Japan 26😸 .. Correspondance 1 (web-alt)
Hello all !
This is first correspondance email of this time being in Japan @ 2k26 ^-^
I've got a lot on the agenda for today, so I guess I'll start by saying like, what does this whole thing even mean? So like, to begin with, the name "correspondance" started as that I just didn't know any better for how to spell the word (this is my third or so iteration of doing these). But then, in recognizing my mistake, it is too that I opted to keep it as is. Maybe leaning into this coincidence [correspon,dance] could be productive and generative yet (and yet), has been my thinking; thinking of this as a dance, of sorts.
As for what the contents or meaning are, it's that these emails will be composed of little ideas and experiences that had came to me throughout the week. This time around, the line-up will be: 1) introduction segment saying where the week is coming from or goals with the particular correspondance; 1/2) little drawings of guys and gremlins and that sort of thing I had did throughout the <aiming to get around 1/day done in this regard>; 2) regular segments of working through things (in longer project duration) or in expounding upon this or that; 2/3) poems; 3) one-off analyses, musings, and attempts at developing frameworks of understanding of the world I'm meeting in the week; 4) little encounters and anecdotes.
I'm trying to improve these whenever I can (not in a capitalist, infinite growth way; but as emergent from self-critique; a would could be better, what did work good), thus the form may fluctuate in the future. I take your time and attention seriously, though, so I will try to streamline as I can. I will do my best to produce a rich program each week, of things that could be not only be informative but hopefully also entertaining in different ways.
=== 1 ===
(Key: Triple equal signs denote section breaks)
There's a wide-ish berth of audience in tow here, so please note that, as the law would have it, what I recount as anecdote will often be fictive in nature (or will otherwise be deftly dramatized for the sake of reading pleasure).
That said, the places where I'm furnishing analysis should be understood as relatively apt reflections of where I and the world are meeting each other in the moments. As such, if at any point you want to respond (to these opinions or otherwise), feel free to do so as however your heart desires (e.g., when/where/if I'm wrong or lacking information about something, I'm very willing to struggle with or come to an updated understanding for how to make sense of these things). I might not reply to things immediately, but I will do my best. Of course, your free to reply to whatever else you want as well. And not replying is both expected and well and truly welcome (genuine) (though in spirit of being genuine, it is also that I selfishly enjoy getting replies and having people engage with my work in some considered capacity; though I of course understand that people have busy lives and am thus not offended in any plausible way if I never hear from folks or whatever else).
I admit readily that I'm a person of many contradictions. I embrace this fact in ways, but I also believe that I'm open to resolving some of them in moments where opportunities for such are legible. (Which is to say once more, please push back or critique me if you're feeling it's warranted to in one way or another). If things arise, as I'm sure they will, I'll figure out a way to issue corrections @ future dances if need be / benefit apply.
=== 1 ===
This dance is as courtesy of no charger, no on-flight movie, just locked in and thinking (and napping and drawing and transcribing notes and...) Worry not, it will not be like this forever
=== 1 ===
My project this time around follows from my initiative to mobilize a strategy I'd heard for how to navigate Minecraft in less frictional ways, of using in that context book and quills as way of getting your thoughts down (e.g., writing to do lists) such that you're then able to get more things done etc.. I found this a productive framework when returning to Minecraft when playing on a new world with friends this past month. That is, not taking as a technology which lets you do what you want to better; there's some give and some requisite navigation with them, but yeah.
It could be useful to understand it as a way of collaborating with yourself (always so fleeting, so flaking away, this is a way of past present and future can team up and work together to find a better way; where and then of course it's that the product and method can also be mobilized and sent to other people too).
=== 1 ===
Cant afford, probably, to be this bleeding, honest (to call it that) with things in the future (as my time throughout the week is filled in not with waiting on an airplane and for a program to start but with school work and such) so if it's too much today maybe a hope could be that it would drop off in time. Which then also is to say, if this is what you love, don't get hopes up *too *high.
=== 1/2 ===
[Drawings]
"I hate it here ON THIS SHELF CAVITY"(cavalcade of guys;; bodies can be sustained of life savers, dna, pills, fi...)
