Valerean

I decided to quit Netflix after not watching it all summer, so that's one less monthly subscription. I've long disliked how they kept me from watching everything due to my basic status (I refused to pay more when they got greedy), inserted commercials in everything I could watch, and kept jacking up the price. I can watch Tubi for free, and plenty of content on Youtube as well, so why would I waste my money on them? One subscription I am keeping is Viki, which doesn't overcharge me or bombard me with commercials. Admittedly all their content is Asian, but that's what I like to watch, so we're good there. Onto the rewatch: a few years back I originally watched and reviewed Road Home , and I wanted to give it another go because I really like Jing Bo Ran as an actor, and I thought I would finally settle on whether or not I like this series. Verdict: I do like it. It's grown-up and features realistic, grounded conflicts that you don't expect from Ch...

Seeking Persephone is a short four-part historical British romance series based on a novel written by an American romance author. Yes, you may cringe. It has a somewhat sparse production (likely to save money) and a storyline that is not particularly historically accurate or even remotely plausible (my opinion, of course.) Given my upbringing I found the whole thing gruesomely fascinating, and spent a couple of hours being very grateful I escaped my past while watching it. The author, screenwriter (or perhaps both) follow in the LDS footsteps of Twilight's Stephanie Meyer, which makes it safe for any tween to watch. The lead female is purchased (yes, literally) by a Duke who has a bit of scarring on his face and no right ear to speak of. He pays over $100,000.00 pounds for this girl, a penniless female with absolutely no prospects whatsoever, once again affirming that you can have any woman you want if you throw enough cash at her family -- which still happens today, just...

Pretty Crazy is a Korean romantic comedy movie about demonic possession, if there is such a thing in any universe, but it is quite amusing and doesn't come with the usual ejections of pea soup we have in the west. It's very clever, well-written and has a somewhat sad turn of events, but nothing that will make you want to throw anything at your screen. The story: Jeong Seon-ji (Lim Yoona) is a baker who lives with her father and cousin, and moves in beneath Gil-goo (Ahn Bo-hyun), an unemployed man who has no skills other than winning prizes from claw machines. From the very first night Gil-goo not only falls for the lovely, gentle and quiet Seon-ji, but also witnesses her demonstrating some bizarre behavior in the middle of the night. In short order Gil-goo discovers his crush is possessed by a demon that wakes up every night at 2 am and must be appeased or she becomes a one-demon wrecking ball. Seon-ji's dad throws out his back trying to cope, and hires Gil-goo t...

Learning to Love is a Japanese romantic drama series that I probably shouldn't have watched, as I'm not a fan of the Japanese version of lounge lizards. Also, an average-looking teacher who is thirty-five falling for said extremely dramatic-looking lounge lizard when he's twenty-three (even thought he has a learning disability) seems like a stretch. Still, I wanted to see if they could pull it off, and for the most part they did. Ogawa Manami (Kimura Fumino) a high school teacher who still lives at home and is being pressured to get married by her overbearing father and dishrag of a mother, meets Kaoru (Murakami Raul Maito), a 23-year-old nightclub host who dropped out of school and cannot functionally read or write. This is at first to save one of her students from Kaoru's clutches, but the two gradually become friends and Manami tries to teach him how to read and write so he can improve his life and get out of the host business. It goes about how you'd exp...

I want to say upfront that watching the Chinese historical romance drama Pursuit of Jade can become very addicting, and by the time you reach the final episode you'll wonder if you just spent a couple of years in the past watching all the fascinating characters play out their equally absorbing storylines. This series has become notorious for several reasons, including one of the most justifiably admired, show-stealing antagonists ever (my hat is off to Deng Kai, the actor who played the role, but we'll get to him shortly.) This story sprawls in different directions, but it basically follows the romance between Fan Changyu (Tian Xiwei), a female pig butcher with super human strength, and Xie Zheng,(Zhang Linghe), a wounded warrior she finds in the snow. Yes, I know, that doesn't sound appetizing, but in reality it's brilliant. Changyu believes her guy is simply an ordinary soldier who needs her help to recover and survive; Xie Zheng is in fact the Marquis of Wu...

Love Beyond the Grave tells an epic love story between a mortal warrior general Duan Xu (Chen Feiyu) and the ghostly sovereign of the spirit world He Si Mu (Dilraba Dilmurat) against a historical backdrop of war, scheming conspiracies in both worlds and terrible losses. Si Mu has incredible powers and commands respect from all the other immortals in the other world, while Duan Xu kind of has the same role in our world, and with as many if not more problems. This is a long 40-episode xuanhuan (general fantasy) story, and in a way it takes that long to play out the epic plot. Every time I thought these two could have some time for each other, fate decided otherwise. Duan Xu is quite noble, and temporarily gives up his senses so Si Mu can experience life as a mortal (she has never been mortal and has no senses of her own.) Meanwhile, Duan Xu is trying through his efforts to reclaim some territories taken over by the enemy to stabilize a very rocky governnment and help friends at ...

I've set aside all my crocheting to finish my March tote for the calendar project, but it's been slow going from the start, and I'm starting to resent how long it takes me to feather stitch, something I've never before experienced. I think that's why I've avoided the tote making for a couple days this month. Crochet is easier so it makes me feel better about myself. I need to work on that bad attitude. I set aside this vintage crazy quilted piece for next month's tote, but because of all the embroidery I wanted to do on it that might not be the wisest choice. I need to do something fun to get my heart back into the project. This video shows how to fuse quilting with crochet, and tempts me to try that next month. I could also do a spin on this crochet and fabric pattern from Yarnspirations to make my April tote half crochet and half quilted. Since childhood I've avoided what makes me unhappy by removing myself from the situation and doing s...

I like exercise and adjusting my diet to control my diabetes. It's brought my A1C down over four points, and it's improved my mood and helped me sleep better. That said, I still have very bad food cravings at night. I don't know why, it's just the worst time of day for me, especially with junk foods. This is the reason why I prefer to stay busy after dinner. I also drink sparkling mineral water with no carbs or calories or stress relief lavender tea with a little stevia to keep me from snacking. I've never found anything that eliminates those cravings, however, until I watched this video. I already eat oatmeal three or four times a week to help with my high cholesterol, and it does fill me up. The high fiber drink Mei recommends with rolled oats and flaxseed (about 5:11 into the video) is one I thought wouldn't work for me at night. I tried it anyway, and to my shock after drinking it my cravings went away entirely, and didn't come back. If...

I'm keeping my threat to watch more documentaries, and started with Egypt's Lost Pyramid on Tubi. I love archaeology, and while I'm more interested in Celtic finds I do think ancient Egyptians were pretty interesting, especially in regard to their outstanding feats of tomb building and engineering. This documentary is less than an hour long, and has a pretty decent locked room-style mystery involved with the discovery of a supposedly untouched 4,000 year-old tomb in a pyramid that someone got into without leaving any trace of how they broke in and looted it. I figured out the mystery fairly quickly, but I still enjoyed seeing the site team work together to solve it. Free to watch on Tubi .

I'm not sure why I decided to watch the Tawainese criminal thriller movie The Abandoned on Netflix. I've been so into avoiding darkness of any variety that these sort of movies no longer have any appeal for me. Life is scary enough, you know? But I think I was looking for something different because boredom got the better of me. Moving forward, I think I'll go watch a documentary instead. The film opens with a woman about to commit suicide in her car. Some frightened kids interrupt her, and she goes to see a corpse that has washed up on shore. Police later arrive, and we learn the woman is a troubled police officer. Gradually as she investigates the death of the woman she found we learn that she's deeply depressed over the suicide by gun of her husband, to the point of where she sleeps in the car where he killed himself (also explaining the beginning) and frequently touches the bloodied bullet hole in the ceiling liner. Finally she becomes drawn into the murd...

As Fred Rogers is one of my personal heroes, I was interested in seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood when it first came out in 2019, but by then my hearing made any movie viewing without captioning impossible. When I saw Tubi had added it to their collection of free movies I was really pleased. Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers with eerie precision, and an obvious respect for the man who influenced generations of young children. The relationship he develops with an angry, damaged journalist who comes to interview him is heart-warming but seems unlikely (if you've been around as many damaged people as I have, you know they only take advantage of kindness and understanding) but I was willing to go along with it. I simply disagree with the message of bringing harmful people back into your life for the sake of forgiveness, especially when they have not changed or stopped causing harm. Women especially are almost expected to do this as part of some faith-based agenda, an...

I'm currently rewatching My Little Happiness , a romance c-drama that I've already seen twice, and I have to admit it never gets old. From my first review: the romance begins with childhood friends Cong Rong (Xing Fei) and Wen Shaoqing (Tang Xiaotian). Rong is a fiesty little girl who can't stand seeing shy, chubby Shaoqing being bullied, and stands up for him. They quickly become best friends, but then Rong's father passes away, and she leaves the school, promising to return and see Shaoqing again, but never does. Twenty or so years later, a very short but quite cute Rong returns from abroad to China for an internship at a law firm, and is assigned to the hospital where the towering and now very handsome Shaoqing works as a neurosurgeon. There's a lot going on in this drama, from Rong's mom not wanting her to become a lawyer to Shaoqing's poet uncle being unable to move on after being dumped by his first love. Rong also has a rich best friend who is...

The Chinese movie Just for Meeting You (badly translated, my guess is it should have been Just to Meet You ) has a delightful little old-fashioned romance between two high school students. This is very G-rated, and there isn't so much as one kiss, so you really watch it for the characters. The premise: Yang Si Huo (Sonh Wei Long), a high school boy who longs for outer space but is otherwise a slacker and a goof-off, and new transfer student Xu Nian Nian (Liu Hao Cun), a lovely, smart but somewhat mysterious girl who becomes the object of his pranks. This evolves into a close friendship as they discover they're kindred spirits, but then college opportunities separate them. A few years later they reunite after Nian Nian finds a hidden letter Si Huo gave her before they graduated. I won't spoil the rest but the ending is particularly satisfying as it reveals the mystery of Nian Nian's character and why they used this title for the movie. This is a feel-good wa...

Some years back I began ending contact with people who for whatever reason had a toxic affect on me. This included colleagues, friends, and nearly all of my family members. I did not tell anyone why because at the time I honestly didn't understand why I was doing it; I just knew I needed to. I ended my relationships as politely as I could, but regardless I hurt some feelings. I have always tried to be accessible and helpful to the people in my life. I'm a very dependable person, and they counted on me to listen to and tolerate their problems, even when they never reciprocated. I also put up with a lot of toxic behavior from them because I believed eventually they would grow up and change. They never did. Funny that after treating me so badly most of them still thought they had the right to be in my life, and got very upset with me for ending the relationships. Now I know why I let go of so many relationships. After more than sixty years on the planet it was ti...

I was able to watch three episodes of the c-drama Boss & Me before I finally had to call it quits. Here's the description of the series I copied from Wikipedia: "Feng Teng (Hans Zhang) is a rich heir and the president of a giant conglomerate. He has a younger sister, Feng Yue, with a very rare blood type. Therefore, he recruits Shan Shan (Zhao Liying), who shares the same blood type as Feng Yue, into the company to be a blood donor. Interesting anecdotes occur when Feng Teng intentionally tries to fatten up Shan Shan, who loves eating. As Feng Teng gets to know Shan Shan, he discovers her innocence and kind heart beyond her clumsy nature, and falls in love with her." Aside from the fact that someone thought it was fine to view a woman as a blood bank and a farm animal, the character of Shan Shan is depicted as the most clueless and mind-numbingly idiotic female of all time. She constantly loses touch with reality as she cheers herself on, and this is in almost ...

