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.

More Food, Another New Phone, A Silkie, A Lost Kid, More Insects

June 30^th Today was the day we decided that my feet are probably good enough to start increasing the speed and distance of our walks, slowly of course. Today was also the day I almost got a good picture of a bird outside the house; do you think he is surveying what he’s going to eat for breakfast? You’ll have to enlarge the photo to see.

It had been a while but I met a couple of my old friends on the way and an (almost) new couple but they turned out to be a bit shy. All these photos were taken on Huan’s new phone and to our surprise, they are fairly presentable.

Shall we stay with the animal world? Why not, here’s a gaggle in the back of a truck. I do like geese, I like the way they look at you. These poor babies were ¥90.00 each, I jokingly suggested to Huan that we buy three and take them home, one for us, one for Yu and one for the Jilin woman. Huan said she would only do that if they were ¥50.00 each! Thank God they weren’t, or we’d have had the hassle of someone doing the dirty deed again.

So how long and how fast was today’s walk? It was long enough, just over seven kilometres, not really fast enough for me though, it took us two hours and ten minutes. Still, any further or faster and the CMO would have been on at me again.

July 1st "Answer July, Where is the Bee, Where is the Blush, Where is the Hay? Ah, said July, Where is the Seed, Where is the Bud, Where is the May. Answer Thee – Me" (Answer July by Emily Dickinson)

Walking plans were binned today, Huan had a problem with her phone. When the choir has a new song to learn, as individuals, they practice at home, record what they’ve done and send it to the teacher. On her new phone she could record but there was no sharing option at all. Trying to find something half way decent in her android market didn’t work at all, probably because I had no idea what I was downloading. In the end I went to Google and looked for recorder apk files, I found many. The sheer amount of choice can be a little overwhelming but I narrowed it down by asking for free apps that were also ad free. Of the four or five I tried, some would not install on her phone and most of them told lies and had ads included. Now I know you don’t have to click on the ads but Huan is very good, (or is it bad), at clicking without reading thus ending up with loads of rubbish she neither needs nor wants. Finally I found one that suited both her and me and it uploaded with no problem. It even sounds pretty good!

Now that I knew all about apk files I set about trying to improve her camera. Similar problems occurred, unable to install, not ad free etc, but I was able to find an app, reputed to be one of the best and, I was able to install it. It had no effect whatsoever so I uninstalled it again. There’s no doubt about it, her camera is cheap and nasty.

Sorting out Huan’s phone had taken me all morning so after lunch I dived into Taobao for me again. My intention had been to wait for the new Nokia to come out so I had a look at existing Nokias for sale. There are hardly any, in the smartphone range anyway. Nokias come with no bloatware and so need access to Google for regular updating etc which I guess is why there are hardly any for sale in China. I could overcome these minor obstacles but then I thought about service and repair, that would be nigh on impossible here. Looking at the newer phones coming out and the way the prices are going made me realise that waiting was not doing me any favours. I narrowed my search to Huawei and Xiaomi and eventually, after lots of Youtube checking came up with two options, one from each manufacturer, around the same price range. How to make the final decision? Brainwave! Huan’s son must know about phones, send him a QQ message and then sit back and wait.

I didn’t expect to be putting any photos up today but Huan insisted. Yesterday I cooked a “Sweet Potato Crust Quiche” which was tasty enough but didn’t go from pan to plate in a way that would have made a good photo. I had a fake curry wurst with mine, garlic sausage with paprika and tomato sauce. We had the other half of the quiche today and Huan fried some fish to go with it, then decided it needed a photo. Again the taste was fine.

July 2^nd Not a far and fast walk today, we had both decided that we needed to get back to our indoor exercises two or three times a week which we had been doing until I bashed my foot. A sedate three and a half kilometres in an hour and a quarter suited us both fine. We checked in on our bridge engineers, they have removed the old (unused) stays and are now in the process of putting up the new ones. Let’s hope they get used!

