Me & Favourites: January 2019

Picture credit: Flickr 

I can't believe that it is already February and that it's been a month since I turned twenty. The difference between nineteen and twenty really makes me anxious. I feel like I really have to say good-bye to my teenage years, but I'm still not ready enough to be called an adult.

Everyone, how was your January? It has been really a relaxing and comforting month for me, since I spent around four weeks back in my home town. College ended on 4th of January and on 8th, I made a trip back home. It'd been around six months since the last time I went home and met my parents, so I was really happy. Last semester had been really hectic too, so during my holiday I really didn't do much of anything. I mostly read books and… yeah, read books. The internet in my home town is really bad so I couldn't be online much. (It's a shame, since I need my daily contents of Stray Kids and news about YG Treasure Box final line up.)

I got sick after Christmas and was still not getting better after New Year (have I mentioned this in my December highlight post?). But after college officially ended and I began packing for my trip home, my cough had gotten a lot better. Fortunately I managed not to get sick during the holiday and ate a lot of good foods (my mother's cooking is still the best).

To be honest, nothing much happened during January since I rarely went out or did anything special. But as I've mentioned, I read a lot of books. I managed to watch enough movies/series during the first week of January before I lost my internet connection too, so let's talk about that!

Picture credit: Pixabay 

//BOOK

I probably haven't said anything about this before, but I usually read at least three books at once. The first one is a physical book, which I read every morning after I wake up. The second one is e-book on my smart phone. I read it when I'm not at home, like when I'm at campus or going out somewhere. And the third one is usually books that are connected to my classes, like in December I read The Culture of Japanese Fascism.

Let's start with my college book.

In January I read The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature. It's actually the book I used in my Introduction to Japanese Literature class next semester. We didn't read all of the chapters in the book (and I, stupidly and ignorantly, sometimes didn't even read the chapters my lecturer asked me to read). My score turned out to be not very good and I barely remember anything from the class, so I guess I will re-read the book again. It's a very long and heavy book, written in academic English, and honestly sometimes I don't know what I read. But I manage to re-read four chapters during my holiday. It might not seem much, but I'm very proud of myself. It also made me realize that my English still needs a lot of improvement, so I've been practicing and collecting new English vocabularies again.

And, oh yeah, if someone's curious, I ended up not finishing The Culture of Japanese Fascism, which I began reading in December. I might pick it up again later, but I have no urgency to finish it anytime soon.

For e-book, I managed to read and finish five books. The first one The Artist's Way. I began reading it in December and fortunately was able to finish it in January. It is a really amazing book. Have I said this in my December highlight post? I have? Oh, well, let me say again that this is a really amazing book. I definitely put this on my list of books that are changing my life, along with Susan Cain's Quiet and Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places. The Artist's Way really helps me to overcome my writer's block, my insecurity about writing and creating, and my constant criticism toward myself. If you often experience writer's block (or any form of artist's block), you better read this book because it is very helpful and inspiring. I cannot stress it enough. Reading The Artist's Way has been a really blessing experience.

The next e-book I read is Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. You know that the movie has been going around internet and causing a big uproar, but since I haven't read the book, I decided not to watch the movie for now. What I can say about the book is that it is very… full of taste. There are a lot of characters and so many things happened in the same time, so reading it is like eating a lot of different dishes. For those who haven't heard about it, Crazy Rich Asians is basically a story about Rachel and her boyfriend, Nick, who is secretly very rich and comes from a privileged family. The book shows us the way extremely rich Asian families live and spend their money.

After finishing Crazy Rich Asians, I read the next one in the series, China Rich Girlfriend. If Crazy Rich Asian emphasizes more on rich Singaporean families, China Rich Girlfriend brings us new Chinese characters. And of course, they are also rich. In this book though, I notice how while Rachel is supposedly the main character of the book, she didn't really have any control over the events happening in the book. It's like she's walking on a road while enjoying the view and getting thrown rocks at the same time. Things keep happening to her, but she barely does anything to try changing that. It makes me dislike her a bit. But thankfully, there are some new characters that I like in this book and they make reading this book more enjoyable.

I don't know whether I will read the third book (Rich People Problems) in the series or not. People said that in the third book Rachel doesn't really show up, so maybe I'll give the book a chance later.

Next I read Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged BirdSings. I actually read the first chapter of the book a few months ago, but the language is a bit puzzling so I dropped it. After I picked it up again and reached a third of the book, I just realized that the puzzling language is just how Black people speaks English in real life. The discrimination and racism against Black people is an unfamiliar topic for me, since I don't live in a place where there are Black people around. But I do aware that the racism exists, so reading this book has been a very eye-opening experience. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography of Maya Angelou, mostly about her childhood and teenage experiences. More than talking about discrimination and racism though, this book gives me a lot of insights on how Maya Angelou build her confidence and grew up to be a really amazing person.

The last e-book I read in January is The Dark Prophecy by Rick Riordan. You know, more than 80% of my Greek mythology knowledge comes from reading Rick Riordan's books. I have read almost every Rick Riordan's books out there, minus Magnus Chase series which I'll be getting on sooner or later. The Dark Prophecy is the continuation of The Hidden Oracle that tells the story of Apollo being turned into human as a punishment from his father, Zeus. Rick Riordan's books are always full of humour and adventure so it's really fun to read The Dark Prophecy. I have already put the next book, The Burning Maze, on my February reading list.

So now there's only physical book left.

For the month of January, I read three physical books. I finished re-reading All the Bright Places during the first week of January, before my holiday started. And then, after I got home, I re-read Terminal by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. It's the last book of the Tunnels series, so re-reading it suddenly out of nowhere had seemed like a big jump at that time. It's been really long since the last time I read it too, so there were many things that I forgot. It felt like I read it for the first time. I don't know what I can say about the book since it's the last book in the series and if I really have to talk about it, I should start from the very beginning. The series is really complex, so it'll be unfair if I only talk about the last book. I collect the Indonesian version of the books and I just realized that the translation is not very flowing, so I'm curious of how the original version sounds like. I plan to re-read the entire series, this time in its original language, so maybe there'll be opportunity to give the series justice and talk about it more deeply.

The last book I read in January (and still reading it at the moment) is Dunia Sophie. I actually consider this one of my college book, since I'm taking Introduction to Philosophy and Modern Thinking class this semester. As you might have guessed, it's a book about history of philosophy, written in a very light language. For those who want to begin learning about philosophy, I guess reading this book will very helpful since you need to start from the very basic.

And then that's it for the books I read in January. Wow. It's pretty long. I don't think I will be able to read that many books in February though, so I'm really grateful that I'm able to finish many books in the beginning of 2019. Next, let's talk about music I discovered in January.

Picture credit: Erkan Utu 

//MUSIC

I've been watching several Korean idol survival programs in January, which I'll talk about later in the cinema section. These survival programs really affected my mood for January and before long I already found my Spotify playlist full of K-pop songs. I also got to know a few new groups after watching those survival shows. I proceeded to listen to their entire discographies and, luckily, discovered some new songs that I immediately liked.

From those new groups, the ones that I kept adding onto the top of my playlist is ONF's Complete and Fly Me To The Moon and also M. O. N. T's Will you be my girlfriend. I really like Fly Me To The Moon. The song is fun and when I watched their performance video, the choreography is pretty catchy. ONF will be having their comeback and releasing new album in February too, so I'm really excited. For M. O. N T., they just debuted and don't have many songs yet, but their debut single is pretty promising. I remember the members from the first episode of Mixnine survival show and feel glad that they're able to keep their image/concept for their first single. It's a really fun and catchy song.

Mixnine winners/final line up 

Talking about Mix Nine survival show, I also grew to like some of the songs they produced for the show (Lies. I love all of them). But my favourites are the cover of Hug and Paradise Lost. Both trainee groups really changed the image of the songs. Hug was supposed to be a comforting and slow song with a lot of smooth vocals, but they changed into a really enjoyable song with refreshing raps. Still warm and comforting, but it becomes a lot more fun and unexpected with more raps parts. For Paradise Lost, the song is actually sung by female. In Mix Nine though, the song was given to male trainees and boy, they really did justice for the song. You gotta watch the performance video by yourself.

After finishing the survival show, though, one of their semi-final songs, Super Freak, got my attention the most. This is the song I listened the most during train ride to my hometown. When my parents picked me up at the station and I got into the car, I also listened to this song. It's really upbeat and fun to listen to. Well, I think I used the word 'fun' a lot while writing this post. I guess that means my January had been a really fun month? Hope so.

There are still so many good songs I haven't talked about, but I'm afraid I can't introduce them to you one by one. Not all of them are upbeat songs. I also listened to slow songs like Twice's Someone Like Me (it's really beautiful), Greyson Chance's Good As Gold (very meaningful), Stray Kids's Insomnia, Blackpink's Stay, YG trainee's Park Jeongwoo's cover of Bruno Mar's When I Was Your Man, Taeyang's Eyes Nose Lips, DAY6's Hurt Road (this one is amazing and very painful, so you should check it out), and Stray Kids's cover of Blackpink's As If It's Your Last. Do check all of them out when you have the time! I also plan to write a post about Mix Nine's semi-final songs because all of them are amazing and people need to get to know them.

