Yep, Still Single

When are you getting married? 

Don’t you want to get married? Are you scared of commitment? 

You should get married! You’re wasting your genes! 

If you don’t want to get married you should get yourself pregnant at least – you’ll regret not having kids when you had the chance! 

Being a single woman at a certain age in life can be very annoying, especially when you're at a family gathering. Everyone wants you to get married or have kids. It can get tiring to answer the same questions repeatedly. I know (most) people mean well but it is still such a pain.

Book Review: Swipe Right

One of my recent reads was a book that I enjoyed reading…I seem to enjoy reading about couples who seem to get the love right, but the timing so wrong because this is another one of them. Swipe Right by Stephie Chapman is about Fran and Ollie, new recruits at a media content agency who start off clashing with each other to work friends.

Credit: Hera

The story revolves not just on the friendship and the wrong timing romance (they met when she had a boyfriend, and Ollie was seeing someone else), but on Fran’s project for work as a result of her recent breakup: dating and evaluating men that she meets from an online dating app. 

Book Review: The Substitute

Picture this: you are going home to your parents because your mom has planned your wedding – to a fiancée that you have already broken up with. You could not find the words to tell your parents about because they have already spent so much on the wedding, so you go home on the date agreed anyway. What are you going to do? If you are Megan Vandemeer, you could get lucky and meet someone like Josh McMillan on your flight home. This is the story of the book The Substitute by Denise Grover Swank. 

In this story, Megan gets drunk on the flight and Josh tries to help her off the plane to her family. They mistake him for her fiancée, and he goes along with it because he found out that one of the people that he planned to investigate during his trip was Megan’s father. 

Never Stop Learning

The best piece of advice I have ever received about life is this: Never stop learning.

I used to think it meant that after college, I should continue my education in other ways but these days I think of that advice as including and beyond the academic experience. It means learning in the biggest school ever, life.

Book Review: The Perfect Dress

It is always refreshing to read love stories that feature characters that are not always given their time in the spotlight. One such book is The Perfect Dress, which features a plus-size female lead along with a group of friends who are plus-sized as well. 

Credit: Montlake Romance

Throwback Post: Online Friendships

* This is an old entry from my old blog, edited/updated for this one. Hope you like it! I've been missing these people since I haven't seen anyone for a long time now. Hope they're all doing well!

I remember during the earlier days of the world wide web, people used to say that it was hard to trust people online. Can you make real friends online? Do the online friends you chat with tell you the truth about who they really are? In these days of catfishing and trolling I think a lot of people will still answer in the negative but thankfully, my experience with online friendships has been very good. Yes, you can make real friends online. I know I did.

In the early days of blogging, when it was more about personal experiences than it is about OOTDs or the latest events and places to see and be seen, I came across people like me who were trying out that new thing called a blog. Through the years, even though some of them have since moved on and stopped blogging, we have kept in touch through social media and have even met once or twice (as much as my faraway provincial life can take me). The friendships, despite the distance and the lack of face to face encounters still exists. For that, I will always be grateful. It is amazing to see all of us grow up and move on with our lives: getting married, have kids, move to a different country (or in some cases move back home). My online friends have been there to support me when I had surgery and was worrying about the possibility of cancer. They were supportive during the loss of my father. If that isn’t proof that online friendships are real friendships, I don’t know what is.

Film Review: Love, Rosie

Cecilia Ahern is one of my favorite writers. I first started reading her books when I discovered P.S. I Love You and I have read almost every book she has released since then.

Love, Rosie (also known as Where Rainbows End) is one of the books Ahern released around the same time as P.S. I Love You. The book is about best friends Alex and Rosie, two people who grew up falling in love with each other but afraid to tell each other how they felt. I fell in love with the book and was very excited when I heard that it was going to be made into a movie. Obviously, I watched it as soon as I had the chance.

Movie Review: The Lost Husband

One of my favorite movies way back when was the film, Safe Haven. I fell in love with Josh Duhamel’s character of a small-town guy/ dad who won over Julianne Hough’s heart. I have not seen him in any romantic films in a while so when I heard about the movie The Lost Husband with Leslie Bibb, I decided to watch it online.

The Lost Husband is about Libby (Leslie Bibb), who lost her husband in an accident and is left with two young girls to take care of. Living with her mother, with whom she has a complicated relationship, she finds it hard to get over her husband’s death. The movie starts with her moving out of her mother’s house and to her Aunt’s farm in Texas.

Film Review: Somewhere in Time

The movie Somewhere in Time is one of those classic films that I’ve loved since I was a child. The episode of Jane the Virgin which had Jane Seymour as a guest sparked an urge to write a post about my love for this movie. When I saw her on my TV screen, I had a flashback of the first time I saw the movie that I think made me become such a hopeless romantic.

Book Review: That Weekend in Paris

This is a silly reason to read a book, but when I saw that it was about a country singer and a songwriter, I thought that it would be a good thing to read. Add to that the Paris setting and I immediately thought this would be worth the purchase and the read. If you are interested in a book with those elements, read on for this review of the book That Weekend in Paris by Inglath Cooper.

Credit: Fence Free Entertainment, LLC

Movie Review: Hello Stranger

A work acquaintance of mine recommended this movie to me and I didn’t get around to watching it until recently. Being a rom-com and Asianovela fan I was curious about this but it took a while for me to get used to listening to the Thai language enough to enjoy the movie.

The story revolves around two Thai tourists in Korea. One was there to enjoy a trip he was supposed to take with his ex-girlfriend and the other was there to attend a friend’s wedding. During the course of their trip, they bare their hearts to each other and fall for each other in the process. Sadly, the relationship doesn’t progress because the guy gets back together with his ex-girlfriend, who followed him to Korea.

Netflix Picks: Book Club

There is a movie that I have been meaning to watch but have been unable to find for rent, streaming, or purchase anywhere until recently. I was very intrigued by this movie, so I was happy when the film was finally available on Netflix. The title of the movie is Book Club, and it stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen as a group of friends who have been together for 30 years and have a monthly book club together.