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Weeknotes 66

  • Happy New Year! šŸ¾šŸŽ†
  • Once again, went to the New Year Cone Parade, and saw some lovely and very creative cones.
  • Mamdani’s swearing-in ceremony was filled with so much positivity and hope. Especially powerful was Jumaane Williams’ speech that includes this incredible passage:

    Yet, the truth of it is there are people who are rooting for New York to fail. Some couching it in concern, others openly scorn our city. But at the heart of this hate is the truth that our success, that our very existence, belies their core belief that New York is not possible. They demonize us because our mosaic challenges their ideology. They want to be right in their cynicism more than they want us to succeed in our idealism. They are driven by the idea that bringing together so many diverse people, cultures, faiths, identities into a united community is impossible. But New York, we are a shining beacon of possibility. We cross new cultural borders through each subway stop and are introduced to new experiences through each passenger. Our possibilities come in every language and from every heritage. So do our prayers. So do our people. So does our power.

  • Those positive vibes came to an abrupt end by the end of day two of 2026, when we all learned the U.S. had once again flagrantly broken international law, bombed a major city, and kidnapped its oil-rich country’s president.
  • We finished watching Pluribus. Vince Gilligan’s favorite Breaking Bad episode must have been ā€œFlyā€. Because that’s what 8 of this show’s 9 episodes basically were.
  • Got around to drilling a couple holes in the shed, to run power. And now I have my motorcycle and Prius batteries properly tended.
  • The final exercise in each chapter of my Mandarin course’s workbooks is to write a short (~150 word) essay using the newly-learned vocab words, and grammatical tidbits. I’d been skipping these because it’s still just so arduous to write when my repertoire of characters I know well enough to write without double checking is so small. But this week, I decided to just do it, and see how long it takes me, and was pleasantly surprised that it’s actually not bad.
  • Whenever we go to Taiwan next, we’ll be filing the paperwork so Taiwan is aware of our marriage yada yada. To do that, I’ll need a proper Mandarin name. So I’ve been pondering ideas a bit. ā€œLeeā€ (Ꝏ) is an extremely common family name, and whenever I tell a Chinese-speaking person my name is Lee, they get visibly confused, and it always requires a brief bit of explanation. So I think that default option is a bad one. When I was a kid, my nickname was some variation of ā€œMagooā€ or ā€œgooā€. So, ꕅ is my current front-runner.
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Weeknotes 65

  • Happy last week of 2025, everyone.
  • Had Xmas festivities at the parents’ house, along with the sibling’s significant other’s family. They were a lovely bunch, and were patient enough to join in on the Ourand tradition of watching Pee-Wee’s Christmas Special, a true Christmas classic. The quantity of eggnog available may have aided in said patience.
  • My trickle chargers arrived, and I perma-installed the plug on the Prius, and charged ā€˜er up. Haven’t poked any holes in our little shed quite yet, while I think upon a minimally crappy way to electrify it.

    Still need to install the NX’s plug, and charge it back up, too, as it’s been sitting for a little bit. Relatedly, I’ve got the Honda heated grip kit in my shopping cart, while I ponder how seriously I want to do some winter-time cruisin’.

  • Few more episodes into Pluribus and… wut? It seems like they almost immediately ran out of ideas after episode 1. Episodes 2 through 5 are almost entirely just filler. What am I missing?
  • Twice this week, Cyn’s said something to me in Mandarin, then stopped and asked if I understood that grammatical meaning. And both times, I did understand because I’d literally learned them earlier that day. She’s apparently internalized my learning progression perfectly. 加油!
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Weeknotes 64

  • Spent a few days driving back-and-forth to Williamsburg to work on a secret Christmas gift for Cyn, utilizing my dad for some fatherly woodworking wisdom and tools. Like most work estimates, this took a lot longer than expected. But I’m really pumped with how they (there’s another identical unpictured frame) turned out.
  • Bolt tire: repaired! Whole week with no low pressure warning.
  • Started watching Pluribus. We’re just two episodes in, but really diggin’ it.
  • Our cold weather snap, like it did last year, murdered our poor Prius battery. So I’ve acquired some trickle chargers. Next step will be rigging up some hacky extension cord based way of getting power into the shed to protect the outlets from the weather, and also keep my motorcycle battery topped up.
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Weeknotes 63

