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I came down with a cold that lasted for a few days after Emma and John were both sick with it. I’m feeling better now.
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The Christmas cards we sent back at the start of December did arrive in Australia on time!
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A COVID-19 cluster broke out in Sydney (ABC News). Although we’re not there, I feel sorry for Sydneysiders who (I believe) will have to celebrate Christmas under lockdown.
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Speaking of the pandemic, I ventured out to buy wrapping paper at our closest LOFT yesterday. I’d meant to buy it online but of course left it too late. Despite the number of detected COVID-19 cases in Tokyo rising to new highs (Japan Times), it looked to me like the numbers of people out were about the same as pre-pandemic. Maybe that’s a decrease from where they should be at this time of year but I’ve not got the sense across previous Christmases in Japan that there’s a huge amount of Christmas shopping done. Hopefully I didn’t contract anything.
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I signed up for Apple One Premier. After only a couple of days, I think there’s good chance that I’ll be downgrading to Apple One Family to save the extra $10 a month. Apple Fitness+ looks interesting but I haven’t found a way to integrate it into my schedule. The other benefits are nice but 200GB will (for a little while anyway) be sufficient for our needs and News+ is yet more to read when I’ve done a terrible job of that this year. (Indeed, I just checked and I’m shocked/ashamed to see that I didn’t finish a single book in 2020.)
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After finishing series 6 of the Great British Sewing Bee a couple of weeks back, Eri and I enjoyed watching episodes from series 5. While I accidentally spoiled myself on who the winner is, I don’t know the order in which the contestants lose and so that’s left enough mystery to draw me in.
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Eri started watching Hikaru no Go after seeing it was available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. I haven’t been watching it but seeing the series brought back a rush of nostalgia from the early 2000s. This was around the time when it finally became feasible to download anime in decent quality over whatever sharing service was popular back then and I remember feeling inundated with all there was to watch. Hikaru no Go was one of those shows that I knew about and wanted to watch but never found the time.
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They’re not especially uplifting but Graeme Wood’s ‘The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse’ and Matt Yglesias’ ‘National Democrats’ misguided re-embrace of gun control’ were both thought-provoking reads. I especially appreciated the references to Foundation and Arcadia in Wood’s article.
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Two weeks back I linked to Apple Music’s Jazz Christmas playlist. It’s not bad but after further sampling, my preferred playlist is now ‘Holiday Cocktail Party’ (Apple Music).
