Too Many Needles, Too Many Speeding Offences and Too Much Rain

November 10^th November 10^th The weather changed, for the worse, yet again. Huan was out in the morning for her usual choir practice, I was lazing on the PC. I had to pack the car and meet her at half past ten though for our monthly trip to Haikou. Lunch was taken en route at a service station we haven’t stopped at before, not the northbound side anyway. It was a pleasant enough place to stop, food was varied and cheap, of course I avoided meat today.

Our usual hotel had vacancies so no worries there and we got the fifth floor which I prefer. This particular room has been refurbished since we last stayed in it, it now has a larger table complete with four chairs, handy for having people round for dinner, and it has a chaise longue to boot!

Here’s the new red laptop all ready to go along with the red mouse and the new red headphones. They will be needed as Huan has brought her hulusi with her.

At the hospital we were good people and waited in the queue today, afternoons seem to be easier than mornings. We had a nice chat with the doctor, his English is not bad, although at times he did have ask Huan for clarification. He decided that this month, as well as my PSA test, I had to have my testosterone checked too. Thank God it was only one needle! We will be able to pick the results up tomorrow afternoon.

From there it was back to the other building for my hormone injection, another needle and a bigger one at that. The nurse is used to me now and didn’t wonder why I put my fingers in my ears and covered my eyes.

All that was left was to try and find some cheapo tracksuit bottoms or pyjamas, I had forgotten to bring anything with me to wear in the hotel room. We failed but at least we got a walk out of it, that took us up to dinner time, no meat again. Back at the hotel I did give in though and had a coffee, from a sachet, which means it had sugar in it. Nothing else till after tomorrows barrage of blood tests now!

November 11^th Met Dr. Tim at eight o’clock, he realised very quickly that I had ‘head’ problems, sinus troubles etc so he gave me a quick check up. I’m pleased to say that my ears, nose, throat and chest are fine, the problem is only in my sinuses. Down to the business at hand then, sorting out what tests I would need to have.

Papers in hand, we set off for the cashier first, then the vampire’s room, which was very busy this morning, and finally to the dispensary for some Tylenol. Results were to be ready in the afternoon, the same time as yesterday’s test results.

After breakfast, it was back to the hotel to while away the time until lunch. The weather precluded any ‘touristy’ stuff. We blame the weather for needing yet another OAP nap after lunch! At four thirty all the test results were in. My PSA levels are fine, the rest I’m not so sure about. Dr. Tim was a little busy when we visited his clinic and if we had stayed to chat to him we would probably have made him ‘late home from work’, instead I decided to scan and email the results when we get home.

Evening time and dinner with friends, Patrick, Flora and their son Padraig, Jake and his friend and neighbour Kevin. We didn’t have far to go, the restaurant was right next door to the hotel. Here’s the adults, well four of them anyway.

Finally, for today, here I am going through the motions of eating a crab from the hot-pot. I’m not a fan of small crabs, trying to get anything out of them is beyond me.

All in all we had a wonderful evening with great company, good food and of course some lovely amber nectar. It was only marred for me by a text message, I managed to get yet another speeding fine on my way up here. I’m already paranoid about all these speed cameras, average speed cameras and having been caught going into a tunnel over the limit before I now take extra care. This fine though, was 150 metres coming out of the tunnel; I guess I pressed the cruise control resume button too early!

November 12^th Nothing to do today except buy some groceries and get ourselves back home to Wuzhishan. En route we stopped at Fengmu again, southbound this time, and the sign above the public conveniences intrigued me. Google tells me that it is Malay, an Austronesian language so I guess there must be a community nearby that are perhaps originally foreign born Chinese.

At the same location we saw something that a neighbour had told us about, it’s where he gets a ‘battery swap’ on his electric car when he’s on his way back to Wuzhishan. I think he told us it takes ten to fifteen minutes.