  • I don’t know what’s in the air, but whatever it is is running roughshod over my Kirkland brand ā€œAller-Floā€ allergy relief spray. Brutal headaches every day. One of these days, I’m going to have to move to the desert or something.
  • As promised, the sequel snow day arrived. And once again, it looks like we get another serving of snow tomorrow. Biru enjoying the snow day views
  • Paid our first insurance premium at our new 6x higher rate for the same plan we’ve had for a year. Which is weird, because I remember—just after the election—being assured a certain political party had shown no interest in messing with the ACA. Huh!
  • We watched the first four S5 Stranger Things episodes. So far so good. But that final little reveal seems teed up for some grade A silliness coming forth in the remaining episodes. I kind of hope they embrace it, and go for a full-on Dark Matter style ridiculous ending
  • Been having to break out the bike pump and top up one of the tires on the car every couple days. Think we ran over a nail (though I haven’t seen the evidence after a few casual inspections). After the last tire repair we had done, the tire completely warped and had to be replaced after just a couple months. So I’ve been hesitant to get this one ā€œfixedā€. But after this week’s many sub-zero temperature days, and having to go out and repeatedly re-inflate the thing, I’ve finally caved and made an appointment. I’m hoping we have better luck with the patch job this time.
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Weeknotes 62

  • We finished watching The Beast Inside Me. Was a fun show. The end was a little too predictable and it felt rushed.
  • I finished the first volume of my A Course in Contemporary Chinese textbooks / workbooks! I began volume 2, which starts out with giving & receiving directions—something I’m horrifically bad at in English. Send me all the good vibes.
  • First snow of the year, and looks like we’ll quickly be getting the sequel tomorrow.
  • Knocked out a few Advent of Code puzzles. After nearly a year of almost no programming practice, I can say: this old man’s still got it!
  • Gym’d a few times… Fine. Dandy.
  • I ponied up the cash for the iOS version of Anki. After using all the various free versions for the past few months, figured it would be nice to toss a little money their way. Plus, the iOS version—unlike the web version—supports text-to-speech. So I’ve been able to stop creating ad-hoc audio files on my mac. Tiny achievements!
  • Speaking of, I crossed the 1,000 ā€œnoteā€ milestone in Anki. So, ballpark, that means I can read, speak, understand around 1,000 Chinese words now. That still places me squarely in ā€œchildlikeā€ territory. So we’ve got a ways to go.
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Weeknotes 61

  • And another month in the books.
  • Rigged up a way to watch TV using my digital antenna over the internet while at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving football purposes. Like clockwork, my home internet turned to garbage as soon as we wanted to watch, and there was much buffering.
  • Back to the gym routine after much excuse-production.
  • The Anki flashcard review session, since adding audio and ā€œagainā€ing myself for not using the right tones, has grown into a beast. My review on Tuesday was almost 2 hours. So I’ve paused learning new words for a bit while we get this back under control. Today’s review looks like it’ll be around 35 minutes, so we’re approaching reasonable again.
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Weeknotes 60

  • Did a big grocery shopping day at the various Richmond Asian markets. Cynthia acquired… let’s say an upsettingly fragrant amount of stinky tofu. Our house has smelled farty much of the week. For one reason or another.
  • While shoppin’, I eyed this curious beverage from the mean streets of Taiwan: Peanut soup in a can Turns out, milk peanut soup can be surprisingly refreshing! I did accidentally spill a tiny bit on my hand, and a couple hours later noticed a small rash there. Very strange, considering my innards seemed to handle it just fine. A peanuty mystery.
  • Got our Prius inspected. I’d been avoiding this since the catalytic converter incident, so it was about 2 years overdue. But she passed inspection, and we’ve got two legal cars for the first time ever.
  • Continuing on the vehicular responsibility trend: I cleaned, lubed, and adjusted the chain on the NX500. Also took out a little slack in the clutch cable. Good as new.
  • In Mandarinland, I’ve noticed my tone game is really lacking. I think it’s partly because my Anki flashcards have no audio. I have no frame of reference for when I’m, in my head, pronouncing things badly. So I’m attempting to rectify this. I first installed the ā€œMeijia (Premium)ā€ Apple accessibility Taiwanese Mandarin voice. Then, in Anki, installed the AwesomeTTS plugin, and had it add audio to the new aptly-named ā€œAudioā€ field of all my notes. It seems like it did a rather excellent job so far. Studying my cards now makes it clear just how brutally I’m butchering most of the things I’m saying. Hoping this helps.
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Weeknotes 59

