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Monday, April 27, 2020

New Anime and Movies This Spring That I'm Excited For!

A lot of movies have been pushed back to the end of the year because of Covid-19, so I actually don't have any movies to look forward to watching this season. Hopefully things will start looking up in the next few months.

Anime:
  1. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime OVA
  2. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!
  3. Kakushigoto
  4. BNA

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Shows I'm Currently Watching: Find Yourself, 2gether: The Series, Skate Into Love, My Roommate is a Detective, Eternal Love

I've been watching a lot of shows since I've been influenced by gifs on Tumblr and the fact that there's only so much I can do while in self-isolation lol.

CURRENTLY WATCHING:



I started watching this series earlier last month and thought it was pretty good. I thought the premise was pretty funny since it's about a secret couple with a big age gap where the female lead was essentially the cougar, but because she's never had any relationships before was the one acting like naive while the younger guy had to be more mature. And because it's a drama, other people are interested in both of them and scheme to get them to split up, which was pretty funny.

I thought that the female lead looked familiar, and I found out that she's Victoria from f(x)! I just didn't recognize her with her short hair lol. I forgot how pretty she is! The male lead is really handsome, too, so their visuals definitely attracted me at first. But I don't know, I kind of lost interest after a while, so I'm not sure if I'm going to finish this drama. I think Victoria's character was starting to bore me because she kept on taking terrible advice and making things more difficult than it should be. However, I did like the show's message that kept on showing how unfair it is in society for a woman to be near her 30s and not married compared to men and how having a family shouldn't be a woman's only end goal.



I was really trying not to get into this show, especially since I knew that it hasn't completed airing yet, but I kept on seeing so many funny gifs on Tumblr that I eventually caved lol. God, it's even worse (by which I mean hilarious) watching the show instead of just seeing the gifs. Tine is such an oblivious dumbass! Sarawat is literally dropping all of these pickup lines and confessions, and HE STILL DOESN'T BELIEVE IT. HE JUST THINKS SARAWAT IS TEASING HIM!

Lol it's all his fault for asking Sarawat to be his fake boyfriend to get another guy to give up on him. I'm just saying, I already knew that I was going to like this show because it has some of my favorite tropes: fake dating, oblivious characters, pining, and musicians!

Also, the main leads are so good looking! I don't know how Tine keeps looking so cute but hot, especially since he seems to be taking his shirt off a lot, which makes me appreciate his abs and arms lol. And Sarawat definitely has the smolder down pat. Like, this guy is always giving Tine these pining, love-filled looks, and my guy Tine is so oblivious to it!

Anyway, new episodes come out every Friday, so I'm just slowly counting the days until a new episode comes out. XD



Another show that I ended up watching because I kept on seeing hilarious gifs on Tumblr. (This is quickly becoming a trend.) This one is about two classmates who reconnect in college. Only the guy just wants to get revenge on the girl because she bullied him all throughout primary school. The best part is that she doesn't even know she bullied him; she just thought they were friends lmao.

There's a lot of fun antics, and the side characters are also pretty interesting! Poor Little Ram keeps on getting misunderstood by the girl in the beginning lol. She keeps on helping him out because she thinks he's literally poor and can't even afford coffee when he's just on a diet lol. As the title implies, the main leads are athletes, so I enjoy all of the scenes where they're playing their sports.

Anyway, I made the mistake of watching a few episodes without even checking to see if it's finished airing yet. What a mistake. It's currently ongoing, so I'm slowly dying waiting for the new episodes to come out! Luckily, its YouTube channel seems to be uploading 1-3 episodes daily with English subs, so I'm grateful for that. :D



This is another show I started watching because of Tumblr. I was suckered into watching it because of the playful dynamic between the main characters lol. Then I found out that it was another iteration of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, so I became more interested since I always like watching crime shows.

Even though it's another spin on Sherlock and Watson, I like how they changed their characteristics. Lu Yao is arrogantly smart, but he's also a goofball who is easily scared and likes the finer things in life even though he's always poor lol. Qiao Chusheng as Watson is like a babysitter for Lu Yao half of the time, but he's also aggressive but easily amused as well, which is a nice dynamic for the two. Bai Youning is the reporter who helps them get clues; she's a nice feminist character trying to prove that she doesn't need her mafia dad's backing to get a job.

