Exercises, Hiking, Haircut, Anniversary, New Office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And finally, the phone number.

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

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

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

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

And the final result –

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wuzhishan, Ledong, Jianfengling Hiking, New PC

June 1^st Another 1^st of the month and another visit to Ledong! Lots of ‘hard work’ for me summarised with these two pictures. I had to replace the shower holder and stick some wall protectors behind the doors!

Oh, and I also delivered various instructions for the future tenants, all laminated too. Aren’t we good landlords?

In fact it was Huan who had the hard work; she was busy with her needles and thread until after midnight. The future tenants, or rather the old lady, felt the sofa was a bit hard. She said we didn’t have to do anything about it but Huan decided cushions would have to be made. Here she is working her little fingers to the bone.

We took a break for dinner and I told Huan I would treat her to DoReMi. However, that was bursting at the seams, I suppose because of ‘Childrens’ Day’. Instead we went to what we call a ‘choose food’ place. I suppose it would be called a buffet restaurant in the west. I’m not sure how many of my friends and relatives would dare to try this place though. Huan had fish, pig’s blood, belly pork and bitter gourd; I had egg, sausage (like chorizo), dried fish and squash. Unfortunately, pig’s blood here is nothing like black pudding back home so none for me. No problems though, both of us were pleasantly satiated.

While Huan had been busy with the seat covers I had decided to have a go at her laptop as it was so slow. She had I think five different browsers, all installed with various Chinese software. I removed all bar two, Chrome for me and QQ explorer for her. She also had four of five programs to make her computer go faster! Again these were either installed with Chinese software or by asking/telling Huan that she needed them and thus getting her to download them. All of this was fairly easy to remove. The most difficult one was something called ‘Kingsoft’ which I believe is an anti-virus software. Now before my clean up started I downloaded and installed Malwarebytes, Avast, CC Cleaner, Revo uninstaller and Auslogics Defrag. These are the tools I keep on my PC. Revo is pretty good, and fast, at uninstalling most things but it took nearly half an hour to uninstall Kingsoft. CC cleaner then found about 1700 registry problems. Result, I ended up going to bed after midnight too and leaving defrag running overnight. All done and dusted now though.

This was Huan’s result, taken just before bedtime.

June 2^nd You may remember I had a plan to go swimming so that we could show you what the pool looks like. Well the best laid plans of mice and men, (and husbands) . . . Huan decided we should visit Jianfengling National Forest Park. So off we went. A lot more details, including local hotels, can be found in my album https://photos.app.goo.gl/jxb3pJiRQW2XHwNB6 We’ll just give you a short summary here. Turn off the highway (G98) and follow the signs. We went ‘left’ inside the park towards Tianchi Lake.

There are three main sites on this road, the lake, Twitter Valley and Rainforest Valley Scenic Area. We started off with the lake; it’s quite a beautiful place with a hotel if you fancy staying. Here’s a panorama of it.

Now a visit anywhere would not be the same without some local wildlife so here we are. I almost managed to touch this fellow before he scuttled off. What about that tail eh?

And Huan managed to find something a little tamer!

She also managed to get in amongst a swarm/flutter/kaleidoscope/flight (take your pick) of butterflies. She wondered why they weren’t in the flowers so I told her they were probably feeling amorous!

From there we made our way to ‘Twitter Valley’, very aptly named. We could hear birds all the way round. Like many places there seems to be a lack of maintenance, here’s one of the abandoned tourist buildings.

Now you may remember that the doctor(s) told me I should avoid hills for a while, well, I failed miserably here. The route is about 2 kilometres and they say it takes an hour to go round. That may be true for a sprightly youngster who doesn't take any photos but not for us. It was stairs all the way up and then stairs all the way down the other side. Unfortunately I forgot to switch on the Endomondo app on my phone so no altitude (or calories used) records.

We did have fun playing Tarzan and Jane! Now now, you naughty boys, I meant swinging on trees!

We couldn’t visit the third site on this road, the Rainforest Valley Scenic Area, the road was closed. It should be open at the end of July so after that we’ll try and get some pictures for the album.

Instead we made our way back towards the gate. We did see some great, if a little hazy, views over the coastal plains on the way down.

Once down we went up the right hand route to the highest peak.

