Lazybob, Chefbob, Badbob, Chauffeurbob, Ambobob, Boredbob

May 19^th A lazy day was on the cards today, it seems that not only did the doctor recommend shorter and slower walks yesterday, he also said I should have my foot raised as much as possible. I decided that today we would follow that advice and sat with my foot on a pouffe or an ottoman or a stool, whichever you prefer.

Mind you, I didn’t stay recumbent all day, I had promised Huan I would cook today. The dish of choice was a Philippine one, ‘Chicken Arroz Caldo’, I suppose it’s a bit like a Chinese rice soup dish. Now I’m not a big fan of rice soups, rice puddings yes, but that’s something completely different. Anyway, Huan does like her rice soups hence the reason for cooking it. I must say I was quite impressed and may even consider trying rice soup when we go out again. Here’s what my version looked like.

While we were scoffing our nosh I received a text message, ignored it of course, nothing is that important. After dinner was all finished we checked it, it was from the traffic police. My first port of call was my dashcam videos, unfortunately I can’t argue this time. Can you see why?

May 20^th Well, doctor’s orders went out of the window today! Due to yesterday’s text message a visit to the Traffic Police was called for and rather than take the car, we walked. It’s actually not far, only about two and a half kilometres but, that’s still double what the doctor ordered. Mind you, we did walk slowly. On the way we passed some guys cleaning up one of the feeder streams that comes down from the reservoir area, looks like a long time since they’ve done it.

A little further up we saw the small dredger that they had previously been using in the main river so they obviously needed sand from this stream too. It was quite interesting to see how they made room for the small dredger. Have you ever had to roll back your living room carpets? Well, try rolling this one back!

Anyway, how did we get on at the local car cop shop? If you hadn’t guessed from the dashcam photo above, I went straight on instead of turning left. I realised at the time that I had ‘broken the law’ but couldn’t do much about it. I received a fine of ¥100.00 and two points on my licence. Most of my life I have avoided traffic fines, now I’ve had six, (and one warning), since we’ve been in Hainan! The fines don’t worry me as much as the points do though. The only good thing is that all my points are cleared every August and I’ve never yet reached the dreaded twelve point mark. So far this year, I only have the two I was awarded today.

I spent the rest of the day uploading a lot of my videos for the last year or so that were not made with the Nikon Keymission camera. I decided it was time to make sure both playlists were reasonably up to date. You can find all my playlists by following the link at the side of this blog to my YouTube channel.

May 21^st The first port of call this morning was the maintenance company office, time to pay the electric bill. They have a very smart office just near the back gate of our compound.

After that a walk was on the cards, the doctor’s orders were exceeded again today but not by much. We took a walk to the town square and sat under the trees, me with a cold coffee and a fag of course. Where we sat is just about one and a half kilometres from home and coming back through the town added another one and a half. I’m sure, that with the break in the middle, the doctor would forgive me. My foot is slowly going down and much less painful now. Did we take any photos on the way? Just these two flowers, hope that’s good enough for you.

May 22^nd Today I was chauffeur Bob, taking Huan and one other person to court. Remember the never ending saga of our gas? Well, they had another court hearing today. Huan managed to take a picture or two before the hearing started, not so good, but they do show you the court.

I believe that’s the court recorder in the centre and the opposition lawyer on the right. I was impressed by all the IT hardware which Huan tells me is provided by the court. I presume both parties can see what the recorder enters. Not so impressive of course was the outcome, nothing has changed. The details are complex but in my view, we have one major failing on our side. I mentioned the opposition lawyer, well, we don’t have one. That would cost too much money!

Having had a break from the house I cancelled any walk today and just put my foot up again. Mind you, I had once again volunteered to cook for her ladyship. I don’t know about you but I really enjoy cooking, I suppose it is more enjoyable when you don’t have to do it all the time. Today’s offering was chilli con carne, well almost, it was one the “a la Bob” versions. The rice was a mixture of glutinous white rice and brown rice mixed together which made it almost impossible to shape for presentation. Still, you can see enough to get the idea.

May 23^rd We followed orders slightly better this morning and didn’t get to three kilometres. That was how I’d planned it, a walk to the lottery shop, duck into the market and then straight back home. On our way out, and back, we noticed an upsurge of work in the river area. There were men in red overalls all over the place, standing on the old dam, operating excavators, working on the new bridges and even, after months of waiting, moving a large waste water pipe off the river bed and up to the road where hopefully it will be buried and do the job it’s designed for, direct the storm run off into the river.

No sooner had we reached our gate than Yu’s husband came running up in a bit of a panic. It seemed that an old gent, about eighty, had injured his head while cleaning a shared balcony. He had scraped a flap of skin off and, because it was his head, he was bleeding a fair bit. “Could I be the ambulance and take him to the hospital?” was the question. Well, I could hardly say no could I? You can just about make him out in this screenshot from the dashcam.

We dropped them off and haven’t heard anything else so we’re assuming the old man is fine. He had been carrying the flap of skin that had come off in the hope that they would be able to stitch it back on. I told Huan that they would probably just dress the wound and wait for his skin to grow back of its own accord.

Anyway, why did we go to the market on a Saturday? Huan had decided she wanted another of my stews again today, ostensibly to use up this week’s vegetables. I believe her! We bought half a ready cooked duck and this is what we ended up with. It would appear that even half a duck is a bit much, the breast is with the soup in the bowls, the remainder is on the plate, and we will be eating more of the same tomorrow. PS Spot the baps.

