Hey there. It's Olivia here from Olivia's
Catastrophe and it is day
eight of this workout challenge. So today
it's already like... almost 6 p.m because I
spent the whole day working at the
school with some children.
So I absolutely had no time to do
anything. I left at 7 30 a.m this morning
and you know, we literally just got back. So I'm about to jump right in with day
eight
exercises. And I'm kind of excited
because I was talking about how they got
a bit repetitive
but other than the three workouts which
are included today that I already know,
there is a fourth one and it's called
Ariana Grande abs. I love Ariana Grande's
music
and it's going to be a new abs workout.
I'm going to nail all four of those
back to
back. Two ab cycles, one lower body burn
and then the usual everyday cardio.
I'll get back to you on that. Afterwards
we're gonna have some dinner and then
I've got a big reading update for you
because I am
far behind on the reading challenge side. I've got to finish three books today to
catch up. Seeing as it's 6 p.m
tomorrow might just have to be a very
big reading day.
Good morning and welcome to day nine of
this
workout challenge. And yesterday I just
ended up feeling a bit ill last night so
I just went to sleep at like, 8:30 p.m,
slept until midnight. Woke up at midnight
feeling a lot better,
had a cup of tea and then decided to
spend the whole night awake reading The
Perks of Being A Wallflower.
And this is a huge turnaround
but I really really enjoyed this book. I
know I've just been harping on about how
much I don't like it
but the further we got in, the more I
understood what Charlie's condition is.
And I was really trying to figure it out
while I was reading because I was trying
to put my finger on why is Charlie the
way that he is.
And then I figured it out. And then we
find out the cause of why he is the way
he is and it all just
fit into place. It got a lot it got very
sad and very heavy
towards the end. And I just really like
how observant Charlie is. How he's
looking at all of these secondary
character stories, and we get to
experience
each and every one of them and really
get to know all of these characters. And
the things that they've been through in
life.
And then you also get to see Charlie's
story which he kind of tries to suppresses
in the background but comes to the light
by the end. The ending was so
wholesome. You know the endings
that aren't happy, but aren't sad,
but are bittersweet. And give you all of
those emotions? Yeah, this one packed a
punch. So I don't like the writing style. I
don't like the way it was written. But in
the end
it convinced me and it won my heart. So
very very happy to have read that.
As for workouts today, it is a rest day
so
I'm just going to take some photos. Maybe
do some yoga later on.
It's slated to rain. I really really want
to get some reading done.
Hello and welcome to day 10
of this reading challenge and workout
challenge.
So it's a bit cloudy and a bit rainy
today. And in retrospect of that I'm just
feeling
a bit mellow and not down. But I haven't
had motivation to do anything today,
given that it's now like, 2:30 and all
I've done is read all day
and talk to my dad and distract him from
working. So I've done nothing else today. Absolutely nothing else
other than read. I had plans to like, do
bookstagram and be productive. But it's
just not happening today. And I'm trying to learn to be okay with
needing to rest and relax whenever I do
need it. It's just weird because I love
to be productive
and always on. But sometimes it's okay to
just switch off and chill. So that said I finished another book. I
don't know where I am on this challenge. I'm so
far behind with the reading. But I did
just finish the Sonnets of Shakespeare
and I really did enjoy these. I did not
expect to enjoy these because romantic
poetry is not my thing
at all, but Shakespeare came through
because his sonnets are beautifully
written.
And they're not that easy. Like, it took
me more time than usual because I had to
think about each one to really garner
what it was trying to say. So they're not
like the easiest read but they are so so
good.
There's 154 of them so it took me some
days, but it was good.
I also started a buddy read which I'm
doing with Cara from Wilde Book Garden
and we started
Bear Town by Frederik Backman. And we're
only five chapters in so far
but I just love Backman's writing style.
And he's managed to already get me
invested
in the ice hockey sports because this is
like, a sports based book. There's a lot
more to it
and the first chapter already shows
there's going to be a lot more to it. But I don't know anything about ice
hockey whatsoever,
so I was a bit nervous for that side of
things. But he's already
shown why the ice hockey is so important
in this town and already got me excited
for that with only five chapters in.
So I'm gonna be reading more of that
today, a bit more Sabriel and maybe
another book. I don't even know. My mood is a mess. I've got to do four
workouts today which
are abs, cardio, legs and arms. I'm just
going to do them all at once at like, 5
p.m or something.
Not motivated at all, I have to admit. I'm
not motivated for the workout part of
this challenge anymore. I would have given up if I hadn't
started vlogging but I'm going to finish
it out because while I might fail my
reading challenge. I will not fail the
workout part. I'm at least going to get
50 percent!
