#anyway such a good day at the olympics for us (finally) yay

[depoteka]

for a pretty flat country that is literally named (roughly) "the land of the field people" we really like climbing up mountains really fast

[fairymadnessyeah]

BNHA Ship to Finish the Year

KodaNuki (Kodai Yui x Honenuki Juzo)

Canon

When they graduate, they end up in the same agency.

The two are good friends, but they get closer when Kodai's PR asks Juzo for help.

Due to her resting unimpressed face, Kodai is not doing well in her publicity, so they ask him, who seems to be close to her, for help.

Juzo is supposed to talk to her, to try and convince her to smile more.

At first, he talks with her, trying to make her smile for the cameras. But it's very obvious she is not good at it either.

Her smiles look fake, and it looks like she is being coerced to be in the pictures and look happy.

It takes him a while, but he finally discovers a way to make smile, funny faces.

Yui Kodai, badass hero extraordinaire, giggles like a little girl if you make funny faces at her.

And Juzo's face, that makes the task of making her laugh easy.

The next time she has an interview, he places himself somewhere the cameras can't see him but where he is in direct line of sight with Kodai.

When the interview starts, whenever it's a good moment for her to giggle or smile, he starts doing faces.

It works. Kodai smiles, and the next day, her smile is plastered all over the city. 

But during that interview, something happened to Juzo. When he was making Yui smile, he couldn't help but feel like Kodai's smile was for him, and the two were the only people around.

It's like being hit with cupids arrow.

It's fast, it's unexpected, and it hurts.

Because when he gets the resolve to talk about their feelings, he finds her getting ready for a date.

He knew she had been chatting with Iida Tenya lately, but didn't know this was the direction it was taking.

He tries to be happy for her, but he doesn't like lying to her. But that changes when he learns that she will be moving away.

So, he tells her how he feels. He doesn't do it to make her break up with Iida or anything like that, he just wants her to know how he feels.

Kodai is confused, but she moves anyway.

A year later, they reunite in a class b reunion. Juzo is single, and Kodai broke up with Iida a month ago.

The two talk during the rest of the night, and then get coffee together at her place.

They don't start dating right away, since Kodai is still not over Iida, and doesn't think she is ready for another relationship at the moment. 

Juzo understands and they sort of agree that they are something, but they are taking it slow.

Four years later, they get married.

Family

Kodai's family is just her mom and her dad.

Unlike her, the two are super energetic.

They smile and laugh obnoxiously, scream and jump like excited children. It's a little bit surprising, since Yui is not that emotional.

The two are very happy to meet Juzo.

They make a feast for their meeting, and they present it with so much love that, he can't say no when they offer more.

He goes out of that with five more pounds than when he first came in.

When Juzo went to their home, he was expecting them to be put off by his face, but Yui's parents don't care. They are like two little kids, living in their innocent little world and accepting everything at face value.

Juzo's family is composed of his mother and his two little sisters.

I don't know why I imagine him with having a dead parent. Maybe it's how he is so responsible, makes me think he has more experience.

His mom is a famous hero-suits designers. She doesn't have that much money, but is well-off.

When she goes to meet them, the moment she steps inside their home, Kodai is surrounded by two teens.

Juzo's sisters are hero fanatics, and teens, so they ask her up a storm. They especially like female heroes, so they love Kodai already.

Juzo's mom also loves her, and asks her if she would let her re-design her hero-outfit.

I imagine that Juzo's mouth is from his mom, but unlike he, she uses a mask to cover it.

I think they would have two sons.

The first one is named Oyugo (swim), and his quirk is to soften his body enough that it can turn into goo. He can't move when he is like that, however.

The second son is named Kukku (cook), and his quirk is that he can soften other stuff to the point it becomes goo. He can also make them smaller.

You might be wondering why I chose those names. Well, I first thought about Oyugo, and I kind of liked the idea that he liked to cook, and he becomes a very successful chef.

But when I created the second son, and I was thinking what I could name him, I thought: 'Wouldn't it be funny if I named him cook, but made him a swimmer, like it got mixed up with his brother?... wait,'

So, here we are.

Oyugo becomes a chef, and Kukku becomes an Olympic swimmer.

I like to think that they have Juzo's mouth, but have Kodai's unemotional face. They have the best Halloween pranks thanks to that, since it's a terrifying sight to look at that.

AU - Theater Geek Couple AU

This is a High school AU, but I didn't want to name it that, so I didn't.

Kodai is a theatre kid who is shy outside of the stage.

There is a fan-club entirely dedicated to her. She has no idea it exists.

Juzo is a geek who helps with the costumes for the school's plays. He is a great cosplayer, and uses the school's resources sometimes, but he makes good costumes.

He likes Kodai, but he is too shy to even talk to her. He thought of joining her fan-club, but it's just a bunch of guys drooling over her in a creepy fashion. He knows they come to all the plays she's been in, and that sometimes they stalk her on social media. 

He is a little afraid they might try something else, so he tells the security guy and the drama teacher.

That is how they end up talking to each other on the first place.

The fan-club starts hanging outside their door after rehearsal, so they ask Juzo to accompany Kodai to her home.

Since he has seen them and knows who they are, he can identify them easily.

At first, they don't talk much. But as Juzo keeps walking her home, they start becoming friends.

Kodai start asking about his cosplay, and he shows her pictures, and one day, she asks if she can do it too. Juzo falls a little harder for her.

They start working on a couple costume and spending more time together.

But then, the fan-club start creeping up more. They go backstage to leave roses and gifts for her, which she doesn't want. It scares her a little, and she asks Juzo to stay with her at her home, since her parents are not going to be there tonight.

He accepts, and as they see some movies and drink a cup of coffee, they start leaning closer.

They don't get to kiss though, since a flash interrupts them.

Juzo goes to investigate and finds some of the guys from the fan-club. They ran when they see him, but they drop the camera.

When the two check it out, they see that they have been taking pictures of her in her home. Nothing that they could blackmail her with, she is dressed in all of them, but it is worrying they have so many pictures.

They call the police and her parents, and they fill a restraining order.

While that is being taken care of, Juzo stays with her until her parents finish talking with the cops.

They don't talk about the almost kiss, but she does sneak a shy cheek kiss.

They go to the con together, dressed as a Titan and Levi. Yui is Levi and Juzo is the Titan.

They have fun, and they act like they are on a date. When he takes her home, they finally kiss and start dating.

All of this AU developed from the idea of Kodai and Juzo cosplaying Attack on Titan, for Juzo's mouth.

Fanon Opinion

The two are too much of a background character for me to come up with anything.

Even after the Joint Training arc, they weren't used much, or at least, Kodai wasn't used much.

I think they are a cute couple. 

They seem like those couples who have like no drama in their lives, but really they are just good at dealing with issues.

I think they would be a couple who succeeds at communication, even if Kodai doesn't talk much.

In my mind that helps, because it means that when she does talk, people pay attention, since it means that whatever she is saying is important enough to be voiced.

There's no art about them that I could find.

There is Fanfiction about her, but she is not paired with Honenuki in any of them. 

Kodai is either paired with other girls or with Iida. 

And there are a few where she is with Sero or Midoriya.

And Honenuki is paired a lot with Shihai or other boys, sometimes with girls.

The gays are taking over. YAY!

I don't think many think about this couple. They are two shy people, and people usually prefer if there is more of a difference between their two characters for a ship.

I like the two as characters, and I have nothing against them as a couple. But being honest, they are not a ship I would look content for.

Like, if it appears or they in the background, I have no problem with it. But they are not a ship I would say: 'Oh, I wonder how this dynamic is!'.

I guess my problem is more to do with importance. They are extras in the manga, so I don't really care much about them. 

I mean, they are background characters.

I wish we could have more about them, and the rest of class B. 

[virtuemoired]

star signs as v/m programs explained (part 2)✨

let’s go mahler nation!!! link to part 1 😌

libra: and the waltz goes on // scorpio: moulin rouge

i have been told that libras are latch but here me out!! i feel like latch is way too emotional and so i am hereby declaring all oct-dec bbs as latch bbs ✨ libras are super idealistic which goes with the program and also v balanced which i think this program has!! they are super underrated and in my opinion this sd is probz their most underrated and unappreciated ok that is all 😌

scorpios are moulin rouge but their alt program is carmen on any given day!! i mean the fact that v/m really pushed through with this program + angst, jealousy etc while being so ambitious w using this piece of music just really resonates w my opinion on scorpios 🤗

sagittarius: great gig in the sky // capricorn: farrucas

i’ve realised that i don’t know many sagittariuses except for taylor swift but anyways i think they are great gig bc this was such a power move like the opening serpentine lift will always be iconic and the dance break in the middle is so cheesy but so fun 😌 i also think this program is super freeing despite the circumstances it was performed under 😔 anyways glad v/m took this risk with being versatile after umbrellas!!

CAPRICORNS yay!! tbh it took so much self-control to not give caps mahler bc i love mahler so so deeply but hey! tessa virtue said that farrucas WAS the olympic moment and i’ll take what i can get! also it is the historical record holder for the OD and you can’t get more capricorn than that 🤩

aquarius: dream a little dream of me // pisces: mahler

one of the most defining traits of aquariuses is that they are independent and we all know that v/m had to quote unquote basically do everything themselves so that’s the short answer for this!! but also this is SUCH a good program and just *chef’s kiss* so i love that for them 😫

and finally we have pisces and y’all are the most sensitive yet artistic and musical group i know of so this one is definitely you 🥰 i’m super jealous and i was almost going to give you funny face and justify that decision accordingly but y’all deserve this one 😫🤧

and there you have it folks 😌

[thegoodomensdumpster]

Prompt: Dog did not place at the Tadfield Family Fun Day Novelty Dog Show. Ethereal and/or Occult Entities are outraged.

Oh wow this turned into somthing way longer than I intended it to be, but it was fun to write and I don’t have any patience left for editing, so whatevs. Enjoy !« This…This is outrageous ! »By all accounts, itshould have been a nice day. The weather was pleasant, the grass wasgreen and smelled of springtime, children were playing, cottoncandies were swaying around, and yet.Aziraphale waspositively fuming. Let’s rewind. Let’s rewind fornearly a year prior.Armageddon had been adverted, whichwas, according to most people on Earth, quite a good news. Now, ifyou had asked around in Heaven or Hell, you would have gottena different answer, but we’ll stick to Earth and the material realmfor now. Actually, we will not even be leavingTadfield.So. Here we were. No Armageddon, more of theworld for humanityto enjoy or destroy, yay ! Aziraphale and Crowley,as the antichrist’s self proclaimed godfathers, had stayed in touchwith Adam. And with Adam’sparents because you cannot barge uninvited into a child’s life justlike that. And with the Them who never left Adam’s side. Andwith Anathema and Newton, who hadn’t left Tadfield either and hadthemselves come to growquite fond of the Them.Thetwo supernatural entitiesthought they were in for anawkward relationship with an eleven years old, but instead theygained a whole lot of new friendsto hang out with. Like some kind of reverse lottery where youactually end up with more than what you had bargained for. Ormaybe that’s just what’s supposed to happen when you actually winthe lottery ?Anyway,one of these incidentals newfriends was a dog shaped creature that answered to the name of Dog.Well, answered was abit of an overstatement, as Dog clearly obeyed only Adam’sorders and, occasionnaly,Pepper’s.Dogused to be a Hell Hound. Very little of it remained, and it wouldhave gone totally unnoticed, if the canine hadn’t been constantlygrowling at Aziraphale. It turns out, angels can be quitetouchy when they are used to beinginstantlyon good terms with all of God’s creatures. At least, Aziraphalewas. The angel could, in a real Disney princess fashion,sit in a glade, and five minutes later a swarm of forest creatureswould be nestingaround him, on him, on his book and his picnic basket, totallyuninvited, drawn to the angelic aura and the cake bits. Most of thetime, Aziraphale considered it to be an inconvenience more thananything else. But he had never thought an animal wouldever hate him. Veryupset, Aziraphale had decided to befriend Dog as best as he could. Hehad read books on dogs behaviour – they always lacked a part aboutthe taming of former Hell Hounds, but dogs were the closest thing toDog in the end. He had given delicious food to Dog and encouraged himto come closer to him, little by little, bit by bit, until one day,finally, Aziraphale had been able to pet him. Then, a fewexcruciating long months later, Dog had finally adopted a normalbehaviour with Aziraphale. The angel was very proud. Both of them hadmade a lot of efforts to make this relationship work. He almost criedthe first time Dog came to him to ask for belly scratches. Backto present day. There was a fair in Tadfield. It was thereal event of the village, with all kinds of activities for kids andadults to enjoy and for R.P. Tyler to complain about. A lot of funwas going to be had.Aziraphale and Crowley’s latestvisit happened to be just during the fair. And the angel nearly lostit when he heard that there was going to be the Tadfield Novelty DogShow.Brilliant ! hethought. This would be the perfect occasion to show and test the bondhe had forged with Dog over the year. He might even win a medal, or aribbon, or a bottle of wine, as a reminder of this victory over theircontestants and over Dog’s hellish nature. Adam didn’tcare for the dog show in the slightest but entrusted Aziraphale withhis pet. Crowley cracked a few jokes, wondering if he should try towin a Novelty Snake Show himself – his main argument was that hewas, after all, the sexiest snake on Earth andshould be rewarded for it, towhich Aziraphale had asked him to zip it while blushing justa bit too much. Everything was fine. Dog himself had beengroomed recently, he was a happy tail-wagging doggy, a perfectchampion ready to snatch any medal or ribbon or wine bottle on hisway. Aziraphalewas very confident. Everyone was allowed to enter thecompetition. This was a family fair, after all, not the DoggyOlympics, so they didn’t care much for race, only for hygiene. Thatpart, Aziraphale had under control. He never dared using his ownpowers on Dog, not wanting to reopen his old Hell Hound wound byconfrontinghim with an angelicmiracle. Which meant that Aziraphale had come fullyprepared, with a bag full of tools to take care of Dog, to clean him,brush him, give him treats, and so on. As an extra precaution, he hadmade sure to take the least muddy road to go to the Novelty Show, andcleaned Dog’s paws with a towel before entering. Aziraphalehad no problem getting in, Dog behaved the whole time, nothing badhappened. Everythingwas as perfect as it could ever be.Except they didn’twin. Not first place, not second place, not third place, not even theterrible fourth place where the contestant at least received aridiculous consolation ribbon. No. Nothing. Nada. Que dalle. Hencethe outrage.« How could they not see »Aziraphale complained loudly, « how cute and perfect Dog is ?What is wrong with these judges ?  He’s the most perfectboy ! Aren’t you ? Aren’t you the most perfect boy,Dog ? Yes you are ! Yes you are ! »Theangel scratched furiously Dog between his ears, much to hisbliss.« Ithink you were theproblem, angel » smirked Crowley.« What kindof nonsense is that now, my dear ? »« He’sright, you know » said Adam. « You kept petting Dog andthe judges couldn’t come near him. »« Yeah »laughed Pepper, « it was impossible for them to seehow cute and perfect Dog was when you had your hands all over him. »« Andthat chihuahua was pretty cute too » saidWensleydale, who promptlyadded after a dark glare from Aziraphale « b-but Dog is cuter,of course ! » That dreadful chihuahua had comein first. Shehad just been Aziraphale’s arch nemesis, and bringing her into theconversation hadn’t been very smart from Wensleydale. But he likedchihuahuas.The angel said nothing, and kept petting Dog.He burrowed his face into the angel’s leg, asking for morescratches. He was too damn cute. « I’ll make youa ribbon myself, Dog. You deserve it. »Aziraphale,Dog and the others carried on enjoying the fair. There would be timeto fulfill that promise later. For now, fun was to be had.

