TV and walking

I had a bit of a lazy day today. I ended up just watching TV all afternoon, taking a nap in the middle of all the TV watching 😂

I finally started watching Breaking Bad today. It has a rating of 9.5 on IMDb! 😱 I didn’t know that when I first started watching it. I just knew that it was really popular when it first came out, so I wanted to watch it too. But I’m always very slow compared to the rest of the world, so I’m only just starting to watch this now 🤪 And it may still take me a while to get through, because I can’t really binge watch shows either. I can only really handle a maximum of maybe three episodes in one sitting, and then I have to get up and do something else (or take a nap hehehe). And I’m talking about 20-minute episodes! Maybe that’s why movies don’t interest me too much?? 🤔

I wanted to go for a bit of a walk today, and we finally left the house at around 7:30pm to do that. This is definitely one thing that I like about Asia: things don’t close until quite late, so there are always a lot of people still around, and you can easily find a restaurant that is still open. We stumbled across a Vietnamese restaurant that we hadn’t tried before, so we decided to give them a go. They were actually pretty good! I would definitely go back again if we were in the area. It’s always good to try new places, sometimes you find some pretty decent places 😊 And yes, sometimes you get a mediocre place too, but I think it’s worth the gamble 😊

I suggested that we go up to The Peak tonight, actually, but N pooh-pooh’d that idea 😂 So I’m thinking of maybe going up there tomorrow instead. I wonder how he’ll feel about that same idea tomorrow…

Easter day 3: confusion all around

We booked tickets to go see the 11:15am session of Godzilla vs Kong at Admiralty. We get there, and the woman at the counter said that we were at the wrong cinema. WTF. So I asked her which cinema we actually booked the tickets for. She said somewhere in Kowloon – i.e. on the other side of Victoria Harbour. I checked where it was exactly on Google Maps: around 14km away, which Google Maps estimated would take 20 minutes 😱 We got to Admiralty at around 11am-ish, so chances are, we’d get to apm, the mall where the other cinema is, by around 11:30am. If we’re lucky, we might just get there right when the movie starts. Otherwise, we’ll be 5-10 minutes late.

Google Maps’ recommended route

Amazingly, we arrived right when the opening credits were rolling. So we might’ve missed a few minutes, but not much. I won’t say much about the movie in case you want to watch it, but I will comment on our 4D tickets. Maaan, they were totally worth it! If you can watch it in 4D, then I would go for that option instead of just the regular 2D. It just adds a whole new level of fun to the movie! I seriously felt like I was going to be flung out of my seat 😂 N felt like he was going to be flung out of his seat, and he weighs almost twice as me! So he kept looking over to make sure that I wouldn’t actually literally fly out of my seat! 🤣 I felt like I needed a seatbelt! Now I understand why there was a height restriction sign outside the cinema. Kids would easily get flung out of the seat! And you’re not allowed to bring food and drinks in at the moment because of COVID, but I don’t know if they’d let you bring food and drink in there anyway even without COVID. Popcorn and drinks would just be flying everywhere in that cinema, all over yourself and those sitting around you! 🤪 But that was fuuun. I want to watch more movies in that 4D cinema now!

We had lunch in the shopping mall afterwards, and then just wandered around and did a bit of shopping. We then just went home and I called my mum to help her log into her YouTube account on their new TV. What would ordinarily take less than 5 minutes took around 1.5 hours with her 😱😒 It’s just so hard teaching them over the phone. It would’ve been faster if I was there in person, but it still wouldn’t have taken 5 minutes 😒 It’s hard when she’s never really used a computer in her life, and all of a sudden, she’s being asked to do all these foreign things. So I was trying to be as patient as I possibly could, seeing her as a student who wanted to learn. But I could tell that there was an element of ‘just tell me what to press so I can log in’ in her attitude, which doesn’t really help her learn. But I persevered and tried to teach her, instead of just telling her to press this button and then that button. Hopefully she learnt something today!

Easter day 2 – more walking and more beaches!

I got up at 6:30am today 😱 It was so good! I really love being up that early. I get so much done in the morning 👍

I had decided that we were going to do Dragon’s Back today. But as we were heading to the train station to make our way there, N changed my mind: we decided to to the Southern Beaches Walk instead! 😆 It was a toss-up between these two anyway, but N’s comment to ‘change things up’ easily swayed me to do the latter. Plus, it was forecast to be another hot and humid day, and I didn’t really want to be hiking in such weather – heck, I’m not really keen on hiking in any weather! 😂 So walking along the southern part of HK Island right by the water, and walking past a number of beaches down there, was much more enticing 😊

Our walk today, around 8km all up 😊

We finished at Stanley Main Beach, which is actually quite a small, narrow beach. I was too tired to walk back to Repulse Bay Beach, the largest of the three beaches that we walked to today (we skipped two of the five beaches on the trail 😄), so we just had to squish in really close with the other beachgoers at Stanley 😒 Despite the numbers being pretty low these days (there were only two new cases today! Woohoo!), I am still acutely aware of all the things that I need to do now, thanks to this stupid 🦠, including social distancing. I also know that we can’t be complacent, because the damn thing multiplies if we’re not careful.

