jan 2022 round-up
Jan. 31st, 2022 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mistydream💿 listening
decided to try last.fm this year just so i can embarrass myself with my detailed listening history:
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tl;dr:
- i’m uaena
- my father is yoo youngjin, my mother is kenzie, and i grew up in the kwangya
- i have chronic loop-new-release disease (but also yena’s ep is rly great and is such a good fit for her vibe. uwu my daughter)
+ didn't make it to the list, but i also thought a lot about iu's pieces ep this month. like someone pointed out in their review/reaction video, while lilac is about celebrating her twenties and welcoming her thirties, pieces was about letting go of the (painful) fragments of the twenties. god i love ms jieun so much, i have no idea how you can process grief and turn it into a beautiful song like winter sleep. the song also reminded me of before our spring, maybe because both use seasons to represent the passing of time. in some ways they also mirror each other - one told from the pov of the person going to take a long sleep, the other from the pov of the friend sitting by their side. all of this to say i made the mistake of listening to winter sleep on a rainy bus ride once, and ended up trying to stifle my sniffles in public like a loser.
📼 watching
ended up watching more dramas than average (?) both random recommendations that came up on twitter:
our sister's soulmate: j-dramas are a bit hit-or-miss for me, though they're my favourite pacing-wise. no clue how this drama managed to balance cuteness with so much trauma (this drama is a minefield of content warnings). both the leads truly went through so much, but i loved that while momoko was determined to make it work, she always gave manato space to figure out how he was going to move forward with his life.
i love it when the side characters feel like Actual People, and the side characters were so lovable in this. i adore momoko's boss, hinako - i guess now that i'm older i relate to older women characters more, especially those that aren't mothers (though hinako is maternal in her own way - it's what makes her such a great boss). i still think about that conversation hinako and saori had about how older women seemed to only have friends with similar marriage status, because... it looks like that's where my friend circle is going (clown emoji).
run for young (风犬少年的天空): not that there was much competition in the first place, but my favourite c-drama to date for sure. high school friendship and stupidity! regional dialect! compact storytelling! i’ll give you my money!
i wrote so many notes while watching this the first time around and will 100% be watching this a second time. there’s something sooooo spicy about the endless love triangulisms of the main characters. tbh it’s probably like a pentagon at this point, Because Everyone Has Some Sort Of Tension With Someone Else.
the ma tian/jiaojiao cp was Truly Made For Me - i do love the oblivious yelly girl and a model student nerd b0i pairing. BUT THE LAST FEW EPS RLY SOLD IT FOR ME. (rot13 for spoilers) [pj: zpq] NAL BGURE QENZN JBHYQ’IR PBCCRQ BHG BS TVIVAT ZBQRY FGHQRAG ZN GVNA NA NEP OHG!!! vg’f fhpu na vagrerfgvat fhocybg gung gryyf lbh fb zhpu nobhg uvf punenpgre ol gnxvat gur Zbqry Fghqrag Frys-Evtugrarbhf gb vgf irel rkgerzr. cyhf jura yvh jradva fubjrq hc v eyl whfg!!! fpernzrq!!! naq vg qvqa’g rira eyl srry pbagevirq, orpnhfr dva-tr urycrq gb cebivqr fbzr crefcrpgvir gb zn gvna nobhg jung pna unccra nsgre lbh yrg tb bs gur natre naq qvfnccbvagzrag. gura bs pbhefr ur unq gb shpxvat qvr va zn gvna’f nezf. xfjy
besides dramas, also kept up my steady diet of nolto and abaddae s2. not to be boosadan but abaddae s2 is rly not the same without mr boo. sir bumkeyk and miss jaece still hard carrying the shit out of their respective shows though.
📚 reading
set a humble goal of reading 6 books this year, which is about 5 more books than i read on average. surprisingly i’m already a third way through?? #girlboss
between the midnight library and the miracles of namiya general store, definitely liked the latter better - it made an interesting point about how people tend to read their own answers into the advice sought from others. at the same time, i loved how the book kept you guessing about how the different threads of the story would be woven together. i don’t think this was the first higashino keigo book i’ve read (i may have read devotion of suspect x many years ago?), but i’ll might look for more of his books in future.
💬 and other things
have resigned to sitting out the next topik and trying for the october one instead, because long answer question 54 still scares the shit out of me. truthfully, it does feel like i'm reaching a slump with my korean, maybe because i can't tell if i'm making improvement anymore? and while i know test prep is a necessary evil to take the topik, it's just... kinda dry. i already have a job i stress myself about, most days i just don't have the brain cells to memorise sample sentences.
thankfully i've kept up the habit of reading newneek somewhat regularly, by letting go of trying understand everything and look up every word i don't know (i'm not going to remember the word for 'mortgage interest rates' even if i tried). i've also found a language exchange partner that isn't a creep on hellotalk (thank god), which also means more opportunities to practice conversational korean outside of class. hopefully i can keep this momentum going through the year...?