The Internet is Really, Really Great

The last couple of days have been the most sociable I've been since I started working from home in March.

Friday I had my weekly Zoom call with the Newcastle gang. We didn't really do anything specific we just chatted, watched a few music videos, drank and ate snacks. It's funny before COVID we only used to meet up once a month and sometimes not even that. Now we video chat every week. It's nice.

I also managed to get episode 15 of The Lost Tomb watched but because of timing issues I watched half the episode before the Zoom call and the other half after the call by which time I had polished off a few glasses of wine. There's a definite change in tone in the middle of my livetweets. Apparently I swear more when I'm under the influence :D

Thoughts about episode 15 under the cut

( The Lost Tomb: Reboot Ep 15 )

Then, yesterday, I hadn't been up for long when a friend in Australia asked if I wanted to watch the first episode of Street Dance of China 3 with her. For those who don't know it's a reality TV show in which Wang Yibo (one of the stars of The Untamed) is a team captain. It's one of those things where I've seen a few clips but haven't got around to actually watching. The episodes are LONG (over 2 hours) and my time has been caught up watching The Lost Tomb.

Still, watching things with other people is always fun and I didn't have anything on in the morning so I figured why not. It ended up being 3 of us watching it. Olivia (who invited me to watch) had seen it before but Em and I hadn't.

I ended up getting really into it! I don't know a lot about dance from a technical perspective but I love watching it. I think what I like about this is that it's a really positive show. None of the captains are 'the mean one' and they are clearly all very passionate about dance. At one point towards the start one of the contestants was revealed to have stolen moves from another dance group (who weren't there but some of the other contestants recognised the routine) and even then no one was mean about it. Yibo was firm but polite saying he was only interested in seeing originality.

I ended up getting attached to all the team captains. I was semi-aware of Lay, who I know from his singing, but the other two were people I didn't know. Jackson is amazing and so expressive. He pulls all these brilliant faces when a routine impresses him and one moved him so much he started screaming.

So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. We were supposed to watch the next episode this morning (coordinating times with someone on the other side of the planet is fun) but we've had to postpone. We might watch it this afternoon my time or possibly later in the week.

This is what I love about the internet. Even now it still blows my mind that I can sit down and watch a TV show with someone who lives 9000 miles away and chat to them like we're in the same room.

As soon as I was done watching that it was time for my weekly Stardew Valley session with Emma. It's always a chill time. We've finished the main 'plot' such as it is so we just spend a few hours planting crops, fishing, and giving gifts to the people in the village. It's such a lovely, gentle game.

Brief pause for dinner (for this week's Saturday night takeaway we had chicken katsu from Wagamama) and then it was back to more socialising.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts I planned a few days ago watch episode 16 of The Lost Tomb Reboot with a Twitter friend. This is another example of why I love the internet. I've been Twitter friends with this person for a while. I can't even remember what fandom we met in but when I don't know I tend to just assume Supernatural. But I've never met them or spoken to them outside of Twitter/email before. We hopped onto Zoom (after some technical difficulties with Discord) and it wasn't like I was talking to her for the first time we just slid into easy conversation like we did this all the time.

We ended up watching two episodes because the first one ended on a cliffhanger. Obviously because we were watching together I couldn't pause every few mins to screenshot and yell on Twitter but I did take notes and do a retrospective reaction so that the thread has all the episodes.

As always I have more thoughts

( The Lost Tomb: Reboot Eps 16 & 17 )

And finally, to end the day, we watched the first few episodes of Yibo's newly released show that was actually filmed a couple of years ago. It started off with just me and Bon (the person I was watching Lost Tomb with) but by the end there was 5 of us watching and voice chatting which was just insane amounts of fun.

The show itself is utterly ridiculous and makes pretty much zero sense, which is exactly the sort of show you should watch with other people. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much.

We've decided to make it a regular Saturday evening thing now. Bon and I are going to watch whatever Lost Tomb episode we're up to and then we'll throw it open to the wider group to come and watch more of My Strange Friend.

I'm so glad to have such great friends in this really shitty time. It feels so good to laugh again.