Author Archives: tc575

Revisiting a classic

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The last time I watched Totoro was years ago and I’m surprised by how much of the movie I had forgotten about. There’s Totoro + the mini Totoros and then the kind of unsettling Catbus but for some reason most of the plot just slipped my mind…

One of the things I find fascinating about the slice-of-life genre is how there isn’t much plot yet it’s still a consistently enjoyable hour and a half. A good chunk of it focused on Mei getting lost and I thought it was really nice how the whole village? town? came together to help search even though they had just moved in only recently.

I also really liked how open-minded the adults were when interacting with the children. For most of the movie you’re kind of left wondering if the kids just have really active imaginations but then the corn-on-the-windowsill just catches you a little off guard. Also, Kanta’s sailor cap was cool.

Overall this was a nice, (mostly) relaxing movie for a stressful semifinals week and I enjoyed it a lot.

Chernobyl Finale

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I really enjoyed this last viewing session of the Chernobyl series even if it was on a Friday night again… A good portion of part 4 was offscreen getting rid of the animals in the exclusion zone which was really sad. It also brought back into mind the Our Planet section about how ultimately it was animals that still managed to survive and live there. Having that in the back of my mind and then watching part 4 was a little upsetting.

Part 5 was a super riveting finale though! I liked how the will-he-won’t-he-spill-out-the-truth got stretched out and then ultimately paid off. I thought it was really cool how they spliced the explanation in the courtroom with the reenactment of what was happening real-time. I also spent a lot of time super disliking all the higher officials who were all just, “science doesn’t matter” and “I did no wrong” etc etc. I think it was interesting that they chose to end the acted-portion of the episode at the end of the trial and spend the final minutes using real footage as an epilogue of sorts.

Overall the series (I caught 3/5 of the episodes) was scary at parts, consistently sad, and very enjoyable.

Internships – Just Ask?

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I attended the internship panel and thought it was very helpful in giving me more information about the process of getting one. One of the main points I think all four panelists touched upon was that sometimes you just have to put yourself out there and see what happens. I had always been putting off looking for internships and research opportunities because it felt kind of weird to like, go up to someone and ask without having a bunch of experience or without knowing them personally… It turns out sometimes you can cold-email and get results. Rather than looking for specific advice, I think I attended the panel to kind of reassure myself that others go through the same thing and that it’s not as scary as it seems.

It doesn’t seem like I’ll be applying to anything in the near future, but now I feel like I’m more prepared to do so and will be more active/confident in my passive searching.

Our Planet – Forests

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We watched the Forest episode of Our Planet and I thought it was really interesting. It didn’t spend a lot of time on each section/area but there were a lot of cool animals shown. My favorite part was the clip about the Madagascar leaf bugs and the lemurs. First of all, they just looked really unique, with the white tendrils coming out of them. I thought it was really funny how the lemur’s food source is just the honeydew produced by the bugs. Other than that, I also found it funny when, during the birds(hornbills?)-fighting-in-midair scene, the narrator kinda just said “yeah we’re still not really sure why they do that…”

One of the later sections also focused on Chernobyl and how animals are still able to live in the zones where humans aren’t allowed in, which I thought was an interesting and unexpected tie-in to the ongoing Chernobyl Friday Film series.

More Crafting (A bit stickier this time)

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The suncatcher making session was the second hands-on crafting event that I’ve attended so far. Very rarely do we get to play with tissue paper (in my experience, at least) so I really liked the novelty of that. I went with the spiky one so cutting the leaf shape out was a bit difficult, especially cutting the inside out but I think it was worth it. Cutting the pieces of tissue paper to stick onto the clear sticky plastic sheet was very meditative. I did run into some trouble when spare pieces of paper starting sticking to the plastic sheet as well but ultimately the extra plastic was cut off so it didn’t matter. It was still a bit of a pain to seperate entire sheets of tissue paper from the plastic but it was actually pretty satisfying ripping it off. I went for a yellow-green-darkgreen color scheme for the inside of the leaf and added in some small orange bits to fill in the gaps. I was worried there’d be too many layers of tissue paper for light to shine through but it still did. There’s not much of a way to hang it up on the window but I’ll hold it to my desk lamp sometimes for fun!

