This is the second part of this post, where we go to Santa Monica, UC San Diego, and then I go to UCLA without my parents to stay with my friend for a few days. First up, the beach!
I don’t have a ton to say about the beach, because all we really did was walk around for a bit. So here are photos of said walking around!
It’s weird to think that in a month I’ll be living closer to Santa Monica than to “home”. It’s weird to think that “home” might change soon.
In this one corner there were SO! MANY! BABY! SQUIRRELS! Please now enjoy a detour into amateur wildlife photography with me because they were SO small and SO cute and I COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW CLOSE THEY WERE TO ME.
This June I went to Rome/Italy for the first time! I’m a big fan of pasta and art, so Rome is a good place for a tourist with these interests.
I went with my dad, who had a work conference, and that was a. lot. of time to spend with him. And I didn’t super understand what having only him as proper social contact for 24 hours a day for 10 days would do to my mental state!! Short-sighted on my part, seeing as I try to avoid my parents normally, but we live and we learn. As a result of this miscalculation + the stress of traveling, I felt pretty depressed for a few days over this trip and it was really scary! One of the biggest giveaways of my depression flaring up into a bad spot is when I lose my appetite completely; I enjoy eating for fun and regularly melodramatically whine about how I’m absolutely starving and must eat something right this second or else wither away into nothingness, will somebody please bring me some chips!!!!! When I’m depressed, I lose my desire to eat completely. It’s really weird and I don’t know how it works, but when that happens I can easily not eat for, like, 12 hours with nary a tum grumble at all. So that happened in Italy, which was scary and made me feel really guilty for getting to travel to such an amazing place and then not wanting to get out of bed at all.
That said, what a time it was. The art was beautiful, the architecture was beautiful, the people were too, and I’m already mentally planning a trip back for myself – maybe not in the middle of summer when it’s roasting hot. We hit all the main tourist attractions while we were there, so ideally next time I’ll get to spend a lot more time looking at art in museums and galleries.
These are some photos from my phone, but I’ll pull together some DSLR pictures for a post! Hopefully sooner rather than later, but that’s a battle I’ve already lost lol.
And lastly, a page of doodles in the back of my Passion Planner of things I saw a lot of there. It’s funny (in the interesting funny sort of way, not the interesting haha sort of way) to see the smaller, everyday things that are so different from place to place. I think that’s why I like going to grocery stores when I travel so much lol – it really shows how people live, in a way that I think you would miss if you just went to the major tourist attractions and nowhere else.
2. favoritez
Eddy de Pretto’s Random performance on Colors: I’ve been listening to this YouTube video on repeat, and I do not mean that in a hyperbolic way. I mean that I have actually been rewinding the YouTube video (the actual song recording on Spotify just doesn’t sound as good to me?) over and over again while I cross stitch or edit photos or reply to emails or whatever. I have no idea what he’s saying parçe que je parle no bien français, but this is really good. I dig his monk going bowling look, too.
New phone: This month I got a new phone! I had the iPhone 6 and now have the XS. It’s very nice to have a phone that doesn’t crash apps all the time and act very slow, as well as to be able to take portrait photos of my cat lol. I think this might be the last iPhone I get because of pricing/functionality/very obviously planned obsolescence.
Stardew Valley: Like any young child who disliked violence in video games and enjoyed games where the goal is to befriend people and chickens, I loved Harvest Moon. I played it a lot and had a notebook that I kept notes in, featuring illustrations of townspeople and their favorite things. (I married Ellie, in case you were wondering, and in the Nintendo DS version where I played as a girl, I married no one because I thought all the eligible male bachelors were ugly. Ten-year-old me had high standards, apparently.) My bf told me about Stardew Valley by describing it as “a better and bigger Harvest Moon”, I downloaded it on my phone (the only time I’ve ever bought an app with my own money), and now I’m obsessed. It’s just like Harvest Moon but better and bigger and I’m amazed that one person made it all, from the character design to the music to the coding and technical stuff. The game is basically a farming simulator, where you play a person who has inherited a farm and now must make a life for yourself in Stardew Valley. You farm crops, you raise animals, you mine gems in caves, you fish, you befriend villagers, you marry someone, YOU HAVE THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE. I think this is a game for people who enjoy games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, where you don’t shoot anyone or steal any cars – you just give your neighbors cookies and hug your goats everyday.
