March 5, 2025

270 - life update 🍗🎭🐈‍⬛

it's a liiiiife update - food, poems and...Pop Mart?

270 - life update 🍗🎭🐈‍⬛

Hey there, !

Been a goddamn minute hasn't it? Let's get into it:

1. We had Chinese New Year since I last chatted to you! How was the Zodiac for you? Did you love it? Apparently so, because I peaked over 100 subscribers in anticipation for the yearly Zodiac post, which meant it came out later because I had to upgrade my plan!! YAY FOR NEW PEOPLE welcome and hope you're gonna have a good year; I know I am (Roosters rise up). Here are a few cute celebration food pics:

   

2. Guys I'm PROGRESSING on my celebrancy course it is incredible I have now done 2/12 of my mock practical tasks. It is excruciating but we are slowly plodding through it D: Each one takes so much more work than I thought - the course work was easy to smash out, but there's just documents and props and writing and ALL OF IT that takes up so much time. Wow, it's like celebrancy is a job...(silly Vince). Shout out to my great actors who were so damn good at roleplaying and putting on funny accents too <3

3. I've slowly got through all the Oscar Best Picture nominees - at least, the ones I wanted to watch. Congrats to Anora which took out some of the big Oscars, but I think that Conclave deserved the win. I'll always love Dune: Part Two as well - I think I'm gonna try and watch A Real Pain after Kieran Culkin got the best Supporting Actor Oscar. For the other nominees...The Brutalist was too long, I can't find I'm Still Here to watch yet, and I'm definitely not going to watch Emilia Perez. Flow looks like a super cute animated movie too - an animated Latvian movie that won Best Animated Feature Film! Add 'em to the queue.

4. Random observation - every time I go into the city and walk through Melbourne Central, there's this hella long line in front of Pop Mart. Every week, without fail, people take time out of their day to line up for blind boxes! It's not even necessarily on a day that there's gonna be a drop (I've seen it enough times now) and yet the line persists. What is happening?!? Scarcity mindset? Not being able to save money for big purchases like houses? Cost of living really do be diverting money to these kinda hobbies, huh?

   

5. On a whim, I recently found a small copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets when I bought it at the Livraria Lello in Porto, and I remembered that I had got it to learn some of the sonnets, exercise my mind and keep my memory sharp. I got reminded of this when I watched Dame Judi Dench perform Sonnet 29 on Graham Norton - her performance was so utterly spellbinding, and so it became the first one I decided to learn! Haply, it didn't take too long, so I did get this one memorised pretty quick - feel free to test me when you see me next :D My aim is to learn 10 by the end of the year, but I'll probably actually get 5 done by then, knowing my procrastination :D Sonnet 18 is next ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?")!

   Sonnet 29

   When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

   I all alone beweep my outcast state,

   And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

   And look upon myself and curse my fate,

   Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

   Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

   Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

   With what I most enjoy contented least;

   Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

   Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

   (Like to the lark at break of day arising

   From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

   For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

6. Heeeeere's GANDALF!!

   

Chat soon :)

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📋Today's Question

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✔️Real Life Recommendations

1. The Map Library - specifically for DnD peeps, I have found that using a blank dry erase battle map with 1x1inch squares is nice, but doesn't fire up the imagination as much as I want to. This set of battlemaps I got from Roll and Play Press is quite beautiful, has 100 different maps, and is easy to use - I got on to them because of a previous Kickstarter (One-Shot Wonders) and they make some pretty nice products! Recommended :)
2. Glory Super Hot Crispy Sambal Anchovies - bursts of crispy, spicy umami that are perfect to add to a bowl of rice. I tried it at a friend's place and now I'm hunting for it at asian grocers. If I don't end up finding it then AMAZON IT IS.

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🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway

1. The Universe of Discourse : Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more - pretty cool, huh? I wonder if it's the same for Asian surnames - like...did they come from somewhere?

2. The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - Ursula K. Le Guin is so good at writing. Absolute GOALS on getting across this level of fascinating thoughts. I read this after my piece on 'filling your bags' with education and was like 'oh okay so other people explore these ideas too, but so much better'.

3. The familiar loneliness of the Kinetoscope - history doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme...