project 365 : days 181 - 199

Day 181/365 – Mong, Ame, and Mori trying to fit in one box


Day 182/365 – This one's been clinging onto me a lot recently


Day 183/365 – Mimi and his stuffed kitty


Day 184/365 – Early morning feeding program


Day 185/365 – Whenever our clothes get sent out for laundry, the clothes automatically becomes a bed


Day 186/365 – Aventine kitty looking quite healthy and fat now


Day 187/365 – One cat, one cat, three cats


Day 188/365 – Mong usually likes to sleep where Jake is


Day 189/365 – REV Major 2017


Day 190/365 – Mori the owlcat


Day 191/365 – What are you doing..?


Day 192/365 – Solo coffee time while waiting for friends at Shang


Day 193/365 – Size difference. Leng is actually our youngest cat. Mong is probably older by 3-4 months


Day 194/365 – Mori is almost as big as our pillow


Day 195/365 – These three have been sleeping together like this a lot these days


Day 196/365 – A panda
Day 197/365 – Mori clinging on to Aian as usual


Day 198/365 – This boy's coat is almost all-white underneath. So cute and strange at the same time


Day 199/365 – A baby raccoon

Photos from the first 20 days of July. Mostly of our cats, as usual. (This blog is, in reality, a cat blog.)

Things that made me happy recently:

1. Recently I've started to watch what and how much I eat. Last month I suffered from IBS again and it was not pretty. So now I've been staying away from the usual suspects whenever possible – dairy, eggs, red meat, oily food, etc. Also at the start of the month I re-installed the Argus app for counting calories, but I also use it to track my water intake, caffeine intake, etc. I should probably start jogging (or in my case, start with brisk walking) soon, too.
2. Feeding the strays early in the morning. (Which is usually when I go to bed.)
3. I mentioned in the last Project 365 post that I placed an order for the COSRX A-sol to help deal with my sudden hormonal breakout. That plan actually ended up not happening. What happened was, the store I ordered from ran out of it so I changed my order to the Benton Snail Bee Essence instead. Which turned out to be a good thing, because all the acne had already gone by the time the essence arrived, and all I was left with was super dry skin. I don't know why but phase 2 of my hormonal roller coaster was my face becoming as dry as the desert. What ended up helping me was the Snail Bee Essence + Hansaeng Cosmetics RIN Bi Gyeol Yun Cream. Fast forward to today, I now only have the PIH to deal with, but otherwise very chokchok skin.
4. On July 9th I tagged along with Aian and their friends at REV Major 2017, which is basically a fighting game event. Some of the featured games were Guilty Gear, Street Fighter, King of Fighters, etc. But the highlight was that it was the Tekken World Tour master event in the Asia-Pacific. Aian's a big fan of fighting games, including Tekken, so we were there on the second day to watch the Tekken matches for the Top 16. It was fun. I thought I was going to feel very out of place as I'd stopped playing Tekken after T5, but watching the matches was very exciting. I also got to meet Tanukana, who's considered the Queen of Tekken as she's currently the best female player in the world. Not only is she a great Tekken player AND a Xiaoyu main (I played Xiaoyu from T3-5), she's also SUPER ADORABLE. I even got to take selfies with her! That was pretty cool.
5. I finally watched Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things. I did this after listening to one episode of The Minimalists' podcasts, because after two episodes I wasn't really feeling the whole thing. Maybe because I felt weird listening to these two long-time friends talk about how minimalism changed their lives, etc. After watching the documentary, I was able to understand where they were coming from a little better. I understood that the whole point of their brand of minimalism wasn't focusing on "minimalism" as it is. It was focusing on living a meaningful life with less. That idea really appealed to me, so these days I've been trying to figure out how to create my own recipe for minimalism and for living a more meaningful life.
6. Freeing up space on my phone. I moved a lot of the photos and videos from my phone to the PC, plus I deleted apps that I rarely used, so I was able to free about 1GB+ of memory.
7. Meeting with Ashley, Sachi, and Ingrid for Eiga Sai, and then Ciara for dinner together. I blogged about it here.
8. Finding out that the SNOW App has a new filter that features hydrangea ears.
9. This video of raccoons. I like raccoons because they remind me of our Leng.
10. Taking out a freshly washed blanket to use. (Random fact about me: I can't sleep without blankets, even in the summer.)
11. Adding a bunch of new blogs to my reading list (which is, in truth, mostly a looking-at-pictures list because most of these are not in English and I sadly can't understand Dutch/Danish/Norwegian/Swedish): ashleylynn.nl, hjartesmil, Niotillfem, Jennifer Stroud, By Haleigh, and Julia - alltid mitt i prick.
12. One of the things I wrote on my 2017 goals list was to take the JLPT in December. Going into July, I saw the posts of acquaintances who took the JLPT, so I was reminded once again of my goal. The truth is, my immediate thought was, "can I even take the test this year?" Because here's the thing – even though I was reading and re-reading my copy of Minna no Nihongo, my brain wasn't absorbing anything at all. It was discouraging to think that back in uni I was able to remember all the names of the bones and muscles and diseases and parasites.. but now I couldn't even memorize the days of the week in Japanese. So at this point I was already getting ready to forget about taking the JLPT this year. But then one day I decided to take a look at my JLPT N5 Workbook. I looked at it only once before, and quickly put it back on the shelf because I could barely read anything, let alone understand. I was so surprised and excited when I realized that I could understand about 70% of the things on it. It was like, SUDDENLY I KNOW HOW TO READ. Not only that, I was able to answer the questions and get about 80% right. Just yesterday, I was able to read and understand a whole paragraph! It was... amazing. And you know what's even more amazing? This all happened because of the Duolingo app. Apparently the Japanese course on Duolingo teaches all of the vocabulary and grammar needed to pass JLPT N5. (I found out about this only today!) So now there's this glimmer of hope that I can actually go through with the JLPT. Right now I've been studying the 120 Kanji needed for N5 while still studying using Duolingo whenever I'm free. I still have a month or so before the deadline for JLPT applications; hopefully I'll be confident enough to send in my registration by then. Wish me luck!!
13. Currently listening to: Highlight - Plz Don't Be Sad and Hoody - Your Eyes (feat. Jay Park).

What's made you happy recently?

To have a better appreciation of life's moments, no matter how mundane, my 365 day challenge for 2017 is to take photos every day of the year, and at the same time write a list of things that have made me happy recently.

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