May 24^th / May 25^th Boring end to the week I’m afraid. My foot is still not back to normal so no walks for two days and only shopping today. I’ve been filling up the time by binge watching “The Saint”, in black and white! I’d forgotten how I used to be such a big fan of Roger Moore and how his Volvo P1800 was probably the first car I ever fell in love with. I still remember sitting with my parents and siblings watching when I was a young teenager, good times.

I guess I’m not so young anymore, but, we’re still making memories and still, for the most part having a good time. Perhaps we’ll have to drive out somewhere in the next couple of weeks while my foot heals, we’ll see how it goes. Bye for now.

New Glasses, Rabbit on a Hot Tin Roof, The Sky is Falling

December 9^th It was that time of the month again, time for us to visit the hospital and get someone to stick a big needle in my belly. We were prepared, up reasonably early, and ready to go by seven forty five. However, we couldn’t go!

We knew whose car it was, Huan went and knocked on her door. She didn’t knock very hard because the lady in question has a dicky heart. There was a phone number in the car, but we both managed to read it incorrectly, thinking that it began with 137. It was another neighbour passing who said it was 139 that got our morning back on track. By twenty past eight, she had moved her car and we were on our way.

Arriving at the hospital and seeing the lengths of the queues everywhere we thought we’d end up having to return again after lunch. I’m sure if I’d been alone that would have been the case but Huan is braver than I am when it comes to Chinese bureaucracy and so we were actually all done by lunch time.

After lunch, we had a walk to the ViVision Lasik centre to see about my eyes. I will be seventy in February at which time my driving licence will need to be renewed, and I will have to pass an eye test. With my eyes as they are now, I would fail. When we arrived there, the English speaking member of staff was on a day off. The girls on the desk told me that they could test my eyes, for ¥300.00. Being the cheapskate that I am we moved on.

We went to a place very near the hotel and made enquiries there. The staff handed over to the ‘doctor’ who said I would need to have my eyes tested to see if I was suitable for Lasik. She also said the test was free. Well, how could I say no? It was a very thorough eye test and the doctor’s English was superb. She even found the remains of a dead mosquito in my left eye! Because I was asking questions she explained everything as she did it. I had to sit in front of four different machines in one office then another one in her office before sitting with the multi-lens machine. What was her verdict? My eyes are not suitable for Lasik surgery. Instead she could recommend either “Lens Replacement” or plain old glasses. My brother and his wife both had their lenses replaced in the UK at a cost of £6,000.00 each. Here, it would cost me between £10,000.00 and £12,000.00! Needless to say, I opted for glasses. I will have to have ‘progressive’ lenses.

So, it was back to her office again for more tests after which I had to walk around for twenty minutes wearing the long distance lenses, then, with the near distance lenses, read a book (which Huan fetched from the hotel for me) for fifteen minutes and finally wear the long distance lenses for another ten minutes. Here’s a picture of me with one of the lenses.

The next step was to choose some frames. Now, those of you who know me will know that I am not a big fan of name brands so the first thing I did was try the cheaper frames. None of them really worked for me, comfort wise or style wise. I ended up settling for Ray Bans, who I thought only made sunglasses. More test were then done with me wearing those frames. The lenses will be Zeiss so they should be OK. The glasses will be ready in a week but we probably won’t collect them until January when I have my next ‘needle’ appointment.

In the evening we met Jake for dinner and introduced him to the pleasure of大盘鸡, Dàpán jī which as you may remember, translates as ‘big plate chicken’. This time, the proprietor offered us the bigger pan and as there were three of us, we accepted. Here’s Jake sat with Huan waiting for me to finish with the camera so he can dig in.

I’m pleased to report that Jake was suitably impressed and even took a doggy bag home with him so that Rachel could try it too.

December 10^th This morning, after a good night’s sleep, it was a shopping day. Strangely enough, we always sleep well in this hotel, so much so that we have tried to find out where the mattresses are from. Unfortunately, there are no names on them and the hotel staff have no idea!

Carrefour was our first stop where we found cheese, butter and red cabbage. The Grocery was next where we bought a few things but nothing for Christmas. They did have huge turkeys, well, too huge for Huan and I anyway, but there were no cakes, pies or puddings. From there we went to Corner’s Deli, where we found marmalade but again no Christmas stuff. They did have European style Christmas cakes but they don’t work for me. Our final shopping stop was RT Supermarket where, after a little lunch, we stocked up on sliced bread, filleted fish and other odds and sods. One of those odds and sods was ‘fish skins’, what’s left after they’ve prepared the smoked salmon. We fry them, they’re quite tasty and of course fish is supposed to have goodness in its skin. Another of the odds and sods was this; the sales lady said it was some kind of broccoli. A Google search tells me it’s ‘Romanesco broccoli’ or ‘Roman cauliflower’. I’ll let you know what it tastes like!

Back home in Wuzhishan by around four o’clock, the first surprise for Huan, the house was cold, much colder than Haikou had been. There followed a lazy evening for me and the usual dancing for Huan.

December 11^th This morning the weather was miserable so when Huan went singing, I stayed home and got on with dashcam work, enjoying FB because I was able to get back on, and also enjoying reading the Daily Telegraph, free of charge. Once the UK election is over, it won’t be free; it’ll be back to a paid subscription, which I don’t have.

Our normal weekly shopping was done this afternoon, much less than usual though. No sooner were we home than Huan was out again, rehearsing the teacher’s tribute act. She’s a busy lady! In fact, after our dinner, ‘fish skins’, she was off out again, dancing. Rain stopped play there though so she was home early. Back to normal for me, guitar and Chinese.

