Lazy Week, Car Test, Huan Gave Me The Bug, Dentist, Freddy’s Home

August 3^rd Inclement weather inhibited our inclination to follow our planned itinerary. In other words, rain stopped play. Nothing to report for today except that Huan has improved a little so my reverie was disturbed by flute, hulusi and guitar although not too much. I binge watched some more movies. Our only good news was that Parmesan arrived from Taobao, at least that doesn’t melt in transit! Oh, and I cooked our dinner, belly pork noodle soup. I only used one red chilli but it turned out a little fierce so I cheated and added yoghurt to mine!

August 4^th Huan still improving but not 100% yet, I decided that in my acting position as Chief Medical Officer. That is a position I will lose again as soon as she is better of course, I will then be relegated to medical orderly! Anyway, the weather forecast looked good for walking today, no rain, overcast but not too hot. Huan suggested the landfill walk but thought that would be too much for her after the last few days, instead we kept to the town and the river.

First we popped into a new café and asked if we could take some photos, I wanted to take some of the walls and there were no customers in the way today. They agreed so here you are, the first one means “live better”, the second one, despite me thinking it could be a bad translation does mean “meet slowly”. What are they really trying to say? Your guess is as good as mine.

And here is the outpatient, meeting slowly with the sad rabbit at the door. It’s a very nice looking café but it does suffer like most cafés in China, there is no real coffee!

You’ll notice that Huan is wearing her mask, in fact I was too, whereas the man behind her isn’t and neither is the café owner. More people were wearing masks today and I think we will see even more over the next few days. Instructions from on high have now been issued and slowly what has been advised will be implemented. There are no such things as “exemptions” here!

Not far up the road we met one of my friends, she always comes running when she sees me. Her owner was telling Huan that she won’t go to Huan because she doesn’t know her. Huan took so many photos I made them into gifs, here’s one of them.

You could tell Huan was getting better, the “director” was back again pointing out things I should be taking photos of. My protestations about only having my phone with me fell on deaf ears. We are still waiting for further news about the Fuji. Being the obedient little serf that I am I took all the photos she asked me too. When we uploaded them to the PC and cropped them so that we could see the subjects they were hopeless. The subjects were almost microscopic! I’ve kept a couple on the PC but they are nowhere near good enough to share here.

On our way home we had to go via the market, I needed to buy something. “Why?” asked the Minister of Finance. Those of you who know her can probably hear the phrase as you read it, I know I can. Although we had been shopping on Monday we hadn’t bought any noodles, thinking we had enough in the house. We had enough for yesterday, but not for today and tomorrow. This was the stall we stopped at, as you can see they are all fresh noodles, and dumplings. The second photo shows the ones we bought.

After lunch my teeth fell out! Now there’s a nice picture in your mind, Bob’s gnashers on the table in all their glory! I should clarify that I do still have a lot of my own teeth but I also have a few capped ones. What fell out was what I think you would call a bridge cap, three joined together. Huan suggested a visit to the dentist; I just pushed them back into place. I suppose I may have to go and get them ‘glued’ back in again!

August 5th Sat on the computer after breakfast and Huan came in with her phone. She’d only managed to take a photo of a bird outside the bedroom balcony. It’s not the clearest of photos but even highly cropped it’s not too bad.

That’s our sum total of photos for today, other things took priority. Huan was out this morning, she was playing at rent collector making sure we got paid for the next six months for our business premises. While she was out I was on Taobao standby. As it turned out, that was a futile exercise, the package came after Huan returned home.

After lunch Huan was on Taobao duty while I cooked dinner. She successfully collected that one. After dinner, I was back on Taobao standby, that package arrived just after six. Consequently there were no walks, strolls, rambles or any kinds of perambulation today, ergo no photos.

