writing.translation.photo
saw a dream
of waking up in a room and not being able to see, because it was filled with mist
and then I looked out of the open window and saw clouds flowing right past and below it,
and I could touch the clouds.
And I grabbed one and ate it, and it tasted like shaved ice and I thought that that must have been a snow cloud.
That’s how much I miss cold and misty weather.
I hated a lot of things about UK when I was living there… like how impossible it was to get anyone to work, whether it was to fix something in your apt, or in banks (I left 6 years ago and they still refuse to close my bank account over there, because they don’t understand the concept of not being able to come in and do it in person because I live on the other side of the globe and don’t remember 9 year old passwords anyway), or real estate agencies who refused to work with you just because you are a foreigner (turned you away the second you walked in), or the London tube that never worked properly… or the drunk crowds destroying everything in their sight every Friday night, … and all the other instances portraying the lack of earnestness and proficiency…
… but I still miss it a lot sometimes. Living in UK. The other things about living in UK.
Sometimes Asians are such… Asians.
Just saw someone complain on 9gag that he started dating a nice Asian girl, but she cooks rice every day and eats it with everything, and while reading it I scoffed and thought t: Why do you need to make up these stereotypical jokes? What’s so fun about that?
… and then I switched channels on my japanese tv, and saw them introducing all kinds of delicious foods (again), among which there was this deliciously looking mashed potatos, topped with a minced meat souse… and just as I was thinking how nice it looks …
… they went ahead and put it on top of rice.
…seriously?
…mashed potato on top of rice?
I’m still not over people putting soba inside of bread, or eating ramen with rice… but how the hell these people can keep eating white rice with everything and put carbs on carbs and stay so thin and tiny is beyond me.
It’s unfair is what it is.
in most of the stories I read/watch, there comes a point where I wish a could stop it and re-write it differently (aka the point where I’ll likely will have to stop watching).
For example, in the Good Wife I was playing at the background for a while…
… I personally think it would be a much better story if they killed off the husband, and not whom they did kill off (spoiler alert, kinda)
(though then she would have to be the Good Widow)
An official notice that was sent to our company from a game rating organization of a certain country I’ll refrain from naming. I’m not even kidding.
The problem with me and traveling is that, as any child who grew up spending a lot of time roaming alone through hotels around the world, a feel a little too at home inside the hotel and don’t really want to go out… I need to go for a walk but in truth staying in the room writing and reading all day feels like so much more fun and a more pleasant way to spend my days off… (Not to mention that it feels stupid to pay money for a good hotel and spend most of the time outside of it.)
OmmWriter app
a way to make you keep your screen clean of fingerprints and stuff.
Sometimes I just have to stop in a middle of doing something and ask myself: “To whom was I just talking so intensively in my head for the last hour?!”
On the company-wide web notice board
stuff like “Person who lost 50yen, please collect”
or “Someone forgot 100 yen change at the wending machine” announcements
are a real thing.
Japan.
p.s. – They hang there for weeks, because whoever lost their money can’t remember if it is theirs, and all the other people won’t take money that is not.
I feel great disappointment when sequels of movies that have ended on some high and happy note, start with “and then, while no one was looking, it all went to shit”…
like the second Ghostbusters or Miss Congeniality
I can’t use my writing to get the bad blood out of myself.
Because I need my writing to be my good blood.
But then I suffer a lot from the need to get the bad blood out somehow and not knowing how…
can’t help but judge people not by the answers they give but by the questions they ask
The Bird and the Blade by Megan Bannen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Disappointing execution of a disappointing concept.
I wanted to like this book. And I thought I did for about two first chapters… until the language and the way the story was told begun turning increasingly disheartening. Another good idea utterly betrayed by a very pure execution.
