“Lightsaber” Cedar Park, 2022
I have been enjoying watching Obi-Wan Kenobi with my son each Wednesday evening. It’s pretty good.
Look-out, Obi-Wan!!
TV Time
“Lightsaber” Cedar Park, 2022
Category: I Like It
“Lightsaber” Cedar Park, 2022
Soba with Costco Tempura
“Soba and Tempura” Cedar Park, 2022
For dinner tonight, we enjoyed soba and tempura. The tempura was bought from Costco and it’s surprisingly good! I highly recommend it. It’s so easy to prepare too: just defrost and heat up in the microwave, then pop into the toaster oven to crisp up. Simple and delicious. 🍤♥️
My New Ukulele
“Kala Surf Swell” Cedar Park, 2022
While looking at ukuleles online, as I often do, I came across a really cool design. It’s a concert-sized ukulele from Kala, called the “Surf Swell” (Model: KA-SURF-SWELL) and it was basically a love-at-first-sight situation. 🥹❤️
I have another Kala concert ukulele, and they are both exactly the same shape. However, the Surf Swell is made of different material, and has different tuners and tuning knobs. It’s got a really retro vibe to it.
Another difference between my two concert ukuleles is that the old one has fluorocarbon strings for a more “modern” sound, but the new ukulele has the nylon strings for a classic ukulele sound. I love both!
But why do I need another ukulele? (I already have 3) Well, I have come to love the concert-size as my ukulele of choice, and the one I had was strung with a low-G. Therefore, I couldn’t play a couple of songs that require the standard G and access to the higher frets that a soprano-size cannot provide. So instead of having two soprano-sized ukuleles (one low-G and one high-G), I am going to go with two concert-sized ukuleles, and probably sell my soprano with the low-G, and keep the pineapple ukulele.
I hope you had a nice day! またね〜
The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017) – Review
“Huang Rong” Cedar Park, 2022
I finally watched all 52 episodes of the 2017 Chinese television series “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”. I enjoyed it quite a bit!
After reading the books (which I loved), I was curious to see how this latest re-telling of the Condor Heroes story would be. I was pleasantly surprised that the first episodes’ characters, plot, and overall feeling matched with what I had imagined in my mind when I read the books.
The kung fu moves were excellent and they spent a lot of effort in the flying effects, the spinning moves, and the choreography in general. It was interesting to me that in the books and also the live-action series, most of the kung fu is not meant to deal lethal blows. Even when fighting with weapons, the conflict was to show superiority, and trying to kill someone is a serious line that only the villains were willing to cross.
Speaking of the kung-fu, many of the moves has specific names, and in the tv show, they flashed subtitles when the person used the move. Pretty cool!
One criticism of the TV series I have is that the special effects were sometimes horrible. Laughably so! In fact, they were so bad, didn’t mind it so much after a while. They did their best! And the fighting was awesome, after all.
This adaptation stuck close to the book’s plot, but at the end I think they skipped over a lot. For instance, when Viper Ouyang was harassing our heroes in Mongolia, he suffered some hilarious indignities, however the TV show only showed one of them, and even that was toned down.
Overall, though, I thought the 2017 series was excellent. I’d definitely recommend it to fans of the legendary wuxia series.
Binge Watching Wuxia
“Mei Chaofeng (Cyclone Mei” Cedar Park, 2022
I spent most of the day binge-watching the 2017 Chinese television drama version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes. There are 52 episodes in total, and I think I made it up to episode 12 or so. It’s so good!
I am delighted that the characters match (more or less) the image I had when I was reading the books. Even the settings are how I thought they should look. And I am pleased that my favorite character, Cyclone Mei Chaofeng, is so sinister and deadly.
The kung fu moves are great as well – way more complex than I was expecting from a television series. Very impressive.
So far, the plot is sticking close to the books, but they did expand upon things a little bit (in good ways). I just hope that the villains stay villains. There are some signs that one of them might actually become good (please no!!!) but we’ll see.
For now, I am enjoying this series a lot!
