Easter day 3: confusion all around

We booked tickets to go see the 11:15am session of Godzilla vs Kong at Admiralty. We get there, and the woman at the counter said that we were at the wrong cinema. WTF. So I asked her which cinema we actually booked the tickets for. She said somewhere in Kowloon – i.e. on the other side of Victoria Harbour. I checked where it was exactly on Google Maps: around 14km away, which Google Maps estimated would take 20 minutes 😱 We got to Admiralty at around 11am-ish, so chances are, we’d get to apm, the mall where the other cinema is, by around 11:30am. If we’re lucky, we might just get there right when the movie starts. Otherwise, we’ll be 5-10 minutes late.

Google Maps’ recommended route

Amazingly, we arrived right when the opening credits were rolling. So we might’ve missed a few minutes, but not much. I won’t say much about the movie in case you want to watch it, but I will comment on our 4D tickets. Maaan, they were totally worth it! If you can watch it in 4D, then I would go for that option instead of just the regular 2D. It just adds a whole new level of fun to the movie! I seriously felt like I was going to be flung out of my seat 😂 N felt like he was going to be flung out of his seat, and he weighs almost twice as me! So he kept looking over to make sure that I wouldn’t actually literally fly out of my seat! 🤣 I felt like I needed a seatbelt! Now I understand why there was a height restriction sign outside the cinema. Kids would easily get flung out of the seat! And you’re not allowed to bring food and drinks in at the moment because of COVID, but I don’t know if they’d let you bring food and drink in there anyway even without COVID. Popcorn and drinks would just be flying everywhere in that cinema, all over yourself and those sitting around you! 🤪 But that was fuuun. I want to watch more movies in that 4D cinema now!

We had lunch in the shopping mall afterwards, and then just wandered around and did a bit of shopping. We then just went home and I called my mum to help her log into her YouTube account on their new TV. What would ordinarily take less than 5 minutes took around 1.5 hours with her 😱😒 It’s just so hard teaching them over the phone. It would’ve been faster if I was there in person, but it still wouldn’t have taken 5 minutes 😒 It’s hard when she’s never really used a computer in her life, and all of a sudden, she’s being asked to do all these foreign things. So I was trying to be as patient as I possibly could, seeing her as a student who wanted to learn. But I could tell that there was an element of ‘just tell me what to press so I can log in’ in her attitude, which doesn’t really help her learn. But I persevered and tried to teach her, instead of just telling her to press this button and then that button. Hopefully she learnt something today!

Lots of closures – and reading practice!

Our favourite yum cha place in HK is currently closed because the building that it’s in is currently effectively being used as a COVID vaccination centre. But apparently they have another branch one suburb / district away, so we decided to go find that other restaurant and try it out.

But once we found it, we quickly realise that that too is closed 😔 Not sure why this other venue is currently closed, but regardless the reason, we still didn’t have a yum cha place to go to 😔 N then remembered another place nearby that we had been to once or twice before, so we made our way there.

Turns out that place is closed too! 😩 Is everything closed because of COVID? The protests the year before? A combination of both factors?? Regardless, it’s all quite sad 😔

We finally stumbled upon another restaurant and decided to try that. It actually turned out to be OK, good enough for us to return to 😅 All our walking around eventually paid off 👍🏻

We then went to the library and borrowed a few books. N found the Mr Men and Little Miss books in Chinese! Omg I had to borrow one and work my way through them. I really like these books, and I know they’ll be good books to read in a foreign language 👍🏻

Turns out I was right. It probably took me about an hour to read a third of Mr Tickle 😂 OMG how painful, knowing I could read the entire book in less than five minutes if it was in English. But every little bit counts, and I’m determined to finish it – and every other book in the series! They don’t have all of the books in Chinese, maybe just a quarter of them, but that’ll be plenty for me to work my way through 😆

And then in the evening, we watched another movie: Snowpiercer. There were no English subtitles available, so when the Korean actors were speaking, we had no idea what they were saying. But they had Chinese subtitles 🤪 I was ready to take this as a learning opportunity and test my Chinese reading skills, but N just used the camera in Google Translate for quick and dirty translations! 😂 But when I could read the Chinese, I used the Google Translate translation as confirmation (or otherwise) of my own attempt.

Lots of Chinese reading practice for me today! I have to recount today’s events in my next lesson – in Chinese 😱 It’ll be speaking practice that day! 😆

Changing things up a bit

It was quite a warm today. It actually felt like summer was starting – yippeeee!! ☀️ I’m happy, but N isn’t. And unfortunately for him, it feels more like summer for about nine months of the year in HK! Needless to say, he hated the weather in SG 🤣 While I revelled in it 😎

We went to Causeway Bay today to check out the Sony store. I’m totally into my tech stuff at the moment, as you might already know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, and I wanted to go check out the camera that I want to buy. I’m not going to buy it anytime soon, I just wanted to admire it today.

Someone else was also admiring it today, so we took turns admiring it 😂 I think he was actually considering buying it today, he is definitely closer to the purchasing line than I am. I was getting very excited for him! We left the store before he did, so I’m not sure if he ended up buying it today. I hope he did 😊

And in the evening, we watched Knowing, We’ve been watching a few movies lately, which is great. I’m not really a movies person, so it’s quite nice to change things up a bit. I think that was my theme for the day, which made it quite a fun day for me 😀

In voluntary quarantine – again 😒

Because of all these cases coming out of that gym near our place, we’re both quite nervous about the stupid virus at the moment. All the residents in an apartment building near our place is being tested, as per current government policy. There are a few buildings in the vicinity being tested, actually, as I suspected would happen, given the proximity to our place of the gym where the cluster started 😔 I just hope that no one from our building tests positive, and we have to go through this whole process too🤞 It’s just all a bit too close to home at the moment. Literally. And ‘close’ in HK is just that little bit closer, unfortunately, with everyone living on top of each other 😒

And apparently if you need to go to a quarantine centre, they give you 1-2 hours to get all your stuff together, and then they ship you out to wherever. I really don’t want to have to go out there! 😩 But it would make for a pretty cool story, that’s for sure! 🤣

So because we don’t really want to be out and about at the moment, we just stayed home and watched TV. We watched Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which was pretty cool. It is totally like the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I read as a kid, except this time, it was on TV. That was a lot of fun 😁

And I also finished The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab. I read a little bit of this book pretty much every day for the past few weeks, which doesn’t happen for me. Not many books have me that riveted. But this is in my favourite genre, a sub-genre of science fiction / fantasy where people live in an alternative reality, where the world is largely the same, but something is just that little bit different. The Time Traveler’s Wife, 1984, these sorts of books.

And today, I heard about Philip K Dick, a science fiction writer whose stories have been turned into numerous movies. I have added The Man in the High Castle on my to-read list, and I am currently making my way through his Total Recall short story, the basis of the movie with the same name. So far, I’m enjoying this too. I’ll let you know how The Man in the High Castle is. If it’s as good as this short story, then I may just read more of his stuff 👍

A lazy, foggy day

Today turned out to be a lazy day 😆 I ended up playing games on my iPad for literally hours today, OMG. I never do that! But somehow, I managed to today lol 😂

The thick fog outside and the thunderstorm warnings throughout the day just didn’t entice me to go out. I was going to go through my books, like I mentioned yesterday, but that didn’t happen either. Instead, I watched TV and played games all day. Like a teenager 🤣

We watched:

• A few episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine;
• The last few episodes of season one of My Hero Academia; and
• Set It Up, this rom com with Lucy Liu and that guy from Private Practice 😂

Tomorrow’s weather is supposed to be more of this blahness, but I hope I have a much more productive day than I did today!

Not quite what I had planned…

I had planned on cleaning out my closet today, doing a really good decluttering. But that didn’t happen. At all. I didn’t even start 🤣 I only had one thing that I wanted to do today, and I really should’ve started with that before doing anything else – ie before plonking myself down on the couch!

So it ended up being a lazy day ☺️ We watched:

• A few episodes of My Hero Academia;
• An episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine; and
• Instant Family, a feel-good comedy with Rose Byrne and Mark Wahlberg.

I also did my stretches. I’ve actually finished my 30-day splits challenge, I’m not sure if I’ve told you. But I’m still continuing with the stretches, wondering if I will ever get down to the floor one day. Like with my YouTube channel, I don’t know if I’ll actually achieve what I’d like to, the only thing I can control is to try my best to achieve it. And I just have to keep showing up and hope that one day, the results will speak for themselves 😊

Sloth Day | Chinese New Year long weekend day 4

I was a bit of a sloth today: I stayed in my pyjamas all day and barely moved off the couch 🤣 I figured I was entitled to one lazy day over this long weekend 😊

I did finish another video, though, another one just for family and friends. So I wasn’t a complete sloth! 😂

We watched Jumanji 2 this afternoon, which now made much more sense after we watched Jumanji 1 yesterday 😂 It was actually quite good! I liked the small tweaks that they added to the second movie, it made it that little bit more interesting for both the actors and for the audience.

So that was some light-hearted entertainment this weekend. Maybe we should watch a more serious movie next weekend… I might go through the Academy Award winners and nominees for some ideas 😊

Valentine’s Day | Chinese New Year long weekend – day 3

I edited a video this morning, a video that was just for me 😊 It was nice to just be able to make a video for myself and not have to worry about other people. I could use whatever music I wanted with no copyright concerns; and I could add whatever shots I wanted and colour grade however way I want. Yep, I have definitely made videography my new hobby 😱