She and Lu Yao are always bickering and playfighting, so I see their relationship more as siblings, but it seems that they're destined to end up together since the newer episodes keep on focusing on them more and more in between cases. I'm not looking forward to it since I see more chemistry between Qiao Chusheng and Lu Yao lol. It's currently airing, so I'm waiting every week for new episodes. D:



My sis and I have been wanting to watch this drama for a while especially since it was super popular when it first debuted, but we've kept on putting it off since it's so long. Then, I found out that there's multiple spin-off series, so I was still unsure of starting such a long series. However, we decided to watch the series together just to see if we'll like it after all since, you know, quarantine gives us so much free time during the weekends lol.

It was confusing at first since there were so many characters and locations, but things really picked up once we got into it. The funniest part for us is the huge time skips lol. In the first episode alone, it has a 20,000 year time skip! Lol it just reminds us that time really is fleeting for immortals so when they say stuff happened 2 months ago, we're just like "that's just a drop in the bucket bro!".

We originally planned on watching episodes together on the weekends since my sis works pretty late, but I think we're both hooked enough that we're both trying to finish work earlier so we can watch it after dinner during weekdays now lol.

FINISHED:



I have been waiting for this season ever since the last season ended! Now I have to wait for the last season to air later this year so I can feel satisfied because this season also ended with a cliffhanger!

Not gonna lie, I was kind of disappointed with the animation for the first half of the season since it wasn't as nice as the previous seasons. I found out from the comments section that it was because they switched animation studios and had a week deadline to finish everything. That really sucks because you can literally see the drop in quality. There was less or shorter action scenes, more freeze frames to make up for it, and there was a censorship thing going on where they wouldn't show blood and gore, so there was a lot of black fog or just pools of white instead of blood, which made it look like they didn't finish animating the scene lol. Luckily, the censorship stuff went away towards the second half of the season, and the fight scenes got better as well.

Plotwise, I was very satisfied. You learn more about a lot of the characters and their backstories as they all start leveling up to defeat the rest of the commandments. However, I still want to know how Meliodas and Elizabeth met! I'm sure it'll be revealed in the last season, but I'm impatient lol. I should just read the manga series now that it's finished and since everyone said that the big fight scenes in this season were way more epic in the manga lol.



This drama is based off of a novel. I had the novel on my TBR list for a while. Then, I saw gifs of the drama and decided to read novel first to see if I'd like it. I finished the novel in a few days, so you could tell that I really liked it lol. Not long after, I wanted to watch the drama adaptation since I liked the book and wanted to watch a low pressure drama that I wouldn't obsess over since I already knew the general plot.

Yeah, what a lie. The drama diverges from the novel's plots quite a bit, so there was still a lot of mystery and suspense, so I definitely stayed up a bit every night watching the show. It kept on ending on cliffhangers! D:

If you like police procedural, crime, and suspense with little romance, then this is definitely your type of show. I enjoyed the unfolding plot and subtle hints of romance in the main couple lol.



This came out as a Netflix original in February, and I remember being nostalgic about it since I watched the original anime when it first came out around a decade ago. I wasn't sure about starting the drama since it was 40 episodes long, but as per this post's theme, gifs on Tumblr convinced me to give it a shot.

Like watching When a Snail Falls in Love, I thought that it'd be a low pressure show since I already know the general plot. Again, I was bamboozled! The characters are just so entertaining! I loved the Golden Pair and Lu Xia's gradual friendship with the girl. The competitiveness and goofy antics when the team members try to sneak around and spy on each other was hilarious. Even the rival characters were well fleshed out and enjoyable. The general bromance with all of the characters were a definite plus lol.

Basically, I stayed up way too late watching this series to be healthy lol.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Weekly Haul 124

So my siblings and I use Amazon Wishlists to tell each other what we want for Christmas. Since we moved, our address on the list wasn't updated, so our bro sent us books to our old house. Unfortunately, they didn't get redelivered to our new house. He was only able to get a refund for one of the books, so we just knew that the packages were lost in limbo at a post office somewhere and then promptly forgot about it lol.

Now, months later, I finally get one of the books my bro bought for me lol.


Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Quarantine To Watch Lists

It's been a couple weeks into quarantine, and I was inspired by a Youtuber to make a list of shows and movies to watch while we're social distancing. I like making lists and crossing things out, so I thought this would be a good excuse make another one, especially since I already made one for books! Also, these lists would be a good reference for when I want to watch something but can't decide on what.

That said, here are four lists on different types of shows and movies I want to watch!

