In between start and end

It'll be great if I can do this annually, so that I'll be reminded of each song's meaning every time. To be honest, this isn't as hard as I thought. Even though there were more songs that I liked. These are few of those songs that really lifted my spirit whenever I'm feeling emotional. 

This song was recommended by Wooseok himself in a pre-concert interview.

It speaks about life being like a domino - you always try your best to stand up but at times, you just kept falling down. It's a very personal song to Wooseok so he felt hesitant when they decided to release this solo in his collab album. But I'm glad he did bcos finding a personal song that is officially released on Spotify is so hard 😩

I could picture both myself and PENTAGON through this song. It's a way to tell someone to let me be, but please don't go.

This year, I've been personally convinced that people who are depressed or having a mental breakdown doesn't necessarily want to hide it. We wished that we could express our feelings too, and when we do, don't try to comfort us with words but just be there for us. I guess the moment you say words that stop us from sharing (because you think it'd be hard on us) is just making us feel more unaccepted. So just lend your ears. 

McFly has always been like that one friend who could relate to the inner me. Their music always touches my heart in a very personal way.

'Tonight is the Night' is about finally convincing yourself to break free and confront your worries tonight. It's a way of saying don't hold in any longer and just let everything out now. It's such a perfect song if you need some push to do something you're hesitating on.

This song sums up an entire episode of living with sadness, ironically in a very fun tune. When I felt really sad, hearing someone else share a similar situation gives me some assurance that I'm doing good enough. And that is what this song does. It gives that imaginary pat on the back.

This year is a beautiful mess for both PENTAGON and their fans.

'Eternal Flame' is a fan song and there's so much events that resonates with this song. Their first full album (Dr. Bebe's comeback) excluded a member - Yanan, while the latest album (Daisy's comeback) excluded another member - Jinho, so this was the only song this year and probably for the years to come that includes all of the current members of PENTAGON - which is very disheartening to hear as a fan. 

I love hearing fan songs and this meant more as it was made for us.

"Will the spring snow come?"
— Spring Snow (2019)

"Spring snow will come to us too"
— Shine+Spring Snow (2020)

"It always snows in our spring"
— Eternal Flame (2020)#PENTAGON #펜타곤 @CUBE_PTG pic.twitter.com/dWAFtLMprz

— 구름☁️ (@changgurie) December 18, 2020

I listen to this song so much this year since the day I discovered it. I like the verses in this song and it's totally how I view the people around me sometimes.

This song is about waiting for someone, maybe to be acknowledged or just to get some of their attention. It's kinda like how parents wait for us kids, going out and about in our busy lives yet patiently wait for us til the day we come back home. 

Or kinda how we are unsure of how people felt about us, at times we don't care enough about each other and I actually wrote a blog post of something similar called 'Frientimacy' and I think that is very much what this song is about.

The verse that caught my attention most was;

and another one (imagine your parents or loved ones saying this 😪);

This song is about dreaming big and believing in yourself. Even when success seems further to you more than everyone else, holding on to the hope that you'll shine someday should be your focus. There's a bridge at the end of the song that goes "I want you to be my light" kinda like saying, it'll be nice if I could have you along.

As a fan of 1TEAM, I do keep some hope that they'll be known one day. However, it's hard to keep up as an average group in kpop, where even those from the big companies are struggling. Anyway, this song reminds me of that hope of wanting to have a successful life.

My favourite line is actually the beginning rap;

I guess you can say, staying mostly at home requires a lot of self-comfort.

Those are my list of 5 songs that got me through 2020. Spotify song list aren't exactly accurate when it comes to emotional connection. Before I leave, here's my Spotify 2020 Wrapped just as my future record.

Dropping by,

Last year I posted a 2020 resolutions for the upcoming year, so this end of the year is the perfect time to review them before the step into a new year.

Below is my resolutions listed with the ones that I have and haven't completed:

To summarize, I only achieved 3 things out of 10 of them. Not a great achievement tbh but mainly bcos my interest has just been changing this past year. 

I realized that some of the things listed are actually harder to achieve since I'm still a student and very much restricted. Some other really just went south because of my incompetency and lack of proficiency. Probably expected too much from myself.

With that, here's a 2021 version of it.

1. Graduate degree with at least a 3.5 CGPA

Currently no longer a 3.5 pointer student huhu.