I started watching the first season of the medical romance k-drama Hospital Playlist but stopped when it triggered some bad memories of my own experiences; although I like romance it's hard for me to watch any medical-centered drama for those reasons. I did like the cast and the story, however, so I eventually I got over myself, went back and watched both seasons on Netflix. The series follows and the professional and personal lives of five very young-looking physicians in their forties; four men and one woman, all of whom work at the same hospital. They're all brilliant doctors, of course, but they also have fairly significant issues in their personal lives (one is divorced with a child, one is divorced with a domineering snooty mother, two are romantic disasters for different reasons and one is actually thinking about becoming a priest.) The thing that makes this series different is that the doctors have been friends since college, and have the kind of group relationsh...

Everyone lately (including my nephew) has been telling me and my guy how young we are for our ages. We're committed to staying active, eating healthy and going on little adventures and having fun whenever possible, but being 76 and 64 we're obviously not young anymore. We've seen friends and family pass away at ages younger than we are because they gave up, became sedentary and refused to accept the realiy of ageing. That's not us. At 64 I still have a full-time job, and although he's retired he works as a handyman around our neighborhood. He loves to talk to people every day. Although it's more difficult for me to communicate because of my hearing impairment, I am still active on social media with my blogs and over on Mastodon, and through them I can talk to people all over the world. We don't really think of ourselves as seniors, either. In most aspects age really is a state of mind. Here's an amazing video by a 100 year-old woman who t...

Watching the Chinese racing romantic drama Speed and Love took a while for me, frankly, because aside from the length (29 episodes) the storyline had an abrupt disjointed remaking of itself about two-thirds of the way through which almost ruined it for me. I came away thinking someone majorly messed with the script at that point to make the series something else, and it suffered a lot because of it. The premise is the story of two non-blood-related siblings Jiang Mu (Esther Yu) a pampered little girl, and Jin Zhao (He Yu), an abandoned boy who becomes her older brother. Mu's parents get divorced, and her dad and Jin Zhao move to Thailand. As soon as she grows up, Mu heads to Thailand to find her brother, who is now a really handsome thug who races cars and fights in underground boxing matches. The attraction between them abruptly shifts from siblings to lovers, and then Mu learns that Zhao is risking his life in dangerous races for very noble reasons. Up to the point wh...

I finally watched all 36 episodes of the Chinese office romance drama series Shine on Me , which really did teach me more than I ever wanted to know about the photovoltaics industry. It also does qualify as one of the slowest of slow-burn romances with one major misunderstanding, a bunch of minors, and a very odd secondary romantic plotline that still seems a bit enigmatic, and that is something the Chinese are definitely not known for at all, so there you go. Song Wei Long did a fantastic job as Lin Yu Sen, a former neurosurgeon and member of a high-powered family, who is haunted by the accident that ended his career. He blames Nie Xi Guang (Zhao Jin Mai), the beautiful daughter of another high-powered family, for the accident, as he was going to meet her when the crash happened. This is the major misunderstanding, btw, and it's kind-sorta plausible, although it casts Nie Xi Guang in an unfavorable light for rather too long. Meanwhile, Xi Guang has this whole other un...

Anyone who embroiders and loves history like me has heard of the Bayeux Tapestry. An embroidered length of linen that is 20 inches wide and nearly 230 feet long, the tapestry dates back to the 11th century, within a few years of when William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England and became king. Technically it's not a tapestry, but an embroidered cloth, but everyone just calls it that, so okay. Tubi has a free to watch documentary about the conservation and research being done on this marvelous and mysterious artifact, so of course I jumped right on that. The documentary is absolutely fascinating. I had no idea the French and other researchers were actively researching the tapestry, or what they've been able to accompish. Seeing the tapestry in its original colors was stunning. So was the fact that these folks have managed to save a cloth that is basically a thousand years old, and one of the oldest embroidered works still in existence and intact. The only down side for...