2/9/24 - Antwerp (Belgium: Part Three)

Another blog post in under a week? I, too, am surprised. It's time to talk about the third, and final day in Belgium, which we spent in Antwerp. It was raining the whole day, and due to the nature of our route we decided to take our suitcase with us instead of leaving it at the hotel. Unfortunately, it was raining buckets that day, so the majority of our stuff got soaked 16/9/24 (and one sunscreen leaked all over my souvenirs), and we were left lugging around our suitcase in the pouring rain. If you hadn't already relaised from the random date in the middle of my sentence, I left this post unfinished and only just picked it back up today. I'll keep this brief, mainly because two weeks is the longest I'm willing to stretch out his post. We had heard that Antwerp was the more 'commercial' city of Belgium, in that it has a lot more shops and smaller/regional brands. We only ended up buying two things, a skirt and a shirt/blouse. After this, we took refuge from the rain in the Matterhorn, which felt cozy. Once the rain settled down again, we set off once more. Despite my love for Ruben's artworks, the Rubenshuis was closed for renovations, and was only opening after we were leaving. We did, however, visit the Cathedral of Our Lady, which houses four of Rubens' artworks, so I really enjoying viewing those. Aside from that, we kind of just walked around and went into shops. I bought a keychain with a beetle in it, later finding out that it is glow-in-the-dark (the casing, not the beetle), bringing my keychain acquirement of this trip to two (the other is of the manneken pis). But yeah, that's basically our whole trip! It was really interesting to go there and to basically spend a whole trip just doing what I want. Have a nice day, and byee!

29/8/24 - Bruges (Belgium: Part Two)

Despite my initial conviction that I would be pumping out these blog updates every two days, somehow fifteen days have passed and I've undoubtedly forgotten even more details about my trip. Anyway, on our second day, we embarked on a journey to Bruges using the Belgian train system as our mode of transport. As someone who lives in the UK, I was really shocked by how clean and spacious everything was, to the point I thought we accidently sat in first class by accident (despite the huge 2s written everywhere). The only downside was that no one actually came to check our tickets for the whole journey, so it kind of felt like we spent a lot of money for nothing?? Anyway, when we arrived there we were struck by how it looked like some sort of medieval town. It was a sunny day, and I felt like I was in a scene from a period drama. It's an incredibly beautiful city and it kind of reminded me of Bath in how... quaint it felt? We arrived in the Grote Markt and decided to eat first, so we went to a place called Wasbar. It was an okay place to eat, although the wait time for the food was around 45 minutes due to the rush, so I would probably recommend people to go to a cafe/restaurant further from the main, busy areas. My main objective for the trip was to see the Madonna of Bruges, a marble sculpture by Michelangelo, in the Church of Our Lady. The sculpture was placed between two other statues, Spes and Fides (Hope and Faith). It's genuinely such a beautiful sculpture and I would recommend people to go see it if they happen to be in the area. We walked back along the canal, eventually ending up at the Basilica of the Holy Blood. Apparently there's meant to be a phial of the Holy Blood of Jesus, however we showed up after the 'viewing hours' and weren't able to see it. It was a very pretty church, although it was smaller than the other ones we saw. It was kind of dark, in both the lighting scheme and the artwork displayed there. Afterwards, we roamed the shops over there, and somehow it proved more successful than our attempts to find a commercial district in Bruges. One thing we noticed is that the clothes were considerably brighter and more colourful than what we tend to have in the UK. Over here, we usually have more dull clothes available - blacks, greys, navy blues, nude colours etc. Over there I saw neons, bright pinks, reds, greens and lots of shimmery clothes. We didn't buy anything that day though, which was a bit of a shame. Overall, it was a very nice city to visit, and very beautiful to walk through. I had a lot of fun there! Thank you for reading, and byee!!

14/8/24 - Brussels (Belgium: Part One)

Sometimes I think that I'm not really cut out for writing about my life. Don't get me wrong, I like updating people who I'll never know nor meet about my life, it's just that I only really write once a month about events that occurred months before. I feel like a lot has happened in the past few months that I've mentally put on a list to write about, so I guess I'll go about this chronologically. This week's entry will be the Belgium entry, I guess.

I visited Belgium after my exams ended. I've been there once before, but it was when I was pretty young so I only really remember having ice cream at night at the Grand-Place with my mum. This trip was only for three days (minus the day we arrived, although that was at 10:00PM so not much to do), so we decided to tick off one city a day (Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp). I mapped out what we would try to do and see in each city the night before, as well as a route that would allow us to travel in a fairly linear fashion, without back-tracking too much. I'll only talk about the 'key' events (i.e. the things I actually remember enough to articulate in words because I'm writing this over two months after this actually occurred).

In Brussels, the main highlights were the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula. In the museum, I saw a lot of paintings by Rubens. For anyone who doesn't know, Peter Paul Rubens was a flemish painter who lived in Antwerp and is largely considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. I, personally, really like the vibrancy present in his paintings, and also how the settings of his paintings feel almost fantastical. We didn't really have that much time to look at other sections of the museum since I was trying to pack around 11 locations into one day.

We visited the cathedral later that day. It had been a while since I had seen a cathedral, but little did I know that it was the first of a series that I was about to see in the coming days. The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula began construction in the 11th century, and was more or less finished in the 16th. It's so crazy to me how some monuments take centuries to build. No one ever saw both the start & the finish of the cathedral. I kind of wonder what the person who decided that this should be built must have felt - did they have a sense that they were about to build something that would transcend centuries? Either way, the cathedral is beautiful from both the inside and the outside. It was nice to just sit down and chill inside. Something I've noticed in churches & cathedrals is that there's always some sort of TARDIS-like phemonemon of them seeming bigger from the inside. I think I'm going to cut this blog post short here, because my brain is kind of melting & also it'll be nice to split up the Belgium trip into three posts. If you've got this far then thank you for reading and I hope you have a nice day!!

5/7/24

It's been exactly two months since I wrote my last blog post. Not much has changed since then. I mean, I'm writing using a completely different laptop, so I have to get used to doing command + C instead of ctrl + C. I also went on holiday for a few days to Belgium, so I might make a post dedicated to that soon (with photos!). Today, though, I'm going to focus on what I saw on the 27th of May, mid-way through my exams and on the way back from a trip to Chaiwala to have some tea. It was raining heavily that day, and the spray from the cars on the motorway made it seem almost foggy. What's weird is that, as you will see in the picture, there wasn't any visible sunlight when I took the photos, but somehow a double rainbow still managed to appear before us. I must have been so overcome by the joy of seeing this beautiful phenomenon that my stomach threw up its acid into my throat, placing me in an awkward situation where my vocal chords were being seared alive (?) with nothing to douse the flames. I remember grabbing the falooda shake my parents had been sharing and downing it in order to provide some relief. It worked, but only for a few seconds before I felt it burn once more. I had this throughout the next few weeks, and sometimes I still have to preemptively drink a cup of milk and have a gaviscon tablet before I eat anything spicy. Anyway, there's my short, yet oddly dramatic post about an event I've been thinking about sharing for two months. Here is one of the pictures I took:

5/5/24

It's very late (or early?) as I'm writing this, so I'm gonna keep it short. I'm doing good, although (as I've mentioned an inordinate number of times) exams are starting soon. I tried to sign up to statuscafe, but I never got the confirmation email (not in junk either), so I guess no one else can be lavenderblues now haha. So yeah, I can't really do one-line blog posts at the moment. Aside from that, I've really been trying to get into snails and nudibranches, although it doesn't help that ever since I stopped interacting with nature on the daily (read: ever since I grew up) I've developed a vague fear of bugs. It kind of stems from not wanting to hurt them, but I can't even touch my phone screen on areas with photos (when I look them up). Speaking of which, a few months ago I was researching a lot about abyssal gigantism (after I read OWUTS - review on my books page!) and when I scrolled down the page to see more results (I was on my phone) I accidenly put my thumb onto a picture of a huge isopod. I don't think I've ever wanted to scrub my skin off so much before. It didn't help that the next morning there was suddenly a news story about a prehistoric sea monster (T-T). Moving swiftly on, I've been resisting the urge to start researching something new before my exams are over, which is annoying because ever since I've made that decision everything seems a whole lot more interesting to research. I'm kind of on the fence about researching space, as there's an astronomy component to the physics exam, but at the same time I know that what I'm planning on researching is not what's in the curriculum. I'm not really a fan of the way I write these posts, but they basically reflect my trains of thought, but decorated to be nice and pretty despite the disjointed, stitched mess it really is. Kind of like how when you know something looks bad, you just add highlights and glitter until it looks like it was made in a semi-decent factory. Maybe I'll start making an effort to keep these consistent one day (and to make my analogies make sense), although I don't have the time nor energy to do so right now. Wow, I said I'd keep this short, but it's ended up a bit longer than I intended :P
Bye!!

28/4/24

Well its been a hot minute since I've posted on here lmao. Over two months?? I started writing some blog posts on here a few times (one still remaining in the depths of a google doc somewhere), although none of them saw the light of day. Honestly, I have a lot of thoughts, but nothing with any substance. Making a blog probably wasn't the best idea for my site, but it looked cool and was on everyone else's sites, so I figured it's probably something I'll get better with in time. That would require me to write on here consistently instead of in 3 month intervals. I kind of want to do more posts like the one about Truman's weapon - big infodumps of stuff that will never have any importance in life unless aliens invade and ask me to tell them about the Potsdam conference or else Earth will unalive. Speaking of random information, I remembered today that when I was in primary school, I had an intense obsession with Scotland. I would research stuff about Scottish highlands, mythology/folklore, animals and plants, history, pretty much everything. While I don't remember much of it, it did come in handy for a quiz I was doing with some friends which asked about the national animal of Scotland (the unicorn), though that may be in part due to Through the Looking-glass and what Alice Found There. Anyway, I only wrote this to flex my knowledge of Scotland's national animal, so there is no more purpose to this post. Have a nice day, bye!

16/2/24

Today I found out that one of my biggest influences/inspirations in making my site has left neocities (permanently or for the time being I don't know). My layout, background, format and content were all inspired by them. I hope they do well in the future. Similarly, it turns out that a vtuber I used to watch graduated around a week ago, and I only found out yesterday as I'm not on twitter. I was a fan of her for over two years, and saw the channel grow from just under 300 subscribers to over 1k, and was often present in her livestreams too. It's kind of jarring to find out that all of that is gone, since her channel is wiped, and I wasn't even there to find out. She has said she's returning later in the year, so I'm looking forward to that. A friend of mine is leaving at the end of the year, so that sucks. I'm bad with keeping in touch with people who I don't see on a daily basis, and I tend to forget them if they aren't there. We live in different areas too, so meeting up will be kind of hard. In other news, they're expanding the building next year, or rather putting us in a different building. I don't think it's going to make much of a difference for me though, since I'll be taking science subjects so I'll be in the main building for the labs. It might be a bit more walking than usual though, since maths will probably be in the new building.

15/2/24

The vtuber community is lowkey crazy right now. Since Nijisanji (JP and EN) is what really got me down the vtuber rabbit hole, it sucks to be seeing its decline over the past year. It's pretty sad to see the talents/livers go down with the agency, at least on the EN side, and it doesn't help that my oshi is Enna, who seems to be caught up in all of this due to speculations that have been turned into fact by sheer force of will. For me, I've been watching Enna for over a year, and while I'm not a very good judge of character, I don't think that she's a bad person. Honestly, until anything is proven fully, I'll still continue to watch her. Out of context clips is how the whole harassment against Nina started (remember the catalogue?) and was probably a bit of a factor in her graduation. Also, please remember that it's not easy enough for the talents to just quit. First of all, due to the nature of the job (depending on their country), they may not be able to actually list this job, so it's just going to be a 1-3 year blank spot in terms of jobs. Moreover, this is their job. There's a level of uncertainty that comes with quitting, and even if they return to streaming, there's no guarantee that they'll get the same number of views/subs from before. Dokibird's situation is very unique. Finally, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes, so they may be in the process of graduating. There's also a 'graduation queue', so for all we know they can't graduate for a few months from now.

Ultimately, I fully support Dokibird, as well as hoping she has all the support she needs. What the company has done to her is horrible, and she deserves to be able to move on in peace. I admire her willingness to move on, her professionalism, as well as her kindness. Most people who continue to harass others after her words are probably just using it as an excuse to hate freely, so it's best to ignore and respect Doki's wishes. But yeah, that's all from me on this situation. I don't use that much social media aside from YT, so I need to pour all of my grievances against misinformation I see in the hopes of perhaps raising a bit of awareness. Obviously this account of the situation is patchy and in no way incomplete, so if the situation interests you, please do your own research from reliable sources (Dokibird's twitter), and remember that most things outside of this is generally pure speculation. There's a good explanation of the timeline here.

How's life been?

