#like omg man maybe just poop more regularly

[victakestaipei]

WEEK 3 RECAP: 9 min mile, SZA, and The Red Poop Scare

This week was not very eventful. Sorry to say folks, but it’s not going to be exciting all the time right? You have to have boring/uneventful days to balance out the exciting ones. I guess it makes you appreciate them more... But regardless of this fact, I still am going to write about the week due to the fact that I’m trying to stay consistent and make blogging feel like a habit/hobby, rather than a chore (at times). If you keep reading and get to the end of this post, you the GOAT!

Monday: 

I was super exhausted this morning from the long weekend (visiting Longdong and Fulong)... I didn’t want to get out of bed and it took all of my strength to get up and climb down the ladder from my bunk bed. I also was still recovering from the first real sunburn I’d had in years, so pulling on my sports bra and t-shirt this morning was definitely a wake up call. In class we had our third test of the course. It was definitely harder than the previous two, but I still think I did well. Class dragged on harder and slower than ever before... I found myself counting down the minutes until 1:10pm.. and it seems like I wasn’t the only one hehe

At the gym it was floor day/abs. So I did mostly floor work with a matt. The weight lifting area of the gym is pretty small so usually when I use a matt I take it outside of the weight lifting room and do my sets in the hallway/foyer. But, there is no air conditioning out here so I find myself dripping sweat onto the matt and it’s just a mess.  ALSO!! I actually ran a mile today, in 9 minutes! That was my goal cut off time and I made it by the skin of my teeth. So I ran the 1.6 kilometers in 9 minutes... Not too shabby from last week ;)

For lunch Bunny and I grabbed potstickers to go (I got the curry flavor) and hopped on the bus to head home. We didn't feel like sitting and having lunch because we are still recovering from the weekend and were super tired. After I got home I hopped on FaceTime and caught up with Karis and some other loved ones. I wanted to take a nap, but I figured it might be better to just stay up so that I can sleep real good when I finally hit the hay. For dinner Bunny made rice, scrambled eggs, and we picked up some fried chicken from the food stand place by our dorm. I had bought a dozen eggs the weekend before in the grocery store, and they were going to go bad soon so we had to figure out what we were going to do with them. It turned out to be a really good dinner. I finished my blog post about Fulong today, and also did some personal journaling of my own before starting my homework. Today was a bit of a moody/emotional day, and I'm not sure why. But it feels good to write. It always feels good to write...

Tuesday: 

So as it turns out, I got a 97% on my test from yesterday!!! Feelin’ good. Feelin’ like a smarty pants. We also had a written quiz today too on the dialogue. I got a 94% on that. I’m really starting to get the hang of writing traditional, and I’m actually glad I chose Taiwan as my study abroad destination, so that I could learn both forms of written Mandarin. I know it’ll pay off in the long run when I’m making dem big bucks! Hehe (kidding)... ((kindof)).

In the gym I ran another 9 min mile. It was also leg day (my favorite)!!... When I got home I bought my SZA ticket. I AM SO EXCITED YOU ALL HAVE NO IDEA. I have been listening to this woman for years now and she’s finally getting the recognition she deserves and I’m so happy for her :-’) I’ll be seeing her with Poirshea in Sacramento in September. Can't wait. Gonna die of excitement!!! P and I really bond over SZA and love her to death and I’m so glad we’re going to experience her music live together. Twin bonding at it’s finest. 

I miss you Twin!!! 

Sza is so adorable I just can’t!!!! Ugh. 

Anways, for lunch the three of us went back to the soy sauce braised place, and filled up on udon noodles, veggies and tofu. I got it a bit spicier than last time.. and it was really really good. WAYY better than last time! For dinner I was still pretty full off of lunch, so Bunny and I went to the street market around 10:30pm to get some fruit and egg scallion pancakes. I NEED to learn how to make these pancakes at home because they're so dang good. I will make them everyday for every meal. BOMB.COM. Egg scallion pancakes are basically green onions, eggs, and dough in pancake form... sounds odd, but man is it tasty!

Wednesday: 

Today I jumped up out the bed at 9:52am like I was just ressurected from the dead. And for those of you who don’t know, my class starts at 10:20am. Bunny was still knocked out when I was startled out of bed.. so we found ourselves throwing on clothes and rushing out the door. We ran to the bus stop, and was only about 10 min late to our class. Thankfully our teacher wasn't upset or anything... But right after we arrived we had a quiz waiting on us at the do’

I’m not sure about my grade yet, but I don’t think I did so well. I was drawing a lot of blanks because I was still frazzled from rushing this morning. After class we got something small to eat before the gym because at this point it's 1:30pm and I'm starVING!!! At the gym I did a really really quick back day, because there’s a class that meets in the gym at 2:20 on Mon/Wed/Fri so usually I have to do short workouts on those days. 

