niflheim

^what comes to mind first is still the many hours I spent leveling there in Ragnarok.

So there was a new ATR on FFXV today. They are not kidding with the game's tagline of "fantasy based in reality", all those physics considerations woahhh. I like the direction they took magic in, especially the interaction with the weather. The whole technology vs. magic reminds me of FFX's set-up, perhaps there will be a similar twist?

In other news, there was a SE sale in the playstation store so now I owe most of the early FF titles except...III, IV, VII. Though I'll play the VII remake, and consider Bravely to be a replacement for IV.

styx

I doubt that I'm the only one who spends considerable amounts of time thinking what a complete shoe closet would consist of. The end game if you would call it.

There exists many previous iterations scattered across whatever journal I happen to have used at the time, and having come across one version recently made me chuckle at how my preferences have changed. The past list involved a lot more heels than I care to wear now.
So in efforts of making this comparison easier in the future, here's what my ideal...yet practical collection circa January 2016.

• White sneakers with a thin sole that looks good dirty. Also functioning as the sole pair of travel shoes in warm weather if need to be. I hope that I'll like the stan smiths enough to not have to go through the trouble of ever needing a replacement. The agony was also comparable to that of finding a place to rent. 
• Minimal sandal with low heel that's comfortable for walking long distance. My HGs...which I think are discontinued, or at least replaced by Trixies? Not a major problem since they look identical. 
• Black loafers, plain almond shaped toe and not a straight or high throat line. It's sad that the most perfect pair I've found yet is a really cheap pair from my last trip back to China. Accordingly, its sole disintegrated in a year. I would love to buy a BIFL version of this shoe category, but more traditional men's loafers are cut too high and obviously not an almond toe. If I come across them again in China...will buy 5 pairs as back ups because black loafer is my desert island style. But I do like the kitty flats ;_;
• Not black loafers for fancy occasions when there are too much standing/walking required for heels. My current pair actually functions as both, but the stitching is becoming undone and requires repairs of which I'm too lazy to atm. Charlotte Olympia's virgo flats would be perfect for this slot, but I was too late this sale cycle to get them...and it does not look like it's a permanent item "orz
• Pointed toe ankle boots, really I'm referring to the Acne Jensen. The metal toe accent and triangular gusset opening is swoon. Though my current pair is perfectly fine, well except for the worn down heel which also needs repairs, so I am hoping to not have to replace them any time soon. 
• Pointed toe heels, simple and relatively comfortable are my only criteria. Thinking of Manolo BBs, but this is very far off into the future.
• Snow boots: bean boots got my covered (y)
• Over the knee leather boots: quite a bit of choice here between the 5050, La Canadienne, etc etc. Can do without, but would make winters more bearable. 
• "Beater" boots, rather the more accurate description would be boots that can take a beating. Activities so far include hiking and non-active construction site visits. Fulfilled by my Cords pair.
• Country boots, fulfilled by my C&J pair, though if you want to be a stickler to tradition, country boots aren't suppose to be black. 
• Dress boots, of which I'm eyeing this. Funny how it's a brown pair, see above. I blame C&J for having such beautiful scotch grains.
• Jodhpurs, specifically this pair which has successfully stolen my heart. Although this is a pretty heavy overlap with pointed toe ankle boots, but alas boots are my weakness. 
• Double, double monks. Two because they will be my primary work shoes, along with the black loafers. Have a tan pair already, which is great because I will need a lot of time to save up for two of St. Chrispin's 630. Not a surprise that the brand of Jodhpurs linked above is owned by the same people.

The influence of /r/gyw is real.

Post-game bonus: a gorgeous pair of heels for evening formal events, more likely to be in a displace case in my room rather than being worn.

...

I'm working on shining my monks this weekend. It requires a ton of patience which I'm having a hard time summoning, though my backlog of podcasts are helping just a tad. Doubting I will get it finished in these two days, but will report back since the seasons have changed such that I have direct sunlight for a couple of minutes everyday now.

