Everything, Everything & The Sun Is Also The Star | BOOK REVIEW

Hi guys! I am back with a book review! It has been a long time since I picked up a book to read, but reading is always my favourite thing to do, as always. Ignore the picture above lol, I just feel like I need a thumbnail for each post loll (so that the layout of my blog looks consistent), and I don't mean to pose like a tutor trying to sell reference books lolll but this is the only good photo I got from the 30 photos I've taken, it's so hard to do the focusing when you're doing the photo shoot alone...ughh. I've always wanted to write about the books I read, but I don't read as often as I used to do back in secondary school and back in that time, I don't have a good device to take pictures and I don't own a personal laptop so it's really hard for me to write, but I'll start writing book review from now if I read any new book (I usually read fictional novels, especially young adult book), but please don't expect me to do book review very often because book is expensive and study is kinda busy right now, so book review will be done like how I run this blog, which means updating whenever I want to hahaha. Anyways, I read two books recently, they're both written by Nicola Yoon which are her famous first book Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also The Star.

So, let's get into the review part!

Everything, Everything

The story of this is about a 17 year-old girl called Madeline who has SCID since young, which is a type of immune system deficiency, so she is basically allergic to the whole world, this disorder cost her freedom of getting out of her house, she has lived in the house with her mom and her personal nurse Carla for 17 years until she meets Olly, who just moves into the house next door to Madeline with his family. Madeline loves to observe people from her window and that's the only thing she can do staying all day in the house, Olly notices her and leaves his email address on his bedroom window which is exactly opposite to Madeline's. From that day onward, they start to send email to each other, chatting until late night, then Olly start to have short visit to Madeline house under the supervision (help) of Carla, but they are never allowed to touch each other, Olly even has to be decontaminated before he enters the house. Their relationship becomes closer and closer afterward. 

The beginning of the story up until like 120++ pages is boring, I'm sorry but it is. I was so close to stop reading it, I thought it's just another "sick teen" y/a story, but luckily I stay reading until the end lol, because it's not at all bad, it's just the beginning part that is boring. The beginning part only revolves around the house and how Madeline starts to develop her friendship with Olly, I understand that Nicola Yoon is trying to show us how boring Madeline's life is being trapped in the house, but I think the whole part of this can be shorten a bit, so that we have more pages for the ending, which I'm going to rant about later. Moreover, the character of Olly is not well presented in the beginning part, I could say that the beginning part (I mean from pg 1 to pg 120++) did not show many dimensions of his character, he is presented as a cheerful, charming, sporty guy with a lot of knowledge of the outside world and tons of cheesy lines lol, I felt like Madeline is too naive for him. I didn't like his character up until the middle part, where the story is not just revolves within the glass house they meet each other anymore because it shows more of Olly's characteristics. BUT, the nice things about this whole part that I claim to be boring is Madeline's character development, how her view of the outside world and mentality changes and she starts to aware that she's slowly falling in love with Olly.

Then, when the story reaches the middle part where it's not just within the glass house anymore, this is where it gets interesting and following by a major plot twist (DENG DENG DENG), the plot twist is genuinely so good that I didn't see it coming, but after I finished it and go through the story again, there are definitely some hints at the front. After the good plot twist, here comes the ending :) The ending is so freaking rush that I kinda hate it, there are a lot of things that need to be explained, but they were just kind of ignored for some points, after the plot twist there should be a drastic change in Madeline's view of the world but it's being written so briefly that I don't like it, there are more details to write about Madeline's changes. 

Overall I'll give it a 3.5 out of 5, I love the writing style and the presentation of the story. Unlike traditional novels that are words after words and lengthy chapters after lengthy chapters, the chapters are short which can keep people for reading, and there are a lot of illustrations, small notes that Madeline wrote which are so cute, I especially love her spoiler review on books she read, those reviews are written according to her mood changes and the situations that she's in at the moment. I really recommend this book to anyone who is new to reading novels, because it's short and easy to read, the vocabulary for this book is kinda easy, at least I have no problem reading throughout the whole book. (Anyways, English is not my first language.)

The Sun Is Also The Star

The story revolves around the magical day when Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican immigrant in America who's facing a deportation that night and she's trying to get help to stay in America through legal procedures, meets Daniel, an enthusiastic Korean American future poet who is arranged to attend an admission interview to get into Yale college. The story is a little too unrealistic and too magical for me, I guess that's just the way Nicola Yoon likes her stories to be, same goes to Everything, Everything. BUT the story is good in reflecting the differences of concepts and beliefs that Daniel and Natasha hold for their life and how they somehow change their long-believed concepts after they meet each other. it also allows you to think from both of their views. I love how different Daniel and Natasha are, and I absolutely love their characteristics, Natasha is a smart realist that believes in nihilism and science while Daniel is a typical Asian soft good boy, optimistic and poetic, plus he is a contagion crier who cries when he sees someone's crying, which is so cuteeeee. I love that the story talks about races (and explain the background of certain racist topics), immigrants (the different mindsets and culture that the different generation of immigrants hold eg the parents and the kids), interacial relationship (which is a huge deal to Asian family aka Daniel's family) and how love means differently to different people, and the universe cannot be explained in any extreme definitions that you hold and believe in. I feel like this second book has more meaning into it and it has more impact than the first one.

For the writing, I really like that it's written in the point of view of Natasha and Daniel in different chapters, and there are also some side chapters beside the main story line of Natasha and Daniel, those are use to explain some terms, history and background of something features in Natasha and Daniel's chapters, the side chapters also includes the stories and pov of the other characters that Natasha and Daniel came across, and it seems like everyone and everything is connected. Nicola always tend to have new ways in presenting her story which is very creative and she still keeps her style of writing that I really like, no lengthy chapters, she always keeps her chapters short which will effectively keep you reading instead.

This book is a little harder to read compares to Everything, Everything in terms of vocabulary, I look up for more words than I did for that book, I didn't really look up for words much for that book and English is not my first language so looking up for words is also a way of learning, but still manageable to read and comprehend. (To kill a mocking bird is the one that I need to read with a dictionary beside me.) I'll give a 4 out of 5 for this book, I really like it even better than the first one that causes me to binge reading I literally read 320 pages of the book and finished it in one day.

That's all for my book review today, see you next time! 🌻

SO MUCH TO SAY | Graduation, Degree, Working prospect

Hello, I'm back after 9102 years lol, sorry for taking so long, I did not forget my password, I just cannot make up my mind on what to write about but I have a lot to say. Sometimes I feel like writing something but I just stopped because I hesitate about whether or not I am over-sharing, like sharing too much information about myself, but if you're here since the beginning you will know how this blog runs lol, I don't update often because I don't gain profit from here, I am just writing to document things that I want to remember like a diary whenever I want. (I am actually writing this in the middle of the night, 1:19am)

Okay, let's jump into topic, shall we?

As seen on the topic, yes, I was graduated from my diploma in broadcast communication, ended my two years of suffers but I jump right into another hell, yes, my degree, I am currently taking my bachelor degree of broadcast communication in the same school (my school is a college university, so I can continue my degree in the same place). My graduation was held on the end of August, it's also the end of my first semester of degree year 2. Diploma has been pretty fine, I mean diploma is quite easy, compares to degree (Degree is like ughhh, all the video production and course works...), I could say diploma is where I find myself in what I love, I always know I love the film industry but diploma helped me to further understand myself, and which part of the industry should I pursue. Diploma, for me, is the period to further explore yourself, it is a period of transitioning from a teen to an adult I could say. Diploma is where you create all the shitty student films lolll, it also means the time to explore things on your own and no one will judge you even if your work is shitty in a sense that no one could possibly perceive your aesthetic lol, but this is where people give you advice and tips on developing a better content. I am really grateful to have the best teachers that I could possibly meet in my life, all the lecturers and tutors that have taught me and gave me chances to create things and allow me to have a piece of my mind even I am just a student. To all the ones that can remember my name, thank you.

Degree has been a little tough, perhaps it was just the first semester and I haven't get my nerves back on track, I mean it is extra stressful, compares to all the semesters I had back in diploma. I have like so many course works, no matter it's written or video production, I kinda felt suffocated for a tiny bits of time, but I got my mind back to working really quickly. Degree is stressful and tough, seems like there are so much going on at the same time, but I do learn a lot, okay, for my course, degree has more practical subjects than diploma, during diploma we are just learning the theoretical stuff like mass comm theories, cinematography (but in a theoretical way, like look, this is 180 degree rule of film), but degree we get the chance to actually produce something with the knowledge we learned from diploma. Moreover, after the internship I had during diploma, I learned more practical stuff in film production as well, so it actually helps a lot in my recent video productions. (i'll link them here so that you can watch it if you want: Documentary & Short film ; I have made two short films during diploma as well, if you want to see what shitty student works look like, here they are: Sarah & Radiant, I want to make it clear, I don't hate them, I love every single story I wrote, but for the technical part, there are so much more to improve.)