2. Build a micro-habit system

I've seen a video talking about building micro-habits and was totally up for it. However, I haven't been setting up one for myself and feel like I should any time soon. So, I'm looking forward to building that system and incorporate that into my life by the end of next year.

3. Upload more kpop covers than I did in 2019.

I'm gonna re-attempt this resolution simply because I've actually been disappointed in myself of not achieving this in the past year.

4. Rebuild that emergency fund

I was actually close to setting aside RM1000 in my emergency fund back in 2019 but failed because I ended up using it to fund my exchange programme and Korea trip. In 2020, I didn't have much to save and financially was pretty tough. But I've been trying to build my emergency fund back and I'm gonna work harder in being strict about it this time.

2021 goal: RM1000

5. Post at least once in each month

The best feeling is when I read back all my archive and relive each moments long after it happened. It's honestly why I kept this blog for so long even when nobody really reads them. Documenting my life through this blog is probably one of the happiest decisions I've ever made in my life.

I think that would be all that I'm gonna put out there. I'll leave the rest of the resolutions to my journal as they're pretty personal 🤭

Dropping by,

Staying at home has made my days pretty much a routine - class, kpop, kdrama, shopee, sleep, repeat. I've lately been addicted in collecting shopee coins lol. But even so, not one day felt boring enough til I don't wanna get out of bed. 

I think that alone is something last semester me couldn't relate. 

Hence, I decided to analyze a little bit of how things went differently this time. And of course, I'll try focusing on the things that I have control over. 

First, my mindset towards having a "break".

Last time, I used to think that I intensely needed some break every time I get overwhelmed. When my friends tell me I should get some time off, I really did. But that's the mistake, I overdid it. I rested so much that I ended up not doing anything with the actual work.

I gave myself too many reasons for a "break" that made myself very manja and lazy. I was really just running away from my responsibilities - which definitely took a toll on both my grades and mental health (in case you weren't reading my previous posts).

One thing that I learn from that is, I shouldn't have a break unless I've finished some work. I know it should go without saying, but sometimes, you gotta have a strong mind to achieve it.

Next is being time efficient in planning.

I have always loved planning. But do I always stick to them...? Uhh 🙂

Ok, so I suck at keeping up with my own plans. Then that left me with two options, either to build a new planning system or retry the old one.

That got me thinking. I realised that I never truly even keep up with the current system I have, so I decided to turn a new page and have a fresher start. I didn't change anything in how I plan since my diploma days. However, what I did change was my attitude towards it.

I didn't ignore my checklist and frequently updates them. To make sure I am not overwhelmed with work, I always break things down to smaller tasks. Instead of writing "Study Chapter 1, 2 and 3", I break down to 3 separate checklist - "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2" and "Chapter 3". 

Does it make my list longer? Yes. Does it motivate me more? Surprisingly it does. After I'm done with one chapter, I crosses one out and it gave me a great feeling of accomplishment even over something so little. 

From there, I realised that my focus is not about being productive, it should be about having consistent progress. There's no use in being super productive when the thing I should overcome is to just get myself to do something.

Lastly, complaining less.

I noticed that people don't complain when they're doing well. You'd think that is very obvious, but to me, that is a huge indicator that I'm doing well. Complaining less means lesser negativity so it's always nice to vibrate positive energy from within. I don't just mean complaining on social media, I mean complaining in real life - whether to your friends, your family or just whoever you speak day-to-day to.

To stop myself from complaining, I just force myself to do my best. I get myself to face all the work that I know scares me, just so that I don't have to worry about it anymore. I think we tend to complain about the things we worry most and it really shows when I get anxious even after letting it out.

I really hate that feeling so I try to address every single thing that makes me most anxious, soonest. So far, it has left me with more space to breathe. They still sometimes do keep me up at night, but at least it no longer linger more than it should. And I think that is a positive sign.

All in all, I am in my Week 11 of my final semester. Few more weeks until final presentations and final assessment. I'm praying I can get the GPA that I hope for, but most importantly the intern place that I dream of.

My degree life is actually ending soon! I'm not ready be an adult 😲😲

Dropping by,

As someone who love watching k-dramas and listening to k-pop, I feel like VPN is becoming an essential tool for international fans. 

Sometimes, k-entertainment can be very restricting to certain regions that makes it unnecessarily hard for some of us to access them. So in this post I will be showing you how I personally overcome that! 

