darkreinfly

It's not clear to me why I feel the urge to blog when nothing of interest has recently happened in my life, and yet the desire  is seemingly absent when there is news to share. Oh ah, on second thought, I think I know why now. I tend to get it all out of my system on Facebook with a million photos haha.

Anyway, for the majority of April I travelled up to Taiwan to visit my sister and my new nephew! He was the cutest baby I've ever interacted with, and had the best features of both parents. While in Taiwan I had a lot of first experiences, in between spending time with little E.T. (his initials) to give my sister a break from first time parenting. We'd never been to Taiwan before so these were new grounds to explore. We ended up on tours that took us to the far reaches of the island (we stayed in Taipei which was in the northern area, but visited the southern most point among other places), familiarised ourselves with their public transport system (their train network was as efficient as HK's and thus also better than ours haha), and visited many fascinating sites. The nature walks and hiking trails were invigorating, the food was (for the most part) divine, and the many, many museums we explored were incredibly interesting. I think I liked the museums the best - I don't normally visit them here at home because I'm just not as attached to the history. It's all fascinating of course, but because my parents migrated here, there aren't any cultural roots, so to speak.

Dot points because it's been a couple of months and my mind is scattered:

• It was wonderful to see my sister (and her hubby) again.
• My graphire 4 (and its malfunctioning pen) has been retired to make room for the new INTUOS 4. So shiny! I have no excuse not to produce more completed art now.
• I don't know why mochi is so popular there but I LOVE IT.
• I also love BUBBLE TEA. I was never a fan of the regular milk bubble tea after a bad first experience, but having it on this trip in a restaurant where it was one of their signature staples changed my mind. I may stick to the blended ice flavour I always get though now that I'm back home.
• UNIQLO had fantastic One Piece t-shirts! These images were straight from the manga, and looked more authentic than Baleno's, which were cute but kind of fanart-y.
• My collection of Korean albums grows <3 Miss A, CN Blue and FT Island, oh my! Photos of things I bought to be posted another day~
• The souvenirs from the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan and I were fated to meet. A lot of fun paper craft-y things that are sure to help the pop-up book project.
• My Chinese has hopefully improved while in this environment, though the Taiwanese accent & slang made it a bit difficult.

Perhaps next time we'll be able to visit the zoo and ride the gondolas!

 On Wednesday (the 8th), a friend and I spent the day up in Sydney to see Harry Potter: The Exhibition and also kill some time at the bookstore I'd been hoping to visit for ages, Kinokuniya.

First off, the exhibition was fabulousssssss and really, the whole day's activities were totally worth the super early start and super draining crash at the end of the day. I won't write about much of what we did specifically, because I wanted to try and create a travel comic for it.

The only downside to the exhibition was that although there was a lot to see, it still seemed too short an experience. We honestly probably spent more time afterwards browsing the gift shop hahaha. Total money vacuum, that place. There was no question of not buying something, because when would we ever see this sort of thing again? But as an example, there was a book there that I'd previously bought (the Film Wizardry one) for something like $30. At Borders (when it still, you know, existed) it was something like $60. At the gift shop? $95. Ouch. And then we checked out the time-turner they had on display. It's this delicate little thing, gold plated apparently, and the rings turn it in different directions. Looked quite cool as a pendant even if you weren't a fan of HP. But we passed because again, too expensive to justify buying.

Not that we didn't use up a chunk of money on other things. The only thing to really pull me in different directions was the Marauder's Map. Fwoarrrrr so amazing... but I couldn't get passed the $50 price tag. /tear

The rest of the museum (Powerhouse) was pretty interesting to explore. I had my first experience of arcade-style Space Invaders too on these random 2-player consoles there.

Kinokuniya was everything I had hoped it would be. It was like a souped-up version of Borders, and with cheaper prices. The manga were still too expensive for me though, so I think I'll just search online for them in future. We spent something like 3 hours in that place though, drifting from the Graphic Design & Illustration sections, to Crafts, to Films, to Manga, and then at one point, we went into the Children's area. There's always fun to be had in the Children's area of a bookstore.

We saw a lot of books and authors from our youth but the highlight was the Pop-up/Flip Book section. We looked through heaps of such books and discovered a new fascination of how they were created. Look out for something of our own in future, because this has become the start of something potentially amazing.

Manifest

I completely forgot to write about Manifest last month. Perhaps because there was a distinct lack of rant-ably news-worthiness to the event?

