Makeover

I finally updated the theme a bit. It’s been awhile since I’ve retouched my blog’s appearance ever since I got my hands on Hobonichi. I started filling my daily journal more often than I could maintain regular posts on this blog. Sometime along the way I even forgot that this blog existed at all. 😥 I guess I won’t call myself a blogger anymore right now, but perhaps I would continue this blogging activity closer in the future once my university life starts. I won’t have time to fill and decorate my journal wonderfully everyday after all. Ah, life. (I feel so old now.)

For these past few weeks I’ve been buying things that I’ll bring for my trip to Japan this coming September. There are quite a lot of things that I need to purchase that I’m afraid everything won’t fit into my luggage. I’ve bought several warm clothing, bath stuff, a bolster (seriously why are they so rare abroad), and other necessary medicines since I get sick pretty easily. 🙄 The university will have another meeting for us students to discuss more about what needs to be done before arriving in Japan so until then I guess I’ll just have to hold my shopping activity.

Anyways, I’ve also been catching up watching a lot of anime recently. Most of it are shoujo genre, though. I finished Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii yesterday and I must say it’s a really good anime (adapted from manga). I really love their insert song which Nike (the female protagonist) sings. I’m also watching the first season of Spice and Wolf. It’s not as bad as I thought as well even though it may look boring for the first few episodes. Now I’m just wanting to watch and know more about the characters!

As for this year’s birthday (which I celebrated 3 days ago), nothing much happened. Lol. Mom and Dad wished me a happy birthday. Dad only sent an edited image with a text ‘Happy Birthday Katherine’ and sent it to me through Whatsapp, though. I guess he’s just busy. My aunts sent texts through Line. Lastly several high school friends who happened to remember also sent wishes from Line. Haha. I do wish I could’ve actually gotten something for my b’day, though … Oh well.

That will be all for this update post, I think. 🙂

Summer 2016 Watch List

I know this post is a little bit late to write about, but in order to ~~just fill up my blog~~ keep my blog going I decided that this kind of post wouldn’t be so bad. This season has several nice titles whereas most of them are being adapted from manga. There’s also an original release from the studios which I find quite interesting as well.

ReLIFE

Yes, you may have read a post about this manga series that I wrote last year. I’m so happy it was finally released as an anime this summer with complete 13 episodes in one go! I especially loved the way the anime was being carried without missing the important events from the manga. The opening song, Button, was sung by Penguin Research. I really liked this series as an anime as well! I hope there’s another season for this as lots of people are demanding it too.

Orange

Orange is mostly about great friendship and romance with a bit of sci-fi element working inside the plot. This title was adapted from a manga series by Ichigo Takano. I really loved the manga so I was really excited to see how they planned to carry out the anime. I think it’s so far so good! This anime reminds me of Re:Zero and Boku Dake ga Inai Machi due to the presence of the time twist feature, but that’s what got me hooked!

91 Days

This is a great difference in genre from the two titles I’ve mentioned so far. 91 Days is all about revenge and mafia. ~~It’s an anime original so there’s no spoiler.~~ From what I’ve watched so far, I think the anime’s going to have some twisted plot that will be executed in the coming episodes. TK from Ling Tosite Sigure will sing the opening for this series! (Oh my god I love their songs.)

D.Gray-man Hallow

THEY DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! After 8249302 years of not knowing the continuation of the first season (because I hate reading the manga for some reason), finally they released the continuation of D.Gray Man this year! (Insert happy tears.) Sadly, this season will only have 13 episodes in total … Oh well, it’s better than nothing at all! I’m looking forward to what will happen to Allen Walker and their crew! 😆

Considering to watch: Handa-kun, DAYS (TV), Shokugeki no Souma: Ni no Sara (I know everyone’s hyped but I’ve read the manga so … hype lost.)

Still watching: Re:Zero. (Come on, Subaru, you look so pathetic.)

//edit: Fukigen na Mononokean is surprisingly good!