A quick update from outdoors from
Supergirl. We just managed to finish
taking our photos for bookstagram for A Heart So Fierce and Broken. So those will
be coming out at some point. But I'm gonna film a video which is
about matriarchies in fiction,
take some more photographs of not only
A Heart so Fierce and Broken but also some
beautiful
bookmarks and then I'll give you a bit
of a reading update once we're back
indoors. Let's go!
Okay so, it's time for that reading
update that I mentioned. I read another
two chapters of Sabriel and I'm feeling
pretty much the same. As I did before,
just feeling a bit okay with it. And then
I've read
10 chapters of Bear Town which means I'm
a fifth of the way
through. And I am so so loving this book. It's gonna have to work very very hard
for me to give it anything less than
five stars.
I think the way that the author handles
character and all of these themes;
touching on all of them but not
lingering too long and yet not not
giving them enough time...
is really amazing me. I'm definitely
gonna have a lot to say in my review. I'm
still like, putting together my thoughts
as I'm reading through. But I'm definitely feeling a lot of
things when I'm reading this. So I'm just
working my way through my buddy reads at
the moment and I think I'm pretty much
giving up on the reading challenge. But
I'm still
going to try and read my very best that
I possibly can. Today we've only got two
workouts to go and it's just the usual
abs one and the usual cardio one. So that's going to be easy peasy and
I'll have it in the bag in 20 minutes. No problem!
Hello, good morning! Right now I am
editing my vlog part 1 of this challenge
which is why I was wearing my blue tint
glasses. But
I'm watching back the footage and in the
beginning I was so excited to ace this
reading challenge and ace the workout
challenge.
And I feel like all of that excitement
has vanished in the second week. This
vlog has been very very
mellow. I've got three more days left in
this challenge because
today is day... not 14,
not 13, it's day 12! But, yeah, so far I counted and I've read
seven books for this challenge which was
supposed to be 14.
And that failed. But I'm just going to
keep doing my best to keep on reading as
much as possible. This is still a reading
vlog even if I'm not reading
at the challenge pace. Let's just
go with the flow. And I'm gonna try and
be a little bit more enthusiastic about
these last three days of workouts and
for showing you more things. I've mostly been repeating the motions
because this week I've dedicated it to
taking bookstagram photos
and creating content. And then next week
I'm going to start with a new schedule
that I've put in my planner which
includes writing,
editing, pre-scheduling things for the
coming month of September
and being a bit more jazzy. And also
getting some books read that you guys
decided to choose for me
for my tbr next month. But yeah, I just
want to apologise for the energy being a
little bit lower and taking a bit of a
dip. We're going to ace this workout
challenge and we're going to see
about the reading challenge. However,
yesterday I saw that Chloe Ting
announced that she's doing a new
workout two-week shred program for 2020.
So there's going to be another
free two-week shred program. So let me
know in the comment section down below
if you would like to see me
try again with this challenge. Doing her
new
two-week shred program and trying again
to read a book a day. Who knows if I'll
be able to
succeed next time maybe. I'm just gonna
fail again like this time. Maybe I should
do a book every
two days because I have managed to read
seven books already so far. So let me
know in the comment section down below
if that's something you want to see.
And well I've got to keep editing this
video because it's supposed to go out
today at 8pm
and I've done nothing to prepare for
that.
Hello there. I did not expect to be
struggling this much with a workout on
day what is it?
13! And the reason why I'm struggling so
much with this one is because
we just did a portion of it because
there's four exercises today
which are abs, abs, cardio and legs.
And that second abs one which I just did...
we haven't done that in a couple of days
and because we haven't done it in a
couple of days,
it's really difficult again. And it was a
big challenge again. And I kind of like
that. She needed to
maybe add a few more exercises so that
she can mix and match a bit more and
then it'd be
longer since we tried those workouts, and
therefore they would be
more difficult challenging. I've still
got to go and do the cardio
and the lower legs one. But I don't think
I'm gonna have a problem with those even
though their abs one
really knocked down my abs. It's just my
abs that are burning and the cardio and
legs don't
really target the abs too much. So I
should be fine.
And just so you know that tapping in the
background is my younger sister. She's
typing. I work out in her room because she's got
a nice carpeted floor. We've got to talk about this book. So
every time I open it I'm always excited
and ready because I'm loving it. But I'm
also
always left feeling so sad after reading
it. I'm
approaching halfway so I'm a bit over a
quarter in. And right now it's focusing a lot
on friendships
and it's making me feel a lot of things
because I've kind of had friendships who
have gone through
all of those things with different
people. So I'm in my feelings about that.
And it's reminded me of why I tend to
avoid books about
sports because it makes me miss
basketball. It makes me miss basketball a
lot. I stopped playing basketball at 18 after
I left secondary school
and I haven't played basketball since.
It's been three years now but I still
miss the feeling of a team and I miss
the competitiveness. Especially as I'm a
very competitive person.
