Freddy’s Flatulent Feast of Featured Monochromatic Fotografia

July 21^st “Who’s Freddie?” Well, the paranoid android is called Marvin so I thought the faithful Fuji deserved a name too, and what better than Freddie. Freddie is capable of far more than Marvin, unfortunately his operator, i.e. me, doesn’t have much idea how to get the best out of him. As promised a few weeks ago and again last week, this week’s photos will all be black and white, Fuji’s ACROS filter, with maybe some contrast adjustment from Picasa.

Today should have been one of Huan’s singing days and hence a long walk for me. However, Huan wasn’t recovered enough from yesterday so we had a joint walk around the river instead, staying mostly under the trees and out of the sun.

Walking round taking black and white photos got me thinking of all the photos I took back in the early sixties, I started colour around 1968. Those early pictures bring back memories, which is what you expect them to do of course and which is why they were taken. What doesn’t come back in those memories are the colours, just the occasional ones where an item of clothing may be remembered, or the colour of a car. It also cost a fortune to take pictures in those days, buying films and having them developed, I take more in a day now, maybe even discard more in a day, than I would have done in a month back then. Once I’m in my dotage let’s hope those memories, and the more recent ones can still strike a chord.

Places can also look a lot different in black and white, while the ‘dirt’ may still show it is far less obvious as can be seen by these two pics.

On the downside of course, unless you have an exceptionally good lens, detail will be lost. This can be seen in this macro of an ant.

SWMBO, who by the way, doesn’t like black and white photos at all, I think her family never had a camera, still looks just as lovely to me. In her younger days, and the same is true for many older Chinese people, photographs will have been a luxury expense and would have been done in a studio. Oh, how times have changed!

I managed to sneak up on another little birdie again today, here the use of colour didn’t really matter so much. This is one of the birds we keep trying to get closer to, but they are mostly black and white anyway.

I took some flower pictures next but I won’t bother showing you them. How on earth did horticulturists know what they were looking at in photographs donkey’s years ago? I know looking at some of my old photos I don’t even know what colour the trees were in the background. I guess the people taking the photos must have taken copious amounts of notes.

The last one from Freddie for today is a little bit of Chinglish. I don’t know what a ‘Snowflake steak’ is supposed to be but I’m guessing a ‘Philip steak’ should be a ‘fillet’.

Marvin was not going to be left out today, Huan stole him out of my pocket to take the next picture, and a few others besides. She took them in colour so I’ve had to convert this one to black and white with Picasa. I love it when animals look into your eyes, you wondering what they are thinking and who knows, they wondering what you are thinking maybe!

Marvin got his way again when dinner was ready. Fifteen years ago, or more, I cooked roast duck in orange sauce for Huan and it was terrible. Kermit would have been happy singing “Rubber Duckie!” Today’s recipe, “Slow-Roast Duck Legs with Marmalade” was an English one from countryfile.com worked a treat, you should definitely check that site out. Of course, the picture has been changed to black and white again, not very good for Instagram I suppose.

July 22^nd ‘er indoors wanted to be just that this morning, indoors, so we didn’t go anywhere I could have gone alone but I didn’t want to leave Huan all alone, there’s always other times to walk. I finished watching an Australian series called ‘Murder Call’ so a replacement was needed. That turned out to be another Australian one, ‘City Homicide’, thank heavens for Youtube.

Huan decided that an after dinner walk would be in order so I got the chance for some more black and white picture taking. The first couple were of Huan in the lift and they were terrible, the shutter stayed open far too long and my hand didn’t stay steady long enough! This next one had to be taken. We were passing the pet clinic when I spotted a forlorn face in the window.

Our next photo was another little creature that almost seemed to be watching me as I walked round the small pool it was in. Perhaps it was waiting to be fed.

Walking back through the outdoor market we did have a talk to a few geese who, as is usually the way with geese, gave me the evil eye. However, I guess you don’t need any more geese just yet. How about the evening sky instead? There are some lovely textures in those clouds.

