“You’ve never met a kdrama you couldn’t love”

Alright, so I improvised a line from “Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them: Crimes of Grindelwald” but I like to apply the “If it fits, then I sits” mantra of the smaller members of the feline family to myself as well when I write down a heading (perks of being a Mano) and the moment couldn’t have been any more opportune because I just finished “A poem a day”.

Granted, I watched it at a very stressful time of my life as my anatomy mock exam happens to be the day after tomorrow and although I pretend to have a “happy-go-lucky” personality, the shameful truth is that I try to binge study (just as I pretty much binge doramas) usually on the last day and I do it- yes, you guessed it, under a hella lotta stress. (Cue acne and making sad faces in the mirror, looking at the reflection with eyes filled with regret of wasting perfectly good time).

But I’ll work on that, I’m going to change my unhealthy ways (My resolutions are based on unstable foundations, I’ll probably remain a sorry excuse of a human till some more years (◕ᴗ◕✿) Gomen!)

Anyways, back to “A poem a day”. The reason I picked up this drama was because I, too love tiny bite-sized daily poetry and I just had a feeling that it would be a good watch. I started it and I was glad to see my favourite cutie, Lee Yu-Bi, the ‘Choco’ from ‘Innocent Man’, the endearing new reporter in ‘Pinocchio’ who always did “Yes, Cap!” with a salute and the shattered but still standing tall example of a woman who had been to hell and back in “Gu family book”. I’d always wanted her to have her own show! And the main lead guy! *drum roll* [SPOILER] The prosecutor who dies in the second last episode of ‘ City Hunter’, actor Lee Joon-Hyuk! (The characters whose character arcs never attain Nirvana in kdrama land always stay with you because you always want them to be happy as well as everyone else who ‘got away’ with their happy ending.) So I was really excited to see him in a drama which was centred around the emotions in a hospital and how literature and words can resonate and calm the storms in us, giving us the feeling that we aren’t alone. And the poems really were cute and adorable, I loved them. Until, well. Until the poems became bait for a show which didn’t have a lot to offer except zero chemistry between the lovers (and I had really high hopes for these actors too) and entrapment of characters in their own idiosyncrasies.

Poetry is something that goes deep into the construct of a human soul and threads out a cloth with the needle of raw emotions. The show did offer moments like that and the soft narrations of the poems were calming and warm but the acting was b a d and relatable moments were seen in the patients in the hospital and rarely in the main cast themselves. And the only person whose story made me “fan away tears” was MinHo who was forced into the field of physiotherapy by his parents who didn’t forget to remind him either that “If you’d gotten better marks, you could have been a doctor instead.” Aigoo, please go away, patronising parents.

In a nutshell, the relationship between Dr. Ye Je Wook and Dr. Woo Bo Young is acted out so superficially that it’s sad because they both met each other through poetry and their characters deserve more depth and motivation than what they were given. Even as the drama ends, we depart yet look on at them staying in their “happy bubble” which at this point, I’m dying to poke just to explore their personalities more.

But we can’t complain, the poems were superb and I think that was the whole point as well so I really can’t hate this drama after all and here is a poem which really, really, brought tears to my eyes. Literally the reason why I wrote up this whole post.

• I thought it was okay for mothers to do that • (Shim Soon Deok)

I thought it was okay for mothers to do that, even if she works herself to death on the farm fields. I thought it was okay for mothers to do that, even if she sits on the furnace and eats a cold bowl of rice for lunch. I thought it was okay for mothers to do that, even if she does laundry with her bare hands and cold water on a winter’s day.

I thought it was okay for mothers to do that.

“I’m full, I’m not hungry.” Even if she starves while feeding her family. I thought it was okay for mothers to do that. Even if her heels are so worn out that they make noises in the blanket, I thought it was okay for mothers to do that. Even if her fingernails are so worn-out that they can’t even be clipped, I thought it was okay for mothers to do that. Even if father’s anger and our rebellion doesn’t phase her-

I thought it was okay for mothers to do that.

“I miss your grandmother, I miss your grandmother.” I thought those were just complaints. She woke up in the middle of the night and cried in silence. When I saw that, I thought,

Ah! It was not okay for mothers to do that.

