A relaxing Sunday

We had a nice, relaxing Sunday. Firstly, we met up with friends for a belated Easter lunch. We started this tradition of going for an Easter lunch with them a few years ago, but they were overseas during Easter this year, so we postponed the lunch until today. It’s a nice tradition that we’ve started, and I hope we can continue it for a while yet. But like I’ve said before, who knows where we will be or where they will be next year, so I just take things as they come, and appreciate the time that we are all in Singapore together.

We then went to a Dyson exhibit at the Art Science Museum. Yes, the vacuum cleaner company. I thought it would be more about the evolution of their products over the years, but it was more about promoting their current products, and learning some science along the way. They had a few interactive displays to learn about science and engineering for kids, so that was quite cool, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting. The kids of our friends who we just had lunch with would probably have had a better time. Oh well. But it did get us thinking about buying the brand new Dyson product, especially with N being allergic to Kitty 😔 so I guess their marketing efforts have paid off…! 😆

And then we rode share bikes to Suntec to watch Rampage at the movies there. We’re getting into the share bikes at the moment. Singapore is such a perfect place for it: it’s a small city, so it’s quite easy to get around on a bicycle. The pavements are smooth, the cost is cheap, and there are so many areas where you can pick up and drop off the share bikes that it just makes it so easy.

And we finished the evening with an episode of Game of Thrones. We finished season six. Now I only have one more season to go before I am all caught up. But then once I’m finished with season seven, I’ll be waiting with bated breath for season eight – for about a year! 😳

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Manga shopping

It was mostly a pretty typical Sunday: Latin lesson, followed by Ballroom practice. After dancing, we went to go buy some groceries for Kitty, some food and litter for the feline member of the family 😸

I then went to Kinokuniya to buy some manga to further my language studies. Once I got there though, the shelves upon shelves of manga just overwhelmed me. Where do I start?? And reading the description on the back of each comic book would take forever, since it was all in Japanese. I couldn’t even figure out how they were ordered. I thought it may be in alphabetical order, but using the Japanese alphabet. But even that idea didn’t seem to hold. So the best I could come up with was to succumb to the pretty covers, read whatever I could on the cover (all the comic books were wrapped, so you couldn’t flick through them), and hope that the advertising would somehow eventually lure me to something that I could potentially enjoy reading 😆

I did, however, manage to find online English descriptions of my shortlisted ones, so I could quickly get an idea of what the manga was about, instead of just solely relying on the pretty pictures on the cover. So after over an hour of browsing through the Japanese manga shelves, I eventually settled for 犬神くんはツンだけどバレてる, which I think roughly translates to “Inugami is aloof but easy to read”. Well, something along those lines. I’m not quite at interpreter level… 🤣

So after browsing through the Japanese manga shelves, I then headed over to the Chinese manga shelves, and went through the same thing over on those shelves 😳 I eventually settled for 小港裡的動物診所 (I would translate this as “A Vet Clinic in Xiao Gang”, referring to a fictional city or the district in Southern Taiwan, I don’t know). I couldn’t find an English website like I did for the Japanese manga, but the cute animals on the cover won me over nonetheless 😂

After almost two hours of trying to navigate my way through the shelves of Japanese and Chinese manga, I then started to head over to the cashier to pay for my chosen comic books. Only to then stumble across some shelves with English manga! Omg, I have apparently discovered a whole new world that I was completely oblivious to before I came up with this manga-may-help-you-improve-your-language-skills idea 😆 The manga in English were more limited in choice compared to the Japanese and Chinese ones. I guess the English-speaking manga fans just don’t quite have the same numbers (and/or the history?) yet. So not only did I have less to browse through in this section of the bookstore, but I could obviously much more easily read the covers of these comic books! 😂 So I got through the English section in next to no time, compared to the mammoth adventure I had in the previous two sections.

So let’s see just how long it will take me to read these comic books… 😜 I’m still hoping that this idea of reading manga will help to improve my language skills, and that I am also entertained along the way, and not just suffer tremendously the entire time!🤞

Resting would have been a much more sensible idea

My stupid cold just won’t go away. Not that I’m fully resting to try and recover from it, no no. That would just be too simples, wouldn’t it?? 🙄

Instead, I traded all day. Except for when I took Kitty to the vet, and when I was FaceTiming my parents – although even then I was still checking the market 😳 So now I’ve just collapsed on the couch to take a bit of a breather – and write something in here!

From next week, I am going to restrict my trading to just a few hours a day, and see how that affects my stats. I did some calcs and discovered that trades I take in the mornings generally do not do well, so next week I’m going to try and just trade in the afternoon, when apparently I seem to do much better.

