Cold, Visa Approved, Another Needle, Fitness App Fun, Supermarket Ban

January 5th What is going on with the weather? Most of the year I sit in the house with my shorts on, and nothing else. This was me this morning, wearing a woolly jumper, and half an hour later I had my hoody and half gloves on too! Maybe it’s just old age!

Huan was at school again this morning but free in the afternoon. We didn’t go anywhere! If we were umpteen years younger and all my bits still worked I think there would be the pitter patter of tiny feet a few months down the line! We did go out after dinner, past the market again but were only successful in buying sausages. I’m going to have to brave a morning walk soon! Down by the riverside we noticed that the walkway was completely submerged. Perhaps they are not letting it rush away because of the work going on down our end.

Further on we saw Huan’s singing teacher holding her evening class, a lot more people than she sees in the mornings and a whole audience looking on from above.

On the way home I dropped Huan at our square to do some hulusi and dancing. I did take some photos but despite using Norman the Nokia, they were rubbish. At home I did manage a decent one of the bridge down below. They have installed lights now, thankfully not bright flashing ones like the bridges in town. This one looks quite nice and will not disturb us when we go to bed. They do switch them off around midnight.

January 6^th There was a list waiting for me this morning, not made by the boss mind you, made by my own fair hand before going to bed last night. #1, send birthday greetings to number one son, (Done). #2, take down the decorations, (Done). #3, hang up the washing, (Done). #4, cook tonight’s dinner, (Done). #5, scan and file household paperwork, (Done). #6, clean desk, (Not done). Five out of six isn’t too bad even though I say it myself. I’m getting the hang of this being a house-husband you know!

An afternoon walk was called for so we set off to the bap and sausage market yet again. Here we are looking suitably cool on the main bridge over the river.

Going upriver on the other side we noticed a crowd of people practicing their Xinjiang dancing. If you look closely, you’ll also spot a lone swimmer in the water. Rather him than me today, I bet it’s a bit on the chilly side!

Passing by the outdoor gymnasium we had to have a little play. Note the observer.

Success at the bap stall, twenty more bought to stick in the freezer. We walked back along the river to see if there was any progress on whatever they’re building. Nothing to report there yet, maybe next week.

Today was another Norman the Nokia day, I’ve been trying to make sure the camera does better than Marvin the Paranoid Android. Huan’s cheapo phone is giving her a lot of problems, the Wifi keeps having tantrums and the battery has nowhere near the life she needs so I may do a swap with her and go back to Norman until I can find something better that I can afford. Norman seems to be coping fairly well, this is one taken through the closed kitchen window, probably a not so clean window at that.

And our last photo of the day is a view down our cloudy street; both of these pictures are the same photo. The second one is a crop from the high resolution version, definitely much better than I can obtain with Marvin.

January 7^th Up at the unearthly hour of half past five in the morning. Now I know some people think there is only one half past five, and that it is in the afternoon. I wish you were right. Today was needle day and visa day, neither of which filled me with much joy. There was even less joy when we stopped at the last service station on the way, just before half past seven, to find everything still locked up!

On we proceeded and met with our first bit of good luck, straight into the visa office car park without having to queue outside and wait for a space. Mind you, our spirits took a nosedive when we reached the location of the office. Not only were there no people there, there were holes in the desks where their computer cables used to be and no computers! Luckily for us they had not moved buildings, just gone downstairs. I now have to attend the office with the grand label of “One Stop Service Window for Talents in Hainan Free Trade Port”. Whatever, at least everything worked out fine in the end, I got my visa, I’m now legal for another eleven months.

The visa office is very close to a large shopping centre called Mova Plaza so that was our next stop. Huan noticed yesterday that my toenails had made holes in top of my casual shoes, my one and only pair of shoes in fact! This part of our plan was a failure, the place doesn’t open until half past ten. We decided to try RT Supermarket where I found a few pairs that suited my very fussy tastes. Unfortunately, nothing above a size 42 was available. Next stop was Carrefour on Haidian Island, where the hospital is, to save time. The story there was similar, they said they had a size 44 but I couldn’t get my feet in them. At that point we gave up and went to part three of today’s plan, grocery shopping, you know, the cheese and sandwich meat that I’m not supposed to eat any more!

