DIY, Rain Stopped Play (a lot), Donald’s New Bum, Blood Tests Galore

August 4^th Rain stopped play, for me anyway. Huan still went off to singing school and I stayed home and binge watched some ‘City Homicide’. After lunch though, it was house maintenance again. This time it was the kitchen tap that needed tightening. In all the houses and apartments I have lived in, and there have been many, I have never had this problem before. In this apartment, this is I think the third time. ‘Scoop’ was there to catch the action.

Huan convinced me I was cooking again today so, just for a change, I did a stir-fry In order of ‘putting in the pan’, I used garlic and onions, shrimps basted with oyster sauce, mushrooms, green pepper and tomato, pre-cooked carrot and zucchini. This is how that looked.

Finally, to soak up some of that juice, I added bean sprouts. We ate it with some flat bread that Huan had cooked yesterday. Here’s the dish, minus the bread, that was in the microwave.

August 5th Would you believe it, the weather interrupted us again today! TV for Huan and Youtube for me took most of the day as well as some dashcam uploading ready for our next trip. I did get my Endomondo summary from last month, nothing special but at least the distance is increasing again.

After dinner the weather decided to give us a break which was just as well as an outdoor expedition was needed to buy our lottery tickets. You’ve heard us mention ‘our restaurant’ before, well the premises that we rent out, we passed by tonight and took a photo for you. As you can see, if our plans in 2015 hadn’t gone wrong, it would have been just the right size for a small café cum bar.

The lottery ticket seller guaranteed us a win, as she always does, probably hoping for a cut! We live in dreams. On our way home we passed one of the newer bakeries in town, not much to speak of, we never buy anything there. However, today they had baguettes, that’s only the second time we’ve ever seen them in Wuzhishan. Needless to say we had to buy one; it’ll do for our lunch tomorrow and will go very well with stew a la Bob in the evening.

August 6^th Rain stopped play again, for me anyway, Huan still went singing. It also didn’t stop work for the men doing the river park. Today they started the support cables for the second bridge. Could that mean progress is accelerating? Maybe, or maybe not, the support cables on the first bridge were in position for months before they took them down and put new ones up.

Just like yesterday, the rain eased off after dinner allowing us to go out for a walk. We asked our garage if they could tell us where our car was being fixed so we could go and have a look. As is often the case the instructions were not too hot, “It’s 20 metres from the turn off” they said, they must have very long legs. Anyway, we found it and very professional it looked too!

No, they didn’t shrink our car! In fact we weren’t able to see our car at all, it was still in the spray booth, presumably drying off or baking.

We had a leisurely stroll back home along the riverside, not such a good idea, neither of us had suitable footwear on but we managed. Huan took lots of photos of my rear view, she was actually trying to take photos of birds, first in a tree and then on the wall. She failed with the birds and you don’t need to see my backside! I didn’t try to take pictures of the birds in the tree; I knew there was no chance of success, even if I’d had the Fuji with me. Marvin was on camera duty today. I did try the wall though and, like Huan I took lots of photos, only one is worth sharing. There weren’t “Three craws sat upon a wa'”, there were six little birds instead.

And, coming up fast behind me, a more exotic bird!

August 7^th Yahoo! No rain today and Huan isn’t singing, maybe we can have a nice long walk. No, she has decided to visit the doctor at the clinic where we had our recent medicals. I’m not complaining though, Huan going to see a doctor is a major achievement. Some of her readings were higher than normal, the doctor told her it’s not really a problem but sent her to the big hospital to be sure. There she saw another doctor who confirmed that many people from that clinic had the same raised levels! She went back to the first doctor again who said, “See, I told you, nothing to worry about”. He did give her some medicine though for her recurring ‘morning sickness’ problem which occurs much less frequently now. I think it’s all to do with hormones and menopause but if the medicine helps, it’s all for the better.

So were there any photos this morning? Well a tree tried to knock me out with a seed pod. It was quite a large pod, maybe 20cm, but the tree failed because it missed me by millimetres. The seeds inside are covered in what almost feels like thin plastic and I suspect that the pod should open on the tree so that they can be blown to all corners of the earth. No comments about the shape of the seed itself please!