August 6^th Yesterday I had a text message from the police; that always makes me worry. I learnt though that by copying the message then sending it to Huan on WeChat I am able to translate it. This message wasn’t about traffic fines but reminding me that our car was due for testing, and it had to be done before the end of this month. That meant our first stop this morning was the car wash, I wanted ‘Donald’ to look his best, he’s six years old now and this is his first test. We used a car wash we haven’t used for a long time and won’t be using again if we can avoid it, they did a terrible job. While we were waiting I prowled around, we know that this place used to be a small hotel at one time, was possibly also a KTV, and used to have a nice coffee shop attached. All of that has gone but there are oddities left behind such as this shelf of alcohol, not the type of stuff that Chinese people normally drink. All of the bottles appear to be untouched.

There were also items of miniature luggage, this is one such shelf. You don’t need to look that closely to see that it hasn’t been dusted for years. In the corner you can see where some insects have been eating the wood, what you can’t see is the enormous spider’s web.

From there we headed off to the traffic police, first off to give them my licence and my recent health check, basically an eye test. They then sent us to another small office to collect a business card for where we had to go for the car test. That was sixteen kilometres away, why so far from town I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t very busy.

There was a waiting room with a smoked glass window which I could see Donald through if I cupped my eyes and craned my head. Luckily, there was also a CCTV monitor so we could check the progress there. In this photo you can see Donald, second row up, second from the left. That is some kind of rolling road and he seemed to spend a long time there, much longer than the car before us.

Did Donald pass his test? We don’t know. The emissions test was fine and we now have a new sticker valid until August 2023. Before we left there the staff told us that if any problems showed up on the testing the police will contact us. If we hear nothing after three days then Donald has passed his test. This is when paranoia sets in for me. Why was he so long on that rolling road? Way back in time front wheel drive cars often had problems with constant velocity joints, is that the problem here? Were the brakes OK or were they too slow, or pulling to one side? We just have to wait and see now and keep our fingers crossed.

After lunch I struggled not to fall asleep and eventually decided that I was feeling this way because Huan had generously given me her bug! After dinner I dived into the medicine cabinet and found some Chinese cold medicine, hopefully that will fix me up quicker than the one that Huan used, she is still not 100% yet.

Fuji update, Huan contacted them this evening, the camera has been repaired. They are now testing it and will send us photos and a video in a day or two to let us know if it’s OK.

August 7^th Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? It’s Saturday again so we went to have a look at the riverside market. It turns out that it has been stopped until further notice as a precaution against the possible impact of Covid. So far there have been no cases in Wuzhishan but the authorities are playing it safe. Strangely, unlike the UK, most people agree with them.

My teeth fell out again last night, while I was asleep, luckily I didn’t swallow them! That meant that our return home from the market took us via the dentist’s where we asked him if he could glue them in again. No problem, here he is preparing the glue and then sticking them back in.

Also last night we had a message that we were invited out for lunch today, just as well I had my teeth fixed I suppose. The invite came from the leader of the resident’s committee, Zōushūxián, the reason for the lunch was that it was立秋, Lìqiū, the beginning of autumn. Here’s a terrible selfie showing Zōushūxián right behind me, Yuèqiūhuá behind her, Zhào dé at the back and Huan hiding behind some strange hanging medical contraption.

And here they all are having a quick toast. Huan may have a can of beer in her hand but that is purely for show, today she succeeded in ‘saying no’.

As usual we ate too much and, in my case, drank too much, and an afternoon’s sleep was required once we got home! Refreshed, and not needing any more food, we took another walk giving us a daily total of 12.3 kms, our first walk over ten this month.

Later in the evening we received a message along with some photos and a video from the Taobao repair shop, our Fuji will soon be on its way home. This is what the old rear display looked like. They said it appeared to be water damage, which we had already told them. I think it was more than likely a mixture of the occasional raindrops and a large amount of my sweat!

August 8^th Sunday, the Sabbath, a day of rest. I told Huan we would stick to the riverside, give her body time to regain its strength. As usual I stopped for a chat with one of my four legged friends, the one from last Wednesday. Today we also came across a little kitten, two in fact, but we could only get a snap of one of them.

