halfcactus

Just got back from a short solo trip to Bangkok where apparently all I did was look at birds... It was my first time in Thailand ever, and between my relaxation-focused itinerary and the semi-spontaneous meet-up plans on my first two nights (I stayed three), I got to at least familiarize myself with the basics of both train systems and the area around my hotel. I logged 20k–30k steps a day (with an average of 26k steps) but a lot of it was unnecessary walking from having no sense of direction and always getting lost haha! Now my camera roll is full of photos/videos of birds (and reptiles—which deserve their own separate post).

I'm still very new to travel so this is only my second solo trip ever and the first in a country/city I've never been in before. I feel some measure of regret for not eating, shopping, or exploring more, but I'm also pretty happy with the way I traveled—a way that is only possible when I'm by myself. And although I barely slept since I woke up at 3:30AM on Thursday to make my 7:30AM flight, I felt so light and free and open to organic interactions with strangers. (Well, as light and free as one can be when tethered to their phone and fully dependent on Google Maps and power banks. XD)

Maybe one day I'll post about the whole trip but for now—birds!!!

Pictures

I hope I didn't misidentify any of them:



I'm so pleased to be able to recognize the Asian koel call from Wingspan (the only call I internalized because it's so distinctive and familiar), so every time I heard it I felt like I was in Wingspan hahaha. I didn't see any though, I guess they stayed on the trees. ;___;

Did most of my bird-watching in Benchakitti Park and Lumpini Park where my main goal was to see monitor lizards (I only got to see them in Lumpini Park, but I'm not sure if time of day was a factor), but saw common mynas, pigeons/doves, and sparrows (no picture because they're that common) all over the city. :) I hope to see one of the temples if I get to visit again! I had to trim my itinerary so I wasn't overextending myself to make it to meet-ups, and one of the activities I cut off my list was Wat Pho (reclining Buddha). A reason to go back, I suppose. :) (I should make a list of the places I got recommended during the meet-ups too...)

Went through a ~cinephile~ period in January in the sense that I saw many movies and found most, if not all, good. Most, if not all, were also gen, which may have raised the enjoyment level for me. Faith in movies restored...????

🇺🇸 Zootopia 2 (2025)
This was just okay, a bit timely for Snake Year. I may be getting too old for this. Favorite scene was the part with the walruses and their feedback loop of "hey bub" (because it reminded me of my friends).

🇨🇳 Her Story | 好東西 (2024) dir. Shao Yihui
Wrote about it here.

🇹🇼 Left-Handed Girl | 左撇子女孩 (2025) dir. Shih-Ching Tsou
I really liked this! This was widely praised in international film circles last year, but I was worried it'd be too slow and that the appeal was in its Asian-/foreign-ness. The pace is very fragmented at the beginning, leaning heavily on slice-of-life, and then, halfway through it connects. The characterization really shone in the buildup of moments, I love I-Ann so much!

Notes: There's a weird scene with the immigrant character that draws more attention to itself when it goes nowhere. And I-Ann's boss + the boss's wife are written with a jarringly heavy hand. But in spite of that, this movie made me feel things. Also it was shot with an iPhone, which was interesting.

CW (spoilers)

Brief animal death (meerkat jumping to its death), terminal illness (brief scene with the biodad), abortion

🇨🇳 Legend of Hei 2 (2025)
Enjoyed this SO much more 1) as a rewatch, 2) on the big screen. Not only was I forced to focus, I could also see the narrative structure more clearly and see the plot through the correct PoV (Luye's). Everything makes so much more sense if you take this as a road trip movie for Xiao Hei and a character study of Luye who's lost so much and loves so much, both of them meeting halfway through Wuxian—but still not really seeing eye to eye. I love them so much!!!

🇹🇼🇯🇵 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days | 青春 18X2 (2024) dir. Fujii Michihito
daisydiversions has been suggesting this movie for groupwatch for a while and I've been so lukewarm about it, but I ended up loving this one too. 😂 First of all, it was shot really well. The lighting was beautiful and reminded me so much of film cameras and even scenes with dim lighting did not look too dark. The two timelines (past and present) were easily distinguishable by the color grading and styling.