Sputnik Sweetheart

Stayed up late last night to finish this, no regrets.

I do enjoy Murakami's novels more so than his short stories. Though the sample size of short story collection is two, so not very statistically significant. But this also applies to Vonnegut.

Anyways, this counts one of my favourite Murakami's. Because the ending was very...unexpected, and also because each of the three characters all say some heart wrenching things.

Let's start with Miu:

It didn't look like she was trying to find the right words, rather that she was immersed in some personal memory, one without beginning and without end.

and no matter how close you are to someone it's not that easy to be with someone else day after day

^thank you for speaking my mind.

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

and then the narrator K:

And I couldn't just shelve those feelings, for there was nothing to take their place.

So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the things that's stolen from us - that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.

Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melting together in a single overlapping figure. And as we live out loves we discover - drawing towards us the thin threads attached to each - what had been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding onto them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting.

^reminds me of Evangelion and the these two lines "我只要沿着记忆的路线 / 到最深处纵然那只是瞬间" from the ED of 仙剑三.

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only only right thing to do. To dream, to live in the world of dreams - just as Sumire said. But it doesn't last forever. Wakefulness always comes to take me back.

Finally, Sumire:

The me sitting here and the image of me I have are out of sync  

^this sounded so familiar to me when I first came across it. I thought it was because I read a prototype short story. But I was wrong, it is because I had a One Piece wallpaper featuring Sanji with that quotation. Correction, I have another Sanji wallpaper, by the same artist, with another Murakami quotation "only the dead stay seventeen forever" (Norwegian Wood).

Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.
[...]
In the world we live, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.
Confusion, confusion.
Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?

^my first impression of this is Bebop's theme of "life is a dream", and damn was I spot on:

So what are people suppose to do if they want to avoid a collision [what happens when what we know and what we don't know are not separated. Thinking is a strategy to make the two live together in peace] but still [not think]? Sound hard? Not at all. Logically, it's easy. C'est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.

and finally:

That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. 

perchance to dream

This is a rare out of character, personal post. From last night:

When I have trouble falling asleep, like today, I often think as if I'm jotting my thoughts down as a blog post. And because it's during an effort to fall asleep, I can usually resist the temptation to grab my phone lying beside me and type it out. Also because thoughts come to me faster than I can type it out.
But not tonight. Tonight these incoherent thoughts make it outside of just my head. So warning, ramblings ahead.

From my newsfeed, I understand that today was Bell's lets talk day about mental health. I've also read posts from some friends about mental health, sharing their stories. I don't really have one to share, or maybe I'm extra good at fooling myself that I'm okay. Though I am good at convincing myself, as I've tried unsuccessfully to explain that to people. My closest attempt came up in a convo with Rui about how I seem so logical in my decisions, because I can't trust how I feel because it could either be how I really feel (instinct or gut feeling)...or what I've convinced myself how I ought to feel.

Anyways, I was getting to the point that, even when I feel absolutely shitty, I'm still too chicken to even wish in my head that I would die. This reminds me of one quotation, which I don't think I've posted, so here it is:

The reason you will not say it is when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it's true.

But you know it's true now.

...
Dying is scary, as Hamlet so eloquently puts it. These are my favourite lines:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

Instead I wish I can unexist, because I know exactly the outcome of that. It's much more convenient than dying, no one feels sad either since I wouldn't have existed in the first place. This is important to me since if somehow the thought the suicide even creeps up, I immediately think of how sad my parents would be and effectively vanquishes any desire to die. I might have told Alex a bit of this, casually brought up in a conversation, and it freaked him out a little? But might've not since I don't recall, though memory is not to be trusted anyways. Two quotations come to mind, but those have been posted before and I trust my future self to get the reference.

To elaborate on the parents bit, I do very much feel an obligation to them. One because literally I owe them my life, so better keep on living that. Though it's arguable that I had no input on whether I'd like to exist in the first place, but let's stay away from that since it gets fuzzy fast. Second is filial obligation to take care of them when they become incapable of doing so (implying that I have become capable in the meantime), both financially and emotionally, because they did that for me when I was a helpless kid. I currently think that this sense of obligation should exist.