Dramas:
  • 2Gether: The Series
  • Skate Into Love
  • Eternal Love
  • My Roommate is a Detective
  • Hospital Playlist
  • Itaewon Class
  • Wait, My Youth
  • Once Upon a Time in Linjian Mountain
  • Unrequited Love
  • Ashes of Love
  • Vagabond

Shows:
  • Queer Eye: We're in Japan!
  • Street Food: Asia
  • Bonding
  • Quantico
  • Ask the Doctor
  • Wu Assassins

Movies:
  • Ralph Breaks the Internet
  • Frozen 2
  • Trevor Noah: Son of Patricia
  • The Standford Prison Experiment
  • Aziz Ansari: Right Now
  • Abducted in Plain Sight
  • Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah
  • The King
  • Ip Man 4: The Finale

Anime:
  • Demon Slayer
  • Fire Force
  • Somali and the Forest Spirit
  • I Don't Want to Get Hurt, So I'll Max Out My Defense
  • Seven Deadly Sins: Wrath of the Gods
  • The King's Avatar Season 2
  • Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 2
  • Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

FEB: 4th Roommate, Colorado Trip, Eric Nam, Going Away Party, Movie Night, Orchid Fair, Hanging Out, & Mom

After Jack and Julie's Tarot Party that Friday, I kidnapped Archana and took her back to my place for the weekend. We had planned on her spending Friday night at our place, but it suddenly became a whole weekend thing since she was like, "I want to learn how to live with a family since that will be my future eventually" lol.

So she became our fourth roommate and went with us while we did our errands like taking books to Second and Charles, getting Starbucks and smoothies while Shelle and Archana got their nails done, buying groceries, and watching more episodes of Queer Eye: We're in Japan. All in all, a very chill weekend.

Oh yeah, that Thursday before the Tarot Party, Erin, Ebony, and I were talking about how we all wanted to try mediation and had downloaded apps to try to get into it at some point in the past year. That's when we found out that we all downloaded the Calm app lol. Ebony tried one lesson, Erin made an account, and I had never even opened the app. -__-"


At that point, we decided to hold each other accountable and start mediating for all of February using various meditation apps since we didn't want to sign up for premium versions in case we didn't like the app. So for all of February, I was trying to mediate in the morning using Insight Timer and Calm. I was pretty consistent for the first two weeks, but then I started slacking off for the last two weeks lol. I'm still trying to get back into mediating in the morning or when I'm feeling angry because I think it helps me work through my emotions and figure out why I'm feeling that way.

But having Archana over that weekend helped me jump start my journey into mediation since she's been mediating for years.

The next weekend was the Colorado trip with Ebony and Jessica. I talked about it in this post. It was a fun and relaxing weekend lol.

The next Thursday night, I went to Eric Nam's concert with Shelle and Kyle. This was our second time seeing him in person, and he was just as good as I remembered. And just as funny! He told us that the last time he performed in Atlanta, his mom pulled him by the ear and told him that he was being too sexy on stage, so in response, he added even more body rolls to the choreography for one of his songs lolol. He told his mom in the audience to just cover her eyes and enjoy the music lmao.


The next night was Valentine's Day. I invited some friends over for a movie night, but stuff happened only Kait and Ebony came over. We still had a great time because we introduced them to Vietnamese music videos that were basically 10 minute dramas with so many plot twists lol. It was fun watching all of their shock and amazement lol.

We showed them ADODDA, which is the one our cousin introduced us to while we were in California.



Then I showed everyone this other music video series that one of the people I followed on Tumblr posted about. Normally, that person only reposts about Cdramas, so I was surprised that they posted about a Vietnamese music video, which was why I watched it lol. Best decision ever. We're still waiting to see if a part 3 will come out soon.



And then we finally watched P.S. I Still Love You, which was the whole purpose of movie night since it had just come out lol. I liked it. I thought it was cute even though I preferred John Ambrose over Peter in the movie lol. Shelle didn't like the movie that much because they deviated from the novel a lot. This is why I didn't read the trilogy lmao.

The next day, I went to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for the first time ever to attend the Orchid Fair. Archana told us that Thursday that the Botanical Gardens was open to the public for free for the whole week, but we found out too late, so Saturday was the only day we were both free to go. We quickly found out that traffic was no joke because we were stuck on the same residential street for 20 minutes trying to get to parking. We eventually drove around and found some street parking a 10 minute walk away instead.

