Forgetful Oldies, Monthly Needle, Bureaucracy, The (Sad) Lonely Goatherd.

December 8^th What a good start to the day! First, when we arrived at the car I had to go back upstairs and collect the SD cards and the emergency torch which I had repaired. Off we went then to our area police station where I dropped Huan off and proceeded to do a circular tour before picking her up again. There she was waiting at the side of the road with today’s second senile moment, “Could I go home and get her passport photographs” as she had forgotten them. Off I went, delivered the photos to her and went off on another circular tour. This time when I collected her, she told me it had been a wasted visit. She was trying to renew her temporary Hainan ID but the machine wouldn’t allow the police to do it, we’d have to wait a few days. Ah well, fingers crossed for next time.

As a result of the faffing around we caused ourselves we were a little late setting off for Haikou for my monthly dose of hormones. There was a plus side though, the weather in Haikou was nice enough for us to sit outside and eat our lunch.

Don’t worry, the birds were not for eating and we didn’t eat any of those fish swimming around. We had seventeen dumplings each, not sure about the significance of the number, if any. Huan had vegetable and I had meat, not bad at all. Here are mine cooking.

While we were waiting I was talking to the birds, who could talk back and also to the fish who, while they could not talk back, were tame enough to come and look at me, and in one tank, nibble my fingers. This one caught my attention though, it’s a Flowerhorn cichlid, and you won’t be surprised to learn that it’s not a ‘natural’ fish. It was bred in Malaysia as an aquarium fish but exists now in the wild too.

Huan insisted I take this next one too, the restaurant staff told us that it couldn’t swim! Huan was rather amused by a fish that couldn’t swim; I suspect it may have been getting on in years.

After lunch we did our monthly Haikou shop, I was a little disappointed at the lack of Christmas stuff. They did have a whole turkey and large turkey breasts but we decided they were not for us. Still, we stocked up on cheese and butter, Italian spices etc.

From there we went to the hospital, our reason for the trip. We then proceeded to make more mistakes! Huan booked my appointment, but when we got upstairs and read the paper it was with the wrong doctor. The cash desk on the second floor wouldn’t change it so we had to go back to the first floor, do the necessary and then go back to join the doctor’s queue again. No worries there, Dr. Cheng knows us well and also likes to practice his English. Prescription in hand, and remembering last month, we headed off to the first floor dispensary that within a minute had my needle ready. They then did a double take and told us we couldn’t take it from there we had to take it from the second floor dispensary. Off we went again, picked up the needle and for the last time returned to the first floor, to the ‘infusion room’. There was a new nurse there, very happy to see a foreigner, my nerves got worse! I didn’t see what she did because, as usual, I had my ears and eyes covered, but I can tell you it hurt. This was probably the worst one yet. Huan told me the nurse said she had to do it the way she did to get through the fat!

I was very happy to escape and get back in the car I can tell you! Due to our late start and our problems in the hospital we had to have dinner on the highway on the way home. At least that was OK. We had a chat with a dog, a red copper Siberian husky. I should say, I had a chat with the dog, Huan chatted to his owner who had a caravan. She had to find out how much it was of course. I don’t think I’d fancy towing a caravan again, I haven’t done it since I was in the army, and even then, it was a very small caravan that my boss only slept in.

Once home we were both very lazy, although I did upload all the dashcam videos and rename them. I’ve given up trying to consolidate them; I need more computing power to do that.

December 9^th After a lousy night’s sleep Huan went off to hulusi school and I eventually made myself get dressed and go to the hospital. Today’s therapy was more of the same, only different. As you can see, the electro pads were placed differently. It was quite amusing watching my fingers do a merry dance now and then.

Our weather was not as good as Haikou’s but it was nice enough for me to have a walk around the town. I do enjoy going through the market even if I’m not buying. Today though, I bought chicken livers with their associated hearts, I’ll cook them tomorrow and shrimps sans clothes, I’ll cook them for the weekend.

Nothing else to report really, weekly shopping and an after dinner walk was all we did today.

December 10^th No doctor’s visit today, Dr. Li has gone to Haikou so she told me to go straight to the treatment room where I had a repeat of yesterday. I can stretch my arm without pain now so something must be working.

Next up was the area police station to renew Huan’s temporary Hainan Hukou. We were under the impression that her new card would be valid from the expiration date of the old one for another year, meaning I would be able to get a visa for a year. Once again we were wrong! Her new card is valid for a year from today which means my next visa will again be only eleven months. I’ll still have to pay for a year of course. Next year we will try and renew Huan’s card nearer the date of my visa expiration. Don’t you just love bureaucracy?

After lunch I decided to cook dinner early, these were the ingredients. In the bowl are the chicken livers and chicken hearts, the rest you can see.

Laziness set in then and apart from baths, we did nothing else for the remainder of the day. I did try and find a way to use the karaoke machine with the laptop, to no avail and I couldn’t find a way to convert the files either. If the committee insist on me performing for the New Year show I thought I could use the karaoke if I’m still not allowed to play the guitar.

There was one other thing, household maintenance, as in checking all the batteries we have. The ones in the emergency torch in the car exploded so I decided an excel file was needed listing all the batteries, their locations, types and replacement dates. Half done today, I ran out of batteries!

December 11^th Today’s doctor was Dr. Gao, gave me the usual small massage. I suggested to her that I have a rest from the electro-convulsive therapy for a week or two and see how it goes. She was not so sure and thought I should still go two or three times a week. However, when I showed her that I could pull the door with her holding it with her foot, and not experience any pain, she relented. That was my morning apart from buying more batteries and almost completing the job. All that’s left now though is watch batteries and as neither of us wear watched there’s no rush for them.

After lunch my first job was escort duty for the ladies who were off to their hulusi class. Taking selfies of more than one person is not my #1 skill, Huan chose this one, I think because I am not in it. That’s what I told her anyway.

From there it was off to the post office for me, we’d had a call to say there was a letter for us. It’s easy to find our letters in the sorting office even though we don’t have a dedicated cubby hole.

The gentleman in the office handed me a letter from Aviva, posted sometime around 11^th November, and asked if it was mine. I replied that it was. He then handed me another, posted on 13^th November with the same question so I said yes again. Lo and behold he then handed me a third one, this one posted on 7^th July which I agreed was also mine.

The Aviva letter brought bad news; my fund has gone down in value by 7.8% since last year. In fact the projected value on my pension date is less than last year’s value! I guess the excuse will be 2020. Next year’s excuse will probably be Brexit!

Both the other letters were cards, both from the same brother and his wife, one anniversary card and one Christmas card. The Christmas card’s on time, the anniversary card is five months late. You can see why I’ve asked the family not to bother sending cards can’t you?

Anyway, I came straight back from the post office, Huan had told me the electricity will be going off tomorrow from half past seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. That meant I had to cook the weekend’s stew today, most of it anyway. The shrimps, in the red bag, will be popped in when we heat it up again tomorrow evening.

December 12^th Well they’re punctual, the power went off at twenty seven minutes past seven. My plan then was just to rot away in the house all morning and maybe go out in the afternoon but Huan reminded me about the Saturday market. Arriving there it seemed everybody and his dog was out this morning, no doubt due to the electricity being off in most of Wuzhishan. The market also seemed larger, stretching out at both ends. However, that was because the authorities, 城管, Chéngguǎn, a.k.a ‘Urban Management, had stopped people setting up in the middle of the road. It certainly made navigating my way through the throng much easier. Not much to show you today, we’ll start off with small furry things. They are mushrooms but how you cook them, and whether or not you have to ‘shave’ them first, I couldn’t say.

A little further on was another furry creature, this one advertising a furniture sale. I wouldn’t fancy wearing that suit in this climate!

It’s always nice to be remembered isn’t it? Someone stopped me in the market and asked where my ‘boss’ was, obviously knows who wears the trousers in our house. Someone else who remembered me was yet another furry friend. I wonder if he knows he has a pink tail.

When Huan came home for lunch she told me that the electricity would now not be back on until six in the evening. That meant another walk had to be taken in the afternoon so I headed off downriver. From a distance I spotted this sad looking goat, it even allowed me to stroke it. Its belly was heaving a bit so I wondered if it was having babies and promised myself to look up on Google whether goats stay away from the herd when giving birth.

Before too long I came across the rest of the family, took far too many photos of them, but I’ll share with you the ‘main column’ and the ‘rearguard.

Much further on here’s a couple of the babies, one peeping at me through the leaves and the other having another lie down. I had seen that one lying down a lot on the way but I couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

They may have been heading for this place but I couldn’t stay to see, or follow them any further, the rain was starting.