December 12^th Another miserable day for the weather so consequently a lazy day for us. Huan didn’t have singing today as she is not part of the ‘show group’. If she hadn’t missed a day taking me to hospital, she could possibly have been included. She did the washing, I spent ages changing the aspect ratios of old photos from 4:3 to 16:9 wherever I could. 2007 was completed and five months of 2008. Only another eleven years to go! Well, it should be less than that, I can’t remember when I decided that 16:9 was better for the computer.

Oh, I nearly forgot, we had our new fangled broccoli tonight, but as it was cooked in the rice cooker along with the soft pork and the vegetables I can’t say very much about it. If you cook cauliflower or broccoli in the same way, the result is the same, mush!

December 13th There was a slight improvement in the weather today, glimpses of sun now and then, so Huan suggested I take the scenic mountain route. I agreed and then didn’t bother. Instead, I just zigged and zagged around the town until I got the daily ten done. I started off checking on the allotments. You can find these all over the place in China, any old bit of land will do. Sometimes the local government has its hands full trying to keep public areas free of local ‘farmers’. I hasten to add, these do not belong to us, nor do any others.

After a few zigs and zags I took the river route and as I was passing the ‘public conveniences’ a man came out and engaged me in conversation, as you do. He asked the usual questions, was I from America, was I from Germany etc. I gave him a negative response to each and when he finally asked which country, I answered England, in Chinese of course. I had to tell him twice at which point he carried on the conversation in almost perfect English. He was giving me history lessons about the opium wars, the ‘Empire’ and America. He told me that English was better than American so I pointed out his American pronunciation! Law came into the conversation and he was convinced that Chinese law was better than UK law. Funnily enough, he also said he was a Christian and did a lot for charity. He was carrying some articles he had written, in English, about support for children with cerebral palsy, autism and something else which I forget. We then had a small discussion about his faith and the government, interesting. I would say he is a good, although quite a mixed up person.

I also met quite a few of my four legged friends today, they had obviously missed me! No photos of them though. In fact, the only other photo I took today was of my belly. When I took a shower after my walk, I noticed that this month, the nurse had bruised me, quite badly in fact. Perhaps it was too near her lunchtime. However, I don’t think you need to see that!

December 14^th As promised it was a walk up the scenic mountain route today. We still had to go via the apartment complex, the road is not accessible yet. Not much has changed there except for the addition of a few small creatures. I’m not sure whether they are loudspeakers or lights. I couldn’t see any speaker grills and of course it was daytime so no sign of any lights. Here are some of them.

You may remember the route we took last time on this walk, over the hill and not up the road. I didn’t fancy the steps today so we took the more usual road route, along with what appeared to be half the population of Northern China. The snowbirds were out in force. It’s actually not too bad, some of them are regulars and will remember us and stop for a chat, others are ‘newbies’ and surprised to see a foreigner, so they also stop for a chat.

To make sure we, or I, got my ten in, we came back via the river and the farmer’s market. I had seen yesterday that the Wuzhishan Food Festival had disappeared along with the mini car show, but Huan was a little surprised. We’ll have to check the signs again to see what we got wrong. Anyway, today’s photo of the farmer’s market is again TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine. Supposedly, whatever is made from these would be good for the problems I have with my hands now and then. I think I’ll give it a miss; I have trust issues with some TCM.

December 15^th What a lovely day for a ramble today. We decided to go through the countryside, but not as far as I’d planned yesterday as we both woke up a little late. Our first photo however, is not the country side, but a set of doors. I’m sure you’d agree that they look to be quite expensive ones too. Now take a closer look and see how they secure them. This is far from unusual in China, in fact it is far more common than seeing doors with actual locks built into them!

Once in the countryside, apart from the usual ducks and chickens, we found a rabbit on a roof! He wasn’t in a hutch on the roof, just scampering free. We missed the photo of him on his back legs having a good old nose at us, but here he is anyway.

The next thing we missed was a real live snake. Well, Huan saw it in the irrigation canal for the rice fields at the side of the road and she called me. By the time I got there it had disappeared into a crevice somewhere.

Now, you know we like planning and that our plans don’t always work out the way we want them to. I wonder who, if anybody, planned these steps.

By the time we reached the steps above we had covered eight kilometres so it was time to turn for home. If we had been up earlier, we would have gone much further and maybe caught a bus home. I wish we had done that. “Why?” I hear you ask. “Because I fell in a ditch!” I respond. To be fair, only half of me actually fell in, my left half. It slid not so very graciously down the slope. My right half tried to follow, not so graciously, and slammed my knee into the road surface. Pain! I had to sit for a few minutes before I could struggle to a standing position and then carry on walking the remaining five kilometres home. We have no photos of that because Huan was too busy worrying about me to take her phone out. Good lady!

Sunday meant a full English for us both, teacher tribute practice for Huan and a nice long soak in the bath for me. It wasn’t so easy getting out today! Ah, don’t you just love it when old age creeps up on you? I must admit to feeling this more than usual, despite it just being a knock on the knee. I didn’t feel like writing the blog, practicing the guitar or doing Chinese lesson reviews. Needs must though so I knuckled down and got them all done.

December 16^th The “ditch dummy” slept very badly last night! I am not a great fan of pain as I’m sure many of you are aware and last night I was tossing and turning all night long trying to find a position that would ease my knee. I failed!

Thank God Monday has become my new rest day, I would have found it difficult to go walkies today. In fact it may be difficult for a few days. Standing is not bad, sitting or lying, while awake, is not bad, but transitioning between sitting and standing is not easy at all! Even getting into the car for the weekly shop was a bit of a struggle.