After I finished editing my video, we went and grabbed lunch at a nearby Japanese restaurant, and then walked around Central for a little bit before we headed over to farewell drinks in the area. One of N’s workmates / friends is heading back to Oz on Wednesday. We didn’t realise that he would be heading back so soon, but apparently flights are mega scarce these days, and if he didn’t get on this Wednesday flight, then he may have to wait until the end of March for the next one. WTH?!? Before 🦠, you had your choice in what flight you wanted on whichever day. Now, the choice is what month?!? That is insane! Sighhh… So yeah, I guess you just take whatever flight you can these days 😔

I also rang my mum today, and got into an argument with her. Sighhh… I felt bad that I got into this stupid row with her, but sheez, you can only hear the same “problems” over and over again before something just gives. It’s the same with N’s mum. And I say “problems” because I don’t even see them as problems! They just seem to like to make mountains out of molehills. OK, maybe not ‘like’, per se, but maybe they’ve just worried all their lives and now they don’t know how to stop worrying. Or maybe it’s just a different generation, I don’t know. Or maybe we just have different personalities. Whatever it is, it is just so annoying! I just don’t want to hear the same things over and over again. If you can’t control something, then why worry about it?!? Sure, there could be tons of things that could happen tomorrow, but what’s the point of worrying now when nothing has actually happened?? And if you can, then why don’t you do something about it rather than complain?? I just don’t understand them. Hence my frustration 😧

And then in the evening, we decided to watch Jumanji. We were actually going to watch Jumanji 2, but we realised that we couldn’t remember anything that happened in Jumanji 1, so we decided to watch that instead 😂 All we remembered were the four main characters and that the movie was quite funny, and that was it! I’m glad we did watch it because it was actually quite good. And now we’ve refreshed our memories, so we can go into Jumanji 2 feeling more comfortable about the characters’ back stories 😊

Oh and no, we didn’t do anything for Valentine’s Day. I did see a few bouquets around today, which were really nice 💐 But nowadays, I’d much rather spend the money on more tech gear on my new hobby anyway 😆 The nice lunch was good enough for us 🥰

Our chess game | Chinese New Year long weekend – day 2

Some bird woke me up at 3:59am (I checked my watch 😆), chirping out on the balcony. It took me forever to go back to sleep, sighhh… Needless to say, we got up even later than we did yesterday! 😔

We took our time getting ready, and we finally checked out at noon, the latest check-out time 😆 We left our bags at the concierge desk, and wandered around the hotel grounds. They had this cool chessboard out in the garden. It was around 2m x 2m, perhaps, with appropriately sized pieces to match. No one was playing so N and I decided to have a game.

Around halfway through the game, a group of friends came up and asked if we were taking a photo with the chessboard and pieces, to which N said no. Then two of them proceeded to pick up a piece each. One man picked up one of my knights that N had eaten, and so it was just off to the side off the board. And then a woman, I assume it was his wife, picked up N’s king off the board and walked over to my side of the board so that they could pose for a photo. WTF, man! Who does that?!? After their photo taking, they just dropped the pieces randomly on the board, and went on their merry way. N was understandably annoyed, while I just found the whole thing absolutely hilarious because seriously, who does that?!? 🤣🤣 Thankfully they only took one piece off the board, otherwise I wouldn’t have remembered how to put the pieces back in their rightful places if they did!

I thought that maybe they didn’t know what chess was, so they didn’t realise that they were actually interrupting something. But N said that he heard them mutter something like “Oh, they’re playing chess” as they walked off, so that theory apparently didn’t hold! 🤣 hahaha too funny!

The woman posing with her king 🤣 The man was to her right 😂

We then had a late lunch near the hotel before heading back home. I copied all my files off our cameras and onto my computer, staying organised on that front 👍 And then we finished the evening off with an old movie: Die Hard! Did you know that it was made in 1988?!? OMG! So there was actually a reference to West Germany. The movie was made before the reunification! How insane is that?! And I had completely forgotten what Bruce Willis looked like when he was younger, I could barely recognise him in the movie! 😱 I’m glad I watched it again, though. I wonder what other movies from back then would be good to watch… Any suggestions??

Using movies to learn foreign languages

N went over to a mate’s place for drinks tonight, so I just started watching Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. It was made before Studio Ghibli was founded (the film studio that also made Spirited Away and Totoro), but it’s still usually lumped as one of their films. Its director was one of the cofounders of Studio Ghibli, and they later purchased that studio where he made this film. So it’s usually seen as a Studio Ghibli film since it has such strong ties to Studio Ghibli.

Anyway, I started watching it, but it started getting quite late, so I’ll have to come back to it another time. We’re going to a friend’s place tomorrow for his birthday, so I probably won’t have much time tomorrow to watch some more. Maybe Sunday, then 😆

I’d like to watch some more of these Studio Ghibli films. I’m also considering using these films as a way to learn my two target languages: Chinese and Japanese! One of the benefits of living in HK is having Chinese and English subtitles available for a lot of TV shows and movies. And the Chinese subtitles are available in both simplified and traditional characters! And then on top of that, Japanese shows and movies have Japanese subtitles available as well. It is such a good place to learn these two languages. I have so many learning resources at my disposal, I can’t let my time in this city go to waste!