On the way back we took a detour through our “it used to be a food” street. We’re not sure why it died; it was well on its way out before Covid-19 came along. Perhaps the rents were too expensive, I remember we thought they were, or maybe it’s just in the wrong place. This is what it looks like now; the second picture is wallpaper for a café then never existed.

I played around with Taobao and Youtube for a while after lunch comparing phones, their camera results and their prices, why do we have so much choice! I needn’t have wasted my time, I ended up back in the same place!

There was a break from scrambling my brain and that was our indoor exercise routine. As we had not done it since the end of May we went back to the beginning, the one mile in fifteen minutes exercise. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be, perhaps because the A/C was on in the bedroom so the house was a little cool. We did work up a small sweat but no dripping on the floor! To be safe though we will keep up this routine for July and move back up to the two mile walk in August and then the three in September.

The chief cook asked me to take a photo of today’s dinner, I think because she wants to share it with her friends on Wechat. Remember the sweet Chinese sausage that I use instead of chorizo? Well, Huan managed to skin it and then make us a great fried rice with it. That’s a dish that I’ve never got bored with over the years, ever since I used to have it for elevenses in Hong Kong way back in the early seventies. This tasted great, the sausages really made it!

After dinner Huan’s son got back to me on QQ and to cut a long story short, he told me that the only two manufacturers he would consider were the two I had mentioned and that he was of the opinion that Xiaomi was the better one. He also told me that the main chips for these phones cost ¥500.00 or more so “what did I expect when spending so little on a phone”. I admitted I had been a bit of a dummy and told him that I would follow his advice. It’s good to know someone who has more inside knowledge of the technology world these days than I do. Good news came later, Huan got her money back for my cheapo phone, all we need to do now is top up her Alipay from my bank and we’re good to go.

“Coincidentally” (?) I received a text message this evening recommending that I buy a Huawei P40 5G phone. Now we never gave our phone number to anybody today, either in the phone shop we visited or on any Taobao site. I have been searching without being logged into Alipay so they don’t know it’s me but somehow, someone knows I’m in the market for a new one. The P40 is a good phone but checking on Taobao it would cost me a month’s pension where the two I’m looking at are only half a month’s! If I didn’t have to have my hormone treatment I would consider it, but that also takes half a month’s pension every month! Just had her indoors check the message and it wasn’t a sales pitch, it was telling me that I had won a Huawei P40 5G and I had two hours to collect it by following the link in the message, in other words, a scam.

July 3^rd Yet again the plans of mice and men, or should that be wives and mice, were tossed asunder, but it wasn’t my fault, honest! Huan decided she would add some dye to her hair this morning which delayed our planned departure to walk the scenic mountain park way. The weather also looked as if it was going to take a turn for the worse so we set off for a slow walk, and just on cue, like the last slow walk, we came across this.

Not having to walk around the mountain gave me the opportunity to suggest that we visit the banks today to enable the purchase of my new phone. I’m not so sure Huan was over keen on the idea but she realises that I do need a new phone and also that I was going for a middle of the road one and not a flagship model. That plan worked!

On our way home we passed Yu’s husband having his haircut, outside, by the gate, by someone who has probably never been trained, as you do of course. Still, who am I to comment, Huan cuts mine, once in a blue moon when I decide it’s getting too long. Anyway, he looked happy enough getting his hair cut and having his photo taken.

If you’re wondering what the box on the wall is, it’s a payment box for charging up your electric motor scooter. No actual money is involved, you use a payment system on your phone and plug in to the relevant numbered socket. It’s very low tech, just normal household sockets with very minimal weather protection, but it seems to work well enough.

Some of you may know I’ve always had a thing for cars, dreams mostly, whatever car I own I’m always thinking of the ‘next’ one. To that end I follow a group on Facebook, and am a member of its associated website, ‘Drivetribe’. They have an offshoot called ‘Foodtribe’ so of course I ended up following that too. Yesterday I was reading a recipe someone had posted when Huan popped up behind and asked what I was reading. It was a recipe posted by someone who hated eggplant as a child and his mother had got round his aversion by cooking it with chicken and peanut butter. I’ll have to make sure I’m not looking at recipes when Huan sneaks up behind me; I was told there and then that I would be cooking that dish today. “Luckily” for us both we had all the required ingredients. It turned out quite well.

