The last part of our trip to Chendu. After just about being bored to death with hospital visits and just plain waiting around for things to happen for 3 weeks solid, on our last day we were just about ready to leave the flat for the airport when the electricity went off. Now ordinarily this wouldn't be much of a problem would it, except that we were on the 7th floor and the lift no longer worked. So I had to lug 2 heavy bags down 7 floors, (one at a time) and of course go back up again, which was the real killer, then bring down the smaller bags, in the end I got help from Rose's cousins' husband, but I was knackered, and to top it all when we got to the bottom ready to go it pissed down with rain. I was ever so pleased to get on the p
We have just spend a sort of bored hectic month, at the start My wife Rose, went to the doctor for a check up where they found a small lump in her womb, the doctors at our local hospital recommended that we got to Chendu women's hospital, which is supposedly the best in china for the Hysterectomy operation. So in a couple of days we were off, house just about left as it was, Happy the dog to his old home and a 5 hr flight to Chendgu, Due to the lateness of the booking we had to go on separate flights, Rose arriving first and going straight to the hospital, I was collected a the airport but 'little uncle and little aunt' (they are literally, little) .
The operation was a complete success they recon there is no need for any further follow up treatment except for regular checkups, the thing that has made me smile was an email Rose sent to her friend in the UK that said "They removed my baby carry thing and my ovals" Chendu was quite cold for me, I was in the house in an overcoat most of the time, even with the feeble heating they had on, we were actually staying in her cousins apartment that she uses as an office, we used the back rooms which were a bedroom and toilet/bathroom. We were also in an area of town that wasn't near any centre of any sort so there was nowhere local to go except to the local Carifour which had a KFC where I ate most of the time she was in dock. I spent all of the days sitting in the hospital with her, although the surgeons were the best in the country, the hospital certainly was not, the shopping malls I have been in were a lot cleaner than the hospital and the hospital toilets needed breathing apparatus. Rose was most concerned about catching a cold off the lady in the next bed, but seemed unperturbed by the toilets!! Anyway, its all over now and we are back in nice warm and sunny Shenzen, (no indoors overcoats here!) I am expecting Rose to milk the 'do this do that for me' thing but she is improving daily now. The did not remove the Nag bone so she is definitely returning to normal.. Our city at the moment is having a bit of a facelift, this is due to it hosting a thing called a Universiade later this year, this I understand is a sort of inter university sporting event. The local council is requiring all the local shops to tidy up their outsides and most are having new signs put up. Lots of the older buildings that face a main road have already been repainted, in other places walls have appeared, painted of course. I'm not over sure if this is an international event or not, but from the preparations it seems so. They even asked me to do a small video advert for it which I did, in English, Rose did the Chinese translation for it. Apparently the new metro (underground) lines and stations that they are at present creating around the city are now supposed to be completed before this Unviersiade starts so the dust pollution that's everywhere at the moment should improve dramatically once all this civil building work is completed.
After having my song "Christmas gets earlier" get played for about a dozen times on the DAB radio station Amazing radio, my plays on the amazingtunes.com site now seem to have dried up a little, so if anyone out there even half likes my stuff I'd appreciate you tuning in to help boost my figures ..... well, only if you want to. One saga continues, the USB soundcard is still at the repair centre, but on the bright side the called and offered me a replacement that I could use until it does either get repaired or replaced. They loaned me a Miditech Audiolink II one which works exactly the same as mine but it only has 2 connections where mine has 4 and also only one volume control where mine has 2, one for the mics and one for the instruments, which works better that way. Hopefully I'll get mine or a new one back this week.
Second repair this week was the car, Rose once again managed to dink the front right wing, but its only a paint scratch this time, she went to pull into the side of the road, didn't indicate and a guy in that lane decided at the same time to pull out, the cop said it was her fault, although they aren't doing anything about it, just letting insurance sort it as would usually happen in the UK. It's all been sorted and repaired again so will soon have a new car again with all the bits that have been redone, it will never go rusty!! its not on there long enough. Also, some good news, the sun returned this week and its nice and warm again, so hopefully its going to stay a while now and not go cold again till next winter. We are still in the grip of UK autumnal type weather here, cold, wet, windy and a lot of fog, a little unusual for here, I cant remember it being this cold last year! or is this just because I turned 65 this year!
