If You Don't Mind Coincidences

I started watching the chinese romantic comedy series Everyone Loves Me to boost my spirits after the again dismal Three-Body, and it was a good choice. It's a college-to-business romance (one-sided on both sides at different times) set in the gaming industry, and if you don't mind too many coincidences you'll probably enjoy this one.

The story begins with soon-to-graduate art student Qianling (Zhou Ye), who has a huge crush on her classmate Gu Xun (Lin Yi). They cross paths at a gaming company as she ends her internship while he is hired to develop a AAA game. Although she's taking advice on how to entice the boy she adores from Campus Hunk, one of her online gaming friends, everything she does is misunderstood by Gu Xun at every turn. When she finally works up the nerve to confess her feelings he crushes her in front of their entire graduating class. Meanwhile, Gu Xun has fallen for a tough, no-nonsense extremely skilled female gamer who goes by the online handle Sticky Dough Twist (she's Qianling, of course.) Did I mention that Gu Xun goes by the name Campus Hunk online, and has been telling Qianling how to snare her guy without realizing it's him she's after? Yep.

The relationship tangle plays out as you'd expect -- both the leads discover the other's secret identity, and are horrified (Gu Xun) and furious (Qianling.) Gu Xun then pursues Qianling, who wants nothing to do with him after the way he humiliated her. They both end up as neighbors as well as working at the same company again, and eventually find ways to work out their problems. Just as they're starting their relationship, a series of problems with the game they're developing threatens to tear them apart and destroy all their dreams and hard work.

It's a fun, mostly not-too-serious romantic romp, and for once the female lead doesn't appear annorexic. I thought Lin Yi was an interesting choice as the male lead, he's definitely got a different look than most Chinese lead actors (which endeared him to me.) There are a couple of subplots in the series that are fun, and overall it's pretty well written if you don't count the coincidences. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a romantic distraction. Available on Netflix and Viki.com.

Comments

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

Search This Blog