I love how they have translated ‘User Instructions’, into Chinese but not the actual instructions. Still, I could work out enough to know that I had to call the ‘Specialost’.

We arrived home to a sunnier and warmer Wuzhishan than the one we had left two days ago. It won’t stay though as there’s another typhoon not far away, it’s just passed over the Philippines creating havoc there. Hopefully, like the last few, this one will veer south and spare us the worst.

Admin for me, transferring files and photos to the PC, and housework for Huan. She did find some time for some more hulusi practice though. No cooking today, dinner was out.

On the way out I had to stop and say hello to three of my four legged friends, which I always do through the gate as they’re not allowed out. They are an incredibly noisy bunch and more often or not are taken back inside after I’ve passed by. The largest one, a collie, is the one least likely to bite and always jumps up for a stroke and a tickle. Unfortunately, he, or she, hasn’t had his, or her, nails cut for a long time, this is what my arm looked like four hours later.

On our way out of the gate we bumped into Yu who convinced Huan that I would probably die if I didn’t have an injection immediately, if not sooner. As I haven’t had a tetanus shot for a long time I bowed down to their arguments on the condition that we had dinner first. It’s a good job I did because they won’t give you any shots on an empty stomach. Anyway, off we went to the hospital, to the A&E department, despite it not actually being an emergency. From reception downstairs we were sent up to the cashier’s office to pay for a doctor’s consultation. This was ¥4.00 more than it would have been during working hours, and that should explain why Chinese A&E departments are not overrun with people looking for freebies. Back downstairs we went to see the doctor, she decided that a tetanus antitoxin shot was needed; printed out some papers for us and sent us back upstairs to the cashier. We did that, paid, and then went back downstairs where the doctor told us to go back upstairs to collect the medication. Off we went, again, got the necessary little bottles and returned to the doctor who then sent us to the ‘infusion room’! First I had a painful needle in my wrist to see if would have an allergic reaction to the tetanus shot. After twenty minutes I was fine and so we moved on to the next stage. To my surprise, the actual shot was going to be in my tender little bum! The way they do it here is that you sit on a stool, lower your trousers a little and then the nurse gets to work. She was asking Huan to tell me to relax, as if that was possible with a needle hovering behind me somewhere. The shot was actually a lot less painful than the test was. Now I have to go to a different clinic in the next day or two to have the tetanus vaccine which as you probably know is good for ten years. Reading through that you may be wondering just what Chinese health care is like. Well, it’s actually pretty good and although not free, fairly cheap. To see the doctor I paid ¥19.30 and the shot cost ¥23.20, a total of ¥42.50, or in real money, about a fiver. Bear in mind I had to pay the full cost, Chinese people are covered by a national health insurance, supplemented by a private health insurance through the companies they work for. They still end up paying, but not the full whack. After all that, home for me, cup of tea, drum practice for Huan.

However, that was not the end of my day. Huan was driving me crazy trying to practice her hulusi while listening to Yu’s recording on her phone. I asked her to send me the file and then split it up into more manageable pieces with Audacity, changing the tempo at the same time but not the pitch. Hopefully that will help her learn and catch up with the others.

November 13th “Friday the 13^th, Keep Calm and Don’t Go Swimming, Don’t Have Sex, Don’t Smoke, Don’t Drink, Don’t Go Out, Don’t Split Up, Don’t Run From The Killer, If You Trip Get Up and Run, and above all Turn On The Stupid Light Before Entering Any Room!” (Stolen from a friend’s Facebook page, thank you Ayne-Marie). We didn’t stay in, instead we took a trip to the traffic police station where they told me that my ‘speeding infraction’ was at the same tunnel as last time, only this time it was on the way out and not on the way in. Luckily, I was within 10% and only had to sign and accept a warning.

From there we had a little walk around the river before doing enough shopping to keep us going until Monday. Huan was cheesed off, the plastic bags are now biodegradable and as such the price has gone up from ¥0.30 to ¥0.80. As for me, well I was so worn out after lunch that yet another OAP nap was needed.

Friday the 13^th it is and it came round to bite me on the bum again. Not long after dinner I received another text message with yet another speeding fine! This time it was nowhere near a tunnel but somewhere on the highway between Haikou and Tunchang on our way home. The speed limit is 120kph and I had the cruise control set on 119kph. We know it’s 3kph fast so setting it at 119 is like setting it at 116. How I was speeding I don’t know, but I guess there’s not much point in arguing. The old dashcam had the speed on the resulting videos, this one doesn’t so I can’t even argue that way.

This is the text message, translated into English by Google - [Hainan Traffic Police] Your small car (my car# here) was on the provincial county-level administrative division of Hainan Highway 56 kilometres 863 meters from Haikou to Tunchang at 11:00 on 2020-11-12. It was recorded by the traffic technology monitoring equipment as "Driving Medium The above-mentioned motor vehicles other than passenger and cargo vehicles and dangerous goods transport vehicles exceed the prescribed speed by 10% or less” illegal behaviour. Please accept the processing within 30 days from the date of receiving this notice. Hopefully, as I was clocked at 10% or less again, I’ll just be issued with another warning.

November 14^th Our weather is all over the place at the moment, yesterday there wasn’t a cloud in the sky; today there wasn’t any sky to see. That made for a pretty boring day, Huan out to choir practice, me cooking dinner early and then binging on “Stingers”. I did get an extra session of guitar practice in the afternoon so the day wasn’t completely wasted.

November 15^th “Listen To The Pouring Rain, Listen To It Pour” (José Feliciano) which is exactly what we did all last night and today. They typhoon I mentioned earlier, Vamoc, did pass us by but the rain clouds associated with it didn’t. This is the Infrared satellite photo of the North West Pacific region, our little island is 110E and 20N, well away from the eye, but still being affected by the storm. Hopefully it will disappear over the next few days although our forecast is for rain until at least Tuesday evening.

Huan was supposed to have an outdoor hulusi and drum practice for our area this morning, that was cancelled. She still managed to let me hear the dulcet tones of her singing and hulusi all round the house though. As for me, I started the character lessons with Yoyo Chinese, the first level is free, I can manage that at the moment. We also brought our regular shopping trip forward a day, I managed to get absolutely soaked in the ten metres between the house and the car. It’s not even warm rain these days, we are wondering where this global warming is, it feels more like the onset of the next ice age for us. We don’t normally feel this chilly before December.

November 16^th Yahoo! The weather was good enough for a walk, albeit a short one, just over five kilometres. Still, that’s better than nothing and should stop my feet from swelling. The first photo is a progress report on the bridge to the island, who knows, it may well be open by the end of the year or by Chinese New year after all.

More proof that I was actually out walking.

And some water lilies.

Boohoo after lunch when Huan took me to the area clinic for that tetanus shot. However, the boohoo soon changed to yahoo, the area clinic does not have tetanus vaccine. I wonder if we will have to see Dr Tim to get it, it’s proving difficult here in Wuzhishan. Huan then had me walk her to school; she had a hulusi class this afternoon, not with the class she wants to join but with someone else. Sat outside waiting we spotted quite a large butterfly. I tried my hardest but it was not staying still long enough and I didn’t have the camera with me, only the phone. You can see the blur of its wings in the second photo.

Another week ends and a new one starts tomorrow. Wish me luck for my visit to the traffic police! See you next time.

Back to Normal, Pareidolia, Books, Philanthropy, Chinese Cars

November 3^rd Sometimes your plans get changed as mine were today. Black skies surrounded us but I had to go out and collect the baps I ordered so I took the car. Now Donald, who is, as you may remember, the car, was incredibly filthy and as I was driving up the road I noticed that the car wash was free, not free of charge but free of customers. I dropped Donald off there and walked to get the baps, trusty umbrella in my hand. Luckily for me the rain didn’t come. Freddy was absent which was a shame because I found a bird that wasn’t black for a change.