Shopping itself can sometimes be a struggle too. I don’t recall ever seeing this in the UK, or even in the large supermarkets in the UAE. Here, they stock the shelves while the shop is open, not only that, but during busy times! There’s not much chance of navigating your trolley through there is there?

Mind you, I was not the only one with troubles today, the Queen had some too. She was sat in the “Throne Room”, minding her own business, as you do, when the sky (ceiling) began to fall down around her ears. Luckily for her, she was out before the worst of it. Here’s the initial photo looking from the door and the final one looking towards the window.

We managed to get someone to come and have a look this evening; we will of course need a new ceiling. He seemed totally unperturbed that a ceiling should fall down after twelve years and thought that ten years was pretty normal!

December 17^th “Hopalong Cassidy” is much better this morning although he still didn’t sleep so well. At least he doesn’t have to visit the hospital today which was worrying him a bit last night. Now transitioning from sitting to standing is merely a mite uncomfortable. Walking, to be on the safe side, was postponed for yet another day!

This morning we had the foreman of the bathroom repair gang round, measuring up again, and then we went with him to choose our new ceiling tiles. He also took us to a couple of light shops but I wasn’t impressed at all. After lunch, it was straight onto Taobao again to see if we could find anything better. We think we did, you can let us know when we eventually receive the lights and fit them.

The ‘gang’ were supposed to be starting work tomorrow but lo and behold, one of them turned up late in the afternoon to ‘prepare the way’. He removed all the hanging bits of wood and ceiling and left us with this.

We’ll see how they get on tomorrow and keep you informed.

“Lonely Table Set for One” this evening, Huan had to go out. They are trying to sort out a video for the old people’s choir area boss, the one who provides the practice space for them. They had to get dressed for the part. This morning’s “Tribute to the Teacher” was rehearsed in red T-shirts and black skirts, looked good to me! However, the class coordinator of the old people’s choir was not impressed and they have to wear dresses. They will also decide the order of the performance etc. They have been told to allow five hours for tonight’s effort. I guess it would be like our technical rehearsals although I’d bet it’s not as well organised.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is not my week. Tonight, I managed, of all things, to fall off my office chair. I knocked a receipt onto the floor, leaned forwards to pick it up whereupon my chair wheels decided to go backwards very rapidly. Luckily, it wasn’t my knee that broke the fall this time but my large posterior! I’ll survive to fight another day.

December 18^th And so we come to the end of yet another glorious day in Wuzhishan. For my sins, I was on ‘bathroom duty’ today, no, not cleaning it, but standing by for the ceiling installation team. Would you believe that by this evening, with dinner well and truly over, they still haven’t turned up? I thought that kind of thing only happened in the UK.

Something else that hasn’t shown up today is water. Of the six buildings in our complex, five have water and ours doesn’t. Trying to get any sense out of the maintenance company is like trying to get blood out of a stone. It went off just before lunch yesterday so it’s now been over twenty four hours! Need I remind you also that we still have no gas?

Tomorrow they have a committee meeting which you would think would be about essentials such as gas and water. You’d be wrong of course. The meeting is about the ‘annual show’ put on for the residents who happen to be here. I say ‘annual’, but there’s only ever been one show and that was last year. If they are going to spend any money on a show, I will be most annoyed and have asked Huan to make sure she lets them know that she is too.

December 19^th Bathroom standby duties for Bob again and a committee meeting for Huan. No annual show was mentioned at all in the meeting; perhaps they had a change of mind. Gas was mentioned, there will be another court case on the twenty second of this month, a Sunday. It appears that the courts are very busy at the moment and work seven days a week. Anyway, this court case is to try and retrieve the money that was paid to the previous gas company, who as you may remember, had an owner who died. The company is now under new ownership. I’m afraid I don’t have the faith that everyone else has; I don’t believe that money will ever be recovered. Water was the other item on the agenda. The solution it seemed was to repair and clean the pump which would then be used to pump water up to our rooftop tank. It needs repairing because it has never been used!

Just before lunch there was a knock on our door, it was one of the maintenance team telling us that the water problem was solved. They had discovered that someone had turned off the water outside the gate to our apartment complex. My first question was “Why did it take them two days to find that out?” My second question, which I didn’t bother asking, not trusting any kind of understandable answer, would have been “How come five out of the six buildings still had water, and only ours didn’t?” The only reason I can think of is that we have more residents than them and thus emptied our tank quicker, not very feasible though.

Just settling down to watch ‘The Bill’ after dinner when there was another knock on the door. It was a man from the bathroom team; he had come to leave his ladder and tools and to prepare the lateral supports for the new ceiling. Now we have installation materials on the bedroom floor and a glue smell to sleep with! He left just before half past six promising to be back between eight and eight thirty in the morning. All we have to hope now is that our new ceiling light arrives tomorrow.

December 20^th We slept in the spare bedroom last night to avoid the sealant smell from our bathroom. Huan slept well, I didn’t. Memory mattresses, which are comfortable, rely on your body heat. As I get very hot when I sleep, the mattress seems to amplify that heat and it feels like being in a soft oven!

Bathroom standby duty was worthwhile today, the fitter turned up five minutes before Huan left for her singing class. He was done by ten fifteen, apart from the light, so I began the ‘clean up’. I thought Huan would be so pleased when she arrived home to find everything moved back into our bathroom. I failed! Ten minutes after I started the water went off again.

Huan came home, angry with me because I had ‘switched my phone off’ and there had been a Taobao delivery. Needless to say, I had not switched my phone off! Seeing is believing for Huan and when she saw that my phone hadn’t moved since last night and that it was still on she almost believed me. It was only when she tried calling me and got the same error message that she believed me. Just a glitch in the matrix! I called her with no problems and then she called me back, this time, successfully.