Down the main road we went, stopping to chat with my three and a half legged friend on the way. He’s always so pleased to see me, quite brightens up my day. Around the corner and along the riverside walk, looking for lizards, we found cows instead.

Much to Huan’s delight we did actually find two lizards today. Taking decent photographs with our phones is not so easy as you’ll know by now, but we did get one nice one.

Our last photo for today shows the temporary table set up at our apartment gate. There’s a thermometer and some disinfectant spray and also a form for checking people in and out. That is more for visitors & tradesmen, they know who the occupants are. What does it say? 记得戴口罩Jìdé dài kǒuzhào (Remember to wear a mask) and 防护很重要fánghù hěn zhòngyào (Protection is important). We can’t argue with that!

We didn’t get ten kilometres in today but I decided 8.7 was more than enough. Besides, I had to cook today’s dinner and prepare tomorrow’s.

August 9^th Another unhurried amble around the town today, keeping Huan away from the hills for a little bit longer. I thought we’d start with a historical type of photo, lots of ladies doing the landscaping along the river bank.

We didn’t stray too far from the main roads although we took a brief walk up the mountain park route, only part of the way and then back down again. One must look after one’s good lady! Our scenic walk actually has a name, it could do with a bit of a clean though.

Here we are at the spot where we turned round to go down again.

Next up, someone who would happily follow us home, he tried yesterday and again today. Huan made sure he didn’t succeed!

Next we found another four legged friend, not a dog this time, not a cow or a cat either, but a little goat. This one has obviously been separated from its tribe and has no fear of humans at all.

On our way home we noticed that the Fodelai hotel was cordoned off with police tape. We had seen this yesterday but had not investigated why. It has become a temporary quarantine hotel, no guest are allowed, only those who have come from other places and that have to quarantine for fourteen days. So far Wuzhishan itself remains free of the dreaded lurgy.

Both of us needed an afternoon nap again today, must be an age thing! We were woken with good news, Freddy was home! Yep, repairs had been completed and he was safely packed and returned to us, along with his broken bits. Here are those bits and the bill.

All we had to do was test it and send the money. This is what happened when I put the SD card in. It had worked before we went the camera away. It is possible that I tried inserting it without switching the camera off I suppose.

Following the advice from the other end I tried formatting the card in the PC, a quick format and, as that didn’t work, a full format. Needless to say that didn’t work either so off I went shopping again. Finding large SD cards is not always easy here, the last time we bought one it had to come from Taobao. My luck was in today so I went wild and bought two! I tried a few test shots and videos with both new cards, and also updated the firmware again. Somehow, while it was away, the firmware went back to an old version. Anyway, here’s Huan, not smiling, probably because she is agreeing to release the money, and here’s one of my frogs too.

My busy afternoon was followed by a busy evening, getting this posted of course but also preparing for tomorrow’s trip. That means testing the laptop, checking the external HDD, making sure I copy all the updated files I need from the PC and such like. Yes, we’re off to Haikou again, the first time since March. My arm will have to give up some blood for a PSA and testosterone test to see whether or now I have to go back onto the female hormones. Wish me luck! And that’s all from us, Huan, Freddy and Bobby, see you next week.

Nikon Week, Sickly Huan, Praying I Don’t Catch It Bob!

July 27^th Nikon week? Another different camera week? Yes, the Fuji is still away on holiday! The Nikon (Keymission 170) is an action camera so there will be no zoom shots of course. To show you the immediate difference here are the balcony photos, with a fairly useless crop.

And then a selfie that, to be fair, is only terrible because of where we took it. The wide angle of the 170 ‘bends’ nearby straight objects. Nikon colours are quite good although I did have to do a little tarting up with Picasa due to the light being behind us.

Macro shots are not so easy of course and you have to crop a lot of the resulting photo. This flower didn’t turn out so bad though.

