12. 20 Sundays, Week 5 – Haikyuu!!

11.09.17.

10.25 pm

I thought I’d skip this Sunday because my semester exams are in just a week but I remembered that I promised myself I’d stick to this commitment no matter how useless it felt. I want to follow through with at least one thing in my life and if I stop every time I feel like I couldn’t be bothered by it then I’ll never change. So yeah, this took a little self-reflection which always feels lame in retrospect but whatever.

I started watching Haikyuu!! this week (Yeah, less than two weeks before my exams. Very smart of me, I know) and I LOVE IT. A lot. More than I thought I would. I watched an episode quite some time back but it was relatively new at the time so I decided to wait for more episodes to come out first and I’m so glad I did. I just finished season 1 the day before yesterday and it was so good. I’m only a few of episodes into the second season but it looks quite promising so far which has me excited. Towards the end of the first season and at the beginning of the second one I started getting Naruto vibes from it; the characters, the friendship slash rivalry aspects, the opening and closing themes, the hard work and passion for an ambition and dream, and things like that. The wholesome stuff. Love it.

One thing I really like about anime like this is the impact of the story telling. Like, if I were someone who already loved volleyball or had even a slight interest in it, obviously this show would speak to me on some level or I’d be able to connect with it to a certain extent regardless of whether I end up liking it or not. But to exude such a strong sense of passion that it reverberates in someone who’s always been an outsider to its world or who’s always been mostly apathetic towards it and get even them riled up and excited for something they didn’t think much of less than a week ago is, in my opinion, excellent story telling. And the character development is as great as I had expected which is something that I always look for in a good story.

Can’t wait to binge watch even more to the point of regret. I just hope my semester papers don’t suffer because of it. Sigh.

Regards,

V.

11. 20 Sundays, Week 4 – K-Dramas I’ve Watched

03.09.17.

11.23 pm

Roughly 5 weeks ago I thought a weekly challenge would be perfect for me because of my past of rarely finishing things I start but obviously I need to re-evaluate my commitment issues since I clearly underestimated them. To be fair, though, it’s been a long weekend because my brother and dad both are out of town for a few months and both of them came back for Eid so it’s has been busy and wholesome at home. Anyway… (Can I patent a word just on the basis of excessive use?)

I wanted to do a post where I listed all the K-Dramas I’ve watched so far (I entered this one way realm in I think March this year, or May. Idk, one of the two) and wrote a few lines about each of them or rated certain aspects of them, but I’m absolutely ex-haus-ted. So I figured, for now, I’ll just list them down and every now and then when I’m able to subdue my procrastinating tendencies for long enough, I’ll talk about each of them in detail. I haven’t actually watched that many K-Dramas, or at least not enough to call myself obsessed or an amateur-ish expert like some of my friends are, but I think I’ve watched enough to be able to comment on a few basic aspects like acting, cast, soundtrack, general story line, et cetera, et cetera (I always say extra is as extra does).

The first three in the list are in the order I watched them in, the rest are more or less in the same sequence except for one or two. I feel like I’ve watched a few more than the ones I’ve listed but for the life of me, I can’t remember which ones. Or maybe I’ve just read up on too many different dramas that my brain is convinced I’ve actually watched them lol. I haven’t watched one in a while (the anime pseudo stan in me revived itself again) but I have a lot, and I mean a lot more on my ‘to watch list’; some have been on it for months. So yeah, I’m looking forward to being reduced to a puddle of cringe and emotions and short but intense obsessive phases again. It’s a great feeling, albeit the constantly intermittent ‘what am I doing with my life?’ thoughts.

Anyway… (Do ya hate me? Cause I do)

Here’s the list, which in retrospect is even more underwhelming than I first thought it was. But oh well.

1. Flower Boys Next Door

2. Heartstrings

3. Cheese In The Trap

(my short lived but very intense, embarrassing, and still a little lingering obsession with Baek In Ho warrants an entire post of its own lol)

4. Shopping King Louie / Shopaholic Louis

5. You’re beautiful

6. Uncontrollably fond

7. 5 episodes of The Heirs (I couldn’t get past the cringe and angst but I’ll try giving it another shot)

8. 1 episode of Pinocchio (I just couldn’t get past the cringe but I’ll try giving this one another chance as well).

