Looking back: Aug '25, Week 1 & 2

I have finally moved to a place of my own! 🥹

It has been a busy 2 weeks! Since the move was scheduled for a Monday, I made it a point to skip writing my weekly updates so that I could focus on cleaning and unpacking. I wish I could share more about my new place, but I'm still waiting for some deliveries to put away some of my stuff, and need to put up my decorations. Hopefully next week? 🥺

Also, skipping a week made me realize that I started to look forward to these updates. I wonder if anyone missed hearing from me? 🤔

✨ Forever home -- Spent Week 1 packing and cleaning as much as I could of my parent's place, and spent Week 2 unpacking and cleaning my new place!

My first rose syrup drink at the new place, served in a new cup. 🌹💕

After almost 5 full years, I am finally living in a place I can truly call my own. My mother, being the gracious queen that she is, said that her home will forever be mine as well, so I guess I have TWO homes now!? 🥹🤔🤣 I don't mind helping to clean and maintain the home I grew up in, but there is already so much to do here! (Busy is good though! ✨) She helped move a lot of our fragile items by car, and gave me lots of large bags for transporting items, so I think she might be the true MVP! 💜 She even treat us to a nice meal on the night of the move. 🥹💖 I will treasure the memories of the last 2 years living with her as I embark on this new journey! 💜

It still feels surreal though -- how did I get here? I never had a clear vision of the future I wanted, so I never aimed for anything. But one choice lead to another, and here I am. Of course, my partner is a major reason why I got here, and why I get to do what I do now, so I am eternally grateful. Still, a part of me would like to believe that I have earned this, but as with all the things I do this might continue to be a struggle. 🙃

But I digress!

My new desk! 💜 I've only put up my favorite Miku posters and took out some cute things I've bought previously that I did not have the space to display.

I'm glad that I took time the weeks leading up to the move to clean the house little by little, as it allowed me to ready the space for receiving our stuff and to familiarize myself with the "capabilities" of our furnishings.

I was also finally able to free all my plushies from storage jail! Decided to let some go (passed them to the Queen to donate/ give away/ keep for herself), but cleaned the rest of them! I definitely don't have enough space to display them all though, so some of them might need to return to storage jail. 🙃

Some of them needed restuffing, like Kitty that I washed before the move. I've removed all the stuffing from those and washed their skins, but some of the creases on the ones that were vacuum sealed for over 7 years were to stubborn to brush out. 🥺 I hope that with lots of love and care that they will eventually look a little more alive.

Kitty has revived, and is now happily chilling a display cabinet with my other special edition Hello Kittys! 💖 You can see what she looked like after her skin bath here!

Refreshed my toy cot with leftover IKEA outdoor tiles, cut to size with a hand saw! ✨

The move itself had its hiccups, but I'm relieved that there was nothing catastrophic! We requested for professional help whenever possible, and I got my hands dirty for the rest! ⭐️ I do love me some handicraft. :)

Throughout the last 2 weeks, Spirit City: Lofi Sessions has kept me focused and sane. 🙏🏻 I've gotten into the habit of using the habit tracker, sound effects (Ocean Serenade + Meditative Chimes sound effect is peak vibes for me), and journal function as a notepad. I listed down the order of items to bring over via my mother's car or public transport, just so that we did not miss anything! Of course we still did forget some items, but I'm confident that without the list, we would have been a lot less organized! I was able to plan the move from the new place (using my laptop) and home (using my PC) thanks to Spirit City's Steam cloud save. I know I could have used Google Drive or something, but I got to do it in style and good vibes! 🥹

Got to host 2 different groups of friends over the weekend too! I hope they felt comfortable enough. I hope my friends know that they are always welcome to seek shelter/ comfort here! 🥺💜

Hope to share more next Monday as I continue to work on my new home this week. 💜

✨ Watched Streams I was looking forward to -- Ari's Anniversary + 2.0 model debut stream, and Enki's Birthday stream!

I got to start and end the weekend before the big move (move was on 11 Aug morning) with 2 streams I was looking forward to: Ari's anniversary & 2.0 model debut stream (8 Aug night), and Enki's Birthday & start of Live2D model debuthon (10 Aug night)! 💖

I had prepared a gift for Ari's Anniversary stream weeks ago, so I was excited that it was finally time to give it to her! 🥹💜 Was hoping to give her the surprise nearing the end of her stream, but turns out she has Discord notifications muted during streams. HAHAHA! Oh well! She seemed happy to receive the gift, so all's good. ♪ Onward and upward, Ari-who-is-now-my-sister! 💜 :>

I've never mentioned Enki before, have I? 🤔 I got to know Enki through Ari, and he's been really supportive of Mimi's activities, always having such kind words of encouragement. 🥹 I tune in to his streams every now and then because he seems really chill with a good sense of humor, and sometimes I get to brush my teeth and head to bed to metal music at 2+AM. 🤣 Quite a cool guy!