She had come in carrying the delivery which turned out to be the two lights we had ordered. The bathroom team were recalled to fit one of them on the new ceiling. I am perfectly capable of doing this but I wanted it included in the same job just in case of future problems. I’m quite pleased with the finished job, Huan is happy as it’s better than she had hoped. The bathroom foreman was suitably impressed; our choice of light fitting was very different and much better than any he had showed us previously. So, here it is. (P.S. That’s the view looking up from the throne!)

Just after lunch the water came back on so I was able to finish the job I had started earlier. All our junk has been moved back to our bathroom. Mind you, we have far less junk than most westerners have. The next item on the agenda? Well, we will be emptying the second bathroom and calling the bathroom team back to replace that ceiling and light too. It hasn’t fallen down, yet, but if you look closely, you can see that it is beginning to bulge. Better to be safe than sorry.

December 21^st Well, I wasn’t on bathroom standby today, not exactly anyway. I had to stay in because it was the turn of Doctor Bob. Huan was poorly, not too bad this time, it was only her nose and throat but she still needed looking after. I was there with ginger and honey tea as required. Like all good Chinese girls she had rice soup for lunch, so no full English today. I spent my time cropping photos again, 2010 is now completed.

By evening time she was on the mend and sandwiches were acceptable. After dinner I walked her down to the town square for her daily dancing, a little bit of exercise and fresh air was probably beneficial. For me, it was lottery ticket duty. I did try and get you another picture though, it’s been a while. Most evenings these birds seem to settle down in this tree. I don’t know how long they stay there but it’s not the first time I’ve seen them. I’m afraid I am still just a little too far away but they are visible.

December 22^nd Huan was much better this morning, just as well because she had a singing practice. I was once more on bathroom standby. I did do the cooking for lunch and so we had our full English today. We’ll have the second one tomorrow. Huan told me that when she was out she had seen and spoken to the bathroom foreman. He said he will come on Tuesday or Wednesday. I was not impressed with Wednesday at all and Huan wasn’t sure why. She won’t be here in the morning because they have another practice that day. The ‘show’ will be on the twenty seventh. I reminded her that Wednesday would be Christmas day and that I will be busy cooking. Mind you, I’m only doing roast chicken this year. PS The court case for the gas was postponed yet again.

December 23^rd Last night we had a call from the bathroom foreman, the tiles we had chosen are out of stock. Huan was free today, so half our morning was spent trying to find some new ones. We succeeded in finding some that pleased the Minister of Home Affairs so then the complications started. I don’t quite know how, but we have ended up with a new bathroom installation team, the foreman of the old one decided that with Huan and the new supplier, he wasn’t going to make any money! We now have to wait at least another three days.

The rest of the morning was taken up with the car wash and shopping. I let Huan go into the market alone to choose a live chicken for our Christmas dinner. I guess I must be an even bigger chicken! The supermarket had its usual Christmas display, complete with Father Christmas and his obligatory saxophone. Don’t ask why, we have no idea! Neither the lights nor Santa were operational though.

The evening was taken up with me preparing the oven; we haven’t used it for a few months, and cleaning up the hole where the hob fits. I also took delivery of my new chair, yet another one. The one I have now keeps going down! The new one also has arms that will fold out of the way. That should help when I practice the guitar in front of the computer. I didn’t feel like assembling it this evening but you can see the state of the box it arrived in.

Recovering Playboy, Needle, Walking Again

April 1^st April Fool’s Day today and as usual I have done nothing. One of these days I must really try and get one over on Huan. So, it’s also Monday, which means it’s our weekly shopping day. Guess who was still on duty when we drove out? I’m sure you guessed correctly, the ‘old’ maintenance company is still ‘in situ’.

Rain stopped play! No photos of the ladies with their dresses and pigtails I’m afraid.

April 2^nd Early morning meeting for Huan, with Jilin woman, in our living room. It would appear that the gas man, God rest his soul, has passed away. He had cancer, which obviously progressed very quickly when he left for his home province. All this time we have been saying things about him, I feel a little ashamed now. His family is coming back, perhaps to sell the property they own here, and also to maybe sell the gas business. One good thing is that we believe they have a map of the pipe layout which means we should be able to get things moving with the government again.

Worrying gossip from the meeting, the bosses of a construction company are trying to find out how many ‘owners’ we have in our complex, and how much land is involved. It looks like they want to try and pull a fast one, get our buildings knocked down and then rebuild and sell for more money. New building is not allowed, but, rebuilding on an existing site can get around the rules! If that did happen, we must by law be either, compensated with cash to the value of existing market rates or, provided with another place at least one and a half times as big. We won’t worry just yet.

We were housebound again this morning due to the rain and Huan was bored. She decided to play with my hair, telling me how my bald patch was getting smaller. To counter my disbelief, she even took photos! According to her, there are hundreds of small hairs where before there were none, and in fact they are slowly growing. Needless to say, my doubts remain. What do you think?

Still housebound in the evening too, no dancing for Huan and no small walkies for me. There is one advantage though, with me sitting down most of the day, yesterday and today, there have been no ‘dribbles’! (Sorry about that, but I’m sure some of you will be interested in how long it takes to go really back to normal after a prostatectomy.)

April 3^rd We woke up to a nice day today and after a quick check of the weather decided we ought to get out early. Rain will stop play later! Being early, we walked a little further than we have been doing recently, 10.7 kilometres in fact. We took it fairly slowly but I was still wilting when we got home. It made a very pleasant change though, a little way out of the town, peace and quiet of the countryside with of course, some photos for you!