I retraced my steps and reached the ‘sad’ goat that by now was lying down and looking much the worse for wear. In the UK I would have phone the local vet for advice but I had no idea how to do that here or even if we have a vet in Wuzhishan that would deign to come out and take a look. Some passers by chatted to me but they had no ideas either. By this time it was fairly clear that the poor little creature was dying, from what I don’t know. I stayed with it, stroking its head, giving it a bit of love as it went. I have no idea if I was helping or not. Two of the passers by came back again and asked me if it had died to which I replied, ‘with a tear in my eye’, yes it had. They then walked the other side of the wall so as not to pass it. Obviously I did not take any photos this time round.

My timing wasn’t bad for returning home and I joined the security team praying to the local transformer altar. Punctuality was the word yet again and the power was back on a few minutes before six.

That elicited a big sigh of relief from me, I didn’t fancy walking upstairs a second time today. This morning I counted the steps, there are 114 of them, too many for a doddery old git! Apart from my Chinese revision I had a lazy evening again.

December 13th Sunday again so Huan’s off for her second weekend day of keyboard practice. I say second, but yesterday they had no power so they practiced hulusi instead. I stayed in and did a huge pile of admin work. We have to go to Haikou again on Tuesday, this time to visit the visa office. Remembering that the lady last year had seemed to think we lived in hotels, I printed a whole lot of documentation, just in case they need it. It’s a long list, new passport, old passport, all my visas since 2007, Huan’s Hukou and temporary Hainan Hukou, both our marriage books, three pages of photographs from 2004 to now, all our property books and all my bank books from 2007. Huan tells me that I will still only get eleven months but hopefully they’ll put all this stuff in my file for future reference.

I didn’t finish until after lunch. My next job was to find out why the printer is giving us an error message all the time, ‘nearly out of ink’, when we have a CISS installed. That’s a Continuous Ink Supply System just in case you wondered. I failed, for now. Being too lazy yesterday evening I also had to bring the Blog up to date.

Once Huan was home and we had finished our second day of shrimp stew it was time for an evening walk, much needed for me, the first walk today. She had an ulterior motive though, we had to pass by both of her banks! Along the way I spotted yet another little friend, Huan insisted that we take a photo of him begging, which I did once he stopped trying to mate with my leg!

December 14^th Another (almost) lazy morning for me, I did do a bit of work, scanning medical bills and electric bills then filing them. Huan was at choir practice today.

After lunch, Huan was out, at hulusi practice, so I carried out my escort duty again to be sure they arrived safely! My route today was anticlockwise around the river with a short detour to see how the new ‘fishing restaurants’ are coming on. They do have a new sign. Huan says the Chinese is “Tea Story” and the small characters mean “farm”. As far as we can see there is no tea there whatsoever!

And what’s behind the sign? Why, the fishing lakes of course, plus a few restaurants and what appears to be a small guest house.

A little further on I spotted what seemed to be a rather large bee in the sky, with a long tail. As I got nearer I was able to take a few photographs of it and, the ‘flyer’ let me take his photo too. He was rather puzzled that I didn’t know how to fly a kite. I never really knew, even as a child.

Next up is a butterfly that has forgotten what plants and flowers look like, it just kept doing circuits and bumps all around this muddy patch.

And let’s finish the week with another one of my four legged furry friends. This one just wanted to sit under my legs when I had a rest on the steps outside the shop.

That’s it for this week, no shopping yet as we’re off to Haikou again tomorrow. Take care all of you and stay safe from the big bad bug!

Doctor #5, Tendonitis, Christmas, Cooking, Ton-up Grandma

December 1st "I heard a bird sing, In the dark of December, A magical thing, And sweet to remember. We are nearer to Spring, Than we were in September, I heard a bird sing, In the dark of December." (I Heard a Bird Sing by Oliver Herford)

Doctor #6, Dr. Gao, and a long wait for her. Our first duty was to tell her that last night I almost put myself back to square one by trying to shut the second bedroom door, which sticks sometimes. She then held her office door against the wall and asked to pull on the handle thus causing me great pain. My diagnosis was then changed to tendonitis! The treatment remains the same, a small machine massage from Dr. Gao, followed by electro-convulsion and microwave cooking by the nurses. She also advised me to do five minutes of biceps curls twice a day, morning and evening, without any weights of course. Huan wanted another photo showing the two pads for the shocking treatment, she took many but this is the cleanest. You can barely see the second pad but they are now alongside each other and not opposite sides of my elbow.

