Weeknotes #156

The weather wasn’t quite as nice for our second week and we spent more time indoors than you might hope to spend while on holiday in Australia. However, in our case, I think it was helpful because it gave Rowan a couple of days where he wasn’t meeting new people or going to new places. He’s been getting a bit better with people but still struggling with food.

For my part, I used the time to tidy up things on Mum and Dad’s computers. Dad got an old computer from the school he was working at but it hadn’t been reset properly. The biggest challenge was installing a new version of Windows. I eventually found a way to temporarily set the version in the registry to a value that wasn’t ‘Enterprise Edition’ and then reinstall over the top of that and it worked.

We did squeeze in a day at the zoo on one of the nicer days in the week. Like last time, we parked down near the wharf but unfortunately (perhaps because it was a nice day) the line for the cable car was insane. I didn’t think the kids would miss skipping it that much and so we just entered at the bottom entrance and then looked around and back. John did almost immediately want to leave, which, after I’d paid as much as I did for the tickets, put me in a bit of a sour mood.

Across the rest of the week, Eri and I were able to have some of the Thai and Chinese food that we’ve been missing over the past couple of years. In my case, that was almost exclusively rice noodle dishes and I’d almost forgotten quite how much meat you get in them.

Oh, and we had Kentucky Fried Chicken gravy and chips! I’ve never been able to work out why but Japanese KFC’s don’t have gravy at all. And the chips are completely different from those used in Australia (in a way that’s considerably more bland). I’m trying to remember now if Japan is the outlier or if Australia is but I can’t remember what KFC was like in the one other country I’ve had it (Vietnam).

I’ve written about this briefly before but after Emma turned six, I started taking her (virtually at least) to Catholic mass. I was raised Catholic and while my relationship with the Church is more complicated as an adult, I thought the experience of attending a religions service weekly was nevertheless positive. The recording we watch is from a church in Lavendar Bay and so on Sunday, we went over there to see it in person. I couldn’t work out where the camera is set up (it films the Saturday night Vigil) but I was surprised how different the space looked from what I’d imagined. Emma was more concerned that she’d lost a hair tie. (I am pleased to report that, in perhaps a sign that God does exist, we somewhat miraculously found it on the road as we were walking back to meet Eri, John and Rowan.)

I watched Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and found it fine but forgettable. I was surprised and also not surprised to see they’d recast Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald. Wikipedia tells me this was the least successful of the Wizarding World films but given that it still brought in $400 million or so, I assume they’ll try to make at least one more.

Rosi, a friend I’ve known since university, started writing weekly updates! Subscribing to that almost-never-updated RSS feed pays off again.

Speaking of weeknotes and friends, Brandon resumed his annual tradition of creating a playlist of music for the year. My favourite discovery was the cover of ‘Cool’ by Singapore indie band, Sobs (Apple Music)).