The gardens was really nice! Very crowded, but everything was very pretty. They still had some of the light strings hanging up from the light show, too. Unfortunately, we were there during the daytime, so we couldn't see the lights at night.

The orchids were very pretty though!

I also realized while hanging out with Archana at her place afterwards that I thought that I was an introverted homebody. I thought that I preferred spending my weekends at home having time for myself. I realized that I was wrong lol. I actually like going out, especially going to nature-y places, on the weekends. I like going out and doing things for a while before going home and recharging; I think that's why I liked doing Pokemon Go Community Days since it makes us go out and explore.

I think that I preferred staying home mentality stemmed from dating David, since he liked staying home and playing video games and watching YouTube all of the time. I think this is partially because he didn't want to eat out a lot and wanted to cook since he couldn't cook much at his rented place and liked to nap.

I just realized that after traveling and going about so much last year that I prefer spending time at home only after I spent a lot of time outside first lol.

The next week was spent worrying about mom. She wasn't feeling so good, so Shelle spent Monday night through Friday night working from their home in Warner Robins so she could take care of her better. She took her to multiple doctor visits and grocery shopping and cooking for them since mom wasn't feeling so good.

I had hotpot for lunch with Shanice that Saturday after Shelle came back. We caught up for hours while eating hotpot at J's Mini HotPot Deluxe, then going to Sweet Hut to buy snacks for the family, and the going to Ding Tea for boba. It was good to sit down and chat since we last saw each other at Emily's wedding in November. I told her about the breakup, and she told me that she might be moving to DC with her boyfriend since he's waiting to hear back for a job offer. Found out last weekend, that it's finally happening, so I'll be sad to see them both move so far away. :(


After that, I drove down to Warner Robins to spend the week with the parents. Mom was doing better, but she was still pretty week and was still tired easily. I spent the week driving her to doctor's appointments, the grocery store, and to the pharmacy. I also finally unpacked everything but one suitcase of art stuff lol.

I brought back my charcoal art supplies determined to use them or get rid of them if I don't, since I've had the supplies for so long and haven't done anything with them. I remember enjoying playing around with charcoal and white conte during my art classes, so I want to get back into it and be creative again. That's the goal anyway. I still haven't touched them since I brought them back lol.

But yeah, that's how February went. Very eventful lol.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Books I Want to Read This Month

I read one book off of this list last month. I would like to call that "progress" since I haven't been reading physical books for months now lol. And since we've got quarantine extended til the end of the month, maybe I will find the motivation to read another book or two off of this list! :D
  1. Fuck Happiness: How Women Are Ditching the Cult of Positivity and Choosing Radical Joy by Ariel Gore
  2. Yona of the Dawn vol. 1 by Mizuho Kusanagi
  3. Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen
  4. The Bride was a Boy by Chii
  5. The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins
  6. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
  7. Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
  8. Uncaged Wildflower by Jennae Cecilia
  9. The Anatomy of Being by Shinji Moon
  10. becoming. by Renaada Williams
  11. beyond rock bottom. by Kara Petrovic
  12. 101 Corporate Haiku by William Warriner
  13. Love Looks Pretty on You by Lang Leav
  14. The Consumption of Magic by T.J. Klune
  15. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

March in Retrospect

It's April Fools, but this whole year feels like a joke. :P How is it only April???

Half of the books read are because of being stuck inside for social distancing lol. I hadn't been in the mood to watch anything really except a few movies with family and friends. Well, I did get back into Kpop variety shows, but that was like for 10 days lol. I also just started watching a few dramas, so I might make a post about that soon.

I read:
  • Kiraide Isasete by Hijiki
  • Can I Kiss You Everday? vol. 1 by Hatsuharu
  • Can I Kiss You Everday? vol. 2 by Hatsuharu
  • Hello, Wife! by Yue Xia Die Ying
  • It’s Easy to Take Care of a Live-in Hero! by Goldfish (金魚)
  • Cinderella Did Not Leave Her Shoe by Kei Oyamauchi & Osanai Emu
  • Don't You Like Me by Lu Tianyi
  • Love Me Again by Yuan Yuan
  • The Beast Attached to Lily Fragrance by Yuan Yuan
  • Manspressions: Decoding Men's Behavior by Joe Biel & Elly Blue
  • The Film Emperor’s Daily Live Cooking Broadcast by Zui Ran Qing Ge

I watched:
  • King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
  • Outlaw King (2018)