After all my gripes about the new Microsoft Windows Live Messenger and installing the old version, I discovered that I was unable to contact anyone who was using the new version! so I have now reluctantly had to install the new version, which once i dug around it a little is not as bad as I first saw, Once it gets customised better its a little more like the old version again. Its first appearance did nothing to warm me to it! I had been using a USB sound card and input system for my music creation, so that I am able to plug in mic's. guitars, organ etc which over a month ago decided to stop working properly and went on its merry way to create huge whistles and crackles whenever I started to use it to record. We took it back to the place where it was bought in the electronics street and they sent it for repair. that took 2 weeks, it came back, it had at least been tinkered with as one of the indicator lights was not quite in its usual position, but alas it was no different to when it went in. So off we went back again to complain and this time they tell us its being sent off to the factory for repair. After a month it comes back, still in the same condition, I was not amused. However it was now Chinese new year and was unable to take it in as everything was now shut for just over a week. We went back in today and went direct to the original supplier who sheepishly told us that he never sent it anywhere for repair, as they did a test on it on their machine (not using what I use, I have to add) and thought, because it played music back ok, it was fine and thought we were just being 'awkward'. I was a little steaming at this point and went for a wander round the building while Rose tried to sort them out. The upshot of all this is that they tried to recreate the fault but failed, due to their ability to get their equipment to record anything, it has always played back fine, its when you record all the damn noises start. In the end they agreed to actually send it to the factory by fast delivery, and if it cant be repaired (as its now out of date!, only had it for about 8 months) they should replace it, at what cost I have yet to find out. So now I wait, again, but they say it will be around 5 to 7 days before we find out what's going on..I, maybe foolishly, live in hope!! I'll find out next week anyway.
My Songwriter colleague, Phil Simon, from London, told me today that my song 'Christmas just gets earlier' is now being played on the DAB radio station Amazing Radio, I obviously can't hear it here in China, but then again how many of you actually have a DAB radio? But I have to start somewhere. After having passed my 1,000 listeners mark I am now quite pleased to have made a radio station, the last time I was on a radio was with my group 'The Shameless Five' and we played on a magazine programme when we were in sunny Aden in 1965. Just a little gap between performances, but that one was at least live and the only time I have ever been inside a real studio. I will probably eventually have for for another band in order to play anywhere live, but that's not going to be easy here....
We had a short trip to Hong Kong the day before yesterday and at the end of it I ended up with a case of upset stomach and shouting down the big white telephone. Seems to be cleared up a bit now though. I also managed to get a genuine copy of the Windows 7 Home Premium software to replace the fake copy of Windows 7 Enterprise that came when I bought the bits for the new machine. I am just waiting for my USB soundcard to be returned all checked out and I can get on with the music again. I now have a 6core Amd, 8 gb memory, 1.5tb of disk space and 1gb graphic card, so that should make the work a bit easier, previously on the XP machine I was unable to do any of the effects live, so it was hard to judge what sound I was eventually getting when I was recording.. It seems on the music site that my most popular song so far has been my "Christmas just gets earlier" song. I've got a few lined up waiting to be recorded so will be busy once the soundcard returns. Iv'e kinda been off the air for about a week while I've been doing the changeover of machines and it all seems to be working ok again now.
Well, I have just upgraded my computer to a new windows 7 machine, 6 core processor 8gb memory, 1.5tb of disk space and a 1gb video card, and the windows 7 is behaving ok so far now that I removed an old webcam driver that kept crashing it. anyway, my rant, Why oh Why did Microsoft change "upgrade" the windows live stuff, its really crap and not that easy to use and its full of stuff I don't want at all, they seem to want to integrate everything these days, which I find a little bit more than annoying, I don't want everyone in the world or even myself to know what I or my 'friends' are doing all the time and I have now uninstalled it and returned to a previous saner version, this all started when the "upgraded" windows live spaces which I used to use for my blogs, and a system that I really liked. the closed it down and sent everyone over to Wordpress, which I didn't like at all, and had none of the features that I wanted, I have as you know now moved over to this site by Weebly, its ok, but still not as good as the old windows live spaces site. Every upgrade lately seems to make life harder..... aarrrgghhh.... except for windows 7 (so far), It has a couple of niggles for me, like it refuses to let me put the correct driver in for my webcam and keeps telling me its something else when it isn't!!!! There feel better now....
Well, not in life anyway, but just spent the last couple of days changing over my old XP computer to a new Windows 7 Machine, Rose is having the old XP system and the laptop she was using, which is starting to fall to bits, is going over to her classroom. Don't let anyone tell you you don't get blue screens with Win7 , you do, I've had 2 today while installing new stuff. Everything seems to be back in order now and, so far, working OK.
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AuthorThe blog of a retired old git Archives
January 2018
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