HELLO

I meant to post about this before I left last Sunday, but I went to Shanghai for five days! :D (I was doing the headless chicken thing before we left, which began with me charging mp3 players on my laptop, helping to pick stuff up, etc, etc, and culminated in my dropping my laptop corner-first onto my foot. It was in its case, so there was protection there, but still.)

It was pretty fun. We didn't do as much sight-seeing as I would have done if I'd gone with my immediate family only, but we were there for my grandmother, and it was good. I did buy five ocarinas at a fraction of the price it would have sold for here. (RMB658, which is SGD131; a single instrument in my set of four six-hole ocarinas would have set me back about SGD60~70 if I'd bought it here, and my monstrously large 12-hole 陶笛 would have cost even more. SO I am pretty okay with my exorbitant spending!) I am learning to play 天空之城, which I thought was a Chinese song because I thought I'd heard it in Face to Fate; my brother strenuously disagreed and thought it was Japanese. We quarrelled amiably over it for a few days, and then we came home yesterday and found out its original name is 天空の城 and it's from Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which I should have guessed from the name only I could only remember it as '天空之something' and the 城 bit is kind of crucial to understanding that it is about a city in the sky.

We went to the ancient water city of Zhouzhuang, which is an hour and half outside Shanghai, and I took loads and loads of photos for research (for the mercy goddess' daughter; I have finally figured out how the next scene I need to write should work). My aunt said it was 'the Venice of China', but really, everything that has canals is the Venice of somewhere, so I took it for its own thing. It was lovely and I bought more stuff there. I also had my Chinese name done on a seal in Yuyuan Gardens (which is an awkward name because it's 'Yu Garden Gardens') and whatever, tourist trap IT LOOKS AMAZING. And we ate lots of xiaolongbao because duh, Shanghai and xiaolongbao.

I also watched Korra! No spoilers, but I have been enjoying it, and I do not understand why people are calling her a white saviour because she isn't... white. She is a sheltered, privileged kid who will, I think, receive character development before the show is done with her, so YOU KNOW.

OH, OH, THE MUSIC WAS AWESOME.

And apparently there are trailer spoilers and I have gotten kind of spoiled. I thought I was going to be okay after watching the first two eps. WHOOPS. Oh well. It's shipping stuff I'm spoiled for now, so that's okay.