Living in exile

Halfway there.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner: Congee with pickles (the 牛肉多 sauce is quite good) and some leftovers. Boring but still tasty.

Meal prep: Made the Filipino-style beef steak marinade. This is an example the Filipino cuisine is not minimalist at all.

Catching up: Talked with the folks and there was a lot of talk about disease and illness.

Observations from the balcony: I have seen about three people not wearing masks. A couple were playing badminton (!) and another was stretching and doing some exercise of sorts.

General absurdity and madness: Online classes are going to start in a couple of days and the higher ups at the university sent out the training sessions for how to deliver online classes, like, just now? (Put up your millennial voice here.) A link to a livestream for 10 am was just sent about 945 am. Absurd. Faculty and staff are scrambling adjusting to the new norm.

Binge watching: Revisited first 11 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Watch the show for some of the choice lines, to see the relatively bad writing given to women and some minorities, and to see the creativity of the props and special effects. The transporter effect has evolved since the 60s. The new series Star Trek: Picard has quite an amazing transporter effect. Seeing the contrast led me to think about creativity at different points in time.

Filipinos on mainstream TV: There are two shows which feature Filipino actors. One is Superstore and the other is Star Trek: Picard. Superstore even had two lines of straight Filipino language. A white guy event tried it out. It seems “tarantado” and “gago” are PG enough. I would say “tarantado” is like “you, rascal” plus “you little fuck”. With the appropriate tone, it can be both negative or playful. “Gago” is somehow similar to “tarantado”. These are both benign versions of our very famous “your mother's a whore” curse.

End of the line: Picard's line from Star Trek: The Next Generation – “Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.”