(umbrella fielding; torn up, it seams)
"qqx_32 77"(sesame street, i suppose; graffiti and a slime mold)
"&love... {alotof loVE}"(tossed away love letter; Arrested development; grinch; &&& a scratch of colon-3 in empire)
(speleology is seldom seen)
"My teeth dont buzz like they uzed 2. (but oh boy, do they buzz)""yousaidxtwo"
"hammer could give your nails a reason 2 live x_x"
(clown college and finger print scanner; tote bag for candy collect; a dead ringer for a laundromat)
=== 1/2 === [guys]
(fuwq-fwieu,psps)
(hehehe,ooooh haha)
(tss.tsss.wwwwwouaehhhh.wrrrr.wuar ;heuheu)
(ehhh,,,, grmm)
(gwuehblebleh)
=== 1/2 ===
[Pictures, of clouds&]
(Will find a better way of embedding these in the future as they are very much not seamless atm)
(Airport waiting; first terminal)
(Airport waiting; second terminal)//The ai-upscaling here is annoying; one of those, phone says it has up to 30x zoom for camera, but then when u take pic on even 10x zoom, which i think this is, then it goes in after and AI-upscales to make it seem like it's real as it was trying to claim it was to begin with; an update of the travesty that continues to be digital zoom; alas; may find a way to disable this at some point in the future too//
(Someone with a actually real camera also taking pics of the sky at this
point; vindicated a bit in this way, I think)
(Airport waiting; third terminal)
=== 2 ===
On the political/ideological issues of language learning
(what I hope to develop into a recurring segment)
Question of: what words are(n't) taught? The course textbook @ first sem @ Yale was having example sentences of smart house, acting like, this is cool and normal, just the way the world is today :^). Framed as neutral, that is; in the context of this course, students had the lack of language skills with which to critically engage with this /neutral/ presentation -- that is, they were equipped with no ability to fight back; to resist, or anything else like this. Elsewhere, words such as "democracy," "capitalism," "communism," etc. have been taught, in my experience, as one off vocab things (framed as fun facts); no structure built up around them to talk through what these things mean, what they feel like, etc., to say, how do we feel about this? Is this what we really want or,?
I reckon one (an individual language learner) can shift / mend some of this by shaping what they're taking in to learn from, but the root thing still remains (with regard to the power structures that facilitate language learning) (and now it's become 1-off person problem; a you problem). At what point is it right to raise question and attention about, so much (Japanese) language learning infrastructure is product of US state/empire? I argue this is a way for empire (e.g., US) to continue to control what ideas are taught when/where/by whom. I mean if the state department can intercept you at the point of figuring out what words are even available to use to think about things with, well, then that seems like a pretty effective method of control. (A more bloody, scabbed up version of this was presented in what is now become part of my "bleeding limb" poetry series -- "epopee of the bleeding limb (part 0): post #8: fullbright, jet and teaching in japan"
This time around, though (this stint of concerted Japanese language learning), I'm announcing that I have a plan. I mean this both with regard to language learning (compared to, e.g., being in Japan summer 2024 & Summer 2018) and being in a new place for university (where the previous example for this is being in New Haven for Yale, which, at least for me, was a very traumatic shift, that to be truly honestly, I still haven't fully reoriented to / with). The relevant quotient of this here today is that I'm having this thing about, having as a goal to meet up with or otherwise find & contact people with shared political interests in Japan (better yet, in Nagoya). I still need to develop closer to the specifics for how I'm to execute it. I also want to reach out to Japanese underground artists I follow / have followed, potentially to communicate in the capacity of music video stuff; but maybe also in mind of research questions. And then I more recently was having some beginning of an idea of, what could a study group with peers in this program look like? I have, at time of writing this, now met at least one of them who seemed fairly nice, all things considered.
One objective for me in this regard is to develop the whatever it would be to be able to work through and discuss dialectical materialism in Japanese (and then to hopefully / maybe bring this into classroom context; this as contingent on what the shape of course work and all the rest is of course; which I'm understanding may not have that many openings for student expression, at least based on what previous Japanese instructors--almost exactly referring to Suzuki Akira of former university of Richmond fame--have said about the state of language education in Japan). Which then a question can be for me, how long has it been like this? Etc. Etc.