Huan had singing class today so I took a comparison photo just to check. If you go back to July 13^th you can see a panorama shot I took where the lessons are. That was taken with the Fuji. Today I took a picture in the same place. As you can see there was no need to create a panorama but the picture quality is no match for the Fuji.

Leaving Huan to her singing I headed off down to the river again, and standing in the exact same spot as last week’s panorama (July 21^st) took this shot.

Out of curiosity I tried a stitched panorama here as well, not so easy with the edges of the 170 field of view being distorted. You can see that there is some distortion in the centre of the photo but overall it certainly shows you the view.

A little more experimenting further down the river showed me that I could get quite a good panorama by stitching only two photos together. My plan then was to take a video of my walk because if I had been lucky enough to spot any lizards on the trees that would have been the only way to get close enough. I needn’t have bothered; I didn’t spot a single one. Not only that the Nikon reminded me of why I don’t use it so much these days by giving me a ‘battery overheating’ warning.

Towards the end of the river part of my walk I did spot a small lizard on a tree so I switched the camera on to take a video and got the ‘low battery’ warning. No problems I thought, I brought a spare, a quick change and we’ll be good to go. Unfortunately I brought the wrong spare battery, I brought a Fuji one! Dummy! A little later on the battery had recovered enough for me to take a few more stills, only this next collage to share though. I didn’t see any cars of note today but I did spot this bike / scooter / moped whatever. It looked big enough for Huan and I, however, there was a problem. At that size I would guess the engine would be well over 50cc and because of my age, I m only allowed to drive motor bikes up to 50cc.

That’s all the photos for today. You almost had none at all because I popped into the bakery on the way home to buy some bread for my lunchtime sandwich and left the camera behind! I noticed my error just as I was arriving back at our apartment complex so had to go back and get it. On the plus side, the additional walk took me up to ten kilometres, the first one for a while. I could feel it too, an OAP nap was needed!

PS Huan had a message from the repair shop today, the Fuji will cost ¥450.00 to repair, quite cheap really. That’s ¥360.00 to ‘repair’ the motherboard and ¥90.00 to ‘clean the glass’. I’m not exactly sure what glass they mean, the screen, the lens or the sensor. Still, that’s way less than I thought it would be, fingers crossed it will still work when we get it back.

July 28^th Off to the countryside with my boss this morning, she chose the route or most of it anyway. We started off over the ‘bridge to nowhere’, my but it looks a long way with this camera, much further than before!

Just like yesterday I used two shots to create a panorama, this one to show you that the ‘nowhere’ point has moved. Our apartments are to the right of the photo and the road now goes further left than before.

We’ll wait for more progress further down the line before showing you where the road will one day go. We went through one of the small villages, the view looks a bit different at 170º FOV, aren’t you glad our eyes don’t distort the edges of our FOV.

Today I was able to create a fairly decent B&W conversion, this chap is not a tourist hiding from the sun but a farmer tending his cows.

Of course I had to find some cows didn’t I, I had to see if the Nikon was capable of giving me cropped shots that showed them in all their glory. I’m pleased to say that it did.

With it being a glorious sunny day, the hardest part of taking any photos was seeing anything at all in the camera display. It’s very small and also old technology. I often wonder what would have happened if Nikon had not abandoned this project in its very early days but I guess they couldn’t compete with GoPro.

Cars are next but only the writing on the side. The first is quite a common message, nothing wrong with it at all in my eyes; the second is slightly more unusual. I wonder whether the owner had been sniffing some N₂O before spelling oxide!

Finally for today, I thought an arty photo should be tried, only because I saw the boots on the wall. I’ve also included a crop of a through the trees shot that Huan thought was good. There’s no accounting for taste, is there?

July 29^th “Oh God, what’s that noise?” That noise was the alarm on my phone telling me that we had to drag ourselves out of bed at the unearthly hour of six o’clock. Usually, being retirees, we get up when we wake up but today was different, we had to go to a wedding party. Mr Lù’s son’s wedding party was to be held in their village near Qióng zhōng. By seven we were in the car and ready to go, I wasn’t driving today. My seat felt rather cool and checking the driver’s seat I found I was sitting on something that had been cooled down in the fridge beforehand!

