Just another life lately post to let everyone know I'm still alive! I feel a little bad that these days I can only come around once a month to update the blog. It's not that I don't have anything to write about. In fact, I try to take photos whenever I can, so I have a lot of them just waiting to be shared. It's just that sometimes things get so busy that I don't have the chance to write about things right after they happen. This is one of the things I hope to change next year. Slowly but surely, I want to get back into the habit of writing on the blog again.
December is probably the most hectic month out of 2018. Only halfway through the month and I've already attended two birthday celebrations and two weddings! (Can you imagine how much I've spent on GrabCar fares alone..) Crazy. The latter half of the month isn't any better—we're flying out to Malaysia again for Comic Fiesta, and after that it's back-to-back Christmas and New Year celebrations! I think I'll only be able to breathe after the first week of 2019 is done, haha. That said, all I can do is to enjoy the rest of the year. More than anything, I'm thankful that I can spend the last few days of 2018 in good (physical and mental) health.
I recently re-installed a manga reader app on my phone, so I finally got to catch up on a few of my favorite series. I also got to read some new interesting ones—Kemono Jihen and Madame Petit.
Kemono Jihen is a shounen manga by Aimoto Shou, serialized in Jump SQ. I realized that a lot of the series that I liked turned out to be from Jump SQ, so I started looking into titles from there. The story appealed to me from the start, especially because there's youkai involved. In this case the youkai are called 'kemono', and the story revolves around them. The thing I liked about this series is that the characters are all written well. In most shounen manga the main protagonist usually acts a certain way because of certain reasons, so the thing that makes or breaks a series for me is how this character is written. Usually, if the main protagonist's ideals don't quite align with mine, it makes it hard for me to get into the series without getting annoyed. (It's a bit silly, but it's a real problem – I've dropped quite a few series because of this.) In Kemono Jihen, I find that I like all the characters that have been introduced so far. Both the story and the art are quite nice too, so I definitely recommend it. It's not licensed yet, but when it is, I'll definitely buy physical copies of the manga.
Madame Petit, on the other hand, is a shoujo manga by Takao Shigeru. At first, the premise of the story is quite off-putting. I mean, Mariko, the protagonist, age 16, is married to a man 30 years her senior??? No no no no. This weirded me out SO MUCH, but I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I've read Takao Shigeru's Isshou ni Neyou yo before and liked it a lot, so I thought I might like this one as well. And let me tell you, I became so absorbed that I ended up reading 40+ chapters in one sitting. I haven't read shoujo manga in AGES, so I was surprised that I was actually enjoying it. Also, me reading romance that isn't BL? If that isn't proof enough of how much I was into this story, I don't know what is. The plot might be a bit iffy, but story itself is well-written. Let's just say that the plot is just a small part of it, so no worries about anything weird, lol. Also the main characters are super cute. I thought I'd already passed the age of liking love stories with children in it, but it seems this almost-thirty tita still likes them after all, huh.
Aian and I have run out of new series to watch (other than the current season's offerings), so we've started turning to older ones. After re-watching Hunter x Hunter and a bit of Yu Yu Hakusho, our most recent series was Darker than Black. When this one came out I remember seeing all the Hei and Yin cosplayers at local cons. I think the reason why I wasn't able to watch this was because I was dependent on friends passing around anime DVD's in uni at the time. These days I'm able to consume a whole series in a matter of days, haha. I'm glad we finally watched this one, because it was so good. I wish we'd only watched the first season though, because the second season was just 12 episodes full of unanswered questions, lol.
If you'd like to see all the other anime I watched / am watching in 2018, you can check out my AniList here.
To no one's surprise, I've only been listening to COLOR*IZ ever since it dropped. I think it's safe to say that I'M HELLA WHIPPED FOR IZ*ONE. I love them so much. I've been watching each and every video OTR puts up of them, liking every photo, retweeting every meme.. The last time I was this emotionally invested in a group was way back when I was still a hardcore stan of f(x). It hurts my heart to know that after 2.5 years they'll be going their separate ways ;____; Guess I'll have to just not think about it for now.
Everyone's been posting their Spotify 2018 Wrapped lists recently, so I thought I'd share mine though. This doesn't surprise me though, since I've only been playing the same few songs everytime. I found it funny that SVT's up there though, I literally only have been playing CLAP and VERY NICE until I thought of adding more songs late this year. Not surprised at gugudan having three songs on my Top Songs list either, there was a month (!!) where I only ever played those three on constant loop while working.
These days I've been enjoying watching slow living vlogs a lot. I tend to enjoy vlogs where there isn't a lot of talking, since I get to watch them while I do something else. Usually I watch these while doing my "relax day" skincare routine. My favorite vlogs are by Hyonyo. Her lifestyle reminds me so much of the mori girl lifestyle, so I always watch her videos with a smile on my face. Some of my other favorites, which are more or less the same thing: Onuk, Jieun, 子时当归, Sueddu. These girls all have somewhat different lifestyles, and all of them appeal to me in different ways. But I enjoy watching each and every one.
This year's Malaysia trip! I realize our flight is just 4 days away, but I haven't even posted about last year's trip yet! I'll try to squeeze that in if I can. This year it'll be just Aian and myself again. This will be our 6th time visiting KL. I always joke that I might as well live there LOL. More than anything, I'm super excited to meet my friends again! And of course, to eat all the delicious food~ I'm also super excited for this year's Comic Fiesta! They've been announcing guests since the beginning of the month and I just get even more hyped with each announcement. The most recent guest to be announced was Honda-san's Honda-san (heh)! I mentioned before that I've been enjoying the Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san anime this season, so I was super hyped when I found out that the mangaka will be at CF. I'll try to get a copy of the manga so I can join the signing event, hopefully there'll still be a few copies in Kinokuniya left for us when we arrive in KL!
What have you been up to lately? :)
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