I actually enjoyed this more than Cape No. 7 which was also about a cross-cultural "romance" because it's not actually a cross-cultural romance. Instead it's about youth and meeting people who show you a path out of yourself. Rather than being a destination, love is part of the journey to becoming who you could be. Honestly a 5/5 movie for me, I'm sorry I doubted you lol.

PS. One of my journal notes says "Certainly it's hard not to notice how men have the privilege of being adventurous (sic)". XD It also helped that I've been to a couple of the places featured in the movie and could sort of anticipate what the characters were gonna do—Kamakura for Slam Dunk, Jiufen/Shifen for the lanterns.

🇨🇳 Resurrection | 狂野時代 (2025) dir. Bi Gan
Definitely a movie to see in the theater... It actually made me appreciate the theater sound system, the sound chapter had SO many things going on.

This is a love letter to cinema nested in a science fiction story about endangered dreamers. The dreamer dreams in movies. Each is a different style and genre, and each represents a significant period in Chinese history as well as one of the five senses: a silent movie about opium (sight), crime/noir about musical madness (sound), a folk tale about a former monk and the Spirit of Bitterness (taste), a con adventure about a thief and a little orphan girl (smell), and a doomsday romance (touch).

I can't say that I loved this movie as I don't really care about the ~spirit of cinema~, but it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, which means it's objectively good. I liked the SFF bits and the little fragments of aesthetic satisfaction. My favorite is segment the father-daughter con for being very cohesive and tropey.

CW: drugs, violence, torture


🇯🇵 Love Letter (1995) dir. Iwai Shunji
An epistolary movie about grief, memory, and coincidences of similarities. When Watanabe Hiroko's fiancé Itsuki Fujii dies in a hiking accident, she writes him a letter and mails it to his hometown. The letter is received by a woman whose name is also Itsuki Fujii (and looks exactly like Watanabe Hiroko). Doesn't that sound like the plot of a GL story riffing on the soulmates trope? XD

Watched this because it was referenced in 青春18X2. It's a really nice play on memory where you only know boy!Itsuki through how the other characters remember him. And it's pretty moving because he is remembered and he is so, so loved. I've been having a lot of anxious thoughts about, among other things, the flimsiness of my own existence, and this movie touches on it for a bit. There's this one scene where a white curtain billows in the wind, and boy!Itsuki disappears behind it—probably as a reminder of his death? But that's pretty much how I have been feeling so I was like "wow, rude."

As most of the movie takes place in the snow and I know nothing about snow, I had the privilege of having daisydiversions and superborb fact-check snow-related scenes and ruin the fantasy. XD I was so impressed by girl!Itsuki skating down a slope with her school shoes too...

Thought it was time to """upgrade""" to—not just a Hobonichi, but a daily journal—since I had gotten more and more consistent in my paper planner/journal use over the years and was writing enough for weekly spreads to feel like not enough space. Of course, last year was my manhwa brainrot year, eventually cured by a persistent fever at the end of 2025, so I had a lot to say. But now all I do is exist in that kind of outlet-less anxiety that leads to hours of pacing in circles or staring into space, so... we'll see.

I also got a pocket diary as a gift last year and was trying to keep it as a separate work planner to make it easier to keep track of my notes, but my brain ABSOLUTELY could not stand the separation. I very unfortunately need everything in one chaotic notebook to function. Work-life balance?


Anyway the tl;dr of it is that after a week of trial and error and mental anguish I think I've decided to use the Cousin's weekly spreads for work and hourly notes, and daily pages for personal notes. Them being in separate sections may still end up driving me crazy but you'll never know until you try.

( hobonichi first impressions )

( warning: large images (journal photos i couldn't be bothered to resize) )

Book recap bc I managed (barely!) to fulfill my goal of finishing 12 books this year. Goodreads tells me I read 4,000 pages with an average book length of 300 pages and an average rating of 3.7/5, which is... not bad for someone who hasn't really been feeling books. Most of what I read this year were by authors I haven't previously read, and most are some kind of Asian. Read 0 books/comics in Chinese (but not for lack of trying).

