Poor customer service

I ran a few errands today, and one of them was to go and visit an HSBC branch. I am almost never impressed with customer service anywhere in HK, and today was the worst I have ever received. I usually brush it off, complain to N briefly to vent, and then just go on with my life. I don’t like continuing to give out negative energy into the world 😔 (although I will be doing exactly that in today’s post! 😂)

But today, customer service was sooo bad that I actually want to write in and make a formal complaint 😡 I haven’t written the complaint yet, but I’d like to do it this weekend, otherwise I’m never going to do it. And then I’ll start forgetting all the details as well.

I know it’s important to do so, so the bank can actually improve their customer service offering to new and returning customers. Assuming that someone will actually take these complaints on board and work on improving their processes.

But given that I will be writing my complaint in English, there is the added risk that my complaint will fall on deaf ears 😔 Because despite English being an official language here, the actual level of English is quite poor. I was expecting the standard of English to be the same as that in SG, given that both cities are financial hubs in Asia, with large English-speaking expat populations. But it is far from it. English is the language that brings everyone together in SG; here, it is Cantonese’s poor cousin.

Typhoons and the rona

Another typhoon is in the area.

There are sooo many typhoons around here! I didn’t know just just how many there were until we moved to HK. Luckily they’ve all been uneventful for us. And we’ve only experienced two major typhoons in the almost two years that we’ve been here, one in each year. And by major, I mean a typhoon with a T8 or higher signal issued by the HK Observatory.

Even though this current typhoon is 800 kilometres away, it’s still bringing some pretty shite weather to the city 😔 We’ve had pretty miserable weather the past few days.

Not that it really matters at the moment anyway, since I’m still trying to minimise going out. New cases have definitely dropped off, and we’re now averaging around 10 new cases each day, I’ve heard that more restrictions are being eased soon too.

Nonetheless, my safest bet is still to stay at home! Although having said that, I have errands to run, so I’ll be out and about tomorrow 😒😷

A lifelong learner

I worked on colour grading today! 😊 I watched a tutorial on the basics of colour grading, and also on how to use the colour grading section in my editing software. My colour grading skills needs a lot of work, as you can imagine, but at least I can now navigate my way around some of the basics in the software! 😅 Hopefully over time, as I colour grade some more, I can get my videos looking exactly how I want them to look! At the moment, I can only just accept what my limited abilities can do 😆

I also had my Chinese lesson today. My listening was pretty shite today, but at least I’m trying! My teacher was telling me about some of her students who spend 2/3 of the lesson telling her stories in English! What’s the point in that?! 😂 At least I try and speak as much Chinese as I can during a lesson. Even if I’m slow and my grammar is all wrong, at least I’m moving forward. What’s that quote? ‘No matter how slow you go, you’re still lapping everybody on the couch.’ Yep, I totally agree! 😊

I think I’ll be a lifelong learner. I can’t not be learning, it’s just one of the things I really enjoy doing 😊

Minimalist aspirations

I started getting really frustrated with all the crap in the study today. I’ve been frustrated for a while now, but it seemed to boil over today. I use the study as a dumping ground for anything paper related, so all books, notebooks, receipts, manuals etc get shoved into this room. And, of course, I don’t keep it neat and organised. If i did, I wouldn’t have this issue! 😆

I have different piles everywhere, with no logic to any of the files. And lately, these different piles have started to get really annoying. And when my level of annoyance gets high enough, it spurs me into action 😂 So I have vowed to spend a few hours this weekend to tidy up this damn room.

I also have this minimalist ideal that I have in my head, so I feel like anything less than this is just a poor attempt at keeping this room neat and tidy. We have friends whose house literally looks like no one lives there, as if it’s permanently on the market for sale – and they have two boys under the age of ten! So they’ve given me this unrealistic standard that I constantly try and live up to. I probably can’t achieve their standard, but it’s something that I always aspire to 😊 If they can do it with two boys under the age of ten, then why can’t I?!? 😜

My other problem is that I don’t have good storage solutions for this room, which makes it even harder to tidy up. I started looking at ideas on Pinterest today, but nothing has really stood out for me as a solution that could even potentially work for me 😒

But first things first, I need to purge. Get rid of whatever stuff I don’t need anymore. And I need to be ruthless. I need to summon our friends’ minimalist tendencies 😆 I’m feeling pumped (and frustrated!), so hopefully I will still feel this motivated when the weekend arrives. All the crap around me will probably keep my frustration levels high, so I should still feel the same way by the weekend – if not even more so, as the piles will have continued to annoy me throughout the week! 😂

This mysterious sunshine drug

I was filled with so much happiness today – and it’s Monday!! More bizarro world! I didn’t even have the best sleep: Little Miss kept waking me up every few hours. The first time, she wanted more food, I get that. Fine. But the second and third times, I have no idea why 🤷‍♀️ She would just scratch at the door again and again, and would only stop when I got up to pat her 😒 What’s up with that?!

But despite these constant interruptions overnight, I was still sooo happy today, like the sun shot sunbeams up my a$$ and I was just shooting them all over the place today, sharing all the rays of love to anyone and everyone I spoke to today 💓 🤣

Omg I even sound like I’m high 🤣 What is up with me today?!?