[photolover82]

The Masked Singer Season 4 Episode 9: Group C Finals Thanksgiving Edition, Last 2 Advance to Super Six (Commentary and Guesses)

Hello, my fellow Masked Singer friends! Welcome (or welcome back) to Ana's Masked Singer recap, where I, Ana, recap every episode of the Masked Singer (excluding sing-a-longs and maybe Road to Finals, unless it’s interesting this season). This is a special edition of The Masked Singer (and in turn of the recap) because we had an episode on Thursday, Thanksgiving, instead of our regular Wednesday episode so this one is ✨extra special.✨ Happy belated Thanksgiving for anyone who lives in the States! Hope everyone had a great day! Anyways, let’s get into this... (don’t forget: like, comment, and follow for more)

Ok so, as with Group A's final, the Group C finals consisted of 3 contestants going head to head with 1 going straight to the super six and the remaining 2 facing the smack down...

The 3 Group C contestants were Broccoli 🥦 , Mushroom 🍄, Jellyfish 💚.

First up, was the Jellyfish 💚 who sang Don't Start Now by Dua Lipa.

Performance Commentary: I really loved this performance, she has really improved so much! This song was the perfect choice for her voice, she really killed it! I do feel like she is slowly becoming one of my favorites!

Next up, we have Mushroom 🍄, who performed Unconditionally by Katy Perry.

Performance Commentary: Ok honestly this wasn't his best performance in my opinion, but it was still really good. Dude he like keeps changing his voice, it’s insane what he can do wow. I just feel like this song wasn’t the ideal choice for him, but I know it’s like him trying to throw us off with a variety of song choices... stay tuned because my guess on who he is has changed *gasp*.... yeah ik I changed my mind I’m shocked too lmao

Last but not least, it’s Broccoli 🥦 aka Brockstar performing Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Seger

Performance Commentary: I liked this performance too even though it was weaker than the other 2. There really isn’t anyone I hate in this season but he is my least favorite in this group ngl. The song choice was perfect for him, very old time-y which goes with the vibe of the costume and his voice in general. So, yeah nothing bad to say, I preferred the other 2 performances, but this one was still good.

Ok, so the winner who advanced automatically into the Super Six is...

Jellyfish 💚

That means that Mushroom 🍄 and Broccoli 🥦 are going into the SMACKDOWN.. and here’s how it went:

Compared to Group A, the 2 guys really gave a more typical smack down complete with some smack talk:

Mushroom 🍄 sang A Song For You by Donny Hathaway and

Broccoli 🥦 sang Take Me Down by Alabama

Mushroom commentary: Wow yeah this one was more like it, I wished he would have sung this in his actual performance because it suits him perfectly and I low key feel like he was showing his real tone here because he’s been playing with us and switching his voice every performance.

Broccoli commentary: Meh, yeah it was good, it suited his voice really nicely. The ending of that was really strong wow, the guy still got it! However, not as strong as Mushroom so the result didn’t surprise me unlike Group A’s result.

Having said that, the contestant who was eliminated was...

*DRUMROLL PLEASE*

Broccoli 🥦

who was revealed to be (as I knew):

Paul Anka

Ok yay got that woohoo! (7/9 correct so far yay!) I kind of expected that he would go home, I would be surprised if he didn’t but anyways the clues kind of gave it away to be Paul Anka:

Jason Mask- reference to his son-in-law who is also famous, Jason Bateman

Dice= Vegas reference, one of the first artists to find consistent success there

Moose = Canadian = he is from Canada 🇨🇦

Game Changing Turkey Clue (ya the clues were delivered via a 🦃 because thanksgiving ofc): he is older than a microwave = well a microwave was invented in 1946 and Paul Anka was born in 1941 so yup older than a microwave! .

Anyways, now let’s look at my guesses for the last 2 contestants going into the Super Six:

1. First we have Jellyfish 💚, who I'm doubling down on my guess for: Chloe Kim

Alright, so I'm so sure that it's her because of the clues:

The sister: she does have 2 sisters both older than her so it makes sense

Gold stapler= reference to her gold medal at the halfpipe (snowboarding) when she was 17 at the Olympics

Game changing clue: never been on a stage like this before = well, duh she is an Olympian & doesn't sing in like an actual stage, she probably does so in her room

2. As for the Mushroom 🍄, I have changed my guess from Jordan Fisher to.... Aloe Blacc

Ok, so I really want Jordan to be on the show (maybe next season?) but with these performances, I am leaning onto Aloe Blacc because they sound so similar to him and the clues also match up:

4.0 GPA and class president = he said this in an interview that he was a good student (in fact, in a previous clue package, they said turning music into a hobby, music was his hobby and he actually worked in a consulting firm before being famous)

Helping underprivileged youth= he has done a lot of charity work

Bull= he attended the Melbourne Red Bull Music Academy in 2006

Boxing ring= he performed in a WWE Wreslemania fight

Game changing clue: the name he goes by isn’t the name he was born with = Aloe Blacc is not his real name, it’s Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III

Anyways that’s it, peeps! See you guys next week for the SUPER SIX WOO!! I am so excited, there will be a triple eliminated, how insane, it’s gonna be an insane episode, I can’t wait! Bye guys! 👋🏼😘

[sachertortes]

@holdmecloseandfast​ here you go! (I couldn’t add more vids to the last post so I had to make a new one lol)

Okay, the thing with Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir is that they’ve been partners since they were 7 and 9 respectively. So they’ve grown up together, trained together etc. for over 20 years. 

Scott says that he considers his first kiss to be Tessa, when he was 10 and they were at the Ilderton Carnival. Aww.

(Everything under a cut to spare your dash)

When they both young, they were living in CA and training in Michigan.

When they trained in Canton, Michigan they had to cross the border from Canada. Scott: “When we crossed the border, they would ask for a note from Tessa’s parents because they thought I was stealing her to Vegas to elope.”

They rose through the ranks of Juniors and started Seniors. They were actually devastated when they didn’t make the cut for the 2005 Olympics.

For the 2008-2009 competitive season, they withdrew because Tessa developed compartment syndrome on her shin. When she went for surgery, it was a very very delicate time for them. Scott was basically training alone (he says he was skating with a sandbag to stand in for a partner). And during this time, some people had no faith that Tessa would ever be back in shape to compete. A lot of very shrewd, very rich parents and coaches were presenting Scott with their daughters to skate with. He refused, of course! But before we get all swoony, by his own admission Scott was not handling Tessa’s injury/surgery very well. He says he did not call or visit her in the hospital once (?!?!?!?!) An awkward teenage boy thing or a Scott thing IDK. 

But despite what must have been a great deal of awkwardness, they pushed on to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics where they won gold. During this time, Scott was dating figure skater Jessica Dube but doing [this sort of thing] with his skating partner pre-skate. It’s to ~~synchronize their heartbeats~~.

Post Vancouver - Pre Sochi aka The Struggle Years. Things are tense at their training cam. They’re training with their main competitors and their coach begins giving most of her attention to their competitors as well. Tessa is dating her coach’s son, Fedor.

When they were really struggling, Tessa tells this cute as hell story about a Bucket of Rice. Basically, one of the things they use in training is the thought that every good thing that they do they add a grain rice to the bucket. And some days are bad, and you don’t add rice to the bucket but you’re also not taking any out. At one point Scott left this outside her hotel room before a competition, to say “Look at all this rice we already have in our bucket.”

In 2013, someone (in PR, probably 😒) convinced them to do a reality show. It was...bad. Awkward as hell. It painted Tessa as this sad, lovelorn girl pining after Scott who was already attached to a girl named Cassandra. (The fact that Cassandra looked like Tessa-lite did not go unnoticed by fandom 👀👀👀). At one point Fedor comes in as a footwork coach and Scott so obviously despises the dude. The show was cringey. Mention it to an old VM fan and watch their eye twitch lol. At least it showed people how awful the atmosphere was at Canton. If you do want to watch it, it’s on Amazon streaming.

This was also the year they did a bridal photoshoot for some reason?? The pics are cute tho: [here] and [here].

Around this time, it’s generally thought that even they were both with other people they were messing around with each other. Things were still bad at their training camp, they both felt that their coach wasn’t completely on their side and Tessa’s leg began acting up again. If you search youtube for their Carmen program and “4CC” it’s actually really heartbreaking because they had to stop in the middle of their FD :(

They kept coming in second to their training mates, Americans Meryl Davis and Charlite White. Scott said that he knew that the writing was on the wall when they came in second during Worlds, after performing clean and even in their own hometown.

They had a difficult time at Sochi, making a bunch of wobbles and mistakes in the Team Event. Before their Individual Event FD, Scott says to Tessa, “No matter what, we’re together, and no matter what, I love you, and no matter what, we’re gonna enjoy this.”

After earning Silver at Sochi, they performed the following angsty as hell Exhibition.

For the rest of 2014 and 2015, they went on tours and shows together. Scott was seeing Olympic Curler Kaitlyn Lawes and Tessa was seeing skier/dudebro Ryan Semple. Ryan doesn’t really last tho.

Then, as Tessa tells it, “We went on a Gold Medal Plates trip to Scotland, northern Scotland, this year and we were with Spirit of the West and Johnny Reid was there performing. And Johnny Reid’s backup vocalist, Miku Graham, and pianist, Michael Shand, they performed a song in a pub. And it was this very stripped-down, beautiful version of ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, Tina Turner. And it was funny because we just sort of caught eyes, while she was singing, and we just knew we needed to skate to this song.” Yes, they locked eyes across the room where Scott’s girlfriend was also present because that’s what buddies do I guess.

A short time later, Scott becomes single 🤔 and they both decide to come back for the Pyeongchang Olympics.  🤔🤔 

The thing that I love most about their comeback in 2016 leading up to the Olympics is that they were working with B2Ten (an organization that provides support for elite amateur athletes) and new coaches and they seemed stronger both physically and mentally this time.

This promo video for their comeback is 🔥🔥🔥. The good stuff starts at 1:00.

The Olympics happened (I could write a whole separate post on why it seemed like everything was against them this time around too and why their Gold was so wonderful and meaningful) & everyone fell in love with them but they denied, denied, denied when it came to questions about their relationship. Fandom rumor seems to veer towards them actually getting together at the beginning of summer 2018, then something happened and they broke up. Don’t ask me what the receipts are for that one, I genuinely don’t know how people came to that conclusion? Some think that since she was doing a Vogue photoshoot while they were in Japan and he came to the shoot that was evidence that they were finally making a real go at it? IDK IDK. 

Then they went on tour together and signs pointed to the fact that they had a whole tour bus to themselves?

In any case, last December shipper dreams were dashed, crushed, demolished! once Scott showed up to Canada’s Walk of Fame event with his new girlfriend, Jackie. Jackie was Scott’s partner for about a year before he was partnered up with Tessa. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

Anyways, after allllll of that I bring us to the present day where Scott is dating his skating partner (yay!) but not that one (...oh.) and Tessa is single and ready to mingle. 

They have another tour coming up this year so...we’ll see where this goes I guess!

EDIT: OMG HOW COULD I FORGET ABOUT THE BABY BLOG

So in 2010(?) someone made a conspiracy blog that claims that Virtue/Moir are together and they are actually parents of a bunch of toddlers and that they are bad people b/c they leave their babies to go on tour all the time??

If you wanna read the crazy you can do so [here].

[inseomermaid-blog]

An Inner Circle First-Timer’s Concert Experience In Seoul [#WINNEREverywhereTourinSeoul]

So. If you tell me freakin’ one year ago if I’d be flying to Seoul for a Kpop concert, I’d smack you for slander.

Buuuuut here we are, a week after WINNER’s Everywhere Tour in Seoul :))))) I’ve just begun to recover. Literally, it took me a week to get through the stages of mourning and to accept that it’s over HAHAHUHU

Anyway, here’s my (and Liz’s) experience in attending a concert in Seoul!

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Why we wanted to see them in Seoul (when it was sure they were gonna go to MANILA anyway):

1. It’s Liz’s annual bday trip gipp!! Or idk, this is part of the rationalization we thought of AHAHA. Initially, we were set for Singapore as it would be way cheaper for sure, but another reason came up....

2. We wanted to see them in their most “comfortable” version - Not sure if comfortable is the word, but I guess we wanted to see them how they were in their home country?? Speaking comfortably in Korean and all? We were anticipating that for other countries it would probably be just Yoon speaking most of the time (not that it’s a problem with us HAHA), and we wanted to see all them four being their natural makulit presence on stage (without them thinking about the language hinderance--even if kami yung hindi makaintindi sa kanila :)))) I know it’s a weird reasoning but :)))) And it’s been a long time since they’ve done a full concert in Seoul! We just wanted to be there in the kickoff concert. I mean, if we were willing to fly out to see them, o di todo na namin diba? Seoul it is!

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How we got the tickets:

Here’s the thing: this is not our first rodeo. We’ve already successfully watched Coldplay in Singapore last year after (WHAT I THOUGHT WAS ALREADY) a bloody online ticketing war. Coldplay tickets were wiped out in 20 minutes, I think? But I was able to secure 7 tickets (3 VIP standing, 4 upper box tickets) after much death and resurrection.

We thought we were prepared for a WINNER ticketing war lol. We were not. Everything (or at least the seats we targeted) was more or less gone in less than 4 minutes.

There were two waves, one week apart. Both of them were intense :)))) I guess our third-world country internet cannot compete with their 5G data network?!