In the afternoon we received a call to day that ‘Donald’ was ready for collection. What, another thing with a name? Well yes, the ‘paranoid android’ is called marvin, the ‘fabulous Fujis’ is called Freddy so the ‘dozy Dongfeng’ was christened Donald, but he’s not getting an orange paint job or a new wig. What he got was his bum sorted out and a new white paint job.

At least I didn’t call him Donatello, if I had done I would have had to give him a nose job then he would have looked like this!

The weather stayed clear so we had a walk around the riverside once we’d checked the car. That turned into quite an experience. We found some small mantises on the wall by the river and were able to make a short video of them. The first part has the largest one, walking ever so slowly, almost as though it needed a zimmer frame. The second part has one jumping off the wall onto Huan’s hand, followed by her arm, her back and her hair before she put it down. The third part had a baby on my hand and a parent (?) leaping onto my hair and then down my back. What was interesting was that putting Huan’s back on the wall, it almost looked as if it was checking her out to launch itself through the air for a second time. We’ve got three stills from the video, marching on the wall, in Huan’s hair and contemplating another launch.

August 8^th Huan had singing class today and the weather was good. However, no long walk was planned, I thought I would have two today, one solo in the morning and one with Huan after dinner. I walked the girls to school first, something I got into trouble for many years ago. I was maybe ten years old, living with my parents in Singapore, and well over an hour late home from school. I’m sure they were ready to give me ‘the belt’ or perhaps ‘the wooden spoon’ until I explained. It was a rainy day, monsoon rain, and Cheryl, a classmate, didn’t have an umbrella so I had walked her home, she lived the other side of the school to where we did. Poor Mam and Dad, couldn’t say a great deal could they, they had brought me up to be a gentleman! I wonder where it all went wrong along the highway of life!

From ‘school’ I went to the bap man, but today, despite being there before quarter to nine, I was too late. Down to the river I went to see if I could find our little friends from last night. Today I had the ‘real’ camera with me so I was hoping for better pictures. They weren’t there. I did spot a caterpillar under a leaf and something strange moving very slowly on the wall, neither photo is up to much though so they’ll stay on the PC.

Today being Saturday, was market day. Last night we had seen how they had split the stalls up with various local village names. There weren’t too many stalls today although they had overflowed the allocated spaces. I guess it will take time for it to build up again after the Covid closure. Snowbirds returning in the winter, if they can, may help. I took a fair few photos, mostly for Huan, she loves to see where I’ve been, the first being a little piggy who went to market. He looks a bit nervous about it, don’t you think?

As for the prospective buyers, more than the last time I saw the market but far less than usual.

Next is something I don’t believe I have showed you before, corn ears. Most people like corn-on-the-cob, it’s popular in China too. I like mine smothered in butter, Huan prefers hers without. We both like this small multi-coloured variety though.

No more market photos for today, nothing jumped out and took my attention. Instead I give you another photo of the work on the riverside park behind our house. The drain from the road goes through the river retaining wall around here so they’ve had to some remedial work to guide it into the storm drains. That meant more work was required so that us mere mortals will have somewhere to walk after. More stairs are being put in.

And that evening walk I had planned with dear wifey? Rain stopped play, again!

August 9^th Luck was with us this morning, a nice day and no singing classes so we could have a longer walk. It’s been a while for Huan so I avoided big hills and just took her around the back of the main street, it’s a very pleasant walk through the forest. We came across a rubber farmer carrying his containers from the trees back to the road. When we asked how much they weighed he told us it was thirty kilograms, rather him than me. Here’s his container next to a rubber tree and a view of the road thereafter.

We headed back across the main road towards the river then, making sure the walk was not too long for today. Along the way we passed some of the local wildlife, both were spotted by Huan. We weren’t as nimble as the first but a lot faster than the second!

Passing by this restaurant I was intrigued by the sign and wondered what the Chinglish was trying to tell me. Huan wasn’t sure until we got home, the first character can have different meanings. It seems in this case it is 德莊, (Dé zhuāng), and it means ‘Morality Village’. Like many other restaurants in China, it’s a hot-pot one, yes, even here, in the heat of summer, people want to eat hot-pot.