Unfortunately for us it was getting a little late in the afternoon for a two hour hike and we were both a little cream crackered from the earlier hike. Another one for next time.

Our last stop for today was ‘Deer Tree’ and “Nanya Forest Guard station. They are in the same place. There’s a story for the tree, but you’ll have to check the album for that.

The views from the guard tower were fantastic. I took four panorama shots but lost one somewhere. Here’s one of the other three.

The difference between this side of the mountain and the other was amazing. All the way around Twitter Valley we could hear birds. Here, there was only silence. It was heaven! I wonder if they’d let me live there and do the guard duty?

From there we made our way back to Jianfeng to check out hotels. We both liked this one.

It even boasts a swimming pool and unusually for many hotels, it was full of water. Unfortunately, it was also full of fish!

It seems they can’t get enough workers for the hotel. That could be because there aren’t enough guests. And that could be because this one is ¥260 sans breakfast while the next one down is ¥160 including breakfast.

So summary of our visit to Jianfengling - It’s definitely a place worth visiting. Unlike many tourist areas, it's not too busy. The downside of that is I suppose no money for maintenance. There are a lot of abandoned tourist buildings. Still plenty to see though. Looking at the map there is far more to see than we saw. A lot of what's on the map is not signposted though. One day is not enough to do this place justice. I would suggest staying in one of the hotels in Jianfeng town and then doing each route (left and right) on separate days. You may even need longer if you want to find everything on the map. Highly recommended! Details of two of the hotels are in the album plus of course the hotel at the lake.

When we got back to Ledong we managed to get into DoReMi today. Who can spot how many places are missing from their world map and name them?

And so we came to the end of a lovely day out, if a little rushed. It was finished off well by the water feature in the town being turned on and a great sunset when we got home.

June 3^rd When we stay in Ledong we have to eat out because the apartment doesn’t have all the things necessary for cooking and cleaning. If we did leave anything there, it probably wouldn’t be there when the tenant leaves! So, breakfast before our return journey. Noodle soup for Huan, and fried noodles for me.

Resting was the order of the day when we got home, at least that was the plan. Both of us had very sore calf muscles after all the stairs yesterday. I had to sort, edit and file all the photos of course, but that’s not such a big job. However, I had also brought the SD card from the Dashcam to upload the files to the PC. Lo and behold, not enough room! So, lots of time spent with Lightworks joining all the files for each trip together and then exporting as a YouTube capable file. That makes the end result a quarter of the size. I must have a clear out of old stuff, eight years worth of teaching files would be a start I suppose!

June 4^th Much more of the same.

June 5^th Summary for May from Endomondo received, a lot more kilometres this month. You can ignore the time though; I forgot to stop the app when getting home, more than once.

There was a typhoon hovering just to the south of Hainan so we had a fairly early walk to avoid any rain. Clouds abounded though.

Huan has recently been expressing a desire for shorter hair for the summer. Now normally, we cut each other’s hair but I wasn’t happy with having to shear a lot off Human’s noggin so I persuaded her to visit the hairdresser. Much cheaper than the UK or the UAE, only ¥60 and that included the massage chair.

My only request had been “Please don’t come back with a Chinese old lady haircut!” I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

June 6^th Confined to barracks! It’s raining, the aftermath of the typhoon which has now passed Haikou. Never mind, a lot more Dashcam work done, some Chinese character learning, some Taobao ordering and some updating this blog. By the way, all done while wearing my Granddad stockings!

June 7^th Nice walk today, just over seven kilometres. I wonder if you can guess what this is? It looks like a walkway through the rainforest canopy doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not. We do have a lot of forest where we live but this is in the town. It is on the way to ‘Shangri La’. “Wait” I hear you cry “Shangri La is not in Hainan”. Well you’d be surprised, Shangri La is all over the place in China, mostly residential areas. This one is full of mostly villas and will have a Shangri La hotel when it’s finished. I doubt very much it’s part of the worldwide chain though! Anyway, the ‘walkway’ terminates in this at one end,

and in this at the other. It will be a lift so that the old people, because it’s mostly old people who buy houses in Wuzhishan, don’t have to struggle up the hill with their shopping.

Last one for today is another one for all you budding botanists out there. We are lucky to see all kinds of flora here. Don’t ask me what it is though, that’s your job!

