halfcactus

Happy Eid!

Small victories, etc

After years of columbarium visits with 0 cat sightings, I have FINALLY spotted one of the infamous garden cats (pictured above)!!! It came out of the garden, right where the family vault was. This one was very affectionate and twined around my legs when I invited it to approach, suddenly nipped me on the knee (without breaking skin) before sauntering off, then returned to me for more scritches. On a different day, I saw a different cat sleeping at the entrance near the flower shop but it had the vibes of a street cat and not a forbidden fruit. Anyway, good month for cat sightings!

Set up S****** on my parents' smart TV so they can watch movies that aren't on Netflix without me and my USB stick. I've seen news that R*** D***** is dead but it works fine on their TV when otherwise the streams would have been unwatchable from infinite buffering.

Learned how to play the Switch on docked mode (after a year of owning this Switch)... Still playing I Am Setsuna and still dropping the game every time I have to enter another dungeon. /o\ I have no idea how far along I am, but it's far enough to have access to the Spritnite that allows me to recover a generous amount of MP every time I defeat an enemy, while not far enough to have recruited a character with the Shadow attribute (it has to be the Reaper, right?).

Found an old notebook that I had been using to learn the lyrics of Chinese songs by translating by hand... Threw it out without hesitation because 1) I don't need to refer back to it anymore 2) my level of comprehension back then is probably outdated and full of rookie mistakes. I do miss the practice of sitting down and writing everything by hand and going through every line word by word, I am so lazy and unfocused now.

Btw I have a computer now! I bought it from my brother's friend who owns a computer shop, which landed me a considerable discount AND reliable/free delivery. I've mostly been using it for watchpartying, online purchasing, posting on DW, and watching videos. I'm trying to ease my way back to do other stuff (making icons, edits, fansubs, etc) but I'm enjoying lying down too much. ^^;

Links of interest:

llonkrebboj/fwoopersongs's translation (with footnotes and all) of Song Dongye's Anhe Bridge, which has become one of my fav songs in recent years (with thanks to jianghuchild who had specifically requested an edit set to this for last year's Cdrama Gotcha for Gaza).

pauraque's post about Until Then, a slice-of-life/supernatural visual novel set in the Philippines (playable on Steam [Windows] and PS5). (H/t rionaleonhart, who also wrote about it here.) I hope there's a Switch release someday!

Mezzanine Theater Diary: a Letterboxd-like app for logging/rating/reviewing the shows you watch and seeing other user-submitted reviews. Sadly this seems purely app-based.

默讀 (Silent Reading / Mo Du) was recently updated with new extras, which I hope are reflected in the official English translation... I've only read 181 to 183, but they're very cute! President Fei and Captain Luo go on a road trip. :D What are the chances that they record these for the audio drama...

This photoshoot makes me imagine a NANA AU where Nana had dated Reira instead of Ren.

Just got back from a sort-of bachelorette vacation, which is either my least documented trip, since I didn't take a lot of pictures or bother taking notes... or my most documented, since it was a group trip and most of my friends and their SOs actively document their lives on Instagram and engage in photography (which I've learned to appreciate as an art, now that I'm trying, and failing, to take decent photos). Most of the pics above were probably taken by someone else!

Otherwise, the week passed like a smudge of memory. I feel like I didn't do much except to be around people, but at the same time I barely had time to relax, and I hardly slept, if at all. At some point I had a stomach bug, maybe from un-fresh food, maybe from being dehydrated and my immune system being weaker from sleep deprivation. And the only bananas I could find were from my own country, which was ironic and amusing and comforting, but also incredibly frustrating because they were the variant that was least representative of the bananas I actually eat at home.

Born to eat Señorita, forced to eat Cavendish. >:(

On my last night, there was some drama at my hotel's laundromat at midnight, which was very exciting (though a little scary at first, because I thought I was gonna end up in a fight). And in a way, affirming—I've never been happier to be trylingual. I always say there's no language I speak well, but I realize now it's because I overthink and compare myself to native speakers and monolinguals/bilinguals who don't code-switch as much, and in real life it's a matter of communication and meeting each other halfway; of being human. And anyway, who doesn't want to gossip about the stupidest pair of people who've been monopolizing machine #2? XD

Anyway, offloading some museum photos so I can add some notes about them.
( pictures )

