MIRTH:
Blogging the delicious, the inane, the delightful, and the laughs of a twenty-something.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
I meant to post this up earlier, you know, when it was still 2010, but I was too lazy haha. This breakdown is completely arbitrary & purely for (my) entertainment purposes.
Best Male Character: Joo-Won from "Secret Garden" played by the ever fantastic Hyun Bin.
Best Female Character: Gu Miho from "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho" played by the radiant Shin Min Ah.
Best Kiss: the train scene between Park Shi Yeon & Kang Ji Hwan in "Coffee House."
Best use of ineffective second-string leads: "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho"
Most anticipated: "Mary Stayed Out All Night"
Biggest waste of talent: Moon Geun Young and Jang Geun Suk"Mary Stayed Out All Night"
Biggest mis-cast: Kim Hyun Joong in "Playful Kiss"
Breakout actor of the year: Lee Ming Jung
Best Drama: tie: "Secret Garden" "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho" "The Woman who Still wants to get married"
Best Album: G-Dragon and TOP's "HIGH HIGH"
Best Male Artist: Taeyang
Best New Artist: Miss A
Best Female Artist: BOA
Best Male Group: 2AM
Best Female Group: 2NE1
Best Choreography: 2NE1's "Go Away"
Song of the Year: Miss A's "Bad Girl, Good Girl"
Artist of the Year: Taeyang
Best Collaboration: Daesung & Hyori's "How Did We Get"
Best Music Video: 2NE1's "It Hurts"
Most Disappointing Comeback: Se7en
Best Mini-album: Gummy's "Loveless"
Best Variety: STRONG HEART
Best On-screen Couple: KHUNTORIA
Best Off-Screen Moment: Daesung's hospital visit to Jung Eun
OMG Moment of the Year: Shinee's Jong hyun & Shin Kyung Admit to Dating
Best Dye Job: Park Bom's red hair
Best Music Stage: 2ne1's "It Hurts"
KDRAMAS
Best Male Character: Joo-Won from "Secret Garden" played by the ever fantastic Hyun Bin.
Best Female Character: Gu Miho from "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho" played by the radiant Shin Min Ah.
Best Kiss: the train scene between Park Shi Yeon & Kang Ji Hwan in "Coffee House."
Best use of ineffective second-string leads: "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho"
Most anticipated: "Mary Stayed Out All Night"
Biggest waste of talent: Moon Geun Young and Jang Geun Suk"Mary Stayed Out All Night"
Biggest mis-cast: Kim Hyun Joong in "Playful Kiss"
Breakout actor of the year: Lee Ming Jung
Best Drama: tie: "Secret Garden" "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho" "The Woman who Still wants to get married"
KPOP MUSIC
Best Album: G-Dragon and TOP's "HIGH HIGH"
Best Male Artist: Taeyang
Best New Artist: Miss A
Best Female Artist: BOA
Best Male Group: 2AM
Best Female Group: 2NE1
Best Choreography: 2NE1's "Go Away"
Song of the Year: Miss A's "Bad Girl, Good Girl"
Artist of the Year: Taeyang
Best Collaboration: Daesung & Hyori's "How Did We Get"
Best Music Video: 2NE1's "It Hurts"
Most Disappointing Comeback: Se7en
Best Mini-album: Gummy's "Loveless"
MISC. KPOP
Best Variety: STRONG HEART
Best On-screen Couple: KHUNTORIA
Best Off-Screen Moment: Daesung's hospital visit to Jung Eun
OMG Moment of the Year: Shinee's Jong hyun & Shin Kyung Admit to Dating
Best Dye Job: Park Bom's red hair
Best Music Stage: 2ne1's "It Hurts"
Friday, January 7, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
I'm in a weird headspace at the moment, so just bare with me. I finally finished reading the book Eat, Pray, Love--and, if you've seen the movie, please disregard it for the purposes of this blog post.
It needs to be said that I almost always get into a strange headspace/mood after I've finished a book (the exceptions being textbooks and the like). I think, though, that my book read, that is, fiction reading, process is a bit strange. When I pick up a book, I skim the back cover/inside of the dust jacket to see if it's something I could get into/want to read. If I'm in a bookstore, I may even read the beginning pages just to see it's style and characters. If I'm sold on it, I'll buy it.
And then, at some point in my reading, usually when I'm just about getting a feeling for the characters and the storyline--right when I'm starting to feel invested in the book and have decided how I would like things to end... I skip to the back of the book and read the last few pages or last chapter, or the epilogue.
Why would you do that?
Many people have asked me this.
But I have always been this way, I think. Movies and books and the like are never "spoiled" for me by knowing the ending. If someone has seen a movie before hand, and we are discussing the points of the movie, I always say, "you can go ahead and tell me the ending, it's not gonna spoil it for me." Because it doesn't. I think the process of getting to an ending is more exciting, often, than the ending itself. And I just like to know. Especially if there's a romantic twist to the story. I like to know that the characters I'm getting invested in are going to give me the ending I want haha.
Anyway, with books, whenever I get towards their end, I always get a bit sentimental--it's even worse though, when it's a book I've thoroughly enjoyed. It's so bittersweet. I can't wait to get to the ending, although I know how the end will play out, and yet I also get sad that I'm almost there.
I catch myself reading slower, drawing out the sentences, the paragraphs, the pages. I let passages stew in me longer, let ideas bounce in my head longer. Wanting to hold on to this story, this unfinished relationship just that much longer. But inevitably it happens. Despite all my hesitation, all my reluctance, I do, finally, reach the end.
It's over. Finished. DUNZO.
And I'm happy it's over; I'm happy I saw it through to the end; happy that I have a new friend to add to my collection. But I'm also sad, as if I've been on a journey with this person as my guide, but they've now taken me as far as they can, so now they have to say their farewells, departing from me and letting me go on by myself. Like all relationships, I'm glad for the time spent together, but I understand that I can't stay with them always and forever.
Today I finished Eat Pray Love. I really enjoyed the book. Without saying too much, I would just like to note that it was exactly the kind of book that I needed in exactly the time that I've read it. It resonated with me a lot more than I thought it would. True, I'm not yet in my thirties, nor have I ever been married (not even close), nor have I experienced the trauma of a divorce...
But I think I was going through my own struggles, watching my own worldview shift in ways unknown to me this year. I carried this book with me to the banks of the Schuylkill river, where I sat eating cake and crying until the sun came down.
Like I said, I think this book came to me in the time that I could appreciate it best. It touches on subjects that are common to the human experience, which is why it was just so relatable. Part of the reason why it took me so long to finish, especially when I was reading it in Philadelphia, was that I kept having to pause, to reflect, to process.
Anyway, anyone else have any strange reading habits? Or am I the only one who likes to skip to the end?
It needs to be said that I almost always get into a strange headspace/mood after I've finished a book (the exceptions being textbooks and the like). I think, though, that my book read, that is, fiction reading, process is a bit strange. When I pick up a book, I skim the back cover/inside of the dust jacket to see if it's something I could get into/want to read. If I'm in a bookstore, I may even read the beginning pages just to see it's style and characters. If I'm sold on it, I'll buy it.
And then, at some point in my reading, usually when I'm just about getting a feeling for the characters and the storyline--right when I'm starting to feel invested in the book and have decided how I would like things to end... I skip to the back of the book and read the last few pages or last chapter, or the epilogue.
Why would you do that?
Many people have asked me this.
But I have always been this way, I think. Movies and books and the like are never "spoiled" for me by knowing the ending. If someone has seen a movie before hand, and we are discussing the points of the movie, I always say, "you can go ahead and tell me the ending, it's not gonna spoil it for me." Because it doesn't. I think the process of getting to an ending is more exciting, often, than the ending itself. And I just like to know. Especially if there's a romantic twist to the story. I like to know that the characters I'm getting invested in are going to give me the ending I want haha.
Anyway, with books, whenever I get towards their end, I always get a bit sentimental--it's even worse though, when it's a book I've thoroughly enjoyed. It's so bittersweet. I can't wait to get to the ending, although I know how the end will play out, and yet I also get sad that I'm almost there.
I catch myself reading slower, drawing out the sentences, the paragraphs, the pages. I let passages stew in me longer, let ideas bounce in my head longer. Wanting to hold on to this story, this unfinished relationship just that much longer. But inevitably it happens. Despite all my hesitation, all my reluctance, I do, finally, reach the end.
It's over. Finished. DUNZO.
And I'm happy it's over; I'm happy I saw it through to the end; happy that I have a new friend to add to my collection. But I'm also sad, as if I've been on a journey with this person as my guide, but they've now taken me as far as they can, so now they have to say their farewells, departing from me and letting me go on by myself. Like all relationships, I'm glad for the time spent together, but I understand that I can't stay with them always and forever.
Today I finished Eat Pray Love. I really enjoyed the book. Without saying too much, I would just like to note that it was exactly the kind of book that I needed in exactly the time that I've read it. It resonated with me a lot more than I thought it would. True, I'm not yet in my thirties, nor have I ever been married (not even close), nor have I experienced the trauma of a divorce...
But I think I was going through my own struggles, watching my own worldview shift in ways unknown to me this year. I carried this book with me to the banks of the Schuylkill river, where I sat eating cake and crying until the sun came down.
Like I said, I think this book came to me in the time that I could appreciate it best. It touches on subjects that are common to the human experience, which is why it was just so relatable. Part of the reason why it took me so long to finish, especially when I was reading it in Philadelphia, was that I kept having to pause, to reflect, to process.
Anyway, anyone else have any strange reading habits? Or am I the only one who likes to skip to the end?
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
to infinity and beyond!
My first post of 2011.
I want to wish you all a belated new years. I hope you rang in the new year with great pomp and circumstance!
This is all a little late, but the holidays never leave me with much time, so now that it's all over, I want to share a few reflections.
2010 was so good to me. I loved and loss. I visited London for the first time! I went back to Paris! I finished my thesis! I graduated with my Masters! I went to Philadelphia! I got my butt kicked at UPenn and by Greek. I applied to teach in S. Korea. I laughed a lot. I cried some. I hugged and made small talk. I ran with my arms stretched out.
I came back home and have been idle. Or, I suppose I am taking a much needed break. My days are everything and anything I want them to be. As great as that is, I think I'm finally ready to get back to doing something productive. I enjoy a certain amount of routine in my day. And ultimately, when nightfall hits, I want to be able to think that I've been productive. I know that there are a lot of ways to measure productivity, and it's not just about being able to pat myself on the back for having checked off all the things on my daily "to-do" list, that there are innumerable ways to be productive, everyday. I understand this, cognitively, at least. But I remain, at heart, a person who loves to make to-do lists, loves to see things checked off of them, and that is how I measure my productivity. As sad as it is, reading 60 pages in a book, sure makes me feel good that I've made progress, but I didn't finish the book. Thus, I can't cross it off my list, and that doesn't make me feel good. It's sad, but there it is, nonetheless.
Like I said, I'm ready to start actually "doing" things again.
This, however, puts me between a rock and a hard place, because while I would love to start getting back to, I dunno, working for a living, I am still, waiting to hear back about whether or not I have a future living in South Korea. This is driving me crazy, because it forces me to live in a sort of limbo. I would just like to know, to have an answer, whatever the decision may be. Because then I could actually start to do something, start to plan for the rest of the year.
On that note, I've been thinking a lot about the direction of my life. It may be because it was the end of the year, and at the ending of the year I'm always forced to take stock of my life, for all it's good and bad, and of course, face my own mortality. I'm 25 years old now. And as misguided as it this notion is, mostly because it was formulated when I was much younger and much more susceptible to the brainwashing that happens when being socialized in school, but I sort of thought that I should have been a grown up by now. That I would have a "real" job and a "real" house and a "real" relationship. --oh gag me -- and it's not that I believe in any of that now, especially the relationship part, but sometimes, just sometimes I wonder just where it is that my life is heading.
I mean, I have all this "education" and all this "life experience" and yet, I'm not really doing much. Nothing really for the betterment of the world/humankind, nothing really to share anything with others about what I've been able to ascertain from the world, not sharing my time to make any sort of positive impact. I know that the answer is that if I am so worried about it, then I should just do something about it, but let me be just a tab bit more specific.
I'm struggling to discover how to make my life meaningful in the greater scheme of things. Beyond just myself, and my closed circuit of friends. Is my life doomed to be a series of fragments, ultimately fleeting, inherently transparent and temporal? With nothing weighty to ground me? WIth my life having no true purpose? No true meaning?
But then again, why is it that I believe that having a life of fragments means less? What's wrong with being temporal, if, in reality, that is hat my life truly is?
So you see my dilemma.
Perhaps this a response to my own mortality? I couldn't argue that it isn't. That wanting my life to mean something somehow makes it worth something, and that I can somehow transcend the bounds of my own physical life.
Still something I'm struggling with.
For now, let me end with some resolutions for the year:
1) cultivate a more meaningful prayer life.
2) learn korean.
3) be healthy.
did anyone else make resolutions? I'm curious to know. Anyway, that's it for me, for now. Happy 2011!!!! (doesn't that sound like we should be driving around in spaceships and/or teleporting?!?) :D
I want to wish you all a belated new years. I hope you rang in the new year with great pomp and circumstance!