I had an exam on the Cold War today. Turns out, writing random blog posts about Trumans's big weapon really helps you in constructing an argument about why he was responsible for the Cold War. History is probably my most inconsistent subject at the moment, so hopefully I get a good mark on it. After researching a bunch of different aesthetics for a dumb thing I was doing with my friends, I found out that a certain aesthetic called Lobotomy-Chic existed. Naturally, it piqued my interest, as someone who completed a research project on the use of lobotomy on women, and I decided to look into it. Now, while I may be mistaken, my understanding of the aesthetic is that it displays a more detached, nihilistic presentation of femininity, as well as slightly glamourising the use of lobotomy on women. While looking at the media representative of the aesthetic, I realised that it seemed to... align with my interests... a lot. I think that if I were more of a normie this may have been my aesthetic. Honestly though, I feel like there's a bit of an ethical issue with the presentation of this aesthetic. It does make me uneasy that the aftermath of a procedure which was used to 'treat' women (obviously it wasn't only women who were affected by lobotomies, however the lobotomy-chic aesthetic very much only refers to lobotomies in the treatment of women) for their 'poor' mental health (read: any woman who didn't conform to the absurd societal standards at the time according to the whim of prejudiced doctors and physicians) is being romanticised as something to aspire to. Although, it could be argued that while the aesthetic uses the name 'lobotomy', there aren't any ties with the procedure itself aside from the apathy resulting from the procedure. Should I do a blog post about what I know of lobotomies? I put so much of my time, energy and emotional strength into this project, so I may as well discuss it.

'I have a big weapon' - Harry S. Truman

Between the Yalta and the Potsdam conference in 1945, America managed to successfully develop and test the world's first atom bomb. This gave the USA much more power in negotiations during the Potsdam Conference in July. It is said the Truman's preferred method of alerting the USSR of this new weapon of mass destruction was by whispering in Stalin's ear that he has 'a big weapon'. Despite this ambiguous wording, the world soon found out about the nature of America's 'big weapon', as the USA would bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan less than week after the conclusion of the Potsdam conference. This particularly worsened relations between the USSR and the USA as it had been previously agreed that the USSR would deal with Japan. By going behind Stalin's back, some may argue that Truman's decision resulted in the dissolution of the Big Three alliance of WW2. Moreover, many people maintain that Japan was fighting a losing battle at this stage in the war, and the use of the atomic bomb was unnecessary. Similarly, the USA didn't remain in the lead for that long anyway, with the USSR developing their own atomic bomb in 1949, only 4 years later. Finally, it is important not to forget the effect that the atomic bomb had on the citizens of Japan. The estimated figure of how many died lies between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians.

Well that's the end of my out-of-the-blue history lesson. Hope you learned something new!

Question: Should I convert the art section into a films section (or any other interest)?

At the moment, my art section is the only section which is 'unfinished' in a sense. I have something to show for most other sections, but art is empty. I mainly do traditional art - the extent of my digital art is basically what's on this website. The main issue is that I don't particularly want to go through the effort of trying to take photos of my art, since I'm kind of bad at taking nice-looking photos and I'm worried it's going to look kind of scrappy and unfinished. Also, there's the issue of storing my images. I'm thinking about using imgur, but I might have to look at other photo storage apps before I decide. If anyone reads this, please recommend me one! Anyway, so I'm thinking about possibly replacing it with a section similar to my books sections, but for films. It might just be temporary while I work on my art page behind the scenes. Otherwise I could always base it on any other interests I have, such as the ocean and sea creatures (I love saying 'sea creatures'), similar to my space page, but I have a feeling that I may forget to write in it (much like my space page). Either way, any major changes would be made after two weeks, since my exams start in 3 days hahaha. Wish me luck!!

deleted this entry haha

Ranting about nothing and everything

I'm still on the fence about the blog... while it seems cool i think its going to be something that I do consistently about twice and then it's going to become an empty husk of a webpage... Same with the book reviews... my first one was so long but that's just because i felt strongly about the book... i don't think i'll be able to write as much for books that I like, which is kind of worrying. I don't want people to shy away from books I love just because my outward enthusiasm isn't as large as my internal enthusiasm, that would be horrible. If I start investing more time into this website, I'll use a better site to make my font - this one has no numbers. I keep on adding more things to my website even though I haven't even finished some of my most basic goals... i added music and i don't know why. Probably just to feel like i've achieved something as my other responsibilities just continue to pile up...