A habit-forming Friday Five...

[magnetic_pole]

1. What bad habits [of your own] bother you the most? My tendency toward occasional over-eating/emotional eating. It always seems so logical and necessary at the time, and in retrospect seems like automatic, mindless idiocy. Or the advent of my period, which is always preceded by two days of ravenousness and crankiness and catches me by surprise every time.

2. What good habits do you most admire [in others]? Regular exercise and regular writing. I can do both, but I need to work myself up to it, every time.

3. What unusual habits do you observe in your family members? Do they bother you? Knee-bouncing. I can't imagine having that much extra energy!

4. Which bad habit do you think would be the most difficult to get rid of? Why? Anything emotional or tied to childhood attitudes or fears. Speech patterns or verbal or physical tics. (I still, like, sound like girl raised in the 80s, you guys.)

5. Which good habit do you think would be the most difficult to develop? Why? Well, habits I don't actually want to develop (like skipping dessert) are difficult for obvious reasons, even when I'm in in a self-improvement mode. A lot of the habits I really do want to acquire but can't seem to develop properly (going to bed earlier, for example) are in conflict with other things going on my life.

***

In other news, I bought the neighbor's wardrobe! Thanks for the encouragement, flist. Right now it's a really expensive vacuum closet, but soon I'll figure out how to make better use of it (and, honestly, I really wanted to put that vacuum away, so that at least makes me happy). We have a walk in closet in the bedroom but no other storage in the apartment, so as you can imagine there are a number of living-and-dining-room-related items which can probably go in there. And we still have three unpacked boxes from the 2015 move, so perhaps we'll finally be able to put those away. Tidy apartment = happy me.

We saw Crazy Rich Asians yesterday. Actually quite fun, all things considered.* (R's read the book(s), I haven't, so I wasn't sure what to expect.) And while there's a lot of talk about Asian and Asian American representation in Hollywood, which is wonderful and important, YAY!, it's also a movie with some really fabulous roles for women, which hasn't been discussed the same way. Michelle Yeoh was excellent, of course, but Constance Wu was, too. And Awkwafina! Hope you get to enjoy these fabulous women soon.

Pre-semester meetings this week, class start next. Summer 2018 is on the wane.

* There are some big caveats that need to come with this movie--see my comments to TRS below.

Comments

[spikesgirl58]

Great answers. Knee bouncing - I have to confess being prone to that as well.

Life is short - eat dessert first. And thanks for playing along with The Friday Five!

[magnetic_pole]

The knee bouncing is so compulsive--the folks I know who do it rarely realize and can't stop even when they try. (It drives me crazy, but that's my problem, not theirs.)

Thanks for the questions! M.

[spikesgirl58]

You're welcome. I end up sitting on mine to keep it still. :D

I make a habit of avoiding "habit" maintenance

[jesse_the_k]

...since I spent too many decades convinced that if I just "fixed myself" I would be a worthwhile person.

That's a wicked spiffy wardrobe. May it hide all the things you're tired of seeing!

Do you think Crazy Rich Asians requires a movie-theater for proper enjoyment? (Context: I love my couch and kitchen; I will see a not-great movie in a theater if it's all about the SFX, for example, Dr Strange.)

Re: I make a habit of avoiding "habit" maintenance

[magnetic_pole]

I make a habit of avoiding "habit" maintenance...since I spent too many decades convinced that if I just "fixed myself" I would be a worthwhile person.

You are a wiser person than me, J. I'm slowly shedding a lifetime's worth of self-improvement, but it's taking a while.

You know, honestly, I don't think it needs be seen in the theater. I love my couch, too, and rarely go out for movies; this one we saw just to make sure Hollywood knew folks would pay good money for an all-Asian cast. (And it did well over the first weekend, hurrah! So things look good.)

Not only are there no special effects, it's basically a play with some really gorgeous establishing shots. Lots of talking. So many close-ups i felt a little uncomfortable being so close to the incomparable Michelle Yeoh's pores. :) M.