A HUGE HUGE HUGE thank you to Cams and Dianne for basically hand-holding me throughout the entire process of securing tickets from Seoul!! T_T Without them, we probably wouldn’t have gotten tickets. All transactions were smooth and hassle-free. There were a lot of K-ICs who also wanted G-ICs to attend the Seoul concert and thus were purchasing tickets so scalpers can’t get to them first. They also helped me with tips and advice on where to stay, where to go, etc etc as it was our first time in Korea. Sobrang bait and helpful nila as in! T_T

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Of course that was only half of the problem:

In less than a month, we had to book flights (ANG MAHAL NA NITO SIYEMPRE), book hotel (Thank you Agoda for your occasional flash sales) and of course, VISA. We highly recommend TravelPros for your Korean visa processing needs! We spent around 700 pesos for this, and we got the visa in exactly 6 days. Super fast. Pero may drama pa kami dun sa visa requirements LORD HAHA pero hindi ko na kwento haba na nito. BASTA when we got the visa I wanted to throw a fiesta, ganung level =))

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CONCERT D-Day~~~

We wanted to get in early-ish because we were anticipating the DVD / merch line.

The train was a bit confusing for this stop!! We knew we were not the only ones because some of the Koreans were also confused where to get off haha

This ad greeted us before the exit!

Entering the Olympic Park Stadium~

Sure enough the line was at least 500m already when we arrived at around 10:45.

AAAAAND YES I lined up for 2 hours for the DVD 0_0 Under the heat of Korean summer 0_0 

Questions in my mind while in queue:

1. why does everyone look so fresh except me

2. how to spot foreigners: they use umbrellas for the heat

3. Don’t be weak

4. why am I doing this again

Anyway, tada~

Let’s just ignore the part where if we waited until 3pm, or at least when the line tapered off, I could have gotten it without the sunburn on my batok but where’s the fun in that no?

Liz and teh boyfriend lined up for merch (mercifully it was shorter) and they were able to buy 2 lightsticks (OUR FIRST ONES YAY! Hirap daw lagyan ng battery lol) and shirts (X and XL lang ang available sizes but it still works out!?? What is this Korean sizing sorcery?!)

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All the cafe / restos were full (Mamamoo was also having a concert that day!) so we had to settle for convenience store food :))) It wasn’t bad!

Met Cams and lots of other PH-ICs who travelled from MNL! You can check out #ICsPHGoesToSeoul to see what everyone was up to while in Seoul.

We got a lot of fans (as in pamaypay) from different fansites (and thus we didn’t have to line up, yay!) and actually saw the faces behind big accounts* HAHA it was surreal.

Actually, the whole thing was pretty surreal (YA THINK) in a good way. Since it’s our first time to attend a KPop concert, we didn’t know a lot of things. One of those was... lining up for freebies given by fansites. 

Girl, INTENSE. As in,  pila kung pila ang mga bagets and not-so bagets. Paano naman kasi ang cute ng freebies! Fans, stickers, photocards, etc. Looking back feeling ko dapat pumila/bumili kami BUT holehhhshit it was really so hot, and after lining up for 2 hours we wanted to just save our energy. 

Super tita namin right?! 

Also most of the masternims who were offering their freebies were all speaking in Korean (malamang) so we didn’t know if it was free or for sale... AH BASTA MAGULO isip namin hahaha yeaaaah looking back we should have at least tried BUT yun nga, it was really too damn hot to walk around talaga. Maybe next time!! (next time talaga?!)

Kill time! We just randomly sat anywhere we could #ifItfitswesits 

At some points, we could hear the sound check so medyo spoilery siya (we heard Jinwoo’s solo performance HAHA) at the same time we were like OMG 0_0

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FINALLY TIME TO ENTER! 

Our seats were 2F (as in second floor). We were initially planning to aim for 1F but giiiiiirl waley. 2F wasn’t that bad! Ang nasa isip ko MOA Arena levels where it’s too high up. This was okay (as if may choice kami HAHA). 1F would be the best seats talaga. Standing is a gamble because there’s a chance you won’t be able to see anything BUT the interactions that WINNER made with the standing group was really worth it :))))) WATCH THE FANCAMS IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I MEAN

I tried to use MIXLR for the first time pala, since I wanted to kinda pay it forward. The first time I “experienced” a WINNER concert was through Cami’s Fukuoka?? mixlr concert and back then I thought, it’s amazing that someone would really try to share this experience with us that can’t make it to the concert. 

(Now that I’m replaying my mixlr, I AM SORRY FOR THE THOUSAND OMGs I SAID =)))) I swear I’m more coherent than that--except when you know, Mino was body rolling live, Hoony was lifting his shirt to reveal his perfect 6-pack abs, Jinwoo with his ethereal voice and stage presence, and Yoon’s powerful vocals and performance. Wala na talaga ako masabi kung hindi OH MY GOD =)))) So I’m not sure if I’ll ever mixlr again hahaha kasi marami naman who does it and is more pro about it??? let’s see :)))

Here are some notable thoughts I remember from the concert (sorry more Tagalog here because all the feels)

1. ANG GWAPO NILANG LAHAT. I mean, fo sure I didn’t stan them for visuals (promise talaga! It was really about the music. Sawain ako sa visuals actually) BUT hooooshit. They are different irl. I’ve seen them before in NAIA airport for like.... 10 seconds and like I knew they were really good-looking. BUT ON STAGE. IN FULL PERFORMANCE GLORY. THEIR VISUALS ARE INSANE. 

2. SOLO STAGES. WHERE TO BEGIN. I didn’t know I’d see Mino perform Body live ever (I thought he had retired the song and I’ve accepted it) BUT GOOD LORD. The “mashup” for Body and TOTL was just made to be together. The stage and performance was oozing with sexiness and charisma and my mind was just a puddle at this point. Mino doesn’t do full-on sexy very often (am I right? It’s like between deliberate sexy and swag, he’d go for more swag) so when he did this... live... the body rolling... the kinda grinding.... we died. 

3. JINWOO. Jusko. Where to start with Jinwoo. I’m rewatching our fancam of his Untitled 2014 performance and it’s the only one who made me feel goosebumps. Especially the part where he went up the stairs and the spotlight was on him, and he was singing so passionately and the audience was just in complete awe. IT WAS A MAGICAL MOMENT I CAN’T EXPLAIN. It’s like as he walked up the stairs and sang, it was like he was taking his rightful place as a superstar. Jinwoo is not even my bias but I super kaduper want him to succeed and become more confident with this abilities (I am speaking from someone who watched Who is Next haha). After his solo stage, my immediate first thought was: JINWOO IS READY TO HAVE A SOLO ALBUM.

4. YOON’S SOLO STAGE. Lol I cried. Ever since I’ve heard It Rains (his solo song), I’ve wanted to hear it live, but I didn’t expect that he’d sing it ever again--maybe he’d sing Wild and Young but not It Rains. The arrangement was “simple” but the experience was HOLY. As in, it was like angels were singing. His clear and strong voice filled the whole arena. The adlibs he did were insane. Literally it was like going to church. The lights and the background visuals were stunning. Sobrang full on drama / rocker Yoon mode! It is something to behold live. Also... INSTINCTIVELY. I also never thought I’d see Yoon perform with a guitar ever again. (Ang drama?? never talaga?? hahaha but I never know with Yoon kasi! He’s so experimental with genres that when he’s already done something already, it might take a long time for him to comeback [in this case, to his rocker roots]). When he took off his blazer... BAKLA SIGAW TALAGA AKOOOOooooo =)))) Looking at him perform like this, I can’t believe he didn’t go solo. I know he’s happier with a group (and I am thankful) but his presence as a solo artist is still very much there. I hope Yoon can release his solo album soon because Liz and I will definitely fly again to Korea when that happens!!! :)

>>>[OPEN FOR A SURPRISE]<<<

Grabe thissss pic.twitter.com/AvxeuT4Xoh

5. HOON. How so even begin writing about Deputy Lee’s stage. He performed Ringa Linga (modified with Hoon’s rap which was a cool touch I think) and Serenade (EVERYONE’S WAITING FOR THIS). I don’t know where haters get the idea that Hoon can’t dance. Like... are you guys BLIND?!?!? He’s one of the most naturally gifted dancers I’ve ever seen--because he dances to feeling**, not with just choreo. Ringa Linga was a perfect choice for him because he was able to showcase his vocals, dancing prowess and abs all at the same time. The dance breaks were insane. AND MY GOD, Hoon’s body is perfection. His arms, torso, legs... ART. 

6. The costumes, lights (LIGHTS), pyrotechnics, over-all stage design was just A++++. I don’t know why I thought it was going to be a much simpler stage but they really went all-in with everything.

7. The nebula ocean was beautiful. I keep saying in the mixlr... “I’ve never seen so many Inner Circles in my entire life” because it’s true! For some reason there is a notion that we are a small fandom and maybe that’s true compared to others... but we are not less powerful. At least 99% of seats were taken, the standing was packed. Everyone was doing the fanchants. Almost everyone had the lightstick. It was humbling and inspiring to see all the fans who love WINNER come together in one venue, screaming their voices out and singing to the songs (while still being respectful and attentive to each stage performance).

4winner 4ever 💙💙💙💙#WINNEREverywhereTourInSeoul pic.twitter.com/dKXYst03v4

8. The boys really love each other. As in, you can feel their chemistry and their teamwork onstage. Of course, I don’t understand the ments while it was going on (by now I’ve seen the translated fancams of course) but I can definitely tell from their body language and the way they regard each other that they are brothers. And they were just so happy! Running to and from the stage, taking fan’s phones, they were on FULL-ON fanservice. I could feel the love from where I was sitting.

9. I want to pick my favorite stages but I don’t know how. It was surreal to shout “Neol johahae!” for REALLY REALLY and answer Hoon’s pizza pasta so so with “YUM YUM!” =))))) Sobrang surreal na nangyayari siya sa harapan ko at hindi sa Youtube (with subtitles). Love Me Love Me stage was super cute, Moviestar was tear-inducing. Speaking of Movie Star, the fan event was so funny! They were really surprised because it happened right smack in the middle (usually it happens at the end, but they were expecting it kasi). All four of them were very confused and I feel like they really didn’t see the video as much because they were busy being... confused with what was happening. But when they understood they look like they were touched and slightly cross that we were able to fool them HAHA.

Also:

MINYOON MINYOON MINYOON

10. There were many cute moments of ICs that I witnessed. Like, before the concert started, they were playing WINNER songs on the screen. Then suddenly, Body was played. Inner Circles all screamed =))) BASTA SOBRANG FUNNY. During Mino’s kissing scene, half of ICs were turned on, half were saying “Nooooo” =))) Then during encore, we were supposed to sing We Were (as in the whole song). When it was already the second stanza, the singing became softer and softer, because it was apparent that ICs haven’t memorized the lyrics. Everyone laughed hard. IT WAS SOOOOOO CUTE T_T

BONUS:

After the concert, we kinda rushed to the back exit to wait for WINNER. Lol it took more than an hour for them to come out (of course lots of picture-taking, maybe even speeches for the team, etc etc). We saw Yang Hyun Suk (ICs began to chant his name too #insidejokefromtheconcert and sure ako labas sa ilong yun hahaha), PO, Jinwoo’s dad, Yoon’s mom, most of the dancers (Gahee my love were you there) to name a few.

Again, it was a tender moment because the van was supposed to “cover” their exit from the door, but the fans cried “Noooo” and begged security to let us see them :)) So after a few minutes, the van adjusted its position, so WINNER could walk out and wave to the crowd outside. They looked very very very happy and thankful to see us. <3

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We met with some of the PH-ICs again to talk about the concert IN TAGALOG PARA TODO YUNG FEELS :))) I can’t wait to see everyone again in November!

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Aaaaand by 12 am we were back in our hotel after getting lost in Dongmyo exit HAHA. Can’t blame us, all our braincells were left in the Olympic Park Stadium :)) It was really a memorable experience that we hope we can repeat for sure on November (WHICH IS MY BIRTHDAY MONTH). Aiming for nearer seats this time, but let’s see what the universe will give us. 

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I thought if I finally see WINNER live I’d be finally scratching an itch--like I’ve already see them live and that’s that. But NOOOOOooooooOOOOOooo. It’s completely the opposite. Now YouTube and mixlrs are not enough anymore T_T When you’ve seen them live... you just want to repeat the experience over and over again.

To all Inner Circles still reading up to this point: CONGRATS and THANK YOU:))

 Also, my god. You can forget everything you’ve read up to this point but just remember this.

SEE

THEM

LIVE.

See them live.

I am not kidding around. You should, at least once in your life. Even if it’s just General Admission ticket or the farthest seat***. It’s different when you are in the same venue and you see them performing LIVE right in front of your very eyes. In my opinion, Yoon’s voice is 10x better live---recording absolutely does not do him justice. Same with the Mino, Jinwoo and Hoon. Their vocals, dance skills, over-all charisma cannot be simply captured by the camera. YOU HAVE TO SEE THEM LIVE TO KNOW WHAT I MEAN, WHY I’M SO ADAMANT ABOUT THIS :)))) I’ve seen performers that are exactly the same live as they are in YouTube or sound the same like Spotify but I can say with complete confidence: not WINNER. I can say their true strength is live performance.

I’m sure I’ve missed a lot but this is becoming a research-paper already HAHA so I’d end it here. SO glad we pushed for this trip, so blessed that everything worked in our favor (we were the last flight out before the NAIA airport incident happened huhu) and we’re already looking forward to November in MNL****! :)

till then bye~

P.S. If you want to chika more or need me to translate the Filipino bits lol just hit me up on teh Ask :)

*we saw at least 2 big Yoon masternims that we avidly follow talaga, 2 european ics we follow (lol “european” what is dead giveaway lol) and 1 of the 3 japanese KSY fans we also like HAHA so cute T_T

** I’m not a dancer, but my boyfriend is, and I remember him saying that personally he has more respect for dancers who dance according to what he feels--because it’s one of the highest forms of expression (as opposed to just relying with choreo). It’s a testament to a dancer’s ability that he/she is able to catch the beat without “thinking” about it too much--so the dance becomes the story of the dancer, not the choreo. LOL I think I’m botching his explanation about it but it’s just I remember Hoon whenever my boyfriend and I talk about freestyle dance.

*** Of course it you can’t make it due to various reasons that’s okay, but if you have a chance to make it happen, don’t hesitate. I’d say it’s worth every penny you’d spend to see them live.

[confessions-of-a-former-fat-guy]

Confession 21: A boy, the Open, and that weird spinny feeling.