I want to fix the mistake of how I set myself up for coming into things with New Haven. (Of, I did some of this analytical work but didn't so much follow thru on engaging with the community so there've remained some blind spots about my understanding of the specific forms of violence there, how the community experiences and interprets them, etc.; didn't open myself up enough -- haven't -- to what the next steps can be and how to mobilize into potential action etc.)
=== 2 ===
(For school) I didn't need to study. it did that by design.
My issues @ studying, as I'm offering now, had been born about by my hist of @ school
The problem of public education & rote memorization & these standards of learning (SOL) bare minimums : they don't incentivize or reward study, like real, actual study. So it is that as I've engaged with other things, I'm become aware that this has not been a skill I built up in earnest (give or take). (To which I'm saying one explanation can be the framework and material conditions of k-12 education I was existing in at the time). This trial and error of what works/doesn't should come @ k-12 or undergrad @ worst (in ideal world). Unfortunately, I've been often able to game the system in ways, it seems.
Because I was never told (or never listened to) why study is important 2 begin with; why i should be pursuing this, I ended up de-prioritizing it. (The problem is that the test, the final paper shouldn't have been; shouldn't be what matters).
If it's not a challenge and you're not being prompted to get in the tank and learn and grow, my experience is that, well, I've come around on study rather late, relatively speaking. It's easy to get summaries these days, to memory brass tacks. The issue, as I mean here to intone is very much structural in nature. (Of course, that doesn't change that I made decisions throughout my life that've had consequences I live with through till now). That is, there's an incentive structure of selling panacea; to teachers AND to students : buying answers; buying... It's a problem born about by that education is framed as gatekeeping (a means to better job, a workplace requirement; and thus this actual function is filed away). This incentive structure has swallowed the whole thing (almost). GED, bachelor's, etc. The problem is capitalism, that is to say.
Though note too that, the objective is not pure economic gain, or not that alone. There's too a run off of, developing non-studiers makes doing propaganda more effective to deploy upon a population. <To be clear, I've no data on hand for making this this claim atm; is rather just as sense--an auto-ethnography--based on the non-studying I've been doing>
So how 2 remedy? No original thoughts in this regard, so I echo others that seem sound> Study groups; working together; sitting with discomfort; recognizing not knowing and coming up with plan to mend. So too is it that literacy (of all kinds) is endemic (issues of it). It's obviously not unsalvageable, in any case. Need only to start trying and to continue to thereafter (and to work together and to organize and be intentional and ...= )
=== 2 ===
Limit to this still in ways (This is to do with my saying about planning and making things better) insofar as there are still probably too many questions marks to things which if im not spending time making become known marks will just default to running away
Things needing yet looked into; i.e., where is transit, where is other stuff,, i.e., im aware that there's some basic stuff needing to get sorted out to build an infrastructure of how to exist in this space for extended period. Nevertheless, and yet... I know there's stuff in quite a few categories and so my tendency is like,,,, ughhhh, I will not even try; given as it is not immediately discernible in automatic ways what takes more priorities or effort or ... in these abstract stuff,,,
Trying tho to be boosted in some sense insofar as it's, trying to remind myself about, okay, what can actually hurt me in this situation <<being paranoid and anxious about going outside, interacting with other people>. My sense is that this is somewhere where bringing in some other stuff into this can help build out a more nuanced and even-keeled analysis of my situation/z/. (Other stuff =3D conclusions reached from my frameworks of political analysis surrounding how violence is structured in empire, of which im aware that Japan is quire def. As such, as being reminded then by development companies and security cameras)
=== 2 ===
One thing I want to look into if I can keep it on my mind when im having other todos cleared out etc. Is to look into the circumstances and facts of governance in the case of Nagoya
What are the zoning laws and other situations that structure this city? And what of those that structure my housing unit's ability to exist in the way it does? (Minded here of, this is where it seems like engagement with comrades would be productive; also curious about, what would be involved in making request of / for information acts to get access to some of this stuff, in Japan, in Nagoya). Wanting to be challenging power in informed and precise ways as I'm able to, as a student, in my given context.
