Marvin’s Marvellous, Maniacal Montage of Miscellany

July 7^th It was a bad day for plans again, mine anyway. Huan had planned to stay home and make dumplings this morning, for our tenants in Ledong so I decided a walk via landfill mountain would be in order. Huan is not keen on that walk, too much dust from passing highway construction traffic. When I roused my weary bones this morning, the good lady was already hard at work and had decided we would walk together today. Now I do enjoy, nay love, her company but just sometimes, a solo walk goes down a treat. There will be more soon, OAP singing school has started again.

So, today was a walk round the river, not my mountain route or Huan’s scenic mountain route, we had to get back for when the pastry had risen. Huan knew that taking photos with Marvin was this week’s plan so I got a lot of ‘direction’. We came home with 116 photos! The worst sixteen have been removed, the rest have been uploaded to Google Photos, only a few will be used here.

First up is bridge progress, it looks like they have finished the centre droppers now, they’re working faster than they ever have in the last two years. This photo was taken at 3x zoom, which in Marvin’s case, is optical and not electronic.

Next up is the Gaokao. Due to Covid-19 all the exams were delayed this year and the Gaokao was rescheduled for today. I’m sure you know by now that the Gaokao is the Chinese university entrance exam, the most important step for most students. When it takes place, roads get blocked off to cars although we can still walk past. Here’s the road block and the stairs to the school.

I wonder how students feel walking up there on the dreaded day. I know that I was terrified of exams and I guess we had less pressure. Even through my army training the routine tests were fine but when it came to the three monthly tests, what we called, barrier tests, I became a bag of nerves and only just scraped a pass mark each time.

Lots of different types of photos were taken on the way round, some more successful than others. It would appear that Android phone cameras are almost as hard to get the hang of as ‘real’ cameras. These were two macros, for me, the second seems much better than the first.

Marvin, like all modern phones, professes to be able to do a lot of things. In this case, we have an optical zoom of 3x and then a digital zoom up to 30x. The 3x is quite good, but don’t try and zoom into the photos on a 27 inch monitor! 5x is not too bad, 10x is worse and 30x is awful. This view was taken at 1x, if you check the album, (see bottom of this post), you will see comparison photos taken from the same spot.

Tilt-shift was my next test, I thought it should do more than this. Perhaps there are other controls for this that I haven’t found yet.

Walking back along the river took quite some time, Huan was calling me back every few minutes to provide me with more subjects. Insects seemed to be high on the agenda again today, here’s the first, taken with Macro.

The next one was taken with 3x zoom.

And this one was taken with 1x zoom.

Quite a few more photos were taken on the way round, playing around with various options on the camera, ‘beautifying’ Huan, another tilt-shift, some B&W etc. I have no idea why Chinese people, maybe westerners now for all I know, seem to like these beautifying filters. To me, it looks like everyone has been embalmed! Follow the album link to see more.

My turn to cook dinner today, a planned two day dinner because we won’t be here tomorrow in the daytime. I’m not exactly sure what to call this, we always call it Shepherd’s pie but it isn’t really. Google says – “What's the difference between Shepherd's Pie and Cottage Pie? Shepherd's Pie contains lamb and is an Irish specialty. Cottage Pie is English and contains beef. Both have mashed potatoes on top. My version had pork mince, onions, garlic, celery, carrot, tomato and mushroom under, with some Italian seasoning, a little salt, a little soya sauce and a dash of tomato sauce. On top it was a mix of sweet potato, normal potato and carrot mashed, with butter and milk of course, topped off with Mozzarella, the only cheese we had open in the fridge.

That’s Huan’s plate, mine broke up so wasn’t good enough to photo. Her portion may look small, but once the photo was taken I added to it. We would often have peas with this but today we had enough vegetables inside it.

Oh, I forgot to add my Endomondo woes. The voice coach works well now, I get a notification every kilometres including the time for that particular one. The GPS may or may not be giving me the correct info, although the tracking on the map looks right. It told us today we had walked over eight kilometres, I believe it was nearer seven and a half. In the audio notification for Endomondo there is also a GPS warning, I guess it tells you whenever the coverage changes, how many satellites etc. However, it is just an audible sound, not a voice, and mine was going permanently, it was driving me crazy. I could disable it in settings but as soon as I started a new workout, it enabled itself again. I can’t seem to find the problem at all so I’ve sent a message to Endomondo, fingers crossed, but not hopeful.

July 8^th Both up nice and early ready for today’s trip to Ledong. I was up before Huan so, as I always do, I quickly popped in the bathroom, grabbed my shorts and went to the kitchen trying not to disturb her too much. Halfway through my cereal she appeared, in a bit of a panic. When I popped into the bathroom, I didn’t notice anything amiss, when she went in, for longer, she spotted a problem. It’s not a new problem for us, although it is new in the bathroom, it is – water coming through from upstairs! We’ve had it in two bedrooms and the kitchen but this is the first time in the bathroom. Not much I could do of course except to try and calm Huan down, telling her that it was too early to go looking for answers and to eat her breakfast and drink her tea first. She listened and agreed, for a change! Somebody was supposed to have the key for the flat above us but they are now denying it, Huan thinks they are telling lies to avoid having to pay any bills. Eventually it was sorted out in the usual way, the water to that apartment was turned off and a note left for them telling them to contact the maintenance company when, or if, they return. I did try and take a picture of it but Huan had cleaned up so there wasn’t much to see.

