#Slow. I know. But I have made soooo much progress!!! I started three yesterday and finished one tonight :)

[lokibites]

COMMISSION QUEUE

[☆⁠☆☆] Blast (stylized portrait)

[☆⁠☆☆] Kok (stylized portrait)

[☆⁠☆☆] Anon (rendered full)

[☆⁠☆☆] Talon (sketch page)

[☆⁠☆☆] Nim (sketch full)

[otteron-the-sun]

[2] Two side of a coin

State : In progress Characters : Moobin x Rocky x OC (Mee Joo) Genre : fluff / a bit of angst / maybe  future smut? Featured : Poly!Rockbin and College!AU Summary : Being a college student seems to be easier for your love life, little did I know that a bet between two guys won’t make everything goes so smoothly after all. Word count : 2,300+ Side note : I wanted to add, Mee Joo is only a true character, with her own life, and own look. If you want to identify at her while reading, you can, and change the look to yours, but I prefer her to be herself when I write. Then again, thanks to my baby @wolfheart-46 ♥

Previous part

Wednesday morning, it was an awful morning. I was terribly tired, face buried in my pillow, and letting out a long and raspy groan at the sound of my alarm going off. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to bed so late yesterday, but I thought that finishing my essay during the night was a better idea than doing it a bit each day and completing it the weekend. But there was the problem. Since I’ll be going to the party at SanHa’s fraternity, I prefer to finish it now and have a free weekend. Maybe free if no one give us homework on the meantime between today, and Friday evening. After a lot of efforts put together, I got up of my bed, staring blankly at the wall for a good minute, and then went take a shower, trying to wash the tiredness off. Not to mention, it didn’t totally worked, and I only want to go back to bed. But no. I have to go in class until the last one to finally go see Rocky for a bit. And I couldn’t hide that it was the only thing that motivated me to go through the day. But that also meant that I have to be cuter than usual, to keep a face in front of him. That’s why, after my shower, I walked to my closet and stood up for a while, staring at every pieces of clothing. And I tried to put two things that looked good together before adding a third, and another one. That’s how I finished with a white tank top, in my high-waisted jean. I really have a thing for high-waisted bottom uh. I took a flannel, a bit to hide my bare shoulder. And also to hide from the cold. We still were in the month of March, so, nop, too cold for only a tank top. Not forgetting to put my sneakers, eat breakfast and grab my coat before leaving, almost late. So, it was fun for the pedestrian, they looked at me, running down the way to the university, grabbing hard on my backpack. I ran until I was in front of my classroom and then stopped immediately, rearranging my hair. Shoot, I haven’t even put makeup on this morning. I’ll have to do it during my lunch break then. Once inside the room, I took my place, next to one of my best friend, Shin-Ae, and I leaned my head against her shoulder, quietly mumbling something close to a “good morning”, and she just patted my head with a laugh. “Wow, you look worse than usually, you don’t even have makeup on. Are you sick?” she couldn’t help but laugh when I looked at her with a yawn, before shaking my head, crossing my arms on the desk and leaning my head on it. Me, almost sleeping, was the first hour of the morning. I said sleeping? My bad, it was totally me, trying my best not to die while also trying to take notes, which was kind of a tough job. But after half of it, fighting against sleep, I started to feel better, more awake, and a part of this universe. It was at this moment that I looked around before pulling on Shin-Ae’s sleeve, tugging softly. “Do you think that I look good today? About my clothes. I’m going to see Rocky at the end of class, and I don’t want to look like some kind of joke beside him… I mean, he’s cute, and I look like… a goose.” She let out a little snort, rubbing little circles on my back, smiling at me. Before telling me that I look really cute, but I’ll look cuter with a hairdo and some makeup, and “she’s sooooooo gonna take care of that during lunch break”. What an angel, sometimes, I wonder what I’d without her, and the reply is: nothing, I’d be lost for my dates. But it wasn’t really a date with Rocky, so it wasn’t the matter right now. Was it? Just the thought of it being a date had my head spinning for a bit, biting slightly on my thumb, thinking about it for the rest of the morning, still taking notes, somehow. It’s true that we get along pretty well, and he is really cute, but… I don’t know, was it too soon? Too soon to go on a date? Come on, it’s just a date. Or maybe it wasn’t, actually. Lunch break was a true relief, eating a bit, thinking a lot. About everything. But I couldn’t just think too long before Shin-Ae pulled me on a chair in one of our classroom, and start doing my hair. She didn’t do much to it to be honest, just pulling it into a bit-messy bun, letting my fringe free. And when she did my makeup, oh boy, it was like being under the touch of a bunch of fairies. It was so nice and light. So peaceful. I could almost fell asleep under that touch. But I didn’t, and I ended with a really nice makeup, not too much on the eyes, not too much on the lips, something really natural, almost cute. Actually, I felt really cute for once. And her, she seemed like she had so much fun, taking care of me like a little doll or even a little girl. But me, I felt like seeing Rocky like