Getting back into painting, dreaming about Minju Kim X & Other Stories and a trip to Jeonju on the bullet train
Picnic Journal Issue #16
Oh! Hello!
Welcome back to another Picnic Journal. I am writing this intro on a snowy morning in late March? Hello, climate change. Oh well, I’m not complaining because an opportunity to wear my red gumboots is not something to lose sleep over. Always looking for the lemonade among the pile of lemons. Is that how that idiom goes? I don’t know but I do know that I should stop writing this intro so you can read the rest of the newsletter before you lose interest! Stay with me. It’s a good one. Kind of… I don’t know it’s kind of the same as the other ones. But I’ll let you be the judge.
Here are three things I spent a lot of time thinking about recently:
1. Minju Kim did a collaboration with & Other Stories and I can’t stop thinking about it
If you live under a rock lobster, Minju Kim is a Korean fashion designer who won the Netflix show ‘Next in Fashion’ a few years ago. She was my favourite designer on the show and I have been following her career ever since. I have been so tempted to buy her clothing from her namesake label, but it is just a bit out of my price range. So the fact that she did a collab with one of my favourite high street brands AND used bunny rabbits in the campaign is just all I can think about this week. There are a few things I have my eye on for when it launches so goodbye future house and retirement plans.
Here are the four pieces that I will be imaginary styling in my head for the next few weeks:
2. Work is just this thing that lives inside a laptop case at the bottom of a shelf in my house
Every day at 6:30 pm I aim to close my laptop (I work remotely as a UX designer, hi by the way) I shove my laptop, my notebook and my charger into a laptop case and then I shove the laptop case onto a shelf that houses our tangled cables in overpriced canvas boxes, medicine and my Nintendo Switch paraphernalia. I have to keep everything work-related in that laptop case just so it doesn’t contaminate the fun, interesting parts of my personal life outside of work hours. Then I forget about the day, and never look back.. until I have to do it all over again the next day. But then on Fridays, I get to pack that case away for a full 72 hours and that is what makes this whole vicious cycle worthwhile.
3. The old lady who served me at the pharmacy this week
For some reason, I have this assumption that old people in Korea can’t speak English, but boy was I wrong about this lady. I went to the pharmacy this week to fetch some medicine but what I got instead was a delightful conversation with an old lady in English (and also medicine). She carefully wrote out all of the instructions on an envelope (in English!!) and explained everything in great detail. I’m still thinking about that interaction and I hope that she is there when I next need medicine.
Recent Doodles
I decided that this week was the week I wanted to become a painter? I used to paint a lot when I was in high school and university but I stopped painting when I started buying my own clothes and furniture and stocks and didn’t want to get it all covered in paint. Thanks to work stress, I have picked up the brush again. I literally brush the day away stroke by stroke and I don’t love the outcome, but the process is super enjoyable.
Here is another doodle from this week:
What I’ve been watching
A Weekend Away
This new Netflix movie starring Blair Waldorf was a good weeknight time-killing movie. As much as I enjoyed it, it made me really angry to see someone making so many clearly terrible solo female travel decisions. I was practically yelling at the screen the whole time but it was a good movie!
New Girl
Winston and Nick from New Girl are truly comedic geniuses and this is the show that I have had in the background during my aforementioned painting resurrection.
Turning Red
I started watching Turning Red this week mostly because it has the voices of Maitreyi Ramakrishnan AND Sandrah Oh, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I watched it. I shall resume it next week but loving it so far
Mia Maples on YouTube
I don’t know how I hadn’t heard of Mia Maples until last week but I have been binge-watching her videos ever since. I cried my eyeballs out watching her and her family give her grandparents a surprise renovation! I just didn’t realise people were out in the world living the way Mia and her family live! Her DIY and interior content is actually better than most of the home interior content on Netflix!
What I’m reading
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Oh lord, I haven’t read a book this fast in a long time, it was so good! I started writing about this one in last week’s newsletter and boy was a bullet train trip a good chance to get through a good chunk of this book. I’m not even going to try and review this book (mostly because I think everyone has probably already read it, I’m just late to the party) but just go and read it! It really made me want to watch a bunch of ye olde 50’s movies.
Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
by Jake Knapp
I started reading Sprint this week and I am l-o-v-i-n-g it. I feel like a small town girl turned Silicone Valley college dropout with a dream and an iPad when I read this book. In all seriousness though, I am soaking up every word of wisdom from Jake and his colleagues because I hope that one day I too will invent a robot that delivers toothbrushes to people in their hotel rooms. Oh, I guess I might need to get my own idea to use for my own Sprint but you get the gist. Recommend it to any people who are stuck on an idea, a problem, something that you can’t quite stop thinking about. It’s a good one.
What I’ve been listening to
Best to You, Blood Orange
This song came on in my shuffle recently and it took me to a place and a time that I have not thought about for a while but it was nice. I used to blast this song in my mum’s car when I drove to my part-time job as a retail assistant in a novelty gift store. At the time I think I didn’t think that life would ever get any better than exactly what I just described but *spoiler alert*, it does.
Apart from that, I’m still just mostly listening to the Encanto soundtrack… but still haven’t seen the film.
Recent YouTube Videos
Want to see what I get up to as a foreigner living in Seoul, South Korea? Check out my YouTube channel. I post videos every so often on there!
Day trip to Jeonju, South Korea
New video of my husband and I travelling to Jeonju for the day to eat some delicious food!
February Monthly Vlog / Feeling bleh, working from home and spending too much money
Goals for this week
Study, study, study… and more study
I have been, for the first time in about 2 years, consistently studying Korean? The driving force behind forming this habit slash lifestyle change has been the fact that the person I work closest to in my new role at my company does not speak English. There is nothing like throwing yourself in the deep end for learning/upskilling. From having to do daily phone calls and messages in Korean, doing weekly speaking classes with my Korean tutor using Say Speaking (aka my favourite Korean Startup) and practising what I learn with my Korean husband, I have already noticed a huge improvement. Obviously, there is nothing easy about learning a language but I feel really fortunate that someone forced me to swim with sharks and I’m living to tell the tale (so to speak, I’m actually a really weak swimmer).
My goal for this week is to get better at revising and going over my notes/lesson topics from my classes. I’m paying money for these classes so I should at least try and drill what I am learning into my brain.