June 8^th Now many of you in China will have been aware of Gaokao this week. For those not aware, this is the annual university entrance exam for Chinese students. Unlike the west, all students are required to take the same exam. This is considered fairer than the way we do it. You can search for a lot more details on Google. One of the things that happens though is road closures. This was one end of the closure for our local ‘testing station’. In case you’re wondering, we could still walk through. I dare say if I had broken into the ‘Day O’ song, (Banana Boat song), I would have been in a bit of trouble, both from Huan and the police!

Today’s flora and fauna included a twelve year old dog. I would guess that surprises a lot or people who don’t live in China, and a beautiful flower.

For the flower I was trying to get as close as possible so that you could see inside. Unfortunately, my phone is not quite good enough.

June 9^th We had a nice long walk today, ten kilometres. Slowly the distance is increasing again. We’ll take it a little carefully before increasing the speed though. The river on the ‘high’ side of the sluice gates was quite low today so another couple of photos were uploaded to ‘World Street Photography’. I was quite pleased with them.

And finally, at long last, eventually (etc), I finished all the outstanding dashcam work. Combining the files into ‘journeys’ saved a lot of space. You may wonder why I’m doing this. Well, it gives me something to perhaps argue with the police, or even agree with them, when it comes to time for our yearly check! I have learnt something though; I need to keep a much closer eye on the dashcam and replace the SD card before it starts ‘writing over’ earlier files. We are missing nearly two weeks from May.

Our first Taobao delivery came today. “Why so many?” you may ask. Well, a box of fifteen costs ¥90 if bought locally, and ¥62.5 if bought on Taobao, including delivery! This is about three months worth for me.

June 10^th Out for a walk again. The sky was a little overcast but we thought we’d be fine. We were wrong! At least it’s not British rain.

And another Taobao delivery. This one will mean hard work for me. The idea was to get Huan to sort out the first 500 that I have learnt, (am learning) from Memrise and then start putting two characters together for me to try learning ‘words’. It may not be so easy as their first 500 differs to mine!

June 11^th Lazy day, watching episodes of ‘The Bill’ and trying to memorise a few more characters. I’m up to 475 now!

June 12^th Black clouds everywhere today so we didn’t go out. Sod’s law, it still hadn’t rained by lunch time, we could have gone. Still, we had rain in the kitchen! Something upstairs is leaking, we know it can’t be ours, all our water pipes are under the floor. As usual of course there is no one living there at the moment. Huan turned their water off!

Last Taobao delivery, for this round anyway. My razor blades are hardly ever available here and when they are they are much more expensive.

I wouldn’t want to do all our shopping online but I must admit Taobao is a Godsend at times. It’s just a shame that we can’t order perishables!

Now, I would hazard a guess that many of my friends and relatives have never seen an electric motor scooter. That is one field in which I believe China is far ahead of the west. It can lead to the occasional surprise though. There are many that get charged in the foyer of our building but today I stepped out of the lift to this.

This one must be a tight squeeze in the lift. Now we have six apartments on our floor, just imagine if everyone tried to do the same.

As we were confined to barracks, I decided it was time for Uncle ‘Wuzhichef’ to get busy again. The treat for Huan today was a Greek dish, an easy version of Moussaka. It was finished off using the ‘Air Fryer’. I must say it went down very well.

June 13^th What a beautiful start to the day!

‘To walk, or not to walk” that was the question. We decided we would and it turned out to be a good decision. The rain held off until late in the evening and we got nearly eleven kilometres in. Early on in the walk, Huan found this little fellow walking along the path. I thought I’d help him out and put him in the nearest greenery, on a tree. He seemed a bit week though and was having trouble holding on. He was still there when we left but gone the next day and not on the floor. Perhaps he survived.

June 14^th So we woke up to almost identical weather to yesterday and once again decided to walk. Wrong decision! You guessed, it rained. Mind you it didn’t start until we had been going for four kilometres. I have to say though that it felt very good, enough rain to cool us down but not enough to cause any great discomfort. With views like this, who can complain?

And it gave me a great picture, (well I think so) to put on the World Street Photography site.

Home to cook for me, today was a curry. Not only that, it was an ‘army’ curry. Very nice indeed!

