Too Many Needles, Too Many Speeding Offences and Too Much Rain

November 10^th November 10^th The weather changed, for the worse, yet again. Huan was out in the morning for her usual choir practice, I was lazing on the PC. I had to pack the car and meet her at half past ten though for our monthly trip to Haikou. Lunch was taken en route at a service station we haven’t stopped at before, not the northbound side anyway. It was a pleasant enough place to stop, food was varied and cheap, of course I avoided meat today.

Our usual hotel had vacancies so no worries there and we got the fifth floor which I prefer. This particular room has been refurbished since we last stayed in it, it now has a larger table complete with four chairs, handy for having people round for dinner, and it has a chaise longue to boot!

Here’s the new red laptop all ready to go along with the red mouse and the new red headphones. They will be needed as Huan has brought her hulusi with her.

At the hospital we were good people and waited in the queue today, afternoons seem to be easier than mornings. We had a nice chat with the doctor, his English is not bad, although at times he did have ask Huan for clarification. He decided that this month, as well as my PSA test, I had to have my testosterone checked too. Thank God it was only one needle! We will be able to pick the results up tomorrow afternoon.

From there it was back to the other building for my hormone injection, another needle and a bigger one at that. The nurse is used to me now and didn’t wonder why I put my fingers in my ears and covered my eyes.

All that was left was to try and find some cheapo tracksuit bottoms or pyjamas, I had forgotten to bring anything with me to wear in the hotel room. We failed but at least we got a walk out of it, that took us up to dinner time, no meat again. Back at the hotel I did give in though and had a coffee, from a sachet, which means it had sugar in it. Nothing else till after tomorrows barrage of blood tests now!

November 11^th Met Dr. Tim at eight o’clock, he realised very quickly that I had ‘head’ problems, sinus troubles etc so he gave me a quick check up. I’m pleased to say that my ears, nose, throat and chest are fine, the problem is only in my sinuses. Down to the business at hand then, sorting out what tests I would need to have.

Papers in hand, we set off for the cashier first, then the vampire’s room, which was very busy this morning, and finally to the dispensary for some Tylenol. Results were to be ready in the afternoon, the same time as yesterday’s test results.

After breakfast, it was back to the hotel to while away the time until lunch. The weather precluded any ‘touristy’ stuff. We blame the weather for needing yet another OAP nap after lunch! At four thirty all the test results were in. My PSA levels are fine, the rest I’m not so sure about. Dr. Tim was a little busy when we visited his clinic and if we had stayed to chat to him we would probably have made him ‘late home from work’, instead I decided to scan and email the results when we get home.

Evening time and dinner with friends, Patrick, Flora and their son Padraig, Jake and his friend and neighbour Kevin. We didn’t have far to go, the restaurant was right next door to the hotel. Here’s the adults, well four of them anyway.

Finally, for today, here I am going through the motions of eating a crab from the hot-pot. I’m not a fan of small crabs, trying to get anything out of them is beyond me.

All in all we had a wonderful evening with great company, good food and of course some lovely amber nectar. It was only marred for me by a text message, I managed to get yet another speeding fine on my way up here. I’m already paranoid about all these speed cameras, average speed cameras and having been caught going into a tunnel over the limit before I now take extra care. This fine though, was 150 metres coming out of the tunnel; I guess I pressed the cruise control resume button too early!

November 12^th Nothing to do today except buy some groceries and get ourselves back home to Wuzhishan. En route we stopped at Fengmu again, southbound this time, and the sign above the public conveniences intrigued me. Google tells me that it is Malay, an Austronesian language so I guess there must be a community nearby that are perhaps originally foreign born Chinese.

At the same location we saw something that a neighbour had told us about, it’s where he gets a ‘battery swap’ on his electric car when he’s on his way back to Wuzhishan. I think he told us it takes ten to fifteen minutes.

I love how they have translated ‘User Instructions’, into Chinese but not the actual instructions. Still, I could work out enough to know that I had to call the ‘Specialost’.

We arrived home to a sunnier and warmer Wuzhishan than the one we had left two days ago. It won’t stay though as there’s another typhoon not far away, it’s just passed over the Philippines creating havoc there. Hopefully, like the last few, this one will veer south and spare us the worst.

Admin for me, transferring files and photos to the PC, and housework for Huan. She did find some time for some more hulusi practice though. No cooking today, dinner was out.