This book fails spectacularly regarding immersiveness and world-consistency. First, I kept feeling that more and more of geographical and historical descriptions felt somehow wrong, but decided that since it’s a fictional version of the world I shouldn’t care so much… But then I almost DNFed (I had to put it away for couple days) when I reached phrase “asset to be liquidated”. Because, seriously? Did the author even try to care about how her protagonist sounded? This and many more very modern phrases and thoughts, jump out from pages, break the immersion completely, and make it impossible to believe in the setting of 1280 Asia. I don’t know if it is carelessness, laziness, or if American YA writers are simply expected to write books like they can only be read by young girls who only care for the cheesy girly feelings and ‘unconscious cuddling,’ and not about things like writing language, consistency, and believability… (It isn’t too difficult to type ‘bullet’ into a search engine and look up the etymology and first known use, is it? Though I suppose something like common sense should tell you it’s not very appropriate for 1280 even without having to look it up… And neither is “yep” Or phrases like “thanks but no thanks”.) But it made me very sad and by the second half I was kind of skimping through a lot of text, instead of trying to enjoy submerging myself in the story (because I knew I wouldn’t be able to, and only would turn more irritated by finding other examples of questionable phrasing…)
Also, the summary is misleading. “Ghosts” have practically nothing to do with the story at all, and their very short “appearance” makes place only at the very end and felt very forced and useless. Otherwise there are only memories and dreams.
Lastly, the least it could have done is follow through with its silliness and have some sort of unexpected positive ending. But noooo, it does the most boring thing of sticking with the unpleasant ending of the original story, which became the tip on the mountain of my disappointment with this book… (The author says she was outraged with it, and than just repeats it in her own work word by word. I don’t see the logic.)
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sweet but confusingly fickle teen love story.
Would I pick this book up if I was browsing at a store? 99% not. (Might have something to do with very toxic pink of the inside cover of Owlcrate edition, tbh.) The themes in this book are something I have absolutely no first-hand knowledge of, and could hardly relate to (hoods, black cultures, teenage dating). Doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested in them, I love to read from perspectives of different cultures, but it does mean that for the whole duration of this book I couldn’t really tell if I should be taking it seriously (believing what it was putting down), or not. In fact, I would actually like to know how people who relate to the background of this story (who come from the area and cultures described) felt about this book. Is it relatable or is it laying it too thick?
I would have given this book more stars, because it has its own world, and the writing is pleasant and charming, if not for one thing – the main character. And I honestly couldn’t tell if this was a writing quality problem of inconsistency of presentation, or if it was a realistic representation of type of a teenage girl mentality I simply didn’t want to know anything about… One minute she is clever and responsible, the next she is arrogantly blind and annoying. Is she calling this boy a ‘home’, and saying how it is easy, comfortable, and ‘right’ to be with him, or is she only going out with him to make the other boy jealous? One minute she says ‘you gotta have your boy’s back’, the next she believes what someone else told her about him withing a second. In fact, she kind of seems to believe whoever was the last to talk to her. I love him, I hate him, I love him, we can’t be together,… every three-four pages the main character changes what she thinks and feels and if that’s how teenage girls are supposed to be I’m glad I wasn’t really around for that phase.
The reason I’m more inclined to believe that this is a writing issue is that a lot of other characters are treated in the same way. A boy who was supposed to be in love with her sister for a very long time suddenly is in love with other girl and there isn’t any explanation, a girls who was almost an antagonist and bitchy as hell is suddenly all nice and helping, there are characters who get introduced and dismissed right away, and story points that could have gone somewhere being dropped and forgotten all over the place… Everything is just so… fickle.
This book felt like it could have a lot of potential the way it began, but about half way through it’s like it was all rushed through and scrambled, like the author just had to finish it and be done with it, leveling behind undone more than half of ideas that she had at some point.
Should probably also mention that this book is full of poetry, and it seems like it would be a big plus for those who enjoy it.
Overall, I feel like I wish this book could have been rewritten properly, with more depth and exploration, picking up all the little branches and focusing on its own details, and then I could have actually honestly liked it.
Keina Daria 