You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘music’ tag.
2017 has already come & gone. It’s already Day 3 of 2018, & I cant believe it. Time really seems to be whizzing by. This is a look back at some of my biggest highlights of 2017.
01. This past year, I really feel like I’ve stepped up my writing, & put more focus & effort into my blog. I think I’m improving in making my own graphic images & site banners, but I’m not a trained graphic artist, nor do I have any artistic drawing abilities whatsoever. So, I’m hoping I’m improving as an amateur graphic artist. I can definitely see an improvement in my writing, & I’ve managed not to get too wordy on the unnecessary details. I’m definitely going to keep writing on my blog, & hope you all follow me on my journey.
02. When I was a teenager, I had all sorts of lofty dreams of going to music concerts & festivals. I envisioned my friends & I hopping in to my little car, & we’d travel around town looking for hip music venues & clubs. Well, that never happened, & even in my early adulthood I didn’t get many chances to go to any concerts…mostly because my group of friends at the time all had different tastes in music, & I could never find a partner to go with me to concerts or live shows.
Fast forward to today, f I can’t believe my good fortune. Jian & I have each introduced the other person to new music genres, bands, & artists. Through our mutual love of music, we’ve been able to attend many concerts & pop culture festivals in 2017. Our list of events include: Anderson.Paak in London, SAVE FERRIS, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats with Kings of Leon, as well as Lord Huron, Carseat Headrest & other bands we didn’t recognize at Chris Hardwick’s ID10T Conival. We saw WEEZER twice last year. Once at the ID10T Conival, & a second time at our local Alt-Rock radio station’s winter concert called Not So Silent Night. We attended on the night Alice Merton (of “No Roots” fame), Walk The Moon, Foster The People, WEEZER, &………The KILLERS performed. Yes, we got to see our favorite rock band of all time (The KILLERS) perform alongside WEEZER!!!! It was a great way to end our year in concerts. Also, I’m going to see The KILLERS in concert again next month at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles for their Wonderful, Wonderful U.S. arena tour. I can just feel all of my teenage concert fantasies coming true.
03. I got to check off an item on my travel bucket list this past year. After all of my intense wishing, it finally came true. I got to visit London, England for my very first time. It took me a long time to convince Jian to go with me, since Jian prefers to visit Asia on his vacations, but I finally wore him down & convinced him to travel with me to Europe/the UK. I was getting a little tired of always sticking to our routine of visiting Japan or China (or Hong Kong) every time we plan an overseas vacation. I’ve been wanting to switch things up & visit Europe/the UK for a long time. Also, visiting London has been a big ticket bucket list item for me, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to visit my new favorite city & stay at a hotel that has completely changed my life.
04. After immigrating to the U.S. from Taiwan (she was not born there), my mom said goodbye & had not given any thought to going back until recently. A lot of my mom’s friends have either permanently moved back to Taiwan, or split their time living there 6 months out of the year. This encouraged my mom to finally want to visit Taiwan. She invited her favorite travel companion (me) her sister, & together they made plans to go back & visit the city they grew up in & left behind over 30+ years ago. Of course, my mom feeling insecure about traveling to a place she hardly remembers, she invited Jian & I to join them as chaperones who could help them navigate the subway system & help them at the airports. We had so much fun eating & drinking our way through Taipei, & making the best of our trip even though it rained nearly every day.
05. Christmas is a big deal in my family. My dad had always emphasized family togetherness during this time of the year, & as a family we took his words very seriously. All of the kids make sure to come home for the holidays no matter what, & my mom throws a huge annual party on Christmas Eve. We usually tend to keep the guest list to family & close family friends only, but this year we broke tradition, & I was able to invite my closest friends & their families to our party. We had the most memorable evening I’ll never forget. This recently past Christmas party was truly outstanding & unforgettable.
06. This past year marked the 5th anniversary of my dad’s passing. I can’t believe it’s already been 5 YEARS. I think about my dad everyday, & I still think about him as though he’s still alive. I try hard not to dwell on the negative, & only focus on the positive memories of my dad. It’s hard to go through life without one parent, especially when you are still relatively young & feel like you still need your parents’ guidance. Another year will pass, & I will continue to think about my dad every day.
Those are my best highlights of 2017. I don’t have any resolutions for 2018. I want to live my life & be happy. Cheers.
Today’s song of the day:
I’ve been noticing very recently that it’s much easier for me to clump all of my thoughts into lists. I enjoy shortening my thoughts & ideas into short blurbs, rather than write while whole posts about nothing. I’m not that clever. Hey, I’m not Jerry Seinfeld. (*chuckles*)
- I love apples. Fuji apples are my favorite type of apples, but I especially love them when they are cold, crisp, & juicy. Yeah, I love to eat juicy apples. I’ve been eating apples more often lately, mostly because my mom likes to use apples as a food offering to her Buddhist shrine whenever she says her Buddhist prayers. We always have a good amount of apples in our kitchen leftover from my mom’s weekly prayer offerings. I especially enjoy eating the apples after my mom has already used them as an offering to her mini Buddhist shrine. I kind of feel like the apples have been blessed by the Buddhist statues after they’ve had their share, which to me, makes them taste even sweeter.