So that’s it. The 2017 CrossFit Open is over. I feel like I speak for most of us when I say, whew. A big sigh of relief is necessary for many this year, it seems. I don’t know if it was that all of the workouts (aside from 17.3 if you sucked like me) were long or if it was just that they were insanely hard (as they’re supposed to be), but I am beat up today. I’m proud of myself, as all of us should be, but I am beat up. I had a number of goals this year. The first was to do every workout as prescribed. Last year I only did two of the workouts Rx because there were so many movements I hadn’t figured out yet and weights I knew I couldn’t lift. It’s a year later and I’ve figured out most of the movements well enough to do at WOD speed. I’m stronger, so most of the weights are manageable. This goal I achieved and I’m really, really proud of myself for that. That in itself shows I’ve made a ton of progress. These are super hard workouts designed to test the fittest people on the planet. Now, I was nowhere even remotely close to performing the workouts at the level of a Games athlete. I don’t care. It has never been and never will be my goal to be a Games competitor. But the fact that I can complete these workouts that the fittest people on Earth are doing makes me feel pretty damn good. Whether you qualified for Regionals, did every workout Rx for the first time, or did every workout scaled, completing these workouts in any capacity is an achievement in itself. It’s impressive. And if you’re reading this and just finished your first Open or your tenth, be proud of yourself. You are impressive and strong and fit and a goddamn force to be reckoned with. You’re amazing. Give yourself all the credit in the world. These are tests and we passed and we came out on the other side better than we were. Go you. Go me. 17.1 was a burner. The introduction of the dumbbell to the CrossFit Open. I’m really glad they dropped the hints leading up to the Open (even if it was to sell out Rogue’s inventory) and our coaches had the wherewithal to program the dumbbell snatch in a WOD before it showed up in this workout. I did this workout twice because I was so close to finishing the 225 reps under the time cap that I just had to. I was 19 reps short my first try and 7 reps short my second try. Close, but not quite there. I was super bummed that I couldn’t get it done, but it was a new movement with a new piece of equipment and I wasn’t sure what to expect in the first place. Oddly enough the dumbbell snatches weren’t the problem. It was those goddamn burpee box jumps that blew my soul to pieces and left them scattered across the gym floor. F those things. Zortmans are not jumpers. When colossal d-bag Dave Castro announced 17.2 I was both excited and terrified. Dumbbells showed up again in the 100 lbs in the front rack walking lunge. Gross. Who thinks this is a good idea? I guess the guy who spent 7 days with corn rows at the Games last year, that’s who. But, the saving grace, the thing I was excited for, was bar muscle-ups. I just somewhat recently got my first muscle-up and was really happy to see them show up in an Open workout. Getting to them was another story. Those stupid lunges wrecked me and took far longer for me than they did for just about anyone else, it seemed. I struggled hard to get through the three sets of those before I could tackle the muscle-ups. I did, though, and I ended up getting 6 muscle-ups in that workout. My goal was 5, so I beat that. Yay! Gluten/sugar/frosting/taste free cupcakes all around. Through two workouts I was still feeling strong, excited, and confident about what I’d done so far in the Open. I was in the top third in the world and state for men. Much improved on my top 60% (or bottom 40% if you’re a dick) from last year. I felt really good about that. Another goal of mine was to be in the top 50% in the world, so to see myself in the top 33% felt really satisfying and kept my spirits up after two really hard workouts. Then, 17.3 happened. Strangely, this is the workout I did best on in terms of where I stood compared to the rest of the world, but it is the one that broke me. Chest to bar pull-ups, fine. Squat snatches? Not so fine. Probably the most technical Olympic lift and the one that haunts my dreams and leaves me waking up in a pool of sweat. My shoulders and groin hurt just thinking about them (and after 17.3, my pride). I knew going into this workout that if I got to the round with 185 lb snatches I was screwed. The heaviest I’ve ever done is 165 and that was as ugly as any snatch has ever been (I’ll leave that alone). I felt OK about the rounds of 95 lbs and 135 lbs, though. How disgustingly optimistic of me. I got through the rounds of 95 lbs fine enough, then struggled and failed on my first two or three attempts at 135, a weight I know I can do without many issues. I finally settled in and got through one round at 135 before my time ran out. This was the shortest workout for me since I didn’t get through the three rounds at 135 in under 8 minutes, but that’s all the time it took to crack my confidence. I fell apart after that workout. I came back the next day to try again and couldn’t get 135 as high as my waist. I struggled and failed for four minutes and stomped out of the gym ready to never come back. I wrote a long post about how I wasn’t sure I want to do this CrossFit stuff anymore. That I’ve lost my motivation and my love for it (see two posts ago). A lot of people stepped in and set me straight and I saw the light. I do still love CrossFit, but I needed rest, which isn’t something I had been able to admit to myself before. I’d also been having some issues with dizzy spells for a couple weeks, but they were very brief and weren’t causing me any issues, so I sort of just ignored it and went about my business. Leading up to 17.4 they had started to get a little worse. They were lasting minutes instead of seconds and were becoming much more frequent. So, at the urging of my girlfriend and many at the gym, I took a couple days off before I came in for 17.4, which I was excited about because it was a repeat from a workout in the 2016 Open that I knew I could improve on. My head wasn’t feeling great when I got to the gym that day, but I went ahead with the workout anyway. And I did better than last year. A lot better. But not as well as I know I could have. 55 deadlifts at 225 lbs, 55 wall balls, 55 calories on the rower, and 55 handstand pushups in 13 minutes. Last year I got through 27 calories on the rower before I hit the time cut off. This year I got through the entire row with a minute to spare. Awesome! 28 reps better in a full minute less. I’d have 60 seconds to work on handstand pushups, which I’ve never done in a workout before. Not so much. The second I stepped off the rower I almost passed out. I could hardly stand. Everything was spinning and my vision was going in and out. Instead of trying for a couple handstand pushups, I spent that minute (and about 15 after) trying to stay upright and conscious. Not good. I’d never felt that way after a workout. Not when I weighed 315 lbs. Not any time between then and now. It scared the crap out of me, so I took the weekend to rest. I had been feeling better and hadn’t had any issues all weekend, so I went in for the normal workout on Monday, which was fine. I didn’t have any issues before, during, or after the workout. Then, at work the next day the dizziness hit and never went away. I spent the whole day (and the next three) sitting at my desk in a fog trying to focus on my work and not falling to the ground. Something was pretty obviously wrong. I was, admittedly, terrified. So much so that I sped home in the middle of the day one day, woke up my girlfriend who was in the middle of working 6 out of 7 overnights (learned a lesson there), and told her I was pretty sure I was dying. I took the rest of the week off training because I wasn’t sure I could get through a workout or if it was even healthy for me to be out there. I went to everyone’s favorite chiropractor and felt much better. I didn’t have any issues with dizziness for almost three days, so I decided it should be OK for me to go in and do 17.5. As luck would have it, the dizziness came back about an hour before the workout, but wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. I had made it this far and was committed to finishing the Open and doing this workout as prescribed. 90 thrusters and 350 double unders…yeah, all that up and down should be fine for someone dealing with dizziness issues…totally fine. OK, not so much. Somewhere in round three the dizziness kicked in HARD. My vision was going in and out and focusing on what I was doing was becoming seemingly impossible. I gutted it out and finished the workout, which I’m proud of. It took me probably 6-7 minutes longer than it should have since I spent so much time trying to rein my eyesight in, but I finished it and there it was, my goal of doing every workout as prescribed this year. Today as I write this I’m not sure where I stand in the world, state, or inter-gym rankings. I don’t care, honestly. I imagine I fell after 17.5, but it doesn’t matter because I hit every goal I had for this year’s Open. My body hurts and my head is still cloudy (which I’m being treated for), but I feel really good about what I was able to achieve. My body is truly capable of things I never thought possible, even when I’m not feeling anywhere near 100%. The improvement in what I can do over what I did last year is evident, obvious, and pretty freaking amazing. I did not qualify for Regionals. I did not finish in the top 10 in my gym (we have amazing athletes at Viral – you guys are animals). I probably fell out of the top 33% in the world. Whatever. I really do not care. This Open was hard. Much harder than I remember last year being. That may be credited to the fact that I did all the workouts Rx or cool guy Dave Castro upping the ante. I don’t know the exact reason, but it was freaking hard for everybody (except maybe Matt Fraser, but he’s a psycho – I mean that with the utmost respect). It was hard for me. I went through some stuff during this Open. A major blow to my confidence and self-esteem. Questioning if this is all right for me. Questioning myself as an athlete. Fighting through what, to me, has been a really scary health issue. It was hard. But as hard as it was, it was worth it. I proved some things to myself. I can overcome setbacks. I can push through pain and fatigue. I can take some rest when I need to. Hopefully others can relate or celebrate other successes. Maybe you PR’d your squat snatch. Maybe you got your first muscle-up. Maybe you were top in your gym of all scaled athletes. Maybe you showed up and did your best for all five workouts. Whatever it was, you did it. You should be proud. I know I am. I’m also very ready to get back to regular programming and training to do even better next year. Here’s to another Open season and to a clear head going forward.

[thebeckychronicles]

Post 10: On trying not to be bitter, irony and one-month anniversary hehe

Warning: This one’s a LONG one

March 14th marked a month since my diagnosis. (Valentine’s Day will always be a fun day from now on.) In my life I’ve battled a lot of beasts. Depression, other health issues, family tension, to name a few. It’s been a month since the most recent beasts of my life has made itself known. While my family is in A MUCH healthier and better place than we used to be and my other health issues I’ve addressed and solved, depression has been a beast I’ve been dodging and only occasionally faced head-on until recently.

Things got really bad for me around October, getting out of bed was a struggle; I’d go to work and have to go into the bathroom multiple times to stop myself from randomly bursting into tears. I’ve been asked by those who know I struggle with depression, “What does it feel like?” In truth, even after YEARS of feeling the way I do I still don’t have the perfect explanation of what my depression feels like. Depression is a beast you don’t understand even as you go through it. Best explanation I’ve come up with is it feels akin to grief. Debilitating, all-consuming grief. It affected my performance at school, how I interacted with my family and friends, my attitude going to work. When I say depression is all-consuming I really mean it- there was nothing in my life that wasn’t tainted by how messed up I was feeling.

Usually, fall and winter are really rough for me, and this past year was no different- except it kind of was. Usually when I’m in a very bad place I’m kind of able to talk myself out of it; and the slumps last for a few days and then abate for weeks. On the other hand, this fall/winter completely swept me up. I typically keep how I’m feeling to myself, meaning I don’t talk to my family about it. But I was so overwhelmed with my inability to cope and just how awful I was feeling all the damn time that I ended crying to my dad at the kitchen table about it. In Latinx culture, accepting mental illness is really difficult. Being able to worry about your mental health seems like a luxury (lowkey blame Maslow’s hierarchy-even though my parents probably don’t know what that is) because then that means that all your physical needs like food, shelter and water are met. Anyway, this was one of the few times I feel like he really heard me when I said I’m depressed. It had gotten so bad that I decided once fall quarter was over I’d quit my job and focus on school and getting through one day at a time.

Fast forward, I made an appointment in late October with my doctor to see if I can get medication to help. I used to be really against medication to treat depression because to me it felt like giving up, and I worried that it wasn’t something that would help my depression but rather would just make me happy in an unauthentic way. So for the first time in my life I talked to a medical doctor about my options and treating my depression. They recommended starting me on meds but also having me attend therapy- which is the current game plan now. When they diagnosed me and started telling me about treatment options it felt like such a relief. Strangely, I felt validated in my struggle with depression- it made it real in a way that didn’t feel confronting and overwhelming, but rather treatable and like there was a light at the end of the tunnel so to speak. This is supposed to be a blog documenting my life with cancer, so why am I sharing this? Because I feel like it’s relevant. Why? Because one of the main things I felt besides afraid and sad and angry about my cancer diagnosis was frustration. Because for so long I didn’t want to confront the fact that I’m depressed. For so long I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t okay. And just when I’m finally addressing an issue I should’ve addressed back when I was 16, when I’m finally in a good place with my family and getting it together at school, another even bigger issue goes off like a bomb in my life. And so after my diagnosis I had a bit of a pity party and yeah- I was super pissed at God. Like, dude what the hell? You play too much. (insert mad side-eye)

This is where I’m at, a little over a month since my diagnosis and going into my second chemo treatment in a few days. Some days I feel really bitter. Some days I’m frustrated because just when I feel like I’m getting my feet firmly on the ground this shit happens. Some days I don’t want to get out of bed. I want to be left alone and give the world the finger. But life goes on, even after a cancer diagnosis. Most days I’m okay, most days it’s really easy to count my blessings. I’ve said before, my cancer prognosis is actually pretty good even though it’s an aggressive stage 2b. And because of this I’ve struggled with the question, “Do I have a right to be upset and wallow and feel all that I’m feeling, when really it could be worse?” I’ve been hesitant to complain and really bitch about my health because I know people and stories of those of have certainly had it worse. It’s hard to feel like I have a right to what I’m feeling when I know at the end of the day I’m still really blessed. My motto this whole time has been, “It could be worse.”

March 14th, I was in Seattle with my best friend, Lety. There we met up with her roommate from last year- a girl I had known from junior high. I know she knew about my diagnosis and I hadn’t seen her since before she found out through Lety. We were catching up talking and then her tone changed and she asked me, “How are you doing?” Now when people ask me I know that’s their way of broaching the subject of my diagnosis. I caught her up on my treatment and that my next appointment is the following week.

Her mother had gone through breast cancer back when we were seniors in high school, something I know she didn’t really broadcast. I think breast cancer in general to me has seemed it’s own significant battle- I don’t know it just seems more severe (not that this is a shit-show Olympics because cancer is shit all around). I just didn’t want to complain to her, or say something that I’m honestly feeling when I’m sure her mother went through worse. I don’t know. Point is, while my sister on multiple occasions has reminded me that I’m allowed to feel however the hell I’m feeling it’s different hearing it from someone who has seen a more aggressive side of cancer.  

So I told her, “I’m good. The prognosis is good. It could be worse. I’m really lucky.” To which she replied, “Yeah, but it still sucks. You’re entitled to feel however you feel about it.”

No lie- I almost cried when she said that. Maybe it’s shitty of me to want to be comforted by someone who saw a darker side of cancer (her mom beat it by the way- so YAY) than I’ve seen thus far but my God it felt so nice to be validated. I don’t think she knows how much I needed to hear that. Even though she wasn’t the one to go through it, she’s lived with it through her mother and I don’t know- just hearing that validation from her makes me feel some type of way. So thank you for that E.

It’s funny to me, the way things are going in my life so far. And the increase in irony in my life too. Two days ago I was supposed to be in Belize with my best friends Lety and Tisa- needless to say those plans got cancelled (though I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t hurt to skip one chemo session- I mean what’s the worst that could happen? I get cancer?) I expected to finish my two years at Cascadia spring quarter but now because my immune system is compromised and chemo really takes its toll it’s not a good idea for me to be in school right now. I told my sister a few weeks before my diagnosis that I wanted to at some point shave my head- and now my hair is actually falling out against my will. (That’s what I get for wanting to shave my head in the first place lol.) I’m studying to be a medical social worker, and had wondered if I should reach out to a hospital to see if I could shadow one and now I have my own medical social worker (Hi Alisha.) When I graduated high school I hadn’t wanted to go into college right after, I had wanted to take a year off and now that I have to take a sabbatical I’m feeling kind of annoyed. But whatever- school will be there when I get back to it.