June 15^th Great walk through the countryside today, somewhere we haven’t been for four or five months. It rained again of course, this time around half way around, probably a couple of kilometres before we passed the “House in The Country” (by the Kinks for those who don’t know). As you can see it’s not used as a house but as a kindergarten. The children must come from the local farms and villages. Seems like a peaceful place to learn.

June 16^th Today the Gods were on our side once again and managed our ten kilometres without being rained upon. Some bad news when we came back though. Something is happening on the island in front of our buildings.

It seems that the long promised park is now under construction. “Why bad news?” I hear you say. “You should be happy!” you say. Well, Chinese parks tend not be the same as those in other countries. We have one very near our apartment in Ledong so we know what to expect. This one is even nearer, right in the middle of the river. We are not looking forward to being kept awake at night by loud music, dancing old ladies, more loud music, playing children, till after midnight most nights. Mind you, as I write this it is bucketing down outside so maybe the rain can help us! There is a lot more rain here than there is in Ledong.

June 17^th Lovely day for walking, and we made the most of it, nearly 13 kilometres.

June 18^th NTR Only shopping, and raining.

June 19^th Another nice long walk, again nearly 13 kilometres. As usual we tried going where we hadn’t been before, and perhaps where we shouldn’t go without the right attire. Part way through a farmer’s field I spotted a snake in front of me. He had also spotted me and was making very fast tracks in the opposite direction. Needless to say I did the same. Huan was in front of me by his stage, here she is on the way to safety!

Bad news later in the day though.

At a rough guess I would say that our many power outages are to blame for this. Luckily I managed to get it working again before the day was out.

June 20^th Only a short walk today, some good news at the front of the house though. They are planting trees across the road.

And we met one of our friends again.

He was sitting on Human’s T-shirt! In the picture, he’s sitting on a new SD card multi-reader. Yes, my previous one failed yesterday and I need that for transferring dashcam videos from the car to the house. When I shook him off you should have seen him go, I never knew they could fly so fast.

June 21^st Only a local walk, the computer had decided to do another ‘chkdsk’. We visited the land of the ‘Monkey King’ again and sat on ‘Horsey’. We both had a go! Which one of us looks more like a monkey? Rhetorical question, you don’t have to answer!

June 22^nd The computer had decided to start this morning so we went off for a longer walk, to Changhao village and back. It’s about 7 kilometres away and we haven’t walked it since my tendon problems started in January. We were supposed to be taking it slow, in fact that’s what this sign says. Can you see it, hiding in the trees?

We ignored the advice and did it in just over two and a half hours. Here we are at the half way mark before coming back. Still don’t really like selfies. In fact I don’t like having my photo taken at all unless I am unaware of it and therefore more natural.

When we got home the computer was playing up yet again so I had to re-install Windows 7. What a palaver that was (is). Previously I had the 64 bit Ultimate version. Re-installing off the same disk gave me only the 32 bit version. Consequently many thins don’t work as they should. For one thing the sound has disappeared completely and will probably never return if the internet is anything to go by.

June 23^rd A whole day, almost, spent on the chat support with Express VPN. You guessed it, that wouldn’t work either. The final analysis, after trying to install/uninstall the app, using many different versions, was that I would have to re-install Windows yet again. Of course every time you do this Windows has to download and install about three million updates. It was a late night.

June 24^th No computer work today, off to Ledong instead. I would have shown you a dashcam picture of the ‘gate’ to Ledong but I can’t play videos yet! We were there because three schoolgirls, age unknown, wanted to rent the apartment for a month. Ten o’clock was the prearranged time, or so I thought. Huan thought it was to be half past ten. In the end it was nearly 6 in the evening. What a boring day, no computer, no books, no swimming trunks. We did have a lovely lunch though and then dinner at Dico’s in the evening, Huan had itchy feet to get back to the apartment so I told her we were going for coffee first. We had waited nearly seven hours for them; they could wait a few minutes for us. This was the name of the coffee place and this was my hazelnut something or other.

It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t a patch on Human’s iced chocolate. I know what I’ll be having next time!