3. not favoritez
Shopping for sunglasses: I’m Chinese, and one of the facial features people with my ethnic background tend to have is a very low nose bridge. This makes it difficult for glasses to stay up on my face. In turn, this makes it very difficult for me because I need glasses to see. I want to get prescription sunglasses because 1) I live in sunny California and 2) I don’t like contact lenses, and it’s been hard finding nice sunglasses that look good and don’t fall off my face immediately. It’s 2019, y’all! Why aren’t there more options for me!? Gentle Monster is cool and all but I don’t have that kind of money!!
What I’ve learned implicitly from family: I’ve been realizing a lot of beliefs I have are pretty dang harmful to me, my mental health, and my ability to live and be cool and fine. Those beliefs had to have come from somewhere, and a lot of them come from my parents and how they raised me! Whether intentionally or not, I’ve taken on a lot of things, and this month I realized I think affection/love is tied to achievement/success (and this is part of why I’m terrified of failure bc it equals being alone and uncared for 4evr). Fun fun funnnn. This video on manipulative parents made me :/, but (not to get all emo or anything) I think it’s better to become aware of these things so I can excavate these shitty beliefs from my mind and grow better.
4. camera roll
Another UC meme, lol.
Rose, bud, thorn via Cupcakes & Cashmere: I hate small talk and like to squirrel away questions to ask people to force them to open up to me, so I thought this was a good one. The idea is you go over a positive thing currently going great (rose), something with the potential to grow (bud), and a struggle or negative you’re going through (thorn). I really like this one, so I hope I remember it next time I’m catching up with someone.
Officine Universelle Buly 1803: A beautiful store’s Instagram I discovered via Lorna Luxe‘s Instagram, filled with things that would be so cool to get or give as gifts. All madly out of my price range, of course!
A Stardew Valley comic that made me actually laugh out loud.
Annamarie Tendler Mulaney’s interview with Nylon: Talking about women by mentioning their husbands first is something I dislike doing, but I discovered Annamarie via her husband John (the comedian, the skinny white guy that wears suits on stage) and this article via his Instagram, so I’m afraid I will here. On this picture, his caption reads ‘As I once said to [Annamarie] “you are an art project that is always evolving”‘ and that is when I melted. What a lovely way to view one’s life, right? Her many artistic ventures from makeup to lampshades to embroidery to looking cool as fuck are so cool to be able to watch. And that sentiment of being a constantly evolving art project is something I hope to keep with me instead of freaking out about how I don’t have everything planned out perfectly.
5. goal recap
THE GOOD
Repaired my necklace that I wear everyday
Started investing (opened a Roth IRA! HOW ADULT)
Registered for orientation at UCLA
THE NOT SO GOOD
Find new sunglasses
Do a whole lot of cleaning/decluttering
Finish my LA post for WordPress on time (not that there is an on time, but it’s been like 2 months lol)
Sent my transcripts for UCLA late (snail mail takes a while, who knew!)
Remembered things I did/didn’t do this month tbh
That’s all I’ve got for June! I can’t believe we’re already a good week into July. Next month I’ll have my UCLA orientation, and the month after that I’ll be moved in there – so weird to think about. I hope your summers are going well and that you’re taking good care of yourselves ~
At the end of May I drove down to LA with my parents to visit UCLA, my future school. I took some photos, I want to talk about them, we all know how blogs work. We did a tour led by one of those backwards walking student guides, met up with some of my dad’s friends from college who live in the area, and I dealt with some intense impostor syndrome.
I’m always into a blue and orange combination. And I really liked the “adventure starts here” lettering!