9. Cantabile Tomorrow

10. One More Time / The Day After We Broke Up (this one’s only on Netflix).

11. 2 or 3 episodes of Reply 1997 (It was really nice but I decided to watch Reply 1998 first)

So yeah, that’s about it. On a side note, I’m kind of proud of myself for writing this post (even though it’s well into the world of mediocrity and unoriginality) because I almost convinced myself to skip this one but I then realized that I don’t want to succumb to my commitment-to-self-growth issues just yet. Here’s hoping I never do, or at least that I stop doing it often.

Regards,

V.

P.S. Excuse any typos. This was a last minute mind barf so my grammar and spelling are probably even worse than usual.

 

10. 20 Sundays, Week 3 – Phone Cover Collection

27.08.17.

14.Something pm

Warning: Unnecessarily long post

The test I don’t know jack about (sorry again, jack) is tomorrow and I know even less about it now than I did a week ago if that’s even possible. But yeah, I decided a few days ago that I don’t really care because my finals are soon and I’ll have to be stressed all over again anyway so I’m taking a mini mental vacation while being completely prepared and surprisingly okay with failing tomorrow.

Anyway…

I had no idea what I should post about today. I was about to write about pancakes because for someone who doesn’t really know how to cook, I love making pancakes almost as much as I leave eating them. I didn’t feel like making any today just to take pictures, though, so I decided to talk about my phone cover collection because y naught, amirite? I don’t think I own that many phone covers but compared to most of my friends I apparently do, and I guess I own enough to call it a collection? Idk, I just like the idea of having collections of things but I’m too lazy and forgetful to have my own so I’ll just use the term loosely and pretend that I do.

I changed my phone last year in April but I still have my S4 as a spare so I kept the covers for it as well. I never thought I’d be an iPhone person; I literally used to cringe at the idea of buying one because of all the issues people would tell me about but now I can’t imagine not using iPhone and the same goes for my whole family (we’re a fickle bunch). I still like Samsung, though, and I miss my androids every now and then but I get bored easily so the change was nice.

Anyway 2.0… (Does it bug you that I keep doing that? Because it’s starting to annoy me too lol)

Here are the pictures that I’m now realizing in retrospect are too basic but oh well, they shall suffice.

These are the covers I had for my S4. I think I lost one quite some time back and another one that I still have was really dirty so I didn’t put that here. The red one is obviously pretty damaged but it’s the one currently on my S4 and I was too lazy to remove it, so yeah. The one on the top right is a really cool metallic silver one but I couldn’t capture how nice it looks in person. The top left one is also a really cool metallic one.

  

I used to love this cover a lot, the tree changes seasons based on how you tilt it and that was always refreshing. It used to turn wintery as well but for some reason it doesn’t anymore which is kind of sad. I prefer hard covers, though, so the rubbery material wasn’t exactly working for me but overall the cover itself was aesthetically pleasing.

This was one was one of my favourites. It was kind of overpriced considering the quality wasn’t that good (it cracked just by trying to remove it) but I loved it so much I didn’t care. I adore the vibes and the minimalistic aesthetic it has, they’re so simple yet refreshing and light.

My iPhone covers collection! I was going to get more but I’d go broke plus people were judging me since I was buying a lot in a short period of time so I realized I should take it easy for a while and start reusing covers before buying new ones. I haven’t bought one in quite some time so I might finally get a new one next month because extra is as extra does.

I love pretty much all of my iPhone covers but this is probably my favourite. I had this custom made from an online store called Cubane and I’ve tried their covers before but the quality improved a lot when I got this one so I was even happier than I expected to be. This is one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite anime films, Kimi No Nawa (Your Name). I went through a short lived but super obsessive phase over that movie and I’m still low-key obsessed with it, so this cover is still one of my favourites. The colours are so soothing and I adore the material.

That’s pretty much it for my sort-of-collection of phone covers. I’m sure it’ll start growing exponentially next year once I’m done reusing the ones I already have because again, extra is as extra does.

So yeah…

Awkward silence moment again?

Ok. Bye.

Regards,

V.

9. 20 Sundays, Week 2 – Art Journal Makeover

   

20.08.17.

So I almost completely forgot about my commitment to this challenge (why am I not surprised?), hence whatever follows this sentence is a barfing of words and randomness and obv incorrect grammar. But something’s better than nothing, right? Maybe. I guess. Idk.