You can see in the second photo that if someone doesn’t come along and clean up the paths we won’t be walking that way for much longer. Around the same area, although not quite close enough for us to get in and have a good look around, were some more ‘ghost villas’. You’ve seen some before, Hainan has a lot. These may not get much sun in the morning but the afternoons should be fine. Notice that they are all empty as are some of the apartments behind them.

Quite a few ducks, chicken and geese around today but this is the one that took my fancy. He even has his own ‘duckline logo’!

Sometimes I wonder how Huan lived through her childhood! If I wasn’t with her she would be tasting almost every fruit she sees on the trees. Now I don’t know whether these fruits are poisonous or not but unless I am starving, I am not going to try them. They are about the size of a fingertip, soft inside with hundreds of small seeds. I forgot to take an internal photo, sorry!

The last photo on our way back was taken of what I think used to a durian fruit. How it got into this particular tree, I don’t know. What I did see was it had been there a while and that the ants had found it. Here’s a cropped version of the photo. They appear to be trying to get that ‘tree trunk’ into the hole. This would have been a good day to have a macro video camera.

Back to Huan for the final photo though. Something flew in front of her and landed on her hat. She was too busy to really notice so didn’t panic too much. It wasn’t anything dangerous though, just one of the bugs we have reported on previously.

Evening time and the ladies thought they would do their dancing, with their dresses as previously planned. Being the dutiful husband, I accompanied Huan, as far as the ‘guard room’, where we all turned round and went home because – it was raining!

April 4^th Out early(ish) this morning to make the most of the weather. The forecast is rain again in the evening. I decided to make it a Fuji day and take a few photos for you. How does 187 sound? I did manage to prune it down to 111 but I guess that is still a few too many for the blog. Let’s see if I can narrow down the field. I quite like this one, converted to black and white with Picasa, of one of the street cleaning trucks disappearing up a side street.

And for the next one, how about rabbits sharing a meal, and chopsticks? Well, I suppose they weren’t really using the chopsticks and of course have no idea that in a few months they will be on the receiving end!

Now Huan insisted I put this one in. She seemed to find it amusing that I was stood under the Playboy sign knowing full well that those parts don’t work at the moment!

I saw quite a lot of my four legged friends today, dogs, goats and cows, even some six legged ones, ants, but I’ll only show you one. Here’s the cobbler’s dog, not so sure whether he should eat something from a stranger or not. The sausage was provided by the cobbler but the little pooch was still not so sure.

Last month we showed you how dry the river was, well, they must have opened one of the upstream gates to allow the recent rains to flow. As you can see, the water level is back to ‘high’ and a lot of greenery has been carried down with it.

Another ‘creature of the forest’, this time a snowbird, quite a melodic one in fact.

There were also a lot of photos of flowers taken, but I’ll only use one, and I’ll make this the last one for today.

As for the evening, the weather forecast was spot on and rain stopped dancing!

April 5^th Nice weather again, and I had a plan, to take the Fuji out for a walk again. So that’s what we did, starting off a little earlier than yesterday, but planning only on going around the town. I wanted to pop into the Chinese medicine shop. Unfortunately the plan went a little awry. Someone, who shall remain nameless, (but he is the author of this missive), forgot to take a spare battery. Yesterday I experimented with ‘continuous shooting’ which drains the battery a little, and I started off with one like that today, only double speed. Many of you may have read the nightmare stories of Chinese parents, many of you may in these modern times almost keep your own children on a leash. Well this is quite normal here, a nine year old boy and his seven year old sister flagged down a motorbike taxi, on they got and off they went. We do actually know these two and this is not an unusual thing for them to do.

Another regular sight in China is loads of people ‘mainlining’, or on a drip anyway. Quite a lot of the time the people who are on the receiving end seem quite healthy, although I know looks can be deceiving. I never look ill when I feel I am. However, some people do use the drips as a preventative medicine and not a curative one!

I took a few more black and white photos around the town, a video of some mealworm, still alive and wriggling. That one I posted on FB with the comment “Anyone for dinner?” Then I had another bout of continuous shooting of Huan buying the weekend’s lottery tickets, we live in hope…

As you can see her face is well hidden, she is not a big fan of having her photo taken at all. Mind you, I don’t particularly like posing either. When we got to the riverside Huan wanted me to take photos of the ‘hanging roots’ to show you. You have seen them before but Huan thought you might like to see them with this camera. You guessed it; this is when I realised that I should have brought the spare battery! I was kicking myself even more a little later when we spotted a guy with a much bigger one than me, (lens, you bad people), focussing on a bird on a stalk in the river. It was quite possibly a kingfisher but it wasn’t quite near enough for my eyes to make out and the Nokia, despite it’s good cropping capability, couldn’t give me a clear enough picture. Better telephoto lens in my future I foresee!

Rain stopped dancing again, it bucketed down all afternoon, but it eased off enough for Huan to join the ladies for a trip to the market. She wants to practice her WeChat wallet. Yes, she has learned how to buy things only using her phone. I tried, and failed. I think it may be because my phone is Windows, and I have WeChat International.

April 6^th Another nice day and another town walk, this time sans Fuji. Here’s a good one for you, a new shopping precinct, you know Gucci, Boss etc, except those shops will never actually be here. Look at the escalator, covered with a blue tarpaulin. In the sales blurb for this precinct there are two escalators shown leading to the RHS of the ‘beige’ balcony. As you can see here, there is now only one, the other one is at the other end of the precinct which, you guessed it, should also have had two!

