Possible freedoms soon?

Oh boy. FINALLY!

This piece of news is pretty exciting: https://www.macaubusiness.com/macau-foreign-residents-again-allowed-to-apply-for-all-mainland-china-visas-categories-starting-from-march-15/?fbclid=IwAR2YFE-gPqZHJqDu-6KNFVqGUYNBw4owih4rZqdBKsMn69rC3IQHe0emO-M

So actually since the lockdown last year, the people of Macau were, erm, stuck in Macau for a while. Well, we weren't really prohibited from traveling, but with all the quarantine requirements, taking a 5-day holiday somewhere is actually a commitment of a +1month effort. Say, I go somewhere (I dunno, Japan or somewhere), need to quarantine for 14 days, then have my holiday for 5 days, then come back, and having to quarantine for another 14 days. Later in the year it was 21 days too.

So it was pretty much "Let's just stay stuck in town". Thus, the Staycation packages from local resorts.

Soon, the Chinese residents (residents who are Chinese in Nationality and thus have a "China return-home card", they were also allowed to freely go to China to the low-risk provinces.

Whereas non-Chinese Macau residents were not allowed to apply for a China visa, and any China visa previously applied was nulled.

So... I've been stuck in town for a while. Looking at friends going on holiday to China. Helping my Boss arrange for stuff in China.

Well well well, just yesterday I was doing some final research on Qingdao, and I found out it's a pretty interesting place. German architecture and all that. And the beer? Though frankly I'm more interested in the old town and also the new hispter area Creative 100. I was just telling my colleagues doing all these research for the Boss is making me really miss traveling...

And this morning my news app shows me THAT piece of news! All inoculated foreign Macau residents, (permanent or temporary), will be allowed to apply for a China visa again! So I just need to get my second shot of the vaccine (end of this month) and technically I will be allowed to be free to travel within China. Woooo.

But as policy also tends to change daily, I'll just wait and see, LOL.

Friday Five 12-March-2021 #1

The following questions are from thefridayfive

1) Have you read more books, or fewer books, this past year than usual?
Since we are talking about books, I think this year (2021) I will have read more than 2020, because, according to my Goodreads account, my 2020 was a lazy year, and I read a grand total of 3 books. Whereas this year, 2021, I am well on my 3rd book already, LOL. But I was reading a lot of online stuff, articles, blogs, fanfiction, but I suppose those don't account for books.

2) What book are you reading now (or what book did you read most recently)?
The book I'm currently reading is The Cobweb Bride by Vera Nazarian. The premises is quite interesting. Death decided to go on strike, so nobody dies, no matter how sick, or injured, how butchered you are. Death requires his Cobweb Bride in order to start working again. Having said that, the happenings in the book are a bit of a drag though... and I'm struggling... I thought a YA book would be an easy read, but it's just got too many story lines and so interspersed that I'm starting to find it annoying.

Most recently I read The Fireraisers (review) which honestly was quite good and I liked it enough to consider continuing the series.

3) What is the best book you read in the past few years?
I'm still singing about Never Let Me Go (review) by Kazuo Ishiguro, but only if you haven't read that yet, because the big reveal is just ooomph! When at that one point to finally understand it, it's just so chilling. But it won't happen on your second read, so I'll move on. I quite Enjoyed All Creatures Great and Small (review) by James Herriot

4) Do you read more than one book at a time, or just one?
I tend to focus on one book at a time, but I do have a few "open" books. I have one Chinese book on "open", it's surely going to take me a few years to read it. Same for a Japanese book. I have a couple of started books on my Kindle but they just don't grip my attention...

5) How big is your to-be-read pile (or list)?
Weeeeeelllllll, there's only 57 books on my "Want to Read" list on Goodreads, but there's still a pile of books on my shelf and a pile of books in my Kindle that I never really catalogued into Goodreads, AND there's 646 unread books on my Amazon cloud (but I have to check if indeed they are all unread as I'm not sure if my old Kindle synced the read status to the cloud or not) so.... I really should get a move on and start clearing all that.

Book: Cobweb Bride

Cobweb Bride (Cobweb Bride Trilogy #1)
Vera Nazarian
Amazon.com product link
(At time of writing, Kindle version of this book is $0.00)

Many are called... She alone can save the world and become Death's bride.
Chivalry and true love transform the myth of Persephone, set in an alternate Renaissance, from a Nebula Award Finalist author.

What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary "pocket" of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill....

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness... Her skin is cold as snow... Her eyes frozen... Her gaze, fiercely alive...

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war... A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father... Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court.... Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living...

Look closer--through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars...

And one small village girl, Percy--an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter--is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death's own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North...

And everyone is trying to stop her.


= + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = +

Ah... a trilogy! So... upon finishing the first book... it’s not the end yet! Let’s hope the second and third are as interesting!

I liked the premises of the book: Death goes on strike so no one can die, no matter the injury, the sickness, the incident, even decapitation... Food won’t even cook! And Death requires his Cobweb Bride for him to get back to work. I put this in a bit of a humorous way but it really not. So the setup is interesting enough. There are about 3 or 4 storylines/character lines in the beginning so it was a little confusing and hard to keep up, but eventually these storylines merged together.

But the book ended in such a cliffhanger-ish not-really-cliffhanger way that, there is no other way but the read the second book. Hm... I suppose.... I would do just that (ignoring the 600-something existing other unread books I have).

Overall well written. I caught a couple typos, such as the Infanta’s name, she’s Claere, but I caught 2 or 3 places where it got mistyped as Clare. Oh, and there’s a slight annoyance that I’ve always known Percy as a male name, but here it’s a girl’s name, short for Persephone, so it took a bit of time for my mind to get used to it.