Anyway…

I LOVE journals and notebooks and hoarding (how cliché, right?) and one of my favourite things to do with them is customize (read: ruin) their covers in an attempt to make them aesthetical and even though I mostly fail at it, the process is always therapeutic. On Friday I decided to give my art journal a makeover cause y naught, rite? And because I have a test coming up that I don’t know jack about (*sweats nervously* sorry, Jack), so obviously I had to procrastinate.

Anyway 2.0…

I was a little underwhelmed (albeit mostly happy) with it at first because the lighting in my room made it feel dull but after seeing it Saturday morning I was actually much more satisfied than I expected to be. So yeah, all’s well that ends well. More or less.

Below are pictures and a brief description of the materials I used to DIY the cover and back. Here’s hoping they last lol.

This is how the journal looked before. The two gold corners are pieces I took from an old gift box.

For the front cover, I used a leftover wedding invitation card. It extends till the spine of the journal so I had to constantly open and fold the journal to make sure the spine adjusted accordingly.

 

For the back, I used two things: For the part adjacent to the spine, I used construction paper, and for the rest of the back, I used a cut out of a part of a magazine cover.

And I guess that’s about it.

[awkward silence]

[exhales]

Regards,

V.

8. 20 Sundays, Week 1

Warning: This is an unnecessarily long post

13.08.17.

One thing I’ve never been able to understand that tends to happen quite often in movies and shows is how people manage to pull things together even when they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. Especially in literal last minute moments where everything can go kaboom unless the character in question, who has absolutely no prior knowledge or experience or even general idea of the situation they’re in (sometimes life and death), has some sort of exclusive to fiction epiphany lasting a couple of seconds allowing them to end world hunger, prevent Armageddon, and make me actually think before I speak. I guess when it comes to the ‘having no idea what I’m doing aspect’, I can relate completely, so here’s me barfing out more than mouthful sentences and incorrect grammar in an attempt to mimic the epiphany part, but obviously that’s a long shot.

Anyway, today I’ll keep it simple (because I have no choice) and post random pictures of mason jars with fairy lights in them and aggressively smash my keyboard for text to go with it while pretending I’ve been productive by doing a DIY that even a monkey with a little money and extrafolyf personality could do.

I wanted to give a friend of mine a super classy mason jar DIY as a gift for her birthday that was in July but lack of time and resources (and obviously procrastination) weren’t allowing that to go smoothly so I resorted to keeping it simple (again I didn’t really have a choice, lol) and simply gave her a mason jar with fairy lights in it, both things she herself can use for other ideas and DIYs as well, so yeah, it was technically a win-win. I did find a lot of other cool mason jar DIY ideas on Pinterest during this process, though; I’ll post those pictures and/or links some other time.

In all that being said, I want to just point out that I’m not underplaying how amazing the simple fairy lights in a mason jar DIY is in any way because I personally really love it; it’s refreshing, elegant, easy to do, and who doesn’t love fairy lights and mason jars? (I know there are people who don’t but I refuse to acknowledge the existence of such people ok).

Also, a few people have been asking me where I got both things (you’d think it’d be easier to find them or know where you can get them but it’s actually not) so I’ll just add that with the pictures in case someone at some point in time living in the same city by the sea as me ever finds this post and wants to know. You’re welcome, stranger who probably doesn’t even exist, may you find what you’re probably not even looking for.

 

I got the mason jars from Hyperstar, Dolmen Mall, Clifton for Rs. 150 each – they had a lot of other nice colours including yellow, green, and even purple. They had tinted mason jars as well where half the glass was slightly tinted with the same colour as the lid, but I personally didn’t like those ones.

I have another blue one just like the one in the picture that I got from the Karachi Eat Festival earlier this year for Rs. 300. There were some mason jars at Chen One, Park Towers as well but with different lid designs and those were I think Rs. 250-300, though I’m not sure.

I got the fairy lights from Billboard Stationary Shop, they were also for Rs. 150. I asked for the small yellow ones but they had different sizes and colours, too.

I love how the jar with lights looks surrounded by petals against a dark background, it’s so refreshing and elegant. And with a book added to the setting the feeling is reminiscent of Sunday mornings and peaceful solitude which I think are a match made in heaven.