July 23^rd Good news, Huan was back to normal today so off to school she went, with me to walk her there. I was too late for a long walk, I had planned the dusty road to Changhao village, alone, to save Huan from the dust. Instead, on the way to school, we passed the stairway to heaven, or, the lift and walkway to Shangri La, it saves the snowbirds walking up the hill.

I walked today down the main road to the traffic police turn off to come back by the river. There’s a public convenience on the corner where the ‘resident cleaner’ always had her dog with her. The last few times Huan and I went past, the powers that be had stopped her doing this due to ‘complaints from the public’. The little pooch was back today, all three and half legs and a big cheesy grin, he recognised me from afar. I took a lot of photos, all with my left hand while trying to keep him happy with my right. Only this one was any good.

On the bend of the river I tried a few landscape photos which turned out pretty good. Of course, in years to come, I may forget the colours I saw! For you though, another panorama, which I think came out reasonably well too.

Not much else lent itself to photography today so my last picture is of my route under the trees to avoid the sun. It is near a road, but not a very busy one so it’s quite a pleasant avenue.

July 24^th No singing for Huan again today so together we went, downriver and then back through the countryside. I thought I’d start with two photos of the bridge to nowhere, remember, Huan said it would have to be knocked down because of mistakes in its construction. Both of these are views you haven’t seen before.

Our walk started off well but before long Huan became the director, the producer and at one stage even had her hand trying to position my camera for me. What would I do without her? Some of what she was trying to get me to photograph would not have worked well in black and white, for example, some kind of jumping insect against a dirty sandy background. Sometimes I listened and sometimes I went my own way, like this one, I think it’s a wonderful shot.

We saw the ‘silkies’ again today along with a lot of other chickens, strangely, they were not running away from us. We think they may well have been looking for food. The goats were missing for a while and then we spotted them all in the middle of the river, they do like hopping around of those big boulders.

I was forced into taking photos of many butterflies next, for which I had to change the camera to colour mode, black and white would have been no good. That means you don’t get to see them this week, sorry! Shortly after that we got to the stairway (not) to heaven. My knees do not like going up things like this any more!

While I’m wandering around taking pictures of anything and everything, what does Huan do? Well today she was carrying a plastic bag she had found at the side of the road and filling it with coconut husks she was picking up here, there and everywhere. It seems they are good for putting into your plant pots and stopping them drying out so quickly. The things you can see on her arms are ‘sleeves’ to protect your arms from the sun. We got three pairs free with our hats; needless to say I will not be wearing mine!

Next up was a video of ducks in a field, they had probably just been let out for the day. In fact a few yards further on we bumped into some of their compatriots. They also seemed less wary of us than usual but not quite as brave as the chickens earlier. Look how cute the little one is.

Just around the corner we came to the byre, where some of my friends usually hang out. The farmer was there today and as they all came to the gate to see me he told us that they loved me! That may not be quite true but I do manage to get quite close to them. Here are two of them having a sniff and a lick, thankfully not a bite.

Another panorama of the countryside, it can look pretty good in black and white, probably not for the youngsters of today though.

As we approached home we passed one of the local schools with lots of coaches outside and more turning up while we watched. I surmised “School’s Out For Summer”. A lot of the schools locally do take boarders; it’s much more common here than it is in the UK. I was going to show you a picture of lots of buses but then thought I’d let you see this one instead. At least you know who he is and that he’s a cool guy. The writing says “Please add #” where the number is not specified, maybe the owner is supposed to add the octane rating there.

That’s it for our walkies but not for the day. I was cooking today, something else from countryfile.com, supposedly “Wild Garlic and Chorizo Tortilla”. I was wondering why it seemed more like an omelette than anything else and a quick Google showed me that this recipe had a mistake in its title. It should not have said ‘tortilla’; it should have said ‘frittata’. Not having any wild garlic available I substituted it for what we call garlic legs, it worked well. As is par for this week, the photo is definitely not Instagrammable!