First, you need to find a VPN that works for you. What is VPN, you may ask?

VPN stands for virtual private network. In layman's term, it's basically used to hide your actual device's IP address with another IP address (thus the name "virtual") to trick the internet into thinking your location is not where you actually are. Some use it for safety purposes (like when using public wifi), others use it for this kind of accessibility purposes.

My personal fav is Psiphon. It was recommended to me when I needed to access restricted contents (like KissAsian to watch kdramas) when using the student's wifi.

Here is the download link https://psiphon3.com/en/download.html. You first need to download and install it in your PC. I personally don't really use the app version, so it might work differently through the app. 

Once you've downloaded and installed Psiphon, you can simply run the application every time you want to access any restricted content.

You can simply disconnect it to get your local IP address back. Easy as that!

However, this VPN do have a limited list of countries you can connect to. For my case, South Korea is not in the list, so Korean contents are still not directly available for me. However, contents that is available to USA is easily available once I turn this on. Most of the time, that worked well enough for me.

I never really had a need to change to other VPN in the 5 years of using this, but feel free to try other software if this doesn't work for you. 

That is it for this little tutorial, hope you could benefit from it.

Dropping by,

What would it be like if we're living a life full of suspicion of the people around us? Well, I'm here to tell you this drama is exactly that! 

"365: Repeat The Year" is a kdrama by MBC aired from March until April 2020 starring Lee Joon Hyuk and Nam Ji Hyun. It consists of 12 episodes, but don't be fooled because this is the perfect length for it! 

In university, there are 2 types of students. The one who always lead and one who never wants to. This blog post is the POV of one who almost never not the leader.

I'm not tryna brag but I genuinely think that leaders are so rare. Speaking from experience, it's so hard to find someone else that can naturally lead a group and be reliably good at it.

Truth is, being a leader sucks.

You always have to start doing everything early even when you don't feel like it, because reality is that nobody wants to start the work. But you can't just ask and demand answers from your members expecting them to give a good idea - most of the time they're just not well thought out.

In the end, it's always me giving all the good ideas. Thankfully, ideas come naturally to me so the others just naturally agree with everything. Weirdly enough, I actually look forward to be criticized for my ideas, but never once that happened. Even when there's rejection, it's always me coming up with newer ideas to replace that and never someone else giving me theirs.

What sucks about it is what will happen after.

I gave all the ideas. Logically, other people shall continue to expand it and we'll divide our work, right? Ha ha ha, as if.

Expanding the ideas became my work, because I seem to be the only one who understand the root of my idea. Then I have to divide all the work myself because "I'm the leader" and everyone just want the easy way out.

Assigning work means I need to know how the overall content is gonna be, so obviously I need to do all the understanding and break them into parts myself. Sometimes the assignments given aren't clear yet I need to assume something, so everyone can have their own parts and do THEIR work.

At this point, I hope you can see how NOT EASY being a leader is and probably why everyone hates being one.

After everyone is done with their parts, somebody have to compile and check everything, right? I would be extremely blessed if I have another member who have sharp eyes and good comprehension skills to check, but unfortunately it's rare that anyone would care about the quality of it, like if there's direct copy pasting, uneven formatting, unrelated contents or just something as simple as typos. I have never personally work with anyone who is as particular of those things as much as me, so it has always been my work, leader or not.

As a fellow student, I feel so pissed every time people expect other people to clean up their mess. How wonderful would my uni life be if everyone cares about their own work and give their best at it. You don't have to look at much, just ensure you don't copy paste and clean up all the formatting. That will already be very helpful.

But if only life was fair. 

Leaders aren't just the person in front but we have to push people from the back too and stressful is an understatement. I remember breaking down at the end of a semester because I had to lead even when I wasn't the official group leader. Everyone was just so irresponsible and didn't want to take the fall. Honestly, strangers or not, even friends can be such terrible groupmates.

I will be super thankful if even one member would personally come up to me and offer a hand to help. But like I said, they're rare.

Last week, I had 2 presentations and as you guess it, I am basically the "leader" by forced. The members are my own friends I'm close with but everything that I mentioned here, still occur.

I proposed the idea. This time, another friend helped with the basis of inspiration (bless them).

I wrote most if not everything in the report.

