journal WIPs~

I really wanted to unwind and recalibrate my mind, and thankfully there was a Calvin Klein event that Zhang Xincheng (among others) participated in. It was mostly just him promoting the product, interacting with fans, and playing unremarkable games onstage and streaming on Taobao, so I just put that on the background and did a little journaling hehe. It was nice! There were musical acts before he showed up, so it kind of felt like going to a friend's gig, hanging around the venue and doing other things while waiting for their set to start. :')

(Images hotlinked from Twitter.)




I don't actually know how to watercolor, I just followed this watercolor aurora tutorial on Youtube haha—didn't quite succeed, but it works for what I ended up using it for. :D

PS. The Niangzi Is Rio mug was a gift from umichii, and too large/heavy to drink from (unless soup), so it's a watercolor mug now hahaha.

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I (FINALLY!!!) finished Little Mushroom novel, so I'm free from reading obligations for a while; I had some other books I was in the middle of (a Ted Chiang anthology + A Gentleman in Moscow) but I kind of lost my ability to read, oops. I found out that some manga IS actually compatible with my Kindle, and while I can't actually afford to buy several volumes in one go (which will only be a problem till I catch up on a canon), I'm still really excited to be able to read and properly look at the art in e-ink, especially since majority of my hobbies involve a heavy amount of screen time. I got the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier, and it was worth every penny. The art is beautiful and it spends a lot of time on the sigils, which is fun! The downside is that there's no Table of Contents to help you navigate through the chapters, and I can't add notes either (just unnamed bookmarks), but it's a small tradeoff to get the same visual experience (and lack of eyestrain) of a physical manga without having to own it physically.

+ Movies that are on my to-watch list (so I don't forget):

Marry My Dead Body: Taiwanese supernatural, LGBT-adjacent comedy that just came out. Might pitch this as a groupwatch (since we're on a Taiwanese media streak), but I'm still a bit tentative, haha. This one has Greg Hsu as a cop character who's forced to help a gay ghost with his unfinished business so he can reincarnate.

Before, Now, and Then: historical Indonesian movie set in 1940 and 1965, and seems to be about women. Highly recommended by dramateaque, who loves Kamila Andini's direction and has given me most of the information and warnings (...or non-warning haha; I was afraid it'd be violent) I need to hopefully proceed with watching this someday. It's kind of artsy and beautifully filmed, from the screencaps that I've seen.

Polite Society: an aartichapati rec; looks like a fun family-centric (sisters!) and high-energy comedy about a British-Pakistani teenager who does martial arts and aspires to be a stunt double.

Filipino movies that have been on my watchlist for a while: Ang Larawan (movie-musical, historical, based on a play I haven't read lmfao) and Saving Sally (romcom, animation)