Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna, in die illa tremenda

I'm about a week late on this, but I finally watched the Hana Kimi special! It was so cute! Hana Kimi was the second drama I watched, and it's still one of my favorites ever. The special was adorable, though I would have liked to see more of the Sano/Mizuki relationship. But the opening part with Nakatsu was too cute for words! I LOVE Toma-kun!! And Umeda's blue contacts STILL freak me out. Also, Julia's wig kept bothering me... I tend to fixate on wigs and weaves in dramas. I see them ALL THE TIME in twdramas...

I spent most of today rewatching Coffee Prince (when I really like something, I rewatch/reread it several times... I've watched HYD like, 5 times already), and working. I've been downloading some of the Coffee Prince OST, which is the best OST I've ever heard. The music is phenominal! (I didn't work on the massive coffee prince post this weekend (I had a test in my grad class), but I probably will at work...) Oh! And I caught the BEST Meteor Garden/HYD reference EVER in Coffee Prince, and don't know why I didn't notice it before!

I also did some Mandarin studying! I made some flashcards, but the program I use only had simplified, so I then had to translate the flashcards into traditional. It was time consuming, but good, since I got some practice in! Though, honestly, as much as I want to learn traditional, simplified does seem a lot... well... simpler (...duh right?).

When I was watching the Hana Kimi special, whenever there was kanji I recognized, I totally read it in Mandarin... (which is understandable, since I only know how to read two kanji in japanese (愛 and 犬... kinda random, huh?)).

And I'm exhausted! Sleep now!

Oh, and every single time I hear this song (너를 사랑해) I get all squishy inside. I swear, BEST SCENE EVER in a drama. EVER.

My drama break is almost over! I'm going to work on the summary for the third episode of Love Contract sometime this weekend. Unfortunately I also have a test next week (I have a week to complete it), so I might have to postpone stuff, but yeah!

Even though I've started watching Corner with Love, I'm going to be watching it seriously soon. In my drama break, I managed to watch the Harry Potter 5 movie (which I've been wanting to see for like, a year...) It was super good! I disliked the book (it's my least favorite out of them, though 7 comes in a close second), but I knew it would make a fabulous movie (the action scenes, and whatnot). So yeah. It was fun!

I've been spending a lot of time researching living and working and learning in Taiwan. My mandarin has progressed... not amazingly or anything, but I do know around 22 characters (meaning I can recognize them, write them in traditional, know their meaning, and know how to pronounce them (and write them in pinyin)). I can recognize (and know the meaning of, and how to pronounce) a bunch more. I also have characters I see all the time, but either don't know how to pronounce, or don't know the meaning of. I'm proud of myself! 22 is better than nothing!

I can say short, basic things in Mandarin. Like, "hello", "how are you", "goodbye", "thank you", "I'm sorry", "okay", "no", "yes", "I don't know", "haven't", "good luck", etc. In sentences, I can recognize words... it's weird to think that 4 months ago I had no clue how to say ANYTHING in chinese... and now I understand some stuff!

Though I haven't finished the first episode of Corner with Love, I have to say, 大S is freaking gorgeous in this drama! I mean, she was always pretty, but in her previous dramas, she was always made to look plain and a little mousey. This is the first drama I've seen her in where she's all made up all the time, and in pretty dresses (which I want so badly! Her wardrobe is fabulous in the first episode, at least!). And I kinda hate her, because despite being 31 in the drama, she looks like she's barely 20!

Several things;

- I've been MIA for awhile due to my recent obsession with A Game About Love. I ADORE it (but then, don't I adore everything?!). It's so sweet, and lovely, and friendship-ey! Qiao En is really good in this role. Her character, Duo Li, is sweet and sincere. More like Xin Yi from Fated to Love You, than her characters in Prince Turns to Frog, or Ying Ye 3+1. Sam and Xun Jie are great too! Their friendship is portrayed so well. And both are fantastically adorable and hot in the drama. Yu Qiao, who plays Qiao En's sister in the drama, kinda annoys me though. I think it's her voice.

- Randomly speaking of Fated to Love You, I read somewhere that there is probably going to be a sequel! Sequels are rare (the only ones I know of are the Meteor Garden sequels, and They Kiss Again (sequel to ISWAK)), but it's not terribly surprising, considering FtLY is the #1 twdrama ever. I guess they originally were going to do a period piece, but then decided against it. That would have been awesome though!

- Haven't started my Love Contract project yet, but I will soon (maybe even tonight!). I've actually been taking notes to start my NEXT project... but that one is still a bit away.

- I just read about a kdrama called Love Story in Harvard that I so want to watch now! How could I NOT... I mean, it takes place in HARVARD. It's be so freaking awesome to watch an asian drama where the setting is a place I see EVERY DAY (yes, I see Harvard everyday... it's on my way to work, and very hard to miss).