Also read a bunch of webtoons and indie oneshots (from Shortbox), but those are harder to quantify, so:
( the 12 books of 2025 )

1. You have the summer and plenty of money to travel abroad. Where all would you go?
Australia to visit a high school friend who recently got in touch with me after a decade of hearing nothing from e/o to tell me she's moved. :') Less realistically I'd like to go to the cool art/design museum countries (Amsterdam, Vienna, Prague). But really, I wish I had the money to see overseas online + offline friends (don't we all).

2. What foods would you be sure you got to eat?
Whatever has servings I can finish. And snacks! I don't really eat much when I travel bc I eat too slow and it stresses me out.

3. What landmarks would you be sure you got to see?
I'd watch at least one musical! And maybe find Gixi if she is accessible haha

4. What airline would you use?
A non-budget airline. :')

5. Would your knowledge of other languages influence where you went? (i.e., would you be more likely to go to France if you spoke French?)
Yes and no... Being able to speak Chinglish and understand the local accent makes Taiwan even more chill than it already is because I'm not panicking as much and can wander around more. The first time I went (2019—my Chinese would be at HSK1.5 level at best haha), I got myself and my brother on the wrong train and had to alight at the next station at a nice idyllic town just outside of Taipei where nobody spoke English. Managed to communicate enough to get back on track, which made the experience less scary, though I'd chalk most of that up to the platform uncle being very sweet and super invested in getting us on the right train. (He was more stressed than us when we missed the next train!)

That said, my travel list right now is Thailand and Vietnam (separately) and I'm not fussed about language barriers.

Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)
This is a loving tribute to locked room mysteries (I might give John Dickinson Carr another go) while not really much of a mystery movie itself, which I didn't mind because... I don't actually watch Knives Out for the mysteries. XD And I think it's great that every succeeding movie has been different, it makes the weaknesses less stark because you take them as part of a series. I love how this was more character-centric—at least, for the characters it was focusing on. I also felt it had more heart. I've been told that this is a very "current" movie but I think me not being American has made the entire experience more fascinating—in particular the depiction of Catholicism in the US—and less affecting.

Liann Zhang, "Julie Chan Is Dead"
Read this because of superborb's post here.

The first half of the book is about a down-on-her-luck woman impersonating her rich dead twin and taking over her influencer lifestyle. The second half is a psychological thriller.

The main character is so stressful omg haha but as much as I really struggled with the influencer + impersonation storyline, I must admit that it is the more compelling component! Technically I "enjoyed" the very vibes-driven second half more, but the stressfulness of the main character was what gave it flavor. When it was not stressful, it was very funny. The scenes about the pressures of being the only minority (or at least not having the privilege of living with blind spots) in the group were suitably incisive but not too heavy-handed. Honestly, the kind of book I'd recommend to IRLs.

F3 Concert Tour
I previously wrote that Ken Chu had allegedly been dropped from the F4 reunion tour due to multiple instances of publicly disclosing unfinalized tour info. This is now official news (the dropping of Ken Chu, not the reasoning behind it) and Ken Chu has been making a lot of noise about it. In the MV of the new song Forever Forever, Jay Chou and Mayday Ashin have been added to the group while Ken Chu has been uncannily removed from the Meteor Garden group shots which feels like historical erasure (speaking as someone who never even watched Taiwanese Meteor Garden lol).


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PS. Now watching Mobius which hopefully we'll finish by the end of the year! Interesting setting; Loving the use of Canto and the code-switching + feeling of nostalgia when they do action scenes, but I'm unfortunately not really vibing with it. It hasn't been a very well-directed/-edited series. The storytelling is sloppy, the humor is awkwardly timed and shot, the BGMs are very distracting, and the main characters don't have a sense of personality. Vastly preferring Reset which is ALSO a time loop drama starring the same actor.