- Piggy-backing off the previous bullet point, I don’t think I’m a strict, devout Buddhist. My mom isn’t really one either. Well, she’s more of a semi-devout Buddhist. She performs many rituals & prayers to her carefully displayed shrine in our home. She even believes in the power & energy of carefully selected Buddhist relics. However, she does not regularly visit a temple or celebrate much of yer Buddhist holidays. I kind of, sort of loosely follow the parts of Buddhism my mom teaches me that is important to our family. Like my mom, I say a few prayers, I light incense, I provide offerings to our home shrine, but I don’t do much other important or significant rituals associated with it. I wouldn’t call myself devout to any one religion. My mom grew up in a strict Christian family before she converted to Buddhism along with her siblings. My dad was raised Catholic through & through…even going so far as to sign up for the priesthood, before dropping out to get married early & start a family. Neither of them pushed any sort of religion on any of their children, but I’ve been loosely following a few customs of the Buddhist religion because it interests me & brings me closer to my mom.
- I have an easier time writing my blog posts when I’m at my local big box coffee shop. Today I’m writing in a different coffee shop location. I hate this location, but at least it gives me a change of scenery from the coffee shop down the street from my house. The coffee shop I’m sitting at is right next to a high school. Once school lets out, all of the super annoying teenagers come swarming in to get their stupid frappy, iced berry, sugary sweet drinks. They come in packs & annoy the masses with their obnoxious jibber-jabber. Like I said, I hate coming to this location because it’s always crowded with annoying teenagers, but I need a change of scenery from my usual blog writing place. At least this place is still very close by to my house, & the baristas here don’t muck up my order. At the big box coffee shop next to my house, the only thing they get right is the spelling of my name on the cup. Other than that, they’re always forgetting one thing or another, like forgetting my drink altogether, or forgetting my food order until I’ve been standing at the counter for well over 5 minutes. The baristas always apologize for the mistake, & always mention that they recognize me as a regular customer, but every time I go there, they always treat me like I’m a stranger, even when it’s the same barista serving me a few days in a row.
- I’m so incredibly excited, chuffed to bits, to be going to London next month. I wish I could speed up the date of my departure, but I also don’t want time to pass by so fast. Jian & I have been almost meticulously planning out all of the things we want to do & places we want to eat at or drink a cocktail at, but we also want to let things happen naturally. Before most of our major vacations, we tend to carefully plan out all the little details of our itinerary, but more often than not we end up doing things spontaneously, like on the fly. We talk & talk & talk, make up spreadsheets & checklists, I make up little travel scrapbooks (with my amateur Photoshop skills), but mostly make up stuff as we go along our trips. I guess that’s the fun part, finding lots of random, local things that isn’t written in some stuffy, glossy guide book. Everyday our list of things to do & eat grows & grows. We only have 7 days to explore London, & we want to make the most of our time there. I want this adventure to begin, but not to end too soon.
- In a couple of weeks I’m going to a concert I’d never imagine going to for a second time in my life. My all-time favorite band, SAVE FERRIS, has reunited after nearly 20 years & is coming back with a vengeance, releasing a brand new album & doing a U.S. promo tour. SAVE FERRIS was the very first band I ever saw in concert back in 1998. They were performing in a relatively small music venue alongside a very new, not-so-well-known band called Incubus, who was merely the opening act for SAVE FERRIS. Also co-headlining the concert was my other favorite band Goldfinger. That concert changed my life. I had told my parents I was having a sleepover at a friend’s house, & since she lived on my street & my parents were cool with her parents, they totally bought it. Luckily for my friends & I, the parents of the friend were totally easy-going & cool & allowed us to stay out late for a concert. I was so obsessed with SAVE FERRIS that I got a fully autographed poster & a concert tee which I wore almost every day. One time my cousin went to one of their concerts too & was able to get the bassist of the band to write me a birthday greeting on a piece of paper which I framed & kept next to my bed. I’ve got all this memorabilia tucked away somewhere in the far outer reaches of my storage closet, & one day I might take it out to reminisce. For now, I’m going to enjoy this upcoming concert, listening to songs new & old. I never really thought I’d ever see this band in concert more than once, but I was able to see them perform at the Van’s Warped Tour that same year back in 1998. Seeing them live for a third time in my life is just blowing my mind away. I can’t wait!!