July 25^th Today’s plan was not a long walk, Huan was off to singing school so I thought I’d walk the ladies there and then check out the Saturday riverside market. When I arrived I thought there was no market, the road was fenced off with a couple of policemen ‘on guard’. However, as I got further along towards town there were the usual stalls, just not as many. We had fruit, vegetables, chickens, ducks, pigeons, rabbits, pork, Chinese medicine and all sorts of odds and sods. Now I know you’ve seen the market before but I was busy clicking away to get you some black and white scenes. As I went back along the main street I even tried a three level panorama, in other words one made up of three rows of five pictures. I may have been to close to the subject for that to work though. I’ll never know because when I got home, all the photos I had taken were far too dark, in fact too dark for me to sort them out on the computer at all. The only problem I could find on the camera was that the ISO was not on automatic but on 4000. How I changed that setting I do not know, but I’ll check next time won’t I?

What this means of course is that we have no pictures of today’s walk at all. All you have is the ‘before’ photo of today’s dinner. I had arrived home early because Huan had decided today was to be another soup day and I was to be the chef. As you have seen many soups, I decided to show you the ingredients instead, although I forgot to add the tomato.

You wouldn’t think that so little food could do so much. We had a very tasty and filling bowl of soup each leaving enough for tomorrow and possible even for Huan’s lunch on Monday. Both of us thought that this was one of our tastiest yet, possibly due to the tin of stewed pork so we will definitely be doing it again.

Oh, I forgot, the other reason for the short walk was our planned TV walk, or ‘lockdown walk’ this afternoon. This month we are still on one mile, maybe next month we can get back to two.

July 26^th Did you know that today is famous for many things? I didn’t until I was looking for something to write about today and stumbled across a site called daysoftheyear.com. Just to pick out two of them, today is “Coffee Milkshake Day”, something that we both like very much but, we didn’t have one of those today. For some reason an insane bout of laziness hit our house this morning and neither of us really wanted to do anything so I was searching for “Couch Potato Day”. It does exist but it’s not today, it’s either in August, October or November. However, our second choice for today was “All Or Nothing Day” so that’s what we celebrated, not quite in the spirit of how it’s meant though, we just did nothing.

We did plan an after dinner stroll but just before we decided to get ready it started raining, that’s our first photo of the day.

Having taken that shot I decided to sneak into the living room and take one of Huan studying her new music book. She wasn’t, she was on her phone! She has become very adept at watching the TV and scanning her WeChat at the same time.

A few minutes later Huan got her revenge and took one of me playing the guitar. You can see how lazy we were, I hadn’t even combed my hair. If you look more closely you may spot that I’m attempting to play an ‘F Barre’ chord, the photo can’t tell you whether or not I was successful! Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not, much more practice still needed.

July 27^th Monday again, shopping again, no Freddie but Marvin was along for the ride. As you can see, this is one of Huan’s favourite days.

I tried to get some Chinglish on the way up the escalator but we were moving too fast for me to control my feet, the trolley and the camera all at once, another time maybe. On our way out I spotted this booth and I got the urge to leap behind it and be the salesman. It looks like the ‘formula’ is the wrong way round, Huan tells me that “if you buy a Baijiahui shopping voucher for ¥1,000.00 you get a phone card worth ¥129.00”. I didn’t get any ‘sales’, do you think the mask put them off?

I suppose the mask at least hides the wide open mouth! Despite the fact that there are no rules saying we have to, we still wear masks if we go shopping or to other crowded places. We read the news from overseas, especially the USA but increasingly in the UK now as well, where people are refusing to wear masks for all sorts of stupid reasons. I just see the world getting crazier and crazier day after day.

Anyway, that’s enough preaching from me, see you next week!

Exercises, Hiking, Haircut, Anniversary, New Office

Well a very busy start to the month with no ‘scribbling things down’ day by day for the first week. Let’s see how much I can remember.

