K-Drama: Alchemy of Souls Ep 15-16 Review

This intro was written after watching ep 15… My unabashed gushing occurs after watching ep 16, which, due to spoilers, comes after clicking read more.

Alrighty… first things first: Jung So-min is confirmed to not be appearing in Part 2. I already made it clear how I’d feel about her being replaced by Go Yoon-jung but, I guess now that it’s been confirmed and I’ve watched a lot more of their behind the scenes/interviews, I really can’t wait for her to be out of this show.

It’s painfully obvious that she avoids LJW. I’m not sure if something happened, but the impression I get is that he’s trying his best, and she’s avoiding him for the most part. She looks far more interested in Hwang Min-hyung (the actor for Seo Yul) and it shows on screen.

This is making it difficult for me to root for the drama’s supposed OTP, and I absolutely hate it when the OTP lack chemistry because it gives me unnecessary second-lead syndrome. From a character perspective, Yul’s random longing for his first love doesn’t really make sense to me, and Nak-su has already made it clear that her heart is now elsewhere, supposedly.

Unfortunately, Jung So-min isn’t really selling the not-interested-in-Yul to me very convincingly, and she’s selling the in-love-with-Jang-Wook even less so. Now, I want to be sensitive to LJW potentially having wronged her, but I can’t help but feel it’s unprofessional for a veteran actress like her to publicly display such obvious bias against him.

It’s so awkward. He tries really hard to appease her and she just tries to ignore him most of the time. I can’t figure out if it’s arrogance or discomfort. However, there’s an interview in which they’re tasked with seeing how well they know one another, and LJW was able to answer almost everything about JSM, while JSM knew next to nothing about her co-star.

They weren’t difficult questions: what’s LJW’s birthday? What’s his IG photo? His fan club name might have been a difficult one, but even after a bunch of hints she scarcely managed to guess one correct answer. It comes across as incredibly unprofessional. If you’re going to be the main female lead, surely you’d do at least the bare minimum of research on your co-star. I felt so bad for LJW; it was really off-putting to watch.

I’ll try to keep an open mind for the remainder of this series but I’m worried that it’ll just turn crap for me now that I feel bias against her, which is a gigantic shame because I used to really like her as an actress and was previously quite enjoying the show. Either way, I’m ready to see what Go Yoon-jung can bring to the table.

We are almost at the end game of Part 1, which I think was supposed to be a complete series in its own right, but the story seems to be losing its oomph. So much is happening and yet it feels like nothing is happening all at the same time. Or, perhaps it’s just how little excitement I feel from Jung So-min these days.

Not sure if it’s the directing or otherwise, but her range of expressions is becoming increasingly limited compared to the earlier episodes. Gah, this is not intended to be a JSM-bashing post. That was not the intention. Anyways, spoilers ahead should you choose to read more!

The above intro was written after only watching ep 15. However, I have a lot more to say now because, well, ep 16 absolutely knocked me off my feet. This show is fast becoming one of my top 10. If not, my top 5. If it continues the way it does, maybe even my top 3. I’m blown away.

Read More

K-Drama: Alchemy of Souls Ep 13-14 Review

I started watching Alchemy of Souls this week after reading about it on Dramabeans. The poster looked interesting and the premise intrigued me, so I read all of the recaps. And, subsequently, started watching the drama… and then binging it all in a few days. Honestly, no regrets.

Actually, that’s not true. My only regret is now the torturous wait until Sat/Sun when the next episodes are due to drop.

To be honest, I didn’t really care that it was a Hong sisters drama – they’re credited for writing some of the highest rated and most popular dramas to grace our generation (Descendants of the Sun, Goblin/Guardian: The Great & Lonely God, Mr. Sunshine — wait, that’s Kim Eun-Sook. Uh… ah: The Greatest Love, Master’s Sun, Hotel del Luna)…

Welp, that’s how much I knew about their works. And now that I know their filmography a little better, I can totally see their fantasy-with-elements-of-horror style all over Alchemy of Souls. I enjoyed Master’s Sun and Hotel del Luna, even if I had to watch half of it hidden behind a pillow, and so far, I’ve enjoyed Alchemy of Souls so much that I need to write about it.

Warning: reading more contains spoilers for Alchemy of Souls up to ep 14. I’m also not writing a recap, I just need to fangirl.