Today’s song of the day:
Hello. I was sitting at my local big box coffee shop again when I had the idea to write this post. These are more random thoughts & various things that I wanted to write about.
- I was casually & very conspicuously staring at the FedEx deliveryman who was wearing a pair of unflattering FedEx uniform shorts. I was thinking to myself, as I was so obviously gawking at this harmless gentleman, that thank goodness it’s sunny outside because this guy needs to get some color on his pale legs. I also fleetingly thought he had a generic pair of typical men’s legs, very average. Please don’t ask me why I was staring at this guy specifically. I was sitting at the counter right next to the drinks drop-off area & was just casually observing all the people passing through the coffee shop.
- An older adult gentleman sat down in the seat next to me after picking up his mail from the post office next door. You can probably guess what happened next. Yes, I had to stick my nose in this guy’s private business & snoop at what he got in the post. I know it’s controversial (in some societal, moral, mannerly way) to be so blatantly staring at other people & their private business, but I am an observer. I like to observe the things & people around me. Some people call it “openly staring in a creepy way”. Other people call it “an invasion of privacy”. I call it “being aware of my surroundings”. I wasn’t purposely trying to look at this man’s mail, but he was practically flaunting it by putting it right inbetween us on the counter in plain view of us both. The packages & post were just begging to be ogled at by all eyes.
Illustration Credit: Rebecca Mock; Photo Credit: Pinterest & rebeccamock.blogspot.com
Illustration Credit: Scott Campbell; Photo Credit: Google Images & designtaxi.com
- As I’m typing this blog post, I’m listening to both the Midnight in Paris movie soundtrack & the Funny Face movie soundtrack (a.k.a. original motion picture soundtrack), both on Spotify. I’ve been listening to both soundtracks on repeat for the past couple of weeks. You should know me by now. Once I find something I like, I will stick to it until the very end of my days. So far I have two standout favorite songs, one from each soundtrack. On the Funny Face movie soundtrack, I love all of the songs, & can sing almost all of the songs by now, but my standalone favorite is “On How To Be Lovely”. On the Midnight in Paris movie soundtrack my favorite is “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)” the cover of the famous Cole Porter song.
- Last week I watched a highly anticipated movie. Based on my above mentioned icon, you can obviously guess which movie I’m talking about. Since I’ve been a long-time devoted fan of the original source material for this movie, I went into the theater with a lot of unrealistic expectations…meaning, I went to watch the movie with the mindset of comparing the movie adaptation of the original source material. That was a stupid thing for me to do. I should’ve just checked my over-zealous fangirl mentality at the door & enjoyed the movie for what it was, pure entertainment through & through. After watching said movie, I went through the initial period of picking apart the movie & comparing it nearly word-for-word to the source material. Once I got over all of those trival quips & squabbles, I was able to appreciate the movie for its own qualities. I enjoyed the movie so much so that I already pre-ordered the digital download on iTunes. Yeah, I enjoyed the movie that much. Also, I highly admire the creativity & talent of the source material’s creator & actors. I wanted those people to make money off of me & help their success grow, plain & simple.
- Adding on from the last bullet point, because I was so enamored with the movie I watched last week, I went back to re-examine the original source material the movie was based on. I’ve gained a new perspective from re-examining the source material, & it has made me fall in love even more than I already am. Re-reading the source material again (for the **th time) has had me re-thinking about various scenes & pick up small details that were previously misinterpreted &/or overlooked. I am now appreciating the source material in a whole new way.
- For the past few weeks I have been on a tortilla eating binge. We’ve been stocking our kitchen pantry with loads of soft, medium-sized tortillas & eating them like crazy, especially for lunch. I enjoy making sandwich wraps & mini lunch burritos with the tortillas, & on ocassion (like on the weekends) I like to make quesadillas. Lately, my favorite lunchtime meal has been making veggie wraps/burritos using either pre-packaged mixed salad greens or baby arugula, sliced white onions, & thinly sliced tomatoes. Sometime’s I’ll add some sort of salad dressing, but I mostly eat it plain (a.k.a. sans dressing/sauce). It’s like I’m making a mozzarella-less caprese salad wrap/burrito. This wrap is so extremely quick & easy to make (as well as eat), & I LOVE no-fuss recipes/meals. Any recipe that takes less than 10 minutes to prep & eat is a winner in my book, & this wrap is the best. I’ve been eating this salad-y wrap for lunch for the past two weeks & I’m still not tired of it. Sometimes I’ll add a slice or two of deli sandwich meat, but I mostly eat it plain, just veggies. I am by NO MEANS
a vegitarian. God knows I love a good slab of medium-rare steak (& other delicious meats), but this no-meat wrap is sooo tasty too.
Well, this concludes my random blog ramblings. Until next time, cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 
You must be logged in to post a comment.