2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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Stranger Things
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Game of Thrones Daily
trying on a metaphor
todays bird
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Monterey Bay Aquarium
@theartofmadeline
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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Not today Justin
Xuebing Du
d e v o n
Keni
Andulka
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One Nice Bug Per Day
Product Placement
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@chaodeng
At first, everything about the other person feels fresh, what’s predictable feels comfortable. But too quickly you learn the other person’s hobbies and habits. You inhabit their world, language and views.
You had a journey of your own, longing for a bond that warrants a lifetime. This, here, isn't it.
a home was not built in one day
translucent you
your parts are shells of humor, sarcasm, arrogance. but there’s a core, protected, another you.
Feeling rouge
10 THINGS TO LIVE BY
Shanghai edition:
1) Hear yes, think no.
2) Assume the guy you met has a wife.
3) Understand the Chinese by understanding their dreams.
4) Be patient.
5) Let fly when something breaks.
6) Know the right people.
7) Know how to get in.
7) Don’t take advantage of people.
9) Don’t let it get to your head.
10) Do not buy the Chanel bag.
10 THINGS TO LIVE BY
Oldies:
1) Be patient with your parents. They’re growing old.
2) Let them finish their sentence.
3) Let them win.
4) Aim for success, but know its meaning will change.
5) Aim high.
6) Criticize yourself, not others.
7) Never hold grudges.
8) Take the positives in people you meet.
9) Make plans to see old friends.
10) Remember birthdays.
10 THINGS TO LIVE BY
On habits:
1) Don’t keep carbs lying around the kitchen.
2) Don’t sacrifice fashion at the gym.
3) Throw away socks with holes.
4) Swim before you run, not after.
5) Go through life, swimmingly.
6) Overeating should be followed by over-exercising.
7) Old habits don’t have to die hard.
8) The inside of a fridge says a lot about a person.
9) Check that person’s fridge.
10) Never leave yours empty.
“If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire”
-St. Catherine of Siena
soba: thin noodles, often made from buckwheat flour
zaru: a bamboo tray that chilled soba is served on
tsuyu: a sauce to dip soba in
I took my mum for sushi at Haiku when she came to Shanghai. At the end of this video, she displays her amazing sideways videography skills. Please watch. And apologies for the dim lighting.
live by it
say it like it is
I'm sure at some point, you've been frustrated by someone who needs a whole paragraph to get one simple point across. That's why I love to talk with people who's first language isn't English. Non-native speakers don't have much to work with, so they don't fuss around with the words they know.
The expats in Shanghai are the best examples, many of them being French and Italian. When they speak English, they are blunt - 'I don't like this.' 'What do you want?' 'Please.' 'No.'
It's exactly how I sound when I'm interviewing a local forex trader in Chinese. I'm fine speaking to my family and friends in Chinese, but I can't get a hang of all the jargon about liquidity, currency swaps, this and that. I've completely scrapped the need to ask questions elegantly or set a scene for the interview. 'What's the yuan doing? Why. Wait, whyyy?' Sorry, trader-on-the-other-side-of-the-phone-line. Maybe you too can appreciate my bluntness!
I am reminded of how refreshing it is to be as simple as possible, after reading The New Yorker's interview with author Jhumpa Lahiri. Already one of the masters of creative writing English, Lahiri recently started learning and writing in Italian. She says that she would only have three words her new language to describe the sky versus twenty-five in English, but that she finds a "strange purity" to this limitation. Lahiri also describes writing imperfectly in Italian as "freedom."
"I feel what I felt as a child, when I was first learning how to write stories, when I was first writing stories, and I was first experiencing that pleasure of putting sentences on paper and the excitement that it would give me," she says.
"How I explain it to people is that I feel as though I’ve tied my right hand behind my back on purpose and I’m writing with my left hand, and I recognize how much sloppier it is, how much more awkward it is, how much more out of control it is in a way. But I also love doing without so much."
Italian lends itself especially well to fewer words (mi amore and we're good, right?) but the point here applies to all languages. There's no need to get your tongue totally handicapped.
“Danger! Dancer's Room!” -Gabriella Marie Limón
a moment from 1997
The blankets and cushions were placed neatly on the bay window and the typhoon outside couldn’t disturb a thing that evening. She lay on her side, close to the glass, with the view fogging up at her each breath. Squinting, she could just make out a strip of pavement 26-storeys below. The rain melted like embers from a firework, harmless from a distance, and all could have been a castle of dreams that hour. The grey outside made her sleepy and she left untouched the plate of grapes her parents brought in earlier. Father was talking gently with mother and the two were going to relax on the bed nearby. For the first time in a year, in that room, they became a family again.
“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.” -Ondaatje