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Xiang Liu's selfless love

(Lost You Forever)

He's the ultimate bad boy who seems very much like a walking red flag at first.

Many times, he reminded me of Choi Young Do (the other red flag 2nd male lead that I've loved). He's temperamental, borderline violent, and also exhibits borderline personality disorder considering the danger he puts himself and Xiao Yao/Xiao Liu in whenever they were together. (E.g. Throwing Xiao Liu off of Mao Qiu, leaving her to Chang Xuan knowing he'd be ruthless to her, etc.) But he's not the type of lover to baby his girlfriend and respects whatever she wants. If she says she has the ability to deal with consequences herself, he does not impose his opinion on her. It was only later that I realised every time he showed his "violent and animalistic" side, it was to prevent both Xiao Yao and himself from seeing him as someone who is capable of the love that Xiao Yao deserves. This was particularly evident when they left the gambling den and Xiao Yao says to Fang Fengbei (Xiang Liu), if she was the one who rescued Xiang Liu back then she would let him live as no one else but Fang Fengbei. This meant that he would never become involved in the war between Chenrong and her maternal family. Xiao Yao once asked her grandfather if he would accept a grandson-in-law who was his mortal enemy; showing that in her heart, Xiang Liu meant a lot and was someone she had considered. But FFB/XL could not allow that because there was no turning back or changing the fact that he will give his life to repay the kindness of the general who had saved him. The only thing that is stopping him is the group of men and the debt he must repay, and given that his character is one which would never tolerate betraying these people, he knows that he cannot let himself choose Xiao Yao over them.

FFB/XL also never answered Xiao Yao as to what kind of person is most suitable for transferring the poison bug because the main criterion is that this person must have feelings for the other person. He could not bring himself to say it, obviously. Because he's already fallen in love with her but he could never let her know.

In the epilogue of the novel written for Xiangliu's character, the soldiers debated about why he always wore white only. XL had only ever told Xiao Yao that it was simply a habit, his survival instinct. But the soldiers also learned that he wore white so that every time they were on the battleground, he became the walking bait and attracted the deadliest attacks, which allowed him to protect most of the soldiers to the best of his abilities. But he also willingly showed Xiao Yao his vulnerable side, something that is counterintuitive for a character like Xiang Liu - not only because he was supposedly a deadly killing machine but also it was an animal's way of showing their trust (if you know what I mean). No, this is no excuse for some of the insane things he's done and his temper but he selflessly saved Xiao Yao when she was technically dead. He traded his life for hers multiple times, including the time when he saved the one person who would care for her and love her. His love was not about having Xiao Yao for himself. And because he knew he couldn't abandon everything else, he did not allow either one of them to initiate a romantic relationship that might stop them both from being level-headed enough.

There is so much to say and I simply cannot have enough of this character. Throughout all of season 1, he was the only character I was constantly waiting for. It is not only that the character has been written so well but Tan Jianci has such amazing acting skills. The way his eyes expresses all the complex emotions is insane.

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My technique for Quick Literature Review

Literature Reviews were one of the most confusing things for me when I began my PhD. I would get lost in searching for papers, wallowing in tangential directions, sometimes looking at entirely unrelated stuff. Other times, I’d be trying so hard to read an article and stuck without moving forward.

From my fair share of struggle with literature reviews, I deviced a technique that helped me do quick literature surveys, especially when I needed to write a proposal or improve half-written manuscript or to understand a new method/theory. So, here you go…

1. Collecting literature: Research Rabbit App🐇

This is my go-to tool for literature discovery. In addition to quickly build a literature collection, it helps to see how all the papers in my collection are connected! This is very essential when you write your LitRev, as you will need to draw connections between different works.

Go to www.researchrabbit.ai and search the topic you need articles for, and add them to a collection.

The app will automatically suggest more papers based on your selections and will make connections between the articles in terms of authors, citations or references!

You can also look for other papers by a certain author or similar papers to the one you choose.

(Make sure to stop when you find yourself going down the Rabbit Hole ;) )

2. Extracting information: Skim & Annotate 📑

Once you finish collecting the literature,

quicky read the abstract and decide which ones are important, relevant or new.

