Day 6: fun! 😁

We did this Python for Beginners workshop today at Central 😁 I was totally geeking out, it was so much fun! He didn’t really show us much at all, and my laptop was being really stupid – and I mean really stupid, I’ll tell you in a sec 🙄 – but it was still so much fun! I want to go on and actually learn more, but I don’t exactly have that much time these days 😔

And my stupid laptop couldn’t find the venue’s Wi-Fi. It wasn’t even on the list of venues when you bring up all the available Wi-Fi’s to choose from. WTH?!?? And when I turned on my mobile hotspot to use that, it didn’t find that either. WTAF is up with that?? So one of the staff members had to lend me one of their laptops 😒 Not happy, Jan. I was not impressed with my laptop at all. Maybe N and I both need to buy a new laptop. But I don’t really need one, since I’m almost always just using my PC at home now. But for the rare occasion when I do use it, I need to be able to rely on it. Maybe I just need to spend some time looking at it and just update the software. It’s not that old, I just haven’t used it in a long time. But anyway, it was just being really stupid today 😒

And then in the afternoon, I was sooo keen to do all the things around the house that I haven’t done the past few days that I spent the rest of the day doing them! Mannn, I did so much, I was so proud of myself 😁

And then we finished the evening off with Free Guy, the new Ryan Reynolds movie. It was so much fun too! I think that just unintentionally became my one-word theme for the day: fun! 😁

Day 5: Working 😒

All the websites that I visit on a daily or almost-daily basis, including this one, logs me out automatically at the beginning of each month, and I have to log back into each one. I don’t know if it’s the websites or if it’s my computer. I suspect it’s my computer. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s sorta nice to have that added level of security.

N had some volunteer day today, they went to do a beach clean-up thing at one of the islands. So I had the day to myself again so I just worked some more on my YouTube videos and read more of the recipes in my 21-Day Sugar Detox book. I forgot he also had this day for work as well. It feels like neither of us are actually getting a proper holiday 😔 Hopefully the weekend will feel a bit more like a weekend 🤞

I also feel like I’m neglecting a lot of the stuff that I want to do around the house during these two weeks. Maybe because it doesn’t feel like we’re really on holidays at the moment, at least the last three days 😔 So maybe I can do some more house stuff over the next few days.

Day 4: My first lesson in 3 months!

N had a conference to go to today, so I just worked on my YouTube videos and looked at some more recipes that I want to try out before and during my 21-day sugar detox period in January. The whole sugar-free thing has turned more a challenge more than anything 😂 There is just sooo much sugar in our food that I’m sorta challenging myself to find sugar-free alternatives for everything! I’m having more avocados because they have less sugar in them, and even greener bananas. I know bananas have more sugar, but they don’t taste sweet, and I’m trying to train my taste buds to not crave sugar so much.

But I’m not completely cutting out carbs yet. I’m a bit worried about that come January 😟 Because I eat lots of carbs! Bread, noodles, rice. I might have to make batches and batches of cauliflower rice and zoodles to get me through the three weeks!

Oh, and muffins and biscuits using coconut flour. Apparently coconut flour is okay! So I might have to make trays and trays of different muffins 😆 I’ll have to take photos of all the interesting things that I end up cooking during the three weeks 😆

I also had my first Chinese lesson today with a different teacher 😱 It’s probably been around three months since my last Chinese lesson when my previous teacher’s schedule changed and we couldn’t find a time that suited both of us. So since then, I’ve been um-ing and ah-ing about signing up to italki, and I finally did it this week and had my first lesson today. It was a lot of fun! I didn’t forget as much as I thought I would. In fact, I felt like I was more fluent today than I have been in ages! Maybe having all my knowledge sit dormant in my mind for a few months actually helped?? Although we didn’t talk about anything too difficult today, so that probably helped too. So once we get going and she starts challenging me with some more difficult topics, I’m sure my usual fumbling will come back in full force! 😂 But as stressful as these lessons are, they are still really fun 😁

Day 3: cooking! 👩‍🍳

N had his first aid course today, so I just worked on my next YouTube video. And then I spent the evening cooking! 😱 I am a bit obsessed with my sugar detox book, and I just want to try so many recipes in it! But obviously we can only eat so much 😆 So I want to try a few different recipes in the book over the next few weeks. I think doing this will ease me into the actual 21-day detox period that much more easily. I’m sorta weaning myself off sugar now, and I’m also cooking more, both of which I’ll need to do to the nth degree during the 21-day period. So I may as well do a mild version now! 😆 I can also start getting comfortable with some of the recipes, so they won’t take me forever to make during the 21-day period. At the moment, they’re taking foreverrr! 😩 But if I get into a better routine, then grocery shopping will be that much easier, and cooking will also be easier and faster. Cooking will never be something that I actually enjoy. I have never been into food, and I doubt I ever will be. So instead, I focus on just how clean and healthy I’ll be eating if I do this, and just how much my body will thank me 😊

Our friends flew back to Oz today 😔 The husband will actually be coming back to HK on the 19th of January as his role is still based in HK, but because quarantine has now been ramped up to three weeks for anyone coming back from Oz, he actually has to spend Chinese New Year in quarantine 😱 Obviously not his plan at all! So if he needs to stay with us when he gets out of quarantine, it’ll be sometime in February, well after my 21-day detox period. So I don’t foresee any problems with me doing the detox in January 👍

So I’d like to start minimising my sugar intake now, so that I will barely feel much of a difference when I actually do the actual detox in January. I’ve already been minimising my sugar intake as it is, but I’d like to step it up that little bit more again this month. C’mon, you can do this! 💪

Day 2: art and decluttering

We went and had breakfast at a cafe in Sai Ying Pun, a place that one of N’s mates recommended. They had vegemite on toast! 😱 That’s the first time I’ve seen vegemite on the menu in any cafe here in HK 👏 And I’ve been wanting to have vegemite on toast recently too, so ordering today was a no brainer! 😆

And then we went and checked out a few art exhibitions. One guy draws these really cute and funny drawings; and the other guy had these AR art pieces as part of his exhibition! They were both cool in their own way.

Funny art

AR art

We then went home and just relaxed for the rest of the afternoon and evening. N spent a fair bit of time working on the theory component of his first aid course that he’s doing for work. It’s wayyy longer than he expected it to be! 😂 And I started cleaning out one of the bathroom cabinets. I haven’t gone through all of the baskets inside the cabinet, but I’ve thrown out some things that I / we clearly don’t use anymore. It’s a start!

And I also cleaned up some stuff in the study, one of the rooms that is really getting on my nerves. I got rid of some stuff in there too 👏 So things are slowly starting to get a home, which is great. Language learning materials are now all together; stationery stuff is also together. But we have a lot of electronic ‘stuff’ (cables, earphones, adaptors etc) and I still need to figure out the best way to store that. I think that just needs to be Konmari’d: put in one big pile and sort out once and for all what we want to keep and what we don’t want to keep. But that’ll take a joint effort, so I have to do that together with N sometime during the next two weeks.

Day 1: Reading and TV

It was the first day of our two-week holiday of sorts, and I really relaxed – I didn’t do much at all! 😂 I finished my second book for the season, The Post-Birthday World. I really didn’t do very well with my alternate realities theme this autumn! Especially when you contrast it with the number of memoirs that I managed to get through during summer.

And it’ll be winter in just a few days (I’m following the meteorological definition of winter, so 1 December), so I think I might just start with my next theme whenever I finish the new alternate reality book that I just started: Light Perpetual. I have a feeling that I might have a bit of a busy winter, so I think I might choose children’s fiction for my next theme! 😆 They’re easy to read, and some of the books that I will re-read will no doubt take me back to my childhood days. I want to read some Roald Dahl again, and maybe some classics like Alice in Wonderland and Charlotte’s Web. And maybe the Grimm Fairytales! Maybe some of the lesser known ones 😊 And I might see if there are any contemporary books that look interesting, see what kids these days are reading.