And I miss the quiet. When people see me
in a basketball court they think I'm a
very different person because I'm a lot
louder, I'm a lot more aggressive on the
basketball court admittedly. And I also just -- I'm so one track minded.
I'm someone who's always thinking about
like, loads of things at the same time.
And sometimes that can be really
exhausting. And basketball was when I
just had one objective, one goal: work with my team to get the
ball in the hoop. And everything else was
quiet. And it was just focusing on that
one thing. I miss that feeling. And I'm reading
about this feeling again and again and
I'm reading about the feeling of
having a team
and the competition. And even though
we're seeing a lot of the toxic elements
of sports in here, it's also just making
me miss
my sport. And I really... I really want to
get back into basketball
but I cannot see a way that that's going
to happen. But don't worry, I'm not here
to just
mope about basketball and missing
basketball like crazy. I've also got some news for you and that
is this weekend. So it's Friday evening
and this weekend we're gonna up the
ante in these vlogs and we are going to
be productive. I've got some photos I
want to take and everything.
But I want to end this reading vlog
strong. I'm not going to finish Bear Town
because our buddy read is slated to
continue throughout
September. But I want to finish three
more books.
So we have plans. Tomorrow is Saturday
and I'm going to read all of Binti by
Nnedi Okorafor. I think this is going to go
pretty fast because it will be a reread
for me.
I'll be taking it to my dissertation. And
then I'm going to read half
of Riot Baby and again, dissertation,
taking notes.
And then on Sunday I plan to finish the
rest of Riot Baby
and also read a Shakespeare play for
Shakespeare's Sundays. And I read
Shakespeare plays all in one sitting
so that's doable and possible. I'll also
be doing the two workouts and hopefully
baking a cake on Sunday to celebrate
the end of the workout challenge and
also the end of me
failing my reading challenge. But still
managing to read quite a bit because the
majority of my reading for August has
been done
in this these reading
vlogs.
So Simone what are we about to do? Simone: play bananagram. Olivia: who's about to win this game? Simone: you. Olivia: yes! Why did you also say I was going to win?
Simone: zoom in on that. Olivia: No. Simone, who won a bananagram in the end?
Simone: I did. Olivia: don't lie to the people! Who won
bananagram?
Simone: Olivia did. Olivia: I did, again!
Hello and welcome to the end of day 13
of this reading vlog. Which you've
already seen
entirely in b-roll. I just wasn't in the
mood to talk this morning so I decided
not to talk and you get to have messy
hair and pajama Olivia summarising the
day.
So the day started off with the news
that Chadwick Boseman had passed away
and it was shocking and it was really
really sad. And it was already like,
weighing heavy on my soul. And I hadn't had a good night the night
before. I'd been awake for like, two hours
in the night where I was really trying
to get to sleep and I just wasn't able
to.
So I had a lack of sleep last night. After several -- I'm just struggling with
my sleep again
which was going much better now is
suddenly not going better which is a
problem.
So I was feeling exhausted. I was feeling
sad. And then I broke my sd card which
was just wonderful because I had a
moment
where I briefly thought that I had lost
all of my vlog footage. And all of these
bookstagram photos that I've been taking. Thankfully we were able to rescue
everything and I'm borrowing my dad's sd
card until a new one arrives that I
ordered for Tuesday. So it was just a really terrible day and
I just went back into bed and spent the
day in pajamas.
And I read all of Binti which is good
because that's something I wanted to do
today anyway. So Binti is about a girl who gets
accepted into this very prestigious uni
for very smart people.
And the people in her tribe and from
her home
don't understand why she wants to go. And
they don't accept her going. So she
decides to sneak out and go
anyway. And along the way tragedy strikes.
And
that's what I'm going to say because
it's a very short book. I don't want to
give away too much.
I already read this back in January and
I'll link my January wrap up if you want
to hear more of my thoughts on this book. But it was still just as good as the
first time I read it. And I was able to
get
a lot of notes for my dissertation. I
then spent some time
writing out all of my notes for the
dissertation because I was just in the
mood to just quietly do things. I took some bookstagram photos with
music. I wasn't feeling in the mood to
work out
at all but as you can see from the clips
you previously watched, I did get some of
my workout in. And while I've been having the
struggling with sleep and just trying to
be productive even though I'm really
really tired, I was receiving some brilliant book mail
from the booktuber fairies. And two books... 
like, not all of these arrived today. But
two of these books arrived today. And in the midst of having such a bad
day it was really nice to
like, receive some books to cheer me up.
I'm really really grateful. But I'll be
mentioning these in a future haul
that'll be coming your way sometime
soon, I hope. Yep. And then after all of
that,
after the workout and everything, I just
decided to spend time with my family and
just feel warm and cosy with them. So I
made dinner with my mum and then we
played bananagram. Me, my mum, my sister.