Repulse Bay Beach

Stanley Main Beach

The weather started getting cooler, so we took that as our cue to go home. Similar to yesterday, I was already feeling really tired in the early evening. So we just watched some TV and we’ll probably have another early night tonight. Maybe we can be morning people during this Easter extra-long weekend?? 😆

Delights

N and I went out for lunch again today. He took me to a different place today, a Viet place that he and a few of his mates from work go to quite regularly because it’s so close to their office. I don’t have Viet very often, but I’ve had it twice in as many days so far this week. Let’s make it three in a row tomorrow, shall we?! 😂 Don’t tempt me, I can easily do it! 😜

There’s one thing that I realised today about Aussies: we like to pay each other out. I don’t know if this term is a specific Aussie thing, but just in case it is, it means to make fun of each other or to insult each other, all in a joking, harmless way. We like to make jokes about things, and poke fun at things. We’re just very easygoing people 😊

I am currently reading a book called The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, and I am absolutely loving it. It is not the type of book that I would usually read, but I am so glad I decided to try something new. This seems to be a recurring theme for me lately! And it’s actually bringing a lot of delight into my life. I think I’m going to keep this up, this try-something-new thing, and see what other delights it will bring 😊

So this realisation about us Aussies being very easygoing people who can poke fun at each other – and also be able to take it from others at the same time – is one of my delights today 🥰

I also spoke to my mum late this afternoon / early evening. I hope I brought some delight into her life as well today 😊

Lots of closures – and reading practice!

Our favourite yum cha place in HK is currently closed because the building that it’s in is currently effectively being used as a COVID vaccination centre. But apparently they have another branch one suburb / district away, so we decided to go find that other restaurant and try it out.

But once we found it, we quickly realise that that too is closed 😔 Not sure why this other venue is currently closed, but regardless the reason, we still didn’t have a yum cha place to go to 😔 N then remembered another place nearby that we had been to once or twice before, so we made our way there.

Turns out that place is closed too! 😩 Is everything closed because of COVID? The protests the year before? A combination of both factors?? Regardless, it’s all quite sad 😔

We finally stumbled upon another restaurant and decided to try that. It actually turned out to be OK, good enough for us to return to 😅 All our walking around eventually paid off 👍🏻

We then went to the library and borrowed a few books. N found the Mr Men and Little Miss books in Chinese! Omg I had to borrow one and work my way through them. I really like these books, and I know they’ll be good books to read in a foreign language 👍🏻

Turns out I was right. It probably took me about an hour to read a third of Mr Tickle 😂 OMG how painful, knowing I could read the entire book in less than five minutes if it was in English. But every little bit counts, and I’m determined to finish it – and every other book in the series! They don’t have all of the books in Chinese, maybe just a quarter of them, but that’ll be plenty for me to work my way through 😆

And then in the evening, we watched another movie: Snowpiercer. There were no English subtitles available, so when the Korean actors were speaking, we had no idea what they were saying. But they had Chinese subtitles 🤪 I was ready to take this as a learning opportunity and test my Chinese reading skills, but N just used the camera in Google Translate for quick and dirty translations! 😂 But when I could read the Chinese, I used the Google Translate translation as confirmation (or otherwise) of my own attempt.

Lots of Chinese reading practice for me today! I have to recount today’s events in my next lesson – in Chinese 😱 It’ll be speaking practice that day! 😆

Changing things up a bit

It was quite a warm today. It actually felt like summer was starting – yippeeee!! ☀️ I’m happy, but N isn’t. And unfortunately for him, it feels more like summer for about nine months of the year in HK! Needless to say, he hated the weather in SG 🤣 While I revelled in it 😎

We went to Causeway Bay today to check out the Sony store. I’m totally into my tech stuff at the moment, as you might already know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, and I wanted to go check out the camera that I want to buy. I’m not going to buy it anytime soon, I just wanted to admire it today.

Someone else was also admiring it today, so we took turns admiring it 😂 I think he was actually considering buying it today, he is definitely closer to the purchasing line than I am. I was getting very excited for him! We left the store before he did, so I’m not sure if he ended up buying it today. I hope he did 😊

And in the evening, we watched Knowing, We’ve been watching a few movies lately, which is great. I’m not really a movies person, so it’s quite nice to change things up a bit. I think that was my theme for the day, which made it quite a fun day for me 😀

A brief respite

I mentioned in this post that our douche of a landlord dropped his legal bill on us the other day, and basically said that we’re splitting the bill. Well, N doesn’t think we should pay it. Plus, the landlord hasn’t returned the balance owing to us because of the change in our rent. We give him two months’ rent as deposit as part of the first lease. But because we had negotiated a lower rent in the new lease, the required deposit has actually decreased, and he should be paying us back the surplus amount. But of course he hasn’t done that – and yet is quick to send us this legal bill, of which we didn’t even agree to pay half. Ugh, so the saga continues 😒 I really don’t like this guy. Part of me just wants to leave this apartment just to get away from him, despite the good rental deal 😔