Crying because I don't know the characters for "pua tiong chiu" (mid-autumn dice game). ദ്ദി ༎ຶ‿༎ຶ ) The internet is giving me 跋, 博, and 拔 . Anyway we are apparently doing this again this year! And ONCE AGAIN at short notice!!! Thankfully we just dug up our mahjong set last year, so this time we have 6 dice and will not be scrambling to borrow any on the day itself. o7

Last time we played was in 2021... I'd made us a visual guide of the dice combos, but unfortunately due to my computer issues (yep, it's a long-term problem), I lost all the files I created in that specific month

Thankfully I managed to find my dice game JPGs in my e-mail and a photo of the document on Twitter, but I'm pretty sure the graphic needs adjustments/corrections which is why I need the original working files. :/

For the sake of posterity (a.k.a. future!me and all my computer issues), I'm posting the ~printable files~ here. Will try to edit this post with correction/adjustment notes when we've finished the game (though likely I will forget....... for another 3 years).

( Dice game rules (graphic) )

1. Have you gotten everything done that you had hoped to do during the first half of 2024?
I guess! I sorted out my Philhealth so I could get a cyst out of my body (years overdue) and not have to pay for all of it. Did both of these in February! And I finally finished 我五行缺你... Also in February.

2. Did anything exciting or unexpected happen to you during the first half of 2024?
Good: A number of college friends came back briefly to visit so we had a couple of reunions.
Bad: One of places we reunited in was a wake (a friend lost a family member).

3. What big plans do you have for the second half of 2024?
Going to the dentist at least two more times. :(

4. Have you taken, or are you planning, a vacation this year?
Yeah, but I don't like talking about WiPs, so...

5. Have you ever wanted to be one of the people writing and posting these questions?
Haha no.

-

TV/Books:

橋頭樓上: Finished chapter 4, which I regretted starting at night. I had to stop halfway and continue in the morning because it spooked me so badly even though nothing bad was happening onscreen. Excellent thriller/horror so far, as much as I'm really distressed and afraid for the child character.

Almost done with Time Concert: Old Friends—am really enjoying the cover choices in ep 12, mostly because a number of them are actually familiar to me + are duets. IDK what I'll be putting on as background noise next... I've finished the Little Mushroom audio drama too so I have nothing lined up. ;__;

Started The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House and so far really enjoying it!!! Ensemble cast + girls + homey food. ♥ It's always funny watching these chill little slice-of-life jdramas because I keep bracing myself for, like, character deaths or life-altering disasters. Also the main girls' relationship this made me want to continue the Haikyuu anime because everything is a sports anime trope to me hahaha.



Twitter things:

This is technically a Tiktok, I just found it through Twitter: Out-of-touch wizard influencer shows you her loot

This kyuruZ comic about force-feeding your pets medicine. Literally me everyday with our dog!!!!! (RIP)

Technically this should be a "top 2" because only Fallen Angels and Leonor Will Never Die made me feel connected from start to finish (Spider-Man: AtSV was also a 4.5/5 movie for me, but took a while to reel me in).
( 2023 movies, books, TV )

Tools used:

Letterboxd Wrapped (3rd party year-in-review generator)

Lastboxd (3rd party collage generator)

StoryGraph Wrapped

Last.FM Playback

---

( 2023 in journal pages )

1) I upgraded from one secondhand phone (iPhone 8, 64GB) to another (iPhone 11 Pro Max, 256GB), and it's been a surprisingly tedious process! Migration took a couple of tries. I was told the battery was still fine but I decided to replace the battery anyway since diagnostics marked it as significantly degraded, and I think it was a reasonable decision???

I also spent some time trying to find a new budget app since the app that I was using to log my expenses has been defunct for years. Ended up with an app that's quite simply called Budget. It's not a super seamless experience but it's close enough to what I need (logging and categorizing).


2) After a solid month of indecision, I got a new planner, one that conveniently starts in December. After going with dateless planners during the pandemic, I'm back to the regular dated life. I went with a Laconic (A5, vertical left), which has an hourly layout on the left and a free grid layout on the right. So far it hasn't fulfilled the fantasy of solving my productivity/laziness issues, but it's nice to be able to block out time visually. Again, not the perfect experience (the allotted daily sections are too small for writing notes, which I like on my dated spaces), but overall it has a lot of nice features.