Chernobyl Part 1 (For me at least)

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As someone who was not present for parts 1 and 2 of the Friday Film Chernobyl series, I went into part 3 with an “aw yikes, I’m gonna be so lost” mentality, so I was pleasantly surprised when I could still follow the plot along quite easily.

This episode was the part where they showed a lot of the fallout/repercussions following the main incident and so there were a couple of gruesome scenes that I kind of had to look away from… I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed watching with the subtitles on because some of the scary scenes would have the sound effects/music captioned on the bottom and made it more bearable to watch (Friday night and all).

It was a pretty sad episode overall… I felt really bad watching maybe 80% of the people there come to terms with their eventual and quickly approaching death. I was super conflicted about the scenes in the hospital where the wife went to visit her husband because you could clearly see how close they were to each other but on the other the back of my mind was constantly going “no no no they told you to stay away you’re going to die” so that was pretty sad too. There were also some political sections that I had a harder time following due to not having much context but overall I enjoyed the episode. I signed up for parts 4 & 5 so I’m looking forward to those as well.

Cascadilla Gorge Exploration

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Glacial Area of Cascadilla Gorge

Just a short walk away from the main waterfall

It’s been a year and a half of walking across the bridge overlooking Cascadilla gorge but not until recently had I actually gone down the trail to the gorge itself. I don’t know what I expected but it definitely was nothing like the walk around Beebe Lake. The trail as a whole had a lot more stairs: it was maybe three flights of winding, cracked-stone sterps before evening out into a flat (but still not a path you’d want to take your eyes off from while walking). I went pretty close to sunset but there were still a few small groups taking pictures near the first thrid of the trail. I really underestimated how tiring the walk would be but it was really fun! It’s like, you see the pictures of the gorges everywhere but once you get there in person it’s like, huh, this is a real place? Even though the trail itself is right next to collegetown it felt like a completely different place. Even if the walk is a bit uneven and really keeps you on your toes I still recommend it a lot just as a place to take a break and explore for a while, even if only for half an hour.

Thinking vaguely about future plans

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I signed up for the seminar mainly to force myself to think concretely about it. Before it was like, oh, I guess I’ll go to grad school, oh, that’s not something I need to bother with now, and the train of thought ended there. But having the process outlined in front of me really made me think about why I was even considering going in the first place. Just because it felt like the right thing to do? Or because I couldn’t come to terms with already somehow being halfway through my academic years? Even now, I’m still not so sure.

The seminar itself was a bit scary at times, but extremely informative. It really turned “grad school” from this vague idea to something I could realistically start thinking about and plan for. I mean, I still barely have any idea of what I want to do, but at least I now know how to go about it. It was a good reminder to take a step back and evaluate my choices and what I’m aiming to do. Previously it was just fulfilling base requirements regarding classes, but now I’m reminded that I’m close to the point where I really have to start making choices…

Card-making, a much-needed break

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The card-making workshop was a really nice way to take a break from an endless slog of textbook notes and lecture recordings. Taking the time to sit down and do something creative rather than staring at a screen for another hour really put into perspective how I had spent the past few weeks…

I think I usually put in a good amount of effort when it comes to card-picking commercially, although I don’t really do it often. I’ll at least pick a card with something funny on the cover, like “We need to talk”, and maybe doodle inside. Nowadays, though, there just aren’t that many reasons to send cards anymore, especially since it might feel a bit awkward unless you’re close to the person you’re sending them to. But I think that’s because I usually end up being more sentimental with card-writing than like, over text or phone call. I honestly found thinking of what to write/who to send them to much harder than the card-making itself, but it’s not the cards are going anywhere.

I really enjoyed the card-making kit that I received; I had a lot of fun thinking of ways to incorporate all the materials into my cards, which I think turned out really nice.