that would be a piece of cake, since I was cute, I didn’t looked like some lost girl who cling to him because he’s so nice and so cute. I wonder if someone ever tried to act lost just to be with him for a bit. It wouldn’t even surprise me. Two more hours was spent in listening to the teachers, taking notes as always, and trying so hard to ignore all the little comments that everyone made once they saw me. It was from some guy telling that I was really pretty when I wanted to, to some girl saying that it wasn’t me, it didn’t suits me, and if it was for a guy, he probably won’t fall for me. So yeah, I decided that ignoring them was the best idea I could have today, before finally leaving the school. But seeing Rocky in front of the entrance door was quite unexpected. I mean, did he really knew where the literature building was, or he just guessed right. His head snapped up to look at me when he heard my footstep on the gravel. And I was greeted by his smile the second his eyes fell on me. “Wow, If I knew, I’d be wearing something a little more… I don’t know, classy? To match you.” Wow, is he serious? I mean, yeah, he don’t wear a tuxedo or nothing like that, but he’s really well-dressed. Shaking my head with a smile, I just looked at him before looking back at my school building. “Did you really knew where it was, or are you just a stalker?” “A stalker. Definitely.“ We burst into laughter after staring at it each other for way too long, and then, he explained to me how he knew. Actually, it was just Moonbin who told him where it was on the campus, because, of course that Binnie knew that. Even SanHa didn’t know where was my building, which was… not really surprising if we count that he didn’t even know where my apartment was. I mean, it’s SanHa, do we really need to add something here? During the walk to the coffee shop, the little talking was mostly about what we did those three last days. I mean, more him than me, since I just went to school, then went to work, before going back home and do my homework. But even though my days was pretty boring and tiring lately, he just listened to me complaining, and he complained with me at some point. Because it was fun to complain about things, like, school, homework, people. We really have a lot to complain about, and it’s nice to have someone that I can complain with. It was great to talk with him more than we did the last time, with the others. It was better to know each other that way, kind of easier. In front of us was standing a coffee shop that was way too familiar to me, since I usually work here after school. I didn’t mind coming here for a drink, since : first, I have a discount on everything because I’m an employee. Second, I could kill for their strawberry cake. But seeing me in one of my day off made my coworker laugh at the sight of me. “ Hey MeeJoo, you know that you don’t work on Wednesday? Or maybe you just missed seeing my face like I missed yours?” It was my turn to laugh, reading carefully the black boards with the drinks’ names on it, but nothing had change and I still know them all, them and what’s inside. “Mhmmm, no thank you, I’d rather have a drink.” And I winked to him, just to tease him before letting him take my command and Rocky’s one. We waited for it, with my comments on how slow my coworker was. We took a sit in one of the booth to be a bit more in a private space to talk. We just sat face to each other with our drinks displayed between us. My vanilla milkshake with my strawberry cake against his cold Americano and a simple chocolate crisp muffin. I took the opportunity of being on a banquette to be crossed-leg on it, doing my best to not let my feet touch the leather of the seat. It was way more comfortable this way. “Soooo.. You work here then? I’m sorry to bring you here during your day off… I just like this place.” He began, a bit embarrassed that it was my workplace, but I just brushed it off with a smile and a movement with my hand. “That’s okay, I like being here.. You should come Thursday afternoon, until 7, we could see each other that way !” Big smiles creep on both of our face. It could be way more nice to have him with me during work, it could make me feel less alone when there is no one with me, and it was always the case the Thursday afternoon. No coworkers, just me. The conversation went on, talking about what we do in our school course, what was the best and what was the worst in it. And he was so in love with dancing. The way he talked about it almost make me fall in love with it. With dancing, not in Rocky, slow down. He started to talk about their new project in dance, that’ll count in his grade for the semester, which was dancing with someone else. “ And of course, I chose Binnie as my partner, since I know him for a while now.” Of course. Strangely, with Rocky, it was always how Moonbin was nice, intelligent, knows a lot of things. But it was really cute to see him being his little hypeman, always there to say good things about him. It’s maybe what happen when you know someone for so long and never leave him on the side. And I thought about SanHa and me, we are close, we tell everything to the other, but since we aren’t together 24/7 like before, we prefer to roast each other when we’re together. And roast other people too. Not everyone have the lovey-dovey friendship apparently. While talking, my index finger drew little squares on the screen of my phone. We ate and drank but then, looking back at my phone, a question subsided in my mind, and I looked at Rocky “Tell me Rocky, how did you got my phone number ?”

