Of lockdowns, laptops, and online learning (What happened in May 2021)

After writing about what happened in April, here’s a summary of how May went. It was a pretty slow month, especially compared to April.

The biggest thing that happened was Taiwan’s local cases increasing and us shifting slowly to Level 1, then Level 2, then eventually Level 3 lockdown. What affected us the most about Level 3 was not being able to dine in at restaurants, because it meant that we couldn’t go out to eat anymore.

During the first few days of the lockdown, many people probably didn’t expect it to be extended so online grocery stores weren’t as backlogged as they currently are (as I’m writing this). We were able to order this box which arrived a week later. Under the current situation, we can’t even order 2 or 3 weeks out. Yikes.

New laptop

It was really good timing that I decided to let my old laptop retire (after 8 yrs…) way before the rise of local cases. 

Bought this new MacBook Air M1 chip and I’m so happy to have a brand new and high performance laptop. Also happy that I went with the rose gold ❤️

When the cases rose and lockdown got extended, classes shifted online and many companies started going remote. There was a shortage of laptops as parents and workers ordered laptops and other equipment.

Online learning

Drops (language learning)

I discovered this app from one Youtuber that I follow, and this was when I was in my “I want to learn Korean” phase. The main reason I wanted to learn Korean was because I was watching a lot of Kdramas and I wanted to understand what the actors were saying without having to read subtitles.

Knowing how to read or listen to Korean would also be useful when episodes weren’t subbed yet or when there were interviews that didn’t have English subs but already had Korean subs. It’s cute because it makes use of visual learning which I find appealing, and recently, I’ve seen them update some images to make them better to understand. They’ve also added new lessons/topics which is good. Goes to show that they’re still working on the app. (So I just Googled them and apparently they’re a Kahoot! company. They were bought in Nov. 2020.)

Compared to other language learning apps where you lose your streak if you miss a day, in Drops you lose it after 2 consecutive days. Other apps like Duolingo have streak freezes which would help you save or repair your broken streaks, but Drops doesn’t have it.

They have a lot of languages (they even have Tagalog which I told T to learn!) but I’m only using it for Korean. Their free version comes with 5 minutes of language learning daily but I felt like that wasn’t enough for me so I signed up for a paid plan. With an annual subscription I could learn for more than 5 minutes a day.

I’ve already learned a lot of vocabulary / words which is cool but I don’t know much about grammar and sentence construction so if I ever want to study Korean seriously, those are aspects I’d need to work on.

Mimo (coding app)

Another app I discovered in May was Mimo. It’s an app that teaches you to code. It has web development (HTML), Python and SQL. Similar to Duolingo, you only have 5 lives and you lose a life each time you choose a wrong answer. The lives are regenerated after a few hours (they take so long…)

I haven’t made much progress with the app because I keep losing lives so I get demotivated and forget to open it. Whoops!

Let me end this post with a cute photo of ze boys (my nephews). They’re so adorable!