Months have built-in tabs and every page has a mini-calendar for the quarter. Monthly spreads have ample space for writing on and/or decorating if I ever feel like it. It is, however, 3x pricier than my previous go-to planners (Midori and Muji), so we'll see how much I use it in 2024.



3) I have no photos of it, but I got a new case for my Kindle! My previous one was one of those very cheap China ones (literally shipped from China lol) and the print for the design was SO bad but not worth exchanging. I put up with it for more than a year but I couldn't take it anymore, so I got a no-nonsense clear one this time (though frosted at the back), one I can decorate with cute stickers. ♥ I actually got curious compliments when I took it to a screen protector stall hehe

4) Lastly: got a new personal Instagram account even though I'm not particularly active, because my original one was created for our dog that died a year ago. Not sure if making a new account was a good idea—in some ways it feels like self-erasure because I did have some travel photodumps on my old account, from a much different time that I'll never get back. But I managed to download the data/archive of my original IG, which feels reassuring because a lot of the photos/videos were taken 3 (or 4?) secondhand phones ago.

Reading recently:

Xi Zixu, My Five Elements Lack You: I'm not sure if I'll finish this this year because my ability to read disintegrated again, but I'm at chapter 80+! It's a wildly uneven book and the main romance sucks tbh (though the chapter 81 confession was hilarious) but I'm really fond of Lin Jue, the thirty-something jiejie who has truly weird and scary hobbies and was recently revealed to be grieving a long-term relationship.

Witch Hat Atelier, which I'm buying veeeeery slowly and I'm very grateful for because reading it makes me feel alive and present.

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This is How You Lose a Time War: finally picked this up for its 2023 virality, but the writing style and alternate history parts might not be for me, sadly. I'm invested in the main characters' relationship, though.

My Shortbox Comics 2023 haul......... I'm not even sure I'm 1/3 in. XD

This video has been sneaking its way around Twitter lately! And completely worth watching because:

a filipino boy group serving “fuck colonizers” concept in their mv and im sitting here wondering how the world isnt hearing them pic.twitter.com/0271wPbL3B

— closed (@yeosangliker) November 6, 2022

I'm so sad that the subs are only in English ajsfioaasfj;a I could tell they were singing in various regional languages (I speak two, with a passing familiarity with a third because it's my mom's native language), but the vocals get drowned out by the production. :(

-

In light of that, I've been having many Thoughts about language! For most of my life I've felt extremely inadequate, never able to pass as a native speaker and always trying to "catch up", but for the past week I've been finding doors in languages, opening and closing and escaping through them when everything becomes too much. I know I'll feel bad again once my feelings settle down, but just for this week I feel lucky to be able to consume art and media in three languages? All of a sudden I'm remembering how much art and literature mean to me as an individual, not just as a means to socialize and be opinionated, but just as a way to feel present and human and connected to someone's vision—and sometimes, to be alone.

And so I've sort of been retreating to Filipino media lately, the ones I don't have to discuss with anyone at all, and it's nice to just... be there with the text. No outsiders, no translation happening in my head or outside it, no explaining to other people or even discourse-ing about the themes because the only dialogue is between the text and our lived experiences. Recently installed Penlab (kind of our local Tapas) and binge-read the webcomic Ang Jowa Kong Crosswise (My Crosswise Boyfriend) up to its latest update! Also booked a ticket to Mula sa Buwan (From the Moon), a Filipino musical retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac that I’ve already missed twice and regretted. It's still a month from now and I'm so anxious that there will be unexpected real life incidents that prevent me from catching it. 😂

I also have a couple of media in my to-finish queue that I hope to finish within the year: The Kangks Show, a sex comedy show that explores sex positivity, body positivity, and generation/social media platform gaps (English subs available, the whole thing is actually completely free to watch on WeTV [here]); Oro, Plata, Mata, a 3-hour war film that's finally now on Netflix and that you thankfully can break into three one-hour chunks because the structure of the movie seems to echo the title (Gold, Silver, Misfortune). CONVENIENT. It's an important and critically acclaimed local film but I'm no longer used to watching serious films and am scared. 😂

Trying to take stock of small accomplishments because it feels like I did nothing all month, other than to sink in despondent thoughts and wishes while battling a weirdly long but mild spell of fatigue. Idk if it was back-to-back hormonal issues, or my increasingly irregular sleeping habits (exacerbated by waves of anxiety), but today I feel awake and "normal" for the first time since... January probably. I didn't really do anything special, but I'd like to take credit for that anyway. XD

1) Finally bought a wifi adapter

My computer's been acting up since last year, enough to necessitate restoring from an older backup, but it's sort of been trucking along with nothing more serious than an extremely temperamental wifi connection. Or it was, until the wifi connectivity just straight up give up on life 2 weeks ago lmfao. So I ordered an external wifi adapter, which solved my connectivity issues.