Now and skim the chosen papers, and annotate the most important things you find. I usually go for paper and highlighters, sometimes use the annotator in Mendeley

Optional: categorize the articles and assign a colour for each.

(Don’t spend more than 10 minutes per paper. You can always go back and read the article thoroughly after completing this task)

3. Organizing thoughts: The Sticky Note Method 🗂

Here comes my favourite part. I developed this technique inspired by a lot of tools I found on the internet. The Sticky Note Method is to capture, rearrange and construct thoughts.

From the now annotated, categorized collection, write down the essence of each article in a separate sticky note.

(here is where the colour-coding might come in handy: you can use different coloured sticky notes for different categories.)

After doing this for all the papers, stick them in a board/notebook

Rearrange them till you get a coherent flow!

That’s it. Now start writing your review! ;)

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Rebellious girls in the 1920s wanted to anger and shock their Victorian-era parents, so not only would they bare their knees with short dresses, but they would also paint pictures to make sure an onlooker didn’t miss their risque hem length. Rolled stockings became a fad with the shorter hemlines, and girls would go get roses, butterflies, ocean scenes, or their dogs’ faces painted on their knees to further push their boundaries. Much like with most makeup in women’s history, this wasn’t just an act of creativity, but an assertion of independence. After World War I, more women gained financial independence with work, broke away from chaperoned parlor dates, and became a part of the public by walking the city streets without a guardian. The new generation felt a need to express this clear break from the old era of Gibson Girls and Victorian women, and they did so with the help of paint and knee rouge. “Because of rolled stockings and short skirts they, like their fair owners, are emancipated,” The San Francisco Examinershared in 1925. The girls were no longer wearing the oppressive corsets of the previous generation, which is partly why rolled stockings became a fad — there was nowhere to clip their hosiery to.

Painted knees were also an experiment in owning sexuality. Rouged knees would seem flushed (hinting at sex,) and painted knees would bring attention to body parts that were stigmatized just a few short decades back. But these moments of self-rule were oftentimes punished, as students in Ohio Northern learned in 1925. Girls had been drawing roses on their knees, and the dean called an emergency meeting to get them to stop. “It was intimated that some of the professors had not been able to do their best work owing to the profusion of knees in certain classes, that it is difficult for a mere male instructor to think of the Einstein theory, for example, with a tastefully decorated knee — well, staring him in the face, as it were,” The San Francisco Examiner wrote. The fad eventually fell out of vogue, but it resurfaced again in the 1960s — during an era where skirts rose in hemline, women pushed for independence, and embraced their sexual freedom once more. Painted knees were the perfect compliment to mini-skirts and Bermuda shorts, and a student interviewed for The News in 1966 said that she painted her knees so often that she could “put it on faster than face makeup.” (source)

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practising this impressionistic style with some studies of Monet, Morisot, Van Gogh, and a photo I took ✌🏻

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Please GOD🥺

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so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

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Japanese child actress Mana Ashida (little Mako) was embarrassed that she couldn’t pronounce Guillermo Del Toro’s name so he gave her special permission to call him “Totoro-san” instead.

My Neighbor Guillermo Del Toro.

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“But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.”

— Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed

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A summary of Zhang Zhe Han's controversies

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Can someone please tell me what it means when an owl LITERALLY fucking swims towards you and then stares you down??

Like look at it?? Literally flew past me and my my friend, it was so close that the wings touched our faces.

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So uh….some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

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What does it take to teach a bee to use tools? A little time, a good teacher and an enticing incentive. Read more here: http://to.pbs.org/2mpRUAz

Credit: O.J. Loukola et al., Science (2017)

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THIS IS THE CUTEST SHIT IVE EVER SEENNNN

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C-drama rec: 《我在他鄉挺好的》 or Remembrance of Things Past

The literal translation of the title is "I'm doing fine in this place away from home." But I think the English title was well chosen and quite relevant to the core of the series. It's only 12 episodes (which is too short when it's such a good one!). I'll try to give away as little spoilers as possible.