So, it was back to the apartment to meet the girls. They turned out to be middle school students, four friends, with no parents in tow. There had also been a communication breakdown about costs. When Huan asked for the money, the four girls each forked out a quarter of what they thought was the cost, ¥2000. They hadn’t understood, or the security lady in the building hadn’t explained, that this was a deposit against damages and missing items and the rent would also be required. So the final result, they went back to wherever they came from and we came back to Wuzhishan having wasted a day.

June 25^th Another shopping day and another Express VPN day. For some reason I just couldn’t get it work at all. Luckily for me though the chat window was available so after about two hours it was back again. Strangely enough there had been something in the local English news about Hainan having open access to the internet in tourist areas. Today’s news, looks like they’ve backed off and VPNs will still be required. Spent the rest of the day trying to work out why my audio won’t work. In the end I decided the time has come, a new computer is needed. I spent a few hours trying to work out just what I need.

June 26^th Before going to the local computer shops we decided it was time to walk up to Xia Gong hotel and have a look at the pool. We hadn’t done that since last year. The sky was overcast again so it was a pleasant walk. Imagine our surprise when we got there to find we could no longer get in without paying. We argued and got to reception where we could ask more questions. If we paid to get in we could have the money reimbursed if we went swimming or had a meal. That will put a lot of people off. It’s a very busy walk, especially in the winter. There used to be another way up, walking at the side of the river, that’s not possible any more.

We were also told that there is no way to enter by coming down from the reservoir. They hope this is going to make them money.

Whether it will or not remains to be seen. As for us two, well if we walk, we have to pay ¥20 each whereas if we take the car, it’s still ¥20. We can pay¥120 to access the pool twenty times in a month so we should not lose money. If you haven’t seen it before, the pool is worth it.

Back via the computer shop where Huan had a chat with the sales lady and I had a chat with some friends.

There are no ‘real’ computer shops here so we would have to rely on the sales lady understanding my needs and me understanding the different parts of a computer she was trying to sell me. It was fairly easy in Harbin the sales guy spoke pretty good English. In the end Huan sent photos of all my work yesterday to her son who guided me to a place on JD.com where I could build my own. Again it’s not half as easy as it could be. Everything is in Chinese so has to be translated and then trying to work out which pieces actually work with which other pieces was driving me round the bend. In the end it appeared that I wasn’t going to save any money at all by ‘building it myself’ so I decided, with Huan’s son’s recommendation, to just buy a complete computer. By the end of the day I had narrowed it down to two choices; we will have a chat to the sellers tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

June 27^th First call of the day was to have another walk before going on to Taobao. I do like the various varieties of fauna we see locally. Here’s one that I may or may not have uploaded before. If you look closely, you will see it also has ants crawling all over the flowers.

So my Taobao sojourn was basically a waste of time. If I wanted to buy a named brand PC such as Dell or Lenovo then the ‘build’ could not be modified at all. After a few hours of dallying and dallying I decided a call to Patrick was called for. I had heard of a ‘computer place’ in Haikou, and Patrick, being the font of all knowledge, would probably know more. It seems the place is called DC City and has original vendors plus ‘build you own’ places too. Plans will have to be made!

June 28^th Well, late last night, lying in bed, the plans were decided. Consequently we were up at twenty past five in the morning. I thought that this ‘time’ only existed in the afternoon! Coffee, bank and fuel and we were on our way. I must say driving that early does mean a lot less traffic on the winding mountain roads. First stop was a coffee stop in Maoyang. To think that when I was younger I would drive for hours and hours without a stop. Still, time is not so important for us retirees and the doctor said I should get out and stretch my legs now and then. Breakfast was in Qiongzhong at the bus station, always room to park the car. It is a burger place but they also have the usual ‘soup noodles’ etc. Disappointingly for me they didn’t have fried noodles but they did have a sort of Chinese omelette. Not bad, although a little salty. I told Huan that if we do this again at breakfast time, we should take a couple of slices of bread and butter with us so I can have an egg sandwich. We were in Haikou before half past ten and then the trusty GPS guided us to DC City with very little problem.

The search began! Original vendors were first and we started with Lenovo. It started well, yes we should be able to change the configuration. However, the more questions we asked the murkier it became. The final straw was when they were trying to show something on another PC and couldn’t remove the ‘boot error’. “We’ll carry on looking around” said Huan and I and rapidly made off. That was then my decision made for me, I was going to have someone build me a PC. There are many such places in DC City but we eventually decided on this one.

