Long Wait, BIG Needle, Randy Duck, Camelot’s Dead, Dentist Respite, New Library

March 9^th Our day started off very well, up at half past four and ever so glad we didn’t leave the car where we usually park it, we’d never have got out.

However, after an uneventful drive to Haikou, and being early enough for the hospital car park and the cashier, our luck unexpectedly changed. This is our receipt for the doctor, normal price, surgery #2 but patient #45! We are usually below 10 when we arrive this early.

We had time to go out for breakfast, go for a walk around the block and even walk around the little park behind the hospital. Here’s the park and both of us, all masked up.

This was the situation when we got back to the waiting room at nearly half past eleven, the doctor finishes at twelve for lunch. The centre column is ours, surgery number at the top in red, (2), patient being seen in yellow (39) and me in violet (45).

The doctor we saw was Dr Zhang, the one who carried out my operation two years ago. He told us that we should have been to see him last year; nobody told us that at the time! On the good news side, (yes there was more), he said that after today’s injection I needn’t go back until August when he would check all the blood test results again and see whether or not I need to continue with the treatment. That certainly raised my spirits! Mind you, I got a little worried when I saw this month’s dosage, previously it was 3.6mg.

I asked Huan if she would take some photos once we got down to the torture chamber, she took a few, but only two were worth saving. Good grief that’s a big needle! It’s a good job I didn’t see that before, I get nervous enough normally. Seeing that I think I would have wet myself! The nurse was very good at her job though and there was almost no pain. The second photo is me holding a cotton bud to stop the blood, and/or the medicine, popping out again.

And that was it, no more compulsory trips to Haikou until August. We did our usual grocery shopping, bought more butter and cheese than usual, some bratwurst, but couldn’t find any decent sandwich meat this time. We will run out before August of course but Sanya is much nearer and we can do the return trip in a day without having to get up in the middle of the night. Somehow, I stayed awake to drive home and then did nothing except this post. Huan was a little more active than me; she joined the ladies for some dancing in the square.

March 10^th Our power went off just after ten last night, no problem, go to bed, we were both tired after a long day anyway. This morning we were both up early and just after breakfast, would you believe it, the power went off again. Huan had a hulusi class this morning but for me, no problem, go back to bed! I must have needed it; I slept until half past nine. The power then stayed on long enough for me to boil the eggs for our lunch before going off yet again. No, I didn’t take myself off to bed this time! I did the old fashioned thing of reading books instead. By the time Huan came home the power was back again, so she didn’t have to walk up the stairs.

Despite us both still feeling a bit weary, we decided to have a nice long after lunch walk. Our destination was a place that I decided, today, to call Camelot because of the lady in the lake. We first saw her back on the 27^th July 2018 and we wanted to see how she would potentially look now they were building a new hotel there. Before we set off I had to wait a short while for Huan and managed to find these two.

Next up, a couple of cars, the first one you will guess the manufacturer, it’s not Italian, the second one I’m not so sure.

Down Sanyue San street we went until we were just about to leave Wuzhishan and then turned right to follow this little stream.

Huan’s first comment was “Where are the ducks?” Usually we spot them almost immediately we start this part of the walk. We did eventually come across them and lots of photos were taken not only be myself and Freddy but by Huan and Marvin as well. Here’s one of mine.

I chose this one to show you because there’s a story to go with it. I missed it but Huan caught it and took a few photos, not so good when they’re cropped though. This duck on the stone was quite happy and then Huan spotted one fairly rocketing through the water. It became obvious that the one on the rock was a female, the one racing through the water was male, intent on having his evil way with her.

While he was having his fun another male turned up to say “Oi! That’s my wife!” Quite the little battle ensued, before Huan stopped taking photos and came to catch me up. If I’d only known I could have videoed the whole thing.

On we went until we came to the small reservoir that feeds this small stream. Disappointment set in when we realised that nearly all the water had disappeared.

Our disappointment heightened even further when we realised that the lady of the lake was no longer there. In fact the lake was no longer there either, so much for me christening it Camelot.

I soon perked up once we got back on our route, back home along the riverside, when my little three legged friend turned up to say hello. I know he has four legs but only three of them work.

