New month of the new year falling on a new week! Too many blog posts to draft and I haven’t been keeping up, what with just coming back from Okinawa and jumping right into my internship. There’ll be a full blog post on Okinawa next week, fingers crossed. As for my internship, it’s been going well. I have friends at work, with whom I always get lunch with. My supervisors are kind and cool, and have given me two tasks so far, one of which has a concrete deliverable that I finished the day after it was assigned to me, though I had a week for it, and the second of which doesn’t really have a concrete deliverable, so it’s harder to say what my progress is. I hope I get more work because I was feeling a bit bored by Friday (but don’t get me wrong, it was fulfilling doing my work when I had it). Despite having a chill time at work, I can’t use company time/resources (computers) to do my own work (blogging), so I was really marinating in boredom. I need to come up with things to do when I have downtime at work and brainstorm ways to show more initiative.
Books
Look out for a 2017 Reading Challenge in review blog post next week! With 58 books read in 2017, it’ll be a bit lengthy!
What Do You Do with an Idea? by Kobi Yamada // ★★★★☆ // A children’s illustrated book.
Surprise Me by Sophie Kinsella // ★★☆☆☆ // Full review on blog closer to when the novel is published in February.
Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn // Not sure that I get plays, so unfair for me to rate.
Currently reading: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondō
Movies & TV Shows
I started rewatching Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix, though that’s taken a pause now that I’m in Beijing and Netflix is blocked. I haven’t been watching very many things because of the crappy internet connection. But. My family has a streaming device at home and we recently got hooked on Nikita (thanks to me); we binged the first season over New Year’s long weekend. So yeah, that’s what I was doing this past weekend instead of drafting my year-in-review blog posts.
As for movies, surprisingly, none of my flights between Philly and Beijing or Beijing and Okinawa had any good movies. Maybe it’s because many movies have their release dates around Christmas, which is too early for airlines to get their hands on in time for winter break flights. Hopefully by the time I head back to Philly in mid-January, the planes will have better movies. I did watch one movie though, which was Dunkirk.
Music
Dang I’m getting really fancy with all these embedded thingies. First the ShopStyle widget and now Spotify playlists?? I decided to give a go at creating monthly playlists instead of doing what I usually do, which is add all new songs to a single, unorganised playlist, which has now gotten quite extensive, and I don’t necessarily like all the music that was added at the beginning, but sometimes I still get in the mood for them. So instead, I’m creating monthly playlists, which will just be filled with music that I’m currently listening to so that 1) I can shuffle and actually want to listen to every song (no more skipping songs!), and 2) I can download a single playlist to listen when offline. This past month I was listening to my December 2017 playlist and Christmas playlist on rotation.
Cafes/Eats
Though I have been eating out, I haven’t been particularly adventurous with the restaurants and cafes I’ve been hitting up. Around campus, I’ve been frequenting Green Engine Coffee (they had a $1 sale on coffee and tea all through finals week) and Maido, and in the city, I’ve occasionally visited Rothman Cabin, which I’ve been loving this festive season; it’s a tent by the public skating rink at City Hall. Last time I visited, I went with Kat and we shared braised short rib cheese fries.
Whenever I’m back in Beijing, it’s all about revisiting old favourites. 煎饼 from the cart outside high school, brunch at Jamaica Blue (french toast, bacon burger, chai latte frozen blend, matcha latte), and take-out from Victor’s Place (butter chicken and kashmiri naan) are musts. Courtney was in Beijing for a few days and we caught up with each other over a sleepover and brunch at Jamaica Blue before she left; it’s like we were back in middle school haha.
Wishlist
It’s not Christmas anymore, but I’m still down for all this homeware. Mugs (and dessert plates) are timeless.
Paper Source unicorn magic mug | Charmed by the tackiness. Sold by the stars inside the mug.
Fringe Studio merry coffee mug | Everything and all the time.
Anthropologie holiday spirit mug | The holidays are all about being aggressively festive.
Anthropologie holiday spirit dessert plate | Aggressive.
Lately
Cleared off and reorganised my shelf to feel like a stereotypical blogger with the Glossier, Mejuri, and Daniel Wellington. Also the minimal layout makes me feel less stressful. (The shelves underneath still need more decluttering though.) Browsed the Christmas Village for gifts but didn’t find anything, visited the Barnes Foundation museum, then got pulled into a tour of the Free Library, but got a view of the city from the roof out of it. Celebratory dinner with Georgina, Grace, and Victoria, followed by our favourite activity: napping. Celebratory dinner with Louise and Steph. A cheeky preview of my trip with my family to Okinawa; full post on the blog next week!
How was your month?
PS: first week of december, second week of december, third week of december
PPS: november, october, september, august, july, june, may, april, march, february, january