On the way out I had to stop and say hello to three of my four legged friends, which I always do through the gate as they’re not allowed out. They are an incredibly noisy bunch and more often or not are taken back inside after I’ve passed by. The largest one, a collie, is the one least likely to bite and always jumps up for a stroke and a tickle. Unfortunately, he, or she, hasn’t had his, or her, nails cut for a long time, this is what my arm looked like four hours later.

On our way out of the gate we bumped into Yu who convinced Huan that I would probably die if I didn’t have an injection immediately, if not sooner. As I haven’t had a tetanus shot for a long time I bowed down to their arguments on the condition that we had dinner first. It’s a good job I did because they won’t give you any shots on an empty stomach. Anyway, off we went to the hospital, to the A&E department, despite it not actually being an emergency. From reception downstairs we were sent up to the cashier’s office to pay for a doctor’s consultation. This was ¥4.00 more than it would have been during working hours, and that should explain why Chinese A&E departments are not overrun with people looking for freebies. Back downstairs we went to see the doctor, she decided that a tetanus antitoxin shot was needed; printed out some papers for us and sent us back upstairs to the cashier. We did that, paid, and then went back downstairs where the doctor told us to go back upstairs to collect the medication. Off we went, again, got the necessary little bottles and returned to the doctor who then sent us to the ‘infusion room’! First I had a painful needle in my wrist to see if would have an allergic reaction to the tetanus shot. After twenty minutes I was fine and so we moved on to the next stage. To my surprise, the actual shot was going to be in my tender little bum! The way they do it here is that you sit on a stool, lower your trousers a little and then the nurse gets to work. She was asking Huan to tell me to relax, as if that was possible with a needle hovering behind me somewhere. The shot was actually a lot less painful than the test was. Now I have to go to a different clinic in the next day or two to have the tetanus vaccine which as you probably know is good for ten years. Reading through that you may be wondering just what Chinese health care is like. Well, it’s actually pretty good and although not free, fairly cheap. To see the doctor I paid ¥19.30 and the shot cost ¥23.20, a total of ¥42.50, or in real money, about a fiver. Bear in mind I had to pay the full cost, Chinese people are covered by a national health insurance, supplemented by a private health insurance through the companies they work for. They still end up paying, but not the full whack. After all that, home for me, cup of tea, drum practice for Huan.

However, that was not the end of my day. Huan was driving me crazy trying to practice her hulusi while listening to Yu’s recording on her phone. I asked her to send me the file and then split it up into more manageable pieces with Audacity, changing the tempo at the same time but not the pitch. Hopefully that will help her learn and catch up with the others.

November 13th “Friday the 13^th, Keep Calm and Don’t Go Swimming, Don’t Have Sex, Don’t Smoke, Don’t Drink, Don’t Go Out, Don’t Split Up, Don’t Run From The Killer, If You Trip Get Up and Run, and above all Turn On The Stupid Light Before Entering Any Room!” (Stolen from a friend’s Facebook page, thank you Ayne-Marie). We didn’t stay in, instead we took a trip to the traffic police station where they told me that my ‘speeding infraction’ was at the same tunnel as last time, only this time it was on the way out and not on the way in. Luckily, I was within 10% and only had to sign and accept a warning.

From there we had a little walk around the river before doing enough shopping to keep us going until Monday. Huan was cheesed off, the plastic bags are now biodegradable and as such the price has gone up from ¥0.30 to ¥0.80. As for me, well I was so worn out after lunch that yet another OAP nap was needed.

Friday the 13^th it is and it came round to bite me on the bum again. Not long after dinner I received another text message with yet another speeding fine! This time it was nowhere near a tunnel but somewhere on the highway between Haikou and Tunchang on our way home. The speed limit is 120kph and I had the cruise control set on 119kph. We know it’s 3kph fast so setting it at 119 is like setting it at 116. How I was speeding I don’t know, but I guess there’s not much point in arguing. The old dashcam had the speed on the resulting videos, this one doesn’t so I can’t even argue that way.

This is the text message, translated into English by Google - [Hainan Traffic Police] Your small car (my car# here) was on the provincial county-level administrative division of Hainan Highway 56 kilometres 863 meters from Haikou to Tunchang at 11:00 on 2020-11-12. It was recorded by the traffic technology monitoring equipment as "Driving Medium The above-mentioned motor vehicles other than passenger and cargo vehicles and dangerous goods transport vehicles exceed the prescribed speed by 10% or less” illegal behaviour. Please accept the processing within 30 days from the date of receiving this notice. Hopefully, as I was clocked at 10% or less again, I’ll just be issued with another warning.