Just around the corner we came across this. Was it bought this way? Did someone just decide to build it this way? Note that the two handlebars work independently of each other, could be a problem if you and your partner disagree.

We took a slight detour then through a new apartment complex, ended up walking out through the main reception and sales area. It was a little on the expensive side, well we think so, for Wuzhishan, ¥16,000.00 a square metre. Their entrance pond looked very nice but it was very difficult to take a picture of it. Panorama wouldn’t work and taking photos to stitch wasn’t easy because if I moved away I lost the bottom of the central design. I really needed to be much higher. Anyway you get the idea. The left side is just the company name 清能/Qīng néng, the right side is 丽景湾/lì jǐng wān which means Regency Bay.

Seeing as how we’ve already had cars today, how about another one. This is a small electric car, probably fine for around town, but not one I think we would like to buy. In fact I probably would not be able to get my legs behind the steering wheel!

We stopped for dinner on the way home but instead of showing you our plates, as I usually do, today I’ll show you the selection. Forgive the clarity but it was taken through the window.

And finally for today’s photos, we both took a liking to this tree. The flowers are at least four different colours, maybe more. Is it natural or has it been cultured? I’m afraid that is something we can’t answer, maybe Gardener Google can help you.

In the evening Huan went off dancing and playing music and I sat in front of the computer to try and bring the Blog up to date. I gave up in the end because I was doing a very good impression of one of those nodding dogs on car dashboards or parcel shelves.

March 11^th This morning I woke up with a stinking headache so we decided to go shopping instead of walking. After lunch, we decided to have a restful day instead! Huan did some music practice. I did yesterday’s work and brought the Blog up to date. I also had to convert some videos for Huan so that she could watch them in the living room and learn how to play her guitar. All the videos I have downloaded play perfectly well on the PC but strangely some of them, not all of them; have sound but no video on the TV. The ‘properties’ of all look the same so I have no idea what the problem is. Converting them to a Youtube format with Lightworks seemed to do the trick. While they were in progress I also did some catching up with my guitar, still a long way to go though. “She of little patience” came in to have a listen and complained that she was having difficulty in even grasping one chord. I tried to explain that I am still not good enough to call myself a guitar player despite playing since September 2019, with a recent three month abstinence of course. I carried on with video converting and guitar practicing while Huan went out for her daily dancing and music session.

March 12^th I thought we were off to the dentist this morning but Huan told me it was tomorrow afternoon. Maybe I’m wrong, but I followed orders. Instead we took the opportunity to have a lazy morning and went to have the car washed instead. Now if we had a villa, I could do it myself, but that’s another story. While the car wash was taking place we had a little walk, enjoying the air, buying the weekend’s lottery tickets and trying to convince Huan that she really needs an electric bike. After the wobbles she had last time she tried that’s not an easy task but I did get her to sit on a three wheeler. Don’t they look just made for each other?

Tuna fish sandwiches for lunch and I told Huan how sandwiches like this were very rare when we were children. It was normally “Shippam’s” meat paste, with no added extras like cucumber or tomato, and with horrible tasting margarine not butter. If we were lucky we got fish paste which at least was not so dry. Once in a blue moon we got even luckier and had real tinned fish, pink salmon if I remember rightly, still margarine and no extras though. Sometimes, we forget just how lucky we are to be able to afford to have all kinds of fruits and vegetables, and to be able to have them all the year round, not just seasonally.

Huan’s drum lesson for this afternoon was cancelled so I thought we’d walk together. I thought wrong, because a few minutes later she got a message from the hulusi teacher. As the classroom was free, (no drum practice), they could have a hulusi lesson instead. Being the gentleman you know I am, I walked her up there and then had a little stroll around town looking for things to take pictures of. I failed.

March 13th Today’s plan for this morning, unusually, went as it should have done. Our first port of call was to be the new library. It has quite an impressive entrance, although it is usually locked with a bicycle lock out of working hours. There is also a temperature scanner on the way in. Being the weekend there were no staff on duty downstairs but I guess the staff on duty upstairs can see what’s going on.