Picture credit: Anatolii Kiriak 

//CINEMA

And so this is it. My movies and series collection for January. I need to warn you that out of 5 series that I watched in January, three of them are Korean idol survival shows. And the only movie I watched in January is a re-watching of Bakuman for my Cinema in the Dark post. If you haven't read the post, you may want to check them out later.

I've mentioned in the music section I watched Mix Nine and it was amazing. I think I also talked about this survival show in my December highlight so… oh, wait. I just remember that I wrote my December highlight in Indonesian. Well, ha-ha. My bad.

The other survival show I watched is YG Treasure Box. Both Mix Nine and YG Treasure Box were produced by YG Entertainment, one of the biggest entertainment agency in Korea, and they have a lot of talented trainees in the shows. I might need to warn you though, the final line-up in Mix Nine ended up not debuting because of disagreement between companies. It was really a shame, because the line-up was very promising and they would have made it big if only they could debut.

YG Treasure Box trainees @ final episode 

YG Treasure Box is different than Mix Nine in terms of the trainees that were participating. In Mix Nine, the trainees came from many different companies and YG collected all of them to make a group that consisted of 9 members. For YG Treasure Box, the participants were all YG's own trainees. The show was already over and the final line up have already been announced. I could write an entire post talking about how YG Treasure Box was a real emotional roller coaster for me, but I decided not to. If you watched the show or are curious about it, just send me a message via e-mail, Twitter, or Instagram. Gotta warn you though, I might have an emotional breakdown while talking about it.

So, yeah. YG Treasure Box left me both hopeful and heartbroken, and that's the ultimate reason I re-watched Stray Kids survival show, just to remind myself that miracle is real and that my ultimate favourite group is alive and doing well. Stray Kids (both the survival show and the group itself) has been my emotional anchor in the past year, so whenever I'm feeling down, I usually find myself re-watching certain episode or specific moments from the show. Yeah, miracle is real. Thank you, JYP.

Aside from survival show (I promise myself never to watch survival show again after this, at least not one that is on-going), I also watched two drama series. I finished watching Signal (I began in December) and started a new series, this time a Korean drama called Wok of Love. I'm a JYP stan (for those who don't know, JYP is one of the biggest entertainment agency in Korea along with YG) and 2PM Junho is one of my earliest celebrity crush (I think I first got to know him in elementary school?). Two of his group members are in the military duty right now, so they can't release a new album together, but the other members have been really productive doing solo activities. For Junho, he has recently gained popularity as an actor over the past years and I have to admit that he's doing a really good job acting. I have watched most of his movies and dramas, so it's no surprise that I began watching Wok of Love.

Wok of Love: Poster 

The series is about a hotel's restaurant chef, a really skilled and talented one. I'm not exactly sure how to summarize the story because even in the first episode, there are already so many things happening and many characters being introduced. It has a really good premise though. The show is enjoyable and the characters are really fun. Hmm, the basic plot is that the chef's lover has been cheating with the hotel's owner, who later on tries to get rid of him. The chef then quits his job at the hotel and begins working at the across the street Chinese restaurant, trying to get a revenge.

I haven't finished watching the series since I didn't have enough internet connection in January, and I don't think I will be able to finish it in February since college already started. But for the twelve episodes I've watched so far, I was really engrossed in it and became attached to the characters in no time. The series doesn't show only about love story, though. It also tells a lot about camaraderie and passion (two things I've always liked in my entertainment supplies), so I'm expecting a lot of good stuffs. And, oh, you might feel surprised when I said that I already finished twelve episodes, but the episode is actually pretty short (not even an hour long).

Picture credit: Erkan Utu 

So that's my highlights for the month of January. I thought this post would be boring because I didn't do much in January, but it turned out that I actually spent my first week entertaining myself with a lot of music and literature contents. And there are even some things I have to left out because I'm afraid the post would be getting too long.

January has been a good month, but now it's the time to focus and work hard in February. My theme of February is take it slow. College starts on 4th and I already have my schedule packed, so I need to make sure that I won't be too stressed out and burnt out. My main resolutions for February are to eat more fruits and vegetables, exercise at least three times a week (I usually go cycling or do yoga), and post at least one content every week on my blog. You might wonder why I push myself to do more exercise and post routinely when my February theme is to take it slow, but I find that exercising and working on my blog is really helpful for me to feel less stressed. Working on my blog makes me feel happy and exercising helps to manage my mood swing. Sometimes self-care is doing more and not doing less. It's more about incorporating more things that I love into my daily life, such as blogging and reading. Therefore I hope February will be a good month too, so see you later!