And I won
again. I really love winning at
bananagram. It
just brings out my competitive and also
English Literature loving side. And then we watched Me Before You. And Me
Before You...
we're going to talk about that later
because I've got a video coming out in
which I get to discuss more of my
thoughts on Me Before You. I know it's a controversial book. I know
it's a controversial film. But my younger
sister, Simone has a blog called The
Wheelchair Teen where she talks about
being
a disabled teenager. And also some other
things to do with the disabled community
and discussions. And she watched Me
Before You as part of the research for a
blog post that she's planning. So that was a nice way to spend the
evening. It's now
late and I don't think I'm gonna be able
to get my chapters of Riot Baby or Beartown in. And I also had some other things
on my to-do list which are just gonna
have to wait till another day.
That's perfectly okay because life
really threw us a bad one today. And it
has not been an easy day for me. Good morning guys! It's day 14 which is
our last day of the challenge. I've got a
lot planned for today. I hope we can do
it all. But it's the morning and it's time to
work out. Today Chloe Ting has four workouts for
us. We've got the cardio. We've got
the abs as usual, every single day. And
we're doing arms. And we're also doing
legs. And I'm going to do them all back
to back. Together it makes
50 minutes of working out which is
probably the longest I've worked out a
long time.
You know what I do... 30 minutes. Not really
50. But I'm gonna nail this
back to back and then I'm going to be
done with this challenge and then I'll
show you the end results to see if you
can see my abs or not. If it was
successful or not. And talk a little bit about my overall
thoughts on the workout portion of
things. And then the afternoon is
reserved for reading,
cooking and baking. And those things
sound lovely to me.
Hello! So I am nasty and sweaty because I
just finished. But I'm so happy to be
done with the challenge. And I'm just gonna like, show you the
results so you get to see
what my abs look like, I guess. And if it
worked and then we'll talk about
it once I'm showered and clean and a bit
more decent to talk. My abs...
there we go!
It looks like. Oh my gosh,
tensing is really hard.
Oh that's as intense as it gets. Yep, I guess my abs are there. Okay, so now
we're here to wrap up the challenge.And
I've got quite a few things to say.
So the first was that the challenge was
successful. You can see the line of my
abs and that's kind of like the goal for
the end of this challenge. I guess? Or
maybe you're different you have a
different goal. But for me that was the
goal
and it worked pretty well. So all in all
I think Chloe Ting's two-week shred
program
is a bit too repetitive for my liking. However,
that repetitivity can be good for if
you're just starting with your workouts.
Because you'll be able to track your
progress and see yourself
improving each time you do these
workouts. However, I have been doing
workouts and yoga steadily for the past
five years. So it wasn't too much of a
physical challenge. At the beginning it
was difficult but then I got used to the
exercises that it wasn't as difficult as
it could
potentially be for someone else who was
just starting working out. I know
if back in the day 16 year old Olivia
decided to do this challenge she would
have struggled to finish. Also there were some things that I did
get out of this. I hate the high knees
exercise. It's actually been one of my
worst cardio exercises
for literally years. Probably all five of
those years. Chloe Ting had been doing it twice a day,
every day,
for the past 12 days because we had two
rest days. So now I do high knees. No problem. I think I've actually made my
peace with that exercise which is amazing. For the next week I'm not going to be
doing any workouts whatsoever. I'm going
to give my body a rest.
And I do advise you, and she also advises
you, that after this workout program you
take a week's rest
because your body does need to recover
from an intense workout program. And
resting is just as important
as working out.
Okay, so I'm here to close out this vlog
today. I did
make the courgette lemon poppy seed cake
which was a big hit with my family. Half
of it is already
gone and I guess that means it tasted
really good. I also did manage to finish reading
Henry V. And it was an okay play. I think
that the ending was quite funny and
there was some really good themes in
there.
But the history plays aren't my favourite
and it's very war focused and very
political. There were a lot of side characters
having banter that I wasn't that
interested in.
So Henry V was an okay play overall. But
I did have fun reading it.
And then right before I went to bed I
read 10 chapters of Beartown. And
wow, this book is phenomenal. But the main
event of the book happened and it's kind
of
breaking my heart. And really really
hurting. This book does it in such a way that you
could deeply analyse everything. You can
think
so much about things about gender,
sexism, the build up and the culture
that creates what happens in this story. I'm finding it to be phenomenal. But it
is one that's making me think a lot and
it's very emotional.
So you can't just like, read this
casually. You either go all in
or all out. There's no in between. I'm
feeling so many things
and I can't wait to finish this one in
September.
So I'm finishing this challenge with
having aced the Chloe Ting workout
challenge. And I only have read 9 out
of 14 books.
I'm going to say that's not too bad. I'm
going to give myself
like a 75%. So let me know in the comment
section
down below what are you currently
reading at the moment.
Please give this video a thumbs up if
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And you know what they say: onwards and
upwards. Excelsior!
you