*****

•das my mum, y’all•

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On chemistry and affections

//From June, 2017//

I’ve always hated chemistry. Because I couldn’t understand it. Because even when I tried to, it still presented itself to me as an esoteric enigma, making me feel like as if I was trying to make sense out of something through a kaleidoscope. I knew it was beautiful, people had devoted their lives to this particular subject, and I respected that. But it never made me feel at home. And I didn’t like that.

Until I had to repeat a year. Sounds a little embarrassing to write it out loud, in front of the internet and all, but yes, that happened. I gave the Medical college entry test, didn’t make the cut (actually I fell pretty far away from the cut) so had to give it another go. (Try, try again, isn’t that right, T.H. Palmer?)

And so I had to acquiesce, like a wild horse being broken. Swallowing my ego, I tried to make peace with many chemical reactions. And after some months, I realised that I could use some of these phenomenas for my own nerdish theories.

(Can’t brainwash my inner nerd away, KIPS! I’ll forever rebel against your 5 am classes by using science to corroborate my own cosmological and philosophical deductions! *takes out every colour highlighter and bookmark and waves them around fiercely to express my colourful heart*)

I always talk a lot about relationships for some reason and I will talk about them again now. Somehow, at at least one point in our lives, we fall prey to the idea of perfection. With every condition at its ideal. Now let me talk a little about gases. They are ideal and they are non-ideal. The non-ideal ones are called real. Do you understand?

For ideal, hypothetical gases, they made a kinetic theory to explain them. But when they used it to explain real gases, well what do you know? Two of the postulates failed. The scientists were probably stumped though until they came upon a realisation that well, you need some ideal conditions to make real gases behave like ideal ones. Low pressure and high temperature. But alas! Some gases still deviated from the ideal behaviour. And then Van der Waal came along and made some corrections in some factors so the postulates could be applied on real gases, yada yada. But I was fascinated by how this felt like something that also linked to relationships. Ideal ones don’t exist. But the idea of one is necessary so you can relate to it once a real one comes along. So, some of your own postulates get debunked and leave you in a mess. Followed by the realisation of what’s real and what’s not. And then making some of your own corrections. Breaking down your own castles to a rubble. But staying steady and getting the hang of it, leaving the idea behind for something far better. For something real. For something you worked for.

(Did I already mention this in a previous post as well? Maybe.)

And then we come to the topic of bonding. Atoms, humans, potato, potahto. When two atoms come closer together, they attract. But no, to be more specific, their valence electrons react, depending on their own valencies and their stability and how much they need to depend on one another. We get some amount of a bond energy and that’s that. But are the atoms completely attached to one another when they’re bonded? Are they standing side by side, no space in between them? No. You forget about the other electrons, the ones in the inner shells. They are negatively charged, the electrons of the other atom are also negatively charged, so they will repel and there will a decrease in energy and a distance between them. A little distance isn’t a bad thing, everyone needs space to breathe. Even when you’re in love, remember that you are YOU, even though you share parts of yourself with someone, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve your own space because that’s a good thing! Distance makes the heart grow fonder. You don’t have to stick together like two beans in a pod 24/7.

(My chemistry professor JUST said “Humans and atoms are exactly the SAME but with different forms of expression” LIKE OH MY GOD WOW I was writing this in class and he just said that, I want to grin out loud!)

My point is, we are made of atoms and so we have their characteristics. We collide, connect, disconnect and even blow up, giving off heat and terrible energy. I just thought this was very fascinating how science, (rationality-driven, fact-seeking) could relate to something as irrational and free as love. I guess they are both two paths of a same journey.

Half-stitched

With every weekend when dad comes home and with every meal he has with us, with very casual smile across the table, with every small joke and every little trip, to the mall or the grocery shop, with every text message and with every flustered expression as my parents learn how to send emojis to each other, seems to my overly optimistic brain as another stitch in the cloth, once torn by time and neglect, now being looked at again with courage to make amends.

Time has swallowed some of the pain, has also removed the marks, of crayons on the walls in my house, but has created some new ones, like cracks in the ceiling which get worse with rain, at my mom’s new place where we moved. But that’s not all that time has done. Because sometimes I give myself the liberty to find, a pile of rubble where the walls of pride once stood and I hope that one day a jar of prayers, collected over the years, will bring us all back home again.