I have been a bit of a busy bee, although I’m technically still unemployed. What I have been busy with are a) filing job applications, b) painting for shows in Manila (which I’m super fucking grateful that I still get to do even though I live here now, for now), c) planning for a film which I’m not going to talk about until we have wrapped and/or maybe not even then, and d) attempting to abate the pervasive, overwhelming sense of dread that wraps itself around me every day. So, technically unemployed, but a lot on my plate, I think. Maybe I’m just a chump who’s bad at managing stress and time and resources.

But wow, yeah, I was here to talk about three things that have become staples in my life. I’ve stopped watching mukbangs, lol, but I’ve carried on knitting and gorging on K-pop and K-drama and the occasional meal, though I’ve yet to find a decent Korean BBQ place here.

It’s been quite amusing to realise that I can now watch things with subtitles while knitting, muscle memory and that. Speaking of subtitles…

01 Crash Landing on You

Holyyyyyyyyy shit, this was so entertaining. It’s so good? Like indulgent good. I’m tired of everything being prestige~ to be frank, so sometimes I really look for things that are just fun and substantial, period.

Anyway, I’ve been watching quite a few K-dramas since finishing this, and while the ones I’ve seen are more or less good, they do not hold a candle up to Crash Landing on You. (Dunno what that means if this is the only K-drama you’ve seen and you hate it.)

What do I like about it? First of all, just because the current one I’m watching is very not this: the score of CLOY is very not distracting. The pivotal or emotional moments are carried by the acting and like, a situational drama, if that makes sense.

Then, there’s the supporting cast of characters, which in some ways, you become more invested in. Because they are endearing and shows a perspective that’s quite unlike the dramas I’ve watched and am watching, given that a lot of the supporting characters are North Korean. Given all this, of course the setting is not something you see often, which makes it all the more fascinating to me. As much as I was rooting for the South Korean protagonist, Yoon Se-ri, to find her way back to Seoul, I really, really missed all the scenes set in North Korea.

I guess the main draw of the series has been the chemistry between Captain Ri Jeong-hyeok (who is a top-notch tsundere who is also a snacc) and Se-ri (who is sort of an atypical female protagonist, based on my limited experience of the genre), which honestly made the series. I think it’s really refreshing for me also to see a story like this unfold between an older couple. So far, I’ve been watching college-age dramas, and while those were cute, too, this felt like it had more depth. I definitely appreciated the lack of aegyo in this series, I’ll say that.

Look, I didn’t anticipate to be laughing and bawling and being invested in this, but I was, and I can’t stop talking about it. It’s piqued my interest in the K-drama world and has, so far, not been surpassed just yet.

02 Winsor & Newton Liquin™ Oleopasto

Lately, I’ve been trying to add more texture to my paintings and have them be even more gestural, teetering on abstraction. It’s been amazing. I’ve always been more or less polished when it comes to my work. Or, at least, I started out like that, but now, I think that with muscle memory (again!) and just a general sense of reckless abandon, it’s been easier to kind of let loose and connect what I want to be on the canvas with what’s in my head. I’m a shit copier, truth be told, and it’s partly because I’m impatient, but also because I always try and make it look exactly like what I am seeing from the source image. It doesn’t work because, as has been established, I’m a shit copier, and then I feel bad because I’ve made something horrendous which makes me feel like a shit artist.

I don’t usually copy images anyway, but lately, I’ve been playing around with different painting mediums and just letting loose a little bit more, and it’s quite gratifying to see what sort of textural variety I get. Can’t wait to get a hang of it more.

03 Nissin Demae Ramen Hokkaido Miso Tonkotsu Ramen

My favourite soup-based instant ramen so far. Instant ramen typically just feels like a bowl of soup, and although this variant obviously is miles away from a really, really, really good bowl of tonkotsu ramen, curly noodles aside, this stuff tastes so good.

I have recently been adding a bit of frozen veggie dumplings just to add a little bit more nutrients to this admittedly rather unfortunate meal for an adult to have, but IDK. I grew up on sodium-rich quick meals, and that’s what gives me comfort to this day. It’s like a very warm and salty hug, and I try not to eat it as often as I would maybe like.

Anyway, these are three things at the moment, but I think we all know that knitting is still kind of my main new discovery (alongside Red Velvet, which… another time). It’s the perfect social isolation activity, and I’ve had to tear myself away from completely immersing myself in ongoing knitting projects projects on account of me needing to be at my studio to, you know, get actual work done.

Ah, well. I still haven’t completely updated my January knitted projects (first part here), and truthfully, I’ve lost my thread (lol) of progress as I jump from one to the other on account of dumb restless behaviour. In any case, basically, I am still into knitting, thank da Lord.