July 1^st Well I do remember that the month started with me trying to get back into my exercises. What with doing my Achilles tendon in and rupturing the cartilage between my ribs in January I haven’t done any since then. That’s a long time! First I did sit ups, (on the bed with my feet on the floor). Well, Chinese beds are hard you know. I followed that with some weights, as you can see below and finally did a few, (very few) press ups. It will take me some time to get back to where I was before Christmas.

Then it was out for another walk as I still couldn’t use my new computer yet, still waiting for the UPS. The first thing we saw was the picture showing the proposed island development. It doesn’t look too bad does it? It is a little worrying though that there are no buildings shown anywhere that are there now, including ours!

As well as the shock of early morning exercises we had also decided it was time to try the ‘reservoir walk’, seven kilometres uphill all the way and then of course seven down again. We passed a snail on the way so I guess we were travelling reasonably fast! We also met another lizard friend and I managed to get quite close this time. Huan wondered why so I explained that his colour was his first line of defence and he would keep perfectly still only doing a sprint at the last moment. This one must have trusted me, he didn’t scoot off at all, just moved his head now and then.
We made it to the top, not as quickly as I have done it before, but quick enough for both of us today. Just to prove it, here I am!

And for more proof, here’s a screenshot, you can even see the hill!

We did have a small problem when we got to the top though. There was nobody there selling any water and after seven kilometres, uphill, on a hot day, we were both absolutely parched! The small village also appears to have been deserted so we couldn’t buy any there. The village stand tap was still in operation though and the water looked clean and tasted fine so we quenched our thirst a little. That was a mistake! Going back down the mountain our mouths felt even worse, a bit like they had done when we had drunk stream water in the past. Must remember this for next time.

Yahoo! Not long after lunch the UPS arrived. No English instructions were included even though I understood they would be. Thank God it’s fairly much plug and play to start with. I got Huan to do a little translation for me. When it gets too difficult because of the technical terms I get her to type them on her PC, send them to me by QQ and then I use Google Translate. We get there usually. Anyway, the UPS had to be charged for six hours before use so I had to have a bit more patience.

The six hours passed and everything was installed for me to have my new office. Here it is, with Windows 10 Pro all ready to go tomorrow.

July 2^nd The first thing I did was remove some of the weight off my dumbbells, nearly six months off didn’t help at all. And then it was Monday so no walking only shopping and back to the computer work. My external HDD for transferring stuff hadn’t arrived so I made a start with the trusty USB. It kept me busy.

Software also needed installing so first off was Chrome, I tried Microsoft Edge but Chrome is still my preference. Browser first of course for all the help that could be needed later. Skype comes as part of Windows 10, not sure if I like that or if I prefer the stand alone version, we’ll see how it goes. QQ International, no problems. Finally on the communication side Express VPN working fine so that means we’re good for Google and Facebook too!

Then the media side had to be seen too. Both Picasa and Winamp are not supposed to be compatible with Windows 10 but they both installed successfully. I only use Winamp for music files so I installed VLC for the videos, again no worries. Aren’t we doing well? That was quite enough for one day anyway so I finished off with a few more episodes of ‘The Bill’ which I hadn’t been watching due to having no sound. (Check the picture above and you’ll see I have wonderfully ‘big’ sound now.)

July 3^rd Boys do like their new toys but I decided we could still spare the time for walking! Only just over nine kilometres today, up towards the hotel, over the bridge at 5km and then down the other side of the small river. It’s a very pleasant walk, very popular too. Despite it not being a weekend or a holiday we saw quite a few other people doing the same thing. Now and then China likes to put inspiring notices on their walks, this is one of them, with Huan being suitably inspired. This one says that at 400 metres into the walk, (we were going the other way) you will have used 20 calories.

Once home it was back to the nitty gritty for me. My first job today was to install and test the printer/scanner. Success, both parts work perfectly. Next was Lightworks along with some Codecs to make it work. I was stuck then until after lunch when the 1TB external drive arrived and I could start the transfer of photos and music. Today I only managed the photos which I then imported into Picasa, still for me the best desktop photo organiser and ‘mini’ editor.