It’s quite impressive, the second floor is for children and the third floor for us slightly older people. It’s all in Chinese so I was a little lost although I did find William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie, Chinese versions. Like all libraries there were people catching up on the news, studying, doing homework or just reading, and it was quiet. As it is new there are still one or two empty shelves but they’re doing well I think. Here are two of the rooms.

My only disappointment was the lack of an English newspaper and no I don’t mean the ones published in the UK. China Daily does have an English edition but it only seems to be available in the bigger cities. If that was available here, I’d be a regular visitor.

They do have a wonderful selection of newspapers and magazines for the locals though, it brought back memories for me of wandering around W. H. Smiths and the like back in Britain. These two titles caught my eye, you probably all know National Geographic, well this is the Chinese edition. The second photo has an English subtitle, I’m not sure why, it’s all Chinese inside. However, more memories were stirred looking at circuit diagrams of various electronic bits and bobs. I wonder if I could still repair anything?

After the library we set off to see how the Saturday market was doing with its new roofed area. It wasn’t. For some reason there was no market today, we’ll have to check back again another time. Home we went via the bap man where we bought some flat bread for tonight’s dinner. Returning down the other side of the river you can see a scarcity of people, probably getting too close to lunch time. The flowers were on the wall outside our building.

After almost falling asleep after lunch I had to slave away getting dinner prepared before we went out to the dentist. Today’s dinner was curry so the rice had to be cooked first, we don’t like using more than one appliance in the kitchen at the same time. (Long story.) Once that was done the vegetables were parboiled and the cucumber raita prepared. Unable to delay any longer I then let Huan drag me off to get my teeth seen to. Unfortunately, the dentist had been called away, his father had been taken ill; he’ll be back in a few days, a lucky escape for me this time.

Despite us both feeling very worn out we had a little walk before going home for me to carry on with the curry. We didn’t really have enough curry powder but before going out I had marinated the chopped beef in soya sauce and some red pepper powder as a failsafe. It worked, the curry was not bad at all, and if you’ve never tried cucumber raita with a curry, I can highly recommend it. Ours today was served with Huan’s four coloured rice again, also good with curry. What would have been even better would have been one of us remembering to take the flat bread out of the fridge! Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

March 14^th “Hey, Sunday sun, Let's go walkin'” courtesy of Neil Diamond, and that was our plan for this Sunday, a nice long country walk.” Inclement weather changed our minds for us, it didn’t actually rain but it was a miserable morning. Instead it was some guitar for me and some guitar and keyboard for Huan. I’m slowly getting back to where I was, not pushing my chord hand though. I also started editing my saved songs to add images of the chords, it may help Huan when she gets a little better and it will help jog my memory too.

A lazy afternoon followed with me watching another spoof James Bond movie, this one even included Lois Maxwell, Bernard Lee, Neil Connery and some other well known Bond actors. The name of the movie, on Youtube, was “The New Spy Against Divided Evil” but checking Wikipedia it appears to have been called “O.K. Connery”, released in America as “Operation Kid Brother”. It comes under the genre of ‘Eurospy’ or ‘Spaghetti Spy’ movies and received absolutely terrible reviews. I found it amusing enough and it passed some time on a lazy Sunday afternoon, what more could you need.

Huan found the guitar learner’s book that came free with my guitar, in Chinese, which is why I don’t use it. The first thing I had to do was scan and print this.

Huan thinks it will make her learning much easier, whereas I think the ‘foreign’ one is far simpler to understand. She also has the colour coded dots on her fretboard that match this one.

An after dinner walk was definitely needed today, even Huan noticed that my left foot was swollen again. I decided to show her the route over the mountain towards the Shangri La complex even though we would probably have to come back the same way. On the way we passed a gentleman vacuuming the road, at least that’s what I told Huan he was doing.

Last time I walked up this way I gave you some panoramic views, this time having Huan with me, you can have a selfie view instead. Two minutes before there was a kind of sunset but by the time we reached a vantage point the sun had disappeared behind the clouds.

Arriving at the top of the mountain it wasn’t fenced off as it had been on my last visit but there were two workmen there who wouldn’t let us go any further. One of them was knocking bits of the mountain down where you see the scaffolding. Rather him than me, I’d be very worried about the mountain fighting back!

