2023 is a year of the Water Rabbit, starting from January 22nd, 2023 (Chinese New Year), and ending on February 9th, 2024 (Chinese New Year’s Eve). The sign of Rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture. 2023 is predicted to be a year of hope.
With that hope, I kicked off the year of Rabbit, with my favorite companions: books and movies, and of course, my niece Mandy. Together we celebrated the lunar new year with red lantern, champagne, dumplings and FaceTime with our family in Beijing.
When I say hope, I’m not talking about work or career. That’s another topic that is more suitable for the platform such as LinkedIn. Given that this blog is my personal space, I’d rather focus on perspectives on life. In General. After all, a job is just one piece of the puzzle that we need to solve, and life is way broader, bigger and more spectacular than work.
Hope is being able to see there is light despite all of the darkness. ~ Desmond Tutu
Interesting enough, the books and movies that I liked the most in January are all related to HOPE in one way or another. 📕 🎥
📕 Wow, No Thank you by Samantha Irby. What a freaking awesome writer! So awesome that I downloaded all books she Elgar’s ever written! I’m not a cynical person but I admire those who has a sharp sense of humor to be cynical and self-deprecating about himself/herself. Irby is one of those people. She struggled most of her life with depression, poverty, lack of education, health issues but she survived all the hardships and ended with being a best-selling author nonetheless, and more importantly, a fresh, feminist, yet relatable pop-culture force. No matter how challenging life was, she kept her head up and her hope up, to inspire other human beings.
📕 Lessons in Chemistry. Oh, how lovely this book is, especially if you know the twitter is a 67 year old elegant lady. Who said you should give up on your hope to be a writer after turning 60?!
🎥 🍿 Everything Everywhere All at Once. Isn’t Michelle Yeoh amazing to shoot such a forward-thinking movie at the age of 60? The hope to win an Oscar award might just become a reality in March. I’m rooting for her, while-heartedly. A small side not: I liked the beginning and the end of the movie, as well as the acting by all the talented actors and actresses, but I find the plot in between is rather over-complicated and the scenery is way too violent and bloody to my taste. Just saying!
🎥 🍿 A man called Otto. This movie is adapted from the book A Man Called Ove, by my beloved author Fredrick Backman. Tom Hanks (I mean Tom Hanks!!!) played the character so well in the movie that I both shed tears and cracked laughs while watching the movie, but overall I find the story should remain in the book. The movie is a bit of lack of the so called cinematography effect. Otto lost his wife, but he does not lose hope about life after several attempts of ending his own life.
My first month of 2023 is wrapped up in one word – hope. In another word: if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Here’s to a hopeful 2023! 🥂
BOLD ELEGANCE 