The Garden of Words

The Garden of Words is an incredibly beautiful animation with a lot of rain. I always liked rain, I like the sound, the smell. The best mornings are the ones when it rains and I can stay in bed, half asleep and listening to the water drops falling to the ground. It is so calming, it makes me so happy, and seeing and hearing it in this animated film, it got me feeling just like that.

Music Break #31

Water filter > bottled water

The last thing I ever imagined myself writing about is water filters. Actually, water filters never even was an option. But hear me out: water filters are great and I'm glad to own one.

I wish I could say I am the type of person who cares for the environment that much, and while that did have something to do with me purchasing a water filter, that was not the main reason. I try to do things for the environment, like not littering and using my own bag (usually backpack) when shopping, but that's about it. I mostly abide the rules and try being a decent citizen (which, actually, I think more people should do), but that's about it.

Yakuza Pride novel

Yakuza Pride by H.J. Brues is one of the first BL novels I ever read. After reading S series by Saki Aida I was eager to read more in the genre and so I came across Yakuza Pride. Since then I re-read the novel (re-read S too) a few times and it is one of my favourites. I am surprised I didn't write about it yet.

The main characters are the yakuza underboss Shigure Matsunaga and the son of an American congressman, Kenneth 'Kenshin' Harris. They meet at a boring event and almost immediately fireworks start sparkling. Both for them and for me because I was hooked from the first pages.

The novel follows the start of Shigure and Ken's relationship, the struggles they have to face, the way Shigure's people view Ken, how Ken can cope with it all, as well as unexpected threats and complications.

Music Break #30

Lockdown vs 'normal'

I am one of those people that had no issue staying inside the house for three months. I really enjoyed myself, I was happy to write on blog, write RP and read a lot. I also picked up some tricks concerning shopping so that I would go out only when necessary. It was great.

Now I started work again and I've been going on a spending spree that I don't know how to feel about. I am not totally reckless; about a month after the shops opened, I first stepped into one and that only because I started working again and I really needed some stuff for work. It kinda went crazy from there.

The Man Standing Next film

At 139 (and counting) seen Korean films I think I can safely say I am a fan of Korean cinema.

My Korean films journey started with Korean thrillers, one my favourites being Confession of Murder. Since I was pretty new to the genre and I was not used to these types of films with a lot of twists and turns, I was surprised in the best way possible and I jumped right into watching more Korean films.

My favourite genres are drama, thrillers (d'uh) and action (especially cop or gangster), but what I like the most is the comedy in these films. It's almost impossible to not have any comedic relief in Korean movies, and most of the times it is hilarious.

I don't only watch those genres, sometimes I feel like watching something like a historical film or a romance one.

The Man Standing Next (dir: Woo Min-ho) fits the historical category.

Music Break #29

Join. Join. Leave.

There are a whole lot of platforms nowadays where people can chat. We moved from 1 on 1 conversations on IM or Y!Messenger to chatting in groups on forums and instant messaging communities. One of such platform that I am on, along with a large number of Internet users, is Discord and now I want to vent a little about some Discord users. And maybe find answers to some of my questions.

John Grisham

As I'm writing this, I just came back from the store. I went to get myself something sweet as I had a craving, but ended up getting something better. The fun thing about this store is that there are books too. I've been avoiding that area for the last few trips because I tend to buy a book (or three) when I roam around, but this time I really felt like going and having a look.

I told myself I won't be buying any books so off I went. There was a book that caught my attention for the whole of five seconds until I saw "The Guardians" by John Grisham. The thing with me and John Grisham is that I see the book and I buy it. Nothing matters, I see John Grisham and I go in a trance of some sort.

You probably know about John Grisham, maybe you even watched some of the films or mini-series inspired by his books, he is a well known author so I'm not going to bore you with details you can easily find on wikipedia. I'm going to resume at my impression of his novels.

Music Break #28

What am I watching on YouTube these days?

I try to limit my time on YouTube as much as possible. I feel down the rabbit hole too many times before, so now I only watch YouTube videos while I'm eating (it's too quiet otherwise, I'm all alone) and I usually just open YouTube, go to my Subscriptions and pick something from there. At some point I realised I didn't actually watch the channels I am subscribed to and decided I want to change that. This is working great so far, I don't spend a lot of time looking for something and I also save music videos to my watch later list so I won't have to hunt for new music when I feel like it. It's a win-win situation.

Of course, I do get the ocassional suggestion on the homepage that catches my attention and a few days ago I got a suggestion for a video uploaded by Jim Browning. I'm going to focus on talking about his channel in this post.

(what I didn't like about) I'll Be Your Drill, Soldier novel

I think I'm going to make a habit of taking something out of a novel I read or movie I watched and write about it. I'm slowly discovering that I really like doing that so why not. There are so many things that can be overlooked in something and I am the first to admit that if I would have read this novel over ten years ago, when it first came out, I might have been head over heels, but since I only read it now, after seeing and learning some things, I'm all the way on the other side of the ruler. 

There are three major things I didn't like in this novel and I will write about them in the order I encountered them. So, shall we?

Music Break #27