After a bit more dithering on Youtube and Taobao, my new phone was also ordered today. Late in the evening Huan received a message to tell us that the phone was on the way, from Haikou! It should be here tomorrow. If it is, it’ll be the fastest delivery we’ve ever had.

July 4^th And it was the fastest delivery we ever had, the phone arrived just before coffee time this morning. It looked good, it felt good and by golly it did me good. Anyway, first things first, try and go through the set-up in English, it started well, but I got stuck. Thinking that, unlike Huan’s phone, I needed the SIM installed before going any further we wandered off to China Mobile, our network provider. First my old SIM had to be cut down from micro to nano size and then the lady there had to put the phone back into Chinese. Within a couple of minutes the set-up was complete. She and Huan then had to try and put it back into English for me, it’s funny, I can change it from English to Chinese easily enough, for them to change it back, not so easy. They got there though. I took a couple of photos in the shop just to make sure that I hadn’t wasted my time and money again, they weren’t bad. In my opinion, my Nokia still takes far superior photos but this is way better than Huan’s and the cheapo one from last week. All I’ll show you here is an official GSM Arena picture. I’ll take all of next week’s photos with the phone camera after which you can decide if I was a dummy, or not.

Once back at home the real work started, trying to transfer the information from old phone to new phone. It should be a piece of cake! Tying the two phones together with Bluetooth worked, apart from the fact that no data interchange between them was possible, one Windows and one Android. Connecting both to the computer I then tried moving files from one phone to the other, again with no joy. Eventually, I had to enter contact details one by one into the new phone. Once they were all in I had to find a way to get the thumbnails in, again phone to phone copying via the PC would not work. Then I remembered I had copied an apk file from the PC to the new phone, so I started again. Number one, copy all thumbnails from Nokia to PC, number two, copy them from PC to Redmi, success! One good thing about transferring contacts like this is that the list was pruned quite considerably.

Next up was installing WeChat, no worries there, and because this phone is an Android, I have a very much more updated version than the one I had on the Nokia. A ‘recorder’ check showed that I could record and share with Huan so no need for another recorder installation.

Running an apk was the next job, the one for Endomondo, again no worries there. We will see how well it works tomorrow when we really must go for a walk.

Next I went through a lot of the apps, or ‘bloatware’ and was able to uninstall quite a lot of them, far more than I could on Huan’s phone. So, first impressions? I’ll be able to live with it, despite the picture quality still not being up to Lumia standards. It will certainly do me until such time as we receive a large cash injection from the lottery! Maybe I should give this phone a name, how about “Marvin”? You know who he is don’t you, the “Paranoid Android” from “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”.

July 5th Yahoo, a trip to the countryside, but not too far, it looks like rain. We set off over the bridge to nowhere which now seems is actually going nowhere. Huan tells me that they are going to knock it down and build a new one, because it failed the tests. I assume they mean stress and/or weight tests although we never saw any.

Next, ladies and gentlemen, I give you a pair of chickens, which, in this case, are most definitely not twins. I guess you’ve seen a lot of the one on the left just like we have. This is the first time I’ve seen the one on the right and some Googling was needed when we got home. Huan said it was a 乌鸡 (Wū jī) which translates as “black chicken”. Of course I took the mickey until my Google search turned up “Silkies” which are chickens with black skin believed to have originated in China where they are known as 乌骨鸡 (Wū gǔ jī) which should translate as black boned chicken but, would you believe it, translates as “Silkie”. If you want to know more, or are planning on raising your own chickens, go here - https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/silkie-chicken/

The director was in full swing today, look at that, look over there, take a photo etc etc. If I showed you all, you’d still be reading in a week’s time. Instead, I’ll tell you what we saw and choose the odd picture here and there. Butterflies were next, seen by me and not the commander, here’s one just landing or taking off, not sure which.