July 4^th Another up the hill and down the other side walk, only 8.5 kilometres. Do you think Huan is trying to get rid of me? Perhaps she just wants me to be a more streamlined model! We certainly walked a few kilometres last month.

Back to my new toy again. The photo folders also include videos of course so I could begin the task of combining multiple dashcam videos (mov files) into individual journey videos (mp4 files) to save space. A BIG job.

July 5^th A long walk again, to a place we have been before, but by a different route. We walked the other side of the river to the village of Nanshengzhen, twelve kilometres. Here’s the map and the analysis.

On the way we passed some buildings under construction and brand new roads that will go somewhere eventually.

We also passed what seemed to be some kind of farm restaurant. It looks like it may have once been a good place to go but this is what the biggest ‘chalet’ looks like now.

Huan had a chat with the ‘management’ and they told her that every time there is a typhoon the buildings get damaged so they don’t bother fixing them anymore.

Today’s wildlife sighting was one very lonely turtle who appeared to be sunbathing. I couldn’t get close enough for a very good picture but here he is.

And the last thing we saw before we got on the electric bus back home was a “Wallace and Grommit” motorbike and sidecar. Which of your friends can you imagine in there? I see the whole Quinn family including Dodo!

I told Huan we should have one and that I would sit in the back seat of the side car, (I’d have to sit there or my knees would be up my nose), and drink beer while she sat on the bike and chauffeured me. She was not impressed!

Once home it was back to work for me, moving all my music from Huan’s computer back to mine. The WD Elements external disc was certainly earning its keep. While that was in progress I carried on with more dashcam work. Busy little bee aren’t I? I did have a break in the afternoon though where I installed my new Logitech Webcam and then gave an Eric Morecambe impersonation with my glasses to test it. Now we can see on Skype and QQ too!

July 6^th Stuck indoors but this time it’s my fault. Yesterday’s long walk was with my new sandals. They are very comfortable and I always buy the same ones but I guess we walked a bit far and the tops of my feet got chafed, too painful to walk today. Just as well, a lot of work to do.

Now that all the data had been moved from Huan’s computer back to mine, today’s job was to re-partition her disk and install Windows 10 Home for her. It’s amazing how much you can learn as you go along. Once everything was done, in went the Windows 10 USB. Tragedy! Her computer won’t boot from USB! More searching on the internet eventually started downloading an ISO file. While that was going, did a bit more searching and found I could still install online so off we went. There were a couple of worrying moments in the middle such as a black screen with only a mouse cursor, which led to more web searching. Eventually however, we were there, Windows 10 was installed.

No programs installed yet, now I wanted to network the two computers and copy some of the data back to Huan’s computer. This means that my photos will be stored on my computer, on my backup, on Huan’s computer and a copy is sent to each of my children at the end of each month. Our memories should not be lost! More importantly of course, Huan can look at photos and show her friends when my computer is off.

This is when more problems reared their ugly heads. The latest version of Windows 10 has no more ‘Homegroup’ so just how do you network. This time the internet failed me completely. Millions of people, (well it appeared to be millions) had the same problem. Even the Microsoft support web pages were no help, at least not initially. Finally though I clicked on this, which appears in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

Now as you would expect, the virtual agent is basically a waste of space but every now and then ‘she’ would ask if I wished to speak with a person. I decided to give it a go. Entered my details and less than a minute later my phone was ringing. I did have to ‘press a number’ but I was not kept holding on at all. The connection to the first person was pretty bad so I have no idea who they were but we did manage to understand each other enough for me to be given a ‘case number’ and then he transferred me to ‘technical support’. That line was clearer, and I found myself talking to ‘Christian’. He may or may not have been in the Philippines but that’s of no consequence really. Within minutes he was controlling my PC, I could see what he was doing of course), and enabling things that I had not seen mentioned anywhere in my desperate web searches. Before long the two computers were each visible to each other. Christian then spent a bit more time enabling the correct sharing protocols and in no time at all, I could see and access Huan’s folders. Absolutely brilliant! There is a message here of course, legal software does sometimes have its advantages! I spent the rest of the evening copying data to Huan’s PC. I also installed a program called ‘Foldermatch’ on mine. It’s a great program for doing exactly as it says, matching folders. I used to use it a lot while I was teaching to match my home files with my USB for use on the school computers. Once everything is successfully copied to Huan’s then I can use this to update hers now and then. It’s a paid software but luckily for me I still had my registration details in my emails.

