My Bluggles

Hi, everyone)). I hope you're doing well. This is an entry I was looking forward to writing for a few days now, and finally got down to it.  As we all know, every task that requires any form of effort (which is, in fact, EVERY task) has its own set of difficulties that tags along with it, no matter if we like that or not. So, I wanted to address some of the struggles I, as well as probably some of you, have come across while blogging this far. BUT, I feel like anyone can just sit down and share a few of their difficulties, therefore, I decided to also include the solutions that have worked for me in my attempts to overcome them. Right, let's get to the point :). The struggle:  Loss of motivation to write. As you may have noticed, I haven't been updating my blog as much as I did in my first two weeks of maintaining it, and that is due to the excitement and motivation to do so slowly dying down. Personally, this is one of my least favourite 'side-effects' of absol...

And we're back on track with the short stories)). The story that I will recommend for you today, is 'The Gift of the Magi' by O. Henry. This is actually a story I read quite a while back, and just so happened to remember about it today and search it up for a reread. Honestly, I think this is one of those stories that is widely-read for a reason, and that everyone should give it a read at least once. The sky looked exceptionally beautiful today, so I had to snap a photo :) The story has a very nice ending, which puts a smile on my face every time I think about it. Also, I noticed that I tend to subconsciously go for stories that contain plot twists. Have you ever noticed a trend in   what you read? You can very conveniently read the story here:  http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/GifMag.shtml

Hi, everyone)). How are you? :) My apologies for not writing for a few days. Good news is, a few things have accumulated over this little break, which I can tell you all about now)). First of all, I'm like to address the missing 'Read of the week'. Last week I focused on reading novels, and didn't think I had a good enough short story to share with you. This week, however, look out for a nice short story). Next up is the weather. Remember how I got quite excited about the rainy season having finally started? Well, the weather decided to pull our leg, and instead of there being rain, it now seems like it was even hotter than in was before. I am quite disappointed about that, although I know that sooner or later the rainy season will eventually come around. A pretty photo I took of the sunset the other day :) I've been trying my best to keep active and either go for a run or do sets of exercises and stretches at home, and I'm happy to report that that...

Songkran is the Thai New Year’s National holiday. It is usually celebrated between the 13th - 15th of April. Not only is it a nationwide celebration in Thailand (where I currently live), but it is also celebrated in many other parts of South Asia, like Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Religious rituals, such as paying respect to parents and teachers by pouring water over their hands are performed, alongside others which I unfortunately do not have enough insight into. People, both locals and foreigners alike, dress in colorful floral shirts and roam about the streets either throwing water, targeting each other with water guns, putting watered-down powder onto each other’s faces, or trying their very best to escape from all the craze, which, I must say, is borderline impossible. I have participated in the celebrations for many years now, and I think that it’s great fun, especially if you have a friend or two by your side. Last year, a friend of mine and I came b...

Hello, welcome back)). Let's breifly summarise the weekend, shall we? :) On Saturday morning I wokeup with very sore legs, which was the expected result of a 1,000 suqat challenge I impulsively decided to do on Friday evening. Yes, you read that right, 1,000 squats, which absolutely destroyed me. Needless to say, I have been forced to make quite the effort to wobble around for the past three days. I baked some nice cookies on Saturday, which got a very good laugh from one specific person who claimed they looked like horse droppings. See for yourself, and let me know if you agree with the opinion: Sunday was they day I attempted (key word here) to make homemade ice-cream. It ended up having a consistency of frozen chocolate mousse, so I wouldn't say it was a complete (another key word) fail. Here's a quick snap I took: Sunday was also the day I was given some lovely chocolates. I've been intermittently eyeing the pack for the entire day today and re...

Yay, we're on our second 'Read of the week'!! I hope everyone's had/having a nice day :)) This week's short story that I would really like to recommend is called  'The Plantation' by Ovo Adagha . Very surprisingly, the story was written in 2010, so the story is rather recent. A handy description of the author and story came underneath the title, which I will quote here:  ‘Adagha is a Nigerian writer and editor of international short story anthologies. In this story set in a small village in Nigeria, a leak in an oil-pipe is discovered in the forest - what effect will it have on the villagers? This is a richly descriptive story.’ I loved reading through this one. For some reason, the situation and the author’s imaginative descriptions reminded me of a rightfully famous book called ‘Lord of the Flies’. I also found the story to be highly quotable, so I will now list out some of my favorite sentences from it: - ‘In the stroking brightness of ...

Good morning; good afternoon; good evening. I hope you have/had a wonderful day :)). This evening I dragged myself out of the house to go for a nice run. Unfortunately, it is now illegal to leave your house without a face mask on, so I had to go running in mine. Being a forgetful idiot, I forgot to get a picture of it before I chucked it into the washing machine, so my bad :| Running with a face mask on really isn’t great. The first and biggest issue is that the mask restricts your breathing making it harder to keep in steady. Yes, that may be good for cardio, but I would rather prefer to breathe normally, thank you very much. Secondly, your face sweats a lot underneath the mask. Not only that, but to make matters worse, my mask was also drenched in sweat by the time I was done with my run. And lastly, for me personally, it was quite difficult to catch my breath after I finished the run. It took me a few minutes, and eventually I had to retreat to taking the mask off. The only po...

Hello, everyone :)). Right, so it appears that there will now be not one, but two separate things segments on my blog. Hooray! I decided to call this one ‘Titled Untitled’, because I’ll be writing these when I’m not able to think of a proper title to match the entry (which may or may not happen fairly often). I think   that the a memorable aspect of today is the moon. As I found out just a few minutes ago, it is in fact a ‘super moon’, and it looks absolutely gorgeous. So much so, that our local news page on Facebook posted a picture of it. For obvious reasons, I could not manage to snap a half-decent photo of it, so instead I’ll drop the photo actual professionals took: Source: https://www.facebook.com/176481829769501/posts/666711574079855/?substory_index=0 A really nice think I’ve noticed some of the bloggers I read are doing, is making posts about the positive things. That made me realise that I haven’t been doing that too openly, so in this entry I’ll talk about the e...

Hello, hello)). As usual, I hope everyone's doing okay. The missing entry on Sunday was intentional, as I decided that I will be aiming for one post on the weekend and, at least while I'm able to, daily posts during the week. This entry will be a summary of my day today, and could even be perceived as somewhat of a routine. I say somewhat, because I dont't like the idea of a routine, as I'm not a big fan of monotonous activity, so I do my best to avoid falling into one. Let me know what you think of this type of post in the comments :). My day started with an 08:30 alarm shaking all the sleep out of me. I don't wake up at ungodly hours of the morning like some people do, because I treasure my sleep (and also because I can't). If any of you wake up early, my hat goes off to you. This picture is here for the purpose of having a nice photo next to the title of this post. Although, I have to say, that pear was delicious :) Now, I'm not proud of this...

In my opinion, the biggest change that has occurred in the area where I live is the settling in of silence. Where before my mum would threaten to throw the fridge down on the music-loving neighbours in small cluster of houses below, now there is no one left to torment us. There are no longer lights in the windows of the nearby condos and hotels, and no tasteless music blaring from the night market. Just darkness, silence, and serenity; peaceful, yet frightening. Frightening in the aspect of it being so unfamiliar. On the slightly more cheery note, I made cookies today :). I'll drop in a photo below, because not only did they lookgreat, but they once again turned out delicious. Perhaps sometime in the near future I'll share the recipe I use to make them with you. That's a little something to look forward to, I think). Productivity wise, I completed the first chapter in my Psychology coursebook today. Not that great of an achievement, but I think it marks the...

Welcome to the first part of this segment I decided to create)). I decided that every week I will recommend you a short story which I found interesting, since I tend to read a lot of those. This week's 'Story of the week', if you wish, is 'When It Happens ' by Margaret Atwood. The story is written in a third-person narrative, and follows a fifty-one-year-old lady called Mrs. Burridge. Mrs. Burridge has a very fatalistic outlook on life and imagines, in astonishing detail, situations that she thinks are bound to happen sooner or later. She is a practical and realistic character, and thinks through every imaginable aspect of her future predications. One of these apocalyptic-like situations is described in the story. I won't go into any more detail to in order avoid spoiling the best bits, but I have to mention that there is a nice little plot twist at the end of the story :) So guys, if you have time, give this one of the many Atwood's masterpi...

Good morning; good afternoon; good evening, everyone! I decided to type this entry up in the evening, in order to tell you about my day today, which, I must say, was quite enjoyable. The day began with me waking up at 7:00 am to go for a morning run. This was somewhat of a new experience, as I usually opt for evening runs instead to not have to go through the waking up part. Surprisingly, I found the run quite pleasant, and this may not be the last time I chose to run in the morning. Have you ever gone for morning runs? A few hours after that, I made my way to my friend's house to put together a puzle. Now, I know what you might be thinking, 'Ksenia, why are you going outside? You should be staying at home', so allow me to explain. I think that if I don't go out to any public places, it is perfectly reasonable for me to visit a friend at her house once in a while. Especially seeing as I drive there without making any stops on the way. Anyhow, the puzzle started ...