So yeah, that was basically it. I’m now realizing in retrospect that I didn’t need to make this post so long for such a simple not-really-a-DIY kind of DIY, but rambling about something I like almost always has that outcome, so sorry.naught.sorry.com. Also, I’m congenitally extra so it’s pretty much expected.

[awkward I don’t know what else to say but I know I want to say something silence]

Regards,

V.

 

 

 

 

7. 20 Sundays Blogging Challenge

06.08.17

3.02 pm

Blog make overs are always fun (in spite of the endless angst and nagging lack of satisfaction) because it’s like redesigning and de-cluttering a space in your mind and figuring out a layout for your thoughts and word scribbles, but mostly they’re fun because pseudo-productivity always is. And with that frame of mind, I’ll try experimenting with a patterned type of pseudo-productivity through a weekly pseudo-challenge.

In an attempt to force my procrastinating self to write at least one blog post every week, I’m taking on a sort of challenge (sort of because it’s just once a week so not really a colossal task, challenge because I’m congenitally lazy so all commitments can be identified as challenges for me) where every Sunday I have to write a post, regardless of how tired or moody I’m feeling. The posts will have somewhat of a lifestyle theme in the sense that they’ll be based on personal experiences and/or opinions. That includes anything I’ve eaten, any place I’ve been to, movie or show I’ve watched, song I’ve heard, book I’ve read, life hack I’ve tried, and whatever else my randomness brain centers can come up with.

It’s 20 weeks because there are 22 Sundays left in this year (including today), so subtracting this introductory post and one conclusive one there’ll be 20 posts altogether. I’ll number these posts in the normal sequence of all my other blog posts, hopefully the order won’t be too confusing. I’ll also try my level best to accompany each post with a picture I myself have taken in an attempt to adopt a secondary challenge of improving the wannabe pseudo-photographer I harbour within.

The reason I wanted to do this challenge is to imprint the idea of blogging regularly into myself and because I’ve been meaning to try some sort of habit changing challenge for a while now. I wanted to start off with something that’s relatively feasible for someone whose personality revolves around the paradox of excuses and personal growth, so this seemed like the best option. The kind of blogging I’ve done so far is definitely my style but it’s the kind I can only do when I absolutely feel like it which I rarely do, and it’s emotionally draining. This kind of blogging will (I hope) be easier and feel more natural because I’ll already have the opinions formulated in my head, they’ll just need to be shaped into ink and ignorant grammar.

So yeah, here’s to pseudo-productivity and Sunday moods. May they always be this promising.

Regards,

V.

6. Spirit

09.07.17.

2.38 pm

If you haven’t already watched Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, I highly recommend that you do. I watched it many years ago and at the time my mind was too taken away by it being an animated film and the fact that the main character is a horse (the mind of a five year old is so enviously simple), but a while back I suddenly remembered it exists and I decided to re-watch it today (bless you, Netflix). I can’t emphasize enough how alive it made me feel, something I desperately needed to feel today. The soundtrack is more amazing than I had remembered, and the movie is so brilliant and soul liberating that I’d gladly want to be re-born as a wild horse if given the chance.

Funny how you can stumble upon a movie, a song, a poem, a book, or even a painting that has just the right elements and tones that you specially need in that particular moment to revive and restore the recesses of you that had been regressing out of your control. I’m grateful such moments exist because they make me want to write again. I haven’t been having writer’s block lately, it’s more like a writer’s crater filled with quicksand, and trying to pull yourself out of something like that is emotionally and mentally exhausting to a point of accepting the outcome of giving in. So, to be given a hand by something unexpected and letting yourself be pulled out, even if only a little, swells my heart and lets me breathe again. Even though what I’m writing after such an experience is less than adequate and mediocre and not as fulfilling as I’d like, to have something that makes me want to write again is a constellation I’m grateful to be able to follow. And for now, I’ll simply hold onto that.

I hope you enjoy or enjoyed the movie as much as I did, time to re-watch The Road to El Dorado next. Here’s to hoping my emotions survive the nostalgia.

Regards,

V.

From a new anime I’m watching, Tsuki Ga Kirei. I love animated sceneries.

5. Lost

22.06.17.

