02BBE: Good Thursday

Thursday Carpaccio

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 950

We're pretty much in our third year of this pandemic and we're still at that point where we haven't met up with most of our friends since before the quarantines began. Sure, we've all started to hang out in person here and there, but I'm pretty sure that everyone has a significant number of personal contacts that they haven't seen since before the world went to crap. And thus every in-person reunion is a celebration in itself. 

Tonight we met up with a good friend that I've known longer than I've known Tobie. I know she's been very careful about going out and the invite to dinner was a most pleasant surprise I'm glad that we were able to make time for it. It almost got complicated by some work obligations that threatened to truncate our time, but it all worked out in the end. We shared a great meal, met new people, and celebrated being able to just laugh at Tobie's silly sexual puns while together at a single table. 

In other news, Disney+ has finally confirmed its official Philippine debut this November. Originally the speculation was that Disney+ distribution in the country would be through Disney+ Hotstar, which is primarily an Indian subscription service that also provides Disney+ to nearby countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. But it seems that we're more likely going to be under Star (Disney+), which may sound more familiar to people who have had cable TV service since the 90s. This means our content library will potentially be more aligned with the likes of Singapore, which seems pretty cool to me - provided licensing doesn't force the Philippines to have a different programming subset or something.

Our main streaming service thus far has been Netflix with rotational appearances by Amazon's Prime Video and HBO Go Asia. I typically activate Prime for key shows that we really like while I've let HBO Go Asia lapse after they announced price increases in August. Adding in Disney+ will be a bit of an investment (especially if we try to save money with the annual plan) but I think it'll be worth it in the long run? I just don't think we'll leave Netflix anytime soon - we're still hooked on K-Dramas at this point and that's been the easy platform to explore versus the likes of Viu.

And let's face it - we rarely go out to watch movies in the cinema anymore, and given quickly a lot of Disney releases get released on Disney+, this still has to make sense, right?

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