You can see that the water is flowing over the top but not very
deep. My boots got wet but the water didn’t come over the top of them. I also
trod very carefully just in case there were slimy bits that could have caught
me unawares.
Once I reached the main road I had a water stop
before wending my way back. Next to the shop there’s a place that used to be
used for driver training, it’s all closed off now. Huan tells me that the signs
say it’s army land. Further towards town there’s another similar, but larger
place so that’s the one I photographed for you. It’s also closed off now and
marked army land.
Not far from there I bumped into a few bovine friends resting on the
road. They were on a corner on the brow of a small hill so I decided not to
bother them. I didn’t fancy being held responsible for any ensuing accidents. I
did take a few snaps but as today is ‘panorama day’ and they weren’t, you don’t
get to see them.
This next one is not a panorama either; it’s a
photo of my completed walk on my phone. It’s not bad considering I stopped to
take all the panorama pictures, stopped for the water stop and stopped for a
second water stop at our friend’s shop. I spent ten to fifteen minutes chatting
to them before telling them I had to go home and cook dinner!
Dinner was chicken noodles
a la Bob, but I think you’ve seen a version of that before so no pics.
July 29th “Paranoia strikes deep, Into your life it
will creep, It starts when you’re always afraid, Not feeling well, doctors will
take you away” with apologies to Buffalo Springfield for my changing the last
line. Are we paranoid? Sometimes yes. Does it creep into our lives? Every time
we don’t feel so well. Are we afraid? Again, sometimes yes. Luckily no doctors
have had to take us away yet. My latest batch of paranoia started yesterday
evening with a persistent dry cough, a tightness in my chest and a splitting
headache. Interrogating Huan showed that her recent ‘cold’ had started the same
way so Chinese medicine it was, for last night and three times today.
Back to normality, I had my travelling companion today but our walk
was short. By the time I got up Huan was in the middle of making steamed brown
bread. At least that’s what it looked like but it seems that the colour came
from ‘yellow’ beans. Huan’s purse was also getting empty so a visit to the bank
was called for. No problem said I, I’ll bring by bank book and get it brought
up to date, it hasn’t been done since last August. Huan succeeded but I failed.
A young lady helped us with the ‘intelligent terminal’ which decided that I had
put in the wrong password and that this was the third time I had done it.
Strange how on all previous occasions I have only put the password in once and
got money out. To fix the problem my presence and my passport is needed; the
copy on my phone will not suffice so a return trip will be required.
Are there any photos from today? Well there’s a
bit more progress on the park bridge, but not enough progress to show you yet.
Along the road by the park there’s a very wide paved area, a perfect place to
plant a few trees for some shade. They haven’t done this yet, and we don’t know
if they will. However, they have planted a ‘Li’ symbol of a parent and a child.
It looks a bit lonely at the moment, perhaps they will add to it later.
Other than that all we have
to show you is the ‘garden’ outside our building door, created by one of our
neighbours. A few weeks ago there was nothing there but some soil behind the
bricks you can see. I have to admit he’s doing quite a good job. I say ‘doing’
because we see him there every morning when we go out.
July 30th Paranoia easing, I feel much better this
morning. The C-in-C was asking me where I was going to walk this morning while
she was out singing. I really wasn’t sure so I told her I would walk along the
main road towards the Sanya route out of Wuzhishan. Most of my walks these days
seem to start with slight knee troubles until I get into my stride. Would it
better or worse if I had as many legs as this little one?
Along the side of the road
I spotted a plume of smoke where a smallholder was obviously burning something
so I wandered over to check it out. For the first time in months I spotted a
pig, two actually, a piglet running around and this much larger one in the pen.
Still with animals I passed
a furniture shop that has a huge cage outside which in the past, had an
enormous dog that wasn’t very well looked after at all. Nobody was allowed anywhere
near the cage, he was not safe. That dog disappeared a couple of years ago I
think. Today they had two new dogs in the cage, one allowed me to get fairly
close but then the other one got right in my face, pushing the smaller one out
of the way and snarling at me. This is the bigger one.
Next it was decision time,
should I take the left turn towards Nanshengzhen village or take the bend to
the right towards Sanya. The village won although I still hadn’t decided
whether or not to walk all the way there.
Not long afterwards I made
up my mind; this was the turn around point.
On the way back a man with a jack hammer told me I was silly to walk
in the sun with my shorts on. I suppose he was at least getting paid for being
in the sun. Not far after that I stopped to take some pictures of chicks,
goslings and ducklings. The farmer and his wife had to tell me which ones were
ducklings and which were goslings, I’m still not sure I could tell you the
difference. The wife then grabbed one of the chicks and advanced towards me. I
thought she wanted me to buy one but no, she wanted her husband to take a photo
of her, the chick and me! Fame at last.
I timed my arrival back into town for a short
time before Huan’s class was over. As usual she was miles away, tunnel vision
at 100%, so it was Yu that spotted me first. You can see the surprise on Huan’s
face.
And my last photo of the
day is our arrival back home, just over fifteen kilometres done, not such a bad
morning after all.
Old age must be getting to me, maybe to both of us, I definitely
needed a sleep in the afternoon and the boss did too. After that all that was
left was for me to cook again. If I cook noodles once in a week I usually cook
them twice, the reason being you can’t keep fresh noodles too long. Today’s was
another special, sausage casserole noodles a la Bob. No photo for you I’m
afraid but big yummys from both of us!
July 31st Admin day today, only incidental walking
allowed. That meant we also had a lazy start, that came back to bite us on the
bum! Our first port of call was the cellphone provider for our phones, China
Mobile. Yesterday we had tried Alipay on my phone but it wouldn’t allow me to
bind my bank account, only Huan’s, because both our phones are in her name. Our
job today was to try and change my contract to my name. Our usual local office,
where we pay our bills etc, couldn’t help, they told us we would have to visit
head office, not so bad, it’s only round the corner. When we got there the
first sales assistant didn’t have any idea, she told us we’d have to ask
someone else. When the second assistant was free, she didn’t know either so she
disappeared to speak to someone higher up in the back office. When she came
back she told us that it could be done, but they would need a copy of Huan’s
Hukou card, her phone number, a copy of my passport, my phone number and a copy
of my sim card. For ‘copy’ in China
you can often use the word ‘photo’ instead because that’s what she did, took
photographs of everything required. Now we have to wait as all the ‘photos’,
along with the request, have to be sent to another ‘head office’, either in
Sanya or Haikou. We’ll find out in five to seven days whether we’ve been
successful. While all this was going on we had ‘points’ that we’d earned
somehow, converted to money on our phones, here’s Huan getting hers done.
Whenever I think bureaucracy is bad here I always cast my mind back
to my first visits to the Middle East, Saudi
in 1983 and UAE in 1984 and then I don’t feel so bad. In those days a simple
thing like this would have required reams of passport copies, numerous passport
photographs and would have taken a lifetime to sort out. China is pretty
efficient really.
Having spent more time than planned in the phone office we started
off towards the bank; remember the card problems earlier this week. We made the
mistake of stopping on the way to buy some fried chicken breast for my
lunchtime sandwich. By the time that was done, we had to make our way home for
lunch and said sandwich. The bank will have to wait, yet again.
Mind you, I was happy waiting for the chicken
and drooling, not over the food, but over this, a yellow Porsche 911. We saw it
from the rear end first and I fell in love with it, I do have a thing for
yellow cars! However, if I stole this one, the first thing I would have to do
is sort the bonnet out. Who on earth does this to a Porsche, and why?
Although outside admin had to be delayed, there was also some inside
work to be done. Huan was remiss; she forgot to take any embarrassing photos of
me with my hands down both toilets, scrubbing them clean with Jif and bleach,
and also giving the bath a good scrubbing too. Usually she likes to take
pictures of me working; I think she does it to show my bald patch!
August 1st “When August days are hot an’ dry, I won’t sit by an’ sigh or die; I’ll
get my bottle (on the sly) And go ahead, and fish, and lie!” (In August by Paul
Laurence Dunbar) Well, it’s not me, I don’t fish and I don’t drink from bottles
on the sly.
Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang
of the weather here. This week it is supposed to rain every day, and for the
last few days it’s done that, later in the afternoon. Basing my plan on that I
set off very early this morning, with clouds around all the mountains, just
like the last few days. Here’s what it was like looking towards our house from
the other side of the river looking over the first bridge.
No rain anywhere so off I
went, up the main road through town towards Haikou. I planned to do much the same as
Thursday and walk until I felt like turning back for home. I only got just over
three kilometres away from home before the rain started. It was a few metres
past the spot in this next photograph, check out the clouds, and the further I
walked in that direction the wetter I was getting. Turn round time was early
today.
Walking back into town the
rain dropped to a drizzle, which led me to deciding that a trip to the bap shop
would be in order. Going back down the hill I spotted one of those elusive
little birds again. This time I put the camera on continuous shooting and out
of the tens of photos that I took managed to find one that was good enough to
share.
Walking towards the bap
shop takes us to the other side of town where, looking over the mountains, I
could see a lot more clouds and rain. I’m beginning to think that there are
times, many of them, when the rain is falling all around Wuzhishan but not so
much on it.
Arriving home, having
completed only nine kilometres this morning, I took a panorama from the bedroom
balcony. As you can see, we are completely surrounded by clouds, and I think
it’s raining behind all the mountains except in the top left corner.
Ah well, getting home early meant I could cook dinner early, nothing
special, just another “finish all the vegetables in the fridge and add a tin of
stewed pork” stew. Huan could smell it as soon as she walked in the door, and
it goes without saying, that it was delicious! Oh, and rain did come down in
the city, from about three o’clock onwards.