The bad news is that
1) airdrop still causes my computer to crash
2) I'm presently trying to upgrade my OS to High Sierra in case it's an outdated OS issue? And panicking because the progress bar hasn't budged in 3 hours, and the stress/uncertainty is going to keep me up at night. /o\

(I'm typing this on a borrowed laptop, which I want to return soon. I started Disco Elysium on it but I'm just not comfortable gaming on a borrowed laptop, especially since running the game makes it heat up alarmingly.)

Edit: Successfully updated, with no visible consequences on my PS/AI yet.

2) Customized my Music app

(Inspired by presumenothing's Zhou Shen update GIFs hahaha)

I signed up for an Apple Music trial subscription and am considering sticking with it--being able to search songs through lyrics is a game-changer since I'm BAD AT REMEMBERING TITLES.

It's just that the native app's interface is... unusable. I hate it. So I paid for a separate app (Marvis Pro) where I could customize everything haha. Possibly overkill but February!me was just so unstimulated and longing for color. And anyway it has last.fm support which is useful for stats (especially since I switch between apps often), though ultimately I will miss Spotify Wrapped's infographics and shareability.

3) Made a ZXC side account

for the sole purpose of making a pinned Twitter moment. Will I update it? Probably not. I still tweet about him on main. XD But putting ZXC content into categories was a satisfying distraction during a night when I felt like I had a head full of bees. I forgot how much I enjoyed The Day of Becoming You until I saw all of my gifs. And then I missed having a computer that was fully functional for me to livetweet an entire show with gifs.

4) Updated my Goodreads

and finally wrote an overdue review for Salty, Bitter, Sweet by Mayra Cuevas. Which, since I never wrote about it here:
( book thoughts )

4) Flower-watching

One of my brother's flowers bloomed this week, which was very exciting! So I've been documenting, mostly to uhhh see how long it takes for the flower to die. I thought for sure it was dying yesterday because it was drooping, but I guess it was just missing the sun. Day 4: still alive

Didn't want to lose these links to the chaos of my Twitter timeline:

1) "Chinese people playing Wordle like" [video]: so much happening in this video, I keep rewatching it lol

2) Twitter thread by bjrecio:

One of the things that commonly get lost in translation when talking about "Philippine Myths" to folks outside the country is the idea that they're not... actually myths to us.

(I think this is something that even our diaspora counterparts don't always get.)

I mean, sure, the tikbalang is a cool looking horse creature that haunts our campfire stories. What gets omitted sometimes is that the stories are often first or secondhand. You've either actually encountered a tikbalang before, or know someone who swears that they did.

Do I believe that this encounter actually happened? That's an irrelevant question, I think. What matters is that to our culture, these are real encounters.

I say tabi-tabi po when passing anthills, not out of belief in nuno, necessarily, but because that's part of my culture.

SO TRUE, for our SEAsian neighbors as well, it's also why I feel so strongly about Zen Cho's short fiction. The stories that feature Malaysian mythological creatures inhabit a really familiar space, even for someone like me who grew up in the urban parts of the Philippines. My classmate's sister has encountered a tikbalang (she didn't find out until she played a recording of their interview), my friends have lived near kapres... (I don't really hear these stories in adulthood anymore. Maybe they just don't come up in our conversations, maybe I'm lucky enough to have grandmother who vets houses for supernatural presences, maybe it's a provincial thing, maybe those with higher educational backgrounds don't believe in them--it's hard to tell because I have a hard "no horror or supernatural stories" rule unless it will directly and immediately impact my life lol.)

3) Found my old planners/journals while attempting to declutter, here's a short thread of photos and notes. This is my favorite find hahahaha:


I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to compile these so they don't take up so much space, one whole hardbound or springbound notebook a year adds up. A problem for another day.