Weeknotes #155

in weeknotes

  • Happy new year! It’s the first entry of 2023. Hopefully this year will be more normal than the last couple.

  • Things went better this week. We didn’t really do anything but then just being here is kind of the point of the trip so that’s not a complaint.

  • That said, Rowan has been having a lot of difficulty adjusting to being in Australia. I’m honestly confused what’s going on because his behaviour has been quite unusual. Whereas in Japan, he’s happy to be held by either me or Eri, he now almost exclusively wants to be held by her and will sometimes throw a tantrum when that’s not possible (e.g. when she’s eating dinner). He’s also been resistant to being held by Mum, even though he was quite happy for her to hold him when she visited us last year in Japan. That was a few months ago and it’s not a surprise that he’s lost the conscious memory of it but you’d think there’d be some residual sense that this is someone that he knows.

  • I’m glad I didn’t bring the laptop because I’ve basically had no time to do any programming at all. I’m trying to remember if I’ve even used the iPad and I think the answer is no.

  • I got the Switch to work with the TV! It turns out the secret ingredient was love. Or, in my case, an official Nintendo power supply as the Switch refused to work with the MacBook one I’d brought to charge the aforementioned iPad. I’ve been playing Luigi’s Mansion 3 with John (again) and Nintendo Switch Sports with Emma.

  • Emma and John went down to the beach for I think the first time. They’ve gone wading in a beach-side pool that they have in Collaroy but if I’m remembering correctly, this is the first time to ever go down to the water itself. We’ve gone twice so far and both times they had a blast running into and out of the waves. I am meaning to build a sandcastle with them at some stage but we haven’t got to that yet.

  • Eugenia mentioned she’d seen Knives Out (Netflix) and that prompted me to finally squeeze in a late night viewing session of the movie. It’s very entertaining. I then watched Glass Onion (Netflix) a couple of nights later and while it’s not quite as good, it’s still pretty entertaining. It remains very strange to me that Lucasfilm got Rian Johnson to direct The Last Jedi. I retain my dislike for that film but increasingly disappointed that the lesson Disney drew from it was to go back to J.J. Abrams.

  • On the topic of Knives Out, I quite liked the video essay ‘Knives Out – What’s with the baseball?’ (YouTube). At five minutes, it’s very short as these things go but I’d recommend it to anyone that enjoyed the film.

  • And on the topic of video essays, I thought Patrick Willems recent ‘Patrick Explains AMBULANCE (And Why It’s Great)’ (YouTube) on the apparently little-seen 2022 action film by Michael Bay was one of the best ones he’s done for some time. This series is at its best when it’s arguing against the grain of critical opinion as it does here.

  • I honestly don’t remember when I added Nerve’s ‘Wasted’ (Apple Music) so if it was via someone else’s recommendation and that person is reading this: thank you! It’s not the greatest song but I don’t think I added much music from 2022 and this makes me feel slightly less old.

Michael Camilleri inqk.net