Weekly Haul (107)

I bought a couple of books this month and then received a book from Archana who loved On Love so much that she got Dom and me a copy lol.

On Love by Alain de Botton

The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

Viz Manga Sample 2018

Kenka Bancho Otome vol. 1 by Chie Shimada

Shows I'm Currently Watching: Tokyo Ghoul:Re, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, ReLIFE, Adam Ruins Everything

I've been watching some great stuff recently! :D Also, this post turned out a lot longer than I expected lol. -__-"

CURRENTLY WATCHING:

Tokyo Ghoul:Re

I started watching Tokyo Ghoul when I was spending the night in London because I saw that it was available on Netflix, which isn't available on Netflix in the US. That and because I had a lot of friends and family recommend the series. After watching the first few episodes, I finally understood the appeal. I ended up staying up for most of the night and finishing the first season before taking a nap and then heading to the airport a few hours after that. When I finally got back home, I finished Tokyo Ghoul Root A and started Tokyo Ghoul:Re. It's been a few weeks since I started watching it, but I'm hoping to finish it soon since the second season of this just started recently airing.

I was really interested in seeing how Kaneki's philosophy on ghouls changed throughout Tokyo Ghoul, especially towards the end. Tokyo Ghoul Root A was not what I was expecting either. It wasn't as exciting as the first season for me. I found out that the season deviated from the manga, so that was why it was different (and according to most fans, very disappointing). That's why Tokyo Ghoul:Re was pretty confusing for me in the beginning. Apparently this takes place after Root A but is supposed to follow the manga storyline? I'm not too sure, but I was planning on reading the manga after I finished the series anyway to make sense of everything. Lol, everyone in the comment section were all like "Just read the manga. It's better and makes more sense." I also really hate how they censor all of the gore scenes too. I felt like it distracted me from the gravity of the scene.

Jingai-san no Yome

I had to watch this because the summary was too weird not to lol. Basically, this high school boy finds out that he's to be the wife to this fluffy creature, and the show details the start of their married life. And that's it. That's the summary. The art looked cute, so I was interested to see how it went.

What I didn't realize was that the anime is only five minutes long, and the outro song is around 1:30 seconds! You basically only get 3 minutes of plot! But I'm still interested in it since it has the same vibes as How to Keep a Mummy, which was one of the cutest anime I have ever seen. There are only two episodes out now, but they were pretty entertaining as it is, so I'm going to continue to watch it since it gives me fluffy feelings lol.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

I've heard about this light novel series for a while now, but I wasn't interested in reading it since I knew it was still ongoing. Luckily, now it's being made into an anime, so I started watching it to see if I would want to buy the light novels after the anime's over to continue with the plot like how I did for Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

I've watched the three episodes available, and I really like it! Yeah, the main character is OP, but he's literally a slime just eating everything that he thinks might be useful for later and becoming powerful because of it. I like the way Rimuru thinks and his friendship with a tsundere dragon is the best lol. I'm looking forward to see how this anime pans out!

ReLIFE

I was interested in ReLife for a while since I've seen the webtoon around manga sites I visit. When I found out that it was being adapted into an anime, I was interested in watching it. I planned on waiting until it was finished being aired, and then completely forgot about it until recently when I found it again.

I'm about halfway through the anime, and the plot is interesting because it's about a 28 year old almost NEET taking a pill that makes him look 10 years younger and attending his last year of high school all over again. The characters are entertaining and funny, the animation is nice, and I love how you see the main character slowly start caring about his classmates. Plus, there's hints about a failed test subject before him that look intriguing, so I'm interested to see what that's all about.

Adam Ruins Everything

The show has been added to Netflix recently, so we've watched a couple of episodes in between cooking and chilling at home. I forgot how informative his show is; I've definitely learned a lot in the few episodes we've watch so far. I remember when his show was super popular on Facebook with everyone reposting his videos. Wonder what happened since I haven't heard much about him recently.

FINISHED:

Meteor Garden

Michelle and I have been planning on watching as soon as it was finished airing on Netflix, but between my Abu Dhabi trip and vacation, we only recently got around to watching it. Omg, it took over our lives for 9 days straight. I'm so sleep deprived now lol.

But the drama was really entertaining! I loved how childish Dao Ming Si was; once he got over his bad boy image, he was literally an immature child who's used to getting his way and pouts when he doesn't lol. Shancai was pretty interesting, too, but she was also really wishy washy towards the middle, which got annoying. Lei was also great! I loved how he always had these witty remarks after he got over his issues towards the beginning. Plus, he always looked so adorable, like a puppy lol. One of my favorite scenes was when Dao Ming Si's friends try to help him practice apologizing to Shancai by trying to get him to look innocent like Lei. It was too funny!