July 7^th Only a short walk today with plasters on both feet. Short, because the plasters didn’t take long to slip off! Whatever happened to good old ‘Elastoplast’? Before we started on our merry way we walked across the road because we had seen some new notices being put up on the second floor property windows. This is what part of the second floor looks like.

You can see that Huan is busy studying the notice. What you can’t see is her brain working overtime. Thank God we don’t have enough money. It seems that the local government, having finally understood that they are never going to rent these places, have decided to sell them. Here’s the details for all you rich people out there.

And finally, the phone number.

Once home it was back to the grindstone for me. The first job was to install Picasa on Huan’s computer, followed by copying all the photos across. Picasa is not perfect, it does have its foibles and one of them is that you have to click on each folder in turn to sort by the order you want. Many, many years and twelve folders in each year for the months sometimes with a sub folder again for videos.  Turned out to be a very late night. The last copy of files included, amongst other things, all the dashcam videos so it took a long time, over six hours in fact. Still, the job is done now!

July 8^th Still got scabby feet so the grounds of discretion being the better part of valour I decided to be a big softie and not go walkies today. Instead it was back to some computer work. Ran a folder match between the relevant folders on our two computers and synchronised where necessary. Most important, helped Huan install Alipay on her computer. Maybe it’s time to put it on mine and on our phones too. I suppose we will do it one day. I also installed Libre Office for Huan just in case. The last job on her PC was to create an account for her on Memrise.com, in Chinese, so that she can learn more English, if she wants to.

My computer is finished now too, or at least I think it is. Other things may come up but they can be dealt with at the time. It was time for me to get back to Memrise after over a week off. Not a great start, in the first two characters I got 50%! I was a little happier when the first one hundred resulted in well over 90%. I think I need to practice the first 500 characters for a week or two before moving on to the next 500!

After lunch, I gave in and let Huan cut my hair. I am very fussy about who cuts my hair and I have found it very difficult in China to find a hairdresser who ‘understands’ foreign, slightly curly, or wavy, hair. Because of that I usually let Huan do it but I do have a problem making sure she doesn’t cut too much off. I like my long hair! Here’s a couple of photos of the session.

And the final result –

July 9^th The song says “I don’t like Mondays”! Well, I quite like them, it’s a shopping day of course but it’s also a rest from exercise and walking day. More time trying to remember Chinese characters and watch ‘The Bill’. Thank God for Youtube.

July 10^th Nursie, no not the one from Blackadder, forbade me from walking because the scabs on my feet haven’t healed yet. More Chinese and Bill.

July 11^th My feet still haven’t healed but even if they had it’s raining outside and will be for the rest of the day. We did some work instead, translating more of the UPS manual. Perhaps we should go into business?

July 12^th We managed to get out this morning but got caught in the rain before we got home. Still a very pleasant walk though. We also happened upon the ‘Clampett’ family drilling for oil! Well, not really. They were taking what seemed to be core samples from beneath the road. I’m not sure what for but it does answer the question of why we often find circular hoes going right through the tarmac when we’re on our walks.

July 13^th Today we didn’t go out in case we got caught again so what happened? It didn’t rain all morning but bucketed down for the rest of the day!

July 14^th ‘To walk, or not to walk” that seems to be one of our perennial questions, especially during the ‘summer’. We decided to go for it. It was a cloudy day but still a bit on the humid side, still fine for walking though. We managed to get some lovely photos on the way, this one was after about five kilometres, I rather like it.

Our luck was not to last of course and within another kilometre the heavens opened up. I got absolutely drenched again but you don’t need to see me. Instead, here’s a photo of Huan who was prepared with her brolly today. I actually don’t mind walking in the rain but I do wish I had some better footwear for it. My sandals aren’t really up to it and there’s no way you can keep up any decent walking speed with flip flops in tropical rain!

July 15^th Confined to barracks all day long, rain, rain and more rain. We did manage to get out after dinner though. I found one of my little friends had been busy, lots of cute little puppies. There were fourteen in total, five from one Mum and nine from another. I’m not sure how many my little friend had, but here is the proud Mum with some of the brood.

Huan is not really a doggy person, or any other kind of pet person really otherwise we’d probably have a house full by now with all the little puppies and kittens I’ve seen. We’d probably have birds, rabbits fish and turtles too!

July 16^th Monday, rest and shopping day. Just as well, it rained nearly all day again. It was also our tenth wedding anniversary so I bought Huan a new Wok. Luckily she doesn’t mind being given things for the house and after all, the tenth anniversary is ‘tin’ so a wok must be better than a can of fizzy pop! She also said she would prefer to stay in than go out today so we had Christmas Pudding for our anniversary dinner. The ‘sauce’ was whipped cream with added Bailey’s. I think that may be why it didn’t whip so well.

I popped a little Bailey’s into a Nescafé Smoovlatté afterwards. You should try it, I can heartily recommend it.

Now all of you thinking I am a big meanie to the love of my life, don’t worry, Huan will be treated well this week. I am duty cook every day for a week!

July 17th Tropical Storm SON-TINH was passing by to the south of us today on its way to Vietnam and Laos. We did manage to get out for a walk before the rain set in though. Later in the day Huan found this interesting bug on our bedroom balcony. It seems it’s known as a Lantern Bug, erroneously so. Check Wikipedia for Fulgoridae for more details.

July 18^th Storm aftermath, still raining so no walking. We decided a ‘weekly drive’ was perhaps in order, especially as we needed a boost start on Monday again. We drove up to the first (or last I suppose if you’re going downhill) white water rafting terminus. It’s amazing to see just how much water comes down from the mountains at times. There were quite a lot of mini-waterfalls by the roadside, it’s easy to see how landslides can happen. There were also waterfalls up in the mountains where you don’t usually even see any rivers. Anyway, here’s a photo from the terminus, if anybody ‘overshot’ today I guess they would be in serious trouble!

And here’s one of those ‘temporary’ waterfalls.

July 19^th We got caught in the rain again, not too bad though. Spotted a bit of Chinglish on our way home. I guess with the majority of Chinese not reading English they would also not be aware of innuendoes!

July 20^th Confined to barracks, it’s raining again. Well I suppose I got some Chinese character training in. It’s not so easy to get back where I was!

July 21^st I was out first this morning, did one and half kilometres before joining up with Huan. Serves me right for being keen, I was soaked by the time Huan came out, yes, it started raining again. It stopped fairly quickly though so I took off at an accelerated pace while letting Huan take a shortcut part the way round. You can see that on the Lap Analysis below.

By the time we got home I was regretting it! I not only had blisters on the ends of my second toe (From Wikipedia - The second toe, "long toe" or "pointer toe", "index toe", "second little piggy") but also on the soles of my feet. I was singing, “People say I’m crazy – I’ve got blisters on the soles of my feet - Well that's one way to hurt these - plates of meat - Blisters on the soles of my feet” (with apologies to Paul Simon). The rain didn’t stay away and came back with a vengeance later on.

July 22^nd Would you believe it, still bucketing down. Probably just as well for my poor feet though. I wondered why we seemed to be having so much so I checked back on my typhoon tracking website and found that good old SON-TINH, remember him/her, had as forecast gone to Vietnam and then on to Laos but had then decided to do a swift about turn. It was now passing over Hainan again, this time to the north of us. I’ve never known a storm do that before. Usually, once they make landfall, a big land of course, not an island, they wear themselves out and disappear. Not this one though, no wonder we were having so much rain.

