2023 recap: films, series, and books

It’s that time of the year! In total I watched 13 films, 17 series, and read just 4 books. I’m particularly disappointed with my book count. I was heavily distracted with taking care of Koomi that I lost time to read. Yeah, I blame Koomi haha.

My favorite movie of 2023 would be Oppenheimer, hands down. It’s too epic and too masterfully made. A genius portrayal of intense calm and deafening silence. Just recalling the film gives me goosebumps!

John Wick was wildly entertaining, as usual.

Howl’s Moving Castle is beautiful, surreal; I don’t know with Ghibli but I find myself more immersed in the animation than the story itself. It’s so magical. Never fails to delight.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 is Marvel’s best movie installment of 2023. There’s not much competition though. Good Lord, Marvel Studios has been spiraling downwards big time ever since it put politics ahead of entertainment. There’s QuantuMEHnia, The lackluster Marvels, and an unimpressive Secret Invasion. Loki Season 2 was dragging up until the last episodes when everything finally gets held together (quite literally) and Loki gets an epic character arc. I loved that. Should’ve turned that into a movie instead.

My love for Mythic Quest and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia remains the same. Great writing as always.

Emily in Paris ended on an intriguing note.

Selling Sunset released 2 seasons in a year, and as usual, I live more for the drama than the houses. Chrishell kicked ass this season, not rolling over for anyone and defending herself eloquently. When I say that I mean she explains herself well. She listens and makes sure she’s listened to as well. Whereas Nicole stutters, Amanza panders, Mary walks out, Brie couldn’t care less, Chelsea backstabs. At least Emma is frank.

Mary-lou, on the other hand, I feel bad for. I don’t know what the real deal is with her but it seems like she’s struggling to make a scene with Chrishell because production says so, and she needs to bring drama to the table if she wants screen time. Just a hunch. And Chrishell saw through that and quickly calls off her BS. There’s no stopping Chrishell. She’s super focused this year no one can break her peace. Love her!

I forgot to add this in the collage but we started watching Impractical Jokers and got hooked! It’s so hillarious!

As for books…

I don’t even want to talk about it cos I didn’t read much. The Lottery (dark) and The Communist Manifesto (idealistic) are very short and I’ll be honest, I read them because I wanted to get a quick book count. They’ve been on my list anyway, but yeah. The Hating Game is a re-read which I re-enjoyed, and Book Lovers… I can’t even remember what it’s about. Urgh.

Still stuck reading A Little Life. I don’t want to give up on it because of my pride. I’m more than 50% in! Just 10 more hours to go lol. People have so much regard for this book that’s why I wanted to read it. And for the first few chapters I liked it. But the pace is so slow, author is really taking the time fleshing out the characters, introducing them properly, which is good. I love how it’s written. It’s just that there’s not much of a conflict apart from the mystery that is Jude’s childhood. I feel so bad for him I cried so hard at one point in the book. But it’s just that… it’s too slow and I don’t see an end to it haha. But I’ll power through. For the sake of my abovementioned pride lol.

♥

Success!!!

Oh my goodness I can finally say I’ve COMPLETELY migrated my domain from the overly outdated platform that is Blogger/Blogspot whatever, to WordPress!

Somebody give me a pat on the back, I freaking toiled over this for weeeeks!

Now if I die and nobody renews my domain and hosting, my online diary is gone forever.

Whereas if I kept blogging under free hosting, even if my domain doesn’t get renewed, my blog will still be alive under a subdomain so it will outlive me.

Anyway, I decided not to care because I don’t intend for my legacy to be a treasure trove of embarrasment and bad grammar. I will not be remembered that way.

I will not be remembered.

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Anywhooo. The biggest challenge with this whole migration thing is THE COMMENTS. Half the battle was trying to make Disqus appear. If I hadn’t read this article I wouldn’t have learned why it’s not showing no matter what I do. And it took me days to figure out how to describe my problem exactly, cos there were freaking layers to it.

