Please watch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (now out in theatres, go!) if only because you will crack a rib from all the laughing. Them Japanese will always, in the middle of a breezily overused time-travel plot, plunge in right where it hurts with sweet wisdom: love bumps and shifts in clumsy, fickle fashion, but will someday be ready in a quiet and well-structured future.
There is too much crazy, romantic energy in here for me to believe Japanese writers pull cynical every day I have read their works.

There are few things that leave you seriously uncertain about how to respond, chuckles entangling with tear ducts, so one ends up choked and confused - but in a good, warm sort of way, like a pat on the back after a good cry. Like a Wes Anderson movie or Six Feet Under. These days I'm restless to the point of not being able to be engrossed in anything so it at least penetrates one day and leaves a light on for a while. It's funny how we've missed Six Feet Under by a few years, but it's not like I'd have understood or loved it in any form until now.
Another thing to add to the list is to accidentally-on-purpose stumble upon one of those press conventions like APE where the breed of comic-obsessed-turned-semi-cool graphic novelists - always sneaky-charming and pushing late 20s at the most - continually hang out. While I've other favourites the personal pioneers are Craig Thompson, Derek Kirk Kim, Jen Wang. You'd think these kids had uncommonly tortured childhoods, but no, they're just better at putting whining into words. And these things always take place in eclectic 'hoods like Portland, Boston, San Fran, in no way near a small place called C'ville. I think it's more their lives I'm fascinated by, rather than their artwork.

My supervisor just got back from HK, she the lady who wanted to be a journalist once, and agreed it's common to find yourself drawing a blank question-wise during dialogue sessions and only thinking of something juicy two hours later. She then fed us panda cookies. I can't decide yet if research is my thing, considering how I get bored very very easily, despite the excitement of continually discovering Projects. The latest project is... birthday present building. A serious business.

Because my sister and I just re-watched Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet we can't stop roaring things like "TEMPT NOT A DESPERATE MAN" and "THEN I DEFY YOU, STARS" at each other the way the actors sound like they are having high-volume seizures in every speech. It's also been a week of spicy food and wine and hot evenings and a lot of laughing.
I've always believed that small talk is necessary before big talk can happen, but have you ever had the feeling of maneuvering your way in and out of small talk so much so that you can no longer remember what it's like to have big talk? Or maybe that the line between small and big talk is really extremely fine? Especially since I think that saying what you really feel, i.e. not small talk, is the best way to break the ice, although of course not everyone may agree, including the person you're trying to break the ice with.
I've been trying to reconstruct my creative writing portfolio, which hasn't actually existed since maybe J1, and quite seriously it's like building muscle, with that much unused self-discipline involved.