My other idea is to just continue reading my alternate reality books through winter as well, since I didn’t get through my short list in autumn 😔 Let’s see what I feel like doing when December rolls around…

And then we just watched some more TV. We watched a few more episodes of The Mandalorian, and then we watched Red Notice to finish off the evening. So it wasn’t the most productive of days, but it was a relaxing one! 😎

An expensive but good day

We had quite a relaxing day today. I finished reading The 21-Day Sugar Detox, and I think I’m going to definitely give it a go next year. I’m going to start looking for some of the ingredients now, and then try and create meal plans using the ingredients that I do find. I won’t be able to find all the ingredients to follow the meal plan to a T, and I’m not going to go out of my way to find them, so I have to come up with my own meal plans some of the time. They give you a Yes / No / Limited list of foods, so I’ll just work with those lists to look for other recipes that will suit me (and our pantry) better.

But even now, I’m generally looking for healthier alternatives, even if that means cooking more stuff at home rather than just buying a product from the store. It’s a nice ‘side-effect’ of reading the book! 😊

After having said that, though, we went and had sushi at Central today 🤣 It’s pretty much right next to Lan Kwai Fong, a popular drinking / entertainment spot in HK. So dinner ended up being unexpectedly expensive. Central and Lan Kwai Fong are not known for cheap food and drinks 😒 So that was a bill that we didn’t really need this month, especially as we go into the festive season when expenses generally already go up as it is 😔

But their food is good. We’ve been there a few times before, and their food is consistently good. I had their green tea ice cream with red beans today, and the ice cream was very well made. It wasn’t sweet at all! It must’ve been made from proper green tea, and they didn’t add a ridiculous amount of sugar to the ice cream. I was very impressed. I don’t usually say much about food – I’m not a foodie by any stretch of the imagination! – so for me to actually make a comment about food at a restaurant must mean that it was different and it actually got my attention!

We went home after that and finished Memories of the Alhambra. I really enjoyed it, and I think N did too. I think there was only one episode that I found a bit slow, but the rest of the drama was great. It is exactly the type of Korean drama that I enjoy watching 👍

So it was a great end to our weekend 😊

Hanging out with other expats

We went over to a friend’s place for dinner tonight. She managed to fit around a dozen people into her apartment, surprisingly. And she lives in a tiny one bedroom apartment that might only be 50 square metres! It was cosy but definitely not cramped. It was actually a really nice evening 😊

We spoke to another friend while we were there, and I found out that she’s also a Sydney girl! 😱 Her husband is from Tassie (short for Tasmania, the tiny little island state at the bottom of Australia), so I assumed – I have no idea why – that she was from Tassie too. So we talked about all things Sydney for a while tonight 🥰

But as nice as it is to hang out with expats (everyone there tonight is an expat), I really would like to make some local friends. And I don’t count locals who have effectively spent half their life overseas. I want to meet people who have led a different life to my own. I want to hear different stories, different experiences. We got to do that a bit more in SG with dancing, and I really loved that. But because we haven’t gone back to dancing since moving here, we haven’t had that opportunity. Maybe that can be one of my goals next year, to make some local friends. Yep, I think that’ll be a nice goal 😊

So it feels very isolating to always just be hanging out with expats, living in our own little expat bubble. So it doesn’t feel like we’re immersing ourselves into the local community. And I think maybe one difference between HK and SG is the level of English in the two cities, as I’ve mentioned before. It’s easier to meet Singaporeans because almost all Singaporeans speak English. But HKers don’t seem to be as comfortable speaking in English, despite it being taught at schools and is one of the official languages of the city. So of course we’re going to hang out with people we can communicate with, and almost all of the time, that’ll be with expats.