Next up was someone who may not have impeccable morals, he did wee on a tree, but he has got manners enough to carry his Dad’s bag!

Huan’s insect radar was in full flow for the last photo of our walk, this one was not so easy. I had to get down as low as possible and still try and see enough to focus the camera. This is probably the best picture I got. Is this the “Red Riding Hood’ of the insect world?

Our planned walk went quite well, it was over eleven kilometres by the time we got home, no need for me to add extra in the evening. If we had planned anything for the rest of the day it would not have worked out anyway. After lunch the heaven’s opened, a real storm, thunder lightning and torrential rain. Almost nothing was visible from the bedroom balcony at all, check the photo, there’s no bridge, in fact there’s not even a river!

Almost as if on cue, ten minutes later the electricity cut off. It’s not unusual in storms and I fully understand it but I do wish there was a number to call for progress reports or any other helpful information. We just have to sit and wait. We had given up waiting, decided to go out for dinner, and were almost down the stairs when it came back on. Straight back up we went, in the lift of course, where I took advantage of the power to cook Huan some bratwurst. As you probably know, bratwurst is German, the meal certainly wasn’t. We had it with a little fried green onion, some eggplant flat bread and some slices of fried eggplant. There’s nothing like a bit of fusion cooking when you come down to it!

August 10^th Up bright and early, it’s that time of the month again, a trip to Haikou for a big needle. This time we also had an appointment booked with Dr Tim, (find out more about him here - https://www.tropicalhainan.com/get-hospital-treatment-haikou-peoples-hospital/ I had sent him a copy of my Wuzhishan Medical report and there were some points that needed to be discussed further. Our drive up was incident free, I don’t think I broke any traffic laws today, and we were in the car park by 07:30. Despite being so early, the queues were already forming.

Ours, on the second floor, wasn’t quite so bad. By half past eight we had finished with the Urology department and went off to the International Clinic where we had quite a wait. Dr Tim is very popular, being a GP he has a way of putting patients at ease and of explaining things in language they can understand. Did I tell you that he is also fluent in Chinese? That helps sometimes in getting Huan to also understand. My right ankle required an X-ray and some blood tests were needed to clarify the Wuzhishan results. We left the clinic with a pile of paper, including my ‘three monthly’ PSA tests, a total of four others were needed. When I say another four, I mean I now had six pieces of paper, the actual blood tests were far more numerous than that! Here I am waiting in line to empty my arm, check out the phials! (PS I dropped them all over the floor just after this photo was taken!)

As always, I am a bigger baby than most real babies! Who remembers Eric Sykes and the “Blood Donor”? If you haven’t seen it you should try and check it out. I told Huan that my arm would be emptied today! We have to wait until tomorrow for all those results. From there it was down to X-Ray, no worries for me there, the results would be available later in the day. Our last port of call was the monthly hormone injection. Needless to say I was as brave as always and covered my eyes and ears.

Now that we had finished the worst part of the day we could have some breakfast, even though it was almost lunchtime. Breakfast had not been allowed before all the tests so we were both more than ready for it!

Finger crossed we made our way to our usual hotel, we had failed to get in there three months ago, partly due to construction work and partly due to ongoing Covid restrictions. Thankfully we were successful today. Our room didn’t look much different but there has definitely been some refurbishment, new bathroom floor, new shower, a paint job in the room. Once again we tried to find out where their mattresses came from, they are very comfortable, once again we failed. I did manage to get housekeeping to turn one over in a room they were cleaning but there’s no sign of any manufacturer’s or seller’s name.

After an OAP nap, which we deserved today having been up so early, we returned to the hospital and picked up the X-Ray results and revisited Dr Tim. I’m pleased to say there’s nothing wrong with my bones. Some of my blood tests were back on Dr Tim’s PC via the hospital network, nothing to worry about so far, the remaining results will not be ready until tomorrow afternoon.

Back to the hotel, this time with the car and our baggage, no more naps though. Huan played with her phone and I did this on the laptop, ready to be transferred when we get home.