Oh back to the previous topic, maybe I won't recognize if I do / did / will feel depressed because I don't think my circumstances justify feeling that way. Things are quite s'well. Even the worst of it in 2B...well I don't know. Maybe that's a lie and I just don't want to know *shurg* But on the other hand, like how I'd defend #firstworldproblems, everyone has their personal hell and it would really be the worst to not (recognize? Acknowledge? Ugh I can't think of the right word. Trivialize!) someone else's problems. Well it's equally bad to do that to yourself. I guess I need a clear and abrupt sign that something is wrong before I can recognize it.

And that abruptly ends this mess of thoughts. It did arise a mild desire to pick up The Life of the Mind again. But velleity. Though more practically because I still have a stack of Murakami to go through (tonight's chapters of Sputnik Sweetheart was amazing, so much truth in Miu and Sumire's words), and I've just borrowed three more books on cooking.

Annnnd, with that we are safely out of the realm of late night thoughts.

浪漫被岁月滴水穿石

Today is really one of those days, not quite like a flat line since that would imply monotonous, but rather a line with random squiggles that cancel out. An adequate description as this.

throwback to first posting this almost 4 years ago, but hey this time I found the MV!

The transition to this mood was triggered by this song coming up on shuffle while working. Somehow listening to the first couple lines of lyrics just hit so hard.

若我爱你的方式 
已不同开始 
不如我们变换下位置 
看一看原来它的样子 
我害怕那种坚持 
无声的休止 
浪漫被岁月滴水穿石

Then it just seems that the rest of songs to come up from shuffle conspires to maintain this hazy mood. Well it won't be too bad of an evening with delicious roasted vegetables and a new stack of books on cooking.

...

Okay feeling more  alive after eating. Let's take this opportunity to remind myself of the good things that happened today: treats in the lunch room and on-point eyelining. And if I may elaborate on the eyelining part, a) I can't believe I spent so many years not believing in eyeliners and b) despite the subsequent many years of eyelining, I still have so much trouble getting the shape right. Curses different eye lids. Though I think I'm getting the hang of getting a cat line right for my lids, it's a 3-part geometry.

The Strange Library

I guess I glossed over the description where it said this was illustrated, a cool short story.

2/7
Onto Sputnik Sweetheart

stir

I've been so spoiled by Fuji colors that iphone photos in my apartment's terrible lighting is so cringe inducing. Hence the lack of my cooking on this blog. But here's some more belated food photos anyways:
 

 The most umami smelling pot of soup ever

But weirdly it doesn't taste as rich as it smells. Rather, the smell is the odd one out since there's barely any ingredient that's especially rich in glutamate. Also finally used up that 1lb bag of pinto beans that I bought when I first moved down, so glad I can move onto better beans now. Let this experience be proof that for food products, you usually get what you pay for, cheap beans = beans that will never turn creamy.

 Can I say that I cook southern food now?

Tried another corn bread recipe, this time from Kenji so you already know that it turned out amazing. Corn cake is a more accurate description since it's so freakin tender. I'd say this is as good as the ones from South City Kitchen.
On the chili side, it was mostly an improvisation of spices but it turned out well. Great if loaded up with cheese mmmm.

I've only realized while grocery shopping on Sunday that carrots and greens were the only vegetables that I've eaten in the past...month? So out went to the lentil bolognaise recipe that I wanted to try and in came this vinegar roasted vegetables that I saw on Budget Bytes. The utility of that food blog is right up there with Kenji's.

I subbed Chinese black vinegar for balsamic and my gosh I forget how much I love that vinegar. Bonus points for my whole place smelling like that from the roasting. It probably doesn't sound pleasant, but my grandparents or parents would boil vinegar whenever I was sick as a kid to help ward off the cold, so there's that nostalgia component for me as well.
But delicious vinegar :D