[semielliptical]

Yes, some of the most worthwhile habits definitely still require effort, as you point out. Brushing my teeth is a no-thought-required kind of habit, while taking time to stretch before going to bed often takes talking myself into it.

Crazy Rich Asians sounds like a good movie for enjoying during the last days of summer break! Hope your pre-semester meetings more useful than most.

[magnetic_pole]

I realized writing this that I'm not really sure what habits are, exactly. In my mind, they seem to be something difficult I'd love to say I did regularly and imagine to be routine and easy for other people...eating well! exercising! going to bed on time!...which is probably not the case. :) What's between tooth-brushing and my idealized version of healthy living? Does it need to be rote or compulsive or hard to stop or just customary? I have a number of embarrassing "habits" that are really just superstitious routines I do to comfort myself (tapping my cereal before eating it, using certain escalators on the metro, counting while walking or swimming, etc.).

Anyways. Yes! to Crazy Rich Asians. It was a fun, end of the summer day--we took the bus to a part of town we don't see often and treated ourselves to the Whole Food hot food and tea cookie bars, as well. (The small joys of life....) M.

[therealsnape]

Thanks for the Crazy Rich Asians review. It got a fairly negative one in our local paper, but I have more confidence in you and R.

I hear you on how you feel on emotional eating. Exactly how I feel about playing jigsaw on the PC. Not necessary, of course, but a well-deserved little treat, and afterwards I realise it was mindlessly wasting precious time.

[magnetic_pole]

Well, to be honest, the entire political premise of the movie is terrible--it's a bit like The Crown, in that it makes you empathize with an entire class of people you actually really ought to feel much more distant from than you already do. (If that grammatical mess makes any sense.) In terms of intra-Asian racial politics, it was painful and horrifying to watch at times--South Asian security men dressed like colonial sepoys, for example--and I'm not sure it was as self-aware and mocking as it thought it was in showing the dynamics of domestic service and wealth in SE Asia. (Which may not have been visible--much of the household help would have been Filipinos, who work in terrible conditions for a pittance through the region.) And on top of all of that, an over-the-top show of .01% wealth to enjoy while you're given a get-out-of-jail-free card by the POV of the protagonist, who has an impoverished, bootstrappy backstory as the daughter of a single mother who grew up in modest circumstances in Queens and just *happens* to fall into the highest rungs of this world like a Disney princess.

*sigh* In a word, not good. Crazy Rich Ethnic Chinese dominate SE Asia. The lack of East Asian representation (and the tradition of degrading stereotypical representation) in Hollywood makes it seem progressive when it's anything but.

But it did show certain aspects of Asian culture (and non-American cultures, more generally) that don't get treated seriously in Hollywood: what does it mean, seriously, to put family above individual happiness? How do you negotiate a world in which both value systems have meaning and worth? And it portrayed two women in conflict who both knew what they believed in and fought for it and weren't turned against each other by the men in their lives. They were both given deep motivation and dignity, and it shocked me how happy I was to see that.

Like much of life, complicated.

On a lighter note, it's a fun film, a whole-hearted indulgence in a world that's fantasy for most of us.

Re: mindless eating / paying jigsaw: which is true: the joy that comes from the indulgence or the regret afterward? Complicated, complicated. M.

[therealsnape]

Thank you for your thoughtful notes on the film. I may still check it out when it gets here, if I have the time. But it's not going to be a huge priority.

As to the joy / regret, I think Housman's poem sums up my feelings after indulging exactly:

How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.
To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.

[therealsnape]

To-day I shall be strong should have been a new section. Sorry!

[magnetic_pole]

It doesn't seem like the kind of movie you'd seek out, but if its ever playing on an airplane while you fly across the Atlantic...you might enjoy it. :)

And I'm going to expose myself as such a philistine here, but: Remorseful Day! This makes me think about the last Morse episode in a such a different way. I had no idea about the origins of the phrase.

It's a prickly-painful poem, isn't it? Thanks for leaving it here. M.