6.55 pm

I’m obviously a little late for the whole ‘Wow, I’m already a month into blogging!’ phase/post, but I guess that also sums up most of my endeavours. And maybe in a way, my life, too. But I saw a cat video today, so I guess it’s not all bad. I’m also evolving as a human bean and finally bought highlighter because if my attitude can’t shine my face might as well, right? I’m going to walk into a room and blind people both with my glow and my RBF because if you can be extra, y naught be?  Anyway [my catch phrase at this point]…

I wrote something a few days ago because venting is kind of my forte, even if my words hardly make sense but I am smol and angree and I’m learning to be lowdor, too. I would also like to mention that misspelling words on purpose sarcastically is the epitome of my self-proclaimed sense of humour and therefore my friends deserve wuv and corn chips for tolerating me. They won’t get either from me, but yeah, they deserve to.

Hope you enjoy the rambling. Or not. Doesn’t really matter, it is what it is.

Regards,

V.

The aforementioned vent thing:

 

I’ve been trying to make sense of all the things I keep feeling (more intensely lately) but I can never capture them exactly into words when I write, yet I have all the right words in my head when I’m lost in my many reveries. It’s a sedating feeling, not good nor bad, just there.

4. I Still Write

31.05.17

09.00 pm

Ahhh, can’t believe it’s already the end of May. I learned a new word a week or two ago, ‘Zenosyne; the sense that time keeps going faster.’ So much depth and meaning in one word to the point where it perfectly describes my everyday thoughts and the strings that hold them. But I’m trying to not dwell too much on the despair side of things because what happens, happens, and I can only move forward from those steps taken [this is the part where I secretly laugh at myself because Lord knows I’m still going to be the defeatist who keeps berating herself for not having malt cake when she was craving it since she’s always craving it]. Anyway…

I’ve been having a sort of writer’s block these days, I guess? It’s not that I can’t write, it’s just that certain ways and things I used to write aren’t coming as naturally to me, especially poems which are, for lack of better words, often my everything. And that hurt a little because it felt like an emotional dull back ache that outstays its welcome, so I forced myself to write one yesterday no matter how unsatisfying it would feel when I was done. I’m also forcing myself to share it because while I’m not completely unhappy with it, there’s something about it that feels incomplete and lost and as part of the process of my transformation into the virtual sasquatch butterfly penguin hybrid creature I aspire to be, I’m making myself embrace such feelings. I’m slowly learning that all my behind the scenes, as flawed as they are, are the honest in me and I need to get off my high horse and accept that. So, yeah, here’s to letting narcissism take a back seat for as long as I can make it stay there [which is obviously not very long because pffft and because of who I am as a person]. Anyway 2.0…

I hope you enjoy the poem despite its faults. May your bread never be stale.

Regards,

V.

the aforementioned poem:

 

3. Become/I Want To

23^rd May, 2017

You know that feeling you get when you want to take back something that you know belongs to you but you don’t know how or why or when? Like that sudden moment of realization years later that you shouldn’t have listened to that bully who made you give them your favourite pen because it paved the way for so much stepping on and taking advantage of moments that followed? Or that time you let someone make you believe that the colour you felt good wearing doesn’t suit you and in doing so you let them take a little of your confidence for themselves, a piece they surely threw away without sparing a second thought? Or that time you let someone convince you that your worth amounts to a portable bank that they never have to worry about repaying because being called cheap and miserly at the expense of priorities stings more than you’d like to admit?

I sometimes wonder if sanity and perseverance work the same way. Maybe I’m playing tug of war with life for the custody of my stability and confidence, or maybe I let life take them a long time ago and retrospection has decided to have fun and paint regrets where fragility had already been residing. Maybe I’m overthinking it more than necessary, but regardless, I’d like to think that it’s okay to feel silly about trivial past oversights as long as something is gained from the scratches they leave. And so I’ll share a rambling I wrote two days ago, one that is very personal and a little unnerving to share, but I know that overcoming that will be healing if nothing else.

I apologize for the lack whimsical over sharing today (not that it matters) but it’s been an odd week. I had my first ever accident, thankfully minor, as the one behind the wheel (and woot-woot, wasn’t even my fault as admitted by two traffic officers who witnessed the embarrassing ordeal) and I sorta tried sushi for the first time – raw prawn wasn’t as ‘ew’ worthy as I had anticipated, so yeah, seafood non-haters represent !!!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading my musings and thank you if you do read them. May your day be pleasant and your take out never late.

Regards,

V.

the aforementioned rambling: