escapades of the elusive kat

Aaaaannnddd it's Monday. Long weekends are not long by the end of it, LOL.

Watched Dr. Strange 2 on Friday. Hm.......... erm........ hrrmmm..... It would probably be amazing if watched in 3D? But the storyline felt a bit.... lame-ish? The pictures were great though. The... those snippets at the end after credits.... Easter eggs? ... were okay.

That universe though (I mean, Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, etc) just feels like it's being added on so it's just gonna expand and... there is no end.

But the trailers before the movie? I'm interested in watching... what's the name... Everything everywhere all at once? That one looks interesting. I already have a provisional date with my friend Jenny, for when it airs.

So.... the family iMac died. Took it to the Apple Store. The thing was like over 10+ years. It's slim, and not really heavy. But when you have to carry it and walk a long way, it gets heavy. Then Mom goes and tells Dad that I'm mad... when honestly, I wasn't. The thing was heavy and cutting into my palm, so I wanted to get to the Apple Store ASAP, but she kept saying she doesn't know why I'm mad... to a point that I actually hissed... No, I am not mad about anything, but if you continue to say that I'm mad when I'm not mad, then I will REALLY be mad. So the Support Genius Bar guy confirms it's a dead hunk of... machine, we went and bought a new one.


And because of the demise of this family iMac, I was worried that my external hard-drive, the one that I use to store all my photos (right from my old phones like the Nokia 5800 or Sony Ericsson K810i and old cameras), would also just inexplicably die, so for now, I sorted through my travel photos and my Flickr travel collection should have them covered. There's no captions though, as many of the photos, I've forgotten about the exact place taken and whatnot.

If you are interested, this is the travel collection.

I have to sort through the other old photos and see what I'd like to creep and archive them on Flickr as well, I suppose... with the pro account I do have unlimited photo uploads... I just don't want to over-upload and then they decide.... you need to pay more for that... the external hard disk shows that I have almost 350GB worth of photos *sweatdrop*

We've been having a week of rainy days and we had to look for an alternative location to walk the dogs. We ended up going "under the bridge" for some cover... there isn't much grass though, but it's still something.


The local 7-11 convenience store is doing some special with Peanuts (Snoopy) and one of its pouches caught my eye. But, it's a little convoluted. You need to spend an X amount of money at the 7-11, then collect stamps. Once you get the required amount of stamps, you get one of those bags or pouches - but you don't get to choose... it's random. A friend of mind shopped to redeem 3 of such bags... and 2 were repeated. I don't have that kind of patience to collect those stamps and then with baited breathe open the darned package to see which I got… I just went to Taobao and ordered the one I wanted… LOL


Okay, so yesterday I went for my first pottery throwing class. My experience wasn't the best though. So we had to knead the clay, and I seem to have gotten the hang of it rather immediately. Then, we were seated at those... erm... turnstile thingamajig? So the teacher was showing us that we have "pull it long, and then push it back flat" (the piece of clay on the turnstile), which is fine really. Except, as she pulled it long, the clay turned into a phallic shape and it looked like a d*ck, LOL. Then, she flattened it back. We were to try the techniques. I was seated on the "outside" row of those turnstiles, away from the "aisle", so when the teacher walked around, she never really walked by me. I suppose because I kneaded the clay pretty ok, and I managed to "center" the clay onto the turnstile, the teacher then sort of left me to my own device.... but then I didn't really know what to do... like how to shape it, how to make it a bowl shape. It was annoying. I even asked a few times, and only got insignificant comments like "you don't have to make it so big", so I made smaller cups.... in the end, everyone had big, large cups, while I had tiny ones. Geez. And because by the time the teacher deigned to spend some time on me, class was almost over, so it was more her making the cups and not me practicing on the technique. More next week. I might just end up making sake cups... this way I can give them away, haha!

I was out running and saw this street name pillar along my running route and was thinking who this Henry Dunant was. I know that some streets in Macau are named after important/notable/historical figures that have been in Macau, such as George Chinnery, Matteo Ricci and such, but Henry Dunant?


So in my brief research, I can only say that this Henry Dunant has not been in Macau. He is also the founder of the Red Cross. And as you all know, I'm a lazy person, so I'm not going to summarize anything. I'll just link to the Wikipedia article about him right here. I'm not sure if it is INCIDENTALLY or if it's PURPOSEFULLY, the Red Cross headquarters in Macau is practically 5 or so minutes away on foot from this location.

