the opener in Beijing deserved better

20260815 - Saturday

Haven't had the most productive weeks- but I suppose that could be said about every week I've lived through this year. I've watched a lot of movies recently, including my first movie theater experience abroad. I'm sad I haven't been keeping up with the blogosphere lately though! I need to remember the homepage mini-blog more often...

Actually, between when I started this post and when you're seeing it, I've found work finally! Full-time work, at that. Updates may be even more sporatic than the last few months... I'm a bit sad, I do want to keep up with the blog, but it'll only be harder. For anyone curious, I applied to 41 places in the span of 2 1/2 months and got 9 replies, meaning 32 jobs ghosted. Isn't that fun?

Craft Progress

I have a few pieces in the works now (as outlined in the last two posts), and I've been favoring the fox pattern from Needlelot Designs the most so far- I haven't worked in-hand in a minute though, so I've been having to stretch a lot.

The hardanger fabric is really lovely- it's new to me but if/when I eventually run out of my current fabric stash, I'll have to remember hardanger is a bit more cozy to me than linen. This blog post has a nice write-up on what the fabric is, because I had no idea what it was when I bought it. I'm not sure yet if I'll try any hardanger embroidery techniques with it, but I have a decent amount left still...

Japanese Progress

I've been running behind quite a bit with updating my Japanese progress, but I think I've been doing very well this year in comparison to the last few.

⊳ Tadoku:花と色, 野菜の花, and 寒い日は「おなべ」. Then, あんこちゃん ～季節のお菓子～ and is one I've read more recently. I think I'm almost out of free level 0 books...

⊳ Mango: I've had this service through the library for a little while, but I haven't been using it as often. I recently re-visited the older quiz materials & was happy to have improved more than I expected. I find it hard to memorize full phrases, which makes this app more difficult to me. There's also no kanji option- everything is displayed in furigana and I don't like it at all.

Movies (in lieu of reading, ope)

First, I want to talk about seeing WHAM!: 10 Days in China. My partner had a giftcard we'd been sitting on for a while, & I've been hesitant about going to the movies because I always have the worst luck ever with other moviegoers- arguments over seats mid-movie, phone screens on full brightness, flash photos being taken of the movie screen, but worst of all, my poor back getting kicked to hell. This recent experience was no different. Maybe it's an easy fix, to sit in the back row instead, we showed up kind of early- but that leaves the majority of a theater vunerable to a level of inconsideration I have a hard time wrapping my head around. The experience was not helped by the duo sitting next to me, who talked through the whole thing... On the other side of my partner, a woman had brought a hand fan, which was clacking through the quietest moments of the documentary with every wrist-flick. This woman was also on her phone towards the end on full brightness. The people behind us started bickering with her... I was so annoyed! It was a point in the documentary where you could clearly tell it'd be over soon- and she had to look at her phone now instead of 5 minutes later?

The redeeming factor is I enjoyed the documentary (for the most part). I don't know much about WHAM! besides what I'd looked up on Wikipedia and the small bits of their discography I listened to in preparation for seeing the doc. We had shallowly chosen to see it because the trailer was interesting, and the 80s film looks cool. Either way, it's an interesting story.

As far as critiques go, for one, a lot of the theater audience laughed at expressions and reactions made by Chinese people who were filmed during the tour, hearing Western pop for the first time. I think the movie lended itself quite a bit to these reactions- it made me a bit nervous at the beginning of the documentary to see it had been partially funded by BBC & I think I was correct in feeling so. The framing of some of these shots that got laughed at felt very much set up to elicit that sort of response of "I can't believe how different (re: weird and bad) these people are from us." I can understand if this critisism is moot, some of the reactions to the music were genuinely funny- but most were very plain, and those moments where the audience laughed at zooms on blank-faced listeners were confusing to me. I wonder if it's even something I would've noticed had I been in a different crowd, or in no crowd at all. There were a few stray laughs as well when both George's and Andrew's names get mispronounced by a Chinese diplomat, which is something I'd never think to react to (the true offense to me is not the Chinese man's pronunciation of their names, it's how British people as a whole pronunciate Chi-ner. Yuck!).

The other critique is its shallowness. The premise (spoilers ahead) of the documentary is WHAM!'s manager convinced Chinese officials to let the duo play two concerts over there as a means to break into an American market, with the Chinese simply being a stepping stone in the operation. I didn't really know anything about mid-80s China before entering the theater, and I still don't, but the whole idea is they're doing these concerts solely for the American press to catch on to because China had been previously closed off to other Western-isms before their visit. But they don't reckon with this idea whatsoever- they're doing interviews with a now quite aged Andrew Ridgeley & it all still seems like a big joke to him. I guess it's that they wanted to keep the documentary under a certain time limit and only wanted to focus on the feelings of the two members, and I think I expected them to be a bit more introspective. I also think the audience I was with would not have enjoyed that sort of angle focusing on the colonial, indifferent types of feelings they had towards an entire country full of people ready to become fans of them & of Western music more broadly. Like, who cares about Chinese people, right? They never revisited the country together because WHAM! broke up the year after their visit, and as the documentary says, George never revisited China & I don't think Andrew did until they were filming the documentary. In the truest way, they were unashamed of their view of China as completely secondary to the States.

Anyway, those are my flimsy thoughts about WHAM!: 10 Days in China. Interesting but shallow. I'd really like to know if anyone is reading this having seen the documentary for themselves, & what their thoughts on it might be. I also think I'm happy to have gone into the theater, because I think this wouldn't have gotten nearly as much thought as if I'd watched it at home. Being surrounded by people who made me feel such pessimism about the world compelled me to actually find critiques I might not have felt otherwise.

A few other movies I've seen lately are A Better Tomorrow (1986, dir. John Woo), and The Cremator (1969, dir. Juraj Herz). I've seen the latter before, a few years ago, and I didn't find myself scared at all during the re-watch (I had previoudly found it terrifying). A Better Tomorrow is new to me, and I didn't care for it at all- I think crime thriller(?) types just aren't for me. There's two follow-up movies to A Better Tomorrow, and my partner wants to watch them, but I don't think I can be convinced... I think, going into the fall, I'd like to watch more autumnal/wintery movies, but I also want to avoid re-watching movies even though it's the comfortable thing to do.

Miscellaneous

⊳ I finally downloaded Notepad++. I hadn't been sure which editor I wanted to try first, but I'm glad I can use this when I'm offline & that the interface is very plain.

⊳ In addition to finding work, I'll be starting drivers lessons soon. I am NOT excited to do this, but I have to if I want to start working in my usual field again. I worry about being stuck in dead-end low-paying jobs forever- my normal work isn't lucrative either. I feel like as I'm working this new job, I'll have to start looking into whole career shifts, even though I'd rather stay in my normal sector. It's just that every other career path also seems to be suffering, and I only chose my undergrad major with the feeling of "if every industry is in a hard place, I may as well struggle in the career I want instead of struggling in a career I hate." But, obviously, I'd rather not suffer/struggle/toil at all, lol?