By the time we had finished in the hospital and done the shopping it was lunch time. We both decided a lazy afternoon would be the plan today but we did walk five kilometres after dinner. Arriving home the band had begun to form so Huan had to stay and beat the drum. As usual I took a video; as usual they were out of sync with the music and with each other. Anyway, they were enjoying themselves.

December 2^nd Today I saw Dr. Gao, who after a few questions told me to go straight to the punishment room and come back to her afterwards. On doing that I found I wasn’t seeing Dr. Gao but Dr. Li once again. They seem a little unsure of what exactly is the problem, mostly because the pain seems to wander. I’ll persevere because I do feel that my arm is slowly improving.

Once back home I hung up the washing that I’d put in before going out and then decided to surprise Huan. When she arrived home from Hulusi practice she found all the Christmas decorations up, with the exception of the tree. Unfortunately, we have no room to put that up anywhere this year. She was pleasantly surprised, told me that the house looks homely and warm now. It does feel good; we haven’t had Christmas since 2017 for one reason and another.

No afternoon walk today, Huan was blowing the Hulusi, but we did go out after dinner. We took the downriver route coming back up the other side. The first thing we noticed, which I should have noticed before, is that they are also beautifying the area in front of our villas.

In China, it’s not only people who sit in clinics with drips in their arms, trees have them too.

And last one for today, at the director’s request, “It will look very nice on the computer” even though there’s no sunset to see.

December 3^rd Once more into the lair of the dragon, this time with my favourite nurse and companion in tow, Huan that is. Today I had to lie on the bed again while Dr. Gao got busy with the portable massage machine. While there, she told us that after this group of sessions I should probably have a rest before seeing if we need to carry on. I told her that we were off to Haikou next week to get some more female drugs injected into my belly. Huan and Dr. Gao lost me then, my Chinese was nowhere near good enough to keep up. The upshot is that I am to have no more microwave therapy because of the cancer I had previously. As I had already paid, she extended the electro-convulsion therapy to make up the difference. I must say I’m not sure how cooking my elbow can affect the internal workings of my body around the nether regions, or even it would make any difference at this stage. Anyway, here I am enjoying (?) my massage.

We left the hospital via the grounds today and not via out-patients as we usually do. That gave me a chance to show you a little more, not a bad place to be confined to bed as long as you’re on the front side of course.

From the hospital we went to the police station that deals with entries and exits to Hainan, or more specifically, our part of Hainan. My visa is up for renewal on 8^th January, the same date that Huan’s temporary Hainan ID expires. To try and sort things out we were hoping that Huan could get a temporary ID for longer than a year, it seems that is not possible. Huan asked about transferring her main ID from Dalian to Wuzhishan, which is not something I really want her to do as it effects her pension and national health. It didn’t matter anyway because they told her she cannot transfer her ID as she is retired! Eventually they agreed that Huan could apply early thus hopefully receiving next years card in time for me to apply for a visa before the renewal date. If she is successful that means two trips to Haikou this month.

Straight home from the police station, I needed a coffee and a fag! After lunch Huan went through our boxes of Chinese character flashcards, sorting them out in the hope that the dummy, (me) will learn some more. I cooked dinner and then jumped in the bath for an hour while it simmered. Huan decided to follow the old British way and jumped in the same water when I got out. At least she didn’t have to use a kettle and fill a tin bath.

It’s still a bit on the chilly side here but we did get out after dinner and by using a circuitous route through the streets to avoid the wind we managed just over six kilometres.

December 4^th My daily visit to the hospital went well enough although my arm felt worse this morning than yesterday. I put it down to the felling slowly coming back. The two doctors and therapists are always happy to see me and try out their limited English. With my even more limited Chinese we seem to do all right.

Back home waiting for Huan so I could make lunch I had to search for something new to watch, I finished ‘The Sandbaggers’ yesterday. I went even further back in time and found ‘Danger Man’ with Patrick McGoohan. Back in 1964 I remember being allowed to stay up and watch episodes of series 2, I never knew it was that of course. YouTube starts from series 1 so a good find, it will keep me busy for a short while.