After the gym we headed to a fruit stand to get mango smoothies and dragon fruit... *REMEMBER THIS* 

I wasn't super hungry because of the food I had before the gym. And then we went home, did homework, took a nap, and watched netflix. At around 9 Bunny and I went to get potstickers at the place by our dorm. That place is the best ever. 

Thursday: 

This morning we actually woke up on time. We were even able to gnab some bread at the local bakery before class. I usually pair my morning bread with a tea of sorts... I’ve been drinking alot of green tea lately, and I really really love the green tea infused with passionfruit. So so good. But, I’ve come to find out on days that I don’t have any tea or milk tea, I get massive massive caffeine headaches. I used to get them alot when I would stop drinking coffee after a few days... But I didn’t think this would still happen to me because the caffeine amount in green tea is so much smaller... who knows. But nonetheless, the tea is worth it!!! 

We had a quiz in class today, and before the end of the three hour period, she sprang a test on us right there at the end. She did this because alot of us (4 out of the 9) will be absent tomorrow due to travel. There’s another student in our class (the Swiss guy) who’s going to Seoul, South Korea this weekend, and he left midway through our class. And then the three of us (Bunny, Nick, and I) leave for the Philippines tonight at like 2am.

Also in class I got called Beyoncé more than I wanted to... Our teacher first brought up Shakira, and asked us if we all have heard of her before (which obviously we have), but she just learned of this Columbian singer’s existence and was tickled/excited to share the news. She then brought up Beyonce and drew the conclusion that I look strikingly similar to the superstar mother of three. I can admit it is quite the compliment, but Lord knows she only thinks this because we are both lightskin, tall women. Hooray for racial insensitivity!!!

At the gym it was leg day once again (it’s Thursday, duh!). I ended up running a 8:40 mile! I definitely shaved off some seconds. SO Proud. Drenched in sweat!

For lunch we went back to that Malaysian place with the sweet lady who showed us pictures of her 8month old grandson. I love her. I ordered the hot/sour Chicken with potato wedges... so incredibly bomb. 

Bunny and I went home after lunch and packed for our trip to the Philippines this weekend, as well as napped. I went to the bathroom and had the fright of a LIFETIME. Which brings me to the “Red Poop Scare” segment of this blog post.... 

I have had problems pooping regularly since I’ve gotten here, I think partly due to my change in diet and stress levels... but nonethless it has only just started to get more regular/consistent. So just IMAGINE my shock when I went to handle my business and my poop was RED!!! I’m talking BRIGHT RED/MAGENTA!!! I thought I was dying!!! Blood in my stool??? Can you IMAGINE!!! I would have had to find a doctor here in Taiwan and omg the HORROR. But when I was handling my business there was no pain or strain or anything... so it was also pretty confusing. After I went back into the room and talked to my roommate I realized that I had DRAGONFRUIT YESTERDAY!!! Which is conveniently the same exact color as my poop. So that was exciting and a relief to realize. It was only that color because of the fruit I had the previous day. THANK YOU JESUS I AM ALIVE AND HEALTHY AND IT WAS NOT BLOOD. 

....I’ve come to realize that maybe this segment of the blog is a bit TMI... but I also told myself that if I’m going to blog, It’s going to be as open and honest and transparent as possible.. everyone has poop probs am I right??? 

Anyway,

We also did a quick run to the night market before taking the MRT to the airport. At the night market we got some more food to eat because we knew the journey to get to Philippines would be long. We were to land at 4am. And we left to the airport around 10:15pm. It takes about 45-hour to get to the airport, plus we wanted to allow enough time to check in, go through security, etc before our plane departed at 1:45am.

Here’s some pics of the wanton/noodles I bought and the really really good burger I had at the Night Market.. THE BURGER MIGHT BE BETTER THAN IN-N-OUT DONT @ ME

I’ll come back with another post about the Philippines!

until then, xoxo

[francel]

rambling;

i have nothing good to post, so i thought it might be fun to compile some answers to various ffxiv- and rp-related memes and questionnaires i’ve done on my private accounts! please enjoy my screaming.

8. Is there a character that embodies your good traits, or traits you wish you had? Several characters? Which ones and what traits?

i wish i was handsome and suave like all my characters thanks

13. What’s something you’ve never thought about your character?

a certain someone recently decided to remind me that francel's house has no bathroom... and i had honestly never considered, in two whole years of playing him, where he goes to pee?

