escapades of the elusive kat

Ugh, it's starting! Recently the reels showing up on my IG are those of people wondering "what is politically correct" when wishing Happy New Year now... is it Happy Chinese New Year? Happy Lunar New Year? So on and so forth. You know what. Who cares? The REAL greeting (for the Chinese) is, Kung Hei Fat Choi in Cantonese (or Gong Xi Fa Cai in Mandarin) means, Hope You Get Rich. It has nothing to do with the new year, maybe except sometimes they tag in "may you have a prosperous year to come" or something like that.

I'll continue to say CNY as I'm living in China territory and that's what I've been saying all through my life.

Maybe it's nothing new to people (and I have posted similar videos before), but I went to an Eye-dotting and Lion Dance ceremony today and I thought I'd share. It's really cute when they dot the eyes of the "lions" and then they start blinking their eyes and flicking their ears and then come alive and "dance". There's also something about feeding it lettuce and stuff which I can't explain too much, but I suppose it's some kind of play on word meaning (Lettuce 生菜 literally "Live Vegetable") and the Lion thanks you for the veggie and brings you good business for the year.


It was all very atmospheric, classical "Chinese drums and cymbals thing". My only small complaint is when they had to change the dancers (it's very tiring and they have to take turns to rest), they had the other "dancers" that didn't have the right pants on. At one point in time I saw the guy with the pink pants play the role of the green lion. So it was a green lion with pink legs haha. Well at least for the photos they didn't have that mix up.

And I'm exploring out of my comfort zone! I went on a lunch with a group of strangers! We have a chat group going on, it's mostly foreigners, with some locals, and we decided to come out for some dim sum. After dim sum, part of the group decided to get some coffee, but we made a very bad decision and decided to go to downtown, and...

We were amongst that horde of people. It was terrifying. Finally found a coffee place and I had a weird grey coffee. I thought it was a black sesame drink, but it's actually some kind of black caramel.

As the saying goes, the third day of CNY is 赤口 and it's a day of arguments so usually people do not go visit friends on this day. But my group of besties decide to go out on this day every time. It's like we are tempting fate to see if we'd ever get in any fights. Along the way I decided to get a... pinwheel charm thingy? The "turning" of the pinwheel (I really want to call it a windmill) is supposed to help "turn your luck around"

Oh yeah I also got these long time haven't seen "Dragon Beard Candy" 龍鬚糖. I'd describe it as... it's like cotton candy pressed together and wrapping ground peanuts in it.

It was nice to laze around the place with the dogs.

And since a friend convinced me to sign up for the 10k run in March, I'm now diligently training. I have some night runs, I have some morning runs.

I've been meaning to post this for the Wordless Wednesday but alas, it's not Wednesday, and things happened, so this shan't be wordless either LOL.

BEFORE I FORGET, since that's why I didn't post this yet because of forgetfulness. This video below was supposed to be my original Wordless Wednesday post where I'd have written nothing about it LOL. Menina is such a terror and that's why she's about the only dog in the family that can bully us into things. She demands to go onto someone's bed (mostly mine, sometimes the parents'). With my parents, she doesn't resort to barking so soon. She'd stand near their trash can and wag her tail so her tail beats the trash can like a drum. She does that WITH INTENT AND PURPOSE!



Then this was Nutmeg on Wednesday, it was after dinner, after dog walk, I was feeling pretty tired and just wanted to have a bit of a shut-eye before shower and, she plops herself onto me without a by-your-leave, thankyouverymuch.



So woke up to the news that the Queen has passed. It kind of feels surreal. I'm of the generation where, the Queen was always the Queen. She was already the Queen when I was born, and I'm now almost 40, so it's a bit of a... hard idea to wrap around.

Never met her in person (of course), but did happen to "celebrate" her not-exactly birthday (sorry, I don't know the full details). I think her birthday is in April but the celebrations are in June or something? So that year was my first "grand trip" to Europe with my 2 besties. We were pretty ironclad with annual holidays to Europe, and that was the first year we started it. We went to Czech Republic. It was the last day of our trip. I had ran out of Czech money but did not want to change more from the euros I had on hand, because it was the last day there. So i was very frugal with breakfast (or maybe it was lunch), had enough money for the transport to the Prague airport. Then was hungry again, so I was hoping maybe I can eat something at the airport, paying by credit card or seeing if they'd accept euro cash. We flew with British Airlines, and after check in, there was a buffet table. "Celebrating the Queen's Birthday! Join the buffet!"