Layers I’m proud to have peeled off as I dug deeper (into my skin) about the impossibility of one of the most popular commenting systems not integrating with one of the most popular blogging platforms. It just doesn’t make sense. So I knew I needed to refine my problem statement.

The development of my searches went this way…

• Disqus not showing on wordpress blog
• Disqus not replacing native wordpress commenting system
• Disqus not replacing default wordpress comment form
• Disqus and wpDiscuz not showing
• Disqus not working on new wordpress themes
• Disqus not showing on full site editor block editor wordpress site
• How to install wpdiscuz on modern wordpress theme

And then finally I chanced upon the abovementioned article saying you should do away with the native comments block and replace it with a shortcode instead. AAAARGGHHH.

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So yeah. When that was done, what’s left to do is map the comments to their respective posts, specially that the URL format has changed. And that’s another deal in itself.

I had to scour through all of the comments made in Disqus and made sure the post URLs is Disqus is the same as the URLs in this blog, otherwise the comments won’t load. It was such a tedious job, and I was already halfway into it when I realized I could automate the part where I check if the URL returns a 404. Wth, I could’ve saved myself a looot of time.

But now that it’s all good, I can rest!

It was both tiring and fun working on this project. Definitely a trip down memory lane looking at my old posts and everyone’s comments. Made me feel nostalgic. I miss the times when I would just write and write and write without any care for cohesion or good grammar. And miss the days when I have an actual blog list I can read and friends who check on me through my blog.

I miss it. It was fun. I miss my friends!

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Happy Holidays!

Major move

 I finally decided to move The Blahger from Blogspot to WordPress.

Note to self: Start fixing at 2019

This was so messy and I must admit I kinda did it on a whim. I was actually encouraged by one of my latest youtube comments saying she found my vlog through one of my blog post and was feeling nostaglic about reading blogs because no one write blogs anymore. Everyone’s moved to other platforms. And that’s true.

So I decided I wanted to continue blogging at The Blahger.

And so I started. I created a new domain, installed WordPress, and updated the DNS. I imported all of my posts and so far…

• I’m missing all of my comments lol
• and all of my posts for 2004 haha
• and some months from 2005 omg
• and I’m also looking at each freaking post to fix the layout because the images aren’t wrapping properly urgh

Oh wait maybe I can fix that through CSS..

Anyway. I’m tired.

But welcome to my new home!

If you landed here from a search page and couldn’t find what you’re looking for, try the search bar cos the links are probably messed up and Google hasn’t started reindexing yet 😊.

Life Lately

I’ve changed the layout again. I realized I didn’t need a sidebar because I couldn’t care less what I’m currently reading, and the recent posts is kindof redundant if you’re coming from the homepage. And it’s not like people would want to know what I’ve posted recently if they came from a specific landing page. So yeah, I just needed a search bar so I placed that with the footer.

What’s up lately?

I just made another big purchase, probably my last for this year cos it’s practically the last thing I can afford this time lol.

I finally bought a Dyson. A v12 submarine that has a mop attachment so I can finally eliminate the mop and bucket thing.

So far it’s been great. It vacuums better, feels lighter, and even though there’s a learning curve with using the mop, it’s still heaps better than having to haul a bucket of water around the house and scrub the floor for hardened dirt. My Dyson does that for me. Although it’s slower, because I have to go over one place over and over to soak it and scrub it, it takes less effort so I don’t find myself sweating after a cleaning session.

It basically made my cleaning experience less tiring.

But we’ll see in the long run. I bought a dock at Lazada that allows me to place it conveniently near the charger, where the attachments are easily accessible, and I’m loving it!

The fluffy floor brush with the laser feature is also very cool. It illuminates dust from the floor, making me clean more obsessively lol.

Aaand, because of this Dyson purchase, I got qualified for SMAC Prestige. Cool! Didn’t think I need the perks but thanks anyway!