I recorded two YouTube videos today, which is total amazeballs for me. I’ve never done that before. Usually I struggle just to get one done. Maybe my whole process is actually getting more efficient?! Or maybe this sunshine drug has just put me on overdrive somehow…! 🤣

In any case, can I have more of this, please??It’s pretty damn awesome! I’d like to be on this natural high more often, thanks ☺️

A whole new world for me

I bought this adapter today. From the Wan Chai Computer Centre, where else?!? 😂 It’s like my favourite mall at the moment, if you can call it that 😆

This is momentous for me because this is the most techie thing that I have ever bought in my entire life. I have never understood the need for things like this, but now I do 😱🤪 I am learning something about a whole world that I didn’t even know existed before! 🤪 And I’m going crazy over tech more than N at the moment too. Bizarro world, I tell you!

I need to buy a container to stash all my tech gear in when I’m not using it. At the moment, everything is cluttered all over the house and it’s all rather messy 😒 I need to get it in some semblance of order. Plus I’m letting the house get messy because I’m too excited playing with all my new tech stuff! Seriously, what has happened to me in the last few weeks?!??

So I’d like to spend some time tomorrow tidying up the house. I’ll do a little bit tonight too, after I finish writing in here, just so the place doesn’t look too bad ☺️

Geeking out on tech

I spent the whole day geeking out on tech 🤣 OMG how insane is that?!? I feel like a totally different person right now!

I was going to watch a YouTuber’s video about her setup, but she prefaced the video with “I’m not technical at all, so if you want more technical information, check out this other video. I just followed exactly what they said in that video”. So of course I stopped watching her video 🤣 And I would’ve watched the video that she did recommend if I hadn’t already watched it before! 🤣 Seriously, bizarro world!

Anyway, today I geeked out on audio. I now know more about audio than I did yesterday, so that’s a step in the right direction 👍

I also started looking more closely at other people’s YouTube setups, seeing what they have in their backgrounds. And I started to think about what I could add to mine that would show off my personality but also staying on brand with my channel. This whole visual thing is going to be the hardest thing for me, I think! I will probably have to have a bajillion different tries before I come up with something that I actually like. But as I keep saying, it’s all part of the journey! 😊

A tad obsessed

I’m now a tad obsessed with making the best YouTube videos that I can 😊 I’ve been getting a few comments from random viewers, and it’s such a great feeling knowing that people are learning things from my videos 🥰 So now I want to start taking it a bit more seriously and start creating some professional looking (and sounding!) videos. And ideally, one day in the hopefully not-too-distant future, I can actually monetise my channel. That would be so awesome if I could do that ☺️

But at the moment, my videos are pretty mediocre. The sound quality is all over the place from video to video as I keep trying to find the best way to optimise the audio; and the lighting is also hit and miss, with some being really dark and others being overexposed. And then there is also my camera presence, which was rather lacking in my earlier videos. So I really appreciate my subscribers right now who are obviously watching my videos for their content, and not for the quality of the film making! 🤣

I asked N to watch my latest video – well, just the first 30 seconds 😆 – to let me know what he thinks of the video and audio quality. He said that my background makes me look like I’m in a jail cell 🤪 Basically because I have absolutely nothing in my background. So I need to figure out how to spruce it up a bit. A nice plant and some background lighting would be a good start, so I’m going to see if I can find anything interesting tomorrow.

Not to mention the audio equipment that I still want… 🙄

Like I said in a recent post, it’s all a learning process, and I just keep trying to improve with each video 😊

A quick trip to the 18th century 🤪

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the power in our apartment building was going to be switched off from 10am-5pm today 😱 So I had my laptop, iPad, phone and camera all fully charged, ready to face the 18th century for a couple of hours – with all my technology in hand! HAHAHAHAHA 🤣🤣

One thing that I neglected, though, was that wifi also requires electricity 😒 So even though I had my laptop running on battery, I didn’t have internet!! I was closer to the 18th century than I originally thought. Luckily that was a quick fix, connecting it up to my phone’s data. But that was going to suck up a lot of battery and data, so I minimised doing that as much as possible.

I went out for lunch at a nearby cafe, which got me out of the 18th century for a while during the middle of the day 🤪 And when I got back, I spent some time filming my next YouTube video. While I was doing that, the power came back on! So, in the end, it was actually closer to 10:30am-3:30pm all up – woohoo! 👏 But I’m glad I was prepared, though. It made the trip to the 18th century that little bit easier 😆 Thankfully this only happens once every five years here. And who knows where I’ll be in five years anyway?! 🤷‍♀️

Research and preparation

Because of all the frustration yesterday, I spent a ton of time today researching on how I can improve my home studio setup. I now have an idea of what I want for the audio component, which has been the most frustrating part for me this entire time. Now I just need to go and buy everything! Fingers crossed this new setup is going to level up my audio 🤞 I might head over to the Wan Chai Computer Centre again on the weekend 😜 I can’t believe just how much love that place now. I’ve never been so techy in my entire life! 😂

The electricity supply is going to be switched off in our building tomorrow from 10am-5pm 😱 Apparently this needs to be tested every five years. This is the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like this. What happens to the fridge / freezer? Is everything going to melt?? What about the milk?? I’m guessing it’ll stay cold for a while, just as long as I don’t open it. So I think I’ll go out for lunch tomorrow, and then I can hold out until 5pm when the power supply is switched back on 😅

I have also made sure that my laptop and iPad are fully charged, so I can still do some work while there’s no electricity 👍 And my camera is also ready to go, so I can try filming again if I have time tomorrow.

So I’m fully prepared: bring on the 18th century! 🤪