November 14^th Our weather is all over the place at the moment, yesterday there wasn’t a cloud in the sky; today there wasn’t any sky to see. That made for a pretty boring day, Huan out to choir practice, me cooking dinner early and then binging on “Stingers”. I did get an extra session of guitar practice in the afternoon so the day wasn’t completely wasted.

November 15^th “Listen To The Pouring Rain, Listen To It Pour” (José Feliciano) which is exactly what we did all last night and today. They typhoon I mentioned earlier, Vamoc, did pass us by but the rain clouds associated with it didn’t. This is the Infrared satellite photo of the North West Pacific region, our little island is 110E and 20N, well away from the eye, but still being affected by the storm. Hopefully it will disappear over the next few days although our forecast is for rain until at least Tuesday evening.

Huan was supposed to have an outdoor hulusi and drum practice for our area this morning, that was cancelled. She still managed to let me hear the dulcet tones of her singing and hulusi all round the house though. As for me, I started the character lessons with Yoyo Chinese, the first level is free, I can manage that at the moment. We also brought our regular shopping trip forward a day, I managed to get absolutely soaked in the ten metres between the house and the car. It’s not even warm rain these days, we are wondering where this global warming is, it feels more like the onset of the next ice age for us. We don’t normally feel this chilly before December.

November 16^th Yahoo! The weather was good enough for a walk, albeit a short one, just over five kilometres. Still, that’s better than nothing and should stop my feet from swelling. The first photo is a progress report on the bridge to the island, who knows, it may well be open by the end of the year or by Chinese New year after all.

More proof that I was actually out walking.

And some water lilies.

Boohoo after lunch when Huan took me to the area clinic for that tetanus shot. However, the boohoo soon changed to yahoo, the area clinic does not have tetanus vaccine. I wonder if we will have to see Dr Tim to get it, it’s proving difficult here in Wuzhishan. Huan then had me walk her to school; she had a hulusi class this afternoon, not with the class she wants to join but with someone else. Sat outside waiting we spotted quite a large butterfly. I tried my hardest but it was not staying still long enough and I didn’t have the camera with me, only the phone. You can see the blur of its wings in the second photo.

Another week ends and a new one starts tomorrow. Wish me luck for my visit to the traffic police! See you next time.

Lonely Boy, Home Maintenance, the Teddy Bear Returns.

January 21^st Another restless night, it was almost nine when I woke up this morning. Isn’t it strange that you spend your younger ears sleeping alone then when you meet someone, who goes on to share your bed it takes no time at all getting used to it. Yet, when you have to sleep alone again it takes days, weeks, months or even years to get used to it!

Still time enough for a walk up the scenic mountain I thought but then I remembered. Sat on the balcony last night I heard a fizzing, crackling noise followed by a bang and the house went dark. The balcony light had failed, one of the old neon types.

Finding a replacement light was not so easy. I knew I’d need an LED version and I decided to buy a whole new one because, if you look closely, you can see that the supports for the cover gave up the ghost a long time ago. “What was the problem?” I hear you ask. Well, over half the shops in town have already shut for the holidays. I did eventually find one, not too expensive, and they said they could install it this afternoon. Yes, I know, I could do it myself. However, with Huan not being here I decided it was easier to ask someone else to do it, save me getting up and down the ladder all the time to run into the living room and turn the breaker on and off.

With light in hand I decided to cut my walk short and go and buy some lovely pork sausages to slice up and eat with my vegetable soup tomorrow. On my way home I spotted the ‘hunter’ again. I have no idea what he is expecting to achieve. I can spot three problems, can you? 1) He is not wearing the right footwear to wade in after any fish he kills. 2) He doesn’t have a net. 3) You won’t be able to see this, but the fish are too small anyway!

So the planned half past one visit from the electrician went by without any sign of him. I called him and we re-arranged for six. I was just getting worried again about quarter past six when he phoned to confirm the location and by quarter past seven it was all done. When he passed the old light down we discovered the reason for the noise last night and why the breaker kept failing if the light was switched on again. This poor little fellow had somehow got himself under the ballast transformer.

