It Started with a Journal

adelagia and I have started our Korean class, and I am LOVING it so far! It's so fun to learn! And I love being able to put a lot of it to practice by watching K-dramas and looking up the names of my favorite actors (after guessing at how they spell their name). ;)

I'm actually really surprised by the written language. I had always imagined it was like Chinese, because they use characters, so it was just a matter of memorizing a bunch of different characters. But in fact, it's a lot more like English, wherein they have vowels and consonants, and you use them to create words, just like English! But instead of words going left to right, the words are placed so that they look more like characters (like Chinese). Anyway, the whole thing is really fun and awesome.

I'm just bummed that due to work travel, I'm going to miss two weeks in a row. Argh! I'll be so behind. :( I hope I can keep up; I've felt really good about things so far and it would really be tragic if this ends up derailing the whole thing.

******

For my last few K-dramas, I seemed to be in a cycle where I was either watching a show where I liked the story, or a show where I liked the ship, but not both. >< This is unlike, say, Answer Me 1997, High School King of Savvy, and Oh My Ghostess, where I liked both of those things at once. (SIG was in all these shows in some capacity... coincidence?? ;) )

Strong Woman Do Bong Soon

In the category of a show where I liked the ship -- "like" is an understatement -- is Strong Woman Do Bong Soon. There was a period of time when I was super done with everything about it other than the stuff with the main pairing, but the other stuff was SO terrible that it was a really frustrating viewing experience. Buuuuuut they did right by us, mostly, in the final two episodes, so my overall lasting impression of the show is positive. I do plan, however, to create a supercut of the show that removes almost everything about the gangsters, and possibly some of the kidnapping plot as well, because both of those things were so poorly done.

As a whole, SWDBS was not a good show. Its massive success is wholly based on the chemistry between, and the individual charms of, its two leads. It also, occasionally, had beautiful cinematography. But that's pretty much it. The writing, story development, plot, pacing, and secondary characters all left so much to be desired. But the leads were so good, and their chemistry so wonderful, that I would still recommend the show to anyone (though I'd caveat it). That's pretty powerful!

( Spoilers through finale. )

Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo

The opposite of SWDBS is Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, which was written by the same writer who co-wrote High School King of Savvy and Oh My Ghostess, both of which were really good in all ways. WFKBJ was a good show, with great writing, pacing, plot development, secondary characters, etc. The leads weren't, in my opinion, as strong as SWDBS (I know Tumblr would shout me down on this one; the couple seems universally beloved). They were good, but I never shipped them the way I ship Bo-young and Hyungsik Bong-soon and Min-hyuk.

I never really got into the lead actress/heroine (way too much crying and wailing for my taste, and I do not understand their coloring choices for her at all), and while I did like the lead actor/hero, I wasn't quite as into him once he was completely defanged (just like Spike!). People seem to love that both Ahn Min-hyuk and Jung Joon-hyung are both nice guy heroes, and while I definitely like that too, what made them interesting was that they both also had a bit of an asshole sheen. I particularly liked Joon-hyung for not getting sucked back into his ex-girlfriend's BS.

Answer Me 1994

This is another one where I liked the story a lot more than I liked any of the ships. It was actually a near-miracle that I ended up finishing this one at all, considering how much I disliked the heroine initially. In the end, I was fine with her, which is a good thing since I have to watch her opposite Park Hyungsik in Hwarang at some point. But the ship was... so meh. It says a lot that jade_okelani and I thought watching all of 1994 was worth it just for the brief cameos that SIG and Eun-ji did... it speaks to how little we were into 1994, and how much we loved the ship in 1997.

( Spoilers! )

I was going to include two other dramas in this post, but if I do that, who knows when I'll actually post this thing? So -- the end! (For now.)

I am on a kitchen goddess ROLL. I've gotten pretty good at making jajangmyeon, if I say so myself (and I DO, okay). I've made it four or five times now, and I've got it down to a science. So delicious! The only negative is that I can't seem to find the right noodles to use. I'm using fresh Korean noodles, but I've tried various kinds and they're all a little too thick. Besides, jajangmyeon is a Korean take on a Chinese dish, so the noodles should actually be more Chinese-style. There's apparently "jajangmyeon noodles" labeled as such out there, but I've never been able to find them. :( (In related news, jade_okelani ate jajangmyeon for the first time and now understands what all the hype is about.) The other day I also made chicken tamale pie, and that was reallllllllly good also.

