Sunday, October 18, 2026

Love Crossed

I finished watching Love Crossed tonight. It is a modern romance with feudal Chinese undertones. Why am I watching a modern romance? One of the You Tube videos I watched a couple months ago on learning a new language said watching shows in the language you are studying helps you learn the cadence, pronunciation, & new phrases in that language; & then this popped up when I opened Rakuten Viki. I decided I better add some modern shows since there would not be much use for the common phrase in feudal Chinese shows, "I must be punished! Kill me!" Now I know how to say, "I like you" in Mandarin. (Chinese culture, both feudal & modern, is apparently shy about stating unequivocally that you love someone unless you really, really, really, Really, REALLY love someone. So saying, "I like you" is a big deal. Not sure why they allowed "love" to be in the title.) 


SPOILER ALERT - The feudal Chinese undertone in Love Crossed is in the hidden familial relationship between Xu Nian, leader of the Y4 Love Boys, & the head of the entertainment syndicate as well as the true back stories of each of the other Y4 Love Boys. And also the plotting, keeping secrets from your "like" interest, & miscommunications. For most of the characters there is a happy ending. (Obviously not for the villains.) FYI It is in the "Once Is Enough" category of my Asian Series Rabbit Hole document because no horses, swords, or martial arts. (Well, there is a little bit of martial arts near the end but nothing spectacular.)

The head villain.

Today I discovered using a Hawaiian keyboard in Linux is more involved than on the Mac. I need to configure the compose keys (that are already pre-made in Mac OS). So bear with me while I figure that out. And I also may need to add additional software for Mandarin in Hanzi & Pinyin, so donʻt look for any of those any time soon. This is likely because there are fewer Linux users wanting to type in Hawaiian or Mandarin so a quick key type of thing like I had in the Mac OS is a little more cumbersome. Itʻs a good thing I am not afraid of going down that path. 


How I discovered that I have additional work to get the Hawaiian & Mandarin to work on the Framework is because I started working on the posts for the days I was in WA. The 1st one I worked on was for 09/28 when we built my new Framework laptop (that I am using to write this post!) That was the primary reason for going to WA at this particular time. Click here to check out the updated post!

Another thing I discovered is that Linux makes you do additional steps to make sure you really want it to do something. Like when I go through my photos to select the ones I will be using for the blog, I turn the ones that are not in consideration sideways. With Mac OS I just rotate it & move on to the next photo. With Linux I have to also click on the Save button for the change to take effect.

The original.
Rotated it so I know not to use it. But it asks me to Save! Mac OS does not do that.
Now Saved, so Linux let's me move on to next step.

While those things involve a couple more steps, & over my lifetime might add up to significant amount of time, what I like about Linux is that it doesnʻt automatically do things like update your operating system without you knowing it or downloading stuff from a zip drive that has been plugged in to your computer. For the updates, I have to click on the notification in the toolbar, answer"y" (yes I want to update), then enter my password before the update will begin.

It asks if I want to do the update.

I said "Yes", so now it asks for my password.
It shows me the list of updates & asks if I want to proceed with the updates.
It starts updating with little yellow cʻs chomping along like Pacman!
As it finishes each update it gives countdown; right now it is showing 5 out of 285 done.

It rained on & off today.  The day was mainly overcast & had some light drizzle for most of the day. But then, every so often it would pour. Especially in the afternoon & evening. The cats slept through it.

At 12:22 pm.
At 2:19 pm it was raining so hard you could easily see it on all 4 cameras.
At 2:19 pm.
At 2:49 pm.
At 2:59 pm.
At 11:15 pm.

I forgot to get on to Lingopie today. I sort of made up for it on Duolingo; I started 1st thing this morning when I woke up. That is my usual time to do my Duolingo lesson; today it was Hanzi practice! 

Only the last stroke was missing.
My pronunciation is getting better!

Later, while waiting for my breakfast order at Motek Bakery, I did a couple more lessons on Duolingo. I am glad I paid for the Super Duolingo so I can make unlimited mistakes & still continue learning. With the regular it is like playing a game where you have "life points", when you lose them all you either have to watch ads to get some back or wait until you are refilled the next day.. That was very frustrating when I started Mandarin so I started an annual subscription. (Iʻm pretty sure it will take me at least a couple of years to finish all the Mandarin lessons on Duolingo!) 

On these "Translate this sentence" ones they give you a bunch of words. 
Then you figure out what the sentence is using those words.
Knowing some words gives me a good chance at guessing the rest of the words.
And also their word order.
These phrases are a little more difficult.
These are sometimes difficult.
I need to add lines linking the pairs.

There are no hurricanes, storms, or disturbances expected in the central Pacific area for the next week. But there is a hurricane in the eastern Pacific named after Trudy! 


The next episode of the eruption of Kilauea is currently paused after the end of Episode 55 yesterday.


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