My Hero Academia Season 3

This was such an important season regarding character development. We've got Midoriya learning better ways to control his quirk and understanding the importance of his role with All Might's big reveal. We've got his classmates' growth during the provincial license exam and just how impactful having Midoriya and Bakugo as classmates have inspired the rest of 1A to be better heroes. Finally, we've got Bakugo's character growth, an accumulation of recent events finally getting him to explosively talk about his feelings and ending with them as proper rivals. It's been a long time coming, and I am living for it. ;__;

But yeah, a great season, and I'm looking forward to the next one since the anime is about to catch up the where I left of in the manga series two years ago. :D

My Week Vacation

After I came back from Abu Dhabi, I worked for a week before taking a week off for vacation. It was a busy week. I hadn't made many plans beforehand, but I ended up meeting up and hanging out with a lot of friends the whole vacation. :)

It started with the Friday before I started my vacation. I had basically finished all of my work the day before and was waiting on feedback from Abu Dhabi, who was already enjoying their weekend due to the time difference. As a result, I had nothing to do at work and was kind of feeling sick since I kept on having a runny nose. All of my coworkers told me to just go home since our managers weren't even in the same country as us, but I ended up staying until 3:30 because Dominique and wound up giving advice to Sonali since she was going through some relationship issues.

Then I drove all the way to Warner Robins from work. Brian was out with friends and Mom was spending the night at the farm, so that I was probably the only time I didn't hangout with anyone when I was down there lol.

David and Harrison have this tradition of going to Curry Mantra once every month or two to hangout, but they hadn't had a chance for the past month because of their schedules. They finally made plans to go out the next day and ended up inviting half of the group as well since it had been a while since we've all seen each other. I finally got to meet Grace, Harrison's girlfriend! She was really nice, and it was so obvious that she cared for him and worried that he was being too nice sometimes. I'm just really glad that he found someone who treats him right and takes care of him. :)

It figures that the one time we want to go to Curry Mantra, it was closed for renovations that one day lol. We went further across the plaza to Tbreak and Pho instead. They were really understaffed; even by the time we finished ordering (and there were 6 of us) none of the available tables were cleaned up or anything.

After that, we went back to Harrison's place and hungout. We played Ticket to Ride and tried to watch a terrible movie called Zombeaver, but we couldn't Chrome cast it to the tv because it was only available on Amazon Prime, which has beef with Chrome because of business. When we tried to stream it using a laptop and an HDMI cord, it kept on lagging, so we gave up on watching it and started watching How It's Made videos on YouTube instead lol.

It was also Alec's birthday, so we went to Piedmont Brewery and Kitchen that night with his parents to celebrate his birthday. We ate until we were stuffed and then headed downstairs to play darts and goof around. I had brought a bunch of snacks back from Abu Dhabi and all of the airports I was at, so we were planning on going back to Alec's place to eat, but it was getting late and Harrison wanted to take Grace home since she was introverted out lol.

Instead, I made plans to have everyone come over to my house the next day to try all of the snacks. We tried a bunch of them, and then went over to David's house to play Overcooked 2 on his Nintendo Switch. My mom had been out grocery shopping when we left, so after we got to David's house, she called me asking where we all went. Apparently she went grocery shopping to get more ingredients for dinner since we had so many people over. I got guilted into bringing everyone and the Switch back over to our house lol.

I think mom missed cooking for a lot of people, especially since I moved out and because Brian keeps on coming home late at night. I mean, she offered to make Pho Ga for us later that week as well. We planned that for Thursday since Alec comes back from his work trip that day and because David has work on Friday. But yeah, it was nice hanging out with everyone and making spring rolls and watching everyone attempt to make them too. XD

Tyler had contacted me that day, so we made plans to hangout the next day. Lol, he asked me if I watched anime, and I was just like, "Do you even know me??? Of course I watch anime." He told me that he and his mom started marathoning Naruto since the night before, which prompted me to tell him that I stopped watching it after it transitioned to Shippuden. What can I say, I have a series commitment issue lol. That is how I ended up going over to his house and watching Naruto with his family for like 5 hours lol. We also had chili dogs, and I ended up running into Mikey's mom at Walmart when we were buying hot dogs and buns.