I divided the parts.

I lead the presentations.

And because they're people I know well, they're very cooperative in terms of responding and I'm grateful for that. But it doesn't cut out the fact that I can't put much faith in them.

After those presentations, my lecturers - to my pleasant surprised, praised us.

One of them said, "I can tell you've practiced more than once" and we did! 

For that class we had to conduct a mock meeting and I prepared the entire 15 mins worth of script (let's not talk about the continuous hours I spent writing). I made sure we practiced together and we did a video call twice prior to the presentation day. It was leceh but thank God everyone were up for it.

I'm sooo happy my lecturer thinks we are good. I know I can pull it off myself, but I was scared for my friends because their language skills are pretty subpar. Glad the practice helped. Obviously, thanks to my scripts too. I came up with the entire meeting flow and it was definitely not as easy as you think. So much research!

Next presentation was about a project proposal. I was very anxious for this presentation because I did 85% of the work and I was scared for my friends for not able to present it well due to lack of understanding on the material. In the end I butted in a lot when our lecturer questioned our budget costs. All of the groups were questioned a lot for this part so no shocking there.

After all the intense confusion and goreng, we were asked how much do we think we deserve out of the 20 marks. All the groups were asked this at the end of the presentation. But before we could even say any value, my lecturer said "I think this is the first group that deserved the 20 marks". Mind you, we were THE LAST presenter for the day. He also said we were very professional during our presentation.

You have no idea how amazing it felt. I thought we did badly considering the amount of pressure he gave us on the costing part. It wasn't detailed enough for him. So when he said that, I was elated by it! It shows that I did really well on carrying my group.

I have never really been acknowledged for being a leader, despite being the official leader for at least 2-3 groups every semester. This is the first time I felt like I got a pat on the back.

Though I sometimes wish I can feel relaxed and depend on someone else for once - like the feeling of "know-know dah siap", I probably never will be able to anymore.

Being a leader sucks, the thought of having to care for other people isn't always fun. But if it's worth delivering good quality work and getting good grades, sure... haih 🤷

Dropping by,

It's already 4am and I can't sleep cos I'm so over the moon right now!! 

I've never experienced such a big accomplishment like being mentioned by Kpop idols I looked up to. That is something I don't even dare to dream of. It honestly feels surreal to even appear in front of them. 

Before you get confused about what is going on, I'll just briefly explain to you on what just happened. Long story short, I joined this K-culture contest where idols learn and teach people all around the world different Korean cultures. This contest involved few of the big named K-pop artists namely PENTAGON (honestly the reason I decided to join), THE BOYZ, G-IDLE, ONF and OH MY GIRL. Each artist have different genre that they are part of so the one I joined was THE BOYZ's genre.

As much as I wanted to join PENTAGON's genre, I don't really have access to the instruments since their genre is Samul Nori (literally samul means "four instruments" and nori means "play"). So, I joined the genre that I think I could pull of which was Taekwonmu (a combination of taekwondo and "anmu" which means choreography/dance).

Two weeks after submission closed, I got an invitation to be part of the online streaming. Like any other K-pop event, this event also has performances along with some fan interactions, which in this case, interactions with the fellow participants. Honestly, this event is almost similar to KCON except that it's free (both the participation and the streaming).

Ok, moving on to the juicy part.

First of all, I was lucky enough to appear on the screen behind THE BOYZ during the live streaming. Mind you, not everyone who joined got to appear on the screen because obviously it's limited to only a number of people, so the fact that I GOT CHOSEN was honestly a blessing as it is.

You have no idea how long the waiting time was and honestly, it would be a total waste of an entire day if I didn't get to appear on it. Prior to this livestream, everything was so messed up because not only things got delayed but the organizer was also EXTREMELY secretive about it. I even thought I was gonna have a personal video call with the artist instead of this ugh.

Then during the livestream, there was no translator so we're kinda just there to show our faces lol. I didn't understand much but I tried to give my best reaction every time they do something funny or cute. It was a fun overall experience but maybe never again lol.

Next is the actual broadcast. So, in case you didn't get the hint, the livestream was all pre-recorded a week before the actual streaming day. Basically, they could do proper editing and what not before the real event, including adding hard subs.

