Indoors

It rained pretty much all day today, I assume from the remnants of the typhoon warning from yesterday that continued pretty much overnight, so I just stayed indoors.

I was hoping to continue reading one of the bajillion books that I have on the go at the moment, but instead, I binge watched Masterchef Australia 😂 I finished Nigella Week, and started watching Legends Week. I’m still making my way through the earlier episodes, so I’m busily watching as much as I can to catch up with where Oz is. I don’t think I’ll ever catch up, but I’d like to get as close as possible 😊 There are a few people that I like this season, which is more important to me than the cooking – I watch the show for the reality tv aspect of it 😆

N got home very late tonight 😔 He has taken the rest of the week off, so he needed to get some work out of the way before finishing work for the week. It’s a bit of a shame because I was hoping to spend some time with him tonight before he flies to Japan tomorrow, but that wasn’t meant to be 😔 Oh well, such is life 🤷‍♀️ He’s actually in Japan the entire weekend, so I’m thinking I might get through a ton of Masterchef again then 😂

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Books and TV

I started reading Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore today. I don’t come across many books that keep me interested from start to finish. I start reading books because the blurb sounds interesting, but I don’t tend to finish a lot of them because I lose interest somewhere along the way. So the ones that do keep my attention tend to be ones that have a bit of a mystery to them, because I just want the mystery solved! This book has that, and it also has a little humour, which I also appreciate. It’s got my attention so far, so hopefully I can make it until the end this time! 🤞 Maybe I need to find authors who write in a similar way to the writers of Korean dramas… 😂

Speaking of which, I finished The Heirs tonight. I liked the ending, it wasn’t your typical “happily ever after” finale. It wasn’t a total tragedy either; it was somewhere in between, a more realistic ending – and I say that after going through a crazy, unrealistic ride for the previous nineteen episodes! 😂 I was thinking of jumping back in and watching a new Korean (or Chinese?) drama straight away, but perhaps I’ll give myself a bit of a break and watch something in the western tv world… 😊 I hear Black Mirror has a few new episodes… I’m actually a few seasons behind, so that series can keep me/us occupied for a little while… 😊

Balance

In an earlier post, I talked about my constant attempt to find the right balance in my life. And today I came across this quote on the interweb: “The quest for balance is universal, but perfect balance is a myth.” And as you can imagine, I am absolutely in love with it. It could be my quote for the year. Heck, I’ll make it my quote for the year! 😆 It made me feel better about not getting the balance right, and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

I remembered Randi Zuckerberg’s book Pick Three: You Can Have It All (Just Not Every Day), and she proposes choosing three areas each day that you want to focus on, and her categories were work, sleep, family, friends and fitness. I’m going to try and bring this back into my daily routine, but change the categories to better suit my own personal focus areas, and keep track in my Bullet Journal to make sure I don’t focus too much on any one area at the expense of other areas. June is about to start, so I’ll incorporate it into my monthly tracking for the new month. How exciting! 😊

And I finally finished Nice Witch, my current Korean drama. I will have to decide on what my next drama will be, as I have a huge backlog to choose from! 😆 Maybe I’ll switch to a Chinese drama, to get some listening practice in… The only problem is that the Korean dramas are just sooo good, it’s hard to tear yourself away from them…! Maybe I should learn Korean instead… 😆 Well… Taiwan, Korea and Japan are my favourite countries in Asia (and Singapore, now, of course 😊), so it’s actually not a half-bad idea to add Korean to my Asian language repertoire… Well I have learnt the Korean alphabet, so it wouldn’t hurt to learn a few basics from here, right? 😉

Nah, languages is one area where I can’t take a balanced approach. I am dedicating as much time to Chinese as possible, so I can work on my proficiency in this language as quickly as possible. And I already have Japanese lined up after it, so if I do want to learn some Korean, it may have to slot in to third place. That is, if Spanish or French don’t call me with greater urgency before then…! 😆 #polyglotdream

Making the most of the current situation

I continued studying my Chinese version of The Little Prince. I just finished chapter 4 – out of something like 27 😱 If I was reading the English version this entire time, I probably would’ve finished it by now, perhaps twice over 😅 So I’m hoping that all this effort will pay off in the long run! I’m waiting for (dreaming of) the day when I can read a book almost as comfortably as one in English. Not any book, but one that I would also be interested in reading in English. I wonder if this is even possible…. But I’m trying my best to get as close to that goal (dream) as possible 😊

