Books and kdramas

Haven't written for a while as I've been busy with work, cooking and writing my stories in my spare time. And also, to be honest, reading more Diana Wynne Jones books :-p. Namely, Charmed Life and Conrad's Fate. They are part of her Chrestomanci series of books which begin with The Lives of Christopher Chant. She's such an amazing writer, seriously. I hope I can one day write as well as her. Plus, having one of my books made into an anime like hers (Howl's Moving Castle), would be an absolute dream!


Well anyway, I've also been recording Pointless everyday in the hope they'll show the one we saw live but it still hasn't been on! I wish they'd told us when it would air, it's been ages.


Now the easter hols have started, YAY :-D!!!!


I actually had to work today and Friday but that's it. I've resolved to make good use of my time off. Mainly, exercising more. Feel so achy after work there's no chance of exercise and I feel fat as a pig. A slimmish pig :-p but still. Saw a double chin in the mirror the other day and it gave me a heart attack. Anyway so have started a regime of cereal or fruit for breakfast, light lunch like salad, playing Just dance 2 (3 or 4 songs on the Just Sweat setting), early dinner, fruit whenever I'm peckish then biking for as long as I can. Haven't biked for a while so will have to build it up to 20-30mins over the next few days. I can barely get through 5mins at the moment :-p.


I also get to enjoy my time writing and hopefully getting nearer the end of my novel(s) and best of all, I bit the bullet and spent the £30 for my favourite korean drama called My Girl. So have been watching that in all my spare time. Sadly, it's only 16 episodes and I'm already on 11.

My Girl

It's a light-hearted yet complicated love story. A guy (Gong-chan) hires a girl (Yoo-rin) to pretend to be his long lost cousin to fulfil his grandfather's dying wish of making things right with her. His grandfather had banished his daughter for some reason (still not sure :-p maybe over her marriage) and she and her husband died in an earthquake in Japan leaving her daughter orphaned. When the grandfather gets ill he feels guilty, blaming himself for his daughter's death and wants to be sure that his granddaughter didn't suffer because of him. So Gong-chan tries to find his cousin without much success and decides to get a pretend cousin because he's afraid his grandfather might die before he can find the real one.
Gong-chan meets Yoo-rin through a series of her pranks and lies that he somehow gets involved in. He ends up choosing her to be his fake-cousin because she's so good at bare-faced lies and looks a little like his late aunty. She's reluctant because she only lies when she has to, but she's being dogged by her gamester father's creditors and really needs the money to pay them off. Only, his grandfather is so happy to have found her that he recovers and she has to keep on pretending indefinitely. A charade further complicated when she falls for Gong-chan and he starts liking her too. Then there's his ex-girlfriend come to win him back and his playboy best friend who likes Yoo-rin making it a lovely square.
There's also a Philippine version but I haven't seen it.

Goong - Princess Hours

The first kdrama I ever saw was Goong (Princess Hours) about a school girl (Yoon Eun Hye) who ends up having her marriage arranged to a prince who's in love with someone else. We see her struggling to learn all the traditions and customs that come with being a princess and also struggling with her feelings for a husband who doesn't want her. Well, not initially anyway :-p. 
The story, the characters and the wealth of Korean culture in this series is what got me hooked on asian dramas in the first place. It also got my big sister hooked when she happened to come in my room as I was watching one of the last episodes. She ended up staying to see the whole thing. By the time I was on the second to last episode, she had caught up and watched the whole series :-p.

Coffee Prince

Another of my favourite dramas is Coffee Prince, also starring Yoon Eun Hye.
Coffee Prince is about a girl struggling to make ends meet who gets a job as a waiter at a coffee shop when the owner mistakes her for a boy. She doesn't tell him the truth in case she loses the job. Yet another love square because she likes his friend and he likes his friend's ex. Alot of hilarious scenes as well as heartbreaking ones. She looks soooo different with a boy-cut. It just goes to show what a difference hair can make to a girl.




The heroine in this is also in Vineyard Man which I quite enjoyed too. She's a clothes designer who loses her job when a superior steals her ideas. She is then offered a job at her Grand-uncle's vineyard and reluctantly agrees. She goes from living in the city to living in a village without any of the facilities she's used to. A HUGE transition. She grows as a person as she learns to grow grapes. My sister didn't like this one because she thought the guy wasn't good looking. Maybe someone needs to send her to work at a vineyard :-p.

Vineyard Man