Oh wow, lucky incident. Had my breakfast (or lunch, I don't recall specifics), had some champagne, and off we went on our flight (stopover in London). It was a bit of a tight transfer in Heathrow because I think we had to go to a different terminal, so there wasn't really any time to browse or shop or anything, and... then boarded the plane going back to Hong Kong.

Had the first snack that was served. Then the champagne I had in Prague kicked in. Conked off for a bit and then my friend shook me awake. "Time for breakfast!" I thought she meant the first meal on the plane, but she said nah, we're at the end of the flight, it's really breakfast-breakfast time. I guess that was the first and only time where I was able to sleep through the flight LOL. Thanks to the Queen.

My boss is soon coming back, then my seemingly always free time would be gone. Not really. It'd be really nice when he's back. Right now, I have to work my normal 9-6 job, then with his late start in the day and him being in the UK... his day starts at my 6 or 7pm, so I have to be on standby for him too. So I've actually been constantly on the clock. If he's back then at least his "day" is still part of my "work-hours".

Which brings me this thing about his office. I always keep his office doors open because some of the ladies put some plants on his windows and sometimes want to water them. I don't mind it, I have everything locked up, and if someone wants to check if it's rain or sun out, they usually check via the row of bosses rooms. They tend to look through my boss' room because he's usually not there.

However, lately, they've been... you give them a hand and they want your arm. They're going into his room for everything. Talk on the phone, talk on the phone, and talk on the phone. I'm starting to get annoyed. I could surely just close the door, but it's kind of a moot point as all the boss doors have the same code. So while their card may not have swipe access, they all know the key number code anyway (that's for when, there are faulty lights or other issues and they need to call the maintenance crew in, so all the ladies outside can help). That's another reason why I wasn't much annoyed by their going in to water the plants before. But going in to talk on the phone? I'm getting pissed.

I might just start leaving his door closed. You want to go in? You key in that code in front of me.

I don't really have anything particularly insightful today LOL

The weather has been terrible. This is likely the 6th day I'm wearing rain boots to work. But it's like the curse of the umbrella: you bring the umbrella, it doesn't rain. You forget the umbrella, it pours. I'm having the same curse with the rain boots. I see the skies are dark and cloudy and most definitely going to rain, so I wear the boots. But I get all the way to work and it hasn't rained much.

The irony of it is, just yesterday, when I thought "it's probably gonna pour buckets, but since it's not, I might as well just get to work quickly!" So I don the boots, think about the rain coat for a second and decide "nah!" And off I went. 3 minutes later it pours and while I had rain boots but the wind was crazy and the rain heavy so the umbrella wasn't much use: I got wet all the same.

So today I have the raincoat with me but it's only a light drizzle. Still have my boots though.

Tomorrow. I have no actual plans. But I'd like to do as I've been doing before, go to Starbucks in the morning, sit there with a coffee and do whatever (read a book, work on the finance log for the shelter I volunteer for, or, whatever). And then in the afternoon mosey over to the mall as I need new underthings; it's been a while (try years) since I last got underthings. They're past their prime.

I've also noticed, since the lockdown, as we've been forced to stay home, Sai Lup hasn't been to his physiotherapy, and now the physiotherapy centre has closed down even, so that's one chunk of expense off. The dogs also haven't been to the vet for their monthly cartophren shots, they don't look any worse for wear, and that's another big expense off me. I can't help with the physio if it's closed down, but the dogs should really get back on those shots, so I should probably take them for that too.

Oh, and here's the cats Harley and Nutmeg having fun on my parents' bed. Harley especially loves it when the sheets are being changed and everything's white like him. Don't know why Nutmeg's got her tail puffed up.

This is the last week of training for the 10km run on Sunday. I feel woefully unprepared because I realized pretty late that, while having to run over the Sai Van Bridge is loads of fun, it's a BRIDGE, meaning, I have to run uphill. So I went to train a bit today. It was brutal.

While running I put on a podcast for a change and was listening to The ChickPeeps Vegan Podcast, cute thing with Evanna Lynch, the actress who played Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter movies (honestly I think the best best best casted character IMHO). Anyway, they were chitchatting and somehow somewhere the thing about choosing their catholic name when going through Confirmation, and Evanna chose the name of patron saint St. Anastasia and that's her catholic name (or something along the line of that)

That got me to thinking: IT WASN'T THAT WAY WITH ME!!!!!!!!!!!! Did I get cheated out of the chance of choosing a name?

I know those who get baptized by choice (i.e. later in life) get to choose a catholic name. I didn't know we can choose another upon Confirmation. Huh. In fact, what we were told to choose was just our patron saint. So my name is Katherina, and I was told to choose between 2 St. Catherines. I forgot the other, but I chose St. Catherine of Laboure because I was told that was the patron saint of another Nun at school and she was Sister Catherine, and I was a dumb kid back then and didn't really know what was going on around me so I just said "ugh.. so I'll follow" and... that's how I chose my patron saint. Huh. I feel cheated out of a choice now.

I don't know, if given the full range of choices, I don't know if I'd have gone through whole research to find a cool saint, or just be lazy, as anyway, the catholic name will not be the legal name (I think?) and my name is long enough as it is (short by regular Portuguese people standards)... my name has 4 sets of words: Katherina xx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx. I had asked my Mom once why I only had one name while my cousins (Portuguese nationality) had long ass first second and third names and Mom was flippant, "it's long enough" and ended the topic LOL. BUT I'm sure there's loads other St. Catherines (or a variant of the name Catherine) and it wouldn't be dwindled to a choice of either one or the other *sniff*

Anyway... jumping topics, I was trying a new running app and this one is scary and tracks the actual location against the map! There's another version of the video where there is an avatar (supposed to be the runner, so, me) running along the route too. It's cool in a way, but you have to think about this constant tracking. Am I being paranoid? Maybe. I like tracking the routes well enough, when superimposed on a google graphic map, but when superimposed on an actual map, it just makes it feel a lot more scarier, huh...

Only for those really interested to hear how we speak as a family (mixture of English, Portuguese, Cantonese, and some Patua, maybe) (I don't recall if there was much Patua spoken in the videos I'll be posting), this is a video-heavy post.

I have 0 video editing skills, so these are all candid and unedited.

First I have the preparations we made for the party. I explain a little bit of what we have. The "cake" I mentioned is a Christmas Cake, I guess. I don't know if it has a proper name, but we have always just called it "Cake". Mom has one age-old Cake that she has kept for maybe 6 years (but I like to joke it's around 35 years), and she takes it out of the freezer every year, pours brandy over it, let it soak, slices a couple slices out to serve, then wraps up the remaining and keeps it in the freezer again.



( More videos and photos and chit chat )
Aaaannndd... finally, my presents haul! Not a bad haul this year. Almost everyone gave bath stuff (I guess it's safe LOL). The funny one was when Cousin Jorge gave out the Victoria's Secret bag, we were all laughing. "You seriously aren't giving us lingerie?" We joked. He replied, "yeah if the size doesn't fit, talk to me!" LOL. It's a set of bath shower and lotion stuff only though. I also got some cash in those envelops, but nowadays we are all going cashless, so I'll probably just go deposit them in the bank after the Chinese New Year.

Week 1: completed. Now how much longer will I hold?? LOL

More feeding time fun

Not quite wordless because this is gonna get a bit wordy. Coz I've got a bit of explaining to do, in case anyone is interested.

So, remember all those "America First, *wherever else* Second" videos when Trump just became president? Here's one on Macau.



First off, the accent, or the way they speak the English, is so very Portuguese-y Macau-ish. There's this intermittent add-ons (such as "quer dizer", "pofa", "sacrista", "caraças") that just makes this whole monologue so... homey to me.
( Read more... if you are interested in a silly explanatory thing.... )