Now I am not a fan of being a passenger in someone else’s car, I much prefer being the driver. Watching our driver’s hand shake while he sorted out the A/C and noticing that the ‘infotainment’ display was showing videos with the music I was viewing the journey with some trepidation, to say the least. Before too long though I realised that the display was not distracting the driver and he was not a bad driver at all. By twenty past eight we had arrived in the village.

Being curious I wanted to know why we were the first ones to arrive and why we were so early. “So that we can have a little walk around the countryside” was the answer.

I took this next shot intending to crop the ducks through the trees but once home I realised that this in itself made for a much better picture. You’ve no chance of seeing ‘live’ what your photos will look like; the display is only 1.5 inches big, maybe that should read small.

Before half past nine we were back in the house waiting for something to happen. I made sure I grumbled enough about getting out of bed so early! The happy couple turned up at ten thirty, I have no pictures of their arrival, in fact I have no pictures of them at all. The way everything was set up not all the guests were in one place, the bride, groom and immediate family were in one room, we were in another room alongside another ten guests, two more rooms had tables of ten, and then outside there were many more tables both in the courtyard of Lù’s house and his neighbour’s. It wasn’t the right environment for me, who nobody knew, to prowl around taking photos of everybody.

By ten to twelve, we were ready to start, and what a nice feast it was.

Alcohol was flowing of course but most people, in fact all that I could see, behaved themselves. Each table had been provided with a small bottle of home made 山兰酒 (shān lán jiǔ) mountain wine, a large bottle of home made 米酒 (mǐjiǔ) rice wine and a purchased bottle of 白酒 (Báijiǔ) liquor. Toasts were offered, I stuck to beer, there was no way I was going to have a few small glasses of any home made stuff! When the bride and groom came round to share a toast with us, as is normal at Chinese weddings, I had some of the mountain wine. Powerful stuff it was too, and I will not be trying it again in a hurry.

Before one o’clock we were on our way home again, this time I volunteered to sit in the back, on the way I had been far too cold and also deafened by the music and the conversation between the driver and the rear seat passengers. Here we are entering the tunnel that Huan and I call ‘the pretty one’. You can see what I mean about the infotainment screen. Mind you, the volume was quieter for the return journey and the passengers were not as talkative.

The last photo of the day shows the back seat passengers well out of it. One is faking it of course, I couldn’t take the photo if I was asleep now could I. At this range the Keymission 170 is not the most flattering of cameras is it?

Having showed you some of the limitations of the camera I have to say that it works fairly well in doing what cameras are supposed to do, make a photographic record. If you’re worried about the battery on your phone just use the action camera. No doubt by now the results will be much better with the latest sensors and technology.

Despite dozing in the car, bed was our first port of call when we got home. Both of us were worn out but Huan was also under the weather, she hadn’t been well before we went this morning.

July 30^th Her Majesty was still not so good today, hopefully the medicine she is taking, (for pharyngitis) will kick in before too long. She was quite obviously not going to go anywhere today. Being a loyal subject and also the court jester I stayed home too to provide moral support.

Other than that we did nothing, except a little bit of Taobao ordering, coffee and Parmesan cheese. The camera repair shop also sent Huan a message saying that the rear display was not working! Obviously a communication breakdown somewhere between the goods received section and the workshop, we had sent a written note with the camera explaining the problems, including the fact that the rear display didn’t work. Another ¥300.00 added to the bill making it ¥750.00 now. That’s still a lot cheaper than a new camera, fingers crossed they won’t discover anything else.

July 31^st Her Ladyship is on the mend, not 100% yet but getting better. She decided that the market walk, plus a little extra, would be fine for today. You may wonder what happened to her Saturday singing class and why we are wearing masks. Well, extracurricular activities have been put on hold, there is some kind of bug going around Wuzhishan and a there is a resurgence of Covid in other provinces. Don’t worry; I do wear my mask correctly when required to.