Out for dinner, Huan was disappointed, she couldn’t have da pan ji, the Muslim restaurant is closed until the end of the month. Instead we decided on a Chinese burger place, which when we got there had disappeared! Don’t tell my ex-students, but we ended up in KFC. Our excuse was that is was too late to wander around looking for something else.

Back to the hotel for the last time today, Huan to practice singing, me to blog and read a book. The latest one is called “Fingerprints of the Gods” by Graham Hancock, quite interesting; you could perhaps call it an early conspiracy theory!

That’s it for another week, I’ll leave you with a photo of Maria Callas, or it could be Hyacinth Bucket, practicing. Stay tuned for a health update next week.

Panorama Day, Paranoia, Pikachu Porsche, Presidential Hair, Prang

July 28^th Time to bring some colour back into your lives and what better way to do that than with a nice walk in the countryside. Huan was at school so I did a recce of the Changhao village route, it used to be too dusty for her. There is still construction, not so much on the road as adjacent to it. “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is (a hotel)” Apologies to Donovan. (The lyrics refer to a Buddhist saying originally formulated by Qingyuan Weixin in the Tang Dynasty, later translated by D.T. Suzuki in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, one of the first books to popularize Buddhism in Europe and the US.) Qingyuan writes “Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.” What you see here used to be a mountain covered in longan trees; it is fast becoming a hotel and apartment complex.

Having taken the photo above I decided that today would be ‘panorama day’. The next shot is where we turn off the main road to Changhao and head off through the countryside. It’s one of our favourite walks, no hills to speak of, no city noises and enough shade to make it pleasant. We would be walking in the same direction as the motor cyclist.

The buildings soon give way to countryside.

It’s been a while since we walked this way so memory can play tricks. I took a side road thinking it would lead somewhere, and it didn’t, I had to turn back. There was a great view at the end of the track though.

And how about a vertical panorama, these boots are made for walking.

Instead of taking the short route back to the main road I took the longer one with the intention of crossing before Changhao and turning back for home. That entailed crossing a weir, which I was hoping would be passable today.

You can see that the water is flowing over the top but not very deep. My boots got wet but the water didn’t come over the top of them. I also trod very carefully just in case there were slimy bits that could have caught me unawares.

Once I reached the main road I had a water stop before wending my way back. Next to the shop there’s a place that used to be used for driver training, it’s all closed off now. Huan tells me that the signs say it’s army land. Further towards town there’s another similar, but larger place so that’s the one I photographed for you. It’s also closed off now and marked army land.

Not far from there I bumped into a few bovine friends resting on the road. They were on a corner on the brow of a small hill so I decided not to bother them. I didn’t fancy being held responsible for any ensuing accidents. I did take a few snaps but as today is ‘panorama day’ and they weren’t, you don’t get to see them.

This next one is not a panorama either; it’s a photo of my completed walk on my phone. It’s not bad considering I stopped to take all the panorama pictures, stopped for the water stop and stopped for a second water stop at our friend’s shop. I spent ten to fifteen minutes chatting to them before telling them I had to go home and cook dinner!

Dinner was chicken noodles a la Bob, but I think you’ve seen a version of that before so no pics.

July 29^th “Paranoia strikes deep, Into your life it will creep, It starts when you’re always afraid, Not feeling well, doctors will take you away” with apologies to Buffalo Springfield for my changing the last line. Are we paranoid? Sometimes yes. Does it creep into our lives? Every time we don’t feel so well. Are we afraid? Again, sometimes yes. Luckily no doctors have had to take us away yet. My latest batch of paranoia started yesterday evening with a persistent dry cough, a tightness in my chest and a splitting headache. Interrogating Huan showed that her recent ‘cold’ had started the same way so Chinese medicine it was, for last night and three times today.

Back to normality, I had my travelling companion today but our walk was short. By the time I got up Huan was in the middle of making steamed brown bread. At least that’s what it looked like but it seems that the colour came from ‘yellow’ beans. Huan’s purse was also getting empty so a visit to the bank was called for. No problem said I, I’ll bring by bank book and get it brought up to date, it hasn’t been done since last August. Huan succeeded but I failed. A young lady helped us with the ‘intelligent terminal’ which decided that I had put in the wrong password and that this was the third time I had done it. Strange how on all previous occasions I have only put the password in once and got money out. To fix the problem my presence and my passport is needed; the copy on my phone will not suffice so a return trip will be required.