Retracing our steps I was quite taken with the view that the residents of Shangri La will have when they leave their complex. Mind you, the owners of Shangri La will probably build a lot more buildings on this side thus spoiling their view. I could be wrong as their complex does include a lot of villas.

Huan had us go back a slightly different way, going through a building under construction, I’m sure she is trying to get me arrested! The light was going so we didn’t take any photos but it looks to me, like many other buildings under construction, that they may have run into cash flow problems. Reaching the other end we found a locked gate with no way out. Luckily, there was a watchman on duty who, although surprised to see us and wondering where we had come from, opened the gate and let us out. Huan will have to try another day to get me thrown in jail!

March 15^th Sod’s law struck again! It was a lovely day, sunny with a bit of a breeze, perfect for walking in fact, but we had to go shopping, the fridge was empty of vegetables. Luck was on my side though, I got to have a nice long 8.5km walk. I thought I would check out another one of our “shortcuts”, forgetting that I had been that way a few months ago.

I remembered when I came to the village at the end, but still forgot where to go next, After a few attempts at different ways out of the village I remembered that I had to turn right just after the pole you can see on the right of this photo.

Eventually I got out on the other side where they are doing some construction so I found a vantage point to show you where I had come from. My route had taken me between the tall buildings on the left and the tin roofs next to them, past chickens and dogs that thought they were scary. In reality, they just bark a lot.

We haven’t had any Chinglish for a while so here’s another example for you. They have taken two words, (Transformer Compartment) and managed to make them into five words whilst still missing some letters out.

Before long I was back on the homeward stretch, looking at our buildings from a different view, under the new park island bridge. It’s not often I take that route but today it worked out fairly well, there was a butterfly. Yes, one, single, whole butterfly, that deigned to stay still just long enough for me to take one, single, whole photograph. That photograph has had to be immensely cropped so that you can see the little creature.

So, another Monday comes to an end, which means another week of posts has been completed, hopefully you’ll find something to raise a smile. Finally for this month, I just discovered that I am palpebrous! Don’t worry, it’s not contagious. See you next time!

Spring Cleaning, New Year Haircuts, Back in Shorts, Needle(s)

February 2^nd As we mentioned last week, repairs are now all completed, (we hope), so spring cleaning can now commence in earnest. What do you need for that? Lots of elbow grease of course, brushes, mops, dusters and let’s not forget polish. Now I guess many of you in the UK are still staunch “Pledge” fans, I am too. However, mine is not called Pledge, it’s called “Glepgo”, I like to think it gets rid of ‘glep’ whatever that is. It’s made in China so I suppose they are to blame for the name, but it’s meant for export, to Indonesia I think. Whatever it is, it does the job it’s supposed to.

Once I had drawn the above polish from the QM’s store, the RSM put me straight to work. Polishing is always my job and it’s at these times that I realise why some of my female friends and relatives are not very fond of ornaments. This year I started in the office, here’s Huan’s side completed after what seemed an age.

Her bookshelf consists mostly of cookery books, (English and Chinese) and her music books. Needless to say, these days the cookery books don’t see the light of day very often! However, that is not a complaint, Huan is a good cook who doesn’t need books. Music takes up more of her time now and keeps her happy, that’s what counts.

Next up was my side which the more astute among you will realise is larger then Huan’s side. That is because I spend much more time in here while Huan has the TV in the living room. I do have books here as well but I’ll leave you to check them out. Suffice to say that the three on the right with Chinese characters on the binding are English speeches by famous people with a Chinese breakdown for English learners. I bought them because they were cheap and to my surprise, they are also very interesting.

The rest of my books reside in the bookcase, Huan has more in there too, down near the window. The first five ‘doors’ belong to me; the last one is Huan’s. Spot the filing system!

The office is the worst room for spring cleaning, even worse than the living room but, it’s finished now. The main and second bedrooms were also done today, boy, did I need a shower after all that. Too much polish aerosols on my body and even up my nose and in my ears! No photos were taken of the two bedrooms, you’ve had enough for one day.