Plus locals have their own family and friends to hang out with. Whereas expats are in the city by themselves, so we tend to gravitate towards one another to keep each other company while we’re all living in the city together. I’m sure all these different factors are at play. But I still think this new goal is a nice one to have 😊

I’m booking it in! 📅

OK, so I started reading the 21-Day Sugar Detox book that I told you about the other day. It has three different levels of intensity / strictness, from one to three. Of course I am only going to look at level one, the lowest level 😂 And even this level is pretty full on: under the list of fruits that are allowed during the 21 days, they only have ‘lemons’ and ‘limes’! 🤣😱 I think they do have a few other fruits on the ‘limited’ list – that is, don’t go crazy eating the foods on this list! But still, there aren’t too many on this list either. So I don’t know just how long I can last! But I guess it’s only for 21 days, three weeks. Surely I can do that?? And I’ve been eating really well these past few weeks already, so it shouldn’t be too hard to tweak my food intake again just that little bit more. And it’s only for just three weeks! Surely I can do that??

It’s pretty crazy just how much sugar is in our food, natural and added. This detox is supposed to help reset our body’s sugar cravings, so you’re supposed to cut out sugar entirely during these three weeks. So apart from green vegetables, there almost always seems to be sugar in everything else! 😩 It’s pretty insane!

So I think I’ll try to stick the 21-day detox as much as I can, but I’m not going to religiously stick to it. I will reduce my sugar intake as best I can, but if the book says that I should use a particular ingredient that’s gluten-free, then I won’t necessarily go out of my way to buy that ingredient if we already have the ‘with-gluten’ equivalent in our kitchen. But as for things that are clearly full of sugar, then yes, I will definitely give those up for the 21 days. Who knows, I may actually enjoy it so much and feel so much better that I actually continue living with minimal sugar in my diet??

But I don’t think I will start this next month. December is notorious for being a terrible month food-wise, with general holiday festivities and all 😂 How about January? Monday 3 January 2022, to be precise, as I consider the 1st and 2nd to still be part of the general holiday festivities 🤣 So that’ll be the 3rd of Jan until the 23rd. Hmmm… Can I do this?? Is there anything that could possibly derail my plans?? 🤔

Ohhh, I just remembered: our friend might be staying with us for a few weeks when he comes back from Oz, and I think he comes back in mid-Jan. Hmmm… So if he comes back on the 15th, say, that leaves me with one week where I have to resist the temptation to order takeaway food or go out for dinner with him… I guess two weeks is better than nothing, though? And then once he finds his own place, I can just try again. It’s not like I only have one chance to do this detox! 😆

Yep, I think I’ll do that. I’m booking it in! 👍 And in the meantime, I’ll continue reading the book and assess just how doable this will be – and determine whether or not I’ll be suffering for most of January! 🤣

Looking forward to December! 🎄

I finally started to feel better today. Mentally better, that is. I’ve been feeling pretty down the past few days, but somehow, I managed to turn my thinking around today. I don’t know if it was just today, or if it’s just me constantly working at it the past few days. I think it was the latter. I don’t know how I got myself into the negative spiral in the first place. But now, at least I’m in a better frame of mind. Maybe until I get the next negative comment on one of my YouTube videos! 🙄 But hopefully I’ve been building enough mental toughness recently to handle the next time better than I did the last time 🤞 Because there will definitely be a next time, that’s for sure! 😒

I’m also starting to count down until next week when we’re both taking time off 😁 It’s not a ‘proper’ two weeks off, as we’re both still doing work-related stuff during that time, but it’s better than nothing! So I think that’s helping too. Maybe I also just need a break. We haven’t taken a proper break in a while, so it’d be nice to do that too. Again, even if it means that we’ll just be doing mundane stuff around the house for most of it! 😅

One of the things that I’d like to do during the next few weeks is to resume my reading. That’s sorta fallen by the wayside, with everything else taking precedence. But even then, I don’t think I’ll have much time to read! I have so many other things that I want to do that I think reading will take a backseat once again 😔 But let’s see. It might not be as dire as I’m picturing!

Oh, and I’ve also decided what we’ll be doing for New Year’s: we will spend it in Sha Tin! I’m so happy that I have finally sorted out what we’ll be doing over Christmas and New Year’s. Now, can we organise 2022 much earlier in the year, please?? Is that possible?? 😜