Since I am already a degree student, which means a year and more I will have to get my ass out to work in the real industry, so it got me anxious about my working prospect, especially when the industry that I'll be pursuing has so many unknown factors, it is still kind of an exploratory type of industry in my country, it's changing every now and then. Moreover, I kinda have chances to be apart of some productions in the industry recently, the more I was involved, the more I am worried. I am kind of afraid of these uncertainties, I know what position I want to pursue, but am I capable to? How long will it take for me to get to the position I want? 10 years? Which company to pursue? Freelance or in-house? Do I need to think of a plan B if this job in my head don't keep me a living?All of these got me so lost, and I have no time to have a gap year before work, I have to get my ass out to earn so that I'll be able to pay my study loan. There are so many uncertainties about working in this industry, but it is what I love, so it's kinda like a love-hate situation here, finger-crossed, hope that I'll figure it out asap. 

Alright, that is all I want to talk about, thanks for coming back to my little land and how bout you? What are you up to? 🌻

How I Sustained My College Life (Without having to pay fees)

  Hello, it's been a while, isn't it? 

I have been wanting to write a post but I was so busy for my last semester and I am currently having my internship so most of my time are occupied basically and when it comes to weekend, where I finally have some times for myself, I just don't feel like looking at my laptop because it feels like I am working, all I want is to rest whole day, doing nothing hahaha. I'm writing this now, in my company's office, because I am all alone in office, not given any task and I am bored. 

So I asked a question on Instagram lately to let people choose which blog post to write first, (if you haven't follow me already, click here.) and the most rated blog post is this one, on how I sustained my college life, so here I am now. I think it's a good idea to share my experience and some methods to help people who has financial insufficiency in promoting their study to college or university. 

I am nearly finishing my diploma for two years and here is how I sustained my two years of college. For these two years, my family hasn't pay a cent for my education fee, but I do get life expenses from my family. There are two things that allow my family to not spend any money, 1) scholarship and 2) PTPTN loan. My SPM result was qualified for me to get a 50% scholarship from my college, and that means I only have to pay half of the fee. For the rest of the fee I applied for PTPTN loan, and it is sufficient enough for me to pay the rest, and that are how things work. 

What I really wanted to emphasize in this post is to anyone who really wants to study for college or uni, but your family cannot afford for your education, do not give up. There are always ways, but of course the journey would not be as easy as the others. If you want to get scholarship, you have to has the ability to overcome the stress, and every little test matters, every marks may affect your scholarship for upcoming semester, you have lesser relaxing time than the others, you have to understand that you're somehow different, and understand the situation you're in, so you really have to be super self-discipline at this point, it is your responsibility after all. There is no free lunch in this world, you get the aid and you have to pay with sufficient effort, that is an equivalent exchange.

There must be people asking what if my result is not good, but I want to study? There are multiple platforms that can help you. PTPTN loan is the first thing of course, but you cannot get full loan from PTPTN anymore. No worries, there are also multiple organisations out there that are giving education fund to students who need it, different organisations have different method of application, you can check out their official websites. Those organisations usually will have collaboration with certain colleges and universities, go to your college or uni website to look at the financial aid section, it will probably be in external scholarship section, or there is an easier way, contact your college Department of Student Affair, they can answer all your doubts about all the education aid, including how to apply for PTPTN loan. 

So, there are three ways to aid you for you education already, 1) Scholarship 2) PTPTN Loan 3) External education fund, so there's no way of giving up anymore. I always heard people blaming their parents for not having the ability to financially support them to further study, honestly, I can't say anything on that matter, I don't know the backstory of people's family so I can't judge, but you can support yourself instead! This is not the era where only rich people can accept higher education anymore, no, organisations and the society are helping for more people to get education, the problem now is whether or not you want to pay effort to get these aids? I know it's kind of unfair when you look at your friends having fun while you are racing with your CGPA, but when we are no longer able to change a past situation, we are challenged to change the future.

To make things clear, I never hated my family, they're all very lovely and supportive, and my mom is willing to do everything to give us better education, and I know giving children education is the responsibility of a parent, but seeing her suffer alone for our education and I do nothing when I know I can actually do something to lessen her burden, I cannot do that. If you are mature enough, you will know it is not the time to blame, it is the time to make choice on your life, like how a quotes says:" Change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." It is your life after all, for sure you have to put effort to make it works like how you want it to be. 

Don't let anyone or any things change your life, except for yourself. 🌻

I'm Fine☀️

Hi peeps! It has been a long time since I posted the last one, so today I'm here to give you a little update on one of my previous posts, which is something changed in me. If you don't already know, that post was kinda sad and down, because I had not been feeling really positive on my social life for a period of time. I'm not going to talk further into it because I feel like there is nothing much worth to be talk about now, because I'm feeling so much better and I'm really fine right now.  