+ Inexplicably Aokbab (most known for her role in the Thai movie Bad Genius) is in this. Even more inexplicably her character is Chinese-American (technically, 美籍華人 which I guess doesn't conclusively communicate her cultural identity). But her English is (though not her fault) worse than the non-American character's, and her Mandarin lines are dubbed over, so...??????? Feeling like they could have rewritten the character to fit the actress or cast someone else. It's such a disservice to cast her only to make her character speak two foreign languages.

https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/146318.html

1. If you had to participate in one Olympic event, what would it be and why?
I would like to participate in eating the famous Olympics muffins. :D

2. What is the one song you always sing along to?
Halaga (Worth, the OG "Nice guys" song haha) by Parokya ni Edgar + the chorus of 晴天 (Sunny Day) by Jay Chou.

3. Do you wear a seatbelt in the car?
Usually, yeah, I find it helps with motion sickness when I'm in the backseat. I don't like being thrown around every time the car makes a turn. ^^;

4. Car, SUV or truck and why?
Car because the bigger the moving vehicle, the scarier.

5. Are you a good/bad driver? Explain.
Passenger princess Bad + anxious driver. I'm bad at directions and knowing "rules" (especially unspoken ones that don't match the signage—you can't trust traffic signs here, they are traps so traffic enforcers can extort you for making illegal u-turns at a u-turn sign lol). I can't estimate horizontal space so I panic if there are cars beside me. I also get very stressed when there's a car behind me, or when it's dark, or when it's raining... So, I'm just stressed all the time. XD I did drive my brothers to and from high school and med school for years so I can be trusted with those specific routes at least.

1. What were some of the smells and tastes of your childhood?

This question unlocked something inside me

General scents: Mosquito coils; the colorful chemical paste that you'd smear on a little stick and blow up into a plastic balloon; the smoke from the (now discontinued) toy revolvers that you "reloaded" with red plastic bullet rings; White Flower oil

Star margarine

Hometown dimsum, my beloved for life.

Hometown "street" food: grilled scallops, grilled pork, lemongrass-stuffed native chicken, puso (rice boiled in pouch of woven leaves). And ngohiong, a five-spice-based ('ngohiong' is just 五香) spring roll that never grew on me but is everywhereeeee in my hometown.

Mango tarts, which I just realized that I haven't seen in a decade, at least not in the exact way I remember. It's the kind that has a round shape, a crimped crust, a custard base, a layer of mango slices and a layer of colorless gelatin (I forget in what order), and they'd be sold in solo sizes.

Eucalyptus leaves, dampened to release a minty scent and cooling sensation (we had a tree).

Santol (cotton fruit) - I haven't had one since we moved to the capital. I only liked the pulp around the seeds anyway lol, I haaaated having to eat the sour outer rind to get to the sweet cottony center.

Kamunggay (moringa). My mom hasn't cooked with these since we moved to the capital. I guess because they're not leaves that are worth spending money on (we used to have a tree).

The whole sensory experience of inasal (roasted suckling pig, more commonly known as lechon outside my hometown) we'd have at Christmas/New Year parties. The meat was soft, succulent, and salty, the way only my hometown can do it. The skin was a glossy, deep red shell. It made a satisfying crackle when you broke off pieces with your fingers and shattered them with your teeth, a full ASMR experience. I am not a lechon enjoyer (I prefer them in leftover form), but adults were always putting cuts of it on my plate and telling me to tryyyy the skinnnnn because it was apparently just That Important to them. Is it any wonder that those relatives developed cholesterol and blood sugar issues over years.....

2. What did you have as a child that you do not think children today have?
Winamp skins and piracy skills!

3. What elementary grade was your favorite?
None, elementary and high school are a blur to me.

4. What summer do you remember the best as a child?
The summer my parents shipped my brother and me to different households in my hometown. During that period, I watched Prince of Tennis, got bundled into an overnight ferry for a beach trip (snorkeling) with my cousins' cousins (my relatives had plans and couldn't just leave me behind), and got yelled at and insulted a lot by my aunt who hated girls bc of generational trauma.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self, and at what age?
IDK, I guess do more extracurriculars, learn to network, and hang out/do things with other people more? But probably more extracurriculars, I didn't really have any.

