A personal review of June Hur’s Behind Five Willows, a warm Joseon-era romance that recalls Pride and Prejudice and You’ve Got Mail.
我的猫Panni | My Cat Panni
以前，我有一只猫。它叫Panni。 它的毛很长，颜色是深棕色，看起来差不多是黑色的。 Panni只有一只耳朵，但是它还是很可爱。 它很安静，也很喜欢跟我们在一起。 我工作的时候，它常常在我旁边睡觉。 Panni已经不在了，但是我常常想它。 它不只是一只猫，也是我的家人。 我不会忘记它。 I used to have a cat named Panni. She had long, dark-brown fur that looked almost black. Panni had only one ear, but she was still very cute. She was quiet and liked being with us. When I worked, she often slept beside me. Panni is no…
Until the End of the World by Sarah Lyons Fleming — Book Review
Sarah Lyons Fleming’s zombie-apocalypse novel offers survival, friendship and romance, but its relationship drama repeatedly overwhelms the danger.
A May Day in Várbalog: Grass Cutting and Cherries
A May trip to our house in Várbalog meant cutting back the overgrown garden, admiring the open fields and picking dark red cherries straight from the tree.
HSKCourse.com Review: A Self-Learner’s Honest Take.
Coming back to Mandarin after a hiatus, I needed something to bridge the gap before jumping back into tutoring sessions. HSKcourse.com came at the right moment, and it feels less like an online course and more like having a tutor actually walk you through the material. After almost a month with it, here’s my honest take on whether it’s worth it for self-learners.
HSK 1-3 Character progress sheet
I needed to do a bit of review on the Hanzi from HSK 1-3 and used Claude to help me create a list that I could track my own practice. Feel free to try it out.
Getting into Claude
I’ve been experimenting with a bunch of AI tools lately – ChatGPT, Grok, Copilot, Gemini, and most recently Claude – and I have to say, I’m genuinely impressed. What I enjoy most is that even without being a coder, you can still create surprisingly polished “artifacts” like this one. I’ve been generating a few comprehension…
A glimpse into Myheritage.
I was fortunate enough to meet three out of my four grandparents. On my mother’s side, the stories were quite clear. My maternal grandparents came from Javanese and Bugis backgrounds, both cultures rooted in the Indonesian archipelago. From my father’s side, my grandmother was Telugu Indian. These parts of my heritage were always known within the family.
The person who remained something of an enigma was my Japanese grandfather.
When life was put on hold
It has been quite a while since my last post. The past few months unfolded quickly — exams for an accountancy certification, long evenings of studying, workplace projects, a promotion, a new team. Life did not stop. It accelerated. Somewhere in that acceleration, I pressed pause on Mandarin lessons. What started as “just for a…
Adrian’s Undead Diary by Chris Philbrook — Series Review
A review of the original eight-book Adrian’s Undead Diary arc: immersive zombie survival, community-building and humour that eventually became too much.