- I've become more sure that my plan to study Mandarin in Taiwan is the right thing for me. It's still a ways away, so I have plenty of time to reconsider. Plus, one of the community colleges near me offers Chinese... so I might sign up for a beginners class. And apparently they don't teach hanzi in the class, which is good, since they'd probably teach simplified anyway. So this way, I can learn some basics, and then I'll be slightly prepared for Taiwan. Also, I want to learn in Taiwan specifically because they teach traditional hanzi. Right now, more than anything, I want to do Chinese studies (in particular, Taiwanese studies).

- It's also really annoying learning mandarin in simplified, and then having to translate it into traditional via my trust dictionary. Stupid simplified!

- Lastly, found a car today! Very possible that I will buy it. It's cheap, and looks nice. So yeah!

( Drama/Anime/Manga List update 11Oct08 )

I FINALLY found the first part of jiā yóu!!
It's the same character that is used in the title for Ying Ye 3 Jia 1!!

加油!! So exciting!

OMG honey and clover totally rocks my world. Seriously. Toma-kun continues to wear the awesome Boston Univsersity sweatshirt (squee!!), and in the last episode his friends uncovered his large porn stash! So cute!

I was practicing my Mandarin tones last night, and I seem to have finally gotten the fourth tone (descending), but now I'm having trouble with the second tone (rising). Whenever I pronounce it, it sounds like the third tone (wiki calls it the "dipping tone")... So yeah. Tonal issues abound.

(Randomly, on the wiki page for Mandarin, it has some sample phrases, and one of them is; "How much will it cost to get to Munich?" (Dào Mùníhēi xūyào duōshǎo qián?).... odd. Also odd, but for some reason, other than english, the foreign language I hear spoken the most in dramas is german. It's weird, and funny... last episode of Honey and Clover a character spoke german. And I totally understood what he said! Dao Ming Si spoke german in Meteor Garden too... granted he wasn't any good at it, but whatever.)

I feel like doing nothing today. I'm so damn tired, and just sick of work. I'm so sick of work it's not even funny.

Random ass note on Prince Turns to Frog

What's with the weird hair dying going on here?! Joe Chen has blonde streaks (they're actually pretty well done! They're true blond, not orange), and one of the other female characters has a HORRID dye job. It looks like it was bleached (it's kinda orangey, the equivalent of blonde on really dark hair), which is fine, since the orange/brown color is actually kinda nice, but then she has really bad roots, like not just an inch or so, which is in style, and forgivable, but like, 3 or 4 inches of dark hair, and then bleached hair. It's weird looking.

I also learned the correct pronounciation of 小 verses 宵. Oddly enough, 小 is a third tone word, but whenever I hear it pronounced it sounds like a first tone word... And 宵, which I thought was a third tone, is actually a first tone. It's confusing.

Oh! I watched Bones last night. And I was TOTALLY unused to watching white people on TV. They kinda looked strange to me, like too elongated. And hearing english on tv is always weird. I watch so much asian tv, that Mandarin seems normal to me now.

It's really wicked hard to find Taiwanese drama icons. Seriously. HARD. Taiwanese dramas/entertainment isn't as popular in America as Japanese entertainment is, so it kinda gets neglected. I'm actually surprised I've been able to find as many subbed dramas as I have, since Taiwanese drama seems to take a back seat to Japanese.

ANYWAY, new icons!! My current one is Zai Zai (仔仔 / zai zai), whom I ADORE! He's (他 / ta) so (所以 / suo yi) great (好 / hao? Doesn't seem like I should use it as such...) and cute (可愛了 ke ai le) in WtSYA. (I'm going to randomly be writing stuff in Chinese for awhile. I want to be able to recognize more characters. Sorry if it's annoying...)

WtSYA is great! I adore Zai Zai's (我愛仔仔 / wo ai zai zai) character a ton. I also love Kingone (我愛王傳一也了 / wo ai Wang Chuan Yi ye le) in it. He's (他 / ta) totally playing against type, which amuses me (我 / wo) greatly. Ken's (朱孝天 / Zhu Xiao Tian) character is cute (可愛 / ke ai) too, but he (他 / ta) hasn't been around much lately, so (所以 / suo yi) I (我 / wo) don't have as great of an opinion.

My understanding of Mandarin has really gotten a lot better recently. I can't (我不可 / wo bu ke) really put sentences together yet, BUT (但是 / dan shi) I can (我可 / wo ke) understand (懂 / dong) a lot more (更 / geng) words, and I can (我可 / wo ke) pronounce them pretty well.

Yay!

( Drama/Anime List update 02Sep08 )

Random Mandarin stuff I want to remember;

吧 - ba -> polite suggestion particle
了 - le -> particle intensifying preceding clause
嗎 - ma -> question particle
沒有 - mei you -> haven't
甚麼 - shen me -> what
因為 - yin wei - > because
油 - you -> second part of ("jia you")
乾杯 - gan bei -> cheers
我不知道 - wo bu zhī dào -> I don't know
是 - shì -> yes
不 - bu -> no
不過 - bù guò -> but, however, only, etc
為什麼 / 為甚麼 - wèi shén me -> why, for what reason
總經理 - zǒng jīng lǐ -> GM
海豚 - hǎi tún -> dolphin
相信 - xiāng xìn -> believe
小姐 - xiǎo jie -> miss (young lady)