Science Fiction

N took the day off today, but we decided not to do anything and just stay home. To be honest, I’m still a little freaked out about the rona, so I still prefer staying home at the moment anyway.

The numbers have gone down now in the past week, with less than 20 new cases each day, with some days in the single digits. Despite this, I’m still cautious, maybe a bit too much so. But I’d still rather stay away from this one.

I finished watching this Japanese drama today called Erased. It’s about this guy who can time travel, and I’m a bit of a sucker when it comes to this sub genre of science fiction. This and body swaps. I can’t get enough of these types of stories 😆 There are quite a few Asian dramas that play with these ideas, so of course I watch them whenever I come across one 😊 A body swap one that will probably be next on my list is Wise and Foolish, another Japanese show. But this one is a comedy, so that’ll be different for me, as I’m always watching dramas 😊

So if you have any other recommendations, please send them through. I’m always on the lookout for good TV shows! (Even though I already have an endless number of Korean dramas on my list! They’re unstoppable when it comes to dramas, I tell you 😂)

Under control

I had quite a productive day today 👍 I love days like this, when things go well! 😊

We also only saw 8 new rona cases today, and only 8 new cases yesterday as well. Woohoo, things are finally under control again! So gyms will reopen tomorrow, along with a few other sports facilities, but you still have to wear a mask when using them 😷 Restaurants can also open until 10pm from tomorrow, extending dine-in hours by an extra hour. Hopefully we can maintain these low numbers once again! 🤞 We did it last time, I don’t see why we can’t do it again.

And we’re now up-to-date with Lucifer. Hopefully we don’t have to wait a full year to see the next few episodes!

I have a few Japanese shows on the ‘waiting list’, though, plus I still have Bondi Rescue to get through – not to mention all the Korean dramas! 🤣 So there’s not shortage of things for me to watch while I wait, it’s all good 😆

Staying home but thinking of going out…

The restrictions have now eased ever so slightly here in HK, and we can eat out at restaurants until 9pm now, extended from the previous 6pm time. Numbers now seem to be below 20 each day, which is still much higher than the previous 1 or 2 cases that we were getting back in June, but better than the 100+ cases that we were getting in July. We can still only go out in pairs, and the two places that I miss the most (the gym and the library) are still closed. So the only difference for me in the current environment is extending dine-in hours until 9pm. But I’ll take whatever I can get. That’s just life nowadays!

Despite the fewer numbers, I am still not that interested in going out. So I just continued watching more Bondi Rescue! I’m a tad obsessed 😆 And we also watched Kung Fu Panda tonight. We saw it when it first came out, but that was so long ago now that I don’t remember anything that happened in the movie! But now that we have watched it, we can start making our way through #2 and #3 😊

I think I should get out of the house tomorrow, though. I’m thinking of going out for a bit of a walk around the block or something each day, just to get a bit of exercise and fresh air (as ‘fresh’ as it is in HK! 😂), since the gym has been closed pretty much all year. We live in a pretty hilly area, so even literally walking around the block could be quite a good workout!

Pure luck

I wasn’t feeling all that great today, so I took a bit of a nap this afternoon. Not sure why I was feeling ill. Lack of sleep? The heat? Lack of food? All of the above? But I felt better in the early evening, thankfully.

I was struggling a bit mentally, though. The Bondi Rescue episode that I watched today had a man who ended up a quadriplegic after an accident in the surf 😞 And he was a dancer too, so he was even more in tune with his body than most people. He was supposed to be performing that evening too, but he decided to go to the beach during the day because the weather was so nice that day. I thought that was a really sad story.

And one of my younger students was testing my patience today too. She bosses their helper around, and today, for whatever reason, the helper didn’t come to attend to her. So then she ended up sulking for the rest of her lesson.

This whole live-in help business is very foreign to me, but it’s very common here in Asia. Anyway, I wasn’t impressed that she started to sulk simply because the helper didn’t come to help her tie her hair up. The helper has other things to do than attend to her every whim, and I didn’t like that she was growing up in a household where she felt like she was entitled to get whatever she wanted as soon as she asked for it 😒 So I told her that she’s a big girl now and that she should be able to tie her hair up herself if she needed to, but she just continued to sulk anyway.

So it got me thinking that this may just be a common occurrence here (in Asia), and I find that really sad. Because the only difference between her and her helper is luck. Pure fking luck. Sorry for my language, but I just feel so strongly about this. How can you possibly boss someone else around like that – at five years old, at that – and just expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter??

Coning from a western country, I am not used to this (and probably never will be), and this is one thing that I struggle with in Asia. I think a lot of other (western) expats feel the same way. Sure there are those who are more well off in Oz, but by and large, it’s a very egalitarian society. The wealth divide is nowhere near as pronounced as it is here in Asia. And like I said, it is pure luck which side of the tracks you grew up on, so you should be thankful if you did grow up on the ‘greener’ side, and I believe that you should help those on the other side as much as you can. Well for me, anyway, that’s one of my values in life.