As his Birthday stream was starting, I took a break from packing (yes, I was packing till late) to Google: How do I give money to a Twitch streamer? 🤔🤣 But I gave up cause I really needed to get back to packing, I couldn't understand why spend on Bits or buy/ gift Subs to oneself and others, and not just donate like a YouTube Superchat, and my PC was already dismantled. 💀💀💀 But I tuned in longer than usual until I headed off to bed though!!! 🥺 Hope he had a good stream! He was so nice to remember that I was in the midst of moving and wished me well before I headed off for the night. Maybe Enki the Birthday boy blessed the move!!!? 🤣💜

His Debuthon lasts 4 weeks until his Vtuber debut on 7 September! Looking forward to seeing his long awaited model! 💜 I will brush my teeth as late as possible that night I suppose... 🤣

✨ Gaming -- Played FFXIV 7.3 MSQ, cleared the new Extreme Trial, and watched Yuraia play The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. Tried 2 new board games: Veiled Fate and ISS Vanguard!

My hands have been busy almost all the time the last 2 weeks, so I haven't had the chance to game very much. Played a little FFXIV, and tuned in to Yuraia's stream as he played The Hundred line: Last Defense Academy.

I am quite fond of Danganronpa characters, and have cosplayed quite a number of them, so I am trying to stop myself from spending money on cosplaying a character from 100 Line. 🤣 I need the money!!! Anyway, I have gaps in understanding because I needed to drop off to focus on packing and cleaning on several nights, but I hope that I will still be able to appreciate the ending of the story!

FFXIV was alright! Got to play as PLD for the new content, which is always nice. :D But I was lagging so badly for some reason last week that I'm glad to have cleared the Extreme Trial at all.

15 August was also the anniversary of my character's Ceremony of Eternal Bonding (the FFXIV in-game marriage), so my partner and I dressed up in-game and took some pics (GPOSE). Here's one!

Holy lights AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Gposing is hard.

Here's to another year of free teleport and FFXIV country club membership together! 🤣

My partner and I used to host board game sessions every Saturday before we moved to stay with my parents, so we were excited to have our board game buddies over! After spending lots of time sleeving cards, we got to try Veiled Fate, followed by ISS Vanguard.

Veiled fate seems like the kind of game that benefits from big brain gameplay to plan your moves around other players, adjusting the strategy along the way to win. But I was way too tired from cleaning the night before to attempt to do so, so I resigned to being chaotic... and won. 🤣 Pretty sure I just lucked out because everyone was new to the game.

I was most looking forward to ISS Vanguard since we received the game years ago. I like space. I like stars. I like space ships. I like fantasy. (Final Fantasy XIV Cosmic Exploration gets a 1/5 from me though. They get 1 point for letting me feel cool using the Companion App to track mission progress.) But I was SO sleepy by the time we finished sleeving that I couldn't focus on the story during the tutorial scenario. I shall look forward to the next ISS Vanguard session to get up to speed!

✨ Music Projects -- Decided on the next cover to work on! 🎵

Being in the new space and having sound isolation that is way better than before made me realize that I had gotten into the subconscious habit of restraining how loud I sound, especially during belted notes. So I chose a song to ease me back into singing at "full power". The project was dropped previously because I was dissatisfied with how I sounded even though it felt like I was already trying my best.

I'll give it another shot when I am done with unpacking! Maybe next week? Hopefully it goes well!

✨ Random interesting thing -- Updated my Discord server's general chat to have less engagement 🤔🤔🤔

Anyone who knows me or has interacted with me long enough knows that I am not fond of notifications. I regularly miss calls, reply to messages really late, and am usually clueless about the latest promotions/ deals in town. There was a period of time in my life when I would not miss a single vibration of my phone. I was easily distracted, found it difficult to focus because I would subconsciously be anticipating a notification, and a lot of time in a day would go into replying to messages or browsing social media. I am committed to living a little more mindfully, staying as present as I can, and not returning to those times.

So I realized that a better way to manage the general chat is by turning it into a forum. I might be a minority in terms of how I want to manage my time (I want to know everything about what I care about... only when I decide that it is time to gain that knowledge), but it's my server after all, so I figured that I should do whatever I want with it.

Besides, it's a tiny community. 🥺 Hope they will understand. I hope everyone gets to live well! Hopefully this gives them more ways to engage with me the way they prefer... that is what this server was supposed to be for anyway!

~💜~

Hopes for this week

♪ Practice vocalizing in my new home

☆ Finish unpacking and organizing my belongings

☆ Make more handicraft (Restuffing plushies, making curtains, etc.)

☆ Decorate my living space✨

Thank you for reading! 🌙🐰