Halloween - Matthew's Pirate adventure

When you are four, the great thing about being a younger brother is you seem to get loads of new clothes to wear. When you are 21 however, you may regret letting your dad take a photo of you in them though!

Cycling

Since 09 August I have been making a concerted effort to do some exercise and after dusting off my push bike, giving it a bit of an oil and a service I have suddenly become quite fond of cycling.

In May this year I had really piled on the pounds and now the efforts of the cycling and Nuch's refusal to feed me to bursting point, the effects are showing through. So far 33 pounds of flab have been shed and I have pedaled myself over nearly 1000 kms.

My first outing was a real shocker. After 45 minutes I was floored, I had used up all my gears and was done in. I could hardly turn the pedals.

Luckily, things are steadily improving. I have managed to cycle up to Pak Kung Au (the top of the pass between Cheung Sha and Tung Chung (although not without stopping) and I am seeing my averages times climbing and my heart rate descending. All good signs.

Spiders from Mars

This little fellow was sitting in our water jug in the kitchen this afternoon. An odd spider as it only had 5 legs. It was like that when we found it honestly!

The picture's a little blurred as it was taken using an old mobile phone camera. The spider is in the bottom of a 1 litre measuring jug.

Photo Update, Man Kok Tsui

Whats a normal day for us?

0830 Take kids to school by bicycle

0845 Collect two door frames from wood shop

0900 Collect 21 bags of cement from builders yard -about 1100 kgs in all

0915 Load all onto a very wobbly sampan then set off in very windy and rough seas

0930 Clear up dog sick from sampan (dog sea sick)

0931 Arrive at pier and unload all the stuff at the pier and cart across the beach to the house

1100 Collect 3 times the amount of cement in beach sand and cart to house by bucket loads

1400 Walk back to Mui Wo and collect bicycles

1500 Collect kids from school

1600 Start work in office answering UK emails

Is it worth it? We reckon it is. It's still a work in progress and it's not everyone's cup of tea. We are well aware of that fact but we really enjoy the place and its as unlike Hong Kong as you care to imagine. No cars, no buses, no noise, no people, no shops, no cinemas, no hassle.

Water is free, vegetables and fruit are grown free, (so far lemon grass, ginger, limes, papaya, aubergine, chilli, Thai basil, etc.)

We have a phone line, we have electricity, we have govt water if we connect to it, we have sewage, the bins are emptied weekly and the beach is cleaned weekly etc. etc.

During the week you can expect to have two or three hikers walk past the house (most of whom are lost) and of a weekend you may get a couple more on mountain bikes.

Post is left in Mui Wo, at one of many letter boxes nailed to a tree at the start of the footpath across the headland.

These photos are not in the best order but you can start to see the house taking shape at last.

Creepy Crawlies

Check out this creature. A truly wriggly and rather angry centipede. Not sure how long it is but it was as long as the water bottle we tricked it into crawling inside. One bite from this sucker and you would have a very very sore and painful weekend. Its not obvious on the video clip but we had made some holes in the bottle so it could actually breathe. What became of it? Ah well that's another tale, it was handed over to a rather eager recipient who had every intention of drowning it in brandy and leaving it in the brandy bottle to help enhance the taste!!!! well rather them than me, that's all I can say.

The renovations update

Well cash is tight - what's new? But we are plodding on.

The back walls of the house, kitchen and bathroom are now cleared back to their original width and the accumulation of dirt and rubble that had been pressing against them has been cleared away. A massive, manual effort as we had no access for diggers or excavators. We estimate about 3 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet of soil and back fill was cleared away. Whats that in volume about 480 square feet, wow nearly the same volume as a local flat here in Hong Kong!

The slope behind the house is now cut back to a safe distance and has been reinforced with a cladding of wire netting over poured with concrete. Weep holes are also now in the wall to allow any accumulation of water to escape out rather than backing up behind the concrete (as it was before).

The back walls have been repaired and additional brickwork added to fill up the holes left behind by the excavations. The whole of the exterior of the house is now ready for final painting.

The kitchen has been designed, delivered, installed, argued over and then partially re-installed after the stirling efforts of probably the worst kitchen fitter ever to have graced Hong Kong (and I do not mean me or Nuch). A relative of Ray Charles I reckon.

The bathroom has been rebuilt and tiled and now sports a new shower and sink but we note now that the floor may need to come up and be redone as our intrepid workmen set the floor to slope away from the floor drain. Indeed it slopes in exactly the opposite direction.

We have all the shower fittings and the sink fittings ready to be plumbed in but as the water is not connected yet we are awaiting that to occur first.

Talking of water, we have re dug two wells, one for flushing water and one for boiling water. Both wells will need clearing every sixth months as the weed growth is pretty rapid. The main potable water is till being supplied from a third well much higher up the hillside and is providing clear, sweet and consistent water.

Inside the house the floors have been re levelled and all the old hollow concrete removed and replaced. Whereas before there was in internal and open gully to take away the water that was leaking in through the back walls, we have now hopefully stopped the leak by digging back the debris outside, resealing the walls and floor and also adding a polythene liner under the floor. Let's see.

The windows are in as are the front doors but due to the odd decisions of others we note that the mosquito doors are upside down, an easy fix but it does mean more concreting etc. Amazingly when you look at the house the windows appear to be crooked but in fact the windows are vertically aligned , just the walls are not!

The outside sitting areas are now fifty percent re floored, the covered area in front of the kitchen and bathroom has been completed and we will have this completed with a waist height wall to enclose it to the front. The remaining outside area will be re-floored this coming week.

Also now completed is a rejuvenation of the front parapet wall which was rather badly finished and rough. A new facade wall of bricks has been built up in front of it which will be cemented over next week ready for painting to match the house.

What's left, well the electrics and the plumbing and the internal decoration. I would say we have broken the back of it now and although we don not have the cash to complete it just yet we estimate about a month's more work is needed.

Once all that is done we can think about furniture and a house warming party.