“ Oh uh… I… First I asked SanHa but he refused because he didn’t want to be the one to ‘put us together’, so I stole his phone and tried to find by myself but I didn’t find your contact name…” He made a pause, reluctant to tell me how he did, so I decided to push him to do it “It’s probably CryBaby or something like that, if you ask me. But then how?” “ I asked Binnie, and he gave me your number.” Silence. The time my head process what he just said. It took me some attempts to finally talk, my mouth opening and closing a bunch of time before. “Why.. How did he do to have my number then?” I wasn’t even mad. Some sort of impressed and flattered, because we never talked before the diner. And so many girls were drooling over him. So, why me. “ I think he likes to have the number of people he want to talk to, but he never find the bravery to text you maybe. Do you want his phone number?” I let out a little “No thank you”, almost like a whisper. I’d love to talk to him, but I prefer to gather up the courage to ask his number directly, not like he did. But somehow, it’s cute that he wanted to talk to me for a while but never did. At the end of the afternoon, he decided that it was nice to escort me to my building to go home, once more. And it was quite useless to spend more time together, it’ll be just more and more awkward to have only one meeting where we talked about everything. We agreed to do that more often, before I climbed the stairs, finishing  my journey directly in my bed, not seeing the text on my phone before dozing off.

[18:51] Rocky : I hope you’ll be there Saturday, it’ll be funnier with you !

Next part

[my-worst-nightmare-is-you]

If you know me well, you would know how much I dislike doing sport. It’s because I am so not used of doing it and having big body makes me feel more insecure of doing any kind of sport. When someone asks me what my favorite sport is, I would proudly say, none. Not even running, it’s one of the sports that I hate the most, actually.

It’s not that I don’t like moving my a$$, it’s just I don’t know. I have asthma since I was a small kid, when I’m running I kinda started to have difficulties with my breathe. Back then in junior high school and senior high school, in sport we did running as warm up exercise, or even “exam” and get scores based on how fast we could run. I remember, me and some of my girl friends ended up failing and tried more than three times to achieve the minimum score, because we ran that slow. And that, almost always happened. Up until now I still don’t fancy running, which makes some of my friends in uni wondered why, because I always said no when they invited me to go jog together.

Probably the only sport that I like is swimming. But also back then in school, I don’t really like that either. I wasn’t excellent, but also not that bad. I mean I could swim, I could say. My favorite style is the one where you just floats and swim around on your back, I forgot what it’s called. It just makes me feel so peaceful and I could enjoy. It’s just.. when we’re talking about swimming, it reminds me of the public swimming pool. I really dislike it, if I don’t have to go, I’d rather not go. I dislike the feeling after you left the pool. My body feels like it’s dry, but it’s wet. Not to mention you also have to wait most of the time to use the shower and changing room. I remember in the last year of high school we went to the swimming pool nearby my house, I almost always went back home to shower and get properly changed immediately. So I left the swimming pool just dry myself out a little bit using the towel, wore back my used clothes, and drove back home.

There are only two kind of sports that I have mentioned above. You could see from that how I really am not a fan of sport. Not doing any kind of exercise daily makes my body just grow bigger and bigger, because on the other side I also love to eat and snack a lot. It has been more than a decade since the last time I am on my “normal” weight. Yes, I am overweight. Not that over, but still over my suggested weight (based on my height). I was like, meh, I don’t care about how I look as long as I feel comfortable and I love myself. I mean, that is true, too.

I started to panic over my weight like a month ago. I was trying to take proper selfies and none of them turned out to be how I wanted it to be. Because of the angle I used to really like of my face was no longer good. I don’t even need to look down to have visible double (or triple?!) chins. At that time, I told myself, I need to lose weight!

Things are easier to be said than to be done, right? Yes. The losing weight journey lasted for only two or three days. I cut down my calories intake for almost a half, I stopped eating snack, I stopped consuming rice and only consumed less less carbs. I counted what goes inside my body and how much calories I burnt. It was interestingly frustrating. It was also hard since it costs a lot too, for me. So I stopped there.

Even when I stopped, it got me thinking. I have diabetic history from my Dad, he passed away due to complications and I believed it all started with the diabetes. He told me back in his younger times, he really liked to consume sweets, everything with more sugar. It frightens me, I looked back on how careless I could be about what goes inside my body. Sometimes when things are really tasty, I just wouldn’t care how much I eat (or drink) as long as I still can consume them, which is not good for my health, actually. Then I also remember how my best friend told me she once got taken to the emergency unit after eating seafood recklessly and it turned out she has cholesterol, and as far as I know she has healthier lifestyle than I do. Thinking about it frightens me, to be really honest.

Because I know it would be hard for me to control my eating habit for now, because I still like to snack a lot (and healthy yummy snacks are more expensive, for me) and I don’t have my own money and my own kitchen yet, I would just stick to the same one, but of course a better one. I still eat Indomie in the middle of the night when I suddenly get hungry and a lot of deep fried foods, for example. But in return, I have been eating less rice than I normally did and I have been drinking more and more water everyday than usual. Also I have been trying to control myself more when it comes to tasty food (and drinks). Not bad.

And… believe it or not, I have been doing exercise for about half and a month! For me, it’s an achievement! Not that extreme, I have been doing cardio dance. I know I am not flexible enough in dancing, I know that for sure. But doing the dancing is just easier than normal work out for me, rather than the doing push ups, sit ups, planks, jumping jacks, etc. Beside, the music got me more enjoying the work out session. I know I might not burn a lot of calories doing the dance, but still, I moved my a$$ and it helped me a lot in not being easily tired when doing something physical.

I enjoy the “me time” while doing the work out, I can’t believe I say this myself but, it also makes me happier. I can’t explain why. I also appreciate my body more by working out, like how my hips move and shake, how my legs feel like burning when I am doing squats, how the sweats feel down on my cheeks which is questionable if it’s sweat or tears, how the air feels inside my lungs when I inhale and exhale, everything. It just feels good. I don’t care about the fat on my belly, it just makes me happy.

I had been doing the cardio dance following the video I found on YouTube, in the first two weeks I danced along with Sunny Funny Fitness videos  and later I found out another channel from Pamela Reif. Pamela is a German, as far as I saw on her Instagram, she is the most followed German fitness influencer. Since she’s a German, I felt more connection to her rather than Sunny Funny and others. More than that, I turned out also really liking the dancing workout videos she made, aesthetically speaking it’s really pleasant to just watch the video, beginner talking it’s also easy to follow, what a perfect combo.

So I had been dancing with Pamela for maybe two or three weeks. I usually take two days rest in a week, depends on when I remember and when my work out clothes are on the laundry, so I have nothing to wear and can’t work out hahahaha most of the times, here’s how I do my current daily work out plan:

  Warm up : I usually repeat this video two times

Dance : These two are the videos I mostly did the whole time. I like the Happy Dance more more more than the Cardio Dance, because for me it is way easier and I like the songs used there more. I mostly repeated the Happy Dance two times, or one time Happy Dance one time Cardio Dance. When I was too tired or unmotivated, I would just dance along with the Happy Dance and repeat the video only to dance one more song.

Cool down : I usually stopped after the first song is finished and repeat it again once more.

  That routine was fun. But I got bored easily, I need more variations. It was really hard for me to find another dance workout that I really like, beside from Pamela’s. I like Sunny’s but the poses are mostly too hard for me to follow and the rhythm is too fast. And others really like to talk in their videos, which I don’t really fancy.

After a long time of consideration I finally got myself a yoga mat to support me in doing more variations of work outs. Of course I ended up buying it because it was on sale, thanks Shopee. It arrived yesterday and I finally am able to use it today in the afternoon. I was soooo excited. I had saved the weekly work out plans Pamela made on her Instagram since yesterday as soon as my yoga mat arrived.

I am currently on the first week, duh, and boom the workouts are so much harder than I thought it would be. So difficult and different comparing to the dancing workouts I had been doing for more than a month. It got me sweating more and faster. While I’m writing this, I still feel like my whole body is aching and burning from the workout I did at 16:00. Maybe because I had the idea of adding more exercise than it was already on the plan hahaha so as you can see below that is the work out plan Pamela made for the beginner in week 1, go on the first day, only two videos. I impulsively did almost 4. So before I did the work outs in the plan, I added my usual warm up routine as before. Then I did the two videos mentioned in the plan. Because the twenty minutes felt so fast, and I didn’t really do all the exercises perfectly (I was trying!) and I still had enough energy left, I told myself, why not go for another one? And I ended up trying the Yoga Flow  for about 17 minutes! So it was, let’s say, 3 minutes + 10 minutes + 10 minutes + 17 minutes, in total 40 minutes! Holy moly…

It’s not that big progress, I’m doing baby steps. But I am happy and so proud of doing this so far! Let’s just hope I would be consistently doing this for the rest of my life, I mean, you know what I mean. Fingers crossed!

To close this, I would like to remind you all to stay healthy and stay safe, please drink more water and take care of yourself!

  Love,

  Zhinta.

written on Monday, 15th June 2020.

    Happy Sweaty! If you know me well, you would know how much I dislike doing sport. It’s because I am so not used of doing it and having big body makes me feel more insecure of doing any kind of sport.

[ma-hao-huh]

last post ended with a bit of optimism and excitement, ready to experience Taipei’s night markets for the first time. well, that didn’t go according to plan, because me and the two guys I met all fell asleep at about 6pm. jet lag is real, and it’s a slow burning, creepy-crawly feeling that you don’t have any concept of until you just start sleeping 12-14 hours a day trying to catch up, even if you aren’t sure what you’re trying to catch up to. i do think I'm making progress though.

so that was two nights ago. yesterday was way more successful...me, TJ and Tim got some good Taiwanese breakfast (dumplings, egg scallion pancakes, etc) and checked out the museum of contemporary art (mainly just one exhibit about the interaction of sound with the environment....not unlike what I saw at the hirschorn in January). we found what was definitely the neighborhood noodle spot but it was 12:30 so the line was so, so long and the blazing heat decided for us that no noodles could be so good. at least, they did — I have the rest of the summer to sweat it out for the good stuff. we ended up eating at a curry place which I honestly thought was gross. it was shit brown, not much flavor... not like any curry I've had in the states, so it made me wonder if I've been having real Indian curry, and about the different types of curry there must be throughout SEA. definitely something to look into.

after that we were in desperate need of a cold treat and TJ had an ice cream recommendation that did NOT disappoint. the 3 flavors we chose were taro, plum, and passionfruit (my choice), and they were all excellent, passionfruit definitely being the winner. honestly, the best ice cream I've ever had in my life. if that’s what I eat all summer, American ice cream is just going to be disgusting when I come back. which will probably be a good thing. also, the lady running the store was so sharp as a tack, great English, so nice. she kind of gave me the feeling she would have something great to say if the humans of ny guy wanted to take her picture. ever thought what you would say?

we decided to go back to the hostel after, and then came the first truly sobering moment of the trip for me. Tim wanted to take a taxi, so it fell upon me to ride up front and tell the cabbie where we needed to go. I quickly learned my navigational Chinese is limited. I could tell him which way to turn, how many intersections to keep going straight, but, crucially, not the address we needed to get to. I was kind of getting it done with google map navigation, but I don’t think the poor guy trusted me enough and called someone up to get the address for him. once he knew, he was quite jovial, patted me on the shoulder, appreciating, I guess, my ability to say “turn left” and “yes” and “I don't know.” lol. I'm glad he was nice about it.

I feel like I'm only about halfway done writing which would make this post monstrously long. I'm torn between making these posts digestible or making them a full account of my days. I think in the beginning when everything is so new, i’lll want to know everything I did, so, screw it.

when we did make it back, everyone broke off for a bit. I read for a while, and when I got back to the room, one of the other guys staying there was seemingly coming back to life from a long night (he had shushed for talking at 9am that morning). I greeted him and we got to talking. he’s a character, for sure... I've never met anyone with such a measured way of speaking. if you’ve heard Obama deliver speeches, it’s sort of like that.... slow, deliberate, intentioned, stirring, smooth, powerful. I learned that he dropped out of college in Santa Clara to go to culinary school in Philly and then wound up at a Michelin star restaurant. he retained his privacy on what restaurant and why he isn’t there anymore...that’s his right though. he speaks Chinese and had planned (and packed) for a one-week trip to Taiwan, but now he thinks he’s gonna be here for a couple of months. he told us we were welcome to join him for drinks at a rooftop bar with a gaggle of Swedish girls he had met (through “his ways”) and then to get some BBQ and check out a techno club. if I had been alone, I would have definitely just gone for it. but Tim and TJ and I had planned to go to a night market, so I got Drew’s LINE and told him maybe we’d see him later.

friends told us the most popular night markets would be absolutely bonkers on a Friday night and to try out one of the smaller ones. our hostel is actually a 10 minute walk from one of them, so that worked out. I’m not sure what I expected from the market, but in my opinion it was a straight up country fair, Chinese style. there were little games for the kids to play, including catching your own little fish to take home!!! so cute, and then a straight half-mile of carts with every kind of meat treat roasting on a spit or under a blowtorch. between the three of us, here’s what we ate:

-beef cubes (I didn’t taste)

-seashell filled with caramelized scallop, crab and shrimp meat (this was the most sketchy thing I ate, and I think I felt a little rumble because of it, but nothing too bad. it was pretty good)

-roasted mushrooms (the spices were kind of weird and the texture was soooo rubbery)

-chicken cubes (so tender and delicious)

-sweet potato balls (unlike the insanely sweet and amazing shakori doughnuts, these actually tasted like they came from a sweet potato, but kind of bland)

-oyster pancakes. this was what the fuss was about, there was line of 20 people at all times. NOT worth the hype. I talked to drew about them today and he absolutely agreed, saying they're totally under salted). it’s like oyster meat, eggs, scallions all cooked up together. there wasn’t much flavor and I wasn’t exactly sure if I was supposed to be eating the whole thing or not because there were oyster parts in there that I did NOT like.

overall it was cool to see but all of our choices definitely didn’t knock it out of the park. I'm excited to go to the bigger ones, hopefully with better guidance, and see if I have more luck.

afterwards we grabbed some beers from this tiny little craft brew place with one tap and it was actually a delicious IPA that was half off your second pint. hell yes. there was a Sierra Nevada sticker on the wall too...I guess they’re global?

I wanted to find live music after, but TJ and Tim are lightweights. they were well and truly buzzed after a beer or two. that’s all good... after fading at 6pm the night before, we made it to 9pm that night and I didn’t mind heading to bed.

as far as today...I viewed the apartment I'm gonna be living in. it’s literally 30 seconds from one of the main mrt stations that two of the mrt lines go through. I thought I was gonna be vetted by the people who live there, but i learned today it’s more of a sign up and move in kind of thing. when I walked in, all the girls were looking very sad, about to take one of the people leaving to the airport, so it really couldn’t have been worse timing. I tried to say “hey everyone, I’m grant” and literally just got stares back. that was fun. I haven’t started filling out the final forms to move in because it made me unexcited about the prospect. but I know that it was just bad timing and it will be a lot better for me to live with people who are happy and excited to help me adjust, so I'll deal with it and fill them out tomorrow.

Drew and I made very tenuous plans to go out tonight, but it’s past 9 and he isn’t back from getting dinner a couple of hours ago. hmmm..... see if tonight’s the night for a night on the town....