Exercise

A friend posted a video on Facebook of her son playing Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved. I went looking for the original song, and, once I heard it, I knew that it was going to be my song for the year. It’s a rumba, and rumba is my favourite latin dance. I was out having lunch when I discovered this song, so I couldn’t wait to go back home and practise! 😆

I would normally be practising at the gym, but that’s been out of the question for most of this year 😔 My last latin song was Daddy Yankee’s Dura, and when that was my song for the year (I think it was last year??), all I wanted to do was practise samba! 😂 Now I just need some more addictive songs for ballroom, and I may actually practise some of the ballroom dances for once! 🤣

So now I may be doing quite a fair bit of rumba for the next few days/weeks! 😊

I’ve also been mimicking paddling on a surfboard, thanks to Bondi Rescue 😆 The lifeguards have been doing various iron man type races in each season of the show, and so of course N wants to try doing the course too. We don’t live in Sydney anymore (at least not for now), so he’s doing the best he can to replicate the race here in HK. One leg of the race is to paddle your surfboard from Bronte Beach to Bondi, which is something like 2km 😱 So he’s tried to mimic this part of the race by using resistance bands. It’s on dry land, and you don’t have the punishing ocean to contend with, but it’s good enough for exercise purposes 👍

Anyway, in the race on Bondi Rescue, they probably have to paddle for at least 10 minutes. N is currently dying after about 2 😂 And I am dying after about 10 strokes 🤣 Well, I’m now up to 20 strokes, but still nowhere near his 2 minutes! And I think 10 minutes will just be impossible for me! Regardless how many I actually do and for how long, it’s all good training for my upper body 💪

One highlight of the day

We went shopping for a little while this afternoon, it was nice to get out of the house for even just a few hours. We just bought some snacks from Muji and from a few other Asian stores, and then we went home. It’s our life nowadays 😔

And then we spent the evening just watching TV. Bondi Rescue, of course, and also a few episodes of Modern Family. A pretty quiet day, much like most other days in 2020. We’re all just plodding along, hoping for a better 2021 🤞

IELTS Test Prep

I spoke to two IELTS teachers today. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here, but I’ve been thinking of working more with students who want to sit the IELTS exam. And having a chat with these two seasoned teachers was pretty cool 😊 Their styles are different to mine, so it was interesting to hear their approaches to teaching and how they help students improve their score in the exam. Now it’s just a matter of me finding the courage (and the students!) to start teaching this subsection of students 😧

I even told one of the teachers (who’s American) about Bondi Rescue. That’s how obsessed I am! 🤪 I’m now up to season five 😆

The two sick ones

Little Miss gave me another scare today: I thought her infection was back and she was bleeding again 😔 I didn’t want to go through the whole vet thing again. But luckily, I was just overreacting, and she was ok for the rest of the day. I hope she stays this way!🤞

My dad is also doing ok. Apparently he’s not eating, though. He is recorded as being diabetic, and so the nutritionist has been preparing dishes accordingly. Now even though he is diabetic, he usually just throws caution to the wind and eats whatever he likes. So you can understand why he’s not too impressed with being served these bland dishes while he’s in hospital! 🙄 He’s lost 4kg since being in hospital! Such a silly duffer!

One of N’s mates invited us over for dinner, but because I was teaching tonight, I couldn’t go. So I ended up just watching more Bondi Rescue while I waited for him to come home. I’m now up to season five. I’m flying through this show! 😆

And HK recorded 18 new cases today. The numbers are getting lower and lower! 👍 This is so much better than the 100+ daily cases that we were getting just a few weeks ago. Hopefully things can return to normal once again really soon 🤞

An uneventful day, but still feeling blah

The typhoon signal was actually ‘upgraded’ to a T9 overnight, the second highest level, but it was back down to a T8 when I woke up this morning, and then all signals were cancelled by around lunchtime. An uneventful typhoon, thankfully. Hopefully all typhoons remain uneventful while we’re living in this part of the world! 🤞

I had another meh day today 😕 I called my mum to see how they are. My dad is continuing his long road to recovery, and my mum is tired from all the walking going to and from the hospital each day 😔 But otherwise, they’re holding up ok 👍

I watched more Bondi Rescue today 😆 I’m so obsessed with this show right now that I made my Chinese teacher listen to me talk about it for our entire lesson today 🤣🤣 It was a good lesson because there are so many words about the show that I didn’t know how to say in Chinese: things like people drowning (or almost drowning); people getting stung by jellyfish; lifeguards catching petty thieves; ringing the ‘shark alarm’ if one is spotted in the water; and chasing them away when there is one nearby 😆 Lots of new words and phrases!

And I try and hold as much of the conversation in Chinese, so I had to try and describe all of this to her in Chinese with my limited vocab! And sometimes I just had to rely on charades 🤣 But I still didn’t use English, that’s the main thing!

The show just makes me miss Sydney 😔 I wonder if that’s adding to my blahness lately. Normally we fly back quite regularly, but with the rona, that’s all been ground to a halt. And then with my dad in hospital but not being able to visit him in person, that’s pretty tough too 😔

Lazy day #2

I had another lazy day 😊 This whole pandemic is an introvert’s dream 😂 But I can totally understand why others aren’t so keen on staying home all day every day. If the tables were turned and someone told me I had to go and talk to people all day every day for six months, I’d be feeling the exact same way! But thankfully, the world is actually in our favour this time 😁

I watched season two of both Bondi Rescue and The Umbrella Academy today, that’s the most productive thing I did all day 😂 I had a few other things I wanted to do today, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the TV 🙄