auburn

I like the roast level of my teas to be inversely proportional to the outdoors temperature. Craving some oolongs now that we've settled into fall (though there's still so much green tea to drink through).

Tie Guan Yin leaves showing the hint of red around the edges from tossing of the tea leaves during processing.

Everlane Cardcase

After slimming down my wallet and replacing it with a binder clip, I decided to finally buy a cardcase. Initially I was thinking of buying this one on Etsy, but decided against it because the Chromexcel will likely be too thick for what I'd like in a wallet (a bag or boots is a different story).

So in the end I went with the trusty Everlane.

(hey guys I learned how to correctly set white balance!)

The leather is good enough in my novice judgement, but importantly it doesn't add too much thickness to the cardcase. I do like the contrast in surface texture (pebbled vs. smooth), and the slant detail. It's also roomier than it looks, fitting 4.5 (one half size) cards plus folded bills. It's also not overly tight, making it easy to slide things in-and-out, but things won't fall out either.

Overall a nice, solid cardcase. Would recommend to anyone looking for a wallet with minimal footprint without being spartan.

forest

Boots and coats are two categories of clothing (and sweaters and scarves, but I've got more restraint now) that I particularly care for and is willing to allocate significant budget for. Good thing the Canadian winter partially justifies these.
(Any suggestions for quality sweaters? Preferably fisherman style)

I've given up on my boots search. It's down to either Wolverine 1ks in brown or some chelsea boot in black (Grenson Grace?). The choice would depend on what PEY I get, thus decision put off for another time.

Instead efforts are directed towards a coat search, which is more fruitless, sigh. The perfect vision: forest green duffel coat with a hood with >80% wool. Out of the 4 requirements, I'm lucky to even meet 2"orz

EDIT: I LIED. THIS IS PERFECT. Time to go try it on :D

This is the most perfect one I've found so far:

images via.

Unfortunately, its from a Korean site, and the product that it's actually selling is the bag. GG.
Though I love the styling of this look, specifically the colours, proportions and pattern.

So the other candidates are:

topshop / babaton

 (note how none of them are forest green. I literally could not find forest green coats. welp)

The Topshop isn't all that bad, but worried about the wool's quality and don't like the high contrast between the toggle and the coat. It is unique as the toggles are off-centered. If I end up settling (not expected, since I'm not in actual, dire need of a coat), this will be the one to get. The Babaton one should have nicer material, with a higher price tag to match. Also don't like how it looks on the model, but do like the more streamlined design.

PS. I think I found my dream leather jacket. Can we appreciate that fit? And for once someone decided to minimize the hardware!

PPS. yeah I get why people love death by elocution now. The coat tag mmmmm.

shoot

The way to build habit is to put the necessary equipment at the space-time location where/when you want the habit to occur.
^that's not the clearest sentence, let me illustrate with an example.

Habit to build: take more and better photos
Set-up: leave camera out, on manual mode, right beside the kitchen so there's no obstacle against taking food photos.

Here's the preliminary results.

Moonlight white tea

Longjing (dragonwell) tea

Kale salad, which is so much better after a couple stirs in the wok (aka warm).

bi-decennial

Third decade of life, bring it on.

The Wind Rises

I think I'd be okay if this was Miyazaki's last film, there's enough in here to think about for a long long time.

image via dA. (this one is also beautiful)

This film says so much that an extra hour would benefit the pacing. Especially at the beginning when there were a lot of time skip, and to build up Jiro and Nahoko's relationship more.

Despite the pace, it is still so so so so so beautiful, exactly what you'd expect from Ghibli. Though this is the first time that I've noticed the quality of the animation (perhaps I was just not paying attention for previous films), especially for the smoke and small details. One day I will have this on blu-ray to truly appreciate the image quality.

Since the main character, Jiro, is an engineer, all you engineering people (and everyone else) definitely needs to watch this. Miyazaki frames the Zero plane as the result of Jiro's pursuit to design something beautiful rather than a machine intended for destruction. This disparity in PoV should remind us of the engineer's duty to society. Here's a better worded version of what I'm trying to say:

Miyazaki’s films are often preoccupied with absence, the value of things left behind and how the ghosts of beautiful things are traced onto our memories like the shadows of a nuclear fallout, and “The Wind Rises” looks back as only a culminating work can. His stories aren’t about the things we’ve lost so much as they’re about the act of remembering them, and though “The Wind Rises” doesn’t forgive us for our transgressions, it directs us back to the beautiful ideas from which they first sprang.

via this review, which is a great analysis.

But even if you don't care about all of this, the film should invoke a sense of pride as an engineer seeing the plane come into fruition. Bonus for depicting slide rules and hand drafting, makes me glad we have calculators and CAD now. Would not want to be designing planes by hand...

I leave you with the main theme:

PS: "le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre" is a good quotation to live by.

belly

Watching how it's made videos really makes you appreciate the end product. Check out the process of making a yixing teapot (found via /r/tea, awesome place):





I went to examine my own pot after watching these videos, and am so impressed by how smooth the transition from spout to body is.
(Finally learned how to use manual mode via fiddling with Angela's camera at camp)