The last part of our plan was not my favourite part, getting a HUGE needle stuck in my belly again. Well, it feels big to me anyway. This was the queue waiting to pay for an appointment with the doctor; it was quite a bit longer before I took the photo.

We may grumble a bit about our hospital visits but to be honest, we shouldn’t. There may appear to be a little bit too much bureaucracy, but we do get in to see the doctor the day we go and we do get whatever treatment is required. Despite that long queue we were #3 for our doctor and in no time at all I was downstairs getting jabbed again. It wasn’t the same nurse as last month, thank God, but I hadn’t seen this one before either. She did seem to be a little more caring, even asking me if I was “a little bit scared / afraid”. That could have been because I had taken up my usual pose of thumbs over my earholes and fingers over my eyes! As usual, I worried too much and although I felt the needle, it wasn’t too bad. Also as usual, and I don’t think I’ve told you this before, I then have to lie back with my finger holding the end of a cotton bud on the entry hole for ten minutes. Huan of course is the other side of the curtain having fun on her phone. This is my wonderful view.

All that was left was to drive home to Wuzhishan, stopping for dinner on the way. The drive up was miserable, no sun, mostly mist and rain, and that continued all the time we were in Haikou. The drive back was almost as bad, but the rain and mist disappeared when we reached home. The sun didn’t show his face, I reckon he’s gone AWOL. Unusually for us, we had the heater on in the car all day, the downside of which was walking into a house that felt like a fridge when we got home. I know, I know, we live on a tropical island!

January 8^th More domesticity pour moi, doing the ironing after cleaning up the breakfast dishes. After that it was time to get stuck into sorting out the phones, changing the SIM cards over and changing various bits of software. Marvin was ready for Huan by the time she came home, only needing verification from another one of her friends to ensure she was who she said she was on WeChat. Hopefully she will have less problems with Marvin than she did with Chuck (the Chilli Pepper Mate30X).

The rest of the afternoon was spent cooking and trying to sort out a phone for me, either Chuck, or Horatio (Huawei Honor budget phone). By the time Huan came home for dinner I still hadn’t succeeded! The Huawei is not a bad phone although it does have a chipped screen. It’s biggest problem is the hardware limitations, 4GB internal and the same on the SD card. It’s not a very old phone but it doesn’t take lone for the phone to give up the ghost. It may be enough for me if that’s what I have to do. The Chilli Pepper on the other hand has 64GB of storage, more than enough for my needs. My problem there is I can’t get my new fitness apk file into the phone.

After dinner we decided to visit the phone repair shops to see if they could help. If we needed a new screen, maybe some simple bits of hardware replaced they could have helped. For my small problem they told us we would need to visit a computer repair shop! We’ll try again tomorrow.

Yesterday, I forgot to tell you, we received messages on both our phones telling us that masks were required everywhere in Haikou, there’s been a case of a student returning with Covid. Today, we received messages again; the directive is now island wide. This evening it appeared that many people had not got the message, another thing to check tomorrow.

January 9^th Mornin’ all! Confined to barracks again today, at least until Her Majesty returns from keyboard classes. First job, do the Chinese practice I didn’t do last night. One day I’ll spend a little money and move onto the next stage. Second job, check if I can put the apk file into Chuck by using ‘developer mode’. I can, but, the file will not install so another trip to town is called for. There’s a lesson here, “don’t buy cheap and nasty phones”!

Onwards and upwards, well not quite, office to kitchen is more like it. This weekend’s two day gastronomic delight is chicken curry. However, to try and keep it on the healthy side there is only one breast between us and a bunch of vegetables.

After lunch it was off to the phone shop again, this time a new shop with someone who we thought might know a bit more than we do. We were wrong! Back home I decided to give Huan’s #1 son a chat on WeChat, he is a software engineer in Shanghai. He knows a darn sight more than the guys down here, that’s for sure. Unfortunately though, despite his knowledge and help, it was still not possible to install the apk file for Mapmywalk. It looks like I will have to try and use Horatio with a large (physical) size sim card and hope the memory and storage is enough.

Our curry was not bad at all but, if you decide to use sweet potatoes in yours, I suggest you use more curry powder than we did.

January 10^th Sunday morning but no rest for the wicked! Huan was out for keyboard practice and I was practicing my singing in the house. Spare a thought for our poor neighbours!

