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I honestly don’t have the time to keep up with variety shows on a regular basis, but this showed up on my YT recommendations and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch Leehom on a duet with Han Hong. It gave me goosebumps. I love Shangri-la (心中的日月) on its own original version, but this arrangement for Come Sing with Me (我想和你唱) just gave me the chills.

Han Hong’s voice goes so well with Leehom’s. ToT

Also, DAMN~ I used to not give much for Hebe’s voice, but girl has continued surprising me all decade. I don’t remember her being much of a vocalist, but I’m shooketh with her performance of Angel Devil (魔鬼中的天使). I wonder if she found Julio Iglesias’ not-so-secret microphone stash.

Leehom also got better. Maybe they’re all getting better sound engineers.

*(%&#*&$(#*&$*#&%*(
expletive~

YAS~

Any Isabella is better than no Isabella at all.

It’s winter down here. My cold resistance has gone down since my not-even-cold Canada days. I even use an electric bed warmer because my room gets so cold, it’s got a breeze with windows closed. lol Anyway, since I’m on the topic, and calling for donations to combat the winter in the South is a yearly tradition that’s never-ending, I thought I would do a post on the Tibetan heating systems. I actually only saw these on various broadcasts of -probably- CCTV’s Yuanfang de Jia (远方的家).

This is a Kang (炕, from the Chinese “to bake or dry by the heat of a fire“) or a “bed-stove”.

Basically, you grill yourself in winter. Like I do with my electric bed warmer. xD

Like European ceramic stoves, Korean Ondol (온돌) underfloor heating, or… well, modern heated ceramic tile floor; a Kang is designed to keep you warm, especially in cold winter nights; like it is mentioned on Coldland People (寒地百姓吟, aka. Han Di Bai Xing Yin), the Tang Dynasty poem by Meng Jiao (孟郊) that starts with the following lines:

无火炙地眠,半夜皆立号。
冷箭何处来,棘针风骚骚。
霜吹破四壁,苦痛不可逃。

Translated on the Wiki page as: No fuel to heat the floor to sleep, standing and crying with cold at midnight instead.

Source: Baidu [includes a detailed explanation of the verses]

Appreciation for coal miners and heat aside; as fancy as floor-heating may look nowadays with ceramic tiles and electric heating. It all started with ovens built with brick and/or clay. A relatively more cost-efficient way to keep families in the South from freezing themselves to death.

I’m not crying, you are.

Did you get to see Faye Wong and Na Ying’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala collaboration? It’s been 20 years since it happened, and this year’s Years (岁月) was probably the most popular segment [like Tang Weiwei’s two years ago]. I do wonder why CCTV hasn’t uploaded the performance on its own (yet).

As far as I know, it’s only available for high quality download on QQ (though, geoblocked), unless… you know, you do your thing.

And now, someone was awesome enough to provide English translations~

Bless them~

Continue Reading…

Interesting! I figured I watched less movies this 2017 than I did in 2016, but turns out I got a couple more films/hours logged. And there were a couple more titles that I didn’t log because they’re not on Letterboxd. They just happened to be not current movies, I suppose.

I’m still, currently, very much obsessed with Mamamoo, though. LOL That’s 30% of my movie-watching time doing Mamamoo-related stuff.

2018 doesn’t look to be an improvement to 2015 levels xD

I’m also not sure whether Ryo Kase is my Most Watched Actor this year, considering I went on a non-logged marathon of Shweta Menon movies— like 4 or 5. But, once again, latest highest-rated movies reflect some of my movie-watching; a little American indie, a little Indian and a little Chinese.

I did find enough for my usual Top30 Favorite Film Discovery post :)

And a super lengthy post on my favorite films this year, which has already changed xDDDDDD

goran kudasai, dozo~

My yearly tradition~

(even though I haven’t been writing at all~~~ lol)

I hope I get to be more productive next year.

Sharing is caring!

Happy listening~

Sighs~

This is just hitting the right mood tonight. Discovered a couple of weeks back on the latest Xiami compilation– it’s called If I Lose my Youth (如果我失去了青春) by the band ZhaoZe (沼泽). Great thing they’re on Bandcamp too!

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=4022515616 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

 

May you rest in peace.

Oh, No I Didn’t~

October 21, 2017 — Leave a comment

Yes, I did. xD

This is the actual first time I’ve ever given my info to MAMA. LOL

The only blind-votes are for Best New Male Artist, Male Groups categories, and I wasn’t too in love with any of the MV nominees.

Do vote for HYUKOH, Bolbbalgan4, IU, Hyori, SNSD, Chungha, Zico and F.O elder YJS xD ^^

Also do vote for the dumb European MTV Awards and their buzz-grabbing international awards for Best Korean Act, on top votes for KOHH or Suiyoubi no Campanella for Best Japan Acts, and Henry Zuo [1] for Best Greater China Act. I thought I was old AF, and done with MTV and EMA stuff, but I guess not. LOL

And if EMA history serves me right, well~ and Henry Zuo passes to the next rounds. He’s gonna win it, just like Chris Lee did, just like BiBi and Jane Zhang. Coz, you know. China. LOL And I don’t wanna see y’all moaning.

I started listening to Chen Weilun (陈伟伦)’s album, Think Miss Sorrow (念思愁), which just came out last week. While adding it to my iTunes library, it struck me how difficult it was to translate the song names. xD

For those who don’t know because you’ve just stumble upon this post, I usually keep a very organized library of foreign music, which includes ‘Original Name (romanization) – English Name/Translation’; so I was looking if there were official English titles for the songs on Chen Weilun’s album available on Xiami, KKBox or iNDIEVOX. There were not. On my search, already on title #3, I realized they were all titles (or most are, I haven’t gone through all of them yet xDDDDD) for Li Qingzhao (李清照), who is known as the greatest Chinese female poet of the Song Dynasty, mostly for her ci (词)/lyrics form of poetry [1][2].

So this is going to be a (hopefully brief) project to translate just the song names xDDDDDDDD

  1. 一剪梅·红藕香残玉簟秋
    A Twig of Plum Blossoms: The Jade-like Mat Feels Autumn’s Cold [1][2]
  2. 念奴娇·春情
    The Charm of Nien-nu: Spring Feelings [1][2]
  3. 如梦令·常记溪亭日暮
    Like a Dream: I Will Always Recall that Day at Dusk, the Pavilion by the Creek [1][2]
  4. 相见欢·无言独上西楼
    Happy Meeting: Wordless, A Lone Ascend Up the West Tower [1][2]
  5. 浪淘沙令·帘外雨潺潺
    Waves Against Sand: As the Rain Patters Outside the Drapes [1][2][3]
  6. 声声慢·寻寻觅觅
    The Sounds of Adagio: Searching and Searching [1]
  7. 渔家傲·秋思
    Fisherman’s Pride: Autumn Thoughts [1][2]
  8. 行香子·述怀
    Incense Burning: Describing my Emotions [1][2]

I only got three so far. xD

— September 22nd 2017 —

There~