UCLA has a gorgeous campus. It is green and sunny and feels like California in all the best ways. It makes me want to post on my studyblr more and be a Cool College Gal laying on the grassy lawn reading smart books. It also kind of makes me want to have an anxiety attack on the bathroom floor. During our tour I felt intensely insecure about my place there and scared of myself, scared of failure, scared of my ability to self-sabotage so that I fail, and eventually I realized that I live with fear at the top of my mind and that’s something that I want to get rid of. It feels maddeningly simple now but when I thought about it then I was like “my god, is this what Kylie Jenner talked about when she said realizing things?”. I don’t think I’d ever fully grasped how much I live with fear and how much I think in a fearful way – and from that, how much I want that to stop now. So, that’s where I’m at now in regards to this Big Life Move Thing, and I’m trying my darnedest to keep hope and belief strung throughout my brain despite my worst instincts.
It was almost the end of the quarter when we went, so we saw lots of people doing graduation photo shoots and flinging confetti in the air (only to later land on the ground and remain for who knows how long).
This building is Royce Hall and is on the cover of all the brochures and websites and shit that gets trotted out to potential students. This building is also one I had a stress dream about, involving me showing up to class here and being turned away. It’s impossible that my dream will actually occur, in part because I was accepted god damn it, but also because I think this building is only really used for fancy purposes, not classes.
May brought me into ~summer ~*! I finished my last semester of community college and will be interning/working at the restaurant for the summer before I go off to college and I have this weird feeling of being in a transitory state in my life. My life in a few months will be so different from my life a few months ago, and that uncertainty coupled with no belief in myself lol is freaking me out a bit. I’m going to be going to Rome in June (!!!!!), but other than that I want to stay close to home and maybe work on learning some Good Life Habits like exercising and cooking and sleeping well and cleaning and whatnot so I can take them with me when I leave in the fall.
2. a trip to LA
The day after I finished my last final exam, we drove down to LA to visit UCLA and UC San Diego. I took my DSLR camera with me so I might make another post if I have good photos, but in the mean time here are lots of HUJI pics lmao. We did a tour of UCLA led by those backwards walking tour guides and it was very cool, if also very intimidating. I felt a lot of imposter syndrome when they were talking about all the amazing people who went to UCLA or worked there and all the amazing things that the school was affiliated with and started getting really in my head and feeling like I wasn’t supposed to be here. I actually had a dream a couple weeks ago where I moved into my dorm and then walked into my first day of class at UCLA, only to be told by someone that a mistake was made, I was never accepted, and I had to go home right away. It was the worst and uh really illustrates why I need to work on ye olde self-esteem and confidence lol.
The campus is really beautiful. My parents left after a few days and I stayed with my friend who goes to UCLA and basically just followed her around for a few days lol, like a live action day in the life of a UCLA student vlog. This picture below is from a bar called Barney’s and the tables were decorated with pictures of celebrities from the 2000s which is 100% my ideal bar aesthetic. Imagine if you had a bar and all the tables were dedicated to celebrities from the early 2000s. There’s a Paris Hilton table, a Kim K as Paris’ assistant table, a Mischa Barton table… it goes on. Stay tuned, we will open when I find an investor as into this idea as I am.
On my flight home I was treated to the realization that Southwest works by having unassigned seats. I had no idea and was just moseying around airport gift shops like an utter fig instead of standing in line! I got the very last window seat in the whole plane.
3. favz
Detective Pikachu: This movie killed me. I cried out of sadness, I cried out of awe at Pikachu’s fluffy cheeks, I cried out of happiness. The moviemakers pushed all the right buttons for me. Other than Pikachu, I loved Psyduck and Ken Watanabe’s Snubbull. I do have a fair amount of complaints and here’s the biggest one of them – Why was Rita Ora there?? Why is she still around??? I’ve always been confused as to why she’s in movies or at premieres/celeb events because she hasn’t…done anything? Except some not great songs?? Anyway, 10/10 would recommend! I would watch Pokemon anything even if I have problems with it like I do here, but if you grew up playing Pokemon like I did I feel liiiike it’d take a lot to ruin that sweet sweet nostalgia.
Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette special on Netflix: My friend recommended this to me and I watched it in bits and spurts while eating lunch at various times throughout the month. It was so good. Her art history tidbits were interesting and her story was alternately insightful, funny, painful, and touching. I wrote down this quote to remember –
Laughter is not our medicine. Stories hold our cure. Laughter is just the honey that sweetens the bitter medicine.
Hannah Gadsby
The Enneagram: It’s been established that I am a sucker for personality tests and I took this one this month. I’m a 4 wing 3 and I read the entire page and was like 😮 it tru :o. The enneagram is a model of personality types that describes 9 interconnected types – thus the name, as ‘enneagram’ means nine-pointed figure. The official website is here, but they charge money to take the test so you can take a free test here and then just go back to the official website to read about your results. It’s not widely scientifically accepted but I thought reading the page for mine helped me realize a fair amount of uncomfortable truths about myself. The description page on the official website has a section on the end listing stages of development for each type, with 3 healthy levels, 3 average levels, and 3 unhealthy levels. The unhealthy levels capture how I was/am at high levels of anxiety and depression and the healthy levels are exactly how I picture my dream life going. I took the quiz and read it all while I was feeling really intimidated and afraid about UCLA; the recommendations for personal growth in my section are so relevant in that regard.
Multicolored nails: This has been ~trendy for a while but I really liked it and did it myself in May. I realized it’s the perfect trendy mani thing for me to partake in because I don’t need any actual nail painting skill, I just need a variety of colors. Amazing!! I think watching AmandaRachLee’s bullet journal videos on YouTube made me get really into the idea. This Byrdie compilation of looks didn’t hurt either.
Graduated from community college with an Associate’s Degree and a 4.0 GPA
Finally went to my eye exam
Submitted all my forms and stuff to UCLA (admission offer, housing application, IGETC, transcripts)
Made thank you cards for some professors
Got my Catbird necklace repaired
Renewed car registration
Opted out of those awful credit card letters that say you’re pre-approved every week and try to get you to sign up
Approved for a credit line increase
THINGS I AM ABOUT
Had an abysmal sleep schedule
Didn’t get accepted for many of the main scholarships I applied for
Did not exercise
Did not keep up with my monthly reflection page in my planner
Did not clean (I wanted to clean out a lot of things but this month, as in the last 93 months, I did not do it)
5. camera roll
I won a Passion Planner giveaway on Instagram this month! It’s the first time I’ve won something since I was in the single digit years of my life and we are very excited. I’m very much looking forward to August so I can crack this guy open and start using it. It’s also in the small (/compact) size that Passion Planner discontinued, so I’m even more excited to use that size again. I went to tell all those people I complained to when they changed to only the medium (/pro) size and they were still like cool, don’t care about planners, lol.
Thank you cards for professors who wrote me letters of recommendation. I’m happy with how they turned out but I’m more happy that I finally did them, because two (2) months ago I was all “this weekend I’ll make the thank you cards and then I’ll have them all ready to go in a couple months!” I did not do that.
My bf sent me some UC memes in celebration of my UC acceptances and they are hILARIOUS.
Just 2 Chinese gals makin’ dumplings!
A screenshot from a video on the Passion Planner YouTube that I’ve sadly lost track of. Really want to start doing this myself!
Luna’s new favorite spot to curl up in – my bag o’ scarves.
A dream size cat!!!!!!!!
Thank u guys for reading! Happy summer if it’s starting for you too 🙂
We’re in May, which means in about twenty days it will be ~summer~! (I’m trying not to think about how in 2 years I will no longer have a ‘summer’, it’ll just be hot months where I am working. And that’s optimistically if I’m able to wangle a job lordy lord adult life sounds terrifying.) I’ll graduate and be done with community college and will be heading off to finish my undergraduate degree in the fall, and as with any ending, I have feelings about it.
Also, April 22 was Earth Day. I was going to talk abut this in my non-favs section but I have a lot to say and I think it’s important and like our planet is also close 2 the end. I saw many many posts on Instagram encouraging me to recycle and buy metal straws on Earth Day, and I also had to sit through a fair amount of presentations from my classmates about how I should say no to plastic bags. The past couple months I’ve gradually come to be a little ??? at this line of argument because how on earth is me trying desperately to recycle everything that comes into my hands going to tackle climate change largely caused by polluting industries and corporations? Did some thinking. Did some listening. Did some reading. And I want to share them with you. This YouTube video from The Atlantic, titled America’s Dopamine-Fueled Shopping Addiction, discussed consumerism in the U.S. and how it has grown into an entirely too wasteful form of consumption. Consumption is undoubtedly tied to climate change, but I think it’s unfair to expect everyone to live a zero waste lifestyle (great as they are) when businesses are still skirting regulations and pumping carbon into the atmosphere and governments are failing to protect the people they work for. The recap episode for the Articles of Interest miniseries from 99% Invisible highlighted the lessons Avery Trufelman learned in reporting on clothing for that series and how she’s changed her own consumption patterns regarding style and fashion in light of how polluting that industry is. The Circular(s) episode from the Still Processing podcast featured David Wallace-Wells, a climate columnist for New York Magazine who wrote the book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. They talked about the limits of conscious consumption in the fight against climate change and the necessity of political action rather than, say, worrying about how much plastic you, individually, are consuming. And this all brings me to the main point – that the response to the environmental crisis that understands “environmental degradation as the product of individual shortcomings and finds solutions in enlightened, uncoordinated consumer choice” ultimately “narrow[s] our collective ability to imagine and pursue a variety of productive responses to the environmental problems before us”. The journal article Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World? by Michael F. Maniates, published in Global Environmental Politics all the way back in 2001 (FOREVER AGO god how did it take me so long to figure this out), argues that “when responsibility for environmental problems is individualized, there is little room to ponder institutions, the nature and exercise of political power, or ways of collectively changing the distribution of power and influence in society”. Some food for thought, eh? Imagine if I had taken all the energy I used fretting over what kind of reusable cotton pads to get to write my legislative representatives or volunteer my time to lobby for political change, huh?
2. favorites
Mejuri x Claire Marshall ear cuff: Mejuri had a sale in March, so I bought this lil guy from their collaboration with Claire Marshall, one of my favorite Internet content people. I’m generally really skeeved out at the thought of buying jewelry and accessories because it’s so much money for such a small product, but I’ve realized that I have entirely too much clothing and jewelry/accessories can do a whole ton for a ~look. This is probably the first piece of jewelry I’ve bought for myself that’s cost more than $15 and it felt like the biggest fucking splurge. Anyway, I’ve been wearing it and it looks really cool! I had hoped to get a cartilage piercing with a hoop this summer, but I think my second lobe piercing is infected so I should probably take care of that first..
The Paula Scher episode of Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix: This episode was amazing!!! I’ve seen trailers for Abstract and my bf’s been telling me I’ll like it for um a very long while, but I hadn’t gotten around to watching it until a few weeks ago. I picked the graphic design episode to watch and was like o00000oOO0oomg the whole time. If you have a passing interest in typography or graphic design, you’ll probably be like that, too. Her work is amazing! Her maps are amazing! Her album covers are amazing! Omfg!! I felt so inspired after I watched it lol.
The Study Group Bringing bell hooks to Prisons from Next City: What an amazing headline, right? While in prison, Richie ‘Reseda’ Edmond-Vargas and Charles Berry began developing curriculum to educate other incarcerated men on the effects of patriarchy and toxic masculinity. The program is called Success Stories and launched in 2014 with a focus on bell hooks and including many intersectional feminist texts. Now based in LA, Edmond-Vargas and Berry operate Success Stories as a non-profit that introduces concepts of toxic patriarchal masculinity and rape culture and then discussing “how their lives have been affected, and in many ways defined, by them”. Over a weekly course, men “find space to talk about their feelings” and many “make conscious efforts to free themselves from it”. Eventually they hope to deliver this program nationally, and I hope to god it happens. People learning about patriarchy and men learning about how living under it affects them too makes my angry sad feminist heart swell.
This tweet from AP: I’m so glad we’re on the same page about calling a racist spade a racist spade.
Do not use racially charged or similar terms as euphemisms for racist or racism when the latter terms are truly applicable.
Ky Ryssdall and Beth Ruyak’s voices: Every once in a while I listen to Marketplace on NPR when I happen to be driving, and lately I’ve started listening to it from the podcast app on my phone. The podcast is fine, but what I want to talk about is THIS MAN’S VOICE. What the fuck? It is such a nice voice. How does he get it that way? Has it always been that way? Did he get a vocal coach to make it that way? I have the same questions about Beth Ruyak, who hosts the Insight show on Capital Public Radio, my local NPR station. They have such nice voices. Every time it comes on the radio I’m like oh ho ho.
3. non-favs
Me health: After about a week and a bit this month, I started feeling super sick. It’s a mystery ailment, mostly involving nausea, and my doctor is confused about what’s going on, as am I. They think it could be a stomach problem. As of now, I feel OK, but it comes and goes and I hope it goes away forever soon.
5. camera roll + reading list
After I got my email rejection for a summer internship I was really hoping to do, I kind of just sat in my bathroom feeling bummed for a while. Luna came over and cuddled with me :’)
How to Fail Like a Pro episode from Freakonomics: The week I got the internship rejection was not a great one, as I was also sick and got waitlisted at UC Berkeley. In the spirit of rejection (and in recognition of the fact that I was totally bitterly wallowing), I listened to some podcast episodes about failure and picking yourself up and growing from it and all that. This one from Freakonomics was a really good one, and I wrote this thing that Jorinde Voigt, a painter and artist, said down in my phone to remember –
It’s not about failing or winning, it’s just about being and doing.
Jorinde Voigt
WOOP, There It Is! episode from Hidden Brain: In the same dejected frenzy, I listened to this episode from Hidden Brain which featured the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, author of Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside The New Science Of Motivation. Long story short, those who have stronger and more positive fantasies are less likely to achieve them in areas ranging from job seeking to forming relationships. Oettingen devised WOOP as a way to actually reach more of your goals – it stands for Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan. You start by deciding your wish or goal, and then you envision the outcome if you were to achieve this wish of yours. But then you pivot and see obstacles in you that may hinder you from achieving this wish. Oettingen stressed that by focusing on obstacles within you rather than the environment or the situation, you maintain agency and only work on what you can, instead of just making excuses when you get a C instead of a B grade. After you know your obstacles, you make a plan to deal with them so that you can get your wish.
What the Hell Else Can I Do to Get a Job? from Bitches Get Riches: I don’t think I’ve mentioned this blog before, but it’s a personal finance blog written by two women and it’s hilarious, well-written, informative, and conscious about stupid things like sexism and capitalism and this lone Internet reader highly recs! In the throes of my internship rejection woe I worried about how I could ever ever find a job. These were some good tips about putting yourself out there and finding opportunity, which is something I need to work on as someone generally uncomfortable with asking for more ketchup at a restaurant. I also read, like, six more articles about retirement, because that’s a thing you worry about when you know your parents are not super financially savvy. This retirement 101 post and this traditional IRA vs. Roth IRA comparison were both helpful for this Gen Z-er who learned about mitochondrias in high school and not taxes or how on earth I’m going to pay to live when the funds for Social Security run out by the time I’m wizened.
Why Did New York’s Most Selective Public High School Admit Only 7 Black Students? episode from The Daily: At one of NYC’s top public high schools, only 7 out of 895 spots in the freshman class were offered to black students. This is fucking bonkers. As a Chinese American person, school demographics are something people who share my ethnic and racial background talk about a lot, and I am part of a group of people that is talked about a lot in regards to school populations. This episode was challenging to listen to because I can totally understand how immigrant Asian families feel but at the same time I disagree vehemently and wish they could see that it’s not about us vs. them, it’s about justice vs. segregation. It’s about equal opportunity for everyone. Right now black and brown kids lack the same opportunities white and East Asian kids commonly have and face challenges once they’re in systems of prestige and education.
The NHS exercise guides: Pls don’t laugh at me lol I’m such a couch potato and I’m trying not to be. I’ve never been ~active~*, not even as a kid, and um what do u kno a sedentary lifestyle usually means you will be in uncomfortable pain and die early. Fun times!!!! This was helpful for a potato like me in figuring out how much exercise I should aim for, as well as how fast I have to walk for it to count as moderate exercise.