Not overstep and jeopardize myself, but also not being docile and unspoken about stuff
=== 2/3 ===
"chance encounter on a layover plane ride vacation" Could that i read ur past on you What was it like in that dorm room in Greece? How was it to lose your husband after 3 yr disease? (Fiction) (Thats a fiction to fill the meter) Raising kids So much depth In a glass bowing exhibit
=== 3 ===
I listened to Vialice's "Talk When We're Okay" pt. 1,2,3,&0 (these are, I guess u can categorize them as ~cloud rap~ albums) on the plane ride to Japan. It facilitated quite a bit of productivity for me; nevertheless, I'm having questions about, what is/n't talked about in music (this stuff & others).
Questions of, who/how did vialice come up? stomachbook / zombAe (Chicago?) DIY music scene infrastructure have gone on to facilitate at least his entrance into performing live music >> see: "VIALICE - PAPER HEARTS FEST (1ST VENUE SHOW, SUBTERRANEAN CHICAGO)", mentioned @ desc: "Huge thank you to zombAe and stomachbook for putting this together and being so supportive!! This wouldn't have happened without yall : )"
What does this sound like? > It is that the songs bleed into another a remarkable amount. Vamping in this regard off a conversation about this I'd had with my dad, in his gesture to compare these short songs in some type of way to Swans, there was a question of, who chooses music length? (To which I will add now, and what does length mean in a context of looped streaming ad nauseum?). One way of what I assume are many in narrating this can be that TikTok/short form content can be relevant context for why length is different as it is in these two different contexts.
This, as related to my ongoing thing of question about, what is an album? What does that mean and for whom? What does an album do? Like so many other things, the quick and dirty seems to be that it's something what emerges from capitalism and its superstructure.
Background of my encounter / coming across Vialice. Had come across some of his music videos back when I was going thru stuff for my 2025 project. In the interim, a couple of his videos have blown up (insofar as getting 150k+ views on a music video on YouTube counts as such) -- e.g., "Vialice - Im Dancing" & "Vialice - Two Drugs" . Was only watching one-off vids of his at the time and only have recently taken the time to go thru and check out his album-length work.
Vialice's music is nice and all. But it does not inspire action, I don't think. It's more catharsis-core stuff. At least it doesn't pretend otherwise (*ahem, fern_shy*). Music about drugs and numbing yourself. What gets it done though? Continues to be my question, in turn
=== 3 ===
"Perfect plane movies" (or, movies where us pro empire propaganda was in its bag) (and then some diversity hires to make it seem like hollywood didnt fall off a cliff at 2010s)
q.jpeg)
Scrolling through stuff on the in-flight screen display. There's a curated
list called "Perfect Plane Movies." Just from the first couple of things
and the framing therein, I was quite interested by it all, so I've compiled
what all was featured amongst it. Questions to consider can be: What
studios are/nt represented here? What genres? How do these movies get here?
Who picks this list?
Starwars a new hope Star wars empire strikes back Star wars return of the jedi Devil wears Prada Titanic Once upon a time... in hollywood Moana 2 The princess bride When Harry met Sally E.t. the extra terrestrial Moneyball Pretty woman The princess diaries The intern Ghost Moulin rouge Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar Confessions of a shopaholic Top gun: maverick Interstellar Moana Wicked Deadpool Barbie The matrix Top gun The godfather The shawshank redemption Blade runner Goodfellas Anyone but you Shrek The sound of music Jurassic park Gladiator Citizen Kane Casablanca Space jam The departed Die hard Mad max: fury road Grease The equalizer The fall guy Frozen Clueless Talladega nights: the ballad of ricky bobby Jaws Dunkirk The greatest showman Crazy rich Asians Singin' in the rain The blues brothers Uncle buck The Lego movie Wolfs Fly me to the moon The notebook A Star is born Mamma mia! Lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring Lord of the rings: the two towers Lord of the rings: the return of the king Harry Potter and the sorcerers stone Harry Potter and chamber of secrets Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the goblet of fire Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix Harry Potter and halfblood prince Harry Potter and the deathly hollows pt 1 Harry Potter and the deathly hollows pt 2 (formatting here may be totally awful, unreadable, but)
Prompts for me question of, what would be a good thing to watch on plane? Is plane conducive to critical viewing? The want is for you to go in and out of sleep even; so would third cinema disconnected from any frame or mode of engagement beyond this actually be worth having? I.e., would it be non-coopted-able? (If not otherwise clear, I'm having a question of, is it possible to have an in-flight movie be in service of revolution or liberation? Or is the frame it comes in just squashing any of that out?)