Did I say you’d had enough photos for today? I lied! As well as being on cleaning duties I was also on cooking duty today. It was an easy one though. Huan had made some steamed bread in the morning so she put some potatoes in there for me. She also suggested heating the sauerkraut in the pork fat after the meat was done, something I would never have thought of. I couldn’t show you two plates, I was too slow getting the phone ready!

We both needed a relaxing walk after the day we’d had so we had a stroll around the town, in the rain for most of the way. Luckily for us it was very half-hearted rain and we’d have had to run around in circles to really get wet.

February 3^rd More of the same today, in the living room and dining room. For some reason it seemed to go a little bit faster than it did two years ago but it still took half the morning and nearly all the afternoon. Only two pictures for you, you can see why the living room almost takes as long as the office.

We forced ourselves out after dinner, I wasn’t over keen; exhaustion was slowly setting in. However, coconut milk for my cereal was required and a new mouse pad for my desk. As usual I left Huan dancing the night away before playing some of those hulusi blues.

I should add that I’ve had a smashing time doing the spring cleaning. First of all I broke a small frog in the office yesterday. Last night I broke the coaster that I use on the balcony, it was a slate one from my mother. Finally, today, I managed to break the glass ball in Huan’s water feature. I hope bad things do only come in threes!

February 4^th Good news, I didn’t manage to break anything today although I did give Huan a scare a few times. It was the kitchen’s turn for the treatment, harder than it looks because oil seems to get everywhere. By the time I had finished we had loads of space in the cupboards and I had managed to move things to more logical places for our usage. How did I do this? Mostly by throwing a lot of things away! On the food side we had Coffeemate bought in 2016 for #1 son’s visit, never opened, we also had out of date cocoa powder, one opened, one unopened, lots of those small milk cups you get in cafés, and a few plastic jars with remnants of various sugars, flours and spices at the bottom. On top of the food, we also got rid of a pile of stuff we never use. We had a mincing machine, to make our own sausages, used twice! We found it a pain in the bun and we don’t eat enough sausages to warrant keeping it. Yu took that, she was very happy. Various containers also disappeared to the rubbish bin. Two frying pans went to the neighbours, one stainless steel one, never used at all, and one ceramic one that is extremely good at getting food stuck to the bottom when you use it. This was the final result. (PS I learnt how to clean in the army when we had handover inspections before leaving our married quarters!)

After all that Huan decided to give me a break and take over my cooking duties for today! What a grand girl she is. Once dinner was over we both needed a walk, my bones are feeling the strain of all this hard work! We decided to go and check on the bap and sausage men to check when they were closing for the new year and then opening again. No worries, they are closing for a couple of days only. Just like most New Year holiday times, plants have appeared on all the traffic islands in the town. We reckon someone nicks them all as the holidays come to an end.

Finally, as I was wearing my 49ers waistcoat from Abu Dhabi, Huan decided that as I was so handsome, (her words, not mine), that she had to have a picture of me.

February 5^th Today was the last day of spring cleaning, hooray! There wasn’t a great deal to do today though, only two toilets, two sinks and one bath. Huan had previously cleaned the walls and other bits, such as the mirrors. Luckily for you, Huan was feeling lazy today, watching TV while I worked, so she didn’t take any photos. I’m not sure you’d have liked to see me with my hands down the loo anyway! All cleaning was done by lunchtime.

After lunch it was time to visit the hairdresser’s. “Hair must not be cut during the fifteen day New Year festival or your uncle will die.” This is a common saying but the more likely reason is character similarities. Hair is 发 (actually 头发 – tóufǎ is head hair) and “get rich” is 发富 - fā fù, so by using scissors, or other sharp objects, you risk cutting off your good fortune. “The Chinese character for hair is the same first character in the word for prosper. This means washing or cutting it off is seen as washing your fortune away and dramatically reduces your chances for prosperity and good fortune in the year.” As Huan is a firm believer in increased prosperity and won’t go to the hairdresser’s anyway, and as I can’t trust Chinese hairdressers, certainly in Wuzhishan’ with my foreign curly/wavy hair, then we visit the hairdresser’s in our bathroom. This year Huan was first to go with me taking a photo first to show how much I would be chopping off then proceeding with the dastardly deed. We then swapped places and Huan did the same for me, with my saying ‘a bit less, a bit less, a bit less!