Annoying horizonal scrollbar

Been trying to fix the comment section on my blog after discovering that it’s causing a wide white space causing a horizontal scrollbar to show. Disabling the comment section removes the white space (that’s how I discovered it) but I need my comments section so I’m still trying to figure it out. I tried replacing the comments section with Disquz, even wpDiscuz but they’re both not integrating well.

Until I decided to make this post and what have you… I just found the right words to google and found CSS workaround to fix my problem.

Turns out I just needed to hide the horizonal scrollbar by adding this to the Additional CSS in Customize.php page

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html, body {     max-width: 100%;     overflow-x: hidden; }

Alright, great!

Seriously

I just wrote about this a few hours ago and now I have one! Guess my birthday’s not over, I keep gifting myself unnecessary stuff lol.

Hopefully I’ll come to like this! Excited to unbox this one!

What is up

 I really need to frkn work on my Youtube backlogs. My earnings are dwindling.

Had a fun birthday staycation at Tagaytay. First time to bring Koomi this far so we were a bit apprehensive. Packed a lot of stuff. Had to bring a cart with us. Normally we just bring 2 backpacks with us.

Koomi takes 2 bags because of his food. We also brought a lot of snacks because we know Tagaytay sleeps early and we eat late.

It was so tiring though. I drove to and from, thankfully we always travel at midnight so there’s less traffic. Thank God we had a safe ride!

I reached 10k steps on Friday can you believe it. It’s the first time I walked this much since my surgery. I think it’s because I used a lot of stairs and I still couldn’t do one step at a time so that counts a lot (literally).

We ate twice at Lime and Basil. Friday lunch and Saturday lunch. The latter being with friends. It’s a really good Thai resto. Love the food, specifically the Tom Yum Goong, Bagoong Rice, and Salted Egg Fried Chicken. So so good! The ambience is beautiful as well, lots of open spaces, and it’s pet friendly too so it’s perfect.

Met with Jec’s friends and his godson. I think they indirectly answered one of my long time questions about being a god parent which is – do I have to be a ninang to my husbands inaanak as well? We were already married when they asked my husband to be a godfather. The answer was made clear when they referred to us as ninong and tita in front of their child. Too clear actually cos they kept introducing us to the child, you know – the way parents would teach their child a new word – so I also felt like I’m being put in my place over and over lol. But I also know they just want the kid to know his ninong. While making the distinction that I’m not the ninang lol. No biggie. They treated us lunch at Lime and Basil, let us shower Koomi when he got filthy playing with Bingsu, and served us delicious ice cream and coffee. I love them, they’re very good hosts. And I love Yohan, he’s such a cutie!

You know I have a bias with kids, they’re normally not cute for me unless they act stupid or if I like their parents. Haha.

Wishlist update

Because my wishlist is expanding disproportionately to my wallet I figured I’d just blog about. So far that has been effective in curbing my shopping impulse, see I don’t have a Dyson yet hehe

I want a new fitness tracker. I don’t trust my Fitbit Inspire 2 anymore. Battery drains fast and it syncs slow. I’m eyeing the Amazfit GTS 4 Mini or the Garmin Lily, whichever has better reviews. Personally I like how the Lily looks more but they say the Amazfit has a really good battery life and it’s roughly the size of an Apple Watch SE. If only Apple would work on the battery life it would’ve been my first choice. But still, I’m apprehensive about the watch size I want something small.

I want a tempur pillow. Or a memory foam topper. Whatever helps me sleep better and wake up without backaches.

I still want a new car but I’m just dreaming for now hehe.

Finally, I want a piano. I’m looking at the Casiotone CT-S300 but I still need to think about where to place it at home. I miss learning to play the piano. And Casiotone looks really cute. Hehe

I want to make a more profound birthday post but I just don’t have anything sensible to say haha. It’s a happy 33rd though! Celebrated with my two families, and also had a lovely staycation with my husband and Koomi. My heart is full. ♥

😊