It has already been about 4 months since I posted that post. During this 4 months, fourth semester started, and it was so busy so I kinda do not have the time to overthink, which was a great start on feeling better. This semester many good things happened on me too. I got an opportunity that made me know a lot more people and having to make friends with people who I can be really comfortable to stay with. I know this gang of people from an assignment because we were grouped together, and they are all so lovely, real and outgoing, and it is always fun to hang out with them. This semester I also make friend with a person who is a really good listener, adviser and he enjoys listening to my wild and weird imaginations, which I really I appreciated because no one really listen to all these cringey things I made up hahaha. Moreover, he is a Potterhead so we can talk so much about Harry Potter and also other gross weird topics that I assume no any normal human beings will talk about hhahaha. Thank you everyone for showing so much love to me this semester, I truly appreciated~

Other than that, for you guys who are reading this, I just want to tell you that it is really okay to feel sad or emotional sometimes. We are all normal human beings, so we do not have to look happy and cheerful 24/7. If you really do not feel right, talk to someone or if you do not trust anyone on telling  your feelings you can type them all out on the notepad in your phone. What's important is that, you have to find a proper way to output your negative feelings, because if you don't, they will all just bottled up in you and you will never gonna feel any better. All the negative feelings you wrote down will somehow become your motivation in the future, for you to remind yourself that you deserve better.

 Another thing is to cross out all the toxic people in you life, I figured out one of the reasons of my negative feelings last time is that I joined a wrong group of people who always make me feel like I'm not good as being a friend, all I can do is help them doing their stuffs, instead of being a friend who is great to hang out with, this makes feel so insecure that I thought I don't know how to be sociable, to be a friend. These are toxic people, they make you feel bad about yourself, real friend brightens each other and brings up the best of you, if there are these toxic people around you, STAY AWAY FROM THEM! You do not have to be completely disconnected with them but you should try to avoid yourself from them, you can only know how many people would appreciate you as yourself, only when you get out of this toxic circle. 

That's all for what I want to say today. Thanks for reading, and thank you so much to people who commented on the last post and friends who dm-ed me for asking my conditions, thank you all so much, I hope you guys are feeling great right now, if you are not, you will be feeling better soon, the sky is not always dark, so do your life. 

See ya next time, xoxo. 🌻

Why I Started Blogging

Hi peeps, I'm back! Today I'm writing this because there are quite a lot of people around me that are curious about how I started blogging and why, so I decided to write this on my blog.

I had been blogging for 4 years, since 2014, but not frequently, which is when  I was 15 years old. I remember the first time I created this blog, it was super ugly, my background was super tumblr-ish, that time I was so geeky and tumblr-ish, I downloaded a lot of pictures from weheartit, tumblr and pinterest. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to use blogger and how to design it, and eventually I chose to make it this basic lol. Blogging was hard to me that time, because I don't own a laptop I used my family (but mostly used by brother and it's in my brother's room) desktop to write and it's so awkward every time my mom opened the door and looked at my screen. ._. But she still doesn't quite know about what I am doing right now, I don't think she knows I have a blog tho.

The first blog that I'd read was a blog by Zoella. If you don't know who she is, she is a famous UK online influencer, she first started her online career through writing blog, after she gained a lot of readers, she started her YouTube channel, and now she already had 12 million subscribers on YouTube. She wrote about her panic attack and how she overcomes it in her blog. She is the most honest and genuine person I've ever seen online. She is my inspiration on writing blog, she is the one that introduced this platforms to me, where I can finally had a place of my own and express myself through writing. As I always said, I'm not good at expressing myself verbally, in speech, and I like to keep things to myself and eventually I will get stress out about having too much trash in my mind but I find writing is the most effective way for me to express even if no one reads them but it is still a great platform for me to output all my thoughts.

The other reason is that I really love writing. I used to have a Wattpad account where I wrote fan fiction and novels online, but I some how stopped it because I don't feel like my stories were great lol. I wrote One Direction fan fiction, Jack and Finn Harries fan fiction, stories about vampires, spirits and super power hahaha. I remember that I did have people reading my fan fiction tho, I had 90 - 100 views on my Wattpad stories, I know it's very little, but I was so happy that time when I see people actually read my works.

Although I had been writing my blog for such long time but I still have very little views compare to other blogger, but I really appreciate every one of you who really spend time on reading what I write. Many people don't understand why I continue blogging with such little views, I don't understand either, but I can't imagine myself without writing. Anyway, I really appreciate you, who are reading this, thank you so much, no matter how long have you been reading my blog. And I know there are a few people who had already been in Terriesland for 4 years, from my very first post until now, THANK YOU SO MUCH.

And for people that are worried about me from the last post, I'm good now, not the best but yeah better, thank you to people that encourage me through dm and comments, thanks a lot. xo.

Bye. xoxo. 🌻