Never let it be said that I neglect dessert! I've also made two kinds of ice cream: vanilla with chocolate stracciatella (basically, chocolate chip ice cream) and chocolate almond walnut. Sooooooooo good. I recently had a disappointing experience with a store-bought ice cream, and decided to make my own. There was one summer when I was making ice cream constantly, but it's been awhile, so I was a little rusty. The custard for the vanilla one seemed a little dicey initially, but after straining it, it turned out great. Next up: I'm going to try and make my favorite sea salt with caramel ribbons ice cream from Salt & Straw. ( My experimentation so far. )

jade_okelani and I are sooooooooo **HEARTEYES** over Park Hyungsik it's not even funny. We just LOVE HIM in Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, and love the show, period. Yes, it has its flaws. But they're easy to overlook when there's so much else we enjoy! I'm both happy and sad that we started watching while it's airing. It's such a great show to look forward to, but it's sooooooooo disappointing when there's no new episode for another week. The problem is, when we decided to watch SWDBS in real time, we had expected to like Goblin a lot more (or I did, at least), and not expected to like SWDBS quite so much. Sigh.

Isn't this an awesome shot of Park Bo-young and Park Hyung-sik? She looks so much better with her normal dark hair like she has it in everything else I've ever seen her in. I'm not sure why Bong-soon has to have the light brown/orange hair, even though PBY is so attractive she can pull it off anyway.



( SWDBS spoilers through ep 8. )

The main theme song from SWDBS is sung by Jung Eun-ji! <3!! I love her voice.

I'm giving Reply 1994 another shot. jade_okelani and I started Reply 1988, but we got to talking, and it seemed to make sense for her to see at least the pilot of Reply 1994. If she could take it, then I could probably get through it with someone else to watch with me, and then we'd be watching things in chronological order. The interesting thing is, on rewatch, I actually do like 1994 better than I did before! Maybe it's watching with Jade, or maybe it's just having the distance from 1997, which I loved sooooooooooooooooo much. I'm not as bothered about the parents being the same actors, and even Go Ara doesn't annoy me as much. I'm still not a fan, but I don't dislike her as much as I did the first time around. This also bodes well for my plan to watch Hwarang (for Park Hyungsik). ( Spoilery comment. )

One of the shows that's on our watchlist, that must now be bumped up, is She Was Pretty. Why? Because in episode 9, there are cameos from Seo In-guk AND Park Hyungsik!!!!!!!!! If they are on screen at the same time, I might actually not survive.

I was forced to buy a new iPod because my old iPod, the discontinued 120GB one that I got yeeeeeaaars ago, stopped working after the latest iTunes update. It was super annoying, but I've had issues with it over the years, I don't actually need 120GB of space on my portable music player, and I figured this might be Apple's way of stopping support for it once and for all. And by "stopped working" I don't mean that it literally stopped working. I can plug it into my car or any speakers, and it will play fine. However, iTunes and my PC can't read it, so I can't update it. In fact, I thought I might have to wipe the whole thing and re-input all my music, which I've had to do several times before, but I can't even do that. It's basically a time capsule at this point, with only the music I've put into it before March 2017. :P Part of me wondered if I should just be patient, and with the next update of iTunes, it'll fix itself. But like I said, I just figured it was time to get a new iPod, so I did. Only days after I got it, however, I learned from adelagia that she only got her new iPod last year, and the same thing happened to her! So... WTF!

Anyway, what's done is done, and I don't really regret it. I liked that I was able to personalize it with an inscription on the back (I used a song lyric, since it's an iPod!). I like that it uses a touch screen. And I LOVE that I can connect to it via Bluetooth from my car and wireless headphones. So, all in all, despite being resentful of Apple for breaking their own shit so that I can't use it, I'm not sorry I upgraded.

Subject line: Bong-soon's Mom to Min-hyuk, in order to manipulate him into joining them for breakfast.