Whatever Floats Your Boat

 AKA, the things that kept me going through this long, bloody pandemic.

There are five weeks of this shittacular* school year left.  There have been ever-present temptations to murder the nearest dumbasses for nearly a year and a half now, but surprisingly enough, I'm still sane.  This week, I thought I might share my coping strategies.  So here goes.

1. Danmei:  Okay, so I flirted with the dark side before, but for the most part I was in denial about my potential to go full-on fujoshi.**  See, I watched Yuri on Ice to see what all the fuss was about, and had to admit it was cute.  A while later I watched Banana Fish for much the same reason, which turned out to be a mistake, because the ending REALLY pissed me off.  Between that and all the female fandom's weird, non-canon shipping, I was convinced that the BL genre had nothing to offer me.  But then last March, out of boredom and the fact that anime was having a dark age, I caved and tried a little Chinese animation called Mo Dao Zu Shi.  I spent the next week caught up in the lives of the two protagonists, progressing from the animation to the manhua and finally beginning the webnovel (because as it turns out, if one beautiful male character is good, two are even better).  And then I read the rest of the author's oeuvre.  And re-read it.  And eventually broke out and started reading other authors.  So while the fact remains that I have a complicated relationship with China, I've got to admit I find their boys' love more compelling than Japan's.  Sadly it will probably be a while before I get to live out my dreams of wandering the jianghu, but for now, I don't know how I would have gotten through the last year - particularly the last month or so - without danmei webnovels.

2. My flute:  This is not a euphemism (no matter how many times my Dark Lord and Master may have made insinuations about band camp).  I started bringing my flute with me after the year we did Kiss Me, Kate, but just started playing it with any regularity since the pandemic started.  And more specifically, since I got into Mo Dao Zu Shi.  This is relevant because one of the two main characters controls zombies animated corpses with a flute, and maybe about that time I found myself wanting to cultivate my own flute skills.  Okay, sure, mostly I just cultivate anisongs, but you know what?  It keeps the time moving.  

3. Crafting Projects: This should come as no surprise.  I AM the person who spends her vacations sewing dolls, after all.  However, my projects have gotten more and more intense.  A year ago I spent weeks on end creating a 3' x 5' Space Invaders-themed latchhook rug.  FYI: latchhook is easy.  Designing it was easy.  Cutting the yarn was easy.  But actually making the damn thing was TEDIOUS.  

I wanted to continue the gaming theme with a Tetris afghan, but I couldn't stand yarn anymore by the time I finished the rug (I've actually only just started messing with crocheting, and I can't get the damn squares the same size).  Instead, I made plushies.  I tried some different designs because I didn't have skin-tone fleece for a while, made a kappa, a mokke, and even a little goldfish (okay, so the WHOLE year of anime wasn't complete garbage).  When my summer course was over I finally let loose and sewed my two MCs from Mo Dao Zu Shi, learning that Chinese traditional clothing is more of a pain to sew than a kimono.  I feel like I really hit my masochistic peak when I decided during the first lockdown that I should make a Tomioka-san plushie, which meant that I had to print his haori by hand, and THAT meant I had to cut stencils (because of COURSE I had to do it the traditional way).  I've gotten to the point where I made silver vambraces using aluminum pie tins, warazori out of one of the nendoroid tatami mats I bought my last time in Osaka, and - oh yeah - I started playing around with epoxy resin.  

Sadly, most of these projects are still unfinished.  I'll figure them out someday.

4. Online Shopping:  When I lived in Mongolia before, I was an amateur when it came to shopping.  Thanks to the pandemic I have leveled up.  It started with Taobao...there were a couple of nendoroids made by GoodSmile Shanghai I really wanted, but their price was crazy.  Someone mentioned getting them on Taobao, and I thought, "Oh.  China's like, right there.  Are there Mongolian Taobao agents???"  Well, it turns out there are, so I got my nendos.

THEN the shopping became a solution to holes in my shoes and jeans, but since getting anything from the States was a gong show  - shipping was expensive or unreliable*** - I had some degree of restraint.  Eventually, I started buying stuff so that I'd have something to look forward to when I got home, and THEN I was introduced to an air freight service named Hotel4Box, and.  Well.  The meme there to the left is all too accurate.  Suddenly everything that I have thought would be convenient to have was absolutely necessary to my well-being.  I needed fabric.  I needed new clothes.  I needed an alto flute and a clothes drying rack and inkjet iron-on transfer paper.  