I texted Mikey about it, and we ended up making plans to hangout the next day since we had already talked about hanging out and watching the newest episode of My Hero Academia together that came out a few days ago. His house had a leak, so he's been staying at a hotel nearby for the past month while they pull up the plumbing and fix the leak, which sucks. It also sucks that he just had knee surgery a few months ago and could only recently put his weight on that leg, so things have been really rough for him and his family. We watched the anime and talked for a few hours before I had to go home and eat dinner with my parents.

Kim has been living with their aunt and uncle in Milledgeville since the summer, but she came back to visit for a few days. That Wednesday, she had to go back to Milledgeville, so David and I ate dinner with her before driving her back to Milledgeville and playing with their little cousins for a bit before driving back home. It sucked that she only came back for such a short time since I was busy hanging out with Tyler and Mikey to stop by and see her until the day she left. Maybe next time we'll all have enough time to hangout and play board games like old times lol.

The next night was when my mom made Pho Ga for my friends and me, so everyone came over (Alec and David late because of school and work) to eat and hangout for dinner. It was a Thursday night, so they didn't stay for long, but it was still nice.

I took my mom to the Riverside mall the next day since she wanted to go shopping for her and dad's Washington trip in a few weeks. I'm more surprised that I didn't end up buying anything, probably because I'm poor and saving up for the New York trip David and I are going next month lol. Because mom had never eaten at Olive Garden before, we ate lunch there. She liked it lol.

The next day was Saturday, and also the day I was leaving. David drove over to hangout and eat lunch before he left for work and I left to go home in Kennesaw. I got home and ate some of Kyle's birthday ice cream cake since his birthday the day before.

The next day, Kyle, Michelle, and I met up with Tawanda, Tiet, and Nicole for dinner at Iron Age. I have seen Tiet and Nicole in a while, so it was nice catching up with them. It reminded me that I needed to make plans to hangout with my girl friends as well lol. But we ate so much that night; we did not need to eat the last three dishes lol. XD

But yeah, that's how my week vacation went! I wasn't expecting to hangout with so many people, and I didn't have a chance to hangout with some of my other friends as well, so I definitely need to make plans before everyone becomes busy with the holiday season!

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

It's officially fall, but why does it still feel like summer? Stupid Georgia weather never cools down until November. :(

Anyway, there's a lot of new anime and movies coming out this season that I'm excited for! I can't believe the yaoi manga I read a few years ago got turned into an anime lol. I never finished it, so I hope it has a completed ending.

Anime:

• Sword Art Online Season Three
• Goblin Slayer
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
• Tokyo Ghoul:Re Second Season
• Dakaretai Otoko 1-I ni Odosarete Imasu
• Jingai-san no Yome
• Bakumatsu
• Kitsune no Koe
• Tsurune: Kazemai Koukou Kyuudoubu

Movies:

• Venom (Oct 5)
• The Hate U Give (Oct 5)
• Ralph Breaks the Internet (Nov 23)
• Creed II (Nov 23)
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Dec 14)
• Aquaman (Dec 21)

I'm most looking forward to SAO, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, and Spider-Man!

Books I Want to Read This Month

The sequel to Tsumiko and the Enslaved Fox comes out this month! I've been excited for it since I finished Tsumiko last month! I read that book in one night partially due to jetlag and partially due to how addicting it was. I really hope I find the time to read this book when it comes out at the end of this month lol.

1. Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat
2. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon? vol. 9 by Fujino Omori & Suzuhito Yasuda
3. Seraph of the End vol. 1 by Takaya Kagami & Yamato Yamamoto
4. Kimiko and the Accidental Proposal by Forthright
5. Dengeki Daisy vol. 1 by Kyousuke Motomi
6. Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
7. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
8. In Real Life by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang
9. A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger
10. The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur
11. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
12. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
13. The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic
14. The Consumption of Magic by T.J. Klune
15. Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan

September in Retrospect

A lot has happened this month! Since I was stuck in a lot of planes, I watched a lot of movies and ended up watching a bunch of anime while in Abu Dhabi. However, I also finished reading a book while dealing with jetlag, lol.

