January 6th Well hello there, and how are you this fine morning, (or afternoon, evening or night, whenever you should happen to be reading this missive.) We are fine at this end, still sticking to our walk in the afternoon unless there’s a reason not to. As I was getting dressed for this afternoon’s walk, preparing to put on my shorts and sandals, I heard the whistling of the wind. A change was immediately implemented, corduroy trousers, long sleeved shirt, shoes and socks, but I could not find my northern flat cap. I wonder if one of my children accidentally packed it when they left. Anyway, the walk was to be quite a short one, we are both feeling a little down, some weird bug going around. The route was to be bap market, river and then Baijiahui.
Huan’s week started off well!
We don’t have many photos today so here’s a bit of flora for you. It’s a very interesting little flower, just look closely at each individual one and you’ll see what I mean.
Did you know that when you see eagles soaring high above you they almost always have a human pilot? Here is one just before take off.
A short part of our walk was by the riverside, quiet today.
Of course we did find a bird which, as usual, was right on the limit of my lens. Wherever we walk, whichever of the three choices we make, the pesky birds are always ‘just out of reach’.
That was it for our short day.
January 7th Huan got busy making dumplings in the morning whilst I made sure I did my Chinese lessons. Before going out we thought we would check the weather forecast. Hmm, 19⁰C at the moment; seems pretty good. I almost fell off my chair when I saw tomorrow night’s forecast though, 4⁰C! This is supposed to be a sub-tropical island!
Huan will insist on taking photos of me taking photos. I keep telling her that I usually have to be cropped and that you, the reader, can not always see my subject. This time it was a dragonfly.
A much better subject than me is next!
Remember the ‘big’ dog from last week? Well today she let me say hello.
The purpose of today’s walk was checking Huan’s bank accounts. While she was in the first bank I was fishing, didn’t catch anything though!
Time for some more scenery I think, before we reach the second bank.
Our little autonomous truck made another appearance today, I managed a short video.
On our way from #2 bank to the lottery ticket shop we found an egret!
Let’s have another view shall we, one of the bridge and beyond. Huan liked this view and so did I. Back home though I decided it would be better in sepia. For some reason the shadows are not so vague when you do that. I like this one.
We haven’t had a car sticker for a while so here’s one for you. I’m not sure I fully understand the name of the club although the purpose seems clear enough.
What are they doing now, around our little island? Initially we thought that they were just creating a new walkway. Now we think they are trying to put water protection around the island, possible with a walkway within the wall. Perhaps we will see before Chinese New Year.
In the evening Chef Bob was on duty again. The spelling mistakes were left in intentionally, they were made when our Sri Lankan staff in Saudi wrote their recipes out for us.
This is one I have made for Huan before but never as good as today’s. For some reason I think I must have read the recipe wrong on every other occasion. We were both impressed! In fact we were so impressed that we forgot to take any photos!
January 8th Well we got out of the town this afternoon, we decided to take a #2 or a #4 to the last bridge. Here we are waiting across the road from each other.
The #2 arrived first, the plan was to take a little walk upriver and get a different bus home.
Huan did her usual and found birds on the fringe again.
Then I managed one in flight!
At the stepping stones we decided not to go on for another bus but to cross the river and take a #2 home again. Would that I could still run across as in my younger years!
On the other side I found another bird and so did Huan. She missed mine under the vegetation and I almost missed hers at the bottom of a small tree.
On our way back we decided that a panorama was in order.
Unfortunately our route under the flyover was blocked, men at work!
That meant we had to backtrack and find a place to clamber up to the main road. This was the spot we chose, not too difficult and the balustrade had disappeared.
Although the clamber wasn’t too difficult Huan had to take far too many photos making me appear as a doddery old man again. Most were scrapped but two were kept.
Back on the road we can show you some more of our town’s scenery.
That last view is a Li style hotel, we’ll have to go and have a look one of these days.
“Let’s go under the bridge” said Bob, knowing that by doing that we would not have to physically cross the road. Lucky we did, we found yet another bird hiding under there.