August 2nd The rain hadn’t stopped before we went to bad last night and it
persisted all through the night and into the morning. It seems that a typhoon named
Sinlaku had been born somewhere off Sanya and was heading towards Vietnam. That’s
the first one this year, the typhoon season runs from May/June to
September/October. I’m not a fan of typhoons but I guess the reservoir will be
glad of the rain. That wasn’t a problem for us today though as we had another
admin day, this time for both of us. My first duty was to act as the getaway
driver! Huan needed to go to one of her banks and withdraw a sizable sum of
money. Once I screeched up, let her in and screamed off again, we were to
another of her banks. This time it was to deposit the lump sum. This was part
of her duties as the ‘Minister of Finance’ and she’s pretty good in that role.
Her job at the bank didn’t take long at all.
Now, this is also my
bank, remember the problems with my card earlier in the week? My job at the
bank should have been much simpler than Huan’s, it wasn’t! First my passport
and bank card were scanned, more than once, and then the fun began. “This
passport is not the same as the account details.” I got a new passport in 2016
and one of our first jobs back in Hainan was
to give the bank the details and the passport to copy. Eventually they agreed
that the number was the same but the name was different. Much more explanation
required, the passport shows the family name first followed by the Christian names;
the bank account has them reversed, as you would say my name. Finally we got it
all sorted out and they then told us the account was locked because the wrong
PIN had been attempted three times. It seems that it doesn’t matter whether the
three times were on one occasion or over a period of time, in my case years.
Thinking about it one of the ATMs here in Wuzhishan had a dodgy keyboard for a
while and depressing keys did not always bring the corresponding ‘beeps’. When
that happened I started again so I assume those times would have been the
errors. Having sorted all that, out we were ready to go when they informed us
that because of the three failed attempts my account was now frozen for a week Even
they couldn’t run my passbook through to update it. What a farce! Imagine being
a trader or even worse a father with a family to feed and no money for a week.
As you can guess from all of that, my job at the bank took considerably longer
than Huan’s.
Despite
all my moaning and groaning above, I do have to say that the staff remained
courteous and helpful all the time. They couldn’t explain the ‘whys and
wherefores’, they were just following the rules which, according to another
customer, had been changed again on April 1st to be even stricter
than they were before. I guess I could have had similar problems even in the UK and at least
here the bank does provide free beneficial facilities while you wait.
And
how did the prime minister feel about all of this? She was happy, her job was
successful.
August 3rd ‘er indoors was up with the larks this
morning, she’d even stolen my phone to take pictures on the balcony. She was
trying to get a photo of a dragonfly but didn’t realise that the phone had zoom
capabilities. Consequently the dragonfly photos didn’t work very well. She also
took a lot of photos of her flowers, they came out better.
Not too long afterwards I
was up, stealing back the camera and taking a selfie of my morning ‘presidential’
hair. Do you think “The Donald” would approve? By the way, there is no wind at
all, that is purely my normal, natural morning look. If you think it’s bad,
take pity on Huan, she has to wake up to it every day.
Monday’s, as you know, are admin days,
otherwise known as shopping days. Today we had some extra admin to take care
of. We received a phone call from China Mobile telling us that the change of
name from Huan’s to mine was agreed, and asking us to visit the office. That
was the beginning of my not very good day. It started well enough, we were
ushered into the manager’s office who it turns out, we know. She’s the daughter
of the people who run a shop with a large Labrador
that’s been missing a while. It seems the reason it’s been missing is that the
lady had been off having a baby and they took the dog with them. Anyway, I
digress. All was going well, we were asked to take a seat while we waited for a
spare assistant so this we did. Once we were at the front of the queue we hit a
bump! Previously, to make international calls you had to put a deposit on your
account, ¥800.00, which of course I had done. Changing the phone to my name
means that deposit has to be paid back to Huan. Another wait followed while
head office, wherever it may be, was contacted yet again. Explanation when they
returned? The money can’t be transferred to my name, and international deposits
are no longer required anyway. Even though my phone is in Huan’s name, the
money can’t be transferred to her phone either. We now have to wait another
fifteen days for the deposit to be refunded and then the name change can go
ahead. I was beginning to lose my patience.
Shopping was more frustrating than usual, pushing me further into the ‘I’m
not very happy’ zone, irritable is probably the best word to describe how I felt.
The crunch came, literally, when we were driving into our apartments, a car
came the other way. It would have been very easy for him to reverse and let me
pass, but I had to reverse instead. He did pull over at one stage and then I had
Hyacinth telling me to go forward and I’m still trying to go backwards. She
kept on and I lost it. I yelled at her and told her she could give me advice
when she’d passed her test! What she didn’t realize was the ‘space’ he had left
for me was not actually wide enough which is why I continued reversing. Unfortunately,
my anger at Huan distracted my attention and I managed to hit the entry
barrier, I had a prang! I should just have calmed down and taken my time.
Ah well, we live and learn, or in my case, we
live and never learn! Another week comes to an end, not the best of weeks. Don’t
get the wrong idea though, as I sit here writing this I have a great big grin
on my face, life is still good!
