Life During a Pandemic

A week long project for my photo class where I'll life blog about my life during the 2020 apocalypse on here for the next 7 days.

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Conclusion of my project

So this concludes the end of my week long—turned 2 week— project. It’s been an interesting journey, kind of sad this is ending because this blog has actually been helping my productivity. But the saddest person may be my mom because I’ll stop taking food pics for her as I usually never do that. I really suck at documenting my life on my own. I want to write out my final thoughts on the projects because I can’t think things to say off the top of my head.

My project is framed by the themes of repetition, series, and sequence and ideas of archive, documentation, and time capsule. This blog is about my life in quarantine and how I am personally living it, so it might be very different from some others and not as covid-19 focused. I think the best way to navigate this blog is to randomly read the posts from archive and take notice of the time it was posted. Or if you want to see the bigger picture and evolution of the blog, then start at the beginning. I apologize for any spelling mistakes as I wrote most of my posts on the stop as things were happening. 

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King and the Dragonflies Wrap-Up

I’m going to try to sleep early tonight so I can start getting my circadian rhythm back to normal. But I just finished King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender and want to give some of my final thoughts about it. I’m going to give this book a 4/5 stars and that’s a really high rating coming from me. I think it just came to me at the right time, you know? It’s a coming-of-age story of self-discovery. The main character is 12 year old Kingston “King” James whose older brother recently died. King’s former best friend, Sandy, runs away from home because he is being abused by his bad. King had cut Sandy off when Sandy told him that he was gay because King’s brother told him to. King struggles with his own identity and personal relationships as he helps Sandy hides. It’s a middle grade book and I think the author did an amazing job capturing that magical time near the end of childhood. The characters were realistic in how they behaved. Though, I do think that some of the side characters and subplots can be more developed. However, I think for a middle grade book, it handled the themes it touches on really well. It’s quite amazing that Callender managed to include the topics of race, sexuality, homophobia, loss, innocence, grief, and growing up in a children’s book that isn’t even 300 pages. There were defiantly some unanswered questions, I don’t know if Callender just forgot about them or if it was purposely left ambiguous. But you can’t know everything even in real life I guess. The ending was perfect for this book and does not need a sequel. But I still want a sequel because it was that good! I would highly recommend people to listen to the audiobook, it made the story come to life for me. Callender has a new book coming out in May, so I’ll be on the look out for that.

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Just walked in on my sister petting the fruits..... 👀

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For my other set of siblings

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^my sister’s meal. Yes we all have our own different meals

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On Politics and Racism

It’s not that I’m against talking about controversial issues, rather I’m just tired of it. I know what’s going on, I understand the argument on both sides, I have my own opinions, other people have their own opinions, I’m not gonna change, they’re not gonna change. America’s politics is a mess as usual, and now racism is on the rise because of the coronavirus. Honestly, I am not surprised. No, it wasn’t surprising that people are ignorant shit heads. It is upsetting, yes. Now, as a Chinese American, I have not personally experienced any sort of racism against myself or my family so far. But since this whole thing has started, I have only been in “safe spaces”. I feel for all Asian Americans who are experiencing discrimination due to current events and I’m disappointed at the actions of certain individuals. When I started this blog, the first thing my sister asked me was am I gonna talk about racism? And I said, “maybe, if it comes up.” It hasn’t. But I guess I should still address it. But really, what can I say that hasn’t already been said? Racism is bad. Violence is bad. It’s really not that hard to be a decent person. The American government has been a laughingstock of the world for a long time, but with this pandemic, it just reveals that basically, every government is incompetent. Seriously, this be better than any TV dramas. Change is needed. And it’s coming. Better be. I feel that even hope among the youth is running out. When I talked with my friends over the past few days and this conversation pops up, they basically all said we are going to survive this virus, but we are NOT going to survive global warming lmao. I hope that we can learn from this catastrophic event and implement the changes we need. As for all the racists out there: fuck y’all. How American is it to break the law huh? Be prepared to face lawsuits and other repercussions after this ✌️

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So I’m not the only one who hates this class! Great to know, everyone is sick of this class and can’t wait for the semester to end.

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Had to stop for my Zoom class. Kind of happy to get a break from drawing because I was actually at it for hours. But a 3 hour Zoom classes is not where it’s at either.

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Learning how to draw flowers

Thanks to vonnart

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idk how to draw flowers

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

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Wow, I woke up at like 1pm, which is probably the earliest in a while

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Wind and thunder be going crazy out there right now

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Oh great, just great

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I just finished chapter 9 of King and the Dramgonflies, so I’m about half-way through the book. It’s been amazing so far. The book gives off a feeling of magical summer nights from childhood. I did hear that there may be some sort of a twist at the end, so hopefully it’ll be strong.

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So I finally finished my painting. There it is, mine at top, Monet’s original at the bottom. Yeahhh Monet did it better. I think it may be because I don’t know how to draw flowers. It’s tragic, I know. It was a strange and sudden realization sometime back with another flower painting I was trying to do. Things were actually going pretty great for this painting (and all my paintings really) till I got to the flowers, which was at the end. So, great time to fuck it all up cuz I can’t be going over everything just to fix it. And I’m just tired of this piece, I don’t want to work on it any longer. Honestly, just ignore the petals and look at the rest of the painting instead. But you know what’s sexy about my painting?

It glimmers 🌟

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Credit: original - Bouquet of Sunflowers (1881) by Claude Monet.

All Monet’s art are in public domain.

I saw this piece when I went to the MET in NYC back in December before the world ended. I really like Impressionism, but I just can’t do it :p