And here are my baps still warm from the oven. We even got a free gift today of a large vegetable filled flat bread. We had it for lunch with cheese, tomato and cucumber.

All that was left was to pick up Donald and he was ready and waiting, he’d even had his shoes cleaned. I have no idea of UK prices these days but this cost less than a fiver.

Back home then to carry out my chief cook and bottle washer duties, oh there’s definitely no peace for the wicked, or me come to that.

After lunch I got to work on the old laptop, removing all the data and software that I had installed. It was left with only Windows 7 by the time I finished. I checked with Huan’s son on whether or not we should consider repairing it and he advised against it, unless we wanted it just for movies, storing files or as a server. We don’t need it for movies, Huan has her TV and a desktop and I have my PC, files are stored on mine, backed up on my external HDD and Huan’s PC and photos are sent to my children every month. As for using it as a server, well I guess I could work out how to do that, but not why.

Guitar and Chinese were not forgotten today; in fact I even tried translating a song into Chinese for the resident’s show. I discovered that it’s not very easy!

November 4^th I was graced with Huan’s company this morning, she has decided to give morning drum practices a miss. It seems there is some bickering between two of the ladies as to who should play what and neither are happy if the leader (saxophone player) makes the decision. Huan has just been playing whatever she was asked to but has decided that an ‘atmosphere’ twice a day is just too much, she will stick to afternoons. Their evening sessions are just fun so those stay too.

Because I had Huan with me I thought we would take one of her favourite routes, the scenic mountain walk. As we came towards the edge of the town where we would start going uphill, in front of us were ominous black clouds so we changed our minds and headed back into town. Of course the weather picked up again didn’t it so we took the anti-clockwise route for a while. It was nice to see some of the scenery again.

Don’t let the empty path fool you, the snowbirds are now back in force, and as we reached the usual congregation place they were there dancing, doing tai-chi, using the outdoor gym, cracking their whips etc. No singing was heard though. As if to keep us from going any further, those foreboding black clouds were back so backtracked again and headed off around the river. It made a very pleasant change for me to have Huan back at my side; life was back to normal again. We saw the usual groups of singers and a lot of people fishing. Of course not everyone was full of life; this one in his RV was having a slow day.

We were both fascinated by a red flower today, from below we could only see the red ‘spikes’ but by bending the stalks we could see the white seeds. I didn’t want to take a photo like that, so we moved on. However, a few metres further along the footpath we found just one flower, on a tree. Whether the wind had blown it there, or someone had put it there, we don’t know, but, it gave me the chance of a photo.

Despite our convoluted unplanned walk we ended up doing a lot more than we would have going around the mountain walk. That is about nine kilometres door to door and we finished with nearly eleven and a half. That’s the longest for some time and I had to have an OAP nap after lunch. I was the chef again today, shrimp and noodle soup, very nice it was too.

Huan’s afternoon was hulusi and her evening was drums. She ‘gave me a job’ before she left, “Just scan and print a few pages from the hulusi school book.” A few pages turned out to be thirty four and of course I can’t damage the book so I rebelled, a little. I said I would do it tomorrow! Yu is already a member of the hulusi class and Huan has the chance to join next week, if she can adapt to their level. They’ve been playing a few months with a teacher as opposed to Huan’s few weeks alone. Fingers crossed but I think she should be fine.

November 5th We were confined to barracks yet again due to inclement weather, although Huan did manage to fit her morning choir practice in. My entertainment consisted of watching the workmen repaving the pavement across the road yet again. Sometimes I think the Wuzhishan local government has been taking lessons from UK local councils. The pavement has been dug up and re-laid numerous times in the last couple of years. The most recent occasion was just a few months ago after which trees were planted alongside the road, very forward thinking. Two weeks ago they pruned all the trees, presumably to allow for thicker growth of the trunks before the foliage spread again. They then painted the bottoms of all the trunks white, there can be many reasons for this but the answer, for China, that I found on Quora states “Painting tree trunks white is a time honoured method of young tree protection often found in orchards and tree farms. There are several purposes but chief among them is to prevent cracking and splitting of the tender new bark, which can allow introduction of disease, insects and fungus.” So far so good. However, last week they took up all the paving stones and in the process removed all the trees. I think they knocked one or two down by accident and then decided it would be better to remove them all. New paving has nearly been completed now, using bricks rather than paving slabs, and room has been left for the trees to come back. It all sort of reminds me of Bernard Cribbins (Right Said Fred) and Flanders & Swann (The Gasman Cometh). You can listen to the latter here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0&ab_channel=NancyDeHaven

Our other spot of entertainment was going out for dinner. The couple who we took to the port before summer set in have returned and insisted on treating us. We tried to refuse, after all we had to go to Haikou anyway and they had already sent us some expensive salted duck eggs. They wouldn’t have it and we felt obliged to go, that was my pre-hospital diet of the window for one night. I did manage to limit myself to three small glasses of beer though.

I did try and take a selfie of us all but my arms were not quite long enough.

November 6^th Would you believe it, yet another day locked indoors, this time Huan as well, she had no practice today. Of course she more than made up for it in the house, I even managed nearly two hours on the guitar. It’s a good job we have no people living above or below us! I also had a go at servicing Freddy; it’s amazing how much help you can find on the internet for almost any problem. The solution I found seemed to work, we’ll see more tomorrow.

November 7^th Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day…The sun was shining, Freddy had a new “Soft Shutter Release” fitted, something that came with the camera but that I never used because I thought it was just ornamental! Huan went off to choir practice and I went off round the river via the Saturday market which was a lot bigger than last week. It had expanded at both ends and there were a lot more people.

I didn’t find anything special to show you this week, mostly because I can’t remember what you’ve already seen! It is a farmer’s market but also has all the usual bric-a-brac stalls, even battery operated toys for the kids today. Remember those toys that used to go round in circles, dogs that barked etc? I’m sure some children will still love them, given the chance, if their parents don’t buy them iPads too early on. I did spot one very happy young boy; his Mum had just bought him a kitten. I suppose you think I mean a cat, well I don’t, I mean a rabbit. I do have to confess though that I had to look up the name for baby rabbits.

Despite all the crowds at the market, there was only a smattering of people down by the riverside.

I did find a lone saxophone player up near the bridge you can see in the distance in the first photo. He had his music hanging from a tree, if you enlarge it you will see that they don’t use staves as we do but instead use a numbering system. Huan uses the same for singing and hulusi, whether it’s easier or not I couldn’t tell you. I do know that I find it more difficult.

This is the view the other side of the river, just starting on my way back, not many people here either. Maybe they were all in the market today.

The only wildlife I saw today was a very small butterfly. If I had got any closer it could have spat in my eye!

On this side I did find signs of life of the human kind though, singers, fishermen and a gentleman playing the Er Hu. I only photographed the last two.

Just before reaching home I decided to make a panorama for you, hope you like it.

And the last picture from today’s walk, taken at the request of the subject. I’m not sure why he asked, after all, he won’t get a copy, but here he is making a new entrance to our riverside walk.

Arriving home I found that our water was off, they were cleaning the rooftop tank. Making dinner would have to wait. Still, it gave me a chance to catch up the Blog, I hadn’t actually written anything since Wednesday.

November 8^th Graced with Huan’s company again today we tried the clockwise route around the mountain scenic walk again, we were lucky, the weather stayed good for us. One reason for going was to check on the progress of the road refurbishment, it’s still not finished.

As you can see from the angle of the shot, I was walking above the road which was fine until I reached the end and to drop down six feet back to the road. At times like that I know I’m getting old! The road further up was just like it had always been.