Are there any photos from today? Well there’s a bit more progress on the park bridge, but not enough progress to show you yet. Along the road by the park there’s a very wide paved area, a perfect place to plant a few trees for some shade. They haven’t done this yet, and we don’t know if they will. However, they have planted a ‘Li’ symbol of a parent and a child. It looks a bit lonely at the moment, perhaps they will add to it later.

Other than that all we have to show you is the ‘garden’ outside our building door, created by one of our neighbours. A few weeks ago there was nothing there but some soil behind the bricks you can see. I have to admit he’s doing quite a good job. I say ‘doing’ because we see him there every morning when we go out.

July 30^th Paranoia easing, I feel much better this morning. The C-in-C was asking me where I was going to walk this morning while she was out singing. I really wasn’t sure so I told her I would walk along the main road towards the Sanya route out of Wuzhishan. Most of my walks these days seem to start with slight knee troubles until I get into my stride. Would it better or worse if I had as many legs as this little one?

Along the side of the road I spotted a plume of smoke where a smallholder was obviously burning something so I wandered over to check it out. For the first time in months I spotted a pig, two actually, a piglet running around and this much larger one in the pen.

Still with animals I passed a furniture shop that has a huge cage outside which in the past, had an enormous dog that wasn’t very well looked after at all. Nobody was allowed anywhere near the cage, he was not safe. That dog disappeared a couple of years ago I think. Today they had two new dogs in the cage, one allowed me to get fairly close but then the other one got right in my face, pushing the smaller one out of the way and snarling at me. This is the bigger one.

Next it was decision time, should I take the left turn towards Nanshengzhen village or take the bend to the right towards Sanya. The village won although I still hadn’t decided whether or not to walk all the way there.

Not long afterwards I made up my mind; this was the turn around point.

On the way back a man with a jack hammer told me I was silly to walk in the sun with my shorts on. I suppose he was at least getting paid for being in the sun. Not far after that I stopped to take some pictures of chicks, goslings and ducklings. The farmer and his wife had to tell me which ones were ducklings and which were goslings, I’m still not sure I could tell you the difference. The wife then grabbed one of the chicks and advanced towards me. I thought she wanted me to buy one but no, she wanted her husband to take a photo of her, the chick and me! Fame at last.

I timed my arrival back into town for a short time before Huan’s class was over. As usual she was miles away, tunnel vision at 100%, so it was Yu that spotted me first. You can see the surprise on Huan’s face.

And my last photo of the day is our arrival back home, just over fifteen kilometres done, not such a bad morning after all.

Old age must be getting to me, maybe to both of us, I definitely needed a sleep in the afternoon and the boss did too. After that all that was left was for me to cook again. If I cook noodles once in a week I usually cook them twice, the reason being you can’t keep fresh noodles too long. Today’s was another special, sausage casserole noodles a la Bob. No photo for you I’m afraid but big yummys from both of us! 

July 31^st Admin day today, only incidental walking allowed. That meant we also had a lazy start, that came back to bite us on the bum! Our first port of call was the cellphone provider for our phones, China Mobile. Yesterday we had tried Alipay on my phone but it wouldn’t allow me to bind my bank account, only Huan’s, because both our phones are in her name. Our job today was to try and change my contract to my name. Our usual local office, where we pay our bills etc, couldn’t help, they told us we would have to visit head office, not so bad, it’s only round the corner. When we got there the first sales assistant didn’t have any idea, she told us we’d have to ask someone else. When the second assistant was free, she didn’t know either so she disappeared to speak to someone higher up in the back office. When she came back she told us that it could be done, but they would need a copy of Huan’s Hukou card, her phone number, a copy of my passport, my phone number and a copy of my sim card. For ‘copy’ in China you can often use the word ‘photo’ instead because that’s what she did, took photographs of everything required. Now we have to wait as all the ‘photos’, along with the request, have to be sent to another ‘head office’, either in Sanya or Haikou. We’ll find out in five to seven days whether we’ve been successful. While all this was going on we had ‘points’ that we’d earned somehow, converted to money on our phones, here’s Huan getting hers done.