Now, only during broadcast did I realize that THE BOYZ actually mentioned about MY COVER during the event! When the MC asked Younghoon whose performance did he think was the most impressive, he said, 

In a different clip where they are deciding the winners, Kevin pointed out on a performance saying, 

Then the instructor said, "Oh that's why it looks like there are three people".

Here is a video proof on what happened:

There are NOT many video entries, if not none, that edited like I did. My video was actually inspired by Susiemeoww's cos she does this kind of edit like all the time in her dance covers. I thought it would be cool to have "more people" in my video using that kind of editing. 

One video had similar idea but it's quite obvious that it's a compilation of 3 different clips (unlike my merged style edit), so I was pretty sure that they were talking about MY VIDEO.

After hearing both Younghoon and Kevin's remarks on it, I felt like a true winner! I didn't expect anything out of this and to have idols (ones that I like), mentioning about my video.... just... beyond amazing. I feel like I've achieved my final goal as a fangirl. Legit, being noticed by an idol I like, is literally all I hoped for as a fan and I just achieved exactly that!

My mind just couldn't accept how lucky I am to be noticed like that. Thinking that among tenths of other participants, I was able to stand out to them AND made them think I was worth mentioning, is amazing to say the least. I could never have experienced something that made me as special as this did to me. Totally unexpectable and almost like a dream come true.

Here is my video performance in case any of you are curious:

Dropping by,

One way to tell if someone has a positive vibe or not, is to see their views on things they talk a lot about. 

Nothing beats the feeling of seeing people' eyes lights up when they talk about things they love. Even as they talk about their bad times, it feels comforting when they stay positive about it. 

I don't mean to glamorize success more than it truly is - which often derives from hardwork and sacrifices, but people with a positive mindset tends to have better approach in handling problems that comes their way. Most importantly, they find ways to work around it.

Personally, it's really motivating seeing other people do what they love. However, some might feel demotivated instead because they haven't discovered what they love doing.

I have never had to face that slump (and wish to never be) so I never really had that "Eureka" moment for me to share any. I have always been a consistent soul. I don't change much, though I have become wiser and better at lots of skills, but my mindset and interest has always been somewhat similar kinds.

I think that helped me in finding myself early. Also maybe because changes scares me a bit. I guess I'm very stubborn also, so I'm not easily influenced.

The one thing that can influence me, is people with positive vibe. Honestly, I don't succumb baselessly so I'm very hard to convinced. But if it's coming from someone who makes me feel good, I can be very fast to accept it, even if it was a stranger.

As much as I like to support my friends, there's not many people I know who truly gives me those vibes. Also, when it comes to success/happiness, it's very subjective and often times, not talked a lot about. I love seeing people's raw sides of doing what they love and funny enough I see more "influencers" doing that than my own friends. Kinda makes me stick out like a sore thumb at times.

I have major tendency of avoiding heavy topics on social media, simply because it stresses me out, but those topics is what I often see people talk about. Am I just at that age where matters either get serious with only work and world issues, or just basic mundane things and nothing more in between? Totally fine either way, but sadly nothing for me to get inspired from. 

You know, it's just nicer to see people who I personally know sharing more of what they love instead of caring about every single world problem. Makes me want to do better in life too. 

I recently followed the CEO and Founder of CasesbyWF - Ain Nurina (clickable) on IG and damn I wish I had followed her sooner. I've known CasesbyWF ever since she run a small clothing/fashion business on IG as WallFlowerStore (if I'm not mistaken) and I've seen her business grow so much since!! Little did I know, Ain Nurina has always been very raw about her journey on her personal IG. That made me feel so inspired, even more than I previously did.

Well, just want to say that I love having passionate conversations (even if I don't always involve in them). Future goals, current interests and how life taught you things... just embracing them makes life a little enjoyable. Especially when people are being genuine and positive about their own paths in life, rather than always feeling like nothing's going your way. 

Honestly, I think it's all a mind game. At the end of the day, you choose what you consume.

Dropping by,

As you might or might not know, I'm one of those people who struggled with online class at one point in life. Not a big fan of watching (lots of) study materials on YouTube instead of my favourite YouTube contents. That alone felt like my entire freedom was taken away. 

I was once the kind of person who envy those who love the idea of work from home lol. However, I can now say, it got less overwhelming.

I think I'm slowly breathing in my positive self back. I don't think this would remain forever but at least for now, I've faced the cause and I'm so ready to move on.