I watched a few more episodes of Nice Witch, my current Korean drama. I only have a few more episodes left, so I’m going to try and finish it off tomorrow – and then I can move on to a new series after that! Yeah! I feel like I’ve been watching this one for aaages, it took me forever to finish it. So as good as it was, particularly the second half, it’d be good to move on to the next drama 😊 It was starting to get a bit ridiculous when a 5-year old could read the news and would start talking about scandals about the workers’ union that she read about on her phone, but hey, there are always ridiculous things happening in these dramas, that’s part of their allure! 😂

And N flew to Taipei tonight, he’s there for the next few days 😔 He’s travelling heaps this year, both for work and for karate. So more me time to watch Korean dramas! 😂 Just looking for the positives and making the most of the current situation… 😆

Nail in the coffin

** Spoiler alert: Game of Thrones finale**

It wasn’t the best of days. I was feeling rather down today, and couldn’t really shake it off all day. So as a result, it wasn’t the most productive of days 😔 I ended up just reading / studying a bit more of my Chinese version of The Little Prince, and then watched a few more episodes of Nice Witch, my current Korean drama. It’s finally getting good! I’m glad I decided to persevere with it. It’s the usual over-the-top drama with a ridiculous plot, but I find that part of the appeal 😆

And then I ended the day with the most disappointing episode of Game of Thrones ever. It was really underwhelming, given how good the rest of the series was. And it was the final episode of the entire series, which made it even more disappointing. Just the final nail in the coffin of an already shite day, really. Sighhh… Fingers crossed tomorrow will bring more fun and happiness than what today brought 🤞

Karate, yum cha, and my new book

We went to watch a karate comp at Happy Valley today. We got there pretty early (well, early for us 😆) as one of N’s friends was competing earlier in the day, and he wanted to get there early to watch her event. We ended up staying for pretty much the entire day! But sitting up in the stands is definitely much better than having to wait out the back, waiting for your events to be called and then waiting again for your results 😊

We briefly stepped out for lunch at Causeway Bay, trying yet another yum cha place. Yum cha is everywhere in this city, it’s sooo good! Well I guess it is The Source 😆 The one we went to today, though, was pretty mediocre and very overpriced, so we won’t be going back there again! I’m surprised it wasn’t all that great, because there was a crowd outside when we arrived, waiting to be seated, so I was expecting the food to be good. Nope, that wasn’t the case at all 😒

Anyway, we’re going back to watch the second day of the comp tomorrow, so maybe we’ll try another yum cha restaurant nearby. Or maybe we’ll just eat something completely different and move on from yum cha, that’s a possibility too 😊 Let’s see how we feel tomorrow…

I also finally decided to buy Antoine de Saint- Exupéry’s The Little Prince – in Chinese 😱 They had a good version of it at The Commercial Press, this bookstore that caters specifically for children. One of my local friends introduced me to it, and this is the first time I’ve returned to it. It’s a treasure trove of books for Chinese language learners like me! I wanted to buy a paper version so I could write in it to help me learn the language. I’m three pages in and I absolutely love it! I want to quickly finish the English version so I know the story, to help me with the translating part when I read it in Chinese. It’s at a really good difficulty level, it’s not too hard like high school level books, but it’s also not too easy, like books aimed at infants. It’s at primary school level, which I think is perfect for me. I’m not looking up every second word, but enough so that I am learning new words. The sentence structures are at my level as well, so I haven’t come across anything yet where I was like “wth does this mean??” 🤷‍♀️ Plus I love the author’s writing style – in the English version, of course. I wouldn’t know what any Chinese writing style is at this stage in my learning! 😂 Anyhow, long story short, I’m so happy I bought it!

Feeling positive

I had quite a productive day today, successfully working on all my main goals today: my Chinese, my trading and my fitness 👍

I went to the gym for the first time in aaages, ever since I got sick, so I didn’t feel all that strong today. But I just wanted to get back into the routine of going, so I achieved that, at least. But then about half an hour in, my earphones ran out of juice 🔋 And I do my dance practice in the second half of my gym session, and my earphones died on me right when I needed them. Isn’t that lovely 😒 But that’s ok, at least I went, I just needed to get back into it today, that was really my only goal today.

And then we watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones. It’s still making me interested in reading the book series, so I’ve pulled out book one from the study – N has the whole series 📖 It’s thick as! 😆 Like I mentioned before, it’s not a genre that I usually read, so I’m not sure if I’ll enjoy it, but I’ll give it a go anyway. I’m enjoying the tv series, so I’m hoping that I’ll get some level of enjoyment from the books too 🤞