I regret nothing.

5. Mug Brownie Sundaes: As cringey as it can be to video chat, my friends have kept me going.  Last fall during one of my chats with Baby Chicken Wing, she said, "Wait, you like brownies, right?"  I gave her the long history of my students hitting me up to make brownies and how I seem to always overcook a pan, and then she hit me with her recipe for a brownie in a mug.  It was heavenly...but there wasn't enough of it.  I solved that problem by making it with tablespoons instead of teaspoons (it gives you 3x the brownie) and topping it with ice cream, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it actually doesn't make any difference what brand of ice cream you use - the shittiest Russian vanilla tastes just fine, because it's really all about melting into a gooey mess (although my personal favorite is the walnut maroo GoodPrice has been importing from Korea).  And that gooey mess gives me something to look forward to even on the shittiest day.

6. Content creators: You know what sucks about being an adult?  Finding other adults to geek out with.  Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have survived the last 6 months without dinners with Engrish between lockdowns, but it's not like she has an appreciation for the 2D world.  I honestly don't know what we did before social media, but sometimes - just sometimes - something good floats to the top of social media, like gold in a pan (apparently algorithms sometimes get things right).**** My 3 favorite treasures are the animatics I found by Limeizuan on YouTube, MorallyGrey's Tiktoks (literally the only reason I go on Tiktok) and incorrect_mxtx - the best thing to happen to Instagram, ever.

So there you go, guys.  Insh'Allah we are on a course bound for normal life, and "coping" will become a thing of the past, but these should keep me going til then.

*I believe this should have two t's - feel free to fight me on it.

**Japanese word for female fans of stories about gay male relationships.  Probably TMI, so sorry :-o

***No, really.  I ordered a nendo part on Etsy last February.  It got here back in January.

****Usually, though, they just insult me by suggesting that I need old lady bras.

Shokugeki no Becky

Yesterday-ish (depending on what side of the international date line you are on), I graduated with my MA in Art Education.  It was pretty anticlimatic.  With covid still being a thing, there was no chance of me making it to the ceremony, and in fact, I couldn't really even go out and celebrate, because Mongolia still shows few signs of getting their cases under control...although restaurants DID reopen yesterday for takeout and delivery, and I'm at least allowed to leave Zaisan, so Engrish and I got together for Indian and beverages and bitchin'.  I thought I'd at least have my name published, but as the grad office had to remind me, I checked the "no publication" option when I applied for graduation - my cyberstalker may be on his best behavior due to his custody trial, but I wouldn't put it past him to act up in the future, so least said, soonest mended.

Homemade salsa

The true upshot of this change in my status is that I no longer have to confine myself to APA format and can use as many four-letter words as I want, which means that it's about time for me to start blogging again.  Yes, I'm going to blame my ongoing delinquency on grad school, which, coupled with a pandemic that never seems to end, robbed me of pretty much all motivation to write "for fun."  It's true that the pandemic is ongoing, but this is probably something that I actually should write about, so I'll pick up where I left off:  Food.  As mentioned WAY BACK in my last post, I have finally learned the fine art of cooking your own damn meals, every damn day (ah, yes...those four-letter words!  How nice they feel!).  This last lockdown was our fourth, and let me tell you, they suck major balls.

Note: Note how I normally stock my fridge.

You may have picked up on this if you're one of my six regular readers, but the kitchen is where the most evidence of my status as a counterfeit grown-up is found.  In a typical year, a close inspection of my refrigerator will reveal coke, a pitcher of lemonade, condiments, and eggs (which may or may not be edible, because even a 6-pack of eggs goes pretty slowly for me).  Typically my freezer has ice and frozen chicken breasts.  Sometimes bread, if I've been on a French toast kick.  It's not that I can't cook...it's more that there's very little reward for cooking food that you're only going to eat by yourself.  I mean, think about it - after doing all the cooking you STILL have to do all the cleaning, and not once during the meal does anyone tell you how tasty it is (unless you talk to yourself.  Which maybe I do).  The reasonably rational side of me thinks that cooking your own food should be healthier and cheaper, but after the last six months, I have very little evidence to back that up.  Although maybe (probably) that's just me.

