Travel

I went to Kowloon Walled City Park today and filmed what will hopefully be my next vlog. It was overcast today, and I did feel a few raindrops every now and then, so that might have kept people away from the park. I like parks in general, though, and I had the time to read a bit more about Kowloon Walled City today in the little information building in the park.

The SG-HK travel bubble has been postponed for two weeks because cases have suddenly increased here in the past two days 😔 We were thinking of taking advantage of that bubble, but the price and all the rigmarole that you have to go through is putting me off. It’s still not as simple as what the marketers would have you believe. It’s still not quite like how it was travelling in the pre-COVID era 😑

So instead, I’m thinking of doing a staycation over Christmas and/or New Year’s. So I’ve started having a look at a few different hotels. A lot of places have staycation deals, so I’m going to see which hotel has the best deal for us 😊 I never really wanted to do a staycation when Kitty was still here, because I always felt bad for leaving her at home. But now she’s letting us go. I would still much rather have her back with us, though 😢

My new habits

So after the blah day that I had yesterday, today was actually pretty good! Not that anything fantastic happened, just that I was in a better state of mind compared to yesterday. And that already made things so much better 😊

And this damn watch is now running my life 🤣 I am probably being so much more active now than I ever have been in the last two years that we’ve been living in HK. And so that includes the pre-COVID era! 😱 Each day, I just want to meet my goals. So I’m doing all sorts of things to meet them: dancing; yoga; squats; stretches; push-ups… Even just pacing up and down the house! It’s one of the good things about technology 😊 Just the mere fact that I’m being so much more active now means that the watch is doing what I wanted it to do: integrate fitness into my life! 👍

It was easier for me to do that pre-COVID, but then everything changed in 2020. A lot of things changed in 2020. It has been such a hard year 😔

The other thing that I am slowly starting to get used to is not having Kitty around anymore. I noticed today that all my habits have now gone. I no longer automatically check if her bowls in the kitchen need topping up; whether her litter tray needs cleaning; or even where she is, in case I step on her. That was a little sad 😔 But my new routine now is to turn on her digital photo frame every morning, and then turn it off at night. And occasionally I’ll stop in front of it and just look at the photos. It still makes me sad when I do that, but it also brings back good memories. I don’t know if the sadness will ever really go away. Maybe you just learn to live with it 😢

The stars were aligned

I had one of those days where it felt like the stars were all aligned for me. Well, almost all. It was just amazing. I wish all day were like today!

I ran a few errands today, including picking up Kitty’s DNA keychain. I think it’s actually quite pretty, despite its rather macabre contents 😆 We’ll leave it next to her ashes, like we had discussed. Ready for when we can splice it with lion DNA so we can make one giant Kitty 🤣🤣

Kitty’s DNA keychain 😳

And then I filmed two YouTube videos, taking my backlog of videos ready to be edited to five. FIVE! I don’t think I’ve ever filmed two videos in one day; nor have I ever had such a backlog in my life. Normally I’m just scrambling to make a video for that week, let alone have a backlog 😱 I’m pretty damn happy with that! But I can’t relax. I must keep going so that I always have spare videos for weeks when I can’t make videos, or don’t want to. Like over Christmas, for example. I’m thinking of taking a few weeks off over Christmas, which actually means that I’ll be using some of the videos for those weeks. So I have to make more to top up the backlog. It’s never-ending! 😆

But I must be getting more efficient, which is good. I remember when I was first making these videos. They would take foreverrrr to make! Now it feels like I’ve actually cut that time significantly, which is great. And hopefully I’ll just continue to be even more efficient over time – and that my skill level in all other aspects is improving too!

Our rather morbid order

We extended the weekend feels by having hot pot yet again tonight 😆 Man, having the gear to be able to eat it at home is just sooo good! 👍

That was probably the highlight of my day. It was a pretty mediocre Monday, to be honest. It wasn’t the most productive, but it also wasn’t the least productive. Like I said, mediocre!

Remember the keychain that we ordered with Kitty’s DNA, fur and bone? Well it has arrived. As per N’s plan, we can now splice her DNA with a lion and make a giant kitty 😂 I was going to go and pick it up tomorrow, but I don’t think I can, so I might go later in the week instead. Their office is in Woop Woop relative to where we are, so by public transport, it’ll take over an hour to get there and then an hour to get back. So I might leave that trek for another day.

They messaged me to say that her ‘necklace’ was ready, but I requested for a keychain, so I hope they got my order right…. Plus they called her ‘Whiskey’ 😒 So I hope it’s just poor English and not an actual stuff-up of my order! Or maybe they were meant to send the message to a different customer… 🤷‍♀️ Anyway, I’ll text them tomorrow just to confirm the details.

Sighhh… I still miss her… I don’t think this feeling will go away for a long time yet 😢

My Apple Watch stats

I was so tired today, I was barely functioning 😔 Needless to say, I didn’t have the most productive day!

Apparently I haven’t been getting enough sleep. My new Apple Watch has been tracking my sleep, and I averaged 6 hours 19 mins last week 😱

I seriously don’t know what happened on Friday 🤣

I am not one of those people who can function on less sleep, so no wonder I am always tired! So that’s another thing that this new watch has highlighted for me: I didn’t realise just how sleep deprived I was! I don’t have the regular interruptions in the middle of the night anymore – if you remember, Kitty would wake me up a few times each night pretty much on a daily basis – so imagine just how broken my sleep used to be!! 😱 How was I even functioning?!?

But I have managed to reach my daily exercise goals this past week. The watch tells me when I’ve been sitting at the computer for too long, and I actually get up and move. And I make an effort to exercise for 30 minutes every day, whereas before, I would’ve just brushed it off and said to myself, “You’ve done 15 mins, that’s good enough”. I am a sucker for stats 😆 Now I need something that will help me study my foreign languages every day! Anyone know an app on the Apple Watch that will help me do that??

Rugby, friends and pets

We went to a bar restaurant in Kennedy Town today to watch a dismal game 3 of the Bledisloe Cup. It was so boring, I pretty much stopped watching soon after the second half started and just focused on eating my dinner 😆 There was just no contest. It was like the All Blacks were playing, and then some other random guys were also on the field 🙄 And it was as if they didn’t even want to be seen holding the ball. It’s like they were playing hot potato with it, that’s how atrocious the Wallabies were today 😒

And then after the horrendous game, we just headed over to our friends’ place just to hang out for a bit. The whole family had stuff to do first thing tomorrow, plus we have our own things to do tomorrow too, so we didn’t hang around for too long. They have a really cute dog, though, which made me miss Kitty a bit 😔

We had a bit of a discussion about what pet we’d like to get next. Not that I’m ready to get another pet right now, but we are currently thinking of getting a Maine Coon. We call it a lion cat 😂

New things to come in the next few months, perhaps?

It was one of those good days where everything went well. These days are nice 🥰 And despite not getting enough sleep last night, I still managed to have a very productive day 👍

And this new Apple Watch is definitely making me move more. I love tracking my stats, so this watch is perfect for me. I already track a bajillion things in my bulletin journal, now my watch helps me track my health and fitness 👍 So I’m drinking more water; I’m dancing more; doing other health and fitness things (yoga, push-ups, squats, meditation etc) and I’m getting up and just moving more in general. It’s great! ☺️ I’ve only had it for a few days, so I’m sure it’s just going to continue to change my daily habits for the better 👍

There has been rumours going around that SG and HK will set up a travel bubble from November, meaning that we could go and visit SG without having to go through quarantine. Woohoo! That is sooo exciting 😁 So now I’m trying to decide which hotel I’d like to stay at. I’ve never actually stayed in a hotel in SG, so I wonder where I’d like to stay…

We haven’t really been able to travel in recent years because of Little Miss, but now she has allowed us to travel again. It’s like she timed it: she was able to spend more time with us this year because we were home much more, thanks to the rona; and now, travel looks like it may resume for us.

But if I had a choice, I would still want her back with us 😢

Still a bit sad

I was feeling a bit sad today 😞 I missed her more today 😢 I also didn’t get much sleep last night, so that probably contributed to my blah mood today 😔

I did manage to finish most of my YouTube video for the week, though, and I also called my parents and helped them a little with their finances, so it wasn’t a complete waste of a day 👍

Oh and I had my Chinese lesson. I even looked up the Chinese word for penis, ready to explain the double entendre 😅 But in the end, I didn’t have to, she already knew the meaning. She must have enough immature students who have taught her in the past 🤣

My new watch! ⌚️

It was a public holiday in HK today, the last one before Christmas. We went and had yum cha at our favourite yum cha restaurant, and then went to the Apple store to check out the new watch.

I mentioned my interest in the Apple Watch in this post here, and apparently we went to yum cha on that day too! 😂 Feels like we did the exact same thing exactly one month ago. But the difference today is that I actually bought the Apple Watch 😱

And it’s actually much better than I expected it to be 😅 It can do more than I thought it would. I bought it primarily for my health and fitness tracking, but you can do other stuff with it too, and this other stuff is what I’m actually quite surprised about. For one, you can set your watch face to scroll through different photos, which is pretty cool. I have set mine to scroll through photos of Kitty, which is so cool 😊

A photo of Kitty on my new Apple Watch! 🥰

And you can also access a few other apps on the watch as well, apps that I didn’t expect to be able to access on the watch, so that’s pretty cool too 👍

You can’t access most of the social media apps unless you go through a third party, but I’m not complaining about that because I’m not really using that many social media apps these days anyway. The only one that I do want is WhatsApp. That is one app that I actually use very frequently. I receive notifications saying that I have a message, and I can also reply to it, but there’s no actual app as such, unfortunately.

But overall, I’m happy with it. I’m still trying to figure out how to use it, since I’m like six versions behind 😂 But it’s been good so far 👍

Tired but still dancing 😊

I was really tired today, I’m not sure why. Because of training yesterday? Not enough sleep last night? Still feeling sad coz of Kitty? All of the above, probably. Whatever the reason(s), I decided to take a nap this afternoon. Which ended up being a few hours 😂

We then went to train at one of the sports centres again. But this time, N did karate while I continued with my dancing. We had the room for two hours, so I got through our entire samba routine and then some of our rumba. 2.5 dances done now, 7.5 to go 😱

I filmed my practising, which allowed me to see what was glaringly bad and therefore what I needed to focus on. My new camera isn’t just for filming YouTube videos; it’s now turning out to be a useful training resource as well! 👍

Dancing is such a good way to stay fit. It’s freaking hard, but it’s such a good form of exercise for me 😊