So, with the problems sorted off we went to Ledong. The security people wouldn’t allow us in with the car which angered Huan a little as we are ‘owners’ but there was a parking space outside, very near so I parked there to calm everyone down a little. Luckily for me I was allowed in this time. The swimming pool is still full, but empty of people, nearly all the occupants have gone back up north. I think most pools are still closed after the virus problems too.

Our tenants were pleased to see us, and we them. I do like our visits, just not when they drag on too long. Today was fine, we were a little later than usual so it was approaching lunch time and they didn’t press us to stay longer as they usually do. Here they are, with Huan, going through the bills and next year’s contract.

The last picture of Ledong is our new water meter, it took a long time to replace and today is the first time we saw it in situ.

I spent the afternoon trying to get on line to the west, with no success. When I wasn’t doing that I was scanning all the Ledong paperwork and my last lot of hospital paperwork and combining and converting all the files from the dashcam. We need it nice and clean for Friday.

Come evening time and I walked down to the town square with the ladies, I wanted to try out some photos with the night filter on, some worked and some didn’t. Here’s the first one, with no moving subjects, it turned out reasonably well.

Pictures with moving subjects were, obviously, nowhere near as good, you can see them in the album. The general street views were not too bad, for me anyway. However, I think I have a lot of learning to do with this camera. Roll on the day they put a pdf manual on the internet!

July 9^th Today is Thursday and as such should have been a solo walk for yours truly. However, Yu and Huan are both skiving off their singing classes this week, they are going to start next week, or so they say. I suppose it did give Huan and I a chance to take the mountain scenic walk which has been planned for a few days now. Our first picture is our local bridge again, the walkway supports in the middle have now been completed, we await the two ends being done.

On the island I managed to get a look in the big hole and see how the cable stays are anchored to the ground. Behind what you can see is an enormous amount of rebar and cement.

Lots of photos were taken on our way round today, over two hundred in fact, after some pruning I got it down to one hundred and forty eight. Not all will be here! We passed by the irrigation canal, joined the main road and passed the school where it seems Goako is finished and coaches were being laid on to take the students back to their home towns. We thought, with life being very much back to normal, that we’d try the shortcut to the scenic walk. Unfortunately, the staff at that residential complex had other ideas.

Huan was happy enough to have her photo taken by this little car, which makes a change, but she wasn’t very happy about my suggestion of buying one just like it for her!

It’s been quite a long while since we did the mountain scenic walk, we always take the road up, cross the river, and come down through the forest. We had hoped that the road works on the way up would have been completed by now. Huan’s initial response was that it would probably be done by the end of the year. She changed her mind when we got a bit further up and I pointed out that work hadn’t even started there yet. Still, at least it’s still navigable.

Lots and lots of photos were taken, at every corner so you could see what is coming up next, mostly normal, no zoom photos, and one or two with a zoom. This is when we reached the bridge to cross over and go back down the other side and this is 3x zoom.

We say that we go down the other side, well, there is a little bit of up too. However, it is much easier going round the way we do instead of park first and road second. Here are a couple of photos just to let you see what it’s like, we enjoy it.

Our last photo for today was not taken by Marvin, shock, horror etc. No, it’s actually a screen shot of Endomondo on the PC just to let you see that the route tracking appears to be OK although the distance tracking seems to be off, especially at the beginning. With a reported eleven and a half kilometres, which we consider at least ten and a half, maybe eleven, I’m not complaining today. It’s been a long while since I got my ten kilometres a day in! I haven’t sorted out the GPS warning notifications yet so it was driving me crazy all the way round.

July 10^th Up with the pigs going to market again, watching them on the backs of motorbikes while having my (early) morning coffee at four o’clock. Marvin tried a few more ‘night filter’ photos, not so good, but then again, it could be just me!

We pulled in for a stop on the way only to find that not only were the restaurants and shop closed but the petrol station was too. Fuel wasn’t on our agenda but a drink from the forecourt shop would have been nice. Why do we go so early? Well this is the car park queue shortly after half past seven, we were already in. They are queuing from the main road and further to the right of this photo, not too bad today, it’s Friday!

By arriving early, this is Huan in the upstairs queue, always shorter than the downstairs one but can still get very long after seven thirty.

By twenty to nine we were all done. I had tried to be brave and not cover my ears and eyes, but as usual, I failed. I did keep them open while the nurse cleaned the ‘target area’ but as soon as she started un-boxing the needle I gave up. By nine we were at “The Grocery” stocking up on necessities, not too many this month. I’ll have to remedy that and drain Huan’s wallet a bit more next month!

Not too long after, at eleven in fact, we were at our usual roadside stop on the way home. Today I had planned to take the next of the only two available stops but my eyes were drooping so the first one it was. It has changed, for the better, both food outlet and shop wise. It’s nothing like a motorway stop in the UK but we can’t complain. I did though! My chicken burger was nuked in the microwave for far too long and I could barely hold it. Luckily my duck leg was fine to eat first and Huan’s jiaozi were fine. It looks much better now too.

One or two more photos were taken, you can see them in the album. We were home by one in the afternoon, earlier than usual and by quarter past one we were both in the land of nod, another OAP nap. It was nearly two hours before I surfaced, Huan woke much earlier than me. Dinner was leftover pizza that we had previously frozen, quick, easy and good enough for us.

Lots of work for me then, dashcam uploading, combining and converting, Marvin uploading to PC and Google, SD Card from the car all music deleted and replaced. I do like a bit of variety you know, this next period’s choice is reggae, dance and disco, only 2,943 tracks.

July 11^th Huan treated Marvin and I to a trip to the “Motor Show” otherwise known as “Central Hainan (Wuzhishan) Car Buying Festival, 2020”. To be honest, I can’t see them selling too many, especially as most of the snowbirds have disappeared back up North. Still, it gave me a chance to browse what was on offer even though, as per one of the salesmen, if you don’t have a Haikou hukou you can’t buy one anyway! There was quite a variety of cars today, enough to keep the casual motorist happy for a while, we’ll show you only two, both SUVs. The first is that good old British marque Rover and the second a famous Chinese marque, 红旗, Hóngqí (Red Flag). The Hóngqí is taken from the rear as that was the only shot I could get.

There isn’t a great deal of room down by the river and despite there not being many probable buyers, there were quite a lot of people going through the motions. I didn’t get much chance to have a sit and I didn’t want to waste the salesmen’s time but I did get to sit in the Rover, or as it’s called in China, 荣威, Róngwēi. Most Brits find it amusing that it sounds like it’s called “wrong way” but the Chinese don’t get it, the two individual characters translate as ‘glory’ and ‘prestige’, it’s only together that they translate as “Roewe”. I was reasonably impressed with it and were I in the market I could see myself driving one.

Today was also riverside market day, the first time since the virus reared its ugly head. As usual I took lots of photos there, you can find them in the album for this week. There are also some of the scenery, even one or two of me, that I’m not impressed with at all. On our last lap we spotted, would you believe it, goats again. These kids are only twenty days old and the owner told us that their mother had died giving birth to them, he is now their surrogate Mum.

Remember the cats we tried with Huan’s phone, well we passed them today as well so took three photos, 1x zoom, 3x zoom and 5x zoom, this is the latter.

Our day finished by arriving home to find that the changeover of rubbish bins has been completed. This is what we now have, for six buildings with at least fifty apartments in each building. “It’ll be fine, they will get emptied every day” was the maintenance company’s response to our queries. I’ll believe that when I see it and I know just what will happen during any holiday periods!

Did I say our day finished? I was wrong, Huan found water all over the dining room floor, this time not from an upstairs neighbour but from our very own water cooler. I don’t know, it never rains but it pours! Taking the back off I can’t see any obvious problems but when we move the bottle around on the top water appears inside. We suspect that the plastic may be broken. I just checked on the internet, it says we have two years warranty, that’s probably a joke. I cheered us up with a full English for dinner, that always works!

July 12^th Today was Marvin’s last big day out so we took him for a Sunday saunter, past the bap shop and back along the river. Yesterday you had the car show, today you have a car, well, at least I think it’s a car. It is an electric one and, believe it or not, it’s a four door, four seater!

Next up is the “Thinker”, I’m sure you all know about him but I’m just as sure that you never expected to find him languishing in the bushes of a Chinese apartment block. This one is taken at 3x zoom, you can see the 1x and the 5x in the album.

Another famous persona, perhaps even more so here is of course “Monkey King” and here he is, being his usual cowardly self and hiding behind Piggy. The four statues have been stored while the garden is being landscaped so who knows, they may get moved to a better spot later.

We were fairly early arriving at the bap bakery but not really early enough. They only had four left which we took, I guess they really are baking less with no snowbirds to cater for. With no customers to be seen, apart from us, pets were out in force though. Cats being cats, were too haughty to stay and talk but the little puppy was happy to.

Our Sunday saunter was over seven kilometres, if Endomondo is right, and we are so unused to it that we both needed an afternoon sleep, again longer for me than Huan. I don’t know how she does it, twenty minutes to half an hour and she is fighting fit again, for me, I have to drag myself up after an hour and a half or two, or more!

July 13th Today is Monday which as you know is shopping day so Marvin didn’t get much ‘exposure’ today. (See what I did there?) Climbing into the car, through the passenger door, would have been a good shot but Huan was busy having a gossip! Why the passenger door? Well I had had to climb out of that door when we parked in the only available slot when we last came home. Once in with the car started Marvin got his chance, just look at the temperature! Oh, and those of you thinking you know the song that’s displayed, it’s a disco version and sounds nothing at all like the original.

One of these days I may try and take some photos inside the supermarket but they can get very funny about cameras, industrial espionage you know… When we arrived home we found a stowaway on the back window, at least we think he was a stowaway. He may have hitched a lift from the supermarket, from the street outside the covered market or perhaps he just dropped off the tree where we parked at home. I almost managed to tickle this one under the chin but I couldn’t really get a very decent photo.

None of this week’s photos have been played with in any way. They have not been cropped, colours have not been altered, neither has sharpness, contrast or anything else. I wanted you to see them as we took them straight from the camera, apart from the size reduction for uploading of course. You can see the whole week’s worth here - Xiaomi Redmi 10X Pro - 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/T3J5tX2pEzz5cfK19

What’s my verdict? As far as the camera goes the Redmi comes nowhere near the Nokia. It has lots of bells and whistles on it but the finished result goes to the Nokia every time. This is most obvious when you zoom in on a photo on a PC but you can see the difference even without doing that. And the phone? I’ll put up with it because I have to but given the choice, and if the three or four apps that I need were available for it, I would stick with a Windows phone every time. Android, for me, is a nightmare mish mash of notifications and permissions, some apps will work where others won’t. Some apps won’t work unless you allow them access to parts of the phone that in my mind, they don’t need access to. Now this could be the Chinese user interfaces and software overlaid over the base android OS so maybe it’s not a fair comparison. I’d be happy to be proved wrong!

Tomorrow back to normal, no more pressure for poor old Marvin, he can relax for a while. Don’t tell him that he’s for the high jump just as soon as we win the lottery! See you next week.

Recovering, Dama Dancing, Water Leakage, No Gas, EVs

March 12^th Back to Wuzhishan and some semblance of what passes for normality round here. The gas has still not been sorted out and we still have water leakage problems from somewhere upstairs. The woman who runs the shop on the ground floor is blaming us, up on the seventh floor. It seems that as if by magic, the water is skipping all the floors in-between and going straight from ours to hers! We do know that it is coming through our ceiling and is affecting both the kitchen and our office.

Nothing could be sorted today and probably won’t be in the near future either. Instead I got on with updating my photo albums and the hospital blog.

March 13th It was a pleasure to sleep in our own bed last night, I only had to get up once! Also a plus, no leakage, which pleased Huan as of course she is sharing the bed. Being back home, and with an empty fridge, today became a shopping day. Not so good for me, I seem to be catching a cold and I decided to have a sneeze half way round, ooohh, much pain in the belly area and a little spurt! Still, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. When we got home our roles were reversed, I carried the eggs upstairs while Huan carried the shopping bags. Lifting heavy things is banned for a while! Thank God the water delivery man carries the bottles into the house for us. Spent the rest of the day on dashcam work.

Huan became a whirling dervish and after a bit of a shouting match on the phone she disappeared for a while. When she eventually came back it seemed that she had galvanised the maintenance company into some sort of action and that the ‘water problem’ has been located. The 9^th floor apartment has a solar water heater on the roof, the pipes are fed from there to the apartment via the OTS for cooker fans. (OTS = Open To Sky). The pipes are damaged somewhere in their kitchen and the water is being fed to the 8^th, 7^th, etc all the way to the 1^st (ground floor). Our visible water is now receding, all we have to do is wait for someone to actually repair the damage!

Huan then shone even more with a duck stew, a wonderful change from all the restaurant food of the last three weeks. What did I do to deserve her?

March 14^th Slept in today, didn’t get up until half past eight although I did have to visit the little boys’ room twice in the night. No leaks though!

The whirlwind was off again today as we still had water problems. At one stage, it wasn’t just dripping above our kitchen ceiling but actually running. I think Huan managed to sort them all out, work is now ongoing on the 9^th floor problems and she also found an 8^th floor problem too. Here she is looking at the source of the damage.

I don’t know, as if I don’t have enough problems with my own waterworks the house has water problems too! I don’t think we’ll ever sort out the furniture. In the office, one side is MDF which of course swells with water damage. The other side is real wood but I have no way of seeing what damage there is there, it’s too heavy for me to move, at least until my internal injuries heal enough for me to shift them.

Still, I have a good nurse to help me along. She did leave me alone again tonight, all on my little lonesome, while she went out Dama Dancing again. She deserves the break though. In fact she brought three of the ladies back with her and then later another visitor turned up too. I’m all for it, now all I have to do is try and understand them!

March 15^th Still slept late today, nearly eight o’clock, I wonder if it’s the after effects of being in hospital still? Ready to go out when the maintenance men turned up again so this time, I left them with Huan and took off by myself. I really needed to get out for a walk and some fresh air too. I also decided to make a YouTube video, nothing special, just my “Post Hospital Walk”. Lots of talk about kegel exercises and leaky parts! You can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XvVk0WzoVI&list=PLrm74YBD3qG5hMSefKtpaGIH2okgNoBLN&index=17&t=0s

Once home I removed all the dressings on my war wounds and took a much needed shower. I had been really looking forward to it but I will need a few more to remove all the leftovers of sticking plaster that held the dressings in place. I thought you might like to see the final result of all that digging around in my insides and I promise that this will be the last picture you see of my operation. Look carefully and you will see the four scars. These are the holes that they made to poke around inside and amazingly enough remove my prostate which was about five centimetres in circumference. I have no idea which hole they squeezed it out of!