  • Acquired some wintery-themed teas, and have been brewin’ and sippin’ those nonstop this week. Mint is the best of the bunch.
  • Got the Bolt inspected for the first time since its acquisition. Easy-peasy pass. One maintenance-free year down. Although, the thing has randomly started prompting me for a password for something, and I can’t figure out it wants from me or why it started doing this. Let me know if you have any clues here…
  • é€™å€‹ę˜ŸęœŸęˆ‘å­øäŗ†äø€å€‹ę–°å­—ļ¼šē«é›ž (I learned a new word this week: turkey. But literally translated, it’s ā€œfire chickenā€, and I think that’s… well it’s at least a little bit funny)
  • Feels like I’ve made a lot of Chinese-listening progress this past week. I can now listen to the Taiwanese Peppa Pig and understand about ~70% of what’s being said. Last month, that felt like a pipe dream. Since I started tracking a couple weeks ago, I’m at ~15 hours of listening ā€œcomprehensible inputā€. Probably another 15 of reading short stories. This is not counting the several ā€œfreeā€ hours of listening to Cyn make fart jokes and calling the cat cute.
  • Pickleball’d again. Again, mostly got my butt kicked. Went 2 - 3 against Ta.
  • Went to watch Jess run in the half-marathon yesterday. The spot we arbitrarily picked to stop and cheer just so happened to be right in front of a friend’s house (had no idea they lived there). Small town, this Richmond place.
  • Went on a little motorcycle ride with the ol’ man again. Did our now usual route in New Kent. But this time with the added anxiety of dealing with 40mph cross-winds.
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Weeknotes 58

  • NY pulled through on makin’ me proud and VA pulled through on not fumbling the ball completely. Nice job, everyone.
  • Learned about a sneaky little IRS rule that, if you sell a single share in a mutual fund that’s set to use ā€œAvg Costā€ basis method, you permanently lock every share you own into that basis method… forever. Sure would’ve been nice to get some kind of warning about that before dooming myself. Between ACA income requirements and maintaining liquid living expenses, it already felt a bit like threading a needle with limited wiggle room. Now we’ve got significantly less wiggle room still. I’m sure there’s a sensible reason for this rule. But it sure feels real dumb right now.
  • Speaking of the ACA… Our health insurance premiums for 2026 are set to go up 6x what they are here in 2025. Neat system we’ve got, here.
  • First time pickleballin’ in a while. Was a tad rusty, but managed to win a couple games. The weather was nice enough to ride the motorcycle out to the courts. The ride home was a bit less pleasant on the hands. My summer gloves will need to be swapped out for something a little more substantial soon.
  • Cooked up an eggplant parm feast to celebrate our 5-years-of-togetherness anniversary. Cheated on my teetotaling and had a little prosecco too.
  • Met up with Ta at Hill CafĆ© and sipped a NA beer outside, enjoying the weather, the scenery, and the company.
  • Listened to about 4 hours of LazyChinese podcasts in total this week. I can now understand about everything in the ā€œbeginnerā€ level episodes, and 70% of the ā€œlower intermediateā€ ones. Also been reading a bunch of graded readers at ā€œlower intermediateā€ level. It feels kinda cool being able to read entire (very short) short stories without pinyin/zhuyin aids on, and not having to look anything up. Tiny milestone on a journey with an impossibly long way yet to go.
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Weeknotes 57

  • Happy November
  • Dialed up the Chinese study time to about 4 hours every day this week. I added a couple things to my routine to help my listening skills and expand my vocab a bit more quickly. So I’ve been listening to a bunch of Mandarin podcasts and reading a bunch of Mandarin short stories. Also added this zhuyin wordle game to the daily repertoire.
  • Went to the Halloween Parade with some buds. One of the perks of living in Richmond is living among so many incredibly talented artsy folks that make these silly events really special. A few of us popped into a tapas bar afterwards, and got some very Halloweeny patatas bravas and some drinkies.
  • Rode out to Charlottesville on the motorcycle along with Jess. Kind of failed in my attempt to plot a fun route out there, but the leaf peeping and the weather was 10/10.
  • Election week… Make me proud, NYC. And make me… lukewarm, VA. Let’s go!