There’s no picture of my after because Huan had to redo it a little after she’d taken the photos. My hair is problematic, whether it is short or long, in fact it’s probably harder to cut when it’s shorter. Huan does a good enough job though so I’m happy with the result. Just in case you are wondering, that is my natural colour, I don’t use dyes. Not only do I not use dyes, I haven’t used shampoos for over five years now, my hair feels much better for it.

As usual an after dinner walk was needed, we both stopped here to look at our island and we both thought that this was a wonderful scene.

Down by the riverside the normal New Year market has begun and as usual lots of photos of lots of red stuff were taken. Instead of trying to pick and choose which ones to show you here’s a collage, even including three selfies which we are still not very good at!

Once under the main road the new construction had a few stalls as well despite not all the roofs being on yet. I doubt if any more work will be done now until the New Year holiday is over. Huan was trying to get me to take pictures of everything in site and yet again saying we must come down here and eat, maybe on Monday. I pointed out that on Monday we will be in Haikou filling my belly with something other then food!

We did try another selfie though, with pretty awful results, partly due to the light but mostly due to me trying to hold New Year decorations, Xinjiang bread and ice cream all while trying to operate the camera with one hand. It’s not very obvious but Huan’s ice cream is vanilla and mine is chocolate, in real life much darker than it looks here.

February 6^th My first duty today was to cook a full English. I know we are not supposed to have too much fatty food but the bacon has been in the freezer for ages so we (I) decided, last weekend, that it was time to eat it. Last weekend Huan had normal eggs and I had goose eggs. I wasn’t really impressed, they were much bigger but somehow more anaemic. This weekend we were both trying duck eggs, they were not much different in size to chicken eggs but tasted a little stronger. As for the sausage part, last week we finished whatever sausages were in the fridge, this week we used the sausage man’s chicken sausages, tasty enough.

After breakfast, Huan went off to her weekend keyboard class, today it was to be held in our little square. Within fifteen minutes she was back home with teacher Wang in tow, nobody else had turned up. I thought we’d be having a lot of noise in the living room, I wouldn’t have minded, Huan doesn’t get enough visitors. No noise though, they just sat and chatted, looked at some photos, and generally relaxed, while I got on with cooking the weekend’s dinner! They also joined me in coffee at break time, but unlike me, they had Bailey’s in theirs! I practiced my Chinese on Ms Wang, telling her that Huan had fun every weekend while I had to stay home and work! It took some help from Huan to explain but I am improving!

Our plan was to walk the scenic mountain park route after lunch but neither of us got off our backsides to rouse the other. I guess we’re feeling the effects of the last few days work and of course, I’ll be weak after my haircut! In fact we were so lazy we didn’t go out for an evening walk either, sometimes it’s good just to do nothing.

February 7^th Sunday is back and I have company today. No more music lessons for Huan until after the holidays now so yesterday’s planned scenic walk could be done today instead. We started off with a selfie on the bridge looking back at our housing complex, followed by a nice view over the river.

Today’s route was the easy one, the clockwise way round. Far too many photos were taken, even after pruning we still have one hundred. I guess we were really enjoying being our together in the fresh air again, I was happy to be back in shorts, at last! To start off then, four photos of the ‘up’ half towards the crossover bridge.

Next up the view down from the bridge turnoff and up to the hotel. We were thinking of going up to check on the roadwork progress but we’d already past the latest upgrade point before this. This is another panorama created from six different photos.

Huan took a few photos of me posing on the bridge in my shorts but I thought you’d probably prefer another panorama, this one created by Sprog, (the youth edition Xiaomi). It took me three attempts what with passers by doing what they do and passing by.

Coming down is much more scenic than going up, here’s the first two for you.

And here’s another home made panorama showing a small bridge on the left and somewhere on the right of centre, behind all the foliage, there’s a Huan!

No sun worries on this part of the walk, the trees provide more than enough shade. We only had out hats on because of the beginning and end of the walk.