After lunch, and more discussions between the residents and the maintenance company we had a visit from someone who will, at some time later in the year, repaint our office wall for us. Who is going to pay we’re not sure, it could be the owner of the ninth floor apartment. He’ll have a big bill! It will include some kitchen repairs too although I doubt we’ll have any joy getting our cupboards repaired, or the furniture in the office.

Evening time, relaxed dancing for Huan, back to ‘The Bill’ for me.

March 16^th The weekend is here! Maybe I shouldn’t, because it’s processed meat, but I haven’t a good old fry-up for over a month so here’s this morning’s breakfast. I really enjoyed it too!

Huan joined for me for my walk today, she had no ‘other duties’ to attend to. Walking is still not a very pleasant experience. Sitting is fine, no problem, lying down is OK too, even all night, no problem, but, walking = leaking! It’s not much but I’d prefer none at all.

Speaking of water, the river level was very low today, as it had been yesterday, although I didn’t mention it then. Huan had never seen it so low and I pointed out to her that the farm irrigation canal was also completely dry. Well, I suppose they do have to have a clean up now and then, a little bit of maintenance. What they never maintain of course is the river fountains. We have two and the only way we know they are fountains is through the pictures we have seen. They have certainly never worked since 2007 when we bought our apartment. With the river being so low you can see all the gubbins today.

March 17^th Another lovely fry-up to start the day after an all night sleep too. Perseverance, that’s what it’s all about, and I need a lot of it. Today we had to go to Ledong and visit our tenants. It seems that the building owner has now activated the security locks on the gates and our tenants need two “NFC Access RFID Keyfob Token Proximity Tags”. As the apartment belongs to us, only we can sign for these fobs hence the trip. I must say the organisation is much better than ours here in Wuzhishan. Two fobs were free, we only had to pay ¥10.00 for a third one for us to use on our visits. In Wuzhishan there was a ¥20.00 deposit for each.

Both our tenants are suffering a little, swollen legs and such like and the gentleman has a couple of injuries where he has fallen down. We reckon they probably eat too many Harbin sausages that their daughter sends them. It’s always quite a pleasure to see them, especially as the gent is such a happy fellow and always so pleased to see us.

Another bonus for this complex, which we won’t be taking advantage of until we have to stay there again, is that the pool has now been filled and the water looks to be very clean. Other tenants told us it was warm enough but they only swim when the sun is hiding in the late afternoons. I wish we had one in Wuzhishan!

There is also a new food court just outside our complex. It’s nothing special, just a typical Chinese ‘poor’ city food court but, it’s something and it’s close. Chicken bits and an ice cream for me, a burger for Huan. I mixed my ice cream with some cold water to give me a ‘fake’ milk shake. It worked.

We did have a little walk in Ledong, less than three kilometres, but at least it was a walk. We popped into the B.O.C to get my account book updated. So far it’s a great little branch, not busy at all. They always make us take a number and then send us straight to the counter as there is nobody else waiting!

Then of course, it was back to Wuzhishan, wearing my granny pants as we were driving again. Going over potholes, manholes or bumps can be a little difficult to say the least. It was highway for most of the way though.

March 18^th Monday again, so although we went shopping on Wednesday, today was back into the normal routine of shopping on Mondays. I had lighter coloured shorts on today so as walking makes leaks I was forced into Granny pants again. We did decide to buy some ‘lady pads’ (sanitary pads) for future use, they should be more comfortable. Sales ladies in our local store, Baijiahui, can never just let you buy what you want, they are always trying to push you towards something ‘better’, (read probably more expensive). I had been trying to help Huan but when she got into a conversation with the sales lady embarrassment set in and I made myself scarce.

A trip to the fish market followed, for Huan’s sake. I am told I can’t have fish for quite a while, it’s one of the banned foods after operations. Others are lamb, spicy foods, foods that are very hot or very cold, and would you believe it, even parsley! Anyway, Huan loves fish so I told her she can’t just do without it because of me, I can always have something else. We came up with the idea of Huan making a whole load of meatballs and freezing them so that when she has fish she can cook as normal and I’ll just share the veggies and have some microwaved meatballs.

I’m afraid the rest of the day was a F.L.O.G. day. Can you work it out? A Fat Lazy Old Git day, I was very tired and couldn’t be bothered to do anything at all. Huan wasn’t so lazy, making meatballs in the early afternoon, cooking dinner later in the afternoon and finally dama dancing in the evening.

March 19^th A longer sleep would have been nice today but I suppose it was too good to last. Woke up at ten to six bursting for a pee so sneaked out of the bedroom and left Huan snoring. At least the bed was dry!

We went for a mid morning walk, this time me with a ‘lady pad’ instead of granny pants. Today we walked for six kilometres, taking two hours to do it. The last half an hour felt like I’d really made a mistake by walking either too far or too long. I kept having the feeling I was dribbling, I wonder if that’s how women feel at that time of the month? Anyway, when we eventually got home it was nowhere near as bad as I thought. I guess I’ll just have to slowly get used to the feeling of going when I’m not until I’m all sorted out again. I hope it doesn’t take too long. Another reminder to all you men reading this, go for a PSA test before it’s too late!

So, what did we see on our walk today? Well, the jack hammers are back in action behind the house, and in this instance, he even had to hand held pneumatic drills for harmony!

