Fobs There and Right Here

Tonight I did something which I seldom do - I turned the TV off! There was nothing worth watching! I sorta...started watching TV on the internet! After the minister at church tried speaking to me in Mandarin and I was staring blankly at him (I think I'm forgetting everything!) and encouraged my brothers and I to try and keep up our Chinese, I went searching for any source of Chinese TV or music on the net tonight, and ended up with these programs which let you watch streaming TV channels online! I know it's nothing new, and I sorta found some programs last year but that was back then when we were handicapped by a 2gb data limit and the online streams stopped working!

Anyway, now our data limit is 20gb and nothing is changed, we just went over our limit again today despite trying to control our downloading, which means we'll be on dial-up speeds for the next two weeks! Oh the pain!!

So after flicking off the TV I opened these programs and had a look through the various TV channels like CBS, the CW and (as much as I tried not to) Fox News, but most of them were screening paid programming (or informercials)!! Thank goodness for Cartoon Network! If only I had that on normal TV. At least that way it wouldn't stop and buffer every few minutes! I also found this other CCTV (Chinese channel) with Spongebob Squarepants dubbed in Mandarin! Now only if I could understand it...

The channel I was really looking for though is TVB, this Hong Kong TV channel, mainly because my mum asked me and also because I want to watch something in Cantonese!

I think I understand what it is like for those people who try to learn English but just can't get it! Instead for me it's Cantonese. No one wants to speak to a fobby Cantonese speaker! Just last week I really wanted to try have a conversation with a friend in Cantonese, which went something like

"Ngoh.....ngoh......(trying to figure out the right word in Cantonese)" ("I....I...." in English)

(My friend) "OK let's just speak English"

And so my struggle to find someone to speak Cantonese with continues...

I finally got round to texting a friend hoping to catch up with her after not having talked to her in the last month or so, and I must admit I was sorta expecting all these exciting stories of fighting dragons and climbing mountains! Here's a little bit of it (or should I say most of it? haha) to demonstrate how magical the conversation was:

"Hey! Haven't talked to you in ages! How have you been doing all this time?"

"Yeah it's been.....ages. Good... you?"

Talk about a frosty reception! So much for catching up with people! haha

So anyway back at church my brothers and I have now officially become table putter-uppers-and-take-downers, and that pretty much sums up what we do with the tables every morning before and after the service and lunch! It's not too bad, but it means we'll have to get to church a lot earlier than we currently do!

And while remaining on the topic of Asians, noooooooooooo for the Asian girl Ramiele being kicked off American Idol last night!!! Now I have to find another contestant to support based on something other than race!