中秋快乐!国庆节快乐!Happy Mid-Autumn Festival and Happy National Day!
It’s an extended break this week in China as both the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day break have coincided to give us an entire week off. Further, this year, it seems there’s only one make up weekend to take place (Oct 7th and 8th)… though, not like that matters much in my job for which I am largely able to decide my schedule.
This weekend marks an end to a very busy nine months. I say nine months because work really kicked off in January and February of this year and there has been little respite from it. I know, you’ll point out my trips to Hong Kong and Canada earlier this year and I can’t disagree that I have had time off, but both of those trips were firsts in a very long time that I can’t say they were altogether relaxing. They were good and necessary, but both involved a lot of movement and, to be honest, uncertainty of what was going to happen, particularly when it came to getting back into the Mainland of China.
Now, however, after a very busy year this would be the first week that I can sit, enjoy the silence, and do nothing. I mean, I won’t do absolutely nothing, but relative to working all day, I will be doing nothing. I haven’t been bored in a very long time!
It’s also during this time that I might have to make a decision about my December and January plans. A couple of months ago I had a flash of inspiration to visit Africa, a continent I’ve never been to and have always admired, particularly its West African tribal percussion. I even signed up for French lessons! But now I’m having a bit of a rethink and wondering if this is a good idea.
Furthermore, I was thinking of visiting Canada once again for Christmas this year but the thought of going through that gruelling 26-hour flight there and back kind of makes me rethink that idea, too. To add to that, why would I need to go again so soon?
I don’t take these as negatives, rather things to consider to make sure I’m doing the right thing both for myself and my family. If I were to go in December the trip would be much shorter, possibly a week or two. But if I were to combine that with going to Africa then you can see how these things become a little too ambitious. I also think the cost associated with these trips and the loss of income has given me a bit of a pause. Are these trips necessary right now?
These aren’t decisions that have to be made right away, but once the National Day break is over and I return from Singapore (oh yea, did I mention I’m going there for a week?), then I’ll start laying plans for the next few months and into the next year. This will also coincide with the (hopeful) start of my next contract here in China… barring any unforeseen circumstances.
Other than that, podcasting has been busy.
In case you missed it, Episode 40 is now live on Spotify, Apple and Google as well as on my website. The Episode features Kazakh Director of Photography Aigul Nurbulatova talking about her work and her travels around the world.
I’ve begun work on Episode 41 and hope to have that done before I leave for Singapore, while Episode 42 has been recorded and will follow a few weeks from now.
I’ve been tweaking a few things here and there on the podcast audio settings so if you’re hearing differences, that’s probably why. Actually, I hope you’re not hearing them and that it is a rather easy-to-listen affair. Please let me know if you come across any issues with the audio and I’ll try to fix it up quickly.
I am still studying Mandarin Chinese but have taken down the number of classes I take.
I’ve started a new language challenge of speaking Chinese for one minute each and every day and posting these to YouTube Shorts. I’m finding that YouTube doesn’t like the mixing of languages so views on these videos have been rather low. This has led me to consider starting yet another language channel but this one focused entirely in Mandarin Chinese. It’s an idea and would give me a lot of practice working within the language itself, but I wonder if I might be stretching myself a bit too thin. On the upside, I think I’m comfortable enough now to speak at length about several topics and, failing that, I can always read from a script, that’s the beauty of video production.
Of course, this all comes down to time and whether or not it’s a good idea to spend my time doing this. It might be that I have to start offloading some of this work to others (notably the audio post production or the video work) so I can focus on other things. I don’t mind the post production work but it is time consuming and, unless I’m learning something from it, I wonder if maybe my time and energy are better used elsewhere.
And in some related, funny news. I’ve had two videos kinda go crazy. One video which I posted to TikTok hit over 500,000 views and has basically taken my account from zero followers to a couple hundred.
And then another video I did on YouTube, “BC AD BCE CE: What’s the difference?!” and, as you can see, views have topped 2200.
Not bad. And, as you can see, not everyone has liked the video. Some comments have been amusing such as “It's not that bc and ad aren't pc, it's that they're dumb. Why not before spider man, it's basically the same” to which I’m not sure if the commenter meant that the early document copiers (eg, the monks) should have just made up a term or if they had some other reason to ignore the use of these terms for millennia before Spider-Man was even invented. This was in reference to the change in using BC/AD to BCE/CE.
I also liked the comment “When i was a kid i thought it was Before Christ and After Dinosaurs”, which I thought was kind of funny.
I tried embedding the video to this newsletter but Substack won’t let me do it. So, if you want to watch it, follow this link: “BC AD BCE CE: What’s the difference?!”
This is the first time I’ve had this happen in all my years of posting videos and making media, so it’s kinda neat to see. (Oh, and did I tell you about the elephants video that garnered almost 50,000 views on YouTube? :)
So it’s been a good year in terms of production and publishing.
And how about that podcast? Well, that hasn’t taken off just yet. :P
We’ll leave it there for this week. It’s been busy and I’m looking forward to having some time to just sit and chill. Working six days a week, twelve hours a day has added up, and that will probably start again later in October or November so now is the time to rest.
Hope you’re well and thanks for reading. I appreciate it. If there’s anything I can clarify or add to, let me know.
All the best,
Steve