[splix]

Congrats on the wardrobe! It's nice to have a place to put things.

I enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians. I liked the books - good fun fluff, for the most part - and the movie felt true to them. Wealth porn. :) I enjoyed all the actresses and thought they did a swell job. Love Michelle Yeoh so much. <3

[magnetic_pole]

I'm so happy to have a place to put things, S. R is not tidy by nature, and now that she's working at home, she really needs some space. I'd given up in the past year or so, not knowing what to do with everything as the place got messier and messier. 2018-2019 will be the year of clear surfaces!

(Thanks for celebrating the small things with me.)

TOTALLY wealth porn, nicely put. Weirdly, R and I both grew up in a distant, aspirational reflection of that world in southern California--I had visceral reaction to seeing it portrayed on the screen like that. As I said to TRS above, awful politically on so many fronts, but also insightful on issues of family and really, surprisingly good in its portrayal of women. And yes! re: Michelle Yeoh. I hope this opens up more doors for her.

Last week without students! Cherish the quiet! M.

[splix]

Did you get the dark color or the blond?

I've been so much happier and felt so much lighter since I've purged my living room. It's really surprised me, tbh. Clear surfaces for the win!

I read your comment above. The book does talk about the ethnicities of the hired help but doesn't go into the economics of the situation. Which doesn't surprise me much given that the focus is solely on the crazy rich people and not the depressing reality of the soberly poor. It does also discuss the uniforms the guardsmen wore - they were Indian elite ex-military or something similar and the uniforms were a mark of prestige [which of course is debatable in the context of colonialism]. I more or less accepted the get out of jail free card because I grew up watching garbage like Dynasty which demanded sympathy for the wealthy. Gotta love the 80s and Reaganomics!

Today is the first day of the semester. I'm almost totally segregated from the students in my new location so it's a little odd!

[magnetic_pole]

The dark. We're in a weird situation, wood color-wise, right now: we started off with birch/light wood in the early 2000s, when we first started buying Ikea furniture, and all of our (many) bookcases are light, but then we got a dining table last year that only came in the darker wood, and we bought chairs to match, so the rest of the light wood has gone in the bedroom. It was lucky the neighbors wanted to sell a dark wood cabinet, since that's in the dining room part of our living-kitchen-dining area.

Ah, the joys of setting up house. This is the first time we haven't anticipated a move in a couple of years, so we're having fun settling in.

Re: cleaning up, I'd been following your progress, and looking occasionally at the website you mentioned, and slowly realizing it really matters to me to wake up to a clean house. And R really doesn't have anywhere to put her stuff. So I'm hoping more storage plus more daily attention will make for a nicer living space.

Ah, ex-military! Well, that explains it, a bit. So interesting you've read the books. Now I'm so curious about what was changed for the film! Like the books, it seems, the movie's forthright in that it's about rich people and their problems, so I'm not going to fault it for that, but it's also caught up in this US-based social-justice-racial-represenation dialogue that's pretty distant from the content or the aims of the movie. Ah, Discourse (tm).

Dynasty! There's a reminder of another age.

First day already! Yikes. How are you segregated from the students? Are there no classrooms in your building? We've got meetings this week, and the students are back next Monday. Summer's never long enough. M.

[liseuse]

I spend the first two days before my period ravenous and cranky and I never ever realise why until my period turns up and then a lightbulb goes off. It's why I try not to mock novels/stories where werewolves forget about the full moon because I too have been experiencing something monthly for 22 years and never remember it's going to happen! Or, because I use a period tracking app, I somehow both know that my period is due and don't twig that my ravenous hunger is because it is due.

Yay for the wardrobe!

[magnetic_pole]

Yay! for storage! One day, this apartment will be cleaned up, I swear. (We do not have the discipline you had in the move, clearly.)

I'm so with you on that element of surprise. The crankiness and hunger are so *motivated* by external events that when I discover they're not the only cause, I'm taken aback, every time. What, full moon *again?* M.