I had a lazy afternoon, Huan had hulusi class so we didn’t go out until after dinner. We were quite surprised by just how many snowbirds there seem to be this year. They were singing, dancing, making music and exercising all over the place. I only had my phone with me so there are no particularly good photos but enough to let you see how Chinese OAPs spend their time.

December 5th Before the hospital visit this morning I had to boil the chicken for a couple of hours. The neck with its head and the feet are also in there somewhere, Huan will eat them. The parson’s nose is also there, for me!

Apart from the usual ingredients of onions, celery, carrots, garlic and parsley, these were the planned vegetables for today. I’ll let you try and work out what they all are. As it happens, despite having taken all the chicken off the bone, there still wasn’t enough room in the pan for the first two.

When I got home from the hospital more cooking was needed, Huan was having sweet potatoes for lunch. She’s strange sometimes, just sweet potatoes with nothing else.

After lunch I tried using Anki to learn my Chinese characters but I’m not sure if it’s the best way for me. Perhaps I’ll get used to it. After dinner we had our now usual walk around the town, staying away from the windy riverside. I lost Huan when we reached our building, she decided to do half an hour of dama dancing. When she got home I asked her to check my Anki ‘deck’ because I thought it wasn’t right. She agreed with me, the pinyin was not correct at all so back to square one.

December 6^th Today my treatment position allowed me to surreptitiously take a couple of photos of the nurse’s station. I wonder what ‘matron’ would make of this! Still, it’s the care that’s important and I certainly can’t fault that.

After lunch Huan had the chance to try riding a small electric moped, one of the ladies from ‘oop north’ who learns keyboard with Huan has one. I went with her to provide the evidence and to have a go myself. Here’s me on a bike that is far too small for me.

Having seen me trying Huan was a little more willing to have a go.

Just before the first picture there, Huan had fallen off trying to turn the corner. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photos of that! Not long after this I left them to it knowing that my presence was not helping Huan much and hoping she would gain some confidence without me there. I suspect she did better than she told me she did when she got home.

As for me, I went looking for wildlife by the river, having totally forgotten it was Sunday and not only that, a very cool and overcast day. That meant that the riverside was not very quiet what with snowbirds, resting workers and students etc. What photos I took are more than likely scenes you have seen before so are not included here.

What is included though is something that many people in the west seem to be terrified of, too much listening to the tin hat brigade I suppose. We have a lot of these around and all they seem to do is allow people faster and more efficient use of their phones. Yes, they are 5G antennas.

December 7^th Just like most days these days, the only difference this morning was that Dr. Li tried pulling my thumb and fingers until they cracked. For some reason that’s not easy with my digits, I told her if she pulled them off she’d have to buy me some new ones.

My afternoon walk didn’t turn up any more wildlife, despite it being the ‘quiet’ time of day. With the weather being so overcast and cool I guess the snowbirds were out to play. For me, this is the third day I’ve been out in the daytime with shoes and socks on, long trousers and a hoodie. I’ve never needed to dress like this in the daytime in the five years we’ve lived her. I wouldn’t mind a touch of that global warming I hear so much about!

My route today took me along the main road where it seems they are trying to make sure bikes, and to a lesser extent cars, don’t turn across traffic or do u-turns except where allowed.

A little bit further down I stumbled across some tents being taken down, something had obviously been happening. Getting closer I found this RV which had details plastered on its side. It appears that we’ve had a bicycle race through Wuzhishan today. As usual, we didn’t find out about until it was too late.

Now you may wonder why I’m taking photos of old ladies standing on walls. You may also wonder what she’s doing. Well, she is looking for plants growing in the crevices between the stones, either for dietary or medicinal purposes, I didn’t like to stop and ask.

Speaking of dietary purposes, Huan had asked me to buy some ‘yellow bread’ to have with our fish tonight. We had no rice prepared and no potatoes in the house. What is yellow bread? It’s made with millet as far as I can tell, not bad, but very different to western bread. I felt guilty about handing over a one hundred RMB note for such a small quantity, (¥2.00) so I bought a Chinese Scotch egg to up the price a little.

As you can see, it’s not really a Scotch egg. The outside is chicken skin, the meat inside is chicken and the egg is a ‘Century’ egg. You can learn more here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_egg. How does it taste? It’s a little salty and the chicken meat is certainly over processed for my taste but it’s not too bad. I may even have some fried with an egg tomorrow morning, don’t tell my doctor though will you.

Time flies when you get older, that’s another week gone already! See you next time, bye for now.