I found a random video of this too.



This "viewing point" (that's what a Miradouro is) is also colloquially known as 半邊橙, literally "half an orange" because of its semisphericle shape. This used to look out to the sea. Now, a road is built across, making the water area a lake instead. In the video, you see a really tall building in the far opposite end, that's China already, a newly super-developing area that's sprouting buildings like mushrooms.

This is a photo I took some 10 years ago in Taipa (part of Macau), I think. This is the kind of fun stuff that happens here. Decipher this riddle: is this a parking spot? Is this a give way point (inverted triangle)? Is this s no-stop area (continuous yellow line)?

Oooh! The renovation guy remembered! He sent his minions to our place this morning and they finished my last wall as per my request.


However, it did not escape my eye that of those 2 shelves, he hung one by more or less 0.5cm higher than the other, so it's not entirely even. I mean, I thought they'd be able to do their own calculations and all that, but huh. But it's at a good height that if I sit on my bed against the wall, I will not hit my head, so it's all good.

My next course of action is to buy one more set of that light you see on the left shelf so that I could put it on the right shelf.

This way, I free up my window sill and the cats can lie there if they want. Nutmeg especially, loves to lie on the window sill and if I have plants there, she's just push them off (then everything dirties up my bed, meh). The round hanging terrarium will have to stay there because the base is a bit too wide for the shelf.

My Nerveplant is certainly slowly dying, even after changing the soil to dry it up, so I'm just slowly waiting for it to either die out entirely, or for a miracle to happen, as one of the leaves seem to be reviving under my new regime with them.

Casetify costs an arm an a leg... but the cases are sturdy and seem to give off a full protection vibe, but honestly, $65 (USD) for a phone case is indeed a tad on the steep side.


But I can't NOT get this case, right? It's Frankie! And coffee!

(Have I ever mentioned I'm actually not so much a friend of coffee? LOL)

A funny story to share.

We had... what are those called... sharons? One evening after dinner. I was performing some miracle or other for the Boss so I lagged a bit over dinner.

When my magic weaving was all done, I continued my dinner and just reached out for a sharon, broke it in half and just bit into it.

And then I saw. A white worm. Squirming in the remaining sharon. I screamed, too late, swallowing was a reflex...

Objectively, I know it's okay. But the squirming part of me is just... noooooo!


And of course, I'm just so obsessed about seeing that worm... but at the same time, it reminded my of a poetry book I had for my primary school years. The phrase actually had been on my mind all these 20-odd years. "What makes me really blue".... After a bit of googling, I found the poem itself, but not the accompanying image of a worm with a sad smiley face.

It's such a shock, I almost screech (Link)
By William Cole

It's such a shock, I almost screech,
When I find a worm inside my peach!
But then, what really makes me blue,
Is to find a worm who's bit in two!

So I guess my consolation is I found an entire worm and not half a worm LOL. 

Taobao, the China online shopping platform, really has a lot of crap.

Things that I never imagined I'd need at all, and yet there is a silly product for that.

And things there are just so cheap. Well, some stores also do imports, and those are very expensive.

My latest conquest: a phone case for the iPhone 12 Pro (note: I don't even have the phone yet) and a pair of wireless earpod thingies.


It wasn't for any reason. I do already have the AirPods Pro (which I use daily), a pair of heavy duty earphones for running, and another pair of earpod thingie that I bought one time to try. A friend recommended this pair (photo above) and there was some miscommunication. I understood that this pair was one of the new fancy doesn't-go-in-your-ear and emits a vibration to that soft bone/cartilage just outside your ear, but apparently no. It's just a hook type, but the pod itself doesn't go inside your ear (a opposed to the AirPods Pro and all the other earphones that have to stick them into my ear). Admittedly, these are more comfortable because I don't have to stick and adjust whatever that goes into my ear. And it was just for the measly price of $50 local money (erm.... less than US$7), I guess this was a good buy.

I just have to figure out when and what to use it for, LOL.

As for that phone case, let me foresee my immediate future: The local Apple Store has decided that they are not going to do direct sales of the new iPhone on Friday. Instead, they will activate the online registration at 6am on Friday. I don't know what that registration does... book a time for you to go to the store to buy? Reserve a model/color and go pick up some time in the future? No idea. We'll see. 6am is easy for me. I will be able to wake up and go to the registration page. But the registration page will be overloaded and go dead in 10 minutes. I can't get the registration to work. I won't be able to upgrade my phone until roughly 3 months later.

It feels weird to have to do the subject and body separately. Though the friend’s list seems to be easier to navigate than from the web browser when on a mobile device.

Let’s try a photo placement!

I think I can’t control where the photo goes. I don’t even think I can control the size and which side it aligns to...

Probably good for when I do my Wordless Wednesdays, not so much when I do a long, multi-photo post.

( Read more... )

(Second edit) The cut was added automatically from the app (maybe when you have more than 2 "sections" the cut will be applied automatically). I had to resize the photos from the webpage version, and switch it back to the legacy editor, coz the new editor is still a bit too new and confusing to me. Not sure what resizing the photos will do to the whole format. It looked OK before, but I really dislike the super-large photos.

(Third edit) just to say that using the app to read the entries look really cool. It uses your first photo to make an enlarged background. But, LJ is always LJ and not Instagram or whatever. I think I prefer it all in a blog/journal format more.

So... my Mom got herself a new rice cooker. Really fancy. It's RED in color. It's small. She loves it.

However, since it's some fancy-schmancy newfangled technology stuff, she doesn't really know how to use it, LOL.

And of course, when she gets new stuff that she doesn't know how to operate, she comes and asks me. Why would I know how to use it? So I had to read the operations manual. It's actually pretty simple and self-explanatory.

Anyway, the folks find out that the rice cooker can be used to bake cakes. So they immediately try out that function, and baked a cake last night. Since they were trying it out, they used a provided recipe of a chocolate cake.


Admittedly, the cake came out looking quite nice. How smooth! Taste-wise, it wasn't anything special. Actually it didn't really taste of anything.

So, we have a secret family recipe for a chocolate cake called the Midnight Cake. I might have mentioned of it before, so some of you may have already read of it at some point in time. It uses quite a lot of cocoa powder (and absolutely no milk) so it's a very dark cake, and the family had called it the Midnight Cake. My aunt's and my Mom's recipe differ a bit (one measurement in tails and the other one measurement in grams, they come out more or less the same; Mom's has less sugar though). The name has become a joke in my immediate family though, because we tend to bake the cake at night and finish around Midnight. Double entendre, if you will.

Well, this tryout rice cooker cake was so light in color, and we finished baking it some time between 10pm-11pm. Dad called it the "11pm Cake", but whether he's talking about it not being dark enough, or the time of the baking, I don't know, but LOL. Dad joke. I didn't think my Dad would ever come up with one himself.

I'll try to bake a Midnight Cake with the rice cooker one time though, see how it turns out.

Apparently, my desk is usually a bit too much on a messy side, so today I got some compliments that my desk is clean LOL.

Of course, that could totally be something as a backhanded thing insinuating that my workstation is usually crap. I do not deny it, I will even take bets on how long I can keep my desk tidy LOL.

I managed to complete those translations today. I wonder if it's the writing style, but for this particular document, google translate has been making pretty sensible translations. Of course, I still have to watermark the document as Google Translate Only, but hey, it's something to work on.

It did take me the entire day and I was actually getting restless, as in I HAD to stand up and move because my joints and muscles felt itchy or I don't know what that feeling is called.

Once again, today was take out lunch. I finally could order my own lunch again, so I went for this healthy salad place. There's 2 salad or healthy eats place that I order take out from. One is more salad-base, and the other is more healthy-base. I noticed the salad-base restaurant's salad gives me the runs... maybe they don't clean out their salads well enough? Anyway, a colleague recommened their thick toast.... and boy, the name does not disappoint. That toast was THICK. And delicious! I didn't think crab sticks could be used to make a sandwich. I learn something new everyday....


I even managed to get some reading done over my lunch break. I even read over my lunch break, but nobody bothered me about that. If I keep this up, I should be able to finish one of my current books within this week.

I've decided to order from the healthy-base place tomorrow if I get to make a solo order. Yes, I'm trying to mingle more with my colleagues and join their group lunch ordering if they are doing one, though if they do that then I don't get to choose the restaurant I order from.