Nothing else special from the morning. In the evening the rain held off today so the ladies went off dancing. Due to a lack of communication between them they weren’t all in skirts, (or dresses or trousers), and they hadn’t synchronised their hair styles. They promised me that would be tomorrows plan so I skipped taking photos of them today except for the ‘march to the town square’.

On the way home, it was a lot more B&W street shots which I won’t bore you with, one of my local cat friends who I like to have a chat with now and then, and just as I walked into our complex, a sunset. I hope I did better with this one for you. What do you think?

April 7^th Another Fujiwalk day and a good one it was too. Loads of photos taken, B&W street views, plants and flowers, guys fishing, people playing music etc. However, I think I’ll just show you the wildlife, I was very lucky today, neither of them moved away from the camera. I only took one of the dragonfly, a lot more of the lizard, but I like this one where he appears to be coming back for another look at me.

And as the ladies promised yesterday, they were all wearing dresses today, and all had their hair in pigtails. As you can guess I took hundreds of photos, especially as I used the camera on continuous shooting a lot. Today is San Yue San day and there is a show in the square this evening. One of these days we’ll go to it but it’s usually so crowded we’re giving it a miss again this year. You only need one photo though don’t you? Here are the ladies posing in front of the San Yue San show poster.

April 8^th Up very early today, in the middle of the night in fact! I woke up at ten past four for the usual reason but as we had to go to Haikou today I didn’t go back to bed. I decided not to disturb Huan but even so, we were on the way by half past six. Here’s a screen shot from the dashcam.

“Why did we have to go to Haikou?” I hear you ask. Well, it’s been a month since my first ‘female hormone’ injection so I was due the next one today. We had an uneventful journey, which was probably just as well; because when we got there, I was soon getting grumpy again. We went to the usual ‘check in’ where you pay to see the doctor, which I had to do to get the prescription, only to find out that everything has changed. We had to go to a different place, the same cashiers that deal with all the prescriptions. As it was Monday morning, this meant long queues!

Once we had our ‘piece of paper’ we headed off to the doctor’s surgery only to find out we were number 44 and they hadn’t even reached 20! Huan did her bit by going around and pestering various staff and we ended up jumping the queue, because we only needed a prescription. It’s not really the right way is it? I was happy enough but I would imagine a lot of Chinese people were not so happy seeing a foreigner go to the front of the queue. I should point out that ‘jumping the queue’ is not at all unusual here anyway.

Anyway, once we had the prescription it was back to one of the cashier offices again to pay for the ‘needle’. At least that was cheaper than we had been told, ¥1,700.00 instead of ¥2,000.00. Once we had paid we had to wait until someone called out my name so that we could collect said needle. Well we heard my name, but with no window number. There were six windows, so we tried all the ones with a man calling out the names. Success! Here’s what that particular cashier’s office and pharmacy looked like, Huan is in there somewhere waiting for my name to be called.

Having the injection was no real trouble, only the usual cold sweats and panicking from me. I wonder what the nurse thought of me closing my eyes and plugging my ears. Even I’m not sure why I do that bit! She wasn’t as gentle as the ward nurse had been but she was OK.

Once out of the hospital a trip to RT Supermarket was called for, it’s the only place we can buy decent bread. Haikou is full of one way streets and as usual the Sat-Nav led us astray. We don’t visit Haikou enough to know the traffic system so well which means that every time I drive there I’m convinced I’m getting points and traffic fines galore! We’ll find out in August, our next visit to the Traffic Police.

It was a great relief to eventually get back on the road, and after a stop for fuel and lunch, we eventually arrived back in Wuzhishan. The first thing we noticed was how quiet it still was today, maybe everybody decided to take an extra day’s holiday. Here’s another dashcam screen shot of us arriving home. We were two very happy bunnies!

Huan did her usual dama dancing this evening and I got busy with a lot of dashcam work. If we don’t both sleep well tonight there’s something wrong!

April 9^th Well, aren’t we the lucky ones? We did both sleep well, me till gone seven, Huan a little less. Today is Tuesday but, as we weren’t here yesterday, we had to go shopping today. You know, you read a lot about unemployment in the world, mostly in the western press but it is not that uncommon in China either. Life’s not always that sweet, even these two poor souls were left on the shelf recently!

I spent the rest of the morning finishing my dashcam work and then had a lovely old people’s nap in the afternoon. I did make up for it though; I went for a ramble around the river this evening, while Huan was doing her ‘Dancing Queen’ impression. I managed a few decent photos with the Fuji but it’s obvious I still have a great deal to learn. I’ll leave you today with a couple of shots of the moon, taken with a 16-50mm zoom lens, not one of the best.

April 10^th As it’s four weeks since we came back from the hospital we decided it was time to start venturing away from just the town and the river again. It’s quite a long time since we visited the village of Chang Hao so that was the plan. It will be quite a long time before we venture that way again! Since we last went they have begun work on what we think will be the highway off ramp from Haikou and on ramp for Sanya, along with all the road widening that that incurs. As you can see it’s dusty, and it’s also most of the way to the village.

We did take a couple of detours though, mostly just to get away from the dust, to places we’ve been before but are always a pleasure to revisit. As you can see, away from the main road, the scenery is great, the air is clear, the sun is shining. What you can’t see is the Belisha beacon that is now my face!

April 11^th I was all set by half past eight this morning, unfortunately, Huan had the rice cooker on working as a steamer. That meant we were a little delayed and the route had to be changed. We went off past the construction site that we had been told would be the new market area for Wuzhishan. It seemed like a good idea, a brand new place for the fruit and veg, for the fish and meat, with car parking to boot. They lied! We passed the hoardings today and saw this photo. It answers a lot of our questions about just what was going on around the back of the ‘market’. There is no plan to move the market, instead it’s another five tall apartment buildings, just what we need, I don’t think.

