I spend most of my time alone, with the exception of Ginger the cat, who is very good company, although he sleeps a lot. I love the peaceful, conflict free quiet of my home, a place where I live with someone who likes, loves, and respects me. When I feel like company I often listen to classical music, or watch videos of one kind or another. Usually there are other projects going on at the same time, until recently that is.
Recently I’ve ventured into watching foreign language entertainment. This requires that I actually keep a close eye on the screen, which took some getting used to. Also, looking from the screen to the closed captioning can take a bit of time, even after becoming accustomed to it. Adjusting the playback speed to 75% allows both the image and text to be viewed, before the story moves on. That too took some getting used to, visually. However, since I have no comprehension of the foreign spoken word, the speech sounds “normal”.
I’ve been watching South Korean and Chinese series, with English Subtitles.
It started with the Korean production called May I Help You, I think Netflix offered it, so I gave it a go and enjoyed it.
I then watched a few more current South Korean series on YouTube, and found the glimpse into a foreign culture fascinating.
Then I bumped into the Chinese historical fiction offerings on YouTube, and enjoyed those too:
My Heroic Husband
Snow Sword Stride
Joy of Life
The Long Ballad
These series are epics, many episodes, action packed. I love how people fly in some of the productions, quite the concept, makes for light viewing. The fight scenes are frequent, but easy enough to fast forward through, as I don’t relish fight scenes.
Right now I am watching My Uncanny Destiny, which I am finding very amusing. In this series the sound cuts out AND, get this, the video plays North American Christmas instrumentals when the sound cuts out. It is the most bizarre thing! This series is a little bit like the old Danny Kaye movie, The Court Jester, with a bit more violence.
I am aware that many of the English translations are poorly done on most YouTube offerings, but I still get the general idea, which is enough to follow the story line. I know that there are cultural nuances in these series, nuances that are beyond my experience and understanding, I don’t see or hear them. I am missing things, they go over my head. Nevertheless, my simplistic understanding is enough to keep me thoroughly amused.
Attila and I watch Prime and PBS programs together, as we have Prime in order to have free delivery of ordered items, and a limited form of PBS is available through Prime for a monthly fee. We have discovered a collection of videos on the PBS channel called “Walter Presents”, and have found these suggested programs much to our liking. Some are too violent for us, but there are a lot of relatively non-violent programs to watch.
I wonder what video offerings other people enjoy?
Worldly
Weather
Updated on Sun, Jun 11 at 9:25 PM
18 °C
FEELS LIKE 18
Light rain
Wind 10 NE km/h
Humidity 75 %
Visibility 12 km
Sunrise 5:23 AM
Wind gust 15 km/h
Pressure 100.8 kPa
Ceiling 7500 m
Sunset 8:51 PM
Quote
“The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
1613 – 1680
They would dwindle in number!
Julia and I have really gotten into Star Trek. We prefer the DVDs as to streaming, as streaming can only be done on our computer (we have an old TV). So far, we’ve gobbled through seasons 1-4 of Discovery, seasons 1-2 of Picard, all the movies, all of the Original Series, all of The Next Generation, season 1 of Strange New Worlds and am now working through Deep Space Nine. DSN is the most unusual, it’s more grittier. But the characters and their development are interesting. I learned a cartoon series featuring the original actors Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley was made, so I sent for those DVDs. Good writers wrote for that, so the tales should be interesting. There’s something about these, with their hopeful view of the future, that feeds my soul. (I still keep up with the PBS dramas, their Nature shows and scientific NOVA shows, too.) We are richly blessed to have such good entertainment.
I;ve watched some So. Korean videos on Youtube and enjoyed them. Squid Game was very good although violent. The Incredible Lawyer Woo (I think that’s the title) was very good and not violent. The British movie “Living” was very good too.
Sandy, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the Korean and Chinese series, a pleasant surprise.
Thanks for sharing programs you enjoyed! I will probably avoid Squid Games, thanks for the heads up on the violence. But I will find the Incredible Lawyer Woo, and the movie Living, I am sure I will enjoy those!
Joan, we LOVE the Star Trek series, all of them. I think we have been through all of the older series twice in the last 10 years. I like to leave a five or six years between viewings, enough time to forget little details, while knowing where the story is going. The writers are very talented, and we always feel good about being alive when Star Trek is entertaining us. We haven’t seen Discovery, or Picard yet, so really looking forward to that.
You said it well, we are richly blessed to have such good entertainment!
Hi, Maggie! Really love the new shirt you sewed. Very pretty!
You can chalk me up as another who loves Star Trek. DH and I are currently on our second time watching Deep Space Nine on Netflix. Netflix and Disney+ are our 2 paid streaming channels, though we recently added in the free CTV channel so we could see the last 2 seasons of Hot In Cleveland that aren’t available on Prime.
I’m glad to see our poor air from the fires mostly gone. I have trouble breathing when air quality index gets above 40, and we got to 119 the other day!
Joan, I found it interesting that William Shatner went into space. He finally understood what some other people are feeling all over the planet, what other people have been outraged about, have appreciated and understood. The message has always been there, we are spaceship earth, we are all part of the same ecosystem, we are unique and precious, and we are all we have. It sounded as if, though, he was the only space traveler on the voyage who actually had an epiphany, which is very, very sad.her
For me the Star Trek series is all about life on earth, a microcosm of human life. It focuses on how precious our existence is, and how we are travelling together on this planet through the deep cold darkness. For me that is comforting, life and humans and Mother Earth are comforting.
Quote from the Guardian:
“But for Shatner, recalling the view almost one year later, he describes “a cold, dark, black emptiness … deep, enveloping, all-encompassing”.
“Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong,” he wrote. “I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things – that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe.”
The Canadian, who captivated the world in his role as Captain James Kirk of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, broke down in tears upon landing, describing having had “the most profound experience I can imagine”. “I hope I never recover from this,” he said at the time. “I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary, extraordinary.”
But a year after touching down back to Earth, Shatner wrote in the excerpt: “I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.
“Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took 5bn years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread.
“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
from the Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/11/it-felt-like-a-funeral-william-shatner-reflects-on-voyage-to-space
Hi Teri! Thank you about the shirt!
Disney+ is on my radar, when we have watched everything we enjoy on PBS, we will switch to Disney+ I think… it will be quite a while though before we run dry of great entertainment on the PBS channel.
Teri, I don’t know what our air readings were, but they would have been high. It has been raining since yesterday morning so the air is much cleaner now. Sorry to hear that you have trouble breathing when the air quality index gets above 40, I hope you have some kind of air filtration in your house to keep you safe!