Jeremiah 29:11 states: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” You know God, I’m really trusting you but homie sometimes what you let happen makes it a little hard. And makes this chick kinda salty.

I know I had my plans for myself. Two years at Cascadia then to UW or some other social work program. Belize this spring break with my best friends. Not getting cancer. I know I had my own plans. But life has its own plans. God has His own plans, and sometimes God just lets things happen. I’m not a big believer in coincidences, but I’m also not a believer in “all things happen for a reason.” Sometimes life’s gonna happen regardless of our prayers. Even saying all of this, I hope I get something out of this other than my health. I don’t think God one day said, “Jenni’s gonna get cancer” and God if you did: Rude. Like I said, I don’t think God just straight up caused cancer in my body, but I do think He let it happen. But I believe God loves me, and because of this I find some comfort in this painful time. I believe God loves me. I probably sound like I’m contradicting myself, but it makes sense in my head so who cares. I certainly had my own plans, and God definitely has His own for my life. I just have to trust in His word and His promise and see where it takes me.

Thank you for your continued prayers, good thoughts, check-ins, well-wishes and visits; they truly mean the world to me. Lots of love to all of you. Find out next time on the Becky Chronicles: 2nd chemo session and a port that’s acting up.

One last thing; Becky’s going down with the rage of Achilles.

[amorremanet]

“chris & phichit’s excellent adventure”

a.k.a, “the transcontinental road trip AU where, a few years in the future, chris and phichit go on the hunt to find vitya’s missing blood family and bring them to the viktuuri wedding.” for #yoiweek2017 day five: stay close to me — option b: bonds/friendship.

(and sneaks in tags for @sikenesque @fighthaus & @pocketlass for reasons)

featuring hijinks and shenanigans, including but not limited to (not even remotely in order):

��how did you even find intel, chris??” // “oh, my future father-in-law has a soft spot for romance and touching family reunions, he helped me out. also, he specializes in finding missing persons for INTERPOL.”

“so, why don’t we just let INTERPOL handle this? like, they have the resources, don’t they?”

“because they’re a police organization? all the rumors about viktor’s blood family being in organized crime are ridic, they’re not even credible enough for gossip bloggers to dignify their existence anymore. INTERPOL has no reason to be involved, my future father-in-law just did me a favor.”

“okay, that makes sense… plus, i mean? if you think about it, it’d probably mean a lot more to viktor and yuuri if we got viktor’s family to the wedding ourselves. found family uniting blood family and all that, right? :D”

“blanket rule: no selfies while we’re on the trip, viktor and yuuri might figure out what we’re up to.”

“won’t they figure out that we’re up to something when they realize that both of the best men have gone missing?” // “nah, i got it covered. :D”

literally the full extent of christophe’s alleged “plan” here is, “make my beautiful bae thierry run interference to keep the grooms-to-be-distracted. he’s in government, he is experienced at finding ways to waste people’s time. then, when i get home, make it up to him that i asked for so much important help, and then have dinner and a gold-medal romantic marriage proposal, awwww yiss.”

having to call on leo for help at some point in the states, bc phichit has never needed to learn how to drive, and chris has a license but he hasn’t driven in ages and he’s used to everything being on the other side of the road, what the hell is this, why is everything in america backwards

“i’m sorry for chris, leo. trying to drive the rental car back in detroit messed him up a little, thank you for giving us a ride ♡”

“THE ROADS MADE NO SENSE, THERE WERE POTHOLES AND BROKEN CEMENT ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE, THE PEOPLE WERE MEAN TO ME, AND EVERYTHING WAS BACKWARDS!!!”

“……right. yeah, it’s no problem, phichit. i was gonna call you today anyway, you’ve been quiet on social media since the thing in munich, i was getting worried. ♡”

a scooby doo-esque chase scene through the louvre, arising from a misunderstanding between chris and a belgian tourist who looked kinda like the last confirmed photo of viktor’s blood mother (in his defense, it’s a very bad photo and the poor tourist did look kinda like viktor’s mother)

“we’re way ahead of schedule, phichit! we have enough time to go out tonight! besides, we’re gonna meet a contact!” — *spongebob announcer voice* SEVERAL HOURS LATER……

“ugh, phichit, come on. our contact probably isn’t showing up by now and this mountain goat guy’s music sucks…… uh. ……phichit? *to the bartender, showing her a picture on his phone* ……hey, have you seen this guy? he came in with me a few hours ago? he’s about this tall *mimes with his hand*, really cute, probably trying to take selfies with everybody?”

bartender: “oh yeah, he headed for the stage while you were arguing with that other patron about whether or not that russian skater guy deserves to be called a living legend—”

“well, what else are you supposed to do when someone insults your best friend’s honor and also his skating”

bartender: “right, well. have fun trying to elbow your way through a bunch of enraptured john darnielle fans to get your cute friend back. :)”

chris does not have fun trying to do this. phichit doesn’t appreciate chris trying to yank him out of the pit in the middle of j.d. playing, “this year,” like?? what the hell, chris!

chris still thinks that the weirdo in the glasses can’t actually sing or play his guitar and also his songs suck. phichit makes him wait by the stage door for an autograph and a selfie anyway.

“you can’t even post it anywhere or this will all go belly-up again ffs WHY”

“because the mountain goats, chris!!! THAT’S why!”

having to call on jj and isabella for help in montreal, bc as the adventure winds down and brings them to canada, they still can’t drive but they are too close to finding vitya’s family to give up now just because chris finds jj insufferable

“seung-gil? this is isabella and jj’s place, uh? not to be rude but… why are YOU here? with your dog?”

“*shrugs* spending time with my best friend and our boyfriend. what are you doing here, phichit. and with giacometti?”

“would you believe that chris and i are on a transcontinental hunt for viktor’s long-lost family who might be involved in organized crime or something, thanks to a series of tips that started with chris’s future father-in-law who works for INTERPOL i guess, and we’ve been all over the world, looking for the long-lost nikiforovs so they can come to viktor and yuuri’s wedding?”

“*headtilts at phichit, then eyebrow arches at chris, who is faceplanted and sacked out on the couch* ……well, i believe that jj would believe that and let you two stay here for a while.”

“*sighs and takes chris’s phone out of his jacket pocket, borrows his thumb to get past the lock, and shows seung-gil some of the intel that’s been guiding them on their search* ……i feel like i should say something witty? but i’m tired and jetlagged, so… please substitute something witty in here for me?”

“*eyebrow arches at chris’s phone and then up at phichit* ……why on earth would you two do all of this instead of just buying katsuki and nikiforov a honeymoon in the bahamas or something?”

“………that. um. ………………that literally never occurred to us?”

“literally never?”

“and we thought it’d be sweeter and more personal to find viktor’s family???”

“*whistles, sighs, then gets up and points at the guest bed* get some sleep, phichit. you look like you’re going to need it. *waits for phichit to lie down, then coaxes his husky up into the bed to go snuggle phichit. because seung-gil likes phichit, so phichit gets dog-snuggles. and none for christophe giacometti, bye.*”

chris doesn’t make arrangements for them in rome bc he expects to be able to call on sara and sleep on her couch, but she, mickey, and emil are already at the wedding when chris and phichit get there.

(sara is there as mila’s plus-one, and yuuri invited emil, who brought mickey as his plus-one.)

so, without any planned accommodations in rome, chris and phichit go looking for either a room or maybe some of the leads they’re supposed to be finding (hey, it’s not that late).

a few wrong turns and oddball miscommunications, exacerbated by their very questionable italian, later… and they’ve found their way to a fancy dinner party being hosted by a distinguished professor of art history and the classics, who has family ties to organized crime.

(their bags get stashed in one of the guest rooms, based on the assumption that they’ll be staying the night.)

people at the party keep asking phichit if he’s the professor’s mysterious sicilian protégé whom they’ve heard about but never met, and at first, phichit is trying to find it as amusing as he can when he can’t post selfies with people after clearing up the misidentification.

after a while, though, enough people have done it that he’s really frustrated because??? what the HELL??? he is THAI, not sicilian??? how are you people even getting sicilian when he knows that his italian is other-than-good???

also, not to be immodest, but phichit just won silver at the winter olympics in pyeongchang, like?? that was just last year??? were his performances really that forgettable????

finally, phichit tries to drag chris away from charming a group of pretty, eager graduate students with an anecdote about some holiday in ibiza that is like 85% made up, and in his indignation at everything going on today, phichit shouts at chris that they need to get back on the hunt for the nikiforovs!!!

*record scratch sound effect!*

this gets them dragged back into a very well-furnished study to have a chat with the professor, his younger brother, and their older sister because oh no, did you say nikiforov :|

turns out that the professor’s family definitely knew the nikiforovs and it’s some kind of complicated mess, and there is some serious miscommunication that briefly makes them think that chris and phichit are the cutest but most ineffective hitmen ever.

once this is cleared up, they are given intel on where to go looking for the nikiforovs on the condition that they leave rome by dawn. they get on the first train out of the city without even caring where it goes.

after a series of unfortunate transfers and sleeping through the stops where they initially planned to get off, they end up in munich. this would be awesome if they were on holiday, but it’s really not where they want to be for the sake of hunting for viktor’s family.

moreover, it’s kinda troublesome because phichit really does have a lot of fans after his big win in pyeongchang — more than he did beforehand, even, which says a lot because he’s had a lot of fans since his instagram started getting attention and got a huge rush of them after he made the cut for the sochi winter olympics.

but he has an especially huge fan club in germany for reasons he doesn’t entirely understand but also isn’t arguing with because omg yay, hi new friends, phichit wants to meet all of you and be your friend for real!!! (how sad is phichit that he’s banned from posting selfies right now? VERY SAD, that is how sad he is)

chris also has a pretty big fan club in germany, and when they show up in munich, he’s wearing the t-shirt one of his german fans designed for him that says, “bigger than hasselhoff” with fanart of chris in his free skate outfit from the sochi olympics (and hey, phichit, it’s not just you who’s upset about the blanket selfie-ban right now, but there’s a reason that you and chris agreed to this)

either way, they run into one of their fans while trying to scope out a café where they can get breakfast (“one that isn’t at the damned train station, phichit. ew, we have time enough to go find better food”) — and while the three of them share breakfast, chris and phichit take a few selfies with him without even thinking that their fan might post it anywhere. which he does.

the selfies end up on instagram, facebook, snapchat, and tumblr — never mind the tweets he posts alerting the fanclubs that chris and phichit are in munich, apparently doing nothing of interest (or maybe looking for someone who knows viktor nikiforov? they weren’t very clear on that).

you know those iconic scenes from a hard day’s night where the screaming fangirls chase the beatles around london?

yeeeeeah, uh.

chris and phichit are going to get chased around munich by screaming fans of all genders. if this were a movie, there would be a shot of them booking it through the main square at marienplatz — like, right in front of the mariensäule and fischbrunnen — scaring the other people and the pigeons as they desperately attempt to get away from the throng of fans behind them.

there would probably be another shot of them running from fans in front of the hofbräuhaus am platzl. because in the movies, you have to showcase the most well-known landmarks. it’s like how you can’t have paris in a movie without showing off the eiffel tower, just so everybody knows that we’re in paris.

they try to hide in different shops and on a bus. they try running into the englischer garten because, with an area of 910 acres, they figure that it should be big enough to hide in (but there are fans there already, shit).

they run out, hide on another bus, and try to go to the tierpark hellabrunn, which is going well until they get comfortable and take a selfie in front of the tigers, and phichit at-tags yurio in it.

for one thing, this tells most of the fans that chris and phichit are at the zoo, looking at tigers and it alerts the fans who are already there because chris unzipped his jacket to show off his shirt and they both pulled down the coverings on their mouths.

for another thing, yurio doesn’t actually appreciate being tagged by either of the best men after he was told (by thierry) that chris and phichit wouldn’t be on social media while away on their adventure (so please, please, please help them out by not telling viktor what they’re doing, and help thierry keep it secret from him and yuuri, please?)

he especially doesn’t appreciate phichit trying to be nice to him and acting like they’re friends by going, “omg yurio, it you” — like, okay. by now, yuri has mostly given up on fighting his nickname. it hasn’t gone away and yuri’s angels have even started using it, but stop being NICE to him, phichit. it’s WEIRD. (also, “it you” on a picture of a tiger, that’s so funny, he forgot to laugh. :|)

so, not only do the fans notice them and resume the chase, but yurio forwards the selfie to thierry, who is other than impressed that chris and phichit have broken the, “no selfies so viktor and yuuri don’t figure out what we’re doing” rule

like, okay, the first one? thierry can understand that. they were tired and hungry and it’s not like they told the random guy at the café not to post selfies because they couldn’t figure out how to do it without spilling the whole story — but the second one, though??

chris, what the hell

thierry loves you but he is trying SO HARD!!! to keep viktor and yuuri from finding out what’s going on and you’re posting selfies with phichit like you swore that you wouldn’t because the selfies would make thierry’s job harder, why are you doing this

and rather than hang up on his boyfriend while the bae is being understandably upset with him, chris tries to apologize and explain the situation while he and phichit are still running from the fan squad

after a while of this: “……uh, chris?”

chris: “*talking quickly, periodically punctuated by heavy breathing* what? i love you, i swear i was listening, you were saying that i’m being irresponsible and—”

“thank you for proving that you were listening, which i was going to trust you about actually, but why does it sound like you can’t breathe???”

chris: “i’m fine!!! i swear, bae!! keep talking, i don’t want to interrupt or anything, i love!!! listening to you taaaalk — ack!!! *sounds vaguely strangled*”

phichit: “*grabbed chris by his shirt and jacket collars to keep him from running out into moving traffic and drag him around a corner instead*”

chris: “i’m fine, bae! keep talking!”

“you don’t sound fine…”

chris: “no, i am!!! i am totally fine! so you were saying about me!! and phichit!! being irresponsible!!! and making your life harder!!! and you really don’t appreciate it because you’re trying so hard to help keep the secret from vitya and sleeping beauty!!! and you’re so good about everything! and so smart!!! and i don’t wanna!! tell you that you’re sexy!!! because i tell you all the time and i know you feel like sometimes i’m just saying it!!! to get out of trouble!! or out of telling you other compliments!!!!”

“chris what in the world is going on because i do not believe for a second that you and phichit are actually fine right now”

chris: “NO I’M FINE JUST LIKE YOUR BUTT!! oh shit, i’m sorry bae!!! that wasn’t appropriate while you’re upset!!! with us for being irresponsible!!!”

“chris stop trying to act like you’re fine, i don’t feel like this is helping and—”

chris: “BAE EVERYTHING IS PERFECTLY FINE WHY WOULD IT NOT BE THAT’S FUNNY YOU’RE SO FUNNY I’M—”

“christophe sebastian giacometti, stop lying to me and give the phone to phichit right. now. :|”

chris: “*groans and whines about how he doesn’t want to give the phone to phichit but does anyway*”

phichit: “hi, thierry! we’re okay!! we’re in munich!!”

“yes, phichit, i saw the selfie. it was very cute, the current situation notwithstanding.”

phichit: “aww thanks!! you’re so cool, thierry! to appreciate the cuteness of the selfie even when you’re mad at us! :D”

“……right. phichit, what in the world is going on, why does neither of you sound like you can breathe.”

phichit: “oh, nothing much! same thing that’s been happening all day! it’s no big deal!!!”

“um. neither of you being able to breathe sounds like a very big deal to me, actually???”

phichit: “but we can so breathe!! it’s just harder because we’re running! like, literally running! have been all day, almost!!”

“why on earth have you been literally running around munich all day”

phichit: “we got on a couple of buses!!!”

“that doesn’t really answer my question…… :/”

phichit: “okay, we’re running from some fans!!!”

“wait what”

phichit: “they started showing up!! after that nice guy from the café!!! posted his selfies with us this morning!!!!”

“you are running through the streets of munich…… pursued by enthusiastic skating fans?”

phichit: “yeah, it’s like we’re the beatles!! but cuter and figure skaters and there are only two of us!!!”

“um, why did chris answer his phone in the first place if that’s the case”

phichit: “because he loves you and knew you’d probably be mad about the selfies!! and he wanted to apologize!!! because yeah, that was totally not a good move on our part!!! and he was all like, ‘it’s fair for him to be mad, i have to take this or it’ll make him more upset, ugh my name is chris giacometti, i’m a huge nerd and i just love my boyfriend soooooo much’”

“uh, why wouldn’t he just tell me that himself”

phichit: “i don’t know???! probably because he’s a huge nerd who loves you so much???! and he didn’t want to like, interrupt you being mad at us for the selfie?”

“………phichit, give chris his phone back.”

phichit: “okay!! bye, theirry!! i’m sorry for posting the selfie and making your life hard!!!”

chris: “HI BAE DID PHICHIT CLEAR THINGS UP”

“chris, this is one of those situations we talked about? you know, the ones where you’re allowed to not take my call or tell me that you need to call me back because important things are happening? so you don’t need to be unreasonably, irrationally worried that i’ll be mad at you because i understand that you have anxiety about this but i swear that i won’t be upset? or worried? or any other negative thing you’re afraid of me being?”

chris: “yeah, but when i didn’t take your call in rome, we were getting interrogated by the mafioso professor guy! i didn’t want you to worry!! also, you’re right to be mad at us!! we fucked it up bad this time!!! so you deserved to, like?! idk, chew us out before you had time to calm down and not be as mad at us!!! *makes a weird squawking noise as phichit drags him into a fairly empty alleyway* also i can’t text you and run at the same time, bae!! i’m not superman!”

“you have been risking your escape and stressing your body out to talk to me while you’re running and dragging luggage through a crowded city…… because you wanted to let me be MAD at you?”

chris: “*in between trying to catch his breath as he and phichit slump against the wall* well, yeah! i mean!! you’re my thierry, you’re my bae… and i know you do that thing sometimes where you’re really understanding and i love it…… i really do!!! ……but it’s totally not fair on you, sometimes!! because you end up censoring your feelings instead of communicating them!! and i mean, i don’t like that i made you mad at us, but you’re right to be so you should express that and like—”

“if the next words out of your mouth have something to do with sex, chris, i swear to god—”

chris: “well, yeah, the sex with you is great, but like!! bae, i mean!!! if it was just that, i wouldn’t love you, though!! it’s all of you, like how you’re smart and you’re sweet and you’re funny and so caring and it’s like?? what kind of way to treat somebody you love is that? ignoring your call when you’re right to be mad?”

“at the moment, it’s a self-preserving way to treat me because frankly? i would have understood if you and phichit escaped from your fans before calling me back. :/”

chris: “but then you’d have time to get not-as-mad at us! which isn’t fair! like you should be able to express that with us and i love you so much that i’d rather let you be mad at us while we’re trying to run from fans than call you back because making you wait is so not fair to the man i’m gonna marry!!!”

“wait what?”

chris: “*deep breaths and finally starts chilling out a bit* which part wait what?”

“‘it is so not fair to the man i’m gonna marry’?”

chris: “…………uh. ……………oops, i love you, are you mad or happy? mad or happy?”

“neither, er — confused, mostly, i mean?? we haven’t talked about anything like this since we moved in together, and??? explain???”

chris: “i decided i wanted to propose recently, okay?! and i wanted to wait until after the wedding so it wouldn’t steal viktor and yuuri’s thunder because viktor’s my best friend and yuuri’s the endearing oddball who makes my best friend happy, and oh god, fuck, this is so not how i wanted to do this—”

phichit: “*shouting at the phone* he was gonna cook for you, thierry! he was gonna make your favorites and he ruled out rose petals because he knows you’d hate the mess and wouldn’t find it sexy!!! he has like twenty-seven pages of handwritten plans about it in his journal, i saw them, it was super-romantic!”

chris: “oh my god, shut up!”

“wait is he serious”

chris: “…i mean, i have more like forty pages of plans about it because some of them, i had to vote, ‘no’ on but…… yes?”

“okay, are you being serious”

chris: “*sighs, then stiffens as phichit tugs on his sleeve and points out of the alley, where a few fans are looking around; sotto voce* ……bae, i don’t want to cut this off because i love you more than anything and it’s important but we’re gonna have to run again, so look? i’ll call you back when we’re out of this for real, and until then, there’s something in the upper right drawer of my desk that should answer your question for you, okay?”

“*chuckles* if it’s those weird gold medal condoms, i’m divorcing you”

chris: “ugggh, it’s not condoms, thierry, jesus! *has unwittingly alerted the fans to his and phichit’s hiding spot* okay, shit, we need to run, I LOVE YOU, BAE, YOU MAKE ME HAPPY EVEN WHEN YOU’RE MAD AT ME, TAKE CARE, GET SLEEP TONIGHT, I LOVE YOU AND WANT TO MARRY YOU, BYE.”

phichit: “*drags chris down the alley by his sleeve because fuck this, they’re running now, chris*”

anyway, at some point, they end up in some secondhand bookshop where a lone fan corners them and actually has some unexpected information about the nikiforovs for them

so, at least a hard day’s night in munich: starring phichit chulanont and christophe giacometti! was worth something more than the entertainment they’ll get out of telling the stories after the fact, when they are not exhausted and trying to get to paris on the tail of this new lead

that’s it for now, this post got long enough and i need to go make dinner

the end (probably temporarily)!!!

okay, bye, thanks for reading

[nyalisa-landale]

ok so I WAS going to talk about how I finally got through to the psych's office and the receptionist STILL tried to give me the run-around, but then more interesting things happened.

and by interesting I mean stressful as fuck, but hey, whatever.

so my aunt is being discharged today, which means that the musical beds we've all been playing has to stop. my bed is... whatever; my room is full of shit and it's encroaching on my bed because I quite literally do not have anywhere else to put it, but whatever, I just kind of... sleep around and on top of it. with earplugs and headphones so that I can't hear the mice. (the mice are ever-present. I don't think there's a single room in the house they aren't in, and if there is then they're in the walls of that room, because fuck you.)

anyway, so my bed is... whatever; I move some shit around and put my pillows back and call it good. aunt's bed is super easy to remake; all I really had to do was shove the comforter over a bit and chuck her pillows back at the top and job done. (I was more concerned about vacuuming up all the hamster bedding that was painfully obvious since we moved the hamster out of the room. and also cleaning the hamster cage again.)

but mom's room. hoo boy.

mom has a waterbed. mom has had a waterbed my entire life, I guess because my dad preferred it. (mom also has his shitty bedframe that he bought with his first wife and kept in the divorce. it's an okay bedframe, with a really spaceous headboard, but it's like three fucking feet high.) the thing about waterbeds? well, actually there's two things about them: the first is that they have to be heated, because who the fuck wants to sleep on top of 220 gallons of cold water? fucking nobody, that's who. (that's right, 220 gallons. it's a fucking california king. because my dad does nothing by halves.) and of course our cats loved hiding behind that thing, and so of course they unplugged the fucking heater at some point. (we haven't had cats in that house since 2014 so uh. that should tell you how long ago that was.)

the second thing about waterbeds is that they are, by nature, filled with water. and like anything filled with water, they can spring a leak. now, we knew my mom's mattress had developed a leak, but we weren't quite sure where, and at any rate there was way too much shit on her bed for us to be able to strip it and drain it. (her room is like mine, re: full of shit which is encroaching on the bed; in her case this happened to be a large majority of our wardrobes, mostly hers but also some of mine, and some books. including, as I tragically learned, one of my mixx comics sailor moon volumes. T^T)

anyway she was all super insistent that we had to remake her bed so that she could actually sleep on it, because apparently I had messed it up or... something? idk. anyway, so we had it more or less done, when she discovered... that the bottom layers on her side? were soaked through where they used absolutely no business being. so she asks me for some scissors and she starts cutting, and then she has me clamber over to the other side to finish, and long story short we, uh, found a way to get everything off the bed and then strip it, because the water damage went further than she realised and the whole thing just needs to be drained and to go in the fucking trash. (that was when I discovered my sailor moon mixx comics volume 3 crammed in somewhere nice and wet, though to be fair it didn't get as bad as some of the other books, so I have a small amount of hope for it.)

(I actually screamed when I found it, like, lilterally fucking wailed in despair, and my mom was all like "it's just a book, it can be replaced" and was... very surprised when I informed her that no, actually, it probably can't be, or at least not without spending a lot of money. it's way the hell out of print and there's new translations. and there's probably no interest now in the mixx comics translations anyway, because tbh they weren't that great, but that was the translation I grew up with, bunny, v-babe, and all. I even have the first... I want to say 28, but it might be 35, chapters in single issue American-style comic form, still from mixx comics; I just don't know where they are and, tbh, I'm kind of afraid of what state they'll be in when I do find them.

anyway, there's a lot of nostalgia tied up in those late-90s/early-00s sailor moon comics for me, is the point.)

anyway, all asides aside, our entire plan for the day was entirely detailed because we still have to pick my aunt up. and we could in theory take her right home, but mom doesn't have anywhere to sleep at home, on account of the waterbed thing coming to a head. I told her she could leave me at dad's house and sleep in my room, but no, she refused. and we can't really just drop my aunt off at home and leave her there; if nothing else my brother openly hates her and she's... probably not all the way recovered. his gf is home and she's at least friendly and helpful, but they're also gonna have their hands full with the waterbed (he almost outright refused to do it, but then he was all "I'll ask gf" and then mom handed over her card in case he needed to buy anything and so suddenly now it's all getting taken care of. although I think gf would have made him do it anyway, because she's friendly and helpful and also if they don't do it then mom, as established, literally has nowhere to sleep, except maybe the fucking floor which, I keep reminding her, is not an option.)

so we're picking up aunt and then heading for dad's house. he's conveniently in the hospital so he isn't exactly using it right now (and ain't that just a story in and of itself). at first mom was all "oh my sister can sleep in your dad's bed and you and I can sleep in grandma's room" and then she was like "wait no what if she falls off your dad's bed" so now aunt is going to take grandma's room and mom is going to take dad's room and I am going to either sleep in there with her (it's a full; we should fit) or on the couch or something.

cause mom has to go to work tomorrow, and the commute from my dad's house is garbage, but she kind of doesn't have a choice. and then either she's going to drag me and my aunt awake at like 5am (unlikely) or she's going to come back for us after work and after her dr's appointment (which, oh, by the way, she has one of those tomorrow, too).

I don't really want to be alone with my aunt, but she'll... probably mostly keep to herself, I think. and I've got plenty of shit to keep myself occupied (especially if I can charge my goddamn ds again) plus, you know, THE OLYMPICS, so I should be good. (aaaaaa I can watch figure skating in hd on a nice tv if I'm at dad's, yay) mostly I just don't want to be stuck having to play caretaker? because I can't even take care of my own goddamn self; I definitely need to not be responsible for someone else's health and well-being. but then, according to the doctors, she's sufficiently recovered as to be able to take care of her own damn self, hence her being discharged. I... am less certain of that, having been witness to the clusterfuck that is the medical industry and my dad on multiple occasions, but then my aunt has better insurance and got to convalesce in a way nicer place than anywhere my dad has ever been in, so. I guess we'll see.

[thestickchick]

Here's how my week of training, writing, teaching, and miscellaneous Filipino Martial Arts-y goodness went.

What have you been up to this week? THE WEEK DAY-BY-DAY: Saturday:  Drove up to Lawton, OK (about 2-1/2 hours from my house) to train with friends at Shotokan Karate of Lawton.  I taught them our stick form one, Baston Anyo Isa (and showed applications out of it) and then then worked with me on empty hand sparring. Fun day! Sunday: I slept a lot! Monday:   I worked the day before Independence Day, and classes were canceled that night (our Rec Center was closed). Tuesday:   Independence Day!  Happy birthday, America! Wednesday:   Attended class at Hidden Sword.  Older Daughter has joined Arnis class, at least for the summer, and I can't be happier about it.  Yay! Thursday:   Classes at Mid-Cities Arnis.  I worked with our new kid student in family class on basics, and in adult class, we worked on pelit-pelit drills. Friday:  Stick sparring night at Mid-Cities Arnis.  Introduced our new student to the idea and she was smiling big by the time class was over.  Another extra Friday class practicing forms for competition and my students are coming along nicely.  In sparring earlier, though, I smashed my left pinkie and ring finger pretty good (against the butt end of an Actionflex stick, which is the big downside of using them) and I spent my evening after class in an ice pack to bring down the swelling.  My fingers are pretty badly bruised.

Older Daughter, Mr. Chick, and I at Arnis class Wednesday. 

BLOGGY GOODNESS:

Here's the new posts or reshared older posts I sent out this week: Monday: Four Profound Life Lessons (Learned in the Martial Arts) Tuesday: Freedom Fighting or Treason: How Shifting Perspectives Matter (especially in the Martial Arts). Wednesday: THAT GUY: Whatever Guy Thursday: The Entropy Game Friday: FACE-OFF FRIDAY: Are the Olympics Good for Martial Arts? OTHER STUFF THAT I SAW/DID: This was the comic I posted on my Facebook page this week (oh, have I mentioned it?  You can find it on Facebook at The Stick Chick Blog Facebook Page).  I post stuff there that you won't see elsewhere, and I try to make it a page that's more than just stuff from the blog.  If you're on Facebook, please like and share it.  Anyway, here's the comic, which was originally published HERE:

Yes, yes, it's not a new thing, but I've always enjoyed these riffs on martial arts life   I want to know what you'd add to the list:  You Might Be a Martial Artist If

We actually got picked this week for the now-relatively-famous "Deaf guy wants private lessons for a short period for a family of five, so please charge my credit card" scam, so I'm kinda feeling like a real-deal martial arts teacher now.  By the way, the guy said he got our contact info from Dojo.Info.  More on this scam at +Bamboo Spirit Martial Arts  blog: Martial Arts Email Scam We have Master Rich Parsons coming down to Texas next week to teach Balintawak, and I can't be more excited!  You can learn more at our Facebook event HERE. And finally, I had to update my running "Enough with Sensei Scumbag's Shenanigans!" post, which some pretty bad news coming out of a suburb of my adopted home town (Kansas City, MO).  I really, really hate these guys, and I don't mean it any sort of , "Man, I hate Mondays!" kind of way. I mean it literally and without any qualification.  I hate these people who do this.  I hate that they can get away with it for any period of time in our community.  And I hate that we can't seem to do more about it.

If you run across cool martial arts stuff you think I should see, please do post them in the comments!

FINAL THOUGHTS OF THE WEEK:

Today I have Arnis in the morning, and hey, it's kobudo day and I'm going over to Dallas in the afternoon. I'm going to go up to Hidden Sword early and practice where I have some room, but with my smashed left hand, I think I'm going to be using just my right hand for much of the day (that'll be... fun... when I'm working bo).  I'm going to be gone all day long, again. Today is also Older Daughter's 17th birthday.  She has to work, so we'll be celebrating tomorrow.  I can't believe she's entering her senior year in High School.  It wasn't that long ago that she was this bright eyed smiling little blonde girl saying the f-word on the playground in pure, unbridled joy, as in, "Mom, this is so f-ing fun!". My kid, y'all. So what did YOU do this week?  What did you train? What did you teach?  Did you see any really cool martial arts stuff online?  Let me know!

[happysandwichparty-blog]

Japan - Day 15 (Final Day & Travel Home)

The final day was uneventful. A lot of cleaning, a lot of waiting, and a lot of flying.

(Text heavy, not many pictures)

We finally got the sleep in! Which really just meant me getting up at 6:00AM instead of 4:30AM. The remainder of the morning was spent eating, watching TV, and packing. We had to be out of the Air BnB by 11:00AM so we didn’t really do anything in the morning. Our flight also wasn’t until 5:00PM but we had nowhere to leave luggage for all that time.

That meant we got to spend a lot of time in the airport! Yay!

The train ride back to the Narita Airport does take about an hour, so at least we spent our time in different places rather than a lot of time in one place!

We took the Asakusa line to Oshiage. The only issue with this is that the elevator for the Asakusa line is kind of a far walk. We were very tired and sore from hauling he luggage. And we only ended up with one extra bag than what we arrived with. Imagine if we filled the two other bags we packed. Oh boy! Don’t pack heavy in Tokyo. It’s nice to have everything you need, but it’s not fun to haul it all over the place, especially in stations that don’t have escalators. 

Anyway! At Oshiage we transfered to the Narita Sky Access line. We were originally going to get off at Aoto (like we did on the way in) and swap trains. But both the one we were going to swap to and the one we got on at Oshiage both end up at Nartia, so we didn’t bother changing, just road the Sky Access all the way since we had seats.

Once arriving at the Airport we had to top off our Suica cards as we were just a little short. The great thing about doing the adjusted fair right when leaving is we have no money sitting on those cards! While we can use them when we go back in a couple years it’s nice to not have wasted any money. 

The fair adjustment machines didn’t have English as far as we could tell, but they were pretty easy to click through and figure out what you needed to do.

Next we checked in to ANA and dropped off our bags, then I made my way over to the post office to drop off the pocket WiFi. There are no post offices past security so make sure if you have to drop off a WiFi you do it before! There was a post office right in the terminal entrance so it was easy!

Security was uneventful. We had priority with the business class tickets so there was literally no wait. Walked right up to the metal detector. Immigration too a little bit longer about 30 minutes. But they just scan the sticker in your passport from when you entered and then stamp, and you are good to go!

Next we went to find the ANA lounge so eat! Food time! On the way to the lounge we passed the ANA Duty Free store. And guess what? They had the Sakura Matcha kit-kats i’d been looking for the entire trip! My mother will rejoice.

The lounge was busy, but very similar to the lounge in LA. The food was obviously a bit more Japanese, but still good and nice to have something to snack on! 

They did have a noodle bar if you wanted something more meal like, and I didn’t notice until our way out to the gate but there was a sushi bar as well!

We were delayed about 20 minutes, but they board first and business so quickly it’s not really a big deal. Honestly ANA boards really quick, you hardly notice because it’s such a smooth process. Or maybe I’m too enthralled in business class by all the stuff and prepping my little sitting space. Who knows.

The return flight is short because of jet stream, plus it’s overnight so that always seems to go faster in my opinion.

The meal service was in similar fashion to the first flight, right at 10,000 feet they started prepping everything. This meal services seemed to go slower. While Mr. Husband seemed to get his food in a timely manner, it seemed as though I was the last one in my aisle to get food. This was the case for every course, despite the fact that I eat quickly and was done. For reference, the husband had his dessert right around when I got my main course.

I have to say the food on the way to Japan was better than the return. This is likely a biased opinion because I’m more tired, and just ready to be home eating my own food, but I still believe the other food options were better and they tasted better.

My only real issue with ANA business class, and I may have mentioned this in my original travel post, is the pillows are awful. I’ve read countless reviews on their business class and not one had anything bad to say about the pillows. Both husband and I thought they were awful. If you are just using them for your back it’s fine, but they are so flat that you may as well not even use a pillow when laying down. My tip, if you plan on actually sleeping, bring a small travel pillow.

My other issue, and this was flight specific because we didn’t have this problem on the way over. Actually I've never really had this issue. The plane was ungodly hot. That’s coming from someone who is always cold. This was unfortunate because it made sleeping really difficult.

All in all though, ANA business class is amazing, and you get treated really well! the flight back to LAX was only 9 hours, and we ended up landing on time despite leaving late. It also was a fairly smooth flight! Bonus.

Arriving at LAX was an incredibly smooth process! We were able to use our Global Entry, which resulted in us getting through the entire process of being cleared back into the country, including all baggage in about 10 minutes. The initial customs lines were incredibly long, but the Global Entry kiosks took about 30 seconds. It is worth it with just one use, I highly recommend!

The remainder of the day was frustrating and as such I wont go into much detail, it adds nothing. 

We did have TSA Pre-Check for security so that was nice. In the end our Phoenix flight was delayed, boarding was a mess, flight was bumpy, and children on planes can be frustrating.

But! We made it home safe, no real problems, and now it’s back to the normal life! The trip to Tokyo was great, and I can’t wait to get back to Japan and explore more! 

2020 Olympics anyone?

[kaitlinmcandrews]

Wow, finally, the time has come! Strap yourself in, this is going to be a long one. I have to cut it into two halves or else it would be like a novel. Now, it’s just have a novel. A short story, if you will.

In August, Patrick’s parents and family friend came to Japan for about a month. Pat’s brother didn’t make it this time, but there was still five of us again. This trip went a lot smoother, in my opinion, than their trip to Korea. To be fair, Japan is a bit more foreigner friendly (the food and culture is not as crazy-different as Korea was) .

Also, I’m not sure how to really explain this… but… uh… I guess since we weren’t going to an island that I know I would never visit again, I felt more okay with being flexible. So, perhaps it was because last time they visited us, we didn’t know how to be tour guides. It could have also been because we knew that we would probably NEVER go to Jeju ever again. Or, it could have been  because Jeju was actually much more different from mainland Korea than we thought it would be.

What I’m getting at is that when Pat’s family came to see us in Korea, we had an awesome time, but we also had some hiccups along the way. This time, however, it seemed that our excursions went fairly smoothly?

So, if you can remember, we were working for an Eikaiwa (a Japanese private school) and had limited time off. Actually, during this time, we were preparing to move for our new job in Yokohama. Wow, I’m distracted. Do you care about our schedule? Probably not…. Oh well, sucks to be you, I’m going to talk about it anyway….So, I shall continue. We worked until the day that Pat’s parents came to Japan. We figured that this would be perfect! Actually, we were pretty clever with our yearly vacation days and were able to use them at the tail end of our work period. In other words, we only physically worked for one extra week, but we got paid for an additional 10 days of work. We got basically half of our August pay!

Annoyingly, though, this made things so much more difficult. We had to deal with working and preparing for class for one more week, try to pack for our big move, clean the apartment, and plan our expected activities. Oh well, we had some extra money, and we were able to help the school for a bit longer.

Oh, were you waiting for me to talk about what we did?

Ah.

Sorry.

Ok, well it was awhile ago, so my memory is incredibly fuzzy….. I’ll try my best!

Day 1 – Arrival in Kyoto

So, the McAndrews met us at Kyoto Station. I misunderstood where they were waiting and did a lot of wandering. Kyoto Station is pretty big so it is easy to get lost. Once we met up with them, we walked with them to their hostel. Unfortunately for them, they came in a bit of a busy season (who am I kidding, every day of the year is busy season in Kyoto…) so they had a hard time finding hotels. Luckily, Pat’s mom seems to be a hostel-finding genius haha.

The hostels that they were in for most of their trip were Japanese-style, which essentially means the bedding situation is different that any North American would be used to. In Japan, many people sleep on a futon. BUT! A futon in Japan is not what we call a futon in Canada. In Canada, if you hear futon, you are probably thinking of a fold-down bed. In Japan, a futon is a thin down/cotton mattress on the floor. At home, this is what Pat and I use every night, so we are used to it.

Since we met up with them fairly late, after they checked in, we went out for supper right away. Now, this time, I made a conscious effort not to dictate our food choices or to argue. So, I let them lead the way with their food choices (actually, to be honest, I don’t like Japanese food as much as I like Korean food, so I felt less of a desire to have them try specific foods. In Korea, I was so passionate about their amazing food that I wanted them to try everything…. ). They decided on an Italian place. It was obviously marketed towards foreigners, which is fine, but means the price will be higher. It was. It was quite expensive…. The portion sized were also quite small. The food was good though!

I really can’t remember, but I don’t think we did anything after that…. Maybe we went to a small Irish Pub at Kyoto Station… I don’t remember what day that was. But, I think it was that day. The Olympics were on the TV so of course Pat’s dad had to get updated! They got to see the Japanese side of the Olympics, which, I’m sure is a bit of a different point of view.

Day 2 – Fushimi Inari

Our first official day off from work! Yay~

They had to check out of their hostel and check into a different one, so I think they had a bit of a hectic morning. Gosh, I really can’t remember. Oh well. Well whatever the details were, we ended up at Fushimi Inari eventually haha.

Now, you may know this already, but Fushimi is my favourite place in Kyoto. I love it. It is an easy hike and somehow I never get sick of the tori gates. Never.

August in Japan is so freaking hot, by the way, so although this is an easy hike, we were all sweating like crazy. There are vending machines along the way (weird right?), but the drinks were way over priced. Well, even though I had an entire post dedicated to this place, here are some more photos!

I think I restrained myself this time haha, just because I already have so many photos. The view at the top was quite nice and clear.

Did you miss pictures of Pat and his Dad’s backs?

It was a nice day. It was hot like it was in Jeju, but we didn’t do as much unnecessary walking like we had to in Jeju…

So once we reached the “top”, Pat’s family friend stayed at the covered shelter while the rest of us continued up the mountain a bit. There is a trail that loops around from that spot and back. There isn’t a view or anything, so continuing from that point on isn’t really necessary. The loop doesn’t take too long so when we came back I think it was a good amount of break time for the family friend.

Pat taking in the view~

If you ever go to Kyoto, I really recommend going here. It is just so interesting. It is a fairly easy hike and doesn’t take too long. It is like the perfect way to spend the day.

I made a schedule for our trip, but I don’t think we followed it very closely so I don’t remember what we did after this. I put on my schedule to check out downtown. So… maybe we went downtown? Ugh, I don’t know.

Day 3 – Fireworks festival in Shiga

The next day, we got to go to an annual Fireworks festival in Shiga, Japan. Shiga is right next to Kyoto. It is an area (I don’t think it’s a prefecture, but it definitely isn’t a city… It’s like a region? I suppose) that surrounds Lake Biwa. Biwa Lake is the largest lake in Japan. The fireworks were over the lake so I knew it would be beautiful.

Well, after talking with my Japanese coworkers, I learned that this is an event that most Japanese people will be wearing yukata. I was soooo excited.

But

I’m an idiot….

A few days earlier (after our last day of work), we dropped off our company uniforms at the dry cleaners. Deciding to take advantage of the situation, I also brought some dresses and my yukata as well. Since this was my first time going to a dry cleaner”s (yeah, I’m a terrific adult…), I really had no idea how long it took to have clothes dry cleaned…. Well, it didn’t take a day like I thought haha. So, I suddenly didn’t have my yukata for the festival. NOoooOoOO~

I decided to buy a cheap one from Uniqlo. The original one I bought was much more expensive and obviously of a higher quality.

Oh well.

I had Pat meet up with them earlier than me as I got ready. I knew that with the hair, makeup and yukata putting-on-ing, that I would take a while. Well, I underestimated how long it would take. Yukata’s are so frustrating to put on and look nice.

Also, short side story:

About a month prior to this time, I got my first haircut in Kyoto. I bleached my hair and trimmed it myself up to that point, but decided it was time for a professional trim. Well, it was a huuuuuge mistake. My hair was like shoulder length and a bit damaged. As I have done many times in the past, I said “I’m not picky about style. Just get rid of the dead ends and give any style.”…. well…. USUALLY, the hair dresser picks a style that suits my face type. I also am 100% okay with short hair, so I told him to cut off as much as he thinks is necessary. Well…. what I’m not okay with is a haircut that is unflattering, difficult to style, or required a lot of work to look proper. That was exactly what he gave me. He cut off a lot, and I was sad, but like, understanding? I knew it was going to be short. I mentally prepared myself for that and let him do what he was doing. In the end, he gave me what is know as a halo haircut. Please, take a break from this post and google it. It is awful. I looked so so so bad. Even now, I am stilll trying to grow this mess of a hairstyle out. The front layers are so incredibly short. I essentially had a mushroom cut mixed with a mullet.