And then Huan wanted me to take a photo of a succulent tree that was flowering. I did try and tell her that the background wasn’t so good but I obeyed orders in the end. The photo doesn’t really do justice to what we could see but I couldn’t find a decent angle.

The rest of the day was what they have all become since we came back from Haikou, lazy, with an afternoon nap, longer for me than Huan again. I also feel that I have a cold coming on. I guess having an operation is not quite as simple as it seems!

Huan volunteered not to go dama dancing but I insisted, she needs to enjoy her own interests and her own friends more, and more importantly, she enjoys it!

March 20^th Well what a pair we are! Huan woke up with a runny nose and I woke up with catarrh. I remember hearing my Grandmother using that word and wondering what it meant. It’s not nice! Anyway, I could be lazy and lounge around on the computer but Huan had to go to a meeting of the ‘eleven good people and true’. That’s a joke, the woman in charge, by default because the head of the eleven has never returned from the North since the committee was formed, is very devious to say the least. They are trying to organise another visit to the local government to oust the present maintenance company so that she and her buddies can take over with their own new company. She told Huan to say that Huan was present at the last meeting where the decision was made by a majority of the tenants. The only problem is, Huan was in the hospital with me! I asked Huan to stick it out and tell the truth, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

So Huan came back and told me that the plan was for the existing maintenance company to be out by the end of the month (again). However, they will present the committee with a bill for ¥800,000.00. People were asked if they would sign acceptance of this bill, Huan refused. Quite rightly in my view, all members of the committee should have a copy of the bill, without signing for it, so that they can analyse it. That, of course, will never happen!

So after our usual afternoon nap, mine longer than Huan’s of course, and after dinner, I decided to walk down to the square with Huan and perhaps take a couple of pictures of either her dancing or me playing the fool. In the end I gave up waiting, they were too busy gossiping about the ‘Jilin woman’ and the ongoing maintenance company saga. Instead I thought I would try and get you a nice sunset picture. This one was perhaps a little too early.

And by the time I reached our roof, this one was perhaps a little too late!

Ah well, not to worry. I also met a couple of or neighbours on the roof. Like many Chinese people, they will try and grow vegetables anywhere, I guess it’s a throwback to the time when food was scarce and everybody had to try and fend for themselves.

March 21^st Good sleep, no getting up for a wee wee, woke up just before half past six. I can cope with that. Usual morning walk during which I was supposed to take some photos with my Fuji for the FB competition. I forgot the camera! We passed by the street market where I bought a single ‘Harbin’ sausage, it will last me two or three days. They are home made here in Wuzhishan so I am assuming there are no nitrates, or nitrites, included! I also forgot to take any other photos during our walk, not doing so well today am I?

However, I made it up for you in the afternoon when we took the car for a wash, something which it desperately needed! Now, if we only had a villa we could wash it ourselves… We met a new friend there, her name is Diǎndiǎn (点点), it means little. Chinese people, more often than not, give their dogs names with two identical characters. (Patrick did you know your dog’s name is “Peas”?

Just across the road from the car wash, which is a new one, you can see the top of one of the local schools, I thought it would make a nice picture too.

Now I didn’t go with Huan this evening, I stayed in to have a nice shower. However, it seems that they didn’t do much dancing today, instead they took a lot of photos of each other. I wonder if that is because as snowbirds, they will be off back up North before too long. Anyway, here they are, at least the ones that turned up tonight.

And here’s Huan, stopping the traffic!

March 22^nd I would love to really understand the complexities of the human body. This morning I woke up at around half past four for a visit to the loo, nothing strange about that I know. However, from then onwards, until I eventually got up, I had the feeling that I needed ‘to go’ despite having just gone. One day all will return to (almost) normal I hope.

Morning walk as usual, with the trusty Fujifilm in hand today. First stop was the car wash across the road, not the one where we went yesterday, which has now started selling cars as well as washing them. He hasn’t sold any yet because he is waiting for the government to pull their fingers out about registering them. You may remember we talked about the law changing as of 1^st March, after which time fossil fuel cars would only be registered via a lottery for numbers. Electric cars were supposed to be immune to that lottery and that is what he is selling. They are very cheap, from ¥29,000.00 to ¥39,000.00, less than a quarter of the cost of our car four years ago. The range is said to be 350 kilometres, I would doubt that myself. The cars can be charged at home, just like the multitudes of electric bikes and scooters we have here, but they cannot be charged on the commercial fast chargers. They will also not be allowed to travel on the highway as their top speed is only 55 kph. However, for many people it gives them a car to start out with, and of course for older people, (not us yet!) it gives them a runabout for shopping, visiting nearby towns, even Sanya or Haikou but via the normal roads. So here’s a piccie, would you pay three to four and a half thousand pounds for one? I might consider it, a few years down the line, if they increase the legroom!

Now I had the Fuji with me to take a green picture to enter the FB competition, as you already know. Well, I took over fifty ‘green’ photos in the end, probably far too many for me to make an easy decision. I did think of uploading all fifty of them for you to decide but we’d miss the competition date! This is not the one I chose but I thought you might like it. It is the main street through Wuzhishan and as you can see, we have no shortage of ‘green’ here!

