Tired of waiting...

I am a very patient, if not extraordinarily patient, penpal... I might send a 'how have you been' message once and again to remind a particular someone of my existance, but I will never bug anyone about writing... it doesn't mean that I don't care whether I'll get a letter or not, but I know that things get in the way sometimes and there are moments when you don't even feel like sitting down and writing... I can relate to that kind of feeling, been through that before... I can understand... I don't require anyone to write more than twice a year, because with the most people, I know that the letter writing frequency is not what makes our friendship work... but sometimes I get tired of waiting too...

~ when a letter takes months to reach a neighbour country
~ when they keep a letter at the customs for weeks while the envelope doesn't contain anything other than paper
~ when people say 'I'll write you soon' every other day and never actually do
~ when people say that they've lost interest in writing letters... taking a break and collecting strength for new challenges in your life is one thing, giving up on 'the hobby' is another... I can't help feeling betrayed when somebody offers to 'stay friends' on facebook or messengers. This is not what I agreed on in the beginning, this has never been the deal! Then there are people who remember about the deal and still send me stuff on paper, but you can't even call it a letter anymore, because it's rather a string of trivial sentences that don't have much to do with me or the person I enjoyed talking to... this is a situation that just drags on and on and I live on the hope that things will get better eventually ~ but this is when I feel tired of waiting all the time and I know I won't be able to wait forever...

By the way, during the months of January (its very end) and March, I've got two letters from people who asked me to be pals and who promised to write their first letter...

... in September!!! I feel somewhat sorry that their final effort won't be rewarded, but seriously?? The first letter? The one and only chance to make a good impression? When I think I've seen all the miracles of the penpalling world, it stills gives me a surprise...

But on to beautiful things...

My amazing Maura ~ always drop-dead gorgeous... another angle from which her face looks perfect and oh that hair of a goddess... And that guy can touch it every day... awwww... envious *.* There are other fans who dislike people talking about Maura's hair or boobs for some reason, but this is my blog, so hair hair hair and boobs boobs boobs ^0^ 

I went shopping... for something totally different and ended up buying all those tapes!! 

 I just couldn't resist the ornament ones! Good quality, 10 tapes for 13 euros, hello??? at some shops they sell one for 5 +.+

 here is some illustration cuteness à l'allemande ~ Janosch with his cute book characters on the new stamps and Die Maus ('the mouse' in German, nobody wants the cute little animal to die ^^) from a children's TV show... I even bought that sucky 58 cents value and printed a bunch of 2 cents stamps on the machine, so that I can show those internationally ^^

 since a few of my penpals are fond of German football teams, they will probably be glad to see that tape ^^  and those who don't care for football will find it cute anyway... 

 letters from  my little Chinese friends ^^ 

 the letter in the back is quite a wonder  ~ it's a reply to a letter written by me in a swapbot swap!! usually, nobody ever writes back, but this girl did and the letter was such a delight! 

 some more cool mailart ~ from... uhm... the great state of Texas, obviously  ^.^

 an outgoing envelope from a while back...

 a card for swapbot ~ we were supposed to draw something that represents luck and since my partner has been married for decades, I wrote that people who have a great partner to spend their life with are truly lucky... those Mandarin ducks also spend their life with the same partner, so this is why they're a symbol for a great relationship ^^

 made an attempt to draw sweets and turned those pix into birthday cards ^^ these here are raspberry tartelettes ^.^ (when it comes to cards where you write your wishes for someone, I totally lose all my ability to express myself and mostly stick to set phrases, terrible, I know)

 

 berry cake ^^

 

and macarons ^0^ 

Lately I realized that all that I draw or paint will eventually go out and live in someone else's home... so I've bought a Moleskine watercolour book and started art journaling ^^ well, journaling is a matter of definition, same as 'art', but it will contain projects I'll try to do, pictures I suddenly see in my mind and illustrations of something that has a place in my heart... and most of all, it will stay with me ^.^ 

Recent mail

So far it's three sent, three received for November... Not a bad start, actually... This weekend was Chinese time ^0^ I noticed that it became harder for me to write in Chinese after not practicing for a long while, who would have thought... Now I also prefer to have my online dictionary available, but then I prefer shutting down my computer when writing letters, because internet and crap always distract me, so that was a kind of a dilemma =.= Soooo, I grabbed my good old paper dictionaries to use... I've a small one that is German-Chinese and Chinese-German and a big one that is Chinese-English only, so I sometimes need to be inventive when expressing myself ~ but it's still good to look up characters I forgot how to write (*yeah, shame on me*) and those that I could never remember (silly things like 'wall' or 'lazy', it's ridiculous, but obviously I can't help it...). Do you also have words you always spell wrong? Somehow, Chinese is pretty compact, both in writing and structure, so if I write like 5-6 pages, it's already like a pretty long letter ~ and these few pages have pretty much taken up my free day... But letters are always worth spending time on, right? ^^

 

My incoming from last week ^^ My mail all came on the same day... sigh... some more Chinese letters to write ^^

I've ordered those amazing books on amazon... I adore illustrators and secretly dream of being one (just dreaming, actually... in reality I just want to draw something once in a while ^^), so I've got this huge book with sketches and illustrator stories in the middle, then 'drawing lab' for just drawing (there are soooo many fun ideas ^0^) and the hand lettering one because I looooooooove fooling around with letters and characters but I'm too impatient to learn real calligraphy, so I'm going to try some of that ^^

My ultimate goal would be to draw Maura ^0^ But now I'm still too scared of 'disfiguring' her wonderful face, so I've just tried one eye... and her dog that sat by her side ^.^

oh, my sweetheart... 

yeah, I know, I'm derailing my own post... so here's my outgoing... (I forgot to take pix of two letters last week... mehhh)

well, I feel like this space looks too blank without a comment ^.^

 I had such a wonderful time with this Kagoneko calendar all this year, so I'm happily recycling/sharing it ^^

insert another nonsense comment...

 I've copied a page from a book by Jimmy Liao, a Taiwanese writer/illustrator, because my friend likes bunnies ^^ This book is 'Turn left, turn right' and it's about two people who live next door but don't know it, then they meet somewhere by accident and lose each other again and oh, it's such a sweet story and I love Jimmy for combining text and pictures so brilliantly...
I watched the movie that was made after this book in Taiwan and it bears so many memories, because well, this was what Taiwan looked like for me too... and isn't Takeshi Kaneshiro one of the best looking guys on earth?? ^0^

I've found a good trailer on youku, but this page won't let me embed it, so here's a link...

Turn Left Turn Right Trailer

Some more nice pix from Jimmy's homepage ^.^