Read More

Fitness: Get Abs Challenge Days 10-14

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2022 Get Abs Challenge

Click here to read my update for days 1-3 of this challenge.
Click here to read my update for days 4-6 of this challenge.
Click here to read my update for days 7-9 of this challenge.

Originally I was planning to have three more posts – days 10-12, 13-15, 16-18. However, day 13 is a rest day, so I’ve decided to split the remaining days into two posts instead, each with 4 days’ workouts in them. So this will be the penultimate post for this challenge!

I’m kind of amazed that I’m even 50% through. I’m already starting to feel unmotivated, but thanks to my teammate I do actually still want to get it all completed. I was even thinking of just taking an extra rest day today since I worked out yesterday (and my glutes are sore!!), but after discussing with my teammate, she encouraged me to get it done today.

We both know that I’m going to get disqualified this week, but she said why not do one final day before I get disqualified tomorrow for falling more than 5 days behind? Tomorrow is another wushu day so I won’t be doing the challenge, but at least we’ll have done 10 days together. Couldn’t really say no to that!

I hope I’ll still be able to finish up the challenge after I get disqualified. I want it on my profile page lol.

Read More

Fitness: Get Abs Challenge Days 7-9

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2022 Get Abs Challenge

Click here to read my update for days 1-3 of this challenge.
Click here to read my update for days 4-6 of this challenge.

Ugh. It has been a week! My allergies have been flaring up quite badly and today is one of those days where I’m kind of exhausted, so this post is coming to you at the end of day 9. The past few days have been filled with junk food, sugar crashes and headaches lol. I wonder if there could be a connection there. Since I’m typing this at the end of Day 9, I’m essentially starting with my summary, and you can read my daily breakdowns below if you like.

These last few days were more workout days where having a team saved me from laziness because I next level did not feel like working out. You may notice from the late workout completion times… yep, that happened. If I were following my usual schedule, the workouts would have been completed before lunch.

My teammate was feeling unwell this week so she actually took a couple of extra rest days, gasp. This also meant that I had more time to get Day 9 completed without getting disqualified for being 5 days behind, which, I managed to do, woohoo!

If it hadn’t been for the extra day, I probably would have been disqualified without passing 50% with my team. I was feeling unwell yesterday so ended up resting as well. What can I say? It’s been a week. But the good thing is, thanks to us being on this team challenge, I still did the workouts even though I really didn’t feel like it, and I’m glad I did.

I’ve also officially signed up for wushu 2x/week, so I’ll still be able to do my Chloe Ting Challenge on Mon/Wed/Fri/Sat (one of which will be a rest day). I’ve calculated the days left on this challenge, and it looks like I’ll be able to complete the challenge by the end of next week or something.

My teammate will be completing the challenge by the end of this week. I’ll for sure be disqualified this week, but the goal for this team challenge was always just to pass 25% together though, so the fact that we managed to get 50% together is fantastic. I’m still glad to be having the motivation to continue.

Oooh, we’re half way there~!

Read More

Fitness: Get Abs Challenge Days 4-6

Image screenshot: Chloe Ting 2022 Get Abs Challenge

Click here to read my update for days 1-3 of this challenge.

It’s Saturday! Are we on day 4 already? Wow, where has the time gone? You may (or may not) be surprised – usually on Saturdays I do wushu, but not today! Nope. Why? Because I needed to do my Chloe Ting workout otherwise I’d be disqualified early from my team and I didn’t want to screw up our team score too badly.

But oh man. Today was not a good workout day. I didn’t feel well to begin with (hello Aunt Flo and what’s up headache), but I wanted to be on track to hit the 25% goal so that we can at least get a rank B for the team challenge.

My teammate has been slaying the challenge as per usual (literally the girl doesn’t miss a day) and a few days ago I got the countdown timer saying I needed to complete 25% within 3 days or something. The challenge is 18 days long so that meant I needed to complete day 5 by tomorrow. So that meant no extra rest days for me this week – I had to workout daily to get 25% on time.

…or so I thought.

It’s only after I completed today’s workout that I realised I still had until end of day on Monday to complete Day 5. Gah, I totally could have taken a rest day today as long as I worked out tomorrow and Monday. That said, usually I take Sundays as my rest days, so perhaps this worked out for the best and I’ll take my rest day tomorrow after all. It’s still far better than having zero rest days at all this week so I could keep up, so I’ll take that as a win.

I’m expecting to get disqualified next week but still continuing this challenge at my own pace. We’ll see how it goes!

Read More