And how does the new light look? Well it’s not so easy to take a photo of a light when it’s dark outside and you have to switch the light on, but, here it is, edited just a little.

January 22^nd Today was a little more back to normal, I even managed my first ‘ten’ day since Huan went up North. The scenic mountain route was the walk of choice this morning. I spotted this RV, campervan, motorhome on the way up and thought I’d give you a snap. We see a lot more of these around these days; in fact we’ve even discussed the possibility of having a holiday in one. The problem is that even though more and more people are using them there are not many, in fact hardly any, caravan parks yet.

Not much else popped up in the way of photos today. I did meet a lot of people, many of whom spoke to me and quite a few of those in English too. It must the New Year vibe! I also met a four legged friend who usually ‘speaks to me’ but today I had to stay a little clear. There was no aggression or growling but she had been given some food by someone and didn’t seem too keen on me getting any closer.

On the way home I tried to buy Wednesday’s and Thursday’s lottery tickets but it seems there aren’t any. The next draw will be after the holiday. I always think they should put a special draw on at this time of the year, with increased prize money, and then make the draw a part of the New Year show.

Not long after lunch the doorbell went crazy, and I mean crrrraaaaaaazy. It turned out to be the committee, bearing gifts, all laughing and joking. They even brought rhyming couplets for the door, which we don’t normally use anyway. To tell you the truth it was getting a bit too much for me and I told them that we were not celebrating New Year this year due to Huan’s Mum passing. I’m not at all sure if I said the right thing or not but at least they went and left me in peace.

Dinner was the last soup while Huan is away, this time with a difference. I didn’t bother warming it up, sliced the lovely pork sausage and added some pickled red cabbage. I guess it was my version of Gazpacho and very nice it was too. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of it.

January 23^rd A better night was had last night, going to bed at midnight and waking up around six forty five, must be the exhaustion catching up. The first thing I noticed this morning was how quiet it was outside, New Year is definitely upon us. Today I took the landfill route again so I could give you a progress report on the highway. The only dust was caused by three dustbin lorries, all the construction work has stopped. Maybe Huan will fancy a walk that way next week. I was able to get closer to the bridge work this morning so you can see how the road will be passing by Wuzhishan. The town is all on the right hand side.

If you’re travelling down towards Sanya, this will be your view on the right hand side. I stitched this from fifteen photos in two lines hoping it would be deeper than it is. Still, it shows you the view and some of the scar on the landscape that will disappear in a few months or so.

Because the construction work had stopped I was also able to take a look where we haven’t been before. Now we know where the tunnel will start. Someone told us that this tunnel will be a few kilometres long but we’ll have to wait and see if that’s right or not.

Have you ever wondered where street furniture goes to die? Well here, it seems it just goes to lie down outside the landfill area. What a waste! (See what I did there?)

Walking alone gives you a lot of time to reflect, nature does that too.

I walked back through town intending to visit the supermarket, on the way passing the pet shop. This little creature, and his friend who you can’t see, caught my eye. I think I caught their noses, they certainly knew I was there. I was very tempted to put my fingers in the box but in light of all the coronavirus worries at the moment, I decided against it.

The supermarket had throngs of people outside, all doing their last minute shopping I suppose, so I gave that a miss. Instead I passed by a buffet restaurant to pick up something for tonight’s dinner. I’ll be having lots of little fish, a small amount of pork, some squash and some green beans, with some rice of course.

Once home, sat on the loo, as you do, I spotted something on my arm. In the gloom of the bathroom it looked like it was perhaps a flying insect. When I touched it, I found it was a little sticky and that long brown piece was trying to take root in my arm! It must be some sort of flying seed. I suppose I should be honoured that it chose me!

When Huan is away I always do a clean-up before she comes back, and no, it’s not because I’m a slob! I started this evening with the balconies, watering the flowers, generally cleaning up and then did outside the front door where we keep the shoes. That’s not such an easy one; something is alive out there at night times and does its business in the shoe rack. It’s never in the shoes though which at least is one good thing. We keep trying various methods to keep whatever it is away, we are presently on moth balls. They don’t seem to work either. It would help if we knew exactly what it was, mouse, lizard or some other small creature. Washing was my last chore of the evening before guitar and Chinese practice.

January 24^th Busy day today but no photos, I spent all day cleaning. I knew that army training would come in useful some day. As long as the OC doesn’t run her finger over hidden spots to find dust I’ll be fine!