Prolonged procrastination

Hello there! Forgive me for being ~~unable~~ lazy to update my posts here. Lots of unimportant things happened and I had no spirit to update even once. Sigh. Even I’m pretty clueless myself about what to post in this entry. Usually I just do anime watch lists (this season’s pretty amazing!) and random boring life reports…

Anyways, my long school break is pretty relaxing except for the times when I had to attend Japanese lessons. We went to Belitung Island last month, it was quite amazing! (Check my IG for pics.) The beaches was truly mesmerizing (and scorching hot!). The food wasn’t that bad as well. It actually suited our tastes. Viva seafood!

During this holiday, I also picked up two new books. The first one was The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin. It’s full of heartbreaks caused by friendship and … jellyfishes. It’s an okay’ read for children (except for the part where this kid stole someone else’s money) as it also tells how to find themselves outside their comfort zone.

The second one was I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson. This book was really interesting and time consuming to finish. (The fonts are small and 400+ pages, hell yeah!) I had to say that this was one of the most captivating books I’ve ever read for some time. The genre’s romance, however it doesn’t only focus on girl meets boy story line but rather love in a greater and wider concept. The ending’s really nicely done. I feel I won’t need a new novel to binge read for awhile. Haha.

An update after some time

Nothing eventful has happened ever since the end of the end of the national exams. I’m literally free from school right now so I’ve been doing nothing else other than lazing around at home watching anime or attending my Japanese language course.

All I’ve been doing for these past few days are filling up my daily Hobonichi planner and playing with my new Koi Watercolors set that I bought secretly two weeks ago (psst). I also decided to get a new A6 sized Hobonichi cover (the one I had was A5) named ‘Cast’ for my future mini portable planner. Yes, another reason to waste money.

Image is taken from the Hobonichi website.

Kiev also ordered the same cover. Yay for matching planners! Our order just got shipped today. It’ll probably take two weeks or more for it to reach our hands. Sigh. The wait is always killing.

Mom bought me makeups even though I’ve never even once wanted to use them, especially lipsticks. Ugh. She also bought me a Pigeon branded compact powder for teens. There were many shades to choose from but she picked the ‘Gold’ color because she thinks it’s more suitable for my skin color. I was just … meh, because I’ve never used those kind of things before.

She got me a nice new and cheap shoes, though. (I’m sure it’s bound to be broken soon enough. Lol.) We saw it on a bazaar stand that was inside the mall after we bought the cosmetics. I’m pretty pleased with the design as well. Moreover, it’s wedges and not high heels! God bless the shoemaker. There were two colors available, khaki (which looks more like a beige, but khaki was written on the box) and black. I once again chose beige because I don’t fancy black for wedges. Also, those patterns on the shoes looks better on the beige color compared to black. Maybe I’ll buy something black for my footwear in the future …

I guess there’s nothing else I need to say other than sorry for not consistently posting in this blog. Lol. I’m too consumed with filling my planner with my daily thoughts which in turn made me neglect the existence of this blog. Sigh.

Spring 2016 Watch List

There are several promising series for this spring! These are several titles that caught my interest. I’ve also watched the first episodes for each anime and I think they’re quite promising. Most of the titles mentioned here has a manga serialised, so do check it out if you’re interested! (Beware of spoilers, though). So here goes the list!

Bungou Stray Dogs

I’m immediately interested with this anime when I saw the synopsis. So I decided to check the manga out before it aired lol. The story and plot was really entertaining and the characters were quite unique since they were named after famous Japanese novel writers! Bungou Stray Dogs has my favorite genre tags: mystery and supernatural, which is why I definitely fell in love with the series in an instant. Oh, and this anime comes in two cours which will be continued in October 2016 once the first season ends. Yay! (More info)

Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge

Finally, a slice of life anime! I’m glad there’s an additional anime of this genre in my list after Nijiiro Days (ongoing). The story centres around Tanaka, the laziest protagonist I’ve ever seen so far. I think he’s far more lazier than Oreki from Hyouka. I’ve watched the PV and it really gives off a relaxing sensation when I watched it. (More info)

Sousei no Onmyouji

I really love stories that has exorcism in it! It’s been awhile since I stumbled upon a story that involves this element since Kyoukai no Rinne, Nurarihyon and Ao no Exorcist. I’ve read the manga before I knew it’s gonna be serialised, so I could follow it just for killing time or might just drop it if I feel bored. Nonetheless, the manga’s plot is pretty good so I hope the anime adaptation doesn’t stray too far from it. (More info)

Mayoiga

This is the last anime in my season’s watch list. It’s about a group of people going to a lost village to turn a new leaf for their own lives. This anime is full of mystery and things that may look really absurd and strange at the first place but I hope some things will come to light later on as the story progresses. (More info)

So yeah that’s it! There’s actually several more series that I’d consider watching but with a little less interest since I’ve followed the for awhile now such as Boku no Hero Academia, but I thought that I’ve read too far so basically I’ll know pretty much what’ll happen in the anime. This is different from Sousei no Onmyouji because the manga is rarely updated so I could still look forward to the anime in case they surpass the manga’s story line.

Hobonichi: A New Obsession

Around two weeks ago, I decided to order a new planner with the help of Kiev and his dad’s credit card (lol). The planner’s brand is Hobonichi and you can find it online here. It took quite some time for the planner to arrive due to customs and delivery and it actually costed a lot (for a student). Like damn lots. I’m once again really thankful because Kiev decided to pay half of the total fees that I needed to pay. 😀

The pen is multicolour Uni Jetstream which was given out as a freebie along with the navy blue tissue holder. The plastic cover is sold separately but since it didn’t cost much I decided to get one to prevent anything bad on my actual cover. There are lots of designs for the cover, however I chose the simplest one I could get because it costs the same as the actual journal.

Basically, everything about this planner feels high quality. I love how the cover has slots when you open it. The rectangle and triangle bookmarks are also pretty useful to differentiate what you’ve bookmarked. Also, the special thing about this planner is that they have daily pages which you can fill to your heart’s content. No need to worry to run out of space!

An extra slot is available at the back of the cover. However, only clear covers have the zipper to access the slot. Decorative covers does not have one, which is why I decided not to purchase the decorative cover even though they look nicer.

Unproductive weekend

Me and my mom attended a meeting with the university representative yesterday. As a result of it, I don’t get to attend extra classes at school. (Yay for skipping.) Lots of things regarding to enrolment were explained but most of it were really boring to me. I was still a bit upset for only getting 65% reduction because the person who sat beside me got 80%. Well, I don’t really know if I’ll decide to enrol in the future.

We went to the mall today to repair my bro’s glasses. It has a big crack on it’s right frame. Both me and my brother had our eye conditions checked and found out that it became worse. 😐 The store clerk said it was probably caused by staring at phone and laptop screens to frequent and also activities that involved staring at screens in the dark … which were exactly the things that I usually did. (Oops.)

My brother ordered a new glasses while I didn’t. I swear the frames themselves are so expensive which was almost equivalent to a pair of lenses.

We went window shopping after that and decided to go into some boutiques. My mom then bought me a white blouse for formal events.

It has a short zipper at the back which would allow you to undress easily. This top fits perfectly with long black jeans which I also bought together with the blouse. I wouldn’t use this too frequent here because I rarely have formal occasions and wearing sleeveless tops are too cold for me. But I think I’d use this once I decided to study abroad … maybe.

Reads about death and mind

I finally got several books to post about ever since my last book related post. The reasons for the long wide gap of unavailable reads are: 1) I just didn’t have the time to read and; 2) There aren’t so many interesting books being published recently.

Which led to another reason why the books that I read this time was published like two or three years ago. They were great books and I wonder why it just caught my eye right now.

