proof of life
Hey there, thanks for opening! Some personal updates and a bit considerable helping (lol) of a TWICE meltdown, so I hope you're into that! Q4 is nuts so far, my friend, and we're about only a month away from Christmas! Wth. Hope you find something useful here! -K
Personal updates
So after more or less 2 years of not seeing my friends, I was able to finally meet up with some of them! Hay. As you know, we haven't really been fond of going out, and most of my outside adventures were mostly due to RTO, so yeah. Being outdoors is still jarring! Haha. It was also our first time on the new Skyway to QC--nagulat ako na biglang QC na siya hala. To repurpose this quote from my sister, "It's as amazing as yung transition from Greenbelt 1 to Greenbelt 5" HAHAHA.
Anyway, C and I visited my best friend J and her dogs (!!!), meeting the newest one Tobey, who is this absolutely charming 6-month old husky who liked scratching his chin on C's shoe T____T It was so cute and dumb I totally forgot to take a photo of that precise scritching moment. 15/10, will definitely do again.
Gang was also complete for Ice's birthday! I think the last time we gathered similarly was also for Ice's birthday in 2019--god it feels so long ago! I hope I can pull off a similar get-together for December--preferably in a large, open-air venue so we can all be there safely :) manifesting this to end 2021 strong!
Fannish updates sksksk
Man, our album pre-orders for TWICE's "Formula of Love" came home last night and I now perfectly understand why people like doing this! 😂😂😂 what a truly emotional and spiritual experience haha 😂😂😂
https://twitter.com/thegshift/status/1462064049114398720
This Jihyo ID fell out just as we were freaking out about C's Sana pulls (G O R G E O U S btw) and we screamed as if a cockroach had just flown into the room. Sorry neighbors. ✌️😂
Also I'm half-mad half-glad I got into this late because jesus christ. I am legit googling buy-and-sell acronyms just to keep up. Mining pcs=the only mining i will tolerate, lbr.
Rappler has a pretty good explainer on photo cards, and as a beginner, I found it really useful!
https://twitter.com/rapplerdotcom/status/1462244908933484544
Anyway, what I like best about being in fandom--and I have been in many for the last decade and a half or so, I think--is that absolutely delightful feeling of a shared sort of madness. Haha. I mean this in the best way possible, of course. Para siyang... mass shared hallucination na walang timezone or borders haha especially now that everything is online. I think during the pandemic, it became all the more important that we could talk about other shared things other than our shared pandemic-induced crises. It's a relief, actually--shared joy, to counteract our default shared grief.
Random kwento: When I was younger and still with the paper, one of my colleagues in Research was a true-blue K-Pop stan. This was in the early-to-mid 2010's, and her group of choice was EXO. I could not wrap my head around it at the time, but she would go to every iteration of every concert she could go to, whether in Seoul, Singapore, Manila or wherever. I thought it was particularly costly--and it was--but then again, what's a job for, right? Binibiro namin siya before na ginagawa nyang Quiapo ang Korea, and she would laugh it off good-naturedly. She studied Korean, she would do signages in Korean during our downtime, and I looked forward to her post-concert kwento whenever she got back from one. At the time, I was involved mostly in TV-based wlw fandoms, so I understood that intense feeling of kinship one can experience with performers and creators, but stanning over TV is significantly less expensive. I respected her determination to put her money where her heart is.
And now, ten years later, here I am. ANUNAAAA 😂😂😂 So damn particularly envious about older fans who got to watch TWICE when they were in Manila in 2019 😭😭😭 C and I are very avid concert-goers, and though we're as anxious as everyone about seeing crowds in some post-pandemic scenario, I certainly won't mind trying for TWICE's next tour.
https://twitter.com/thegshift/status/1460094605127725057
From the Internet
- Zooming from the Office? Worst of both worlds, says NYT.
- This thread about Gunkanjima island in Japan is a reminder of what can happen to communities that bleed their natural resources dry, I suppose. Interesting and scary.
- Are your employees angry about being asked to return to the office? They probably are, here's why via FastCompany.
Meme
Here's my favorite meme for this week, which encapsulates the struggle and the madness lmao
https://twitter.com/WholesomeMeme/status/1460817199313174528
Bonus content
nbd, just Jihyo god things (also i really REALLY love this song)
https://twitter.com/kjschae/status/1461098838308044807
Thank you for listening to me ramble about this week. I hope the coming week is good for all of us. Hope you had a restful weekend!
XO,
K