I am writing my first monthly reflections on the last day of the first month of the new year for my new site. If that is not a text book example of a fresh start, I don’t know what is.
I have been trying to get into the groove of keeping a journal more diligently and reviewing what I have accomplished over a day, a week, and now, a month. This gives me an appreciation of what I have learned, experienced, and struggled with.
Writing
I bought an Midori MD A5 notebook this year and have to admit that the paper quality is outstanding. Overall, it’s a fairly simple notebook but it does its job very well. The paper does not bleed through which is something I’ve always wanted with thin paper.
Fittingly, I wrote some thoughts on note-taking.
Crafting
Earlier this month, my partner and I went to our local craft shop for a sticker making workshop. I painted a Chinese lantern, and an iced coffee that looks like a Horchata. They now live in my Midori notebook.
Reading
At the beginning of this year, I finally finished The Grapes of Wrath which I thoroughly enjoyed. It took me longer than I expected to finish. The use of vernacular was hard to read as a non-native speaker.
I got The Pacific Circuit as a gift from my partner for Christmas. It describes how the city of Oakland, particularly the West side, was transformed from a buzzing predominantly black neighborhood to the epicenter of Pacific trade. By the use of eminent domain, blacks were displaced to make way for the Oakland port. I learned a lot, the book itself however was not very well written.
An annual tradition of mine is to read that year’s Booker Prize winner. I liked David Szalay’s minimalistic and ‘economic’ prose in Flesh.
Watching
Movies
I was busy this month! One of my, rather lighthearted, goals this years is to watch every Palme d’Or winner of the Cannes Film Festival. I watched
- Brief Encounter
- Rome, Open City
- Viridiana
- Anatomy of a Fall
- Torment
- Taste of Cherry
- Farewell My Concubine
Separately, I got caught up with some Oscar contenders and watched
Hard to pick a favorite for Best Picture, but realistically, it’s going to be a coin toss between Sinners and One Battle After Another.
Misc
I learned what elicitation) means. It’s pretty wild.
Elicitation is a technique to obtain information from someone without raising the suspicion of the interrogated.
Listening
I bought myself some nice vinyls recently, my favorite has been Pisces Iscariot by the Smashing Pumpkins.