Next up is me playing with Picasa. Huan thought that the shadow of the leaves on the blank white sign looked very pretty and who am I to contradict her. The first photo is only slightly corrected, the second is with a lot of shadow added and the third is with the colours inverted. I quite like all of them.

We had seen many snowbirds on our way round, more coming down where we were going up, they like to go out early. Luckily, there aren’t too many of them in the photographs. To my surprise, there were none in the gym at all!

Finally we came to the end; you can see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, and of course we had to try another selfie with the park sign to show where we had been. Unfortunately, the sign was vertical and we couldn’t get us and the sign in together. You’ll just have to take our word for it!

Huan insisted I take another photo as we wended our way home, remember the ferret? Well today it was eating its dinner, a frog. The photo was taken but it won’t be shared here. Instead of going straight home, worn out though we were, (or I was), we went shopping for New Year food. I told Huan that I’m happy with just anything, no need for a spread. We came away with duck, chicken, fish, prawns and pork!

Needless to say the rest of the day was us doing not a lot at all. Only after dinner did we rouse ourselves to go and have the car washed and tanked up ready for our trip to Haikou tomorrow.

February 8^th Roused from my slumbers at quarter to five in the morning again, all thanks to the Time Lord. I wanted to leave Wuzhishan later and spend the night in Haikou, Huan wanted us to go and return the same day. No stopping on the way today, the hospital car park fills up early. We were early enough and got in with no problem. Huan went in to pay while I had a relaxing coffee and fag in the car. When I went to go in I was stopped at the door, the security guard wanted to see the health code on my phone! A few minutes later Huan turned up, from the outside, having already been in and paid, now two of us couldn’t enter the hospital. After fifteen to twenty minutes faffing around we, or should I say Huan, succeeded in getting the health code on both of our phones so in we went. Outside the doctor’s surgery the second problem arose, his computer was down and we were #6 in the queue. Eventually a new PC was delivered by an orderly, followed by two patients lying on the floor trying to connect it all together. They nearly succeeded, they couldn’t get the outside monitor to work. This meant the doctor had to come to the door each time to call the next patient. No problems once he saw us, although he did ask if I wanted my liver testing again. Huan told me that he was looking at a previous test result from a visit to Dr. Tim. From there it was back to the cashier’s office, hand over half my pension again and head to the pharmacy. “Sorry, you have to go to the downstairs pharmacy today.” One day we’ll end up in the lady’s chamber! My first needle port of call was the blood test area, I looked the other way as usual. “When will the results be ready?” we asked, only to be told that they would be ready tomorrow afternoon around four thirty. I never had to get up early this morning at all! Back downstairs we went for my second needle, once again ears and eyes covered, although this month’s nurse did a fine job. That was it for the hospital and off to the hotel we went, luckily having no problems checking in whatsoever.

After a short time relaxing with another coffee each it was time to go out and buy the lottery tickets, visit the bank and have lunch. Somebody was feeling the weather! Having had such a beautiful day yesterday I had driven up in shorts and a short sleeved shirt, with a pair of longs and a long sleeved shirt in the bag. The weather was completely reversed from yesterday, at least Huan had had the foresight to bring her small denim jacket. Once we had fuelled up with some hot noodle soup we set off for Carrefour looking for something cheap for me to wear, again! It seems to be a regular occurrence in Haikou, perhaps we need to leave some warmer clothes permanently in the car. Carrefour let us down so Huan dragged me off to the morning market near the hotel where we found a cheap (¥60.00) Puma jacket, size 4XL. It will do for this evening.

So, did we take any photos today? Well of course we did, how could we not, there’s always something to pique our interest. This first one was not so much the car, it’s a small electric one again, but the words on the door. I doubt very much whether there is such an office within the Chinese government.

We didn’t forget to take lunchtime photos either, first Huan’s them mine.

And as we were leaving Carrefour we spotted this gem, can you see what made us take the picture?

No more photos for today, I couldn’t have photographic evidence that I had visited KFC now could I! And that’s it for another week, although this will be a late posting due to the fact that the only part of the Blog on this computer is today, the rest is at home in Wuzhishan. Never mind, better late than never. I’ll just sit back and watch “Olympus Has Fallen”, see you next week!