2.12.21// here we go again - with phd research and norwegian grammar exercises... it’s honestly everything i do right now to distract myself from the actual classes i need to take, but, surprisingly i’ve managed to plan out one of my term papers, which is kind of a success!

listening to: taeyeon, gemini

01.12.2021

happy first day of december! i’m slowly getting through all of my quizzes and such, and of course, getting ready for finals which are all next week. today, i went out to a small, hidden cafe with my friend and we enjoyed some hot chocolate and chai while also studying! additionally, i’ve applied to another coffee shop for work, since the one i work at currently is far too stressful and busy. i have an interview today, which i am slightly nervous about but hopefully all goes well. i will take pictures within this coffee shop as well!

Today I am feeling unwell. I have submitted my essay. Hope that I do well 🙏🏾 I did some accounting questions and accounting notes.

Sunset photo: Jerry Slaughter

Day 17/100...

I've completed all my projects for coding.😃So I'm going to do them again but this time with videos playing along so I can see how to improve. Spanish is improving a bit I think..

01/12/12, 09:54

Good morning!! Long time no see 🥰 I’m studying in a cafe today! Deadline season is here and I hate it.

📚- Oathbringer (Brandon Sanderson)

You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens…

Actually i was going to share a video 📽 today... i tried to shoot it while studying but it didn't work, because there was not enough memory on my phone, the video was interrupted and after editing the video it didn't turn out the way I wanted so I deleted it, I was very angry because the editing took my time but in vain. Anyway, I just continued the movie I started last night… now my to-do list is waiting to be completed and if he says I haven't come back yet… see you soon because I need to get back to class as soon as possible…

Ps. :My sister gave the cup in the photo and I made green tea 🍵, and mixed cookies 🥜 with it. And the fox 🦊 plush in my hand is my other sister's…

Of course I moved my fourniture around until 1am (but finished my homework before)

32/100 days of productivity

November 30, 2021 | Tuesday

I’m trying my hardest to do good in this class, it’s just a bit difficult especially since the teacher isn’t the best and says ‘look at the textbook’ whenever you have a question🙄. I’m praying that I pass and I can move on and not look back

30.11.2021 • studied in the school library with my friends. finished writing an assignment & studied for the mid-term exam i'll take today.

Exam season is upon us…

Between having four exams in two weeks and writing applications for external scholarships for my MSc (so excited!!), let’s just say I need a nap…

But despite there being so much to do, I don’t think I could ever stop getting excited about science 🧬🐠

Getting to the point in an assignment where the tabs are beginning to overtake all my screens.

2021/12/01

first of four finals this afternoon. wish me luck! separately, the sun seems to hide more and more these days, only rising at 08h, and setting around 15h… it’s really putting a damper on everything, but only 20 days until we start getting more light! (and maybe some snow)

1/12/21

Time for my November Immersion Overview!

Admittedly, I'm four reviews behind, but I was so much in the immersion zone this month that I kept putting off writing them all. No regrets, since that's four completed reads and a million monthly streak still going strong! I'll try my best to put them out for you guys before the year ends.

As usual, I'm excited for a brand new month of immersion, especially because a bunch of stuff I've been waiting to finish releasing are now ready for me to binge over the holidays.

Books

I was self assessing a lot recently, and I figured out that I've been quickly gaining speed reading in 横書き but going slowly for 縦書き, which makes sense because I've spent a lot of my time reading visual novels. Can't beat reading horizontally for most of my life I guess.

To combat the problem, I tried reading books again with some success, since I actually finished one that I stalled for months on end. Tried to use pomodoro, but because every chapter is a different length, I find it very easy to break concentration as compared to visual novels that, despite having to make choices, I can just continue reading 'til the point of almost exhaustion before quitting for the day.

Not giving up though, because I discover new interesting reads everyday, and do have the desire to read all of them one fine day. Just have to keep pushing forward.

My reads for the month totalling 103.32k characters: 本好きの下剋上 司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません 第ニ部 兵士の娘II, かがみの孤城, 君の名は, くまクマ熊ベアー 2, and 三日間の幸福 (completed finally! Review soon.)