Overall, I felt like I just wasn’t in the right headspace today. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t actually focus on any one particular task, I was just jumping around from one thing to the next. Sighhh…

We finished Brooklyn Nine-Nine last night, so N introduced me to a new show today: Kim’s Convenience. It’s not baaad, but definitely not my favourite. But it’s light and easy to watch, so we’ve already watched a few episodes of season one 😆 They’re up to season five, so they must be doing something right!

Despite this brief respite, it still didn’t completely shake off the blahness of the day 😔 Hopefully the weekend will be better 🤞

In voluntary quarantine – again 😒

Because of all these cases coming out of that gym near our place, we’re both quite nervous about the stupid virus at the moment. All the residents in an apartment building near our place is being tested, as per current government policy. There are a few buildings in the vicinity being tested, actually, as I suspected would happen, given the proximity to our place of the gym where the cluster started 😔 I just hope that no one from our building tests positive, and we have to go through this whole process too🤞 It’s just all a bit too close to home at the moment. Literally. And ‘close’ in HK is just that little bit closer, unfortunately, with everyone living on top of each other 😒

And apparently if you need to go to a quarantine centre, they give you 1-2 hours to get all your stuff together, and then they ship you out to wherever. I really don’t want to have to go out there! 😩 But it would make for a pretty cool story, that’s for sure! 🤣

So because we don’t really want to be out and about at the moment, we just stayed home and watched TV. We watched Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which was pretty cool. It is totally like the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I read as a kid, except this time, it was on TV. That was a lot of fun 😁

And I also finished The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab. I read a little bit of this book pretty much every day for the past few weeks, which doesn’t happen for me. Not many books have me that riveted. But this is in my favourite genre, a sub-genre of science fiction / fantasy where people live in an alternative reality, where the world is largely the same, but something is just that little bit different. The Time Traveler’s Wife, 1984, these sorts of books.

And today, I heard about Philip K Dick, a science fiction writer whose stories have been turned into numerous movies. I have added The Man in the High Castle on my to-read list, and I am currently making my way through his Total Recall short story, the basis of the movie with the same name. So far, I’m enjoying this too. I’ll let you know how The Man in the High Castle is. If it’s as good as this short story, then I may just read more of his stuff 👍

Taking it easy

I walked a LOT today. 9km, according to my Apple watch 😱 And coupled with the jogging and the star jumps that I did yesterday (trying to reach my exercise goals for my watch 😂) and the daily stretches that I’m still doing for my splits goal, my legs are now SORE 😝 And my body was just generally tired. I’m no spring chicken anymore, these things are now tiring!

So I took it pretty easy tonight, and just resumed watching my current Korean drama, Secret Garden. Oh, that link is to IMDb! I’m glad to see that Asian shows are now showing up on IMDb 👍 I guess a lot of these are available on Netflix, so they’re getting seen by more people outside of Asia, which is cool. And Korea makes the best dramas hehehe It’s just a shame that I’m not learning Korean! 😆

N had karate today. It was the first time that he’d been to karate since the restrictions were imposed back in December, so it’s nice to see things open again. There are a few places that are still closed, but they are places that I don’t really go to (eg karaoke venues, mahjong parlours and swimming pools) so it doesn’t really bother me. So I’m good 😄 But summer is just around the corner, and I’d like to be able to go to the beach when the weather starts warming up. I hope they’ll open the beaches sometime in the next few months… 🤞 🏖

Category #2: Books! 📚

I read the ‘how to tidy up your books’ section in Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy. And in case you’re wondering if you should read both books, I would say no. The latter has how-to drawings (and the first one doesn’t), but I don’t think it gives you any more insight into the theory than the first book. And her videos on YouTube will give you better instructions than the drawings anyway.

And also, just a heads up, her book is also very touchy-feely. In fact, I think her whole approach is very touchy-feely. So if you’re not like this and want practical tips on how to tidy your home, then this book ain’t for you. You’re not going to get much of that from her! 😆

The book ‘Outer Order, Inner Calm‘ is on my to-read list, and I think this would have more practical tips, if this is more your style.

But this 8-week challenge is all about Marie Kondo’s approach – the KonMari method – and I’m going to give it my very best. I wonder just how effective this will be after 8 weeks, and whether I will indeed stay nice and tidy, and not relapse and go back to my old ways.

I actually don’t have many paper books, so this category is actually really easy. It’s the next few categories that I am going to really struggle with, in particular, papers and hobbies. These are really difficult categories for me to tackle. And I’m sure a few other miscellaneous categories are also going to be pretty hard. And I’m already dreading getting to the final category: sentimental items! 😩