Our last picture comes from the bus. We were chatting about dinner and another passenger mentioned a place with free food. I suspect that the free food was part of a tourist package. The place that he was talking about is in Wanning so it’s either a drive there or we suspect, to get the free grub, a trip in a tourist bus.
January 9th Huan was a very happy teddy this morning! I told her that we would not be going out; instead we would be having another lazy day. I must admit I was a little surprised when she agreed so easily. Perhaps she doesn’t like the stairs either.
As it happened her day was even lazier than mine, I was duty chef this evening.
This is an Iraqi / Jewish recipe and I must say it worked well. I divided everything by two so the quantities were pretty much right for the two of us. Things I would probably change next time? I would use garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, and a curry powder mix instead of ours from the jar. I would also use just a hand whisk instead of our blitzer. Our sauce was a little too thin.
I’m not sure what our fish was but it wasn’t cod. However, Huan gave it a ‘thumbs up’ and our plates were once again cleared. I had some cheapo British Rail wine with mine. I call it that because it is an individual size bottle with a screw cap. It was good enough for me though.
January 10th Saturday means a morning walk and not an afternoon one so that we can get to the weekly market. The plan was to go to the far end by bus and walk back to buy the lottery tickets before returning home. The #2 that turned up was full to the brim, no room for us at all. We crossed the road to take the #4 instead. We waited for what seemed like hours before that bus came and when we reached the other end we decided to skip the riverside and only visit the bap and lizard market. While there I accidentally took this photo.
Temptation called in the way of fried breadsticks, we succumbed!
On our walk home all we found was a car with a lady on the side.
Back home, looking through the living room window I spotted an egret, as usual a long way away. I sped to the bedroom balcony and tried my best.
I did enjoy the view though.
We had changed our dinner plans to a stew, mostly because we wanted something nice and hot. It’s old age you know, as I write this I am wearing my ‘Inspector Bulman’ gloves to keep my hands warm. Actually, a quick Google tells me that my memory is failing me; Bulman wore full gloves and not fingerless ones as I am doing! Anyway, dinner was a nice big bowl of pork bone stew; we will finish it off tomorrow evening. There are no photos; you know what a stew is.
January 11th I’ll be very happy when the lift is finally completed. We think that all the work has been done and we are now only waiting for the government’s inspection and approval. They should come once building #2 has been finished. In the meantime we carry on with the stairs.
Today we needed shopping again, so that tomorrow I don’t have to carry too much up said stairs. Up to the main road we went and past the snowbirds’ play area. A new activity has arrived there for them, another outdoor gymnasium.
We did try and find other subjects for you, honest!
We even tried the ‘middle way’ to try and find some of those birds that often sit on the irrigation stand pipes. We failed, I think because someone was flying a ‘bird’ kite.
Soon I needed the public conveniences so I called the commander across so that she could take over camera duties, phone duties and wallet duties for me.
‘Business’ done I returned to find that Huan had managed to capture a lizard and without even using the zoom part of the lens!
Last photo of the day now, I did stand here for a while but nobody came to spank me.
January 12th Shopping day, time to go down and up the stairs carrying bags of vegetables. First Huan went to buy her lottery tickets while I waited on the sunny side of the street.
Back home with only two rest stops on the way up the stairs. I did
however need a nap today! It was my turn to be the chef again today, this time
an English one. I would hazard a guess that all British people know what
bangers and mash is but this one is a little different. It actually comes from
Waitrose, a supermarket brand in the
So what did I change this time? Not a lot really. I skipped the black pepper because our Chinese sausages already had black pepper in them. I couldn’t find thyme so I used powdered rosemary. If you have a normal kitchen where you can do more than one thing at a time then you should be fine. Having said that ours was pretty good really. The only problem I could find was that it did not appear to be very sticky. We would definitely have it again and maybe not just with sausages. It would go well with pork too; after all we do eat apple sauce with pork.
I also made too much mashed potato but we still managed to eat it all. No breakfast left overs for Huan today but she didn’t mind, she enjoyed it very much too.
And on that culinary note we will bid you adieu, until we see you again, in a week maybe. Don’t forget the usual, click to do many different things! Bye.
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