Which is also to say that there's nothing hardly at all queer about encountering a movie on a plane as your entry to it (nor can it be possible to queerly encounter a movie in a corporate aircraft, I argue). Like, they put it there for you to see it, and then you saw it.
There's something too about, the all that's entailed @ the watching other people's screens @ plane. It's how it's designed; what does it do for/to empire? can be a question I would then raise. This is a captive audience, in a truly real sense.
Except the airplane did have fnaf 2 movie, so maybe in-flight movie s r awesome
=== 3 ===
fern_shy So I guess the background context of this is fern_shy is a producer who does stuff and is involved in some of the underground music spaces I've been following (for research and other capacities) for the past bit. He's produced several tracks for Edward Skeletrix (e.g., "Drug Dealer Injects His Fentanyl (Psychosis)" & "Pain & Torture" <<see also: "Drug Dealer Injects His Fentanyl (Psychosis) Deconstruction" >> ) as well as one of the songs on the Girls Rituals (aka Devi McCallion) album from last year ("We Poke Holes") <<of which, the original desc was clear to state that the song was meant as in part a response to Trump government's spending bill from last year>>. Both of these artists are also featured on fern's album from last year, Who Are You Really? (on the tracks "MONSTER" and "WHAT i WANTED" respectively).
The context for why I'm even talking about this is that, while waiting between flights at the airport, I was reflecting again on an interaction I'd tried to have with fern via YouTube comment section earlier this year. In response to the following comments left on the video ODE 2 TOY (Official Music Video) @thetamancer6726",
@Nicole-h9v: "a potential of the artist under capitalism: pushing the "destabilizing taste" aspect of the art-as-commodity to the point of short-circuiting capital itself" @fern_shy: "I think the true potential of the artist under capitalism is to create revolutionary art (destabilizing taste) and to not conform to individualistic art concepts like "Art for Arts sake" or even being afraid to make political art due to its absence in the "mainstream" ... it's not easy but there is much room for counter culture growth / new punk / new wave revolutionary art"
-so yes, in response to this, I'd replied with an excerpt from Karatani Kojin's "The Utility of Aesthetics: After Orientalism" where Karatani offers a critique of aesthetics based on it's tendency (necessity) to bracket material reality. As far as I can tell, he deleted my reply. Which is fine, he's the right to do so. What's been eating at me, though, is that in addition to this comment, fern has similarly expressed ostensibly leftist, revolutionary artist sentiments (e.g., @ 1:38 in his video "5 TIPS TO BE A GOOD ARTIST").
I too oppose capitalism and am interested in how art can be operationalized in the struggle against it. However, from what I can discern, I take issue with the methods fern's both espousing and using to this end. In addition to the problems I have with what he's saying about, liberation is achievable thru just engaging with aesthetics (of which one question I'd ask in turn is, so you think aesthetics can't be coopted by capital? hmm okay.)- so in addition to this, I have issues with his alignment with Skeletrix. While I have an aesthetic appreciation for Skeletrix's work, I do have serious problems with his politics and positionality, which seem to only get increasingly so as time goes (I've gone into more details about specific criticisms I have of Skeletrix in this review I'd written of his recent album). The tl;dr, though, is Skeletrix is an artist who's tied in with Paris Fashion week, who's collaborating with Joeyy (a white supremacist known to cause problems in this underground music space), who's consistently advocating for AI, and who's just in general taken anti-materialist (in the Marixst sense not the consumerist sense) positions of constantly retreating to fiction and appeals to Creative Direction etc.. So to what extent are you interested in and working toward liberation if you're also in constant collaboration with this type