Although this is a concrete road it is not a busy one, it only leads to the hotel at the top. That’s one of the reasons we enjoy it, the other is the scenery at the sides. Here’s a view stitched from six photos, as you can see, good walking weather today.

You’ve seen the bridge where we cross to go down before, this is the view the other way, stitched from six photos again.

Some of the rubber trees were in action today and using Freddy, I was able to catch a drop. Of course if I knew the camera as well as I should I may have done a better job.

This chap was much easier to photograph although what he was doing in the rubber collecting cup we don’t know. Can you see him?

Our canine friend wasn’t so friendly today. She did come running when I whistled and clapped my hands, and was happy to see us until she realised we had no food. I really ought to buy some dog biscuits for her.

Snowbirds were out in force today, some of the early ones coming down as we were going up but some going our way too. One asked me if I was Russian so I asked if he was Korean. He then asked if I was French, for some reason, so I asked if he was Japanese. I stopped there but he carried on, German, Australian, Kiwi, American and finally British. At least he took my responses in good humour. Despite all the snowbirds we did manage to take a lot of photos without any of them showing up. Here’s another stitch up of the bamboo grove which usually has quite a few people exercising, empty today.

Finally, on our way home we passed the town square and there was a book sale in progress. The sign said “Buy two, get five” so after confirming that you actually got seven books for the price of two we dived in. You pay for the two most expensive books, which in our case was ¥75.00 and ¥34.00. Huan was not too happy about paying ¥75.00 for one book but she got the point eventually, I think! Here’s the haul, Huan’s three at the front, my four at the back. Buying English books here is not easy so almost anything will do.

We were both worn out when we got home; it’s a long time since we walked up hills and steps, so an OAP kip was called for. I slept for just over two hours and, unusually for Huan, she slept an hour and a half. It’s a good job we didn’t have to cook today!

November 9^th I had bad news from Shure microphones this week, neither of my wireless ones are on frequencies used in China. Mine are both VHF and here they use UHF. Today was disposal day for them and for the laptop.

The first stop was the computer shop where they have a small workshop. Unfortunately, the technician was not in so I had to deal with the sales lady. Communication was not so easy but eventually another customer got the point before she did. I was not trying to sell them the laptop or to ask for it to be repaired; I was trying to give it to the technician who may be able to use it for parts.

No such problems were encountered at the ‘repair everything’ shop; the gentleman there had big smiles when he saw the two microphones. I pointed out the frequencies for him and explained that the government forbids the use of these in China. Hopefully he understood, I wouldn’t like to see him hauled off to jail.

Never let people tell you that Chinese made products are not up to standard, I mean, look at this, it even says ‘High Quality’ on it. It’s got four wheels, four seats, four doors and runs on electric, what more could you possibly need? Don’t laugh, that could be our car in a few years time!

If you’re wondering why there’s no shopping today, after all it is Monday, it’s because we are off to Haikou tomorrow for tests and needles. Hopefully all will be OK, you can find out in next week’s episode, see you then!

Taobao, The Weather, Under the Weather, Brawn & Storytime

October 27^th We woke up to a lovely day today and with Huan out for choir practice I thought a nice walk would be on the cards. I was wrong. Her Majesty put me on Taobao duty, I had to stay in and wait for the laptop. I kept myself busy until it arrived and then cooked this evening’s dinner before Huan came home.
 
Once Huan arrived we started up the laptop, first going into BIOS. That was in English so my first worry was assuaged. Carrying on through the boot process the laptop went straight into Windows with no installation questions and therefore no language choice. It booted up in Chinese. Trying to change the language to English didn’t work so we got on the chat with the trader. He told us that he ‘forgot’ we wanted an English option and that he would send us a USB version to which we replied that we would withhold our agreement to pay until we received that and tested it. All packed up and stored for the next few days. Here’s what it looks like, from the website, and also the ‘putting it into English’ control panel view. PS I won’t be playing games on it!