After lunch I went out for a much needed walk, half way round I realised I was overdressed today. Long trousers with a long sleeved shirt and hoodie may well have been enough, I had the first two as well as a pullover and a fleece lined jacket, plus a cap and the required mask!

The first thing I spotted for you today was a little more Chinglish. The translation isn’t too bad though, Huan tells me it means “Civilized Dinner”.

I passed by the outdoor sausage and bap market again, not to buy anything, just to put a few kilometres on the new Huawei fitness app I installed. It’s quiet in the early afternoon, the stall holders were just setting up as I passed by.

My route then took along the riverside so I thought I’d give you a panorama, the white buildings centre and left are a vocational school that just seems to keep growing and growing.

A little further on I spotted the municipality workers ‘weeding’ along the river bank. Both Huan and I will be disappointed to see the large rushes being chopped down. You can see both before and after in this photo.

As promised I passed by the new construction on the riverside, it seems that we were right, it is not going to be over the road, like a pedestrian street, just over the sidewalk. We also suspect that it will make it easier for them to rent out the market pitches on a Saturday.

Arriving home I decided to go and check on the ladies. They were practicing something the teacher had left on the board for them but they were not all practicing together. All of them were practicing the piece individually, what a cacophony! They were having fun though.

Once home I checked the fitness app, it had recorded quite well on the phone with one ‘minor’ problem. “This session will not be recorded in your personal results because key data (such as distance) is missing or abnormal.” This means I will not be able to see my records, only the individual walks, one by one. I suspect it may be because Huawei looks for a ‘step count’ and ‘cheapo Chuck’ is probably not capable of that. Another failure thus uninstalled. Tomorrow I will try again with ‘Sports Tracker’. There is yet another problem; my data from Endomondo uses different files so I can’t import it. Endomondo was a great app with a very good user interface, and all the data I would ever want. It even had a great name to boot, such a shame it was sold and then retired.

January 11^th I learnt something last night, if you pour super glue straight onto your skin, it burns! This is not something I wanted to learn and neither did I do it on purpose, I just missed the point I was aiming for. P.S. Don’t try this at home!

This morning I learnt something else, it’s too cold to go out for a walk this morning! This must be the coldest it’s been in Wuzhishan since we moved here five and a half years ago.

It may have been too cold for a walk this morning but I had to go out after lunch. The girls needed walking to school and we needed to stock up on walnuts. They’re good for you; check it out on Google if you don’t believe Dr. Bob. At the place where the girls have their lessons I thought I’d take a few more pictures, let you see that despite being apartment blocks, they are not too bad. To start with, they will have a swimming pool.

You’ve seen photos from outside the building where they learn and have their shows, these two photos are from further up looking back towards the building. The swimming pool is directly behind me for the first one and a little bit further behind for the second one. It’s a nice place to live, it would look even better if the sun was shining!

I left the ladies making noises and headed off into town. Walnuts were no problem at all; I even bought Huan some ready shelled almonds, very generous today! However, I faced a problem at the supermarket, the largest one in town, the only one where I can buy my coconut milk (that cholesterol problem, remember). I pranced up to the entrance, held out my hand to have my temperature taken, only to be told I had to go to the and of a (short) queue, which I hadn’t seen, and scan a QR code to activate the health code on my phone. Of course my phone is not capable of that at the moment, maybe Huan can sort it out for me tomorrow. I made a big fuss of course, telling them that foreigners phones were not capable of doing as they asked. I even asked them if they wanted me not to eat. As you probably guessed, arguing was pointless, it was worth a try.

And that’s it, I arrived home and froze waiting for Huan. After dinner we both froze a bit more. Huan decided to order some northern style quilted pyjamas for us both, not for wearing to bed, but to keep us warm in the house. For me, they can’t come soon enough.

Today’s walk was with the Sports Tracker app which is also no really good enough for me. It did track my distance and time, even my elevation, but there was no visible map on the phone. It shows me a map to confirm my location during setup but not during walking. Just like Map My Walk it asks for Google play which although Endomondo asked for, it used to work just fine without it. At home, I waited for the website to update with today’s walk and of course it wouldn’t. Eventually I had to activate the VPN on my phone (which only stays activated for a few minutes for some reason) and then the walk was uploaded. Sports Tracker uses Open Street View on their website which does not give the option of a satellite view. In other words, another failure, I wonder what I should try tomorrow?

And that’s all for now folks, the end of another week in heavenly Hainan. See you next time.

Snowbird Choir, Ordinary Birds, One (Wo)Man Band, Good Tenants!

 December 29^th What a beautiful day it was today, and we were stuck inside for another of Huan’s shows. This was the weather when I arrived a little early.

I managed to get myself a front row seat so lots of photographs were taken. Here’s the first one, the assembled cast along with teacher in the middle.

Two photos of my superstar wifey next, both not of the best quality I’m afraid. Blame the photographer. In the first one the choir are singing a Chinese New Year greeting song, sung to the tune of Clementine, in the second she is playing the hulusi. Having only been asked yesterday to join the hulusi group and not having played one of the songs before, she did very well. I was certainly proud of her!

Next up is one very happy and relaxed Huan, when it was all over and her nerves were not frayed any more. She is not keen on having her photo taken but I like this one.

After that we all had to hang around for a while waiting for lunch to be prepared. In the rehearsal room I was cajoled into singing a couple of songs, it was very difficult for them to get me to agree. (Hahahahaha, those who know me will know that I didn’t need asking twice!) Huan took a video but it was bad quality, the video, not my singing, and I couldn’t even use a screen shot as proof. You’ll have to take my word for it. Their teacher seemed impressed; he asked Huan if I had had a singing teacher!

Both of us needed an OAP kip when we got home, in my case I think it was a food coma! I then spent the evening sorting out the photos while Huan did her usual in the residence square. I keep asking her to relax more but my pleas fall on deaf ears.

December 30^th We should have been out today, with one of two tourist groups. The first one cancelled the trip because of the weather. It is very strange weather recently, a temperature drop of thirteen degrees in one day, bye bye sun and hello ominous black rain clouds. The second tourist group was going ahead, and still did, but they decided foreigners were not allowed!

I spent the morning cooking, noticing that the skies were clearing and maybe an afternoon walk would be on the cards. False hopes were raised, as soon as lunch was over those ominous clouds returned. More downloading karaoke for me and various practices for Huan.

The promised rain didn’t appear so we managed a walk after dinner. What was dinner? It was a very nice shellfish noodle soup, the management was well pleased.

Our first two photos of our walk, and the only two worth sharing, show more construction work, or maybe I should say destruction work. We had thought they may just repair the sluice gates in our little dam but instead it looks like they are going to remove it completely. Hopefully some other kind of dam will replace it or we’ll never see any water in the river.

December 31^st New Year’s eve is upon us, just another day really. It was another overcast and cool day, I prefer to say cold but you guys further north will not believe me. Just like yesterday I spent the morning cooking dinner. Huan was lazy, she only practiced singing, hulusi and playing the keyboard! Dancing was put on the back burner. Mind you, she’s going to have to find even more hours in the day because drum lessons are next to be included in the timetable!

After lunch we set off for an afternoon walk, a little chilly to start with, but we warmed up with time. Other people were obviously feeling it too, there were no shorts on display today and quite a number of quilted coats. We’re not ready to go that far nor to wear long underwear outdoors, this is supposed to be a sub-tropical island after all.

Huan’s idea was to find creatures to photograph so we searched along the riverside, mostly in vain. There were quite a few birds around but as usual, they were not easy to zoom in on. The first one was fine, the second was a little too far away.

The third one was not quite so far but still not really near enough, (you may struggle to see it), while the fourth one gave us a little more to aim at by flying a short way.

As luck would have it Huan spotted some more in the rushes very near where we were walking. It was impossible to sneak up and most of them flew away from us out towards the river but we did manage to get an almost decent picture of one.

How about a couple more ‘birds’, one quite pretty exotic type and one ugly duckling!

Our last creature of the day is a cute little rabbit. The owner took it out of its hutch, really a cage, and gave it to me to hold and I almost lost it. I’ve never known little rabbit feet to move so fast in its attempts to escape my clutches. It’s a good job Huan wasn’t holding it or I think it might have been away! Anyway, here it is in the owner’s arms, and as if to prove my earlier point, you can see the owner is wearing a quilted jacket.

Back home we traipsed just in time for me to finish off this evening’s dinner. All I had to do was prepare the noodles for our version of spaghetti bolognaise! The portions were not as small as they appear, more was added after the photo was taken.

January 1st (No poems or songs this year, instead we’ll have “On this day”.) “On this day, in 45BC the Julian calendar came into effect.” (Penguin Pocket Reference ISBN0-141-02715-0). That is why I can heartily wish you a Happy New Year today! Let’s hope 2021 is better than 2020. Mind you, that wouldn’t be difficult would it?

A lazy start to the new year for us, Huan cooking and me still finding songs to sing. We did go out after lunch, me for a walk and Huan to yet another new class, she has now taken up the drums. I didn’t find a great deal to take pictures of so you’ll have to make do with the main road through town and a hood ornament for someone getting married.

Huan arrived back from her new class after me, and despite her assurances, she decided to practice in the house! So now I have to put up with dancing, singing, hulusi, keyboard and drums, we had all of them this evening. Anyone know where I can buy a soundproof door?

January 2^nd We changed our plans this morning, Huan was free, it’s Saturday and therefore riverside market day, so off we went. I forgot the big camera, it didn’t really matter though, there was no market. I guess they’re on their New Year holiday too. All we did then was go and check out the progress of dam busting for you. (cue music) These two photos give you more of an idea of just how much has to be destroyed. We’ve still no idea what will replace the dam, if anything.

And that was our day, just about. I cooked this afternoon, Huan practiced hurting my ears! I had a little respite when she went out this evening. I just carried on looking for songs.

January 3^rd This morning was a bit of a late start, for me anyway. I roused my weary bones at just gone half past eight to find Huan busy in the kitchen. She was busy steaming dumplings, not for us though. She had decided we were off to Ledong today to visit our tenants and give them a new year gift. At least the weather was clear enough for driving. You can see from this picture of the car though that last night was a mite chilly. This doesn’t happen very often.

Getting to Ledong is easy these days, the new highway to Sanya passes that way, so before too long we were sat in the old folks’ living room. It’s a pleasure visiting these tenants as they really look after the place, unlike the previous ones. Before long we were having a good old chat. Well, they and Huan were, my input was limited as was my listening comprehension. We both learned something new today, it seems that our tenants were both originally North Koreans. The old boys parents went back to North Korea with his elder siblings but for some reason he and another stayed in China, I’m not quite sure what the old girl’s story was. The old fellow has been back twice, in 1965 and 1975 but now has no relatives left there, they have all passed on. He told us that he didn’t want to go back anymore. Their daughter was learning and speaking Korean when she was a little girl but stopped due to the teasing she received at school. It’s amazing what you learn sometimes.

 I took a short break from sitting down and checked out the view from the balcony. When Huan bought this place the plan from the owner had been to build across the road too. Luckily he hasn’t even started yet.

And just to refresh your memories, this is where the builder lives, in the penthouse just behind our dining room and kitchen. The foliage has grown so you can’t see any on the assorted wildlife that normally lives up there.

For a change, and as we hadn’t driven that way for well over a year, we came back to Wuzhishan via the normal roads. I was getting rather worried about Huan; she kept dozing off and mumbling to herself. The last time I did something like that I was delirious; in Huan’s case I guess it was just exhaustion. We did stop to fill up at a place that provides a ‘free’ car wash, basically just a hose down and rub with clean water, good enough for me. While we were there a chap rode in from Sichuan, approximately 2,000 kilometres away. He did it on this and as you might be able to see, he had cameras all over the place. I quite fancied his bike, some kind of Honda, and to my surprise, so did Huan! Of course I’m limited to 50cc because of my age now anyway.

January 4^th More choir practice for Huan and more downloading for me in the morning. After lunch I walked Huan to her hulusi practice and then took a stroll to the bap and sausage market. On my way I passed this corner, obviously the gardeners haven’t visited for a while. However, I like to see nature taking control, if we had a garden I’d probably have a weed corner!

Disappointment struck at the market, nothing was open, they must have still been on their lunchtime siesta. Down at the riverside I found out why there had been no market yesterday. They are installing some kind of framework which we thought would go over the road. At the moment it looks like it will only be on one side. More progress photos will be shared as the work progresses.

Finally, last photos for the day and for the week, something we don’t see too many of here. We do see campervans, (RVs for my foreign friends), but this is only the second caravan. I’m not quite sure what they were going for with the name.

After our baths Huan had a relaxing, for her, evening in. She still practiced of course. I decided I had to stop searching for songs and do a little work on the blog and also doing my monthly photo upload for my children. As usual, see you next time.