And by then, hopefully I’ll be much more rested, and my mind much clearer 😌

A delayed start to the week

Kitty and I made our way to the vet today. I put Kitty in her carrier, and while I was organising our ride to the vet, I could see out of the corner of my eye her little head peeking out of her carrier. Apparently I didn’t zip up her carrier properly! So she turned into liquid (this phenomenon that cats seem to be able to do 😂) and squeezed herself out! OMG! 🤣🤣 Of course I wanted to film the whole thing coz it was just so hilarious – I still can’t believe she wormed her way out! – but in between my being in hysterics, trying to organise our ride, and then trying to chase her down after she escaped, the filming just didn’t happen. A shame, really, coz it was just too funny 😂

I spent the rest of the day on my trading, and had my best day ever. Feeing all high and mighty now as a result 😂 I need to rein that in before tomorrow, because the market is very good at humbling you if you start getting too cocky. Nonetheless, I still want to celebrate today’s achievement, even if there was no doubt a little bit of luck involved 🎉 So far, whatever I’m doing seems to be working, so I’m going to try to stay on this same path for as long as I can 😊

So as you can see, I am feeling better today 😊

Back to routine

Back to routine. Back to the vet today. I came in just before the craziness started. As I was waiting for my Grab driver to arrive, FIVE dogs came in omg. Thankfully we were seen before the craziness started! But I’m sure Kitty saw and heard all the commotion, poor thing.

I watched this YouTube clip called “You shall not pass, dog”. I thought it was fascinating that these huge dogs would be so afraid of a little cat. But I can understand why: the little buggers swipe at them with their evil claws! Their little paws look all cute and soft, but hidden underneath the soft padding lies some nasty claws, and they will not hesitate to use them, even on those that they know!

Anyway, I saw this happen at the vet clinic today! The golden retriever was 100 times the size of the resident cat (it was huge, I think it weighed around 45kg, if I heard the vet nurse correctly), and yet the resident cat did not hesitate to swipe at it. And I’m sure the golden retriever was only coming up to say hello! Cheeky little bugger!

Back to routine. Back to trading. Back to feeling like this multiple times a day 🤣🤣 Although I highly doubt I look as happy as the dog in that meme.

Back to routine. Back to watching an episode of Game of Thrones, almost finishing season four. I think we’ll finish the season tomorrow night 👍

Sometimes I love my routine – even crave for it – sometimes not so much. Today probably fell more in the latter 😐

Tired and still a bit down

Kitty and I went to the vet this morning, as per usual. There were work experience students at the clinic who, in human years, are probably as old as Kitty! They asked how old Kitty was, and after their initial surprise, they both quickly ran to the poster that converts dog and cat years to human years 😂 I asked them what the chart said about how old Kitty is. She is an equivalent 73 years of age!

My tiredness over the weekend continued into today. After I got back from the vet, I could barely concentrate in front of the computer that I just had to take a quick nap before I could actually be lucid enough to do some trading.

I couldn’t make up my mind what to have for lunch, and when I finally decided and was 100% sure it was what I wanted, my mind was vehemently opposed to it: what I wanted was not going to help me get over my tiredness. But my stomach won and I ordered my Meatasaurus pizza from Dominos 😂

In hindsight, with my continued down mood and my tiredness, I should have just taken the day off 😔

Busy bee Thursday

I joined a webinar this morning, hosted by the Actuaries Institute, on gender diversity in the workplace. I didn’t realise that the webinar coincided with International Women’s Day, so that was a pleasant surprise. The webinar was really good, and it was nice to see some familiar names and faces. It was the next best thing to being at the venue 😊

Webinar 😊 

I then went to the usual weekly FX seminar, which was informative, as it always is. I know the format of each talk now, and that’s the beauty of trading: part of it is all about the consistent execution. It is that simple and yet also so damn hard to do! 😂

And then as soon as I got back home, I had to take Little Miss to the vet for her usual biweekly visit. It was sooo quiet in the clinic that I had to comment on the quietness there today. The vet nurse said that it’s because thr vet has finally had her baby! It’s been due any day now, and the whole clinic has been waiting for the baby to come already – heck, even I’ve been waiting! 😜

Two resident cats at the clinic staring at me

And then in the evening, we decided not to go dancing and just rest up a bit, and also spend time with our friend who’s here from Sydney. We decided to go to this restaurant called Whampoa Keng, and try their signature fish head steamboat. We didn’t have a fish head, just slices of fish, but it was still very tasty nonetheless.

The wait staff spoke better Chinese than English (probably because they are native Chinese speakers 😂), but the waiter we had was very patient and only reverted to English when it was clear that we didn’t understand what she was saying. Well, if N didn’t understand what she was saying. My listening skills are terrible, so I barely understood anything she said 😔 I really need to practice speaking and listening more (note that this is another 2018 goal!).

And on that note, I’m going to write a diary entry on our dinner tonight – in Chinese. And read it out loud!