Ahhhh I can't believe November's almost over. A couple of weeks ago we had a typhoon that was as big as our entire country. The coastal areas bore the brunt and weakened it; I spent that weekend keeping an eye on the news while watching a bunch of movies and Physical: Asia, which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected (at 1.5x speed) though I can't be bothered to watch the finale.

MOVIES:

Ballad of a Small Player; American Psycho; The Running Man (2025); Superman (2025); Legend of Hei 2

Ballad of a Small Player (2025)
Directed by Edward Berger, who worked on Conclave (which I haven't seen). This movie is all style, no substance. Macau is painted as a rainbow of neon, dreams, and desperation with a display of excess that feels thematically performative—Colin Farrell plays a gambler who calls himself Lord Doyle and performs at opulence and meaningless hunger. Fala Chen's character recognizes in him a "lost soul" and appears to feel a thread of connection to him. I feel like if the movie had tried to flesh out her thoughts and motives this movie would have struck me as orientalist, but there really is not enough substance here to turn over. It is, however, very nice to look at.

American Psycho (2000)
A portrait of the wealthy as vapid, interchangeable men in suits who are in constant need of affirmation and identity markers and are quite literally an echo chamber. For all their resources, they never achieve self-actualization. They don't even have real jobs. The jokes are funny, but I'm extremely squeamish about violence so I ended up only watching the first third of the movie—which was enough to see its thesis statement—and listening to the rest. Patrick Bateman is the OG # performative male.

Superman (2025)
Enjoyed this a lot, not just because there's a DOG (though mostly because of the dog). Hearing Noah and the Whale's 5 Years Time in a 2025 blockbuster was NOT in my bingo card, didn't really know how to feel about that. The first hour really flew by, while the second one was very standard superhero shtick. The visual gags were fun, the interpersonal conflicts were great, and the ending was satisfying. It's very much a socially relevant movie that's centered on human experiences and doing good. I watched this while a supertyphoon was brewing and seeing the extras take their pets with them in the evacuation scene really hit hard.

The Running Man (2025)
Rather than a dystopian movie, this is more like an alternate reality one, since its themes are very much "present". Apparently this is not just an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, it's also not the first one? It's definitely a great one to catch at the theater and immediately forget once it's over. There's a lot of interesting action, fun references to reality TV shows, and timely reminders about the dangers of AI and digital surveillance and cops, though it's horribly underwritten and overly sanitized. The script simply doesn't support the film's intentions. The dialogue in the last 1/3 outright assumes that the audience is stupid, and the ending is played so safe it loses its meaning.

Glen Powell's character's defining characteristic is meant to be his ANGER towards injustices but he just isn't angry enough and is weirdly passive for someone who's known for always going rogue. Rated R-18, but values are very family-friendly. Michael Cera's scenes were the truest part, both in terms of underground activism (the zines!) and in terms of what I think of as Edgar Wright's directorial voice, which seemed otherwise lost.

罗小黑战记2 | Legend of Hei 2 (2025)
I can see this movie selling really well to overseas animation fans (or at least battle shounen fans), but as I feared, for a movie about Xiao Hei, this didn't have enough Xiao Hei. ;___; First half was great, but second half was bogged down by too many action scenes that didn't feel very meaningful; the entire appeal of the first movie (and even the TV series!) for me was the characters, the relationships, and emotionally driven action and personal conflicts. Instead, this movie was high-stakes and brought to a real-life level I simply didn't care about. There were too many scenes of NPCs with no clear motive or emotional development and the "mystery" suffered for it.

Humor, banter, slice-of-life moments, and 晚安喵 montages were still on-point, though! Like I would still rewatch this for all the character interactions (and I would live in the montages if I could), it's just that I think this movie should have focused more on the found family storyline.