After our tasty dinner of chicken noodle soup it was a short walk for me before a little guitar and Chinese practice. Talking about the soup with Huan we decided that Chinese people would more than likely enjoy it but would never buy it, it’s more expensive to make than the way they make it!

I took the ‘bridge to nowhere’ route to see if there were any major changes intending to arrive back in our complex in time to see Huan and the gang giving it their all with their drums and Hulusi. The bridge has no changes but I did have to make a slight detour to get on the right track after the bridge, the normal track has been overrun with garbage!

Rain is what I was worried about this evening so I cut my walk short and headed home, chatted to a couple of schoolchildren on the way. They showed me their books but couldn’t actually read them for me, or communicate very well. Still, they had a little practice which made them happy, something to tell their parents about when they reached home.

Along the way I made a short video, for posterity you understand, showing the two bridges to the future ‘park island’. The whole project was supposed to be finished by the end of the year, we can’t see that happening. Of course they may have meant before Chinese New Year, that is a possibility, if we don’t have too much more rain.

October 28th What a miserable day! As if the rain wasn’t enough I was struck down with yet another bug, I seem to have had nothing but since we came back from Sanya. Huan went off for her morning music but before going made me a nice hot ginger drink. My, it was a fierce one, I could feel it burning my throat on the way down. For the rest of the day all I had to do was add a little more water.
 
Our only entertainment for the rest of the day was Taobao, All Bran, no problem, Weetabix, no problem, headphones, yes problem. One of the disadvantages of ordering from Taobao is that often the instructions are in Chinese only. Plugging the headphones in worked fine, which is what I will do here at home. Getting the Bluetooth to pair and work was nigh on impossible to start with. Eventually we understood the Bluetooth name was F9 but it was still disconnecting as soon as it connected. Finally, looking at the phone at the right time in the sequence, I saw that the headphones only had 20% charge so were probably automatically disconnecting and switching off. Nothing about that in the instructions, or at least we didn’t see it. After a charging period, up to 90%, success, all worked fine, I could listen to music and even speak to Huan, through my phone to hers. The microphone is not top notch but it will do as I will hardly ever use that function.
 
Huan didn’t even get her evening practice in today, the rain never let up at all. Let’s hope tomorrow is a better day.
 
October 29^th My hopes were dashed, the weather was still miserable and I wasn’t much better. I even had to miss out on a nice lunch today. Huan’s singing teacher is off to Sanya for the winter and as he always does, he’s inviting everyone for lunch, not free of course. I was quite looking forward to it, my last ‘blow-out’ before next month’s blood tests. Instead my NAAFI break was standing on the balcony recording the monthly air raid siren tests and my lunch was a bacon bap.
 
Huan came home and sent all kinds of stuff over to my WeChat, as usual, the quality leaves a great deal to be desired. I kept only a few of the photos, here’s one of Huan’s table with their teacher in pride of place.

As you can see from the photo, they had plenty of food so Huan didn’t need a big dinner and although I was beginning to feel better I still wasn’t 100% To make life easy and as a last splurge, no fried food for the next two weeks, we had almost the same as my lunch, bacon baps but with the addition of one egg each. For the next two weeks there will be no chocolate for me, nothing with sugar in it, mostly fish and vegetables to eat and water to drink. With a little luck my blood tests will give Dr. Tim, and me, nothing to worry about.

October 30^th Still under the weather but I made sure I got out before the rain started today. I was in desperate need of some fresh air. Of course I didn’t get much because I was wearing a mask to keep my bugs to myself!

Good news for Huan, sort of anyway, the court case concerning the original maintenance company has been dropped. They had filed a case against the residents’ committee so Huan was one of the defendants in the case. The company lost their case in the first two courts and had appealed to a higher court but they have now decided to withdraw their case. They also had to pay the costs so Huan is not out of pocket. I’m still not at all clear what has happened but at least that’s one less thing for us to worry about. Now all we have to do is wait and see how the gas company case goes, I’m not sure who is suing who there, or how much longer it will be. It’s now been twenty two months!

