Tag: 2023
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Pop Excellence: Best K-pop songs of 2023
My good friend Kayla has been kind enough to invite me into an annual tradition: over at her blog, Pop Excellence, she recruits K-pop critics and fans to collectively hash out (and write about) the best songs of the year. I was lucky enough to contribute a whopping six (!!) blurbs to this year’s list,…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 22: Back to beige-ics
It’s another quick post for today – I don’t know what it is about this week, but I’ve been dealing with different health problems every day! First it was the stomach pain on Tuesday, and now it’s a sore throat and nausea on Wednesday. Last I tested, I was negative for COVID, but jeez, I…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 21: Earning my stripes
Well, this marks the end of my third week! I have to say, as fun as it’s been, I’m just about ready to wrap this month up. I just found out that I’ll be moving in with my partner in March (exciting!) and need to do a lot of packing and prep work (less exciting!),…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 20: Into the thicc of it
The moment I saw my friend’s suggestion in my inbox, I knew I needed to prepare myself: “Huge emphasis on the dumpy 🍑” To be frank, this theme raised my blood pressure. I’ve never felt confident about my body – for most of my life, bad experiences in P.E. and team sports deterred me from…
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February Fashion Challenge, Days 18-19: Sk8er Boi and the Multiverse of Madness
Here’s something about working with high schoolers that I never expected; I find myself constantly thinking back to the people I wanted to be as a teenager, and wondering how all of those alternate selves could have turned out. What if 13-year-old Mo had told his parents that instead of moving to Seoul, he wanted…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 17: All aboard!
Why is it that I love ships so much? There are so many reasons. Ships, from the ocean liners of yesteryear to the cruise ships of today, are marvels of engineering and design: giant floating hotels that can accommodate thousands of people across the seas. (Cruises are also shockingly cheap sometimes – and as a…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 16: Reflections on academia (what, like it’s hard?)
To survive academia, you need ease: the ability to walk through any place, whether a house party or a cocktail reception, with the conviction that you belong and you know how things are supposed to work. Ease may be a product of education, but it’s also a product of wealth, and just as its etymology…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 15: Life in (pastel) color
While I’m still having plenty of fun with this challenge, I’m officially past the halfway point – and the honeymoon phase is decidedly over. Some of the themes I have left still make me scratch my head, wondering how I’ll manage to pull them off (if you have ideas for Viking Day, please let me…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 14: For Jason
For Valentine’s Day, I’d like to do something different – because today’s outfit isn’t about a theme. It’s about a person. I first met Jason at a hole-in-the-wall Korean place, where we sipped bori-cha, gingerly offered each other bites of japchae and soondubu, and exchanged brief snippets of our career and life histories. I had…
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February Fashion Challenge, Day 13: An extra-large pocket of rest
It was bound to happen eventually, but today was the first day where I couldn’t pull together an outfit for other people. It’s not that I’m doing this challenge solely for other people; it’s more that I’ve been focused on expanding my comfort zone, and sharing what I’m wearing is a large part of that…