I stuck to the usual routine this year - I attended with two certain friends of mine, on just the one day of the three-day event (always Saturday) and was again only interested in the trading hall. I didn't spare any attention to the video gaming hall (to be fair I didn't realise the building was there to begin with, it was so far away from all the rest), the anime being screened I could always just watch at home, and what dressing up I did see whilst walking about did little to encourage me to seek out the cosplaying events.

So, yes. Nothing much else to say. One highlight though was indulging this year in purchases of the non-print/buttonbadge/poster kind.
I bought, for example, a cubed cushion. A Companion Cube (Portal). Oh lordy, excuse me while I spasm in glee yet again. It's soft and squishy and very companion-y. I shall post up a picture of it when I can be bothered taking one. Here it is with the rest of my purchases:

 

Read-a-thon

The end of August also saw the end to my reading period for the MS Readathon. Donations are still welcome until the last day of September, which is great because I haven't even reached half of my target amount yet. But I clocked in at 20 books read, for just over 96 hours. Tallying up these figures satisfied that little part of me that really likes counting and list-making.

-- Book reviews

I think I'd have to add another category now to the books I've read. BookType04 (BT04) are ones that weren't recommended but that interested me anyway. I went into the library about halfway through last month and stumbled across the biography section. I hadn't stepped foot into that particular library in something like 8 years, and a lot had changed in that time. So, yes, biography section. So many names sprang out at me luring me in to learn about their lives. It was incredibly humanising stuff. With the biographies, I would wonder if they wrote so invasively with consent. With the autobiographies, I would wonder what on earth possessed them to want to share so much detail? TMI. Way TMI.

Dear Fatty by Dawn French was one such autobiography (BT03). I'd never seen any of her comedic work before (not counting her appearance in Harry Potter), but still saw this as possibly like the books I'd read by other comedians. It wasn't. Well, it was sort of like Tony Martin's Lolly Scramble in that there was some wit to be brandished, but the author didn't come across as a very funny person. She tries to be, I think. This isn't just my imposing some weird mandatory rule that funny people generally write books meant to be funny first, informative second. This is more like walking into a Danny McBride film for the first time (Your Highness) and having no one to blame but myself for disliking it/wasting money. In both instances, clearly I just wasn't connecting with their brand of comedy. Dear Fatty was still an interesting read, however, in that small world sense. All these well-known names were popping out as having worked in the same circle and time as her, and these early beginnings are always fascinating to read about. Chatty, but not my cup of tea. ★★

Hugh Laurie: The Biography by Anthony Bunko (BT04) didn't even need to be a great read for me to come away with something positive. The cover art was of a profile image of Laurie - just seeing those blue eyes was enough haha. The book went beyond what was necessary though in that it was a great read. It was somewhat sad to hear of the problems he's been struggling with, yet very much enjoyable to read of the praise/appreciation by people he had working relationships with. Hugh Laurie. Enough said. ★★★★

I liked A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future by Michael J. Fox a lot because I could very well imagine the words spoken in his voice. It was conversational and light-hearted even when dealing with harder issues like encroaching poverty while pursuing a dream, and the downward spiraling emotions that prefaced acceptance of an incurable disease. Duly inspiring. ★★★★

I'll just list a few more of the books I read out of the final 20 for now. Towards Zero, The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Death in the Clouds are all by Agatha Christie. I think Poirot made an appearance in only the latter two. I could not participate in any reading event and forgo any titles by Agatha Christie or Terry Pratchett. I also cannot help but enjoy every Christie and Discworld-related book that I read. Enjoyable as always. ★★★★★

 Okay, a couple of years ago I would frequent several LJ comms for FFVII. Obsessively. It was how I spent my nights because goodness knows I didn't have the energy for any sort of social life after coming home from school. Or that's my excuse anyway. And hey, I was sort of immersing myself in a community of writers, right? That had to count as social interaction... if a bit passive.

Anyway! I cannot remember why I stopped visiting them. Perhaps because school/uni began consuming more of my time. Perhaps it was the travelling. Or the myriad of computer problems I've had to deal with, and the resulting loss of bookmarks again and again.

In any case, I've recently been hunting down the writers I used to look out for, and the good news is, I've found a few of my favourites and those stories I used to follow? Yeah, they're all finished and shiny and just WAITING FOR ME TO READ. <333 This also means I've got some fantastic titles to add to my Epic FF list, which is great, because I just knew I'd read some incredible fics but for the life of me couldn't remember where.

All on journals, apparently. LJ, IJ, Dreamwidth... I didn't discriminate. And neither did the writers, so 's all good.

I've just finished reading Mad World by etrix and am on that end-of-story-high.

Now to move onto an actual novel. Don't worry, Readathon, I haven't forgotten you. ...Often.