What I’m Up To – Mar/Apr 2025

(As of March + April 2025)

Updated April 27, 2025

Ongoing: Teaching AP English, studying architecture, doing Wing Chun, cleaning houses, writing Percolations

Community-ing

Being part of an after-school program for highschool students from China – 8 two-hour sessions total. Went decently well for the most part, although I now have a few specific and first-hand-experienced concerns regarding young people these days, affected by covid so heavily for years. May write about thoughts on this at length soon.
Putting together a provincial homeschool convention happening May 2025 – Prep and packing are almost done. In the last stretch now.
Playing music at various nursing homes – Just gave the best performance of the month a couple hours ago (out of a total of 3). Lovely times! I like seeing the folks’ eyes just light up from deep inside… 🙂

Pan flute, bamboo flutes – Small bits of progress made. Not too happy about it, but still feels a little closer to heaven each time I play the dizi. And…I got a bamboo sax. (Yeah. You read that right. So cool, no?)
Korean – Caught myself swearing in this language without thinking…a step towards fluency, but not necessarily the kind of step I’d want to brag to my mom about. XP
Written Chinese – A little more able and confident with my reading/writing.
Interior design basics – …Nope. Actually forgot about this on most days, only to feel guilty when I check up on myself through this page. Oh well. Maybe in another few months I’d pick up this line of thought again!

A novel – More thought, no work. *facepalm*
An instrumental track with my “niche instruments” (as requested by a friend 🙂 ) – Some melodies are being worked on, but nothing solid yet.
An AP Language and Composition course – Outline done, content yet to be created and finalized.
Sketches of buildings – The skyline of Toronto.
Memories 😉 – A LOT of them. Good one and bad ones.

Natural eyesight healing + maintenance – Ongoing!
Fractal + chaos theories – Ongoing!
The science behind night-time dreaming, particularly in genres, “film styles,” and connections to the dreamer’s real world – Ongoing!

The White Olive Tree (2025) – 8/10. Kinda slow and a little iffy (I liked the side characters more than the main ones), but overall pretty decent.
Squid Game 2 (2024) – Fascinating, though I might not recommend to just anyone. Such a twist at the end! Can’t wait for the third and final season.
Lectures on music and philosophy
Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) – 9/10. My parents watched this on one of their first dates together: to this day, this movie is an inside joke within the family due to its sentimentality and slowness (in some parts). I LOVE.
Collateral (2004) – 7/10. Sparked some interesting thoughts, but overall a bit bland and flat.
The Brutalist (2024) – 9.5/10. LOVE. Enough said.
The Goldfinger (2024) – 8/10. A rewatch, only because it has two of my three favourite HK actors and my current long-distance crush (as a doctor in the film – for a full three seconds, haha!)
A Few Good Men (1992) – Didn’t watch.
Perfect Days (2023) – 8.5/10. Quite slow, but that was part of the point. Made me think and reflect deeper on my own housecleaning (and public toilet cleaning – yes, I do that too sometimes!) shifts.
Papa/爸爸 (2024) – 8.5/10. Watched the North American premiere of this. Well worth it.

Leather goods – particularly my jacket, a notecard sleeve I use daily, and the leather seats in Icarus
Eggs
Long discussions with random people on random things

It’s weird how these things cost money, time, or attention. Or all three. 😉 If you’d like to contribute, I’d appreciate it.

Odelia Chan