Counting by 7s

The story follows Willow Chance, a genius kid who is interested in plants and medical world. The book tells about her hardships and how she experiences and fights the depression from losing her loved ones together with her newfound friends, Mai and Quang Ha. Literally every character introduced in this book has one similarity in which they are lost and are swimming against the tide to overcome their own challenges.

I love the book for the reason I could relate to Willow and feel what she was feeling. It also presented some kind of lesson about real life situations that a person would definitely experience one day. Overall, this book was really nicely written!

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

This is indeed one of the funniest books I’ve read about death. The story centres around Greg Gaines, his friend Earl Jackson, and his dying friend Rachel Kushner. The first few hundred pages of the book was pretty entertaining and hilarious as it tells the everyday life story of Greg trying to not stand out at school along with his early filmmaking years with Earl. The rest of the few chapters nearing the end of the story was a bit depressing to me because of the ‘dying’ part.

This book may have comments on how similar it is with The Fault in Our Stars because of the ‘dying girl’ part. But this has nothing similar to TFIOS except for the dying thing. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl has it’s own originality and humour.

Psych101

This is actually the very first educational book that I’ve read about psychology. Nothing much to mention except for the amazing list of experiments that is included inside. It may be interesting for people who has high curiosity in science field.

P.S: This book is borrowed from Kiev. (Thanks for lending me!)

White Ver 2.0

I’ve finally got the chance to update this website’s layout into something at least ‘decent’. This layout was originally named White for it’s plainness but in the end it looked to similar to my previous layout which has a mixture of salmon red and tosca — my favorite color.

One thing that I’ve never had in my previous themes were footer widgets. I decided to put one in this layout for a variation. The sidebar does look cleaner now that it only has a menu and search bar. What’s more was that I actually (kind of) succeeded in making some sort of responsive theme. Almost eight years of blogging and I’d just discovered how to tweak codes about CSS Media right now. 😐 I still have lots to learn about.

Another thing that I changed was the favicon! It’s now a daisy. I kind of found it through the google search engine so I don’t remember the source. It reminds me of Dengeki Daisy.

Well, anyways, I’ve tested this site in iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad. I have yet to see how it looks like in Samsung smartphones, but it looked pretty much OK the last time I checked using my bro’s.

Lots of thanks to Kiev (that nick, though) for listening to my rambles when I was restlessly tweaking my codes.

A good news and a series of bad news

Long story short, I got admitted to Ritsumeikan. Even though I only got like 65% scholarship, I’m still pretty happy about it. It kind of meant that everything that I’ve done didn’t end in vain, I guess? My friends are urging me to just take the offer and complete the enrolment procedure. My mom says otherwise. My dad hesitates once more because of the living cost. I guess living Japan is just expensive.

Well, for today … I placed last with the longest time in 100m running due to the wet slippery soil (it rained so hard in the morning) which almost made me slip face first. In the end, one of my teachers accidentally swung their stopwatches to my hand and it hurt so damned much. I’m glad it wasn’t swollen or anything, but the aftereffect was I experienced a hell of excruciating pain through my fingers that made my hands shake for several minutes non-stop.

Afterwards, my friend sprayed lots of aerosol onto my fingers and then invited me to her house to practice basketball for tomorrow’s practical exam.

We practiced for an hour or two, got really exhausted, and then decided to buy ice cream at the nearest bakery in the area. I got myself an oreo cheesecake ice cream while she got herself a bottled-shaped ice cream with the flavour of bubblegums. It was pretty nice.

I also got to see her new house which was still under construction. I also met both her parents there. They invited me to take a peek into the house. It was quite big compared to my house. The stair steps are made of solid marble I almost thought it was from plastic wood. Her mom then invited me to stay over once the new house gets finished. I only nod and smile.

Anyways, the practical exam today got my limbs sore to the point I don’t feel like moving. There’s still basketball tomorrow. Guess I’ll just give it my best shot as an indoor type person.