Today’s walk was a countryside one, not off the tarmac but around some of the villages. Lots of black and white photos of those taken, they bring back memories for me of when I first started taking pictures, a ‘few short years ago’.

Huan also had me taking pictures of jackfruit, now that we know the difference between that and durian. You, of course, have seen all those pictures before so they’re not going here! Instead I’ll give you another of nature’s marvels, just look how the fruit is protected. A Google image search didn’t come up with any answers for this one, maybe you can try?

Another fruit for you, this time a pineapple. I’ve seen a lot of pineapples in my time, whole fields of them in the Philippines for example. However, I never knew they could be this colour. These were growing wild at the side of the road.

And the last one for you today, a little early for Christmas, is a turkey. He was strutting away and doing things I’d never seen a turkey do before. I guess it was some kind of mating ritual, although he couldn’t get to the female, she was in the coop!

That’s it for today. No dancing for Huan tonight, the teacher fell over a baby last night and can’t dance today. I can just imagine my PTIs in the army giving us the day off if they were injured!! No chance, we’d have still been given the full works no matter how broken he was.

April 12^th Out earlier today and we did twelve kilometres. Lucky for us the weather was not too hot! We saw two more of the same type of lizards that we had seen on the 7^th and again were able to get very close, although I couldn’t quite get to touch them. Coming back through the hillside villages we spotted quite a bit of fauna. Here’s a very protective mother pig with her brood.

Another couple of turkeys were spotted, nowhere near as chubby or as showy as yesterday’s though. Puppies were in the mix too so I got a little cuddle and made the baby of the shop chuckle. His mum was pleased and I have to say I was too. The same shop had three birds in cages, at least one of them was talking, and we heard “ni hao” more than once. I managed to get a couple of decent shots of two of them, even though I had to shoot through the cages.

Your last photo for today is yet another bird, this time a chick, a lovely white one. It seemd to have fallen down from the bank, we could see what was probably its mother strutting around up there. Unfortunately I couldn’t get near enough to give it a helping hand back up. Chicks move almost as fast as chickens. I think it’s only since we’ve been here in Hainan that I’ve understood where the use of ‘chicken’ meaning coward, comes from!

As usual, far too many photographs were taken, eighty-nine in fact, flowers, people, animals and black and whites of village scenery etc. I managed to whittle it down to forty five to keep, still far too many for you, even though I love you all!

Lazy evening for me, Huan off dancing again, let’s hope the teacher doesn’t lose her footing again today.

April 13th Success! My first night of sleeping with no pants on, I thought it was time to try. No leaks! I must say it felt much better being ‘au naturel’ again, especially as the night temperatures are now never less than 22ºC!

The weather was a bit ‘iffy’ today so we stayed in and around the town. I also purposely left the Fuji at home so as not to bombard you with too many photos. We didn’t see much, the farmer’s market was back and the only unusual thing there was what we think was either a ferret’s, stoat’s or weasel’s head. They had obviously already sold the rest of it. I didn’t think you’d want to see that! On the way home we spotted a big spider hanging from a tree and another of those hairy caterpillars. Those I did take photos of, thinking you may enjoy them. Unfortunately, I forgot to take my glasses with me this morning so you don’t get to see them either.

Now this evening’s plan was to go out for a walk when Huan went dancing. I’ve found out why they dance later now, they are worried about the evening sun on their skin! Anyway, my plan went awry, again. This time I can blame a niece who shall be nameless, I doubt she will read this anyway, she’s far too busy. She shared a musical YouTube link and that was it, I was lost for a couple of hours, clicking on all kinds of stuff. YouTube for a music fan must be like computer games for today’s youngsters, definitely addictive for me. Lots of memories brought back, and of course checking my music library to be sure I already had what I was stumbling across.

April 14^th A gorgeous day today, probably a bit hot for Huan, up to 31ºC, but then again she does have her Japanese hat to protect her. It was another Fuji day but I took great care no to go overboard with the photo snapping today. At the rate I’m going my hard disk will soon need updating, again! We strayed away from the town today and went on one of favourite walks but took a detour down to the river. We have walked up this road in the past, but never down it. Here’s a panorama I took at the bottom of the road.

We had to head back up the road, yes; we had to go back as there was no way forward, not without some rubber shoes anyway. On the way we were both wondering where the cows were in a stall and why we couldn’t see them. However, when we got a little closer…

They look very curious but when I went around to the gate only one would come and have a sniff at me and let me touch it, and that was the youngest one! Too young to know that humans are bad news I suppose. Nothing else to report today.

April 15^th You know the routine by now, Monday is shopping day. However, there was a slight change today. Remember the saga of the gas? Well, Huan was leading a delegation of the residents, well five people, down to the government offices to try and get it sorted out. As usual she came back with no good news. It seems we have a pipe that has to be repaired and that after that we may be able to connect to the town gas, which I don’t think is operational yet. It still means we have a damaged pipe and nobody knows where it is under the ground in order to be able to repair it! PS The gasman’s family have not yet returned.

Evening time and Huan went off to her dancing so I decided a walk was in order. Not just a walk, but a faster one than usual was the plan. I succeeded in doing ten kilometres in one hour and fifty three minutes. Now that may not seem fast for you sprogs out there but I think it’s pretty good for someone who’s sixty nine years old and only recently out of hospital. (Am I tugging on your heartstrings yet?) I did learn that it’s not a good idea to walk so fast just an hour after dinner, rambling would probably be better. I also learnt that going faster makes it much harder to control those pesky leaks!