We’re going to London in a month or so. Last time I took some time to go off to Devon by myself, this time I’ve booked myself weekly lessons on making Japanese style woodblocks. I wanted to do something physical, so not writing or learning something, and also creative. The other option of this sort […]
New plans
Our architect sent over three new proposed plans and, rather to our surprise, they are quite promising and have several ideas for how to redo the flat effectively. So a very good start, and we will ask her to make a few changes, consult the engineers as required, and hopefully, kick it all off. Less […]
Bad aunt
I am now a bad aunt to at least six sets of nephews and nieces. I acquired another a new nephew to be a bad aunt to today – he is not new to the world, being around two, but this was the first time I’d seen the son of one of my closest university […]
Something starting to click
In the past week or so, as part of my effort to turn my life around and reduce regrets when on a ventilator, I have allocated some time daily to study something interesting. This has been raags, despite my tin ear. I’ve been working my way through a few websites, including the one below, a […]
Submarining
A small nod to yesterday as I found an attractive squid, waved it at the GF and brought it home for dinner (to eat, not to host). Also had an extended moment of work-related panic as I had to give a quote for a project and, as usual found myself virtually incapable of calculating how […]
Day aquatic
There was an aquatic theme to today, as we went for lunch to renowned old seafood place (founded in 1940, so before the white army retreat into Taiwan) where we had the set menu for two. It began with mullet roe and squid, a crab soup and shrimp rolls, the centrepiece was mud crab on […]
Life change plan
I’ve decided, once again, to become a little more organised, a little less scattered, less prone to feeling at the end of a day that it has been a wasted day and I’m that much closer to death with little to show for it. In particular, I tend to put work above anything else, and […]
Back to Beitou
Today’s Chinese lesson went better than Monday’s, when both the GF and I felt rather stupid and beaten down. It made me very thankful that I was always quite good at school, as it was a taster of how deadly it is to be made to feel like an idiot and given no time or […]
Unos miedos
I have some fears about my Spanish, and am feeling rather stuck in the language. I’m just fluent enough that I can, ungrammatically, make myself understood, so am at risk of getting trapped in a badly spoken, semi-literate language, like the cliche of an immigrant to another country who has learned enough to get by […]
Test
We had our Mandarin test this morning. Both of us passed with exactly the same number of wrong answers, though slightly different marks as the weighting was different. We preened a little at scoring in the high 80s until our teacher mentioned that the pass mark was 75%. Well, it’s done. I haven’t had a […]