Further on we passed a gent with his head almost under water, a photo that I definitely wanted, but by the time I got the snap he was just a fisherman with a net in his hand. More ‘normal’ chickens were seen hiding under the trees by the irrigation canal, which we walked to the end of before keeping a lookout for my friends. Some mooing from me soon had them looking over the wall, Huan is convinced they remember me.

A silhouette is next, of a dragonfly, it was a black one anyway so you’re not missing any colours. I loved the way the light shone through its wings.

Remember the ‘bridge to nowhere’; well this is where it is eventually supposed to lead. The first photo is looking back towards the village at the end of the bridge; the second is looking where the road is supposed to go. It is a planned by-pass, not really sure if it’s needed, the highway will do a good enough job of bypassing us anyway.

A few more bugs and insects were spotted on our way round and then we came across this poor little mite. We think it was possibly a newborn, struggling to keep up with the rest of the tribe. This photo was taken just before I reached him, gave it a tickle and then started videoing while trying to shoo it towards the tribe.

It seemed like we may have been succeeding but then the whole tribe was shooed off by a woman working at the local rubbish depot. They all flew past Huan and me leaving the kid behind again. I gave Huan the camera while I picked the kid up and gave chase. It was no use, the nearer I got the further they ran. In the end I just had to put it down and hope its family would come back for it later. Here I am doing my best.

Nearer to home we took some more photos of the bridge construction, they have started installing the ‘droppers’ now, pretty soon we may be able to show you the completed project. Walking along the parapet wall after that the director was off yet again, this time asking me to take videos of insects, tiny little white ones. I put all three of today’s videos on Facebook, geese, which I forgot to mention above, goats and insects. There were not too many good screenshots, here’s a couple.

These two are not related to each other as far as I know, in fact the white one appeared to have come out of the shell of another insect, shown below, not very clearly. There were many of the little white insects but only one of the coloured one above.

There is bad news from today, of course! Endomondo does not work well on my new phone, it lost the GPS after one and a half kilometres and never found it again, and the audio coach doesn’t work at all. I spent hours trying to find out why, with no success. The problem could be from so many different places, the fact that the operating system is Xiaomi’s laid over the top of a standard android, the way location services work on Chinese phones in China etc. I have sent a message to Xiaomi’s help centre and Endomondo’s but I can foresee me having to change apps. I do so love the name Endomondo though.

Dinner today, with no photographs, was bratwurst hot dogs. Huan had mustard and onions and I made mine into a currywurst with just a few onions. Quick, easy and tasty!

July 6^th A productive morning today, starting with a selfie test. We managed to find out how to remove all the beauty filters, one of which was on by default, so here we are, warts and all! I have to say that in Selfie mode, with all the beauty filters off, Marvin is much better than the Nokia was.

Next was Huan’s phone, she needed a couple of photos for her home screen and her lock screen. We managed to find one of the two of us dressed quite nicely for her home screen but her lock screen will have to wait. I decided that the best thing was to let Huan look through all the photos on her computer and then tell me which one to use, less hassle for both of us.

Then it was back to the world of android for me, trying to find out why Endomondo is not playing right. It seems a text to speech app is required and enabling the Xiaomi one wasn’t doing the job. I told you he’s a paranoid android! I decided to try and download the Google version on my computer and then install the apk in the phone. I surmised that although we can’t access Google, the app wouldn’t need to do that anyway. It seems to have worked, the ‘Audio Coach’ test button now speaks to me anyway. As for the GPS, so far I’m still fishing in the dark. What I tried today was enabling auto-start on the compass, which seems to be the only location device I have access to. I’ll find out tomorrow if either, both or none work.

Right, that’s it for another week, remember, all next week’s photos will be taken by Marvin so tune in again then to be impressed, or as I suspect, not impressed!