Drama

Only one drama?! Pathetic, I know. An absolute shame that all of the things I wanted to watch were either hard to find or still airing. I have come prepared for December though!

着飾る恋には理由があって

So happy that what I did watch was pretty good though! 横浜 流星 keeps playing chef characters in the shows I have seen with him as lead, and its so attractive it should be illegal. (.////.)

Really enjoyed this show; it hits my standard for 女性向け dramas - relatable and cool female lead, interesting side characters, and to top it off, the goodest dog you ever did see! Just a bunch of young adults figuring out their lives like normal people without all the unrealistic drama and scandal that's usually in romance shows.

Podcasts & Youtube

I've also come to realize that all the reading I have been doing have actually started to put my listening behind a bit, and because I've been learning to bake a lot of different things recently, I needed something to listen to while waiting for things to rise in the oven. Figured podcasts were the way to go, because I haven't touched them in a while, and they're relatively much harder than watching content, since they have no context aside from maybe a short description per episode.

4989 Shiku Hakku American Life Podcast

Easy to follow and relatable since she talks a lot about her English language learning journey in America.

ひいきびいき

Probably still my favorite podcast despite only listening to a few episodes since it requires me to concentrate on it a lot more than American Life, but I really love that this is basically two people having a conversation, and their banter and verbal expressions are a really good reference to imitate for future output attempts.

自分に換えるゼロ空間

Stumbled upon this on Spotify, and listened to a few episodes. Can't tell if I like it or not yet, but there are so many episodes that she could easily be potential shadowing material for me, so I'm hoping I get into her content more.

フェルミー漫画大学

Technically, this is not at all a podcast but I like listening to it in the background as if it is, and honestly I've been kind of surprised at the range of non-fiction topics this has.

Visual Novels

Read 1.02 million characters.

At this point, I've come to accept that I've truly fallen deep into the 乙女ゲーム hole, and that there are no signs of me stopping or finding a way out.

Finished both あやかしごはん おかわり, 紫影のソナーニル　-What a beautiful memories-, and I will try my best to write my reviews for them as well. (´v｀;)

The tricky one here is エンジェルビーツ!, something I stalled way back in July. For the most part, I agree with the sentiment that if you're not enjoying something drop it and move on (and I technically did for 4 months), but I'm also stubborn, and it upsets me that everyone raves about how good Key VNs are and I have yet to finish even one.

I said earlier that choices in VNs do not break my concentration, but if it is as many, as pointless, and as close to each other like it is for Angel Beats (and for the couple of other Key VNs I did start and stall as well) then it becomes a problem.

Starting this again, I realized that despite following a guide, it just goes all over the place, sometimes choices bringing me to the middle of a different route - I was not ready for that kind of chaos at all. Still, I have goal before the year ends, and I'm going to do my best to beat this game despite it being a skip hell fest and unfortunately only mildly funny for my taste (the jokes in this got old so fast I...٩(๑`^´๑)۶).

-☆-

Thanks for stopping by and reading! I'll catch you all again next time.

Now to actually go write those four reviews....ヾ(｡>﹏<｡)ﾉﾞ

Day 16/100..

On to my last project for the first portion of the course. Those projects are not as refined as I would like them to be but I intend on practicing until I get better. I will be focusing on Spanish reading today so it will be a light session.😊

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato's Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur's Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai's iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of "White Town" in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of "Muddling Through" - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

'Massa Day Done:' Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism's effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe's influence on India's culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

Time is running out.

No one :

Me : *Going absolute feral at 2 am*

I HAVE TO LEARN LATIN AND FRENCH. I HAVE TO LEARN PLAYING PIANO AND GUITAR. I HAVE TO WRITE A POEM ABOUT THAT BOY I SAW IN THE LIBRARY. I HAVE TO TELL THE MOON HOW PRETTY SHE IS.

— before and after

the end of august/beginning of september smells like a brimming cup of tea, new textbooks, and autumn slowly approaching

fuck hiding your femininity in stem. your sharp eyeliner is a taste of how steady your hands are in lab. your fire outfit demonstrates your attention to detail. normalize being hot and smart