"do you mean poop" francel is a delicate maiden i will not consider this

(we figure there’s probably an outhouse... somewhere...)

3. What’s something that surprises you about your canon?

Wiltswys: You think me cold? Well, fie on what you think! I wanted something better than tilling salty fields and spilling small fry out the nets, and occasionally taking a passing sailor into my bed for more o' the same!

LISTEN THIS IS THE MOST VULGAR LINE IN THE GAME I SWEAR TO GOD

i have done this quest at least... 4 or 5 times now and it never fails to make me scream. and every time i do it i have to zoom in on her and look at her face because she is a really cute roe girl, so i wonder what her taste in sailors is...

19. Give me an appearance-related headcanon of your choice.

LAUGHS OK hmm what have i never said before...

i have definitely mentioned that i don’t think francel likes his appearance very much — he especially wishes he had lighter-colored eyes like stephanivien and aurvael...

i personally want to think that chlodebaimt looked very different from francel BUT, although i have never datamined the necrose knight (i really should), a friend of mine took screenshots and his eyes at least look like francel's eyes

...but they might very well have just used a generic house haillenarte knight model for that, so who knows what chlodebaimt looked like?

i also like to think that baurendouin (francel's father) persists in the belief that his youngest son will do great things because he at least superficially resembles driancoin de haillenarte (the haillenarte founder you see in the haldrath flashback scene). i mean, i doubt portraits of driancoin survived or anything, given the nondescript statues of thordan's knights, but i’m sure comments about him did?

"he was fair of face and fair of hair" idfk some shit like that

5. What do you hate about your canon?

i am always, ALWAYS so tired of hearing people complain about how “no one ever” treats the wol like they’re “a normal person” ah, yes no one no one ever has treated you nicely never mind the fact that people regularly apologize for turning to you in their hours of need, and for asking you to kill things, and you usually just dismiss their applogy no one!!! has ever!! been nice!! to the wol!! i know the entire arc of my francel writing career has been bitching about similar things but at least i find new ways to do it

ok wait i have to vent more about how people still persist in the NO ONE WAS NICE TO THE WOL BUT HAURCHEFAAANT!!!!! delusion like tataru fucking made you clothes recently IS THAT NOT THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF LOVE? YOU'VE FINALLY BEEN REWARDED WITH SOMETHING PHYSICAL AND TANGIBLE!! STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW YOU DON’T HAVE FRIENDS!!

24. What’s a song that reminds you of your character?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B7VKiJhU_s “Dear Jack,” by Jack’s Mannequin.

lately, i’ve been listening to this... i don't like every part of this song, but lyrically, it is such a perfect francel song

dear jack, i write you as a friend dear jack, i write for fear the end is coming soon to you it's not so clear it's clear to me it's clear as glass

dear jack, wherever you are, hold tight wherever he is, shine light right there be strong i dare

i had songs for you i had all your music written out the words came when i heard you screaming i had plans for you until the plans fell through now there is no turning back, my dear jack

11. Something you like to look at.

i have complicated feelings about haurchefant these days, but sometimes i go and look at this mug and cry about his handwriting

like from a lore perspective i know he can't be writing in english because they write in eorzean but until then, my friend...

14. When writing for specific characters, is there anything you have to do to get in the specific mindset?

yes! but it depends on the character. for ramza... i either read shakespeare (for real — i have lifted quotes wholesale from hamlet and the tempest) and/or listen to "rather be" by clean bandit? seriously, that is my most strong ramza association... which is weird because the song and the game are like 20 years apart? or i listen to the FFT ost...

for francel i have a whole playlist, but most importantly i either go on twitter and look at wolchefant fanart or read bad wolchefant fanfic on ao3... (don’t judge me; it keeps the bitterness alive)

18. Is there anything you really wish you could do that you feel is outside your current ability? A concept that you wish you could pull off but are uncertain about?

UMMM... hmmmmmmm...

i dont know... i don’t really think any plots are outside of my current ability, but i admire my friends for being so consistent and on the ball with their dignified prose? i can be dignified too, but at some point i'll crash and start writing intensely silly tags

i would like to do more plots where francel is a badass for whatever reason, but that’s just wish fulfillment

17. Which character is the easiest to write? Why do you think that is?

francel is the easiest to write because he has the ugliest emotions

ramza is the hardest because he is always so virtuous

everyone else has varying levels of self control, but with francel i can usually succumb to base impulse reactions. i like his unguarded nature...