This is all a little late, but the holidays never leave me with much time, so now that it's all over, I want to share a few reflections.
2010 was so good to me. I loved and loss. I visited London for the first time! I went back to Paris! I finished my thesis! I graduated with my Masters! I went to Philadelphia! I got my butt kicked at UPenn and by Greek. I applied to teach in S. Korea. I laughed a lot. I cried some. I hugged and made small talk. I ran with my arms stretched out.
I came back home and have been idle. Or, I suppose I am taking a much needed break. My days are everything and anything I want them to be. As great as that is, I think I'm finally ready to get back to doing something productive. I enjoy a certain amount of routine in my day. And ultimately, when nightfall hits, I want to be able to think that I've been productive. I know that there are a lot of ways to measure productivity, and it's not just about being able to pat myself on the back for having checked off all the things on my daily "to-do" list, that there are innumerable ways to be productive, everyday. I understand this, cognitively, at least. But I remain, at heart, a person who loves to make to-do lists, loves to see things checked off of them, and that is how I measure my productivity. As sad as it is, reading 60 pages in a book, sure makes me feel good that I've made progress, but I didn't finish the book. Thus, I can't cross it off my list, and that doesn't make me feel good. It's sad, but there it is, nonetheless.
Like I said, I'm ready to start actually "doing" things again.
This, however, puts me between a rock and a hard place, because while I would love to start getting back to, I dunno, working for a living, I am still, waiting to hear back about whether or not I have a future living in South Korea. This is driving me crazy, because it forces me to live in a sort of limbo. I would just like to know, to have an answer, whatever the decision may be. Because then I could actually start to do something, start to plan for the rest of the year.
On that note, I've been thinking a lot about the direction of my life. It may be because it was the end of the year, and at the ending of the year I'm always forced to take stock of my life, for all it's good and bad, and of course, face my own mortality. I'm 25 years old now. And as misguided as it this notion is, mostly because it was formulated when I was much younger and much more susceptible to the brainwashing that happens when being socialized in school, but I sort of thought that I should have been a grown up by now. That I would have a "real" job and a "real" house and a "real" relationship. --oh gag me -- and it's not that I believe in any of that now, especially the relationship part, but sometimes, just sometimes I wonder just where it is that my life is heading.
I mean, I have all this "education" and all this "life experience" and yet, I'm not really doing much. Nothing really for the betterment of the world/humankind, nothing really to share anything with others about what I've been able to ascertain from the world, not sharing my time to make any sort of positive impact. I know that the answer is that if I am so worried about it, then I should just do something about it, but let me be just a tab bit more specific.
I'm struggling to discover how to make my life meaningful in the greater scheme of things. Beyond just myself, and my closed circuit of friends. Is my life doomed to be a series of fragments, ultimately fleeting, inherently transparent and temporal? With nothing weighty to ground me? WIth my life having no true purpose? No true meaning?
But then again, why is it that I believe that having a life of fragments means less? What's wrong with being temporal, if, in reality, that is hat my life truly is?
So you see my dilemma.
Perhaps this a response to my own mortality? I couldn't argue that it isn't. That wanting my life to mean something somehow makes it worth something, and that I can somehow transcend the bounds of my own physical life.
Still something I'm struggling with.
For now, let me end with some resolutions for the year:
1) cultivate a more meaningful prayer life.
2) learn korean.
3) be healthy.
did anyone else make resolutions? I'm curious to know. Anyway, that's it for me, for now. Happy 2011!!!! (doesn't that sound like we should be driving around in spaceships and/or teleporting?!?) :D
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Snowflake Melts in Your Eye
You'd think that with all the kpop I've been exposing on this blog that it was my first dive into fandom. No, no, my friend, not a long shot.
My gift to you this Holiday Season is this: Nsync's HOME for CHRISTMAS Album. Although Mariah Carey's Christmas album may have enjoyed more popularity, I think the quality of Nsync's album, on the whole, is more enjoyable--their acapella version of 'O Holy Night' is particularly lovely. The whole album been on constant repeat on my itunes ^_^
Enjoy & Happy Holidays!
My gift to you this Holiday Season is this: Nsync's HOME for CHRISTMAS Album. Although Mariah Carey's Christmas album may have enjoyed more popularity, I think the quality of Nsync's album, on the whole, is more enjoyable--their acapella version of 'O Holy Night' is particularly lovely. The whole album been on constant repeat on my itunes ^_^
Enjoy & Happy Holidays!
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