March 23^rd Nothing much to report today, normal sedentary walk in the morning, there was a farmer’s market down by the river but you’ve seen many photos from there before. Well, there is one you may not have seen, a juice machine. It crushes sugar cane to make a drink, far too sweet for me though. Spot the QR code so that you can pay with your phone.

Afternoon was nap time again, I seem to be needing many these days, and they are usually two or more hours long. Is it still the aftermath of having an operation? I don’t know.

After dinner I decided to walk down to the square with Huan again. I had my trusty Nokia with me, all ready to record them for posterity, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t get them to do the ‘Birdie Song’. If you’re too young to remember, then Google it!

Walked home alone, all together now “Ahhh, poor Bob.” Thank you! Saw this in a local furniture shop and had to take a pic through the window. This one is for Patrick Quinn and Jake Canning. Surely this bike is more than 125cc?

March 24^th Lovely night’s sleep, woke up around seven, wish I could have a lot more nights like that. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve slept through as much as I have this week. We had our usual mid-morning walk and today spotted some wild life for you. I put all the photos up on FB where I referred to it as a cricket. However, based on the size, over twelve centimetres, I think I was wrong and it’s probably a locust. What do you think?

I left Huan gossiping along the way, I couldn’t stand around for too long, and slowly wended my way home. Now China, as you may or may not know, posts a lot of signs to encourage the people to follow the law, be kind and so on and so forth. Well I came across one sign which even Huan had trouble translating for me when she got home. It’s something to do with alleviating poverty. This is the bottom of the sign. Don’t you wish it was as easy as this and that you could find the tree? At least I’d have an answer for my Mum after all these years.

Lazy evening for me, shower and shave; more dancing for Huan.

March 25th “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” Well they don’t usually, but today was not a good day. I woke up last night at twenty past two, for the usual, and then tossed and turned for the rest of the night. God knows how Huan was not disturbed anymore than she was! “Why?” I asked myself. “Perhaps it was the coffee.” I answered. Since coming back from hospital I have drunk a lot less coffee than I used to, sometimes even ‘none’ a day. Well, it is a diuretic so I thought it better to ease off a little. Before I went in to hospital I must have been immune to the effects, even late night coffees didn’t seem to worry me. I only had one cup yesterday but it was quite a strong one around half past seven when Huan got home from dama dancing. Maybe I should go back to what my dear old Mam used to do, one coffee a day, mid morning! She always made it with hot milk, long before anyone had ever heard of lattes, cappuccinos and the like. In fact, we still make it that way now and then.

So, being Monday it was also shopping day. There we were, going down the escalator with our full trolley when suddenly, it stopped. Now I don’t know if you’ve checked trolleys and escalators in the last few years but they are designed not to slide, or run away from you. Have you tried pushing the trolley against all that friction from two thirds of the way up to the bottom? I can assure you it’s not easy.

Just to end our shopping on a high, we got to the tills, started unloading and then realised that none of our fruit and vegetables had been weighed and priced! At least the store wasn’t too busy so I could stand guard over what we had unloaded while Huan shot back upstairs to get everything priced up. Thankfully the escalators were working again! Worst of all, I didn’t even think to get the camera out for either of these unfortunate incidents. Blame the lack of sleep!

Some more dama dancing for Huan in the evening, a short walk round the town for me, and then back to ‘The Bill’. Roll on tomorrow.

March 26^th It was Huan’s turn last night. I have no idea what time it was but it started with the bathroom light followed by the main light in the bedroom. She was being bothered by a mosquito and her ‘tennis racquet wasn’t working! Still, I’m lucky that the mozzies choose Huan more than they choose me.

Huan was ‘called to a meeting’, the people from the House Book Office, (similar to the Land Registry Office in the UK), wanted a meeting with the ‘eleven’. Well, only four turned up, some have already gone back up North and a couple were busy. The government side said that in order for things to proceed the ‘eleven’ would have to sign a guarantee and put money ‘up front’. At that point, good on her, Huan left the meeting. Sometimes I wonder if anyone really knows what they are doing, on either side.

Yesterday, as you do, I had something niggling away in the back of my mind, I needed to buy something from Baijiahui. Old brains don’t always work the same as young ones! It came back to me during our morning walk today. We have two Baijiahui stores, a smaller old one and the bigger new one. Our normal weekly shop is done in the new one but I remembered that the old one sometimes has butter and cheese slices, not good ones, but OK for a sandwich now and then. So, we found the butter, a lot more expensive than Haikou or Sanya but at least it’s there when we need it. Unfortunately they had run out of cheese slices. I did find something else while we were wandering around though. If any of you live in China, or have visited, you may know that restaurants usually serve soups in enormous bowls. I thought it was time Huan and I had one each for our occasional big soups and stews. Here I am ‘modelling’ mine, what do you think? For some reason it reminds me of Boris Johnson!

Evening time and I was in trouble. Huan went off to her dancing leaving me to go off for a little walk. Well I surprised her mid-dance with a shouted “Bend your knees more, let’s see some bouncy bouncy!” at the top of my voice. Poor girl, I threw her timing off completely and was henceforth ordered to walk home alone, poor me.

March 27^th Not much to report today, we had our usual morning walk, nothing special and no photos. An afternoon nap seems to be something I can’t avoid these days, even Huan had nearly two hours today. Huan did her usual dama dancing in the evening and I managed to sneak up and take a quick couple of videos. Not a lot of smiles are there? Perhaps they need to watch some ‘Pan’s People’ or ‘Legs & Co’, both from ‘Top Of The Pops’ or maybe ‘The Tiller Girls’ from ‘The London Palladium’. Showing my age now aren’t I?

March 28^th I woke up this morning just after seven to hear Huan already on the phone. She was talking to what I suppose is the equivalent of the Ombudsman, here in China all you have to is call 1234. She was complaining about the length of time we have had no gas and the fact that trying to get it sorted was just leading us on a wild goose chase. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of this!

As you are probably aware, we don’t have much of a winter here, although being a big softy I still feel the cold at times. Anyway, spring must be in the air as they have started painting the bottoms of the trees again. Today we thought we would stop and ask them why they do it. I always thought it was some kind of pest control but according to them it was to make the trees beautiful. What do you think? Do they do this where you are?

Remember the new electric cars we saw? Well, there are also a lot of other forms of electric transport here, mostly scooters / mopeds. However, as Hainan is the ‘Bournemouth’ of China we also have a lot of old people and they use something like this.

This one belongs to our eighth floor neighbours, both of them in their eighties. He walks reasonably well but his wife not so well, so they use this for their shopping and to get to one of the outdoor gymnasiums that seniors use. Unfortunately, the police have just stopped him from using it. We’re not sure why, it seems that it may not meet certain regulations. My question would therefore be “Why is a factory allowed to make them and sell them then?” There could be an alternative reason, given by another neighbour, all electric vehicles, or maybe those over a certain horsepower, now have to be registered and drivers must have a licence. That I can’t argue with at all, as well as the old fogeys with their two or three wheelers, we see youngsters driving them all the time here, on their way to and from school!

March 29^th There I was thinking I’d done OK, sleeping until twenty to five after going to bed at half past ten, then deciding it was too early to get up so back to the land of nod. Not for long though, at half past five someone was ringing our doorbell! I suspect it was the neighbours but they’d gone by the time I got there. I could see light under their front door though! Too late to go back to bed!

I guess the ombudsman in China, (1234), is no better than the UK one. Today they told Huan that they had been informed that the ‘pipe is damaged’ and they are unable to help further. Back to square one, the gas man ran away with the money, the ‘boss’ of the eleven denies any responsibility and the maintenance company say the boss of the eleven is blocking the repair. Meanwhile all the residents who paid in advance for gas just have to either grin and bear it, or in the case of some, switch to bottled gas. Not so easy for us to do, there is nowhere to put the bottle!

Other than that, NTR.

March 30^th Huan decided she wanted a day off today, a bit of a rest, from walking as it were. She didn’t exactly rest, she did a huge pile of washing instead. As she wasn’t with me I went a little faster than we have been going. I suspect I may have overdone it a little. You can see from the lap times that by the time I had completed six kilometres I was struggling a little. I was definitely feeling it in my ‘blood drain hole’ which has not completely healed yet. The doctors did say to walk slowly and not too far in the first three months! After today’s effort, I think I may well heed their advice for future walks!

I got back just before the rain started, just a few spots here and there to begin with. However, by dinner time it was pouring it down along with some thunder storms to keep it company. That meant that there was no dama dancing today. Shame, because they had planned to all wear dresses and also all be wearing pigtails. I of course was going to do my David Bailey impersonation and photograph them for posterity. Ah well, maybe tomorrow…

March 31^st Strange weather again today but the rain held off. Seems like it may be coming earlier this year. So, you know all about the ongoing saga of the maintenance company, here’s the latest update. Today will be their last day. Yesterday, they carried out some repairs to some kerbstones where people ignore the rules and park on what used to be a nice grassy area. Check out the work. You may think it’s bad because they are leaving, I suspect it would be just as bad with anyone else, and I fully expect to see them working as normal tomorrow!

The river looks like it could do with a lot more rain. No doubt it will come soon. As it is now, the bed is quite dry and grass has started growing near the banks.

We see quite a lot of these birds on our walks, always in cages of course. This cage is a little on the small side. These little birds can be quite talkative, many of them know how to say 你好, (Nǐ hǎo), which I’m sure you know means ‘hello’. This one can chat too, but today he wasn’t in the mood!

Now we should have finished off this month with a group photo of the dama dancers, all in pig tails and dresses. That was yesterday’s plan, which got rained off, and today only Huan turned up dressed as planned. They promised they would do it tomorrow so let’s hope the weather holds and we can get the picture. Do you think I should be in too?

Well, we come to the end of March, shorter than normal, and with far less interesting walks. Slowly that will improve as my fitness improves and we can start going further and up the hills again. Until next month then, au reservoir! (French for ta ta.)

P.S. If any of you gents reading this have any questions about prostate surgery and its after effects, feel free to drop me a comment, with a way to contact you.