How did the Nikon cope with the market? With the first collage you can see that taking pictures of the wares and then cropping the edges was fine.

However, the second collage, showing some of the now open food street shops, (I know, one is selling clothes and one is selling Chinese medicine and massage), shows marked distortion round all sides of the photos even after cropping.

On our ramble we passed another artistic creation, this time on the side of an electric moped. You can probably see why I shared this with you!

We did take a few more photos of gardens and flowers but you know how they look with the Nikon now. The walk, while short, 6.4kms, did wear Huan out a little so after lunch a small kip was needed, for both of us. Chef duties called me to the kitchen, a nice big shepherd’s pie for today, and tomorrow. Mind you, having run out of ‘real’ cheese I had to use cheese slices on top of the potato. No, I couldn’t ‘pop out and buy some’; the nearest cheese is over a hundred kilometres away. It worked well enough, we both enjoyed our meal.

August 1st Oxygen was discovered today in1774 by British chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestley. I wonder how people survived before that! He called it ‘dephlogisticated air’, I’m glad it’s now called oxygen. On topic for this week, the 11^th Olympic Games opened on this day in 1936 in Berlin. In 1965 on this day, cigarette advertising was banned on UK TV; that worked out well didn’t it.

The boss was still a little under the weather and the weather was pretty miserable today so we spent the day doing not a lot again. Huan watched TV in the living room and I worked my way through cyber movies. I found a list and slowly I’m working my way through it, skipping movies that have very little cyber in them, such as Jurassic Park, and of course I can’t find all of them free on the internet. By evening time I was down to 1995 and Hackers with a very young Angelina Jolie. If you are interested in these kinds of movies you can find the list by following this link - https://cybersecurityventures.com/movies-about-cybersecurity-and-hacking/

No walk means no photos, except of course for one of Huan in repose.

August 2^nd Huan is not better yet but she is slowly improving, hopefully another day or two and she’ll be fine. She’s half convinced herself that she has Covid but of course will not consider going to be tested. It doesn’t help when WeChat is full of misinformation (not malicious) about the symptoms which are also very similar to any other viral respiratory disease. There has been a reported case in Haikou so measures are being taken there to test possible contacts and to limit any possible spread. Wuzhishan has had no reported cases. Some places in town are being a little more careful now, asking people to wear masks and checking temperatures, but so far they are in the minority. People wearing masks are also in the minority; just like these two who have just6 finished their weekly shopping.

SWMBO ordered me to go out for a walk this afternoon, alone! To be fair to her, she is better off staying in and resting anyway. Why was I ordered out? Because my feet were swelling, no not smelling, swelling, pay attention in the cheap seats!

I didn’t go far, the weather was closing in fast, just round the river. Before heading that way though I took a video of “Our New Island Park”. There are a group of people, a very small group, with the same camera, and we do like to see the occasional video from each other. If you’d like to see it too, just follow this link https://youtu.be/2A1SdIShqLE

Taking some photos with the Nikon struck me that it’s not at all bad for advertising touristy places, the wide angle helps. Of course the quality could be better as could the choice of day.

In the previous photo you could probably see that the weather was not too good, well just check it out in this panorama. This was stitched from three photos.

On my way home I spotted two little ducklings in a cage, the same ones we had seen on Saturday when we walked through the market. Taking photos of anything in a cage is not so easy of course, whichever camera you are using, but I tried.

So that’s a week of Nikon Keymission 170 photographs completed. What do you think? It’s not so easy to take ‘art’ photos or frame your subjects well but in the absence of any other cameras it does a good enough job of providing a record of what you’ve done and where you’ve been. That’s good enough for me! There’s been no further news on the Fuji yet, I wonder if they have found something else wrong. I suppose we’ll know soon enough.

From me and the Prime Minister it’s goodbye for another week, see you next time!