Whenever I think bureaucracy is bad here I always cast my mind back to my first visits to the Middle East, Saudi in 1983 and UAE in 1984 and then I don’t feel so bad. In those days a simple thing like this would have required reams of passport copies, numerous passport photographs and would have taken a lifetime to sort out. China is pretty efficient really. 

Having spent more time than planned in the phone office we started off towards the bank; remember the card problems earlier this week. We made the mistake of stopping on the way to buy some fried chicken breast for my lunchtime sandwich. By the time that was done, we had to make our way home for lunch and said sandwich. The bank will have to wait, yet again. 

Mind you, I was happy waiting for the chicken and drooling, not over the food, but over this, a yellow Porsche 911. We saw it from the rear end first and I fell in love with it, I do have a thing for yellow cars! However, if I stole this one, the first thing I would have to do is sort the bonnet out. Who on earth does this to a Porsche, and why?

Although outside admin had to be delayed, there was also some inside work to be done. Huan was remiss; she forgot to take any embarrassing photos of me with my hands down both toilets, scrubbing them clean with Jif and bleach, and also giving the bath a good scrubbing too. Usually she likes to take pictures of me working; I think she does it to show my bald patch! 

August 1st “When August days are hot an’ dry, I won’t sit by an’ sigh or die; I’ll get my bottle (on the sly) And go ahead, and fish, and lie!” (In August by Paul Laurence Dunbar) Well, it’s not me, I don’t fish and I don’t drink from bottles on the sly. 

Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of the weather here. This week it is supposed to rain every day, and for the last few days it’s done that, later in the afternoon. Basing my plan on that I set off very early this morning, with clouds around all the mountains, just like the last few days. Here’s what it was like looking towards our house from the other side of the river looking over the first bridge.

No rain anywhere so off I went, up the main road through town towards Haikou. I planned to do much the same as Thursday and walk until I felt like turning back for home. I only got just over three kilometres away from home before the rain started. It was a few metres past the spot in this next photograph, check out the clouds, and the further I walked in that direction the wetter I was getting. Turn round time was early today.

Walking back into town the rain dropped to a drizzle, which led me to deciding that a trip to the bap shop would be in order. Going back down the hill I spotted one of those elusive little birds again. This time I put the camera on continuous shooting and out of the tens of photos that I took managed to find one that was good enough to share.

Walking towards the bap shop takes us to the other side of town where, looking over the mountains, I could see a lot more clouds and rain. I’m beginning to think that there are times, many of them, when the rain is falling all around Wuzhishan but not so much on it.

Arriving home, having completed only nine kilometres this morning, I took a panorama from the bedroom balcony. As you can see, we are completely surrounded by clouds, and I think it’s raining behind all the mountains except in the top left corner.

Ah well, getting home early meant I could cook dinner early, nothing special, just another “finish all the vegetables in the fridge and add a tin of stewed pork” stew. Huan could smell it as soon as she walked in the door, and it goes without saying, that it was delicious! Oh, and rain did come down in the city, from about three o’clock onwards. 

August 2^nd The rain hadn’t stopped before we went to bad last night and it persisted all through the night and into the morning. It seems that a typhoon named Sinlaku had been born somewhere off Sanya and was heading towards Vietnam. That’s the first one this year, the typhoon season runs from May/June to September/October. I’m not a fan of typhoons but I guess the reservoir will be glad of the rain. That wasn’t a problem for us today though as we had another admin day, this time for both of us. My first duty was to act as the getaway driver! Huan needed to go to one of her banks and withdraw a sizable sum of money. Once I screeched up, let her in and screamed off again, we were to another of her banks. This time it was to deposit the lump sum. This was part of her duties as the ‘Minister of Finance’ and she’s pretty good in that role. Her job at the bank didn’t take long at all. 

Now, this is also my bank, remember the problems with my card earlier in the week? My job at the bank should have been much simpler than Huan’s, it wasn’t! First my passport and bank card were scanned, more than once, and then the fun began. “This passport is not the same as the account details.” I got a new passport in 2016 and one of our first jobs back in Hainan was to give the bank the details and the passport to copy. Eventually they agreed that the number was the same but the name was different. Much more explanation required, the passport shows the family name first followed by the Christian names; the bank account has them reversed, as you would say my name. Finally we got it all sorted out and they then told us the account was locked because the wrong PIN had been attempted three times. It seems that it doesn’t matter whether the three times were on one occasion or over a period of time, in my case years. Thinking about it one of the ATMs here in Wuzhishan had a dodgy keyboard for a while and depressing keys did not always bring the corresponding ‘beeps’. When that happened I started again so I assume those times would have been the errors. Having sorted all that, out we were ready to go when they informed us that because of the three failed attempts my account was now frozen for a week Even they couldn’t run my passbook through to update it. What a farce! Imagine being a trader or even worse a father with a family to feed and no money for a week. As you can guess from all of that, my job at the bank took considerably longer than Huan’s.

Despite all my moaning and groaning above, I do have to say that the staff remained courteous and helpful all the time. They couldn’t explain the ‘whys and wherefores’, they were just following the rules which, according to another customer, had been changed again on April 1^st to be even stricter than they were before. I guess I could have had similar problems even in the UK and at least here the bank does provide free beneficial facilities while you wait.

And how did the prime minister feel about all of this? She was happy, her job was successful.

August 3^rd ‘er indoors was up with the larks this morning, she’d even stolen my phone to take pictures on the balcony. She was trying to get a photo of a dragonfly but didn’t realise that the phone had zoom capabilities. Consequently the dragonfly photos didn’t work very well. She also took a lot of photos of her flowers, they came out better.

Not too long afterwards I was up, stealing back the camera and taking a selfie of my morning ‘presidential’ hair. Do you think “The Donald” would approve? By the way, there is no wind at all, that is purely my normal, natural morning look. If you think it’s bad, take pity on Huan, she has to wake up to it every day.

Monday’s, as you know, are admin days, otherwise known as shopping days. Today we had some extra admin to take care of. We received a phone call from China Mobile telling us that the change of name from Huan’s to mine was agreed, and asking us to visit the office. That was the beginning of my not very good day. It started well enough, we were ushered into the manager’s office who it turns out, we know. She’s the daughter of the people who run a shop with a large Labrador that’s been missing a while. It seems the reason it’s been missing is that the lady had been off having a baby and they took the dog with them. Anyway, I digress. All was going well, we were asked to take a seat while we waited for a spare assistant so this we did. Once we were at the front of the queue we hit a bump! Previously, to make international calls you had to put a deposit on your account, ¥800.00, which of course I had done. Changing the phone to my name means that deposit has to be paid back to Huan. Another wait followed while head office, wherever it may be, was contacted yet again. Explanation when they returned? The money can’t be transferred to my name, and international deposits are no longer required anyway. Even though my phone is in Huan’s name, the money can’t be transferred to her phone either. We now have to wait another fifteen days for the deposit to be refunded and then the name change can go ahead. I was beginning to lose my patience. 

Shopping was more frustrating than usual, pushing me further into the ‘I’m not very happy’ zone, irritable is probably the best word to describe how I felt. The crunch came, literally, when we were driving into our apartments, a car came the other way. It would have been very easy for him to reverse and let me pass, but I had to reverse instead. He did pull over at one stage and then I had Hyacinth telling me to go forward and I’m still trying to go backwards. She kept on and I lost it. I yelled at her and told her she could give me advice when she’d passed her test! What she didn’t realize was the ‘space’ he had left for me was not actually wide enough which is why I continued reversing. Unfortunately, my anger at Huan distracted my attention and I managed to hit the entry barrier, I had a prang! I should just have calmed down and taken my time.

Ah well, we live and learn, or in my case, we live and never learn! Another week comes to an end, not the best of weeks. Don’t get the wrong idea though, as I sit here writing this I have a great big grin on my face, life is still good!