Okay, back to the festival.

My hair was so difficult to style. I could not get it to look flattering. (In my last post at the Gion Festival, I had the same issue). My makeup was okay, but due to my airline incident, I really didn’t own much makeup. My new yukata had an obi (belt) that I had to tie myself, unlike my expensive one that had an easy style obi.

I was so frustrated. It took so long.

I knew the trains were going to be packed and the venue would be so busy. I wanted to leave waaaay earlier than we did.

Well, everyone was very patient with me. We got to the train station and holy moly was I right. The trains were packed! I suppose it was interesting that the McAndrews got to experience the stereotype that Japanese trains are wall-to-wall with people and how people are basically pushed onto the train to fit. Not that that is a good experience, but kind of neat I guess..

Sorry everyone in this pic. You are now famous.

This was at the festival train stop. So many people! Notice that the going up side is completely empty. Not as many yukatas as I had expected, but still quite few.

Once we piled out of the station we followed the crowds to where the viewing areas were. I had brought a cooler bag along so we were also on the lookout for a place to get some drinks to fill the bag with. Everything was crowded. It was pretty difficult to do anything haha. We split up momentarily. The boys got some drinks and the girls went to scout out places. It was already so busy at this time..

It was like an organized chaos. Japan, unlike Canada, really knows how to handle large crowds AND large crowds know how to handle themselves. Nobody was being crazy, nobody was jumping or climbing over the rails, and nobody was on the opposite side of traffic. People walk together as a group and seem to peacefully find a place to view the fireworks without being rude or pushy.

Me and Pat’s mom found a place to sit on the pavement (on a mat thing…). Pat, his dad, and the family friend didn’t want to sit on the pavement and totally ditched us! I was actually pretty annoyed at Pat since I was so excited for this event and really wanted to spend it with him. Oh well. I suuupoooose his comfort is important…

There were around 10,000 fireworks supposedly. It was the best fireworks display I had ever seen in my life. I can’t even describe how stunning they were. I tried my best to take photos of them, but it’s much easier said than done for a non-photographer like myself.

The fireworks were stunning, so here is a whole bunch of photos:

oooh, planets

smiley faces!

teddy bears!

I don’t know!

“falling” type

So many colours. I snapped this one like 1 sec too late…

Probably my favourite photo

I had a lot of fun, despite sitting away from Pat. I’m pretty sure I had teary eyes. It was so overwhelming. The fireworks were so impressive. They had a ‘program’ for the fireworks so it was easy to predict when the big shows would start. In Japanese style, they were on time for every segment. Like, to the minute. This made it easy to follow along and have an idea of what was going on.

The fireworks finished quite late, but we were a bit hungry. Since it is a festival, there is always street food around. But, because it’s Japan, everything closes pretty early. We had to get the last servings from some food stalls. We each got a draft beer (which are served at the street food tents) and drank them on our way back to the train station.

The line for the train was MASSIVE! We had to wait quite a while in line and there were even security guards ushering people inside the station. They must know how many people can fit in the train at a time since they seemed to be counting the number of people entering at a time.

It started to get a bit worrying since the trains don’t really run that late and we don’t live in Shiga. If we missed the train, we would have a pretty expensive taxi ride. Luckily, we did make it. It was a lot of fun. If you are ever in the Kyoto area around the beginning of August, I highly recommend checking out the fireworks festival on the lake.

Day 4 – Osaka (baseball)

Before I talk about the day itself, I have to tell you about buying the tickets. We bought the tickets a week or so before they came. Although the stereotype about Japan is that it is super high-tech, in many ways, it is a bit archaic. It’s like they try to be high-tech, but somehow make it more difficult than it needs to be.

So, buying tickets (or like anything) online is either non-existent or for Japanese citizens only. Sometimes, you can get something online, print out the order, bring it to the convenient store, and then pay at the convenient store. WHY? Why make it so complicated?? Why add so many steps?! ahem. sorry.

In this case, it wasn’t quite that easy. So, to order sporting or concert tickets, you need to go to the convenient store and order them there. There will be a machine (in Japanese only….) where you will find and order your ticket. For people that are fluent in Japanese, this probably is quite convenient. For people like me, who suck at learning languages and definitely don’t know the terms needed to buy tickets, it can be quite a headache. To make things worse, it seems that certain tickets need to be bought at certain stores.

We went to Family Mart to get our baseball tickets. We were basically buddies with the employee that worked there and he tried his hardest to help us. We both had our Google translate out and were basically communicating with the apps. After a long time doing this, we figured out that we couldn’t buy what we wanted at that convenient store. He told us to try Lawson.

We headed to Lawson. We fiddled with the machine there and couldn’t find anything…. We headed to 7-11. We headed to the copying/fax/buying ticket machine. We started to have some luck. It was still all in Japanese so we had to use Google translate throughout the process. We were able to find the games, categorized by teams, and get the tickets. We then had to bring the tickets to the cashier to pay for them (because paying at the ticket machine would make too much sense right?). This was like a good hour out of our day, but we did it!

Okay, fast forward to the actual event.

I decided to take a detour from the family and go to the Pokemon Center for Pat’s mom. She wanted to buy a gift for her niece so I decided to go for her. It is a bit out of the was from downtown Osaka. I was hoping that they would go to Osaka Castle while I was buying this, but as always, they didn’t have enough time. It’s too bad, I think they would have really liked it.

We planned to meet in Osaka once I was finished. But, there was a problem…. My phone was dying. Not just that, but the game was going to start soon. I was in a panic. Finding a place to plug in is really difficult. I got scolded when I plugged into the wall at the train station…. so embarrassing.

My other task for the day was to find a bank and take out cash. Have I ever told you how frustrating it can be to take out cash from a Canadian bank card? It seems that some people (okay, probably most people) can easily take out cash from the atm at 7-11 or at a JP Post atm. For some reason, the ONLY bank that has ever accepted our Canadian card was Citibank. So, as I was dealing with trying to meet up with Pat, carrying around a huge Pokemon Center bag, and havin a dead phone, I was also trying to find a Citibank.

Well, it no longer existed….

ugh.

By pure luck it seems, I found Pat, and we rushed to the Stadium. The game was okay. I’m not a big sports fan, so I mostly enjoyed eating and drinking haha.

I personally enjoyed watching the game in Korea so much more. For someone who doesn’t care for the actual game, the games in Korea are so much more interesting. You can get seats with tables where you can eat delicious fried chicken. You can bring in your own alcohol or food. The cheering sections were so so entertaining and it just had a really fun atmosphere.

The one thing that is note-worthy about this game was the balloons that were shot up into the air near the end (the blue balloons in the photos above). They had a very…..interesting…. shape to them. Everyone let them go at the same time, so it was like reverse rain of blue balloons. They made a whistling sound as they shot up into the air. We didn’t have any, so we felt a bit out of the loop. That would have been fun. Pat’s dad picked up a used one from the ground as a souvenir hahahaha, funny guy.

After the game, we headed to Osaka’s famous downtown area: Dotonbori. This area is really nice at night. There is a river that runs through the middle and has an iconic view.

We were pretty hungry after the game so we went to find some food. I really wanted them to try okonomiyaki as it is a famous dish of Osaka. It is sometimes referred to as a Japanese pancake. It is essentially shredded cabbage, egg and flour that is made into a thick pancake type thing. There are many options for toppings such as squid, pork, kimchi, and apparently tomato… Many places were already closed (did I mention that Japan shuts down early?), but luckily we found a place. This place specialized in a tomato-type of okonomiyaki so I was not too excited haha.

Fortunately for me, they had other special types that were so so good.

Unlike Korea, having a grill at your table doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be cooking anything. The soba and okonomiyaki come to you cooked and are simply on the grill to stay warm and add a bit of crisp if you want it. Man, I haven’t had okonomiyaki in a loooooong time…. it really is a Kansai thing. It doesn’t seem to be so popular here (I live near Yokohama, now).

After we were stuffed, we headed home. We may have gone downtown and watched some Olympics with drinks outside, but I really don’t remember what night that was haha.

Day 5 – Riverboat tour and Arashiyama

We originally planned to have a day of rest on this day seeing as we were being quite active up to this point. We shuffled the days around and decided to go hard and have the day off before our move. This would give us enough time to do the necessary things like returning uniforms to our school, packing, cleaning, and all the last minute details.

This was completely the family’s idea. I was happy that they did some research into what they wanted to see. I felt kind of bad basically dictating our activities. I don’t know what interests them so I just made a pretty generic list of things to do.Which, to be fair, are pretty good things to see in Kansai ( I think…).

So, they found a brochure at the information booth near Kyoto Station. It was for a riverboat tour. Of course it was all in Japanese, but it seemed like a nice way to relax and enjoy some beautiful scenery.

Before we get to that….

You guessed it!

Story time~

Well…. It would be me and Pat if there weren’t hiccups along the way. We actually bought these tickets the day before (of maybe two days before… I don’t remember). They were a bit pricey so we bought them using a credit card (not a common thing in Japan… surprisingly). Since this trip was almost booked, we had to get a strange auxiliary seat on the bus and got a weird special ticket. The auxiliary ticket is much cheaper, but like, not a choice? Meaning, you can’t choose the auxiliary seat to pay a low price. It is only offered to you if the bus is full. The best way of describing what this auxiliary seat is, is to think of a Greyhound style bus and then imagine the arm rest folding out into the aisle for someone to sit on. Wow, comfy….Not so important, but note that we had one weird ticket.

Well we were given a time to meet by the bus. Somehow, we weren’t late. We weren’t very early though either….

As we were about to board, we realized we were missing something. Our freakin’ tickets! Of course nobody had the receipt on them. There was definitely not enough time to go home and get them (we lived like an 8min train ride away so if we had been early, we could have been okay…). We tried talking to the info desk lady and there was really nothing they could do. Unless we had the reciept or tickets we couldn’t go on that trip.

Well, we didn’t really want to abandon our plan at this point. The lady’s only solution was to buy the tickets again and then bring our tickets later to get refunded. What a pain. Well, that’s what we did. Now perhaps someone cancelled last minute, I don’t know, but we had to pay the full price. We didn’t have an auxiliary seat anymore.They also didn’t have ‘real’ tickets for us so we just got on the bus haha…

Okay, so we made it. We got on the bus. It took us to a quaint little train station in the middle of what seemed like nowhere. We then got to go on a ‘scenic’ train. It was really cute.

I apparently didn’t take a picture of the train itself. Trust me, it was cute. The pictures I took from the train were obviously not great…. Oh well, in real life, it was quite nice. On the train, you could pay a person to take your photo with a Polaroid camera in the train. Why? what would the backround be? the old train? Why? Especially when every single person on that train had their very own expensive DSLR camera….. I kind of wanted one…

After our scenic train trip, we arrived at the riverboat station. We were put into groups and shown our boats. Pat’s mom and I were lucky and got front row seats! (I felt bad for the family friend as she is a much better photographer and got stuck behind a pole on the boat…. ). Pat and his dad were somewhere in the back haha.

I can’t even imagine the amount of work these guys that were rowing the boat were doing. They were dripping sweat. Yet, somehow, they were like cracking jokes (I assume since everyone was laughing, but who knows, I didn’t understand a thing. Maybe I was the butt of his jokes, who knows? He could have been like “look at this white girl in the front. Her skin is hurting my eyes it’s so pale!” but I have no idea. I am pretty sure I fake-laughed along to whatever he was talking about. Anyway, point is, he seemed like a funny guy), was telling stories and pointing out interesting things to look at on the way.

I guess I don’t have much to say really… It was a hot day. The slight breeze and being on the water felt nice.

At one point in  the journey, there was an opportunity to try rowing for yourself. Pat’s mom is not one to pass up an opportunity so she gave it a shot. Not only that, but she surprised the heck out of the guy since she is pretty strong. It seemed like the technique was quite different from a canoe, a kayak or even a rowboat!

The handles had large grooves in them from being rubbed in the same spot many times over. They had to be constantly made wet to ensure they would glide rather than stick. It was interesting.Okay, here are some more photos!

As we got closer to the end, we went buy a market boat. It was selling some packaged goods and some hot things-on-sticks as well. I got mochi (pounded rice cake) and I really enjoyed it. It’s not for everyone, but I like it ^^~.

We eventually got to our end destination; Arashiyama. This was still part of that package we paid for so we were given a free pass into a temple and the gardens. We pulled up to the shore and were given a time and place to meet for the ride home so we had a bit of free time to explore as we wanted to.

Everyone seemed to have a different pace. Pat and his dad like to basically jog everywhere. How they can appreciate anything they see I’ll never know. Pat’s mom and I are in the middle, snapping photos here and there. The family friend is taking her time to get the perfect shots (she can actually take nice photos haha). We eventually split up so she could take her time and not feel rushed. Pat and his dad were forced to slow down a bit.

Here are some photos!

So interesting…

I always feel a bit weird taking photos of tombstones or statues… I dunno, just feel weird for the deceased that I know nothing about and are reduced to a hunk of stone…

So, we made it to the temple. Oh wait. We don’t actually have any tickets to show! I’m pretty sure we had to whip out a receipt or something. The lady didn’t seem to want to deal with us and let us through. She was probably informed of the tour group and knew what was going on.

Hey cicada buddy…. can you like… shut up for a minute??!!

The gardens were, as always, stunning. The main attraction at Arashiyama isn’t the temple or gardens though. It’s the bamboo forest. It is world famous. It is actually so freaking cool! This was my first time going in the daylight. It can make beautiful photos if you are super lucky to find a time when it isn’t crowded.

We were not so lucky. It was so so busy. I’m pretty sure you need to go early early in the morning to get any good shots. Oh well. It is really cool to see though. I recommend it.

After adventuring around on growling tummies, we found some street food. Pat and I got some really good fish cakes. Pat’s mom told us a story of the worst food she has ever eaten, being a slimy and chewy fishcake, so we urged her to try ours. I think she wasn’t a fan still, but at least her image of fishcakes wasn’t ruined forever. No one else was really interested in the streetfood so we set out to find some real food. We found a small cafe and had some pasta. It was pretty good and it felt nice to sit under some air conditioning.

When our time limit was almost up, we headed towards the bus and checked out the gift shop. After a long day in the heat, we finally got back to Kyoto Station. We were pretty pooped.

We got refunded our tickets later that day. Pat had to move fast to get to our house, grab the tickets and go back to the info place before it closed. We couldn’t go on other days because we had our plans all set out and we had to leave before the place opened and wouldn’t return until after it closed. It was kinda stressful haha.

…To be cont.

Japan with the Inlaws – Part 1 Wow, finally, the time has come! Strap yourself in, this is going to be a long one.