Miscellany

Monday mid-day Randal went to the Philippines with Bill Kimley to bring boat parts to our friends Dave and Dorothy Nagle.  I’m here on the boat, alone, having a “stay at home” adventure.  I call it that because, it is the first time I have stayed alone on the boat.  My first reaction to Randal’s leaving was, “here I go missing out on another adventure.”  But when I got over that, I thought it would be kind of neat to stay here and take over all of the space on the boat for just me.  And the cats.  And lots of boat yard workers it turns out.  There are last minute things that need doing but it works ok.  They all work in the saloon and speak Chinese and I have the pilot house or our room where I can speak English to myself or the cats.  Stella kindly asked me if I was worried about being alone and asked if maybe Lillian or Jane should stay with me.  I said that I’d be fine having lived alone for many years.  Stella asked the night guards to be extra vigilant and also left the wifi on for me to use my computer through the evening. 

Monday morning, before Randal and Bill drove away,  I walked into Biajiao and took the ferry  across the river  to a market in Jingan.  I wanted to buy diet coke without lemon and some bottles of plain yogurt.  It seems we have already bought every can of plain diet coke in the nearby markets of Baijiao and Jingan.  It had been so hot lately that we were drinking it as fast as I was lugging it to the boat.  Only the lemon flavored is left on the market shelves and I don’t mind it, but Randal doesn’t like it.  So I walk to  the further away markets where no one else who buys diet coke seems to go, and I buy 10 or 12 cans of plain diet coke at a time.  Add a few cans of beer and a few other groceries and my pack weighs a ton.  It makes me really stingy with those cokes.  And unfortunately,  none of the markets on our side of the river sell yogurt.  So I made a quick trip and was back in time to say good-bye.  Lunch was about 1:30 and by the time we were finished it was mid-afternoon and the day was going very fast.  I tried to sketch a picture of Slick the cat, but he wouldn’t cooperate and kept moving and I wasn’t fast enough to get done between moves.  I had to keep erasing his head.  In the early evening Stella checked on me before she and the office crew left for the night.  I made a light dinner finishing the really terrible peanut butter bread I had made.  The recipe had you mix the peanut butter into the flour rather than the eggs and milk so it had the consistency of pie dough with egg milk poured on top.  The poor thing never recovered and was very dense.  The cooking time was way off too.  But I ate it and it’s all gone.  I put yogurt cheese on it and honey and that was that.  I make yogurt cheese by straining the yogurt through a cheese cloth.  It has the consistency of cream cheese but not the taste.  I like it.  Randal doesn’t.  Then I watched a video because our cable connection wasn’t working quite right.  About 10 pm I went to sleep.  Slick slept in the pilot house.  There were rolling waves and I was rocked to sleep in no time with not a worry in the world. 

Tuesday, I got up early, about 5 am, knowing the workers might come aboard at 7:30 to continue their work.  I ate my usual oatmeal with raisins and yogurt, and some tea.  A quick shower, my patched cutoffs and I was ready.  I took the computer out onto the cockpit and picked up the wifi and read email, read about the Red Sox, and at 7 am went to the Fox Sports site where you can follow the game with their little diagrams and text.  Unfortunately the Red Sox lost to the Yankees but are still 9 ½  games ahead.  Later, at 10:30 Ray Wolfe was leaving the yard to return to the Philippines.  He inspects boats for many owners, like a home inspector.  He and his wife and 2 daughters live in the Philippines and I am looking forward to meeting his family, their pets and horses!  Ray was leaving China through the port of Gongbei so I caught a ride with him to window shop the zillions of bazaar like stalls.  It is an all indoor area and with the rainy weather I figured it was a good day to go.  I had been there twice before so knew how to get the bus home.  It was also just a few blocks from the Vanguard Supermarket that sells cereal Randal likes.  About 10 minutes after I got to Gongbei,  I was ready to leave.  But I wanted to buy a few more shawls having given mine as gifts.  I found a shawl store and the clerks pulled almost every shawl for me to try.  I knew I would buy at least one so the high pressure sale didn’t bother me.  I bought 2; one to use  every day in air conditioned Hong Kong, and one for dress up.  Or to give away.  I also had my heart set on a red bead bracelet.  It would be my good luck, win the World Series Red Sox bracelet.  Not that I need any more proof of my fanship.  I have the hat, shirts, watch with a big red B and a tiny baseball hat charm on a chain around my neck.  But you can never have too much good luck and pitching.  Hopefully the fact that I paid less for the bracelet than they asked won’t jinx it.  I probably paid more than they expected.  But it was only about $2.25 U.S., a bargain compared to the $190 we paid last fall to see the Sox lose at Fenway park.  Then I was done and headed for the Vanguard Supermarket for Randal’s cereal.   It was still a bit drizzily so I was wearing my too heavy rain jacket and sweating away.  The supermarket is huge and I’m not really so familiar with the layout.  By the time I had found and waited in line to pay for the cereal I was definitely ready to go home.  I walked over towards the bus terminal and caught the 601 bus to Jingan just as it was leaving.  Luckily being early afternoon on a week day there were lots of empty seats on the bus.  I have had to stand during the 90 minute ride when the bus was crammed packed.  The bus stops in Jingan about a half mile from the ferry terminal. Before catching the ferry I stopped in a wet market  to buy some dinner veggies,  and then hot and tired caught the ferry back home to Baijiao.  In Baijiao I thought about taking a little green 3 wheel taxi but opted for the exercise and walked back to the yard with my shawls, bracelet, 4 boxes of cereal and cauliflower.  When I was on the boat,  it was back into my tattered cutoffs and time to relax.  About 4:30 some of Stella’s friends from Hong Kong came by and I gave them a boat tour.  They were very charming and I shrugged off the fact that the boat was messy from the work still being done and just life in general.  (I’m sitting in the cockpit, early morning now as I type this, and the sun has just come out making it hard to see.  But it is drying the clothes I washed earlier in hopes that today would finally be sunny after all of our rainy days.  I also just asked Stella to write a note in Chinese for me telling the workers to make me move if I’m in their way.  After my visitors left I cooked myself some cauliflower and had a glass of wine.  That and a Chinese cup cake for dessert was dinner.  I watched some tv and went to sleep at 10.  Slick the cat slept in the saloon.  About 2:30 I woke up hungry so had a cup of tea and read for a bit and then back to bed until 5:30 this morning. 

     I’m typing this as I follow the Red Sox/Yankees game on the computer.  The workers are busy inside the boat.  When the game is over I’ll walk to one of the wet markets for dinner veggies.  Since I vowed to paint during these few days I got out my paints and paper and will attempt it some time today  The workers are in the pilot house now too and on the fly bridge so I’m not sure where I’ll find  a place to sit.  I did take some photos of the really huge boats at the yard next door.  So that’s it.  Back to the game for me.  Red Sox won. I did turn on the tv and sat and painted a picture of the blue and yellow tin that holds our pens and pencils.  I like the way I painted some of the things in the tin.  It’s either not bad or I’m easily satisfied.  I did eat that awful peanut butter bread!

And today, Thursday, is an exact repeat of yesterday’s early morning paragraph.  I did ride my bike yesterday afternoon on our 9 mile loop.  And this morning I washed and hung another load of laundry.  The game is on the computer and the workers are in the saloon finishing things.  It’s only the second inning of the game and the score is Yankees 3/ Sox 0.  I’m going off to the market for veggies and will check on things when I return and finally send this.  Randal will be home later this afternoon.

Ru