6. When writing a character, do you find it easier to work on their external or internal ticks first? oh, internal, definitely. i think my tags suffer from the fact that i often don’t describe what my characters are doing or what is around them? just... just assume on my behalf lmao.... so IF FRANCEL IS CAUGHT UP IN INTERNAL TL;DR there's a 90% chance he's doing that kicked-puppy stare at the floor

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you? XIV, hard mode: no Haurchefant/WoL.

LMAO THAT HARD MODE...

xiv's fandom has rarely "ruined" pairings for me, as in "i liked them before but i hate them now solely because of fandom"... that said, i think i kind of liked the idea of zephirin and aymeric as a rivalry ship, but i hate when fandom takes the "oMG ZEPH RAPED AYMERIC WHEN HE WAS HELD CAPTIVE" route...

i think this perception of zephirin as this horrible awful evil man comes from the fact that the information on the ward happened after the game was released, so... in the span of time between "zephirin killed haurchefant" and "wait actually zephirin is a virtuous man," people formed their opinions, you know?

but it's still really annoying, and to some degree the misconception persists...

i was also okay with guydelot and sanson at first, but i’m a little annoyed by them now, too... it’s not for any particular reason — i just think the fandom is annoying in the "THEY'RE SOOO MARRIED!! EVEN THE OTHER QUEST NPCS SAY THEY'RE LIKE A MARRIED COUPLE!! THEY’RE SO CANON!!!" way and i’m like Please Shut Up. that said, i guess it’s mostly jealousy because none of my pairings are ever canon, but whatever...

so i guess i'm going with zephirin/aymeric, guydelot/sanson... and oh btw like. urianger/moenbryda to a degree? i remember when the wind-up moenbryda item came out and the english item description was like "you don't want to know what urianger did to this" or something like that, like, i just took it as — like urianger probably dressed it up in a little maid outfit and had it serve him tea or something equally otaku-like?

but the entire fandom was like OMG HE JERKED OFF TO IT OR USED IT AS A SEX DOLL OR SOMETHING and i was like ... okay. like if that's how you're determined to see it, fine, but fandom always takes the worst possible interpretation of something i swear to god

13. Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

LAUGHS WELL I GUESS MY USUAL TIRADE: i don't think of haurchefant as the perfect cinnamon roll angel and actually he annoys me a little...

my friend just finished running coerthas quests on her balmung alt and like... even she commented on how brusque and condescending he seems to francel? and she has no reason to be tainted by my perception of him, it's just... it’s just that he is brusque and condescending.

back when i liked haurchefant/francel, i told myself that it was just how he acted in the heat of the moment and i was sure he was gentler later... but now we’ve seen so much of haurchefant that from the way he treats francel it really feels more to me like francel was just a friend of convenience. i don’t know. i’m bitter. maybe i’m just bitter because it’s easier to cope that way.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

um... well, i think everyone in the ffxiv fandom also agrees that the fandom is annoying...

something i sometimes worry about, but which is not exclusive to ffxiv, is like... people who rp wind up with such a different impression of things than people who just play the game? 

i'm not judging either side on this but... i have rp friends, and i observe the rp community on tumblr/balmung, and i also have friends that are just gamers? and you know, like. sometimes rpers get carried away and invent all these narratives, like i know some tumblr rpers had a bunch of "plots" where a murder mystery happened in ishgard and it was all full of like noble OCs and intrigue or something?

but my gamer friends will sometimes be like, “ishgard is so boring.” so they... see it differently? you wind up viewing the game differently based on what you do in it.

there's also the divide between the english version of the game and the rest of the world, which i bitch about a lot but

just as an example, in english the nobles of ishgard are kind of broadly characterized as being unintelligent and shallow and foppish, whereas the other versions of the game really take a much more neutral approach?

or well i can really only speak for the japanese, but in general the german and french versions of the game are loyal to the japanese, however, 2.0 content was often based on the english...

so, for example, 2.0 content was EN->FR, but ever since 3.0 most of the patches have been JP->EN/DE/FR

however, the EN version continues to make changes, whereas DE and FR don't really change many things!

so i worry a lot about the different perceptions people have of the game, and what that means, like, when i write fanfic...

does my interpretation of coerthas align with other peoples' interpretations of coerthas? probably not. that’s something that’s deeply distressing, as a writer and as someone who prefers to have control, but i don’t know...

17. Instead of XYZ happening, I would have made ABC happen...

STARES INTO THE VOID it's it's too late for any of this

2 years ago i would have told you without hesitation that i wanted haurchefant to be alive and for him and francel to have eloped together, but now i just...

i've learned to play with the cards i've been dealt