On the road by seven, planned to stop on the way to Haikou at the usual place and have a meal and a relax before heading on up to the airport. Would you believe it, all the restaurants, and the little shop, were closed! At least I managed to get a bottle of coffee from the filling station shop. Without a long break I reset the cruise control at 100kph, (down from 120kph) and carried on. Finding the entrance to the airport car park was not so easy, and not only for me. Lots of other drivers seemed to be having the same difficulty. Eventually I found it, parked the car and followed the signs to the food court. Guess what? You’re right, all closed up for the night. I did find a KFC on my way down to domestic arrivals, not exactly my favourite restaurant. I had a very weird burger, it was an “Australian Steak Burger”. It was a soft bun, with egg, cheese, steak, mushrooms and some kind of strange gravy. I got used to it! KFC make lousy coffee though!

Huan’s plane was ten minutes early but she wasn’t out very quickly. Her sister had given her a box of food, mostly fish and seashells, so that had gone in the hold. While I was waiting Patrick from Haikou called, he, Flora and Padraig were returning from Cambodia and couldn’t get a taxi so asked if we could give them a lift. Once Huan was safely in we headed off to the International terminal and picked them up too. There followed an uneventful journey to their house where we dropped them off.

January 25th We continued on to the highway. I was really looking forward to stopping for a coffee but when we reached the highway services, not only were the shop and restaurants closed, the filling station had closed too!

I took a detour through Qiongzhong finding a fuel station on the way, bought some coffee for me and water for Huan, and then rejoined the highway until we found a nice rest stop. We were home later than expected, around twenty past three. All the seafood had to be unpacked and stowed in the freezer so by the time we got to bed it was four. For some strange reason I was up early! Huan managed a couple of hours more than me.

Lunch was dumplings supplied by the neighbours, they’re a good bunch really. Dinner was a fry up, cooked by yours truly. Huan definitely needs rest; in fact we both needed an OAP nap today.

January 26^th Almost back to normal today, both of us up at a reasonable hour, Huan around seven and me three quarters of an hour later. Walkies was on the cards but I made sure we were never to far from the house so that we could head on home as soon as Huan decided she’d had enough. We started off the other side of the river, took more photos of cows, a photo of the track we were walking on and a photo of our house. Huan wanted me to take that one but it’s not worth showing you, we were too far away. The next photo was also taken at Huan’s bidding and although it’s not as good as it could be, (that lack of zoom again), it’s not too bad.

Coming back onto the road we passed this which I thought you should see, a wall protected by rusty nails and razor wire. You would think that there I something very valuable or secret in there. You’d be wrong, it’s a small allotment!

And even more security for you here, these are on every road in and out of our town and on quite a few roads within the town too. They’re no problem in the daytime, after all I try to keep within the speed limits. At night time though, they all have very bright lights as well as a ‘flash’ every time you drive through them.

And our last photo of the day is just to show you the weather. It certainly wasn’t a hot one today, in fact it was so overcast we were expecting it to rain at any minute. Not long after this we headed back to town and then home. The heavens did eventually open up but that was long after we had arrived home and finished our lunch.

The rest of the day was almost a repeat of yesterday except that I wasn’t too lazy to do some guitar practice today. Much more is still needed!

January 27^th Winter is back! The temperature is down by ten degrees since last week and in fact during the middle of the night this week we can expect to have a low of 10⁰C. Because it is so dreary you can have black and white photos of our morning. This is on the road side, I was intrigued because the cloud usually forms between the first and second ridges and not the second and third as it has done today.

And this is a lovely long panorama from the riverside, bedroom balcony.

Today being Monday we weren’t planning on walking anyway, it’s our rest and shopping day. As usual we left the house late in the morning to miss the crowds. We failed! Being the day after New Year everybody and their Gran was shopping. The car park was chock a block so we had no chance of using our normal supermarket. Luckily, along with the new one way system they increased the parking spaces in the town so we were able to park a street away from the other branch. Inside it wasn’t too bad but as planned, we wore our ‘Wuhan Virus Masks’ anyway. (At this time the virus had not yet been named Covid-19.) I know they are not very effective but they may help in crowded places. In keeping with today’s theme, our photo is in black and white, don’t you think we look very ‘with it’?

I can’t see much else happening today so we will wish you a Happy Monday and enjoy the rest of your week! See you next time.