I read:

• Tsumiko and the Enslaved Fox by Forthright

I watched:

• Flavors of Youth (2018)
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
• War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
• Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale (2017)
• The Asterisk War Season 1 (2015)
• The Asterisk War Season 2 (2016)
• Baby Driver (2017)
• The Greatest Showman (2017)
• Wonder Woman (2017)
• Rampage (2018)
• Red Sparrow (2018)
• Tokyo Ghoul (2014)
• Tokyo Ghoul Root A (2015)
• How Not to Summon a Demon Lord (2018)

Weekly Haul (106)

I think I'm three books behind in this series now lol.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 11 by Fujino Omori & Suzuhito Yasuda

Abu Dhabi Work Trip

Basically, for the past four months, I've been working on this AMS project for the Abu Dhabi International Airport. Jenn, who had written the original AMS training two years ago, was working with me in the beginning until she announced her resignation two and a half months before the training was due, which was when things were getting really busy because we realized the extent of updates needed for the training.

With the help of my manager and another coworker and a lot of stress, we managed to finish creating the training. It was insane; we found out that the training was due the previous week and needed it to be done within the next two days! I accumulated a lot of overtime in the past two months working on this project lol.

However, it was obvious that we needed someone there during the pilot training session to see how the training went since this was the first training we've created for this program, and our team usually sends at least one person to a newly created training that we've created for this purpose. In addition, we had rushed to finish the training the week before, so there was bound to be updates made.

Irene, my manager, had been planning on sending me to the pilot session for a few weeks now for the experience and to make updates so that future training sessions would go smoother. However, we didn't receive confirmation for my trip until August 30th, a week before training started, so I spent the next week shopping, packing, and planning for my trip to Abu Dhabi.

I quickly learned that Abu Dhabi is extremely hot and humid--way worse than Georgia humidity. It's like getting slapped in the face with hot water whenever you step outside, lol. I was really concerned about overheating during training since Irene had been to the training center the year before to check it out and said that it was very hot in there. However, they moved the training location to another room, and I was actually pretty cold in the building! I wasn't ready to freeze every day lol.

It was a great experience though. I got to see my training in use firsthand and had to make a lot of adjustments and updates to the training as we found out that we were missing some content and that the order of topics should be rearranged to better follow the system's flow.

I had two main issues during my trip though: jetlag and Uber's unavailability. First off, to book my flight, I had to use our company's new system called Concur, which is really limited when trying to find specific flights. That's how I ended up booking a flight to Abu Dhabi with two layovers on the flight there and back. By the end of the trip, I had been to six different airports and had to spend the night in London for one layover. It was pretty crazy and super tiring, so I was suffering from sleep deprivation and jetlag for the majority of my time in Abu Dhabi.

It didn't help that training was squished into four days instead of the planned five days due to a national holiday. That meant that training was from 9AM to 6PM everday, but as I had to be picked up to the airport, I had to be there around 8:30 every morning. Luckily, training usually ended around 5:30 everyday and we ended around 4 on the last day of training, which gave me more time to nap lol.

However, it was really nice to meet so many of my coworkers in person since we've only been communicating through emails and Skype meetings. Everyone was so nice!

The other issue I ran into was the fact that Uber was unavailable in Abu Dhabi. When I was researching for the trip, I read that Uber was available in the UAE, but it wasn't until I arrived in Abu Dhabi that I found out that it used to be available in Abu Dhabi before they canceled it two years ago due to privacy issues. But it's available in Dubai lol. So yeah, because of that and because I found out that most taxis didn't have credit card readers, I wasn't able to travel much within Abu Dhabi since I hadn't converted much cash before leaving the airport.

Luckily, I stayed at the Crowne Plaza on Yas Island, which had a free shuttle service to all of the attractions on Yas Island, so I was able to go to the Yas Mall for dinner and souvenirs for a few nights.

The mall is HUGE. I think it has over 300 stores inside? I only had 2-3 hours to explore before the last shuttle left every night, so I walked around a bunch after eating dinner. It was crazy! They actually had a rock climbing wall in one store, and there was a huge area for a kids' amusement park with fair rides and everything. There was also a waterfall inside the mall as well. Plus, it was the entrance for Ferrari World and had Ikea right next to it.

I ended up eating dinner at this place called the Giraffe Urban Kitchen my first night visiting the mall since it had a variety of meals from around the world. I tried their beef brisket pho since I was curious how it would taste over there compared to the U.S. It was pretty okay lol. I was more excited about the butterfly pea latte I had also ordered because it was blue.

The next night, I went back to the mall and ate at Al Fanar Restaurant, a famous local Emirati restaurant. It was really good, but the portions were more family style. I felt so bad that I could barely finish a third of my meal and couldn't bring it back to my hotel since I didn't have a fridge. I had also ordered dessert and a mango and passionfruit smoothie before finding out how large the portions were, so I was stuffed by the time I left lol.

I knew that there was a McDonald's somewhere in the mall, and I was curious to see if the menu was any different from the States. However, the mall was so big and I didn't have a lot of time to explore, so I never found it. -__-"

Because we had a national holiday that week, I had Thursday off to explore before I go back home the next day. Luckily, we had a new member join our team the week before who is stationed in Dubai, so we made plans to meet up on Thursday so that he could show me around. It was great because Rakesh was able to drive me around to visit the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and the Louvre, which are the two places I really wanted to visit while I was in Abu Dhabi.

The mosque was as magnificent as all of the pictures I've seen online. It's incredibly huge and humbling and mindblowingly beautiful, and the architecture is amazingly designed. I loved walking around and seeing everything.

They blocked off a few areas, so we weren't able to explore everything, but I wasn't disappointed at all. I was dying from the heat, but I was also wearing longsleeves because I'm dumb lol. I just wanted to wear white so it wouldn't attract more heat to myself throughout the day. I had to wear a burqa there since I had to cover my hair and was wearing shorts, and the burqa helped cool me down. However, I was dumb and didn't tie my hair up beforehand, so I was still sweating up a storm because my hair was all over my neck lol.

It was interesting that we had to take our shoes off before entering the mosque. There were just shoe racks on both sides for people to store their shoes and some people keeping watch so no one would steal them. I think the fact that we were walking around barefoot on the tiled ground helped emphasize the holy atmosphere. The fact that everyone was taking pics everywhere you looked kind of detracted that, but I was one too so what could I do lol.

Afterwards, we went to the Emirates Palace for their famous Palace Cappuccino which has 24 carat gold flakes in it. Lol we actually saw that there was a dress code for the cafe, which didn't allow shorts (which I was wearing), but they didn't say anything and served us coffee.

It was really pretty. I tried to drink it as it without stirring it first and ended up breathing in a few gold flakes lol. They gave us a date and chocolate macaroon as well, which were also tasty.

The hotel itself was grand and magnificent. The lobby and cafe were all low-lit and stately that I felt like a pleb in my hoodie and shorts lol.

Afterwards, we went to the Louvre, which was so cool. I liked how it showcased how different items have the same history even though they occurred in different time periods and countries. Like these water vases were all from different time periods and countries but they all served the same purpose.

The building itself was really cool. You got to walk outside at one point to get to the end of the gallery, and you get to see the ocean and underside of the ceiling as you make your way to the cafe or children's museum.

Afterwards, on the way back to my hotel, Rakesh took me to this small Indian cafeteria that sold authentic Indian tea, so I got to try Indian tea. It was delicious! So creamy and flavorful. I wish I could get some around here lol.

But yeah, the next day, I ordered room service for breakfast and frantically packed before going to the airport. I ended up being moved to the front next to the window and became friends with my seat mates towards the end of the eight hour flight to London lol. For most of the flight, we were all alternating between sleeping and watching movies (I've watched so many movies this month due to all of my flights lol), but then we started talking towards the last few hours, and it was fun.

I learned that the Rawan, the girl seated next to me, was on her way to London for school. She was starting her Master's in Physics soon, which is crazy! She said she was thinking about getting her PhD afterwards! She's crazy! XD

We soon got to know Sayid afterwards. He's actually from London, but he usually only goes home once a year during Christmas due to his job, which has him traveling year round.

I was in London for the night because I had a 13 hour layover before my next flight. What did I do while I was in London? Ordered room service and watched Netflix because I was tired, jetlagged, and so peopled out that I didn't want to interact with anyone lol. I didn't even sleep for long because I had to get up at 4AM to go to the airport.

I landed in Chicago and had to quickly go to my next flight since I had a short layover at that airport. Luckily, they gave us these bright orange Express Connection tickets that allowed me to cut through the customs line and stuff, so I made it to my gate with 15 minutes to spare lol.

Then I finally got back home. I barely had any sleep for the past two days and was already sleep deprived the whole week because of jetlag, so I wanted to sleep after I had lunch, but Shelle wouldn't let me sleep until after 8PM. I ended up sleeping around 10:30PM and woke up at 7:30AM and finally got more than 5 hours of sleep for the first time in ages.

The jetlag actually wasn't as bad since I came back, but I'm still tired. I think it's because I haven't had much sleep to begin with anyway. :P But yeah, I'm finally home and have a bunch of snacks for everyone to try!