[TW: Suicide]

Before anything else though, I'd like to add a very big trigger warning of suicide because the series opens to the scene of a girl jumping off a bridge. This girl is one of the 4 main characters; her name is Jing Jing. The series then follows the story of these four characters with them often recalling memories of Jing Jing as they stumble through life in Beijing city. Their struggles are very relatable and perhaps all too realistic. If you're looking for a feel good, escapist story that will lift you up, maybe this isn't the one. But I can tell you it's a great drama with well-written characters and a realistic and sensible plotline. Also, I ditched every other series I was watching just to watch this.

(Where to watch: Links at the end of post)

If I were to liken this to any other story that I know of, this series does remind me a little bit of the book by Celeste Ng, 'Everything I Never Told You'. The 3 characters and also one of the male characters grapple with the trauma of Jing Jing's death. For the 3 female characters, they're Jing Jing's closest friends and also one of them is her older cousin sister. (In China, as I've observed, cousins tend to be addressed as their own siblings and some of them do share very close bonds.) The story follows these characters as they go on with life but also each episode reveals a little bit about what might have led to Jing Jing's death. They realise how much they do not know of Jing Jing and each episode, they discover something or someone they'd never known. It prompts its audience to think, you may know someone and you may think you know everything about them but things may just turn upside down when you least expect it. And you won't even know what went wrong, who this person that you love so much was, and how people left behind deal with the trauma.

One of our main characters, Qiao Xi Chen (Qiao), works in the marketing department of a coffee company. She works hard when she has to, is very competent and smart, and is very confident in her work. But office politics throws things off balance. She then gets into a series of unfortunate events. The first one being swindled of her half year rental fee which she gave to the agent. She was kicked out of her house and it's honestly the most horrible and terrifying thing to lose a place to live in overnight. For those who might have rented rooms or houses in cities, you might have had some experience that are bad or your worst living nightmare. I personally have had a series of those. Her story is also very relatable for young women who live alone and work in a big city.

Jing Jing's other best friend is Xu Yan and she works at a company's customer service department. All day, she deals with phone calls of grumbling customers complaining about the products. She sometimes have to deal with calls from customers who speak with a heavy accent or dialect but she does her job pretty well too. However, her story arc is less relatable to me personally. She has an unhealthy obsession with branded handbags and items. She and her boyfriend are the typical "Moonlight Clan/Generation" who barely manages to have any savings because they're spending on rent, bills and all the miscellaneous luxury goods that are trending. She struggles with her self image because of her work environment and feel pressured to keep up with fashion trends or a lifestyle that she can show online. I don't think it's inherently wrong to want to pursue such a life. Enjoyment and leisure can be very different to many people even if it doesn't appeal to all. She may appear a little childish but she isn't actually hateable.

Jing Jing's cousin is the oldest in the group and they all call her "Nan Jia jie" (older sister). She's an entrepreneur who started her own events management company in Beijing. She's 35 and she's pressured by her mother to quickly get married. Problem is, her mother thinks she should just get married to anyone (literally ANY MAN) who is willing to marry her. She also considers purchasing a house but property prices in Beijing are impossibly high and she barely manages to put together money for her first instalment. I think we're living in an era which has made property ownership impossible difficult. And capitalism may still want you to think that you must own a house, this may not necessarily be the case anymore.

I really like all the tiny details of this story. The way everyone finishes work late and each go their own way because sending your colleague home at 3 or 4am across the city would mean you basically do not get sleep (like you might as well just stay in the office), or how you live further away from your workplace because you can't afford a place nearer. The commute to and from work during rush hour. The list is endless. But this feels like a story that is close to the hearts of many, it tells the tale of the average salaryman living in a metropolitan city (especially in Asia).

It's the kind of drama that will leave a mark on me for life, and in a good way. I feel like part of it is already engraved in me. The cast is also doing great at stringing you along in sharing their emotions (I don't think I've cried this many times at the very beginning of a series). The writing and pacing are all great. Characters are also very well written. I do have some qualms with certain characters and their actions but... Not too big and they aren't grave sins.

I also don't think they're doing the best job at depicting trauma of witnessing a suicide and dealing with the aftermath of the suicide of a loved one but, to me, it's handling these issues quite well. At least the story is indeed about them coming to terms with the suicide of Jing Jing and them trying to make sense of what led her to this end.

Where to watch Episode 1:

Remembrance of Things Past - MangoTV

On their Official YouTube Channel