July 23^rd Yahoo, Monday! No exercises, no walking, only shopping. Guess what, it was raining again anyway. It also gave my feet a little more time to heal and my brain some more Chinese practice. Strange how I can remember German after 38 years away from it but Chinese is giving me so much trouble.

July 24^th No rain today, we managed to get out for a walk. I cut it short today though and instead of our planned 10 to 12 kilometres we only had 9. I could feel my feet beginning to blister up again. I really must try and buy some decent shoes, my sandals aren’t up to it. I just begrudge paying almost a month’s pension for something half decent! Popped in to see a couple of ‘friends’, they’re always pleased to see me. I think the shopkeeper keeps them tied up in the daytime and then lets then loose when he closes up. Pussy cat will then keep the mice at bay while puppy dog barks at any intruders.

Just before we got home we spotted a ‘Lego Bug’, well that’s what it looked like anyway. I couldn’t get close enough for a decent picture, Huan was worried that it was dangerous and would sting me. One of my ex army buddies told me it’s a ‘Mud Dauber Wasp’ and a quick google seems to confirm that.

July 25^th Foot inspection by Nursie this morning who said we could go walkies so long as we went slowly and not too far. So an uneventful walk was had with no photos along the way. Drinking my afternoon coffee though I spotted this guy stuck outside the balcony window. It has now been there four hours since I took the photo. I used ‘boost’ on Picasa but you still can’t see the gold band around its thorax. Unfortunately, I think this one may be dead too. What is it with our house?

July 26^th Lazy day again, raining outside, learning inside!

July 27^th As I mentioned earlier, weather forecasting is definitely not our calling. It looked as if we’d be OK today but no, we got soaked half way round again! Huan did get me to ‘pose’ for a photo just before it came down though. Well, actually I had been sitting down to get photos of the ducks but they didn’t turn out so well.

Usually of course ducks will run, or swim away, as fast as they can. This is not like the UK where they come to be fed! This one though didn’t want to move at all. She, we’re guessing it’s a she, was as drenched as we were and not looking too happy at all. It’s only when we looked at the photos on the large screen that we noticed the blood towards her rear end. Perhaps this was a bit of making babies that was a little too violent?

Finally we found our first mermaid, well a first for Wuzhishan anyway. She was also the biggest mermaid I’ve ever seen. By now every part of we was soaking wet, there was no possibility to dry the phone out so I couldn’t zoom in at all. The weather also prevented us getting any closer. We’ll try again later in the year. She will eventually be surrounded by water and facing a new hotel within the apartment complex we were circumnavigating. Still some time to go I would say. We christened her the 'Golden Lady'!

July 28^th & 29^th We got it right! No walking, too much raining.

July 30^th More raining and shopping. Looking at my new Windows 10 weather app the historical records say that on this day, for the last thirty years, it has rained on 30/30 occasions!

July 31^st Raining in the morning so we thought we’d have a little ramble in the afternoon. We thought wrong, but not because of the weather this time. Huan received a phone call from Dong Feng telling her that our insurance would be going up considerably, (by that read staying the same as last year) if we didn’t renew quickly. New laws from Beijing and because the insurance companies appear to be losing a great deal of money. Most drivers in China pay the bare minimum that the law insists on, similar to our ‘third party, fire and theft’. Unfortunately a lot more claims are made here too! She did send as a URL proving all this so we asked when we had to pay by. “By the end of today” came the reply! So off to Sanya we went, deciding to kill two birds with one stone, get the insurance done and give the car a service. All done and another month’s pension gone. Ah well, that’s what it was planned for. Not much to see on the way, just a couple of policemen hiding in the shrubbery here and there.

More worrying for us is what the insurance lady told us when we arrived. Next year, it would seem that Beijing and the insurers intend to do away with any annual reductions completely and we will be back to paying what we paid the first year!

Ah well, we will worry about that nearer the time. That’s all for now, we hope you enjoy reading our little blogs and we'll see you next month!