Neither of the guys had any English but armed with the specs I had already printed out and with Human’s amazing Chinese language skills we did manage to get them to understand what we wanted. They said it would take about an hour to sort it out so we gave them an hour and a half and went for lunch. My only proviso was that they not install any Windows software.

There is a food court in DC City but as it was now around midday it was wall to wall people. Luckily, there is a shopping mall adjacent, I think it’s called ‘Summer Festival’ but I can’t be sure. Whatever the name is, you can’t miss it. In fact it was where we had parked the car. Just for a change I let Huan choose KFC. We both tried a ‘Chizza’ which is a combination of chicken and pizza. It may work for some but it didn’t for us. Still, it filled a hole as they say. While we were scoffing away I noticed something quite normal for Haikou and probably a lot of southern China. Now many of you who live in the north or back in the west may see the occasional motorbike or scooter. This was the view from our lunch time window:

Lunch time over and it was back to the store. Build was complete and they were trying to partition the ‘big’ hard disc without much success. So they asked about Windows software and I produced my ‘original Win 10 Pro’. Here we go I said. Well after a couple of false starts we got it working and we were off. The final result is a PC with 240GB SDD, 2TB HDD, 8GB RAM, DVD, all the relevant ports, including USB 3.0 and of course Win 10 Pro. We added a 27 inch monitor and much to Human’s chagrin a lovely set of PC speakers so that I can be a pest in the office. It cost me one month’s pension to buy it all but if it lasts another five years before I need to upgrade I’ll be happy. I did forget one thing though and that was a UPS. I suspect a lot of the problems in my existing PC have been caused by the numerous power failures we have in our place. That means of course that all we bought is now sitting in Boxes around the office.

By three o’clock we were on our way home again. Of course we, or should I say I, decided that GPS was not needed, getting back out of Haikou should be easy enough. Well, I must have followed the wrong signs and after a few wrong turns we eventually got to the highway at four o’clock. Slowly the service stations are beginning to open up. There were no restaurant facilities here yet, but the fuel station was operational, they sold cold coffees and the restrooms were operational. The Gents even had three western style cubicles.

By quarter past five we were in Qiongzhong for dinner, we like to eat early! The worst part of the journey, for me, is always Qiongzhong to Maoyang but we were there for twenty to seven for my next caffeine fix. We arrived home around seven thirty. Not a bad day’s work!

June 29^th After yesterday we decided that a nice walk was in order before we started on Taobao again. We strayed off our usual beaten paths today, intentionally, and had a great walk. Tracks through the country side are what we both like and as long as it hasn’t been raining they are fine.

As usual we saw lots of pigs, ducks, chickens etc but this has to be my favourite photo of today’s ‘wildlife’. I haven’t processed it at all apart from cropping it but it looks more like a painting than a photo. I love the expression on the mother’s face. She was very, very protective of her babies.

Remember all that about the UPS earlier? Well, just to rub in the fact that we need one, we arrived back after our walk, more than three hours, to find that there was no electricity and hence no lift. We had a little rest in the garden first before braving the stairs. Huan noticed this little creature. I have to say I have never seen a caterpillar like this before. It also moved fairly fast. Huan wouldn’t let me pick it up in case it was toxic. Some googling needed methinks.

The end of the day, after we’d finished our Taobao ordering, brought something we very rarely see because of our apartment’s location in the building, a sunset. Usually when I try to take pictures of sunsets with my phone they are completely washed out by the glare, today I tried playing. Don’t ask me what I did though, I’m no expert!

June 30^th A lazy day, as far as exercise is concerned anyway. It looked very hot outside after we’d had out weekend fry up so we decided to stay in! It gave me time to catch up writing this blog anyway. I also began the reorganising of the office. Once everything arrives then this old computer will become Human’s and her laptop will only be used when we travel. Here’s what her ‘new’ office looks like and her view when she is sitting. She won’t be able to see me because this monitor is 24” and mine, 27” will be behind it!

And so we come to the end of an era, no more posts from this computer, (I hope). Next month’s post should come from an all new, all singing, all dancing computer. Of course you, kind readers, will not notice any difference at all! See you next month, bye for now.