October 31^st The CO confined me to barracks again and put me on Taobao standby, waiting for the USB (English) for the laptop and some lovely bubbly bath stuff, also for me. Both arrived just after lunch. Huan was out morning, afternoon and evening while I fought with the laptop. Changing it to English was easy, insert USB and boot from it. A side effect was that it removed the partitions they had installed and all the Chinese software that I didn’t want anyway. Why was I fighting it? Well, I love Windows 10, much prefer it over previous versions but it does seem to have one big failing and that is getting computers to network with each other, the old ‘homegroup’ facility has been removed. I was trying all sorts, it even came down to swapping cables in the end. Finally I got it working, well after midnight!

November 1^st “No sun, no moon! No morn, no noon, No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day. No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member. No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! November!” (November by Thomas Hood)

A new month, a new day, an almost new Bob, feeling much better than the last few days. I even took Freddy out for a walk, he didn’t behave well, I think he needs a service. There may be somewhere in Haikou but there’s definitely nowhere in Wuzhishan. Consequently the first few photos were taken with Marvin instead, he started off with a little spider.

The spider was on the doorframe of the ‘band practice room’ where the gang were busy doing their thing. I could only get photo of all of them by using Marvin’s wide angle function; he is good for something now and then.

The observant among you may notice that there is a gentleman playing the euphonium. Huan knows that I played the same instrument many moons ago in an army brass band so she piped up asking if I wanted to buy one. After fifty two years I doubt if I would even remember one scale never mind the multitudes that I knew then! Speak of the devil, the last time I saw them she was on the bass drum, today she was on cymbals, I made sure not to get my head in the way, just in case!

The weather was even on my side today.

Not all was sunshine and roses, I failed to get any sausages, they weren’t going to be ready until afternoon by which time I would end up being far too busy. I did get my order in for twenty more baps on Tuesday morning though and even found that the Xinjiang bread bakers have returned from the north, that was lunch sorted out.

This morning the computers were networking well together so in the afternoon I began the job of copying some of the necessary files across from the desktop to the laptop. These are files that I may or may not need when we are sitting in hotel rooms. All was going well until I reached one particular folder then I kept getting the message “Access denied”. There was nothing in the folder I was trying to copy other than pure data files, why only this one folder? I searched so many different sites, spent hours on sharing, permissions and security, getting more and more confused. All my settings on both computers were correct, other folders had been transferred. In the end I tried something that nobody had suggested on any site anywhere and I disabled the firewall on the laptop for the private network. Magic! It worked. I still can’t explain how I was able to copy all the other folders across though. All’s well that ends well, but it was another late night!

November 2^nd Monday again and shopping again, Huan skipped her morning practice with the local band of noise makers. Before that though, and as we are short on photos this week, how about a bit of brawn? Imagine trying to comb that in the morning!

More brawn in the supermarket, but unlike ours in the UK this only has pigskin inside the gelatine. The shop assistant was adamant that it was very tasty and that we should try it. She gave us both just a piece of the gelatine and we both hated it!

For me most of the rest of the day was on the laptop again, installing software, sometimes with no difficulty, other times with great difficulty. Still, I got it all done and also learned that Lightworks will not work on the laptop either. Maybe it’s time I became less paranoid and stopped saving all my dashcam videos. Alternatively, I could just save them “as is” on the laptop, nothing else will be saved permanently there.

When Huan went out to make more noise I hopped into the bath, using the bubble bath we had received on Saturday. Her ladyship did make sure she took photos before she went out though. If you’re wondering what’s going on here, I am reading to the ducks, “Hornet’s Nest” by Patricia Cornwell. They seemed to enjoy it too!

And now that I am all clean it’s time to say goodbye for another week. Hopefully, the bugs will stay away from me and life will return to normal, lots of walks in the countryside and lots of photos too. See you next time!