weather forecast the afternoon seemed like the best time to go walkies so we stayed put in the morning. Huan did a little ironing and I cooked tonight’s dinner, chicken curry. It was a snap choice because I had taken two chicken breasts out of the freezer yesterday, frozen together. The planned menu will be used tomorrow. As it is I used the chicken, some onion and garlic, a sweet potato and half a broccoli. It worked.

After lunch, which consisted of egg and salad sandwiches, we spent quite a bit of time on my computer with QQ and Alipay. My head hurt then so it was nap time!

When we woke up we skipped coffee and took that planned walk. Almost immediately we found some egrets again, possibly the same family but only three this time.

Huan also found a kingfisher for me.

And then it was time to look over the fish scale weir, mostly fixed again now.

Huan then tried pointing out a dragonfly for me but no matter how hard I strained my eyes I just could not see it. I walked on while she tried with her phone. Sometimes she remembers the zoom, and sometimes she forgets. Today was the latter but it’s still not too bad.

Meanwhile I was fixated on scenery.

Another flying creature was spotted, as always on the limit of our eyes and the camera.

And wherever would be without our wonderful lizard spotter. Yes, she did it again!

As for me? Well, more scenery of course.

Then it was time for me to correct someone and tell them that their little dog was not English, but that he was in fact Welsh, just like 50% of me!

Almost home and just time for one more view, hope you like it.

At home it was once again time for me to pull my hair out and go berserk. For some reason Chrome had decided not to follow its instructions and “continue where you left off” but to do something it had never done before. Sometimes it will tell me that it didn’t shut down properly and would I like to restore the pages. That usually works just fine. Today it came up with a history box, from my laptop, and nothing else. I eventually found my PC in that box but then I had to click on every single link, open in a new tab until they were done. I then had to rebuild my Chrome groups and try to remember if I had missed anything. Why it did this I have no idea. In fact, I will now try turning it off for a minute or two and then back on and see if it does what it’s told this time! Luckily it worked fine, fingers crossed every time I shut down now!

November 27^th My plan was the same as yesterday’s, especially as the temperature was on its way down again and the wind was coming from the north east. This was the recipe I had planned for yesterday, deferred for one day, and the ingredients, apart from dill. In fact I very finely chopped the dark green parts off the half a broccoli I had left over from yesterday and put them in instead. The cream would be added in the evening.

There are no pictures of the dish in the evening but we both think it turned out very well indeed. If I had to find fault it would be that I didn’t buy enough mushrooms. Huan had hers with mixed colours of rice with some broad beans mixed in; I had just plain white rice. I did rather envy her broad beans though so I added some dried raisins to mine, as you would with a curry. It worked.

Anyway, let’s go back in time to after lunch when Huan dragged me off to the hospital to see if we the pharmacy there had my daily hormone tablets. They did so it was then off to see Dr. Shen for a prescription. The rules here are one per month too but at least we don’t have to return to Haikou just for a bottle of pills now.

A short walk through town was all we had time for after and we varied our route with a few back streets. This one had some bamboo scaffolding.

Our main road can still look nice in the daytime, without the little lights on the trees.

Siesta time must apply to animals as well as people. We came back through the outdoor market near our part of town, the shops were closed and the pets were ‘out’!

Three pictures from two mopeds and one car next. Forgive the first one but as we had just observed a chess player having a whiz at the side of the road we felt that this one should be included. I have no idea of the meanings of the other two.

And that was it for the day. We did take a lot more photos but they were of people’s windows to give us an idea of how we are going to do ours. You may remember that our maintenance company had recently warned people about their windows getting too old. Well ours definitely are and Huan has been saving her pennies just for this. I think she may be in for a shock when we actually get estimates but we’ll see. Maybe I will be the one pleasantly surprised.

November 28^th After sending another email to my pension provider the day before yesterday I actually received a reply last night. That necessitated a trip to the bank this morning. Success and joy intermingled although with a little sadness. It appears that my cries have been heeded and that things have been sorted out. My payments for the new pension, frozen since February, have begun and I think they are all correct. However, my one off lump sum has not been received. That was supposed to have also been sent at the end of October. Another email sent.

So what did we see on our way to and from the bank? The little baby again.

En route to the bank we looked for our skink, he was absent, but Huan found someone else.

Now if we were looking in the mirror, which one would be me and which one would be the director. We do see some strange things on the roofs of cars.

Oh what a tangled web we weave!

Just look at this! I did, for quite a long time. Whoever owned it never came back so we couldn’t ask questions, I can tell you that it is German, Rewaco in fact.

Here I am trying to sell it to some of the people who thought it was mine!

While I was doing that I spotted another trike behind them. It wasn’t bad either but the green definitely has it for me. Of course I am not allowed to drive it!

We walked back via the middle walkway along the river, hoping to see some birds sitting on the irrigation heads again. We failed I’m afraid.

Here’s a sad picture with a sad story. The cleaning lady, who also takes of recycling plastics and cardboard, opened a box and this little puppy ran out. It has obviously been mistreated and is very wary of us humans. The strange part is that nobody seems to have any idea whose dog it was. I’m wary of trying to capture it and take it to the vets, they may just decide to put it to sleep. We’ll keep an eye on it for a while and see what happens.

Back home it was time to bring my bank records up to date, seems OK, and then to sort out the photos and stuff before getting myself once more into the kitchen. Today’s recipe is one that you have seen before, kare kare. Don’t be frightened by the two pages, it is actually very easy.

And here are our two dishes. I need to learn how to modify this recipe better, this was too thin for my tastes. Huan was pleased enough with it.

November 29^th It’s market day again, funny how it comes around every seven days. On the way we found another car decoration for you, no explanations needed for this one!

Work is still in progress on our side of the main road so the market is all on the other side.

By the time we managed to join the throng I had already helped a young couple and an old lady. The young couple were trying to get out of the stairwell and onto the road and people were not letting them through. With my body and some use of my long arms I got them out. Mere metres away an old lady was facing difficulties too so I did much of the same. While doing all this I overheard someone saying that the ‘foreigner is helping the Chinese’. I tried to tell them that the foreigner didn’t see Chinese people, just people that needed help. I’m fairly sure that the sentiment was way over their heads!

Progressing through the market was a slow and difficult process but we did still look out for snaps for you. For this one the market trader was having a good old argument with someone trying to take a photo of his fish with her phone. He didn’t seem to notice me. I suspect his worries were that this is a sturgeon, (correct me if I am wrong), and they are under threat in China due to habitat loss and overfishing.

Had the aliens arrived? Was this some kind of new scientific apparatus? I found the answer on Amazon after doing an image search. “Smokeless Ear Moxibustion Tool Head Moxa Instrument Mugwort Moxa Roll Tool Wormwood”.

The piggy seller had found a place down at this end of the market too. The ones in the steel cage are for sale; the ones in wicker baskets have already been sold.

We tried for some birds, not very successfully.

We may have failed with the birds, and the market may have been way too crowded, but the final part of our walk was, how shall I say it, just right!

Huan suggested that we go out for dinner tonight; well she suggested it yesterday in fact. I agreed but told her that my wallet was empty! “No problems” she said, “you still have money in the Taobao account which is on my phone!” Her choice was the new BBQ restaurant in the Baijiahui building. Unfortunately it was too full and also had many customers waiting.

So we went to a place very near Baijiahui, the Lanzhou Beef Noodles restaurant where we didn’t order beef. This is a Muslim restaurant and one of our favourite dishes in these restaurants, which we often eat in Haikou, is 大盘鸡, Dàpán jī otherwise known as Big Plate Chicken. We ordered a couple of cold dishes to wait.

In Haikou, our ‘plate’ is always a rather large serving dish. Here our plate was a plate. However, despite what you can see and what you may think I did make the mistake of not taking the snaps of the dishes together. This dish was probably four or five time the size of the two above.

We found that there was no way we could finish everything, especially as they brought a big plate of free broad noodles too. Cue the take-away tubs, one for the noodles, some chicken and veg for Huan’s breakfast and one for the potatoes which we can use with fish on Monday. As you more than likely guess, we waddled home bloated!

November 30^th Well we messed things up today! The sky looked terrible in the morning and the mountains were covered in clouds so we stayed home and relaxed. After lunch we took the plunge and went walking downriver to start with. Huan was on form!

Across the river work was being carried out. Maybe we will once again be able to walk down that side again; it’s been a few years.

I found this one, a long way from where we were standing.

Sometimes the views make everything so worthwhile. For this one I tried to make sure that there were no buildings in shot. There is a highway in the distance but I think we can allow that.

This is how we crossed the river to go back into town the other side. Shoes had to be removed and baby steps had to be taken. Underfoot was especially slippery. Huan did try for photos but I managed to rein her in, temporarily at least.

I then had to move the farmer’s cow gate bars so that we could reach the path during which time Huan’s phone became busy again. The second photo is me showing the lady the way!

Note that I didn’t try to snap Huan at all, just made sure that she got onto the path. When it was my turn however, the shutterbug went berserk. Many have been conjoined in collages and many have been removed to the bin. At the end, after ‘leaving things as we had found them’ I gave a loud fanfare, “tadaaaa”!

This chicken almost let me get close enough, not quite though.

This dog on the other hand did come closer and it appeared that his chicken buddies may have wanted feeding because they came closer too.

The next family didn’t want to talk to us and in the second picture baby us shouting, “Mam, wait for me!” The last baby, not in the photo ran the other way.

We had completely misread the weather and we got rained on more than once during our little meander through the countryside. There were gaps though when we were able to snap some more scenery for you.

More birds too, but a long way from us again.

I then had two chances at a rainbow, one slightly better than the other.

It kept disappearing behind the clouds! Behind some other clouds a brief glimpse of blue sky was seen. “Where have you been all day?” was our plaintive cry.

Back home it was cup of tea time first and then a shower for Huan and a spell in the kitchen for me. No photos, you probably don’t need to see them to know what I am talking about. We had sausage, bacon, eggs, beans and mash. The mash included onion and garlic and in my case some parmesan cheese too. It was a tasty and lovely change, enjoyed by both.

December 1^st What is happening with our tropical island weather? Today we were back to rain, just like English weather in fact. Still, all we had to do was go shopping. That led to our first problem, getting out of the car park. Here’s the boss on the phone.

There are no photos of problem number two, or number three in fact. Number two was the sheer number of snowbirds in Baijiahui this morning. I like shopping but I am not a big fan of elbows! Problem number three was Huan trying to close the rear door of Donald on my head, ouch! We had lunch and then had a look downstairs at yet another apartment with new windows. Soon we will be ordering ours I suppose. As usual, naps were taken.

This week I am the chef for four days, Huan will cook fish on Friday. Today was a sausage and potato casserole, one that the whole family can eat. We added garlic, of course, and a carrot. The potatoes came from our doggy bag from Saturday. Verdict? Best one yet!

Stay tuned for more cooking by Bob and hopefully more walking and less sitting indoors hiding from the rain. After November life will be slower, or should we say more relaxed, but there will also be a little spark missing. Thank you for visiting Christopher and Samantha, we really enjoyed having you here. Love to all! xx