1. Blacklist

Mum and I have been binge watching Blacklist together. We often watch shows together and when we find a series we both like, we’ll watch it together. For most of August, we have watched Blacklist together at almost every opportunity. Lunch hour? Blacklist. Dinner time/after work until mum’s bed time? Blacklist. Weekends when neither of us has plans to go out? Blacklist. It’s been great.

Blacklist is about an FBI agent Elizabeth Keen who’s roped into a task force out of nowhere dedicated to hunting criminals from the blacklist of a supercriminal Raymond Reddington. Naturally, Keen + Red relationship and their work with the task force is the overarching story line, and some blacklisters are sometimes intricately woven into the main plot. The plot thickens at every turn and you can see how the characters grow and change over the seasons. Not to mention Red is freakin’ James Spader. I swear he carries the show and I can’t imagine anyone else pulling the character off the way he does.

There was a spin-off Blacklist Redemption about Tom Keen and his work with a private intelligence company (vague criminality) headed by his own parent(s), which aired between Blacklist’s seasons 4 and 5. The character Tom essentially walked out of Season 4 and came home in Season 5. Unfortunately the spin-off only lasted one season despite starring the likes of Famke Janssen (Jean Grey!) and Terry O’Quinn (John Locke!). I’d be down to watch anything with John Locke. We watched the spin-off between the Blacklist seasons as intended.

It’s coming to the end of August and we are at about Season 6. Lunch hours alone gets us through 5 episodes a workweek, evenings are usually 3 episodes per… so that’s 20 episodes in a workweek. We can definitely finish Blacklist’s 7 seasons before September. Guess we’ll be lost and yearning again once September rolls around.

2. Supersize VS Superskinny

This is a UK-based series, basically having an almost-morbidly-obese person switch diets with a very underweight person. The key factor is that they both have shitty diets, like extreme over eating (all-day grazing, mad portions, unhealthy choices) or not giving any regard to food at all (coffee for breakfast, cereal for lunch, sammich or candy for dinner). It has to be to the point where the obese person is 5-10 years from dying of stroke or something, and the underweight person is on the way to getting scurvy or concave nails.

Also I learned from this show that, truly, underweight people can also have cholesterol problems if they eat crap! Yeah, thin =/= healthy. Something else I learned was that like over a billion GBP per year is spent on dealing with obesity related shit not limited to illnesses, like special bariatric ambulances and equipment + staff dedicated to MOVING obese people in hospitals - like from bed to bed.

They switch diets for 5 days, and gawk at how their diet feels and looks when they watch the other person eat it while also trying to accept and get used to eating more/less themselves. And they feel bad when the other person is like “OMG This is absolutely nothing I am fuckin starving” or “OMG I’m so sick I’m so full this is disgusting this is so much.” They also make the overweight person visit someone (tailored to the specific overweight person e.g. same food motives) in USA who’s like almost 40 stone (I looked it up: it’s like 250 Kilos) who can’t stand for more than 5 minutes, needs help treating sores and infections deep inside their fat folds, needs help to clean their body and get up/get in the car, etc. It’s meant to shock the supersized person by facing their imminent future should they fail to improve their eating habits. Watching it on a screen or even a personalised message is really not the same as going there and experiencing them in their habitat. It’s pretty effective. Basically shit gets even harder for everyone around you once you’re over 30 stone (190 Kilos).

I like these kinds of shows, they’re a window into a world I’ll (hopefully) never know. Also given my shitty diet recently and general lack of activity, I was hoping it would help inspire me to take more care in what kind of sustenance I allow in my body. Though, I must admit, the evil side of me is tempted to just up my intake of caffeine/coffee to suppress my appetite (it does this for these 30 Kilos people!) to get some easy weight loss going.

3. Home planning

Our appointment to select our HDB BTO unit was early this month! This got us excited. We’ve been thinking and planning and doing research as if we were gonna do renovations next month! We have relatively solid plans for furniture placements and carpentry plans for most of the house. The guest room is very much up in the air.

We find that planning from now is better than waiting until it’s close to key collection time (2025) because then we can see what kind of plans/ideas stick! If we have wanted something for 5 years, we’d know we want it for sure. If an idea about something is always changing then we’d know it’s better to decide on something that can be changed any time (e.g. standalone vs built-in). We used floorplanner to help us with it - you can upload your floor plan image and it’ll be like a background to your project. Set the scale and just plan over it rather than having to measure each wall on your floor plan and drawing from scratch on a program. It gave us a really good visual on everything and it also makes it easier to explain to the fam when we share our ideas.

It’s also important to plan from now because then you know what you want, like how I know I want marble-like porcelain tiles on floors AND walls for example. There are certain things you know you want and if you plan for it, you can afford it. I’d rather not face a hefty renovation quotation and realise we’d have to get a renovation loan (never do this). If we have a rough budget in mind now, then we can start planning financially. Having all these costs in consideration allows us to tailor our financial planning to allow for the things we really want! Why go budget for your home when you can be smart about your cash from the earliest possible point? It’s not like we are starving for the cause. Well, unless you’re planning to sell it in 5 years then yeah just give it the ole basic cookie cutter renovation, that’ll cost you less than $10k.

We’ve looked up limitations, options, materials, prices, etc. Maybe we’re just really excited. I’m sure we wouldn’t be so into it next year until 2024. But if we decide on the financial plan - saving $x per month - at least we know we’ll be able to afford it when the time comes, whatever the home plan may be by then.

4. Pinterest

This is related to home planning. I got an account cos Pinterest has a wealth of images of beautiful homes and furnishings. My boards are essentially categorised based on the rooms of our BTO unit, and/or functions. I can spend hours on Pinterest and habitually open it whenever I play with my phone to pass time or just be occupied.

An added benefit of getting on Pinterest was that now my mum feels like she can bond with me over that, too. She sends me pins and I send her pins and she’s been so happy about it. She’s especially delighted when she sees a pin and thinks it’s beautiful and I’d like it, and realise that it’s one of my pins. My Pinterest obsession has brought her so much joy. That’s always nice.

5. BONUS: Liner’s Obsession - Valorant

Liner’s been gaming almost every night playing Valorant. From what I know, this is basically Overwatch but heaps better. In Liner’s words, “it’s Overwatch without all the shitty things.” It seems many people are in agreement.

August obsessions have been full of excitement and promise! Seems productive too. ;D I can deal with that. Wonder what show will captivate me next month.

None of this is sponsored.