Newest culinary discovery: Homemade chocolate sauce

However, at the very least, I've unlocked this particular adulting skill.  Although my first week and a half of lockdown I subsisted on a rotation of pasta and red Thai curry, I've gradually opened up all sorts of new worlds of culinary discovery.  My fridge and cupboards are stocked with a variety of ingredients that I can use to make single servings of different things, throwing in a handful of this and a splash of that.  Turns out, there are cheats I never knew about.  I finally figured out that chicken wasn't the only meat I could freeze a single portion into a ziploc baggie, quick and easy to defrost in a can full of hot water.  I've also learned to chop or grate my veggies or cheese, FINALLY reusing those take-out containers I've been collecting the last year and a half to store them in the freezer.

Another cheat: indoor weenie and/or marshmallow roast

My bags of groceries look less and less like an eight year-old turned loose at the checkout with a big wad of birthday cash.  Okay, I'm willing to admit that, more often than not, restocking my coke supply is what forces me to go out shopping, but along the way I've found good meat at our Rosie's, mozzarella cheese at the little shop in Enkhjin apartments, and Korean ingredients at almost all of the shops in Zaisan, ensuring that, at the very least, I can make that spicy marinade that Bronte taught me, back in the day, and - BONUS! - I can make a whole bunch of it at once and freeze that into ready-to-go portions (the smaller, round takeout containers are best for that).

Throw in cabbage and tteok-beokki and it's basically dalkgalbi 

I've also braved the pitfalls of ordering your groceries online.  I wasn't quite convinced about this one...last summer I attempted to make Good Price bring me a flat of Coke, and that didn't work out.  The idea of letting someone else pick out your veggies just seemed like asking for a bag of produce that was about to go off.  Just before the first lockdown ended, though, I got to missing pizza pretty badly.  I dug up my old recipe for flatbread (or the closest recipe I could find), threw some pasta sauce and mozzarella cheese on it, and called myself a culinary genius...but had to admit that it was missing something.

V3: Using homemade alfredo for sauce and with jalapenos added.

Which is crazy, because I actually love cheese pizza, but my own just needed a bit of something more.  Pepperoni is basically non-existent in Mongolia, so I went for the #2 pizza topping, Italian sausage...mainly because I knew Rosewood Market made it AND that they delivered.  

And that's how I ended up down the rabbit hole.  About once a week I make a big list with all sorts of things I could live without, but since I'm already living without human contact, seem a lot more necessary.  Big baked chocolate chip cookies?  Better have two.  Huge jar of tahini?  Much better than making my own!  Avocados that I will forget to use until they have gone bad?  Sounds good to me.  They usually have salsa, but the last couple of times it didn't show up on the website, so I even got all of the ingredients and made salsa myself, which may be the first time in five years I've done so.

Fortunately the lockdowns have usually had some break in-between them, and usually come with some warning before.  This means my cooking has gotten progressively more extravagant.  Rather than just making a bit of taco meat, throwing melting cheese on it and slapping it onto a tortilla with some salsa, I could pick up a can of refried beans, or find a jar of something approximating guacamole (it's not actually guacamole, but unlike those avocados I keep wasting, this crap doesn't go bad)...because I'd have a week or so to prepare.  Not so much THIS time, but some of the others.  That said, if you find yourself in Ulaanbaatar the day before a pandemic lockdown, you're better off not planning to go anywhere if you need a car to get there.  I mean, unless you REALLY like your car and want to spend hours in it not moving.

Lockdown masterpiece: Cheesy baked alfredo tortellini

I guess I should probably end this on some kind of positive note, and talk about how using the recipes that I learned in my friends' kitchens made me feel closer to them in my isolation, or that the recipes I picked up traveling somehow helped me to relive my experiences in other countries while I was grounded...but that's bullshit.  If I weren't fairly introverted by nature, I feel like there's a good chance that I would have done something irreparable a long time ago.  By the time I got to Engrish's yesterday I was pretty much starved for attention - I had verbal diarrhea to go with my potty mouth, and was probably telling the most boring, inane stories of all time.  Lucky for me, she'd had almost as little human contact, so either she didn't notice, or she was willing to live with it.  Maybe a little of both - Engrish is a lot kinder than me.