The Sacramento Bee’s CA Influencers series: Very much unrelated to how I think about influencers in this blogging day n age lol – the Sac Bee, the newspaper in the capital of this fine state, does this series with the people ~influencing~* the state and the country. It’s interesting and good to know
The Light Triad: Psychologists Outline the Personality Traits of Everyday Saints from Discover: I think my bf found this on Reddit. If you like personality quizzes, you’ll love this!! Lol, the dark triad measures the more sinister aspects of personality (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) and this year, psychologists from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Hawai’i-West O’ahu developed a counter part light triad test consisting of humanism, Kantianism, and faith in humanity. Interesting article to read, and you can take the light triad scale test for yourself at one of the researchers’ website!
UC decisions came out this month and I got into UCLA, where I’ll probably be going! A relevant meme:
Explicit Design: An artist on Instagram with very minimalist and v nice art! I saw a tattoo of their work and it was gorgeous.
Cleansing Tools & Techniques from Snow White and the Asian Pear: On this month’s skincare article rabbit hole, I learned about Go Hyun Jung’s cleansing rules – never touch your face without washing your hands first, wash properly and at length, and wash against the grain of your skin. This means “instead of starting from the inside and sweeping out like you do with a toner or general skincare, start at the outside of your face, and using tiny circular motions, slowly work your way in towards the center”. Also, don’t apply cleanser all over your face right away, to ensure the dry patches of your skin don’t dry out too much. Go hyun Jung says you should apply cleanser to the nose, forehead, and outside of the face, and then move from the outside inward. I’ve been trying the washing against the grain of my skin thing and I can’t say I feel anything different on my fingertips, but my skin’s been looking pretty good lately!
5. goal recap
GOOD THINGS I DID!
Get accepted to UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Davis, and UC Santa Barbara
Tried acupuncture for the first couple times
Filed my taxes
Got A’s on all my essays/exams in my classes
NOT SO GR8 THINGS I DID!
Got waitlisted at UC Berkeley
Got rejected for the summer internship I wanted to do
Got very weirdly sick – this one has had a big impact on this month. I’ve stayed home sick a bunch and taken time off from school, my internship, and work, so I haven’t super gotten things done. I’m trying to be OK with it instead of mad at myself for not getting stuff done, because illness is, you know, a Rl Thing, and I’ve been brainwashed into wanting productivity and business at the expense of my wellbeing. This month was a little slower than usual and I spent the bulk of it trying to feel better. That’s OK.
Thanks for reading u guys! I hope May is off to a good start for you.
We are almost done! Truth be told, I’ve been a bit sick recently so stuck at home with time to edit photos and whatnot lol. Today we’re going to Lijiang (丽江), a city in the northwest of Yunnan province, to look at the historic Old Town area. Like any good day, we start with a couple bags of chips in the car.
We had a meal (lunch? Breakfast? How do I remember timelines almost a year afterwards?) at this place on the side of the freeway, where we had chicken soup. I wish I could tell you more about it because it was delicious and there was some kind of special method for cooking it but, alas, memory does not serve me as well as it did in my youth.
A China Mobile shop near our hotel! The Naxi ethnic minority lives in this area, so you can see their language on a lot of signs – like here, the smaller characters underneath the Chinese 手机 words show the Naxi language translation.
And here we are at the Old Town – my uncle works in the tourism industry, and this city is a really big spot for tourists (mostly Han Chinese, not international, I think) after having been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Frogs, according to my uncle our tour guide, are important to the Naxi people because they’re…resilient and strong? Do not remember, pls take all info with several hundred grains of salt.
My brother and I tried bubble waffles for the first time here! When we were in London, there was a bubble waffle place on the corner of Chinatown that we would always pass and think about going into but never did because of the huge lines that were always there. So we are late to the trendy food party and it is indeed fun to eat, and fluffier than regular waffles.
We walked around Old Town going in and out of buildings and shops. These are some signs showing the Naxi language, which a nice old man started explaining to my dad and I.
You can’t super see, but this picture on the right has one of those stone lions that sit outside buildings and there is a BABY LION BREASTFEEDING. This is the interior decor of my dreams.
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