Aug. 23rd, 2020

allekha: Aliens Ail and En cuddling next to food (AilEn cuteness)
It's been an exciting couple of days. Z's new roommate just moved in yesterday, and as he's coming from out of state to do his next year at university, he has to quarantine for two weeks; because he can't stay completely separated, Z is also quarantining so he can stay with his cat. So we spent a couple days together beforehand before we are cruelly separated for two weeks.

I decided to make a couple of small cakes to eat, as Z will be missing my birthday. I decided to use a couple of small decorative tins I have, as I've had good results from them before and they make nice cute single-serving cakes. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what I used to release cakes from them last time and I guessed wrongly, so they ended up as piles of crumbs. (Delicious, matcha-flavored crumbs, though.) Lucky for me, I remembered a video on how to deal with this exact situation, so I didn't panic. The video says to use buttercream, but I already had some ganache prepared because I had planned to cover the sides with it, so I used that and:
  1. Lined the cute tins with plastic wrap after washing them

  2. Coated the inside of the tin with ganache

  3. Added a layer of crumbs, a layer of ganache, another layer of crumbs, and then a final layer of ganache

  4. Sealed with more plastic wrap, turned on a plate, and cooled in the fridge a few hours
It was sooo good and so rich that we had to split them into two servings. Maybe they even turned out better this way! Though I think for my actual birthday, I'm going to see if the local bakery has any single-person cakes to eat while I videochat with my parents.

We also watched some Star Trek TOS and an anime movie called Giovanni no Shima or Giovanni's Island. It's a film about two young brothers living on one of the Kuril islands just before and in the time after the end of WWII.

The first part of the film follows their growing friendship with a young Russian girl whose father is part of the occupying forces, and there are some really cute moments, like how they begin to play with her through gaps in a sliding door and how the Japanese class and Russian class learn to sing each other's favorite songs from adjoining classrooms. There's also a good depiction of the children starting to learn bits of each other's languages and being able to play even when they don't understand each other. (All the Russian dialog was recorded by native speakers, and so were the bits of Korean later in the film). The second half, when they are forced into an interment camp as they wait to be repatriated to the mainland, is much sadder, and also weaker in plot and more cliche.

Night on the Galactic Railroad is referenced often, and the idea of a train rolling through space is a frequent motif in the film. I haven't read the book, but the movie explains the main ideas it leans on well enough, and it also leads to some beautiful animated sequences.

Shortly before I left, my skating friend R called me and asked if I was free - he's a photographer, and his model was apparently having partner issues and had just bailed on him and his photography partner, Y. So I agreed to help out last minute, even though I know nothing about modeling. R says he actually finds it easier to work with people who don't model, like me and Y, because they don't make weird faces xD

I slapped on some of my really old and not good cosplay foundation to try and cover up the fact that my skin was freaking out a little bit before he picked me up. We found me an outfit from R's costume collection that fit me okay, didn't show off my binder, and bonus, covered the ugly scratches on my legs from when I tripped a few days ago. The shoot was outdoors, in a local park that has beautiful scenery, so we didn't have to stand close to each other when taking the pictures. We got a good amount of walking in, and Y is also an interesting person to talk to. (And he's Russian, and when he overheard us talking about skating stuff, I finally got an explanation as to why 'Trusova' is such a funny family name - apparently, the root means something like 'coward'! He said it's the kind of name that would get you picked on at school.) Curious to see how the photos and the behind-the-scenes video we took will come out!

Today has been much quieter. Ran some code, then took a break to edit the Swan Lake video. I am now at my least favorite part, the 'attempt to white-balance and brighten 90 different skating videos' part. Though I will say, watching uncle Dai do Hip-hop Swan Lake to the Dance of the Little Swans is an absolute delight, and possibly my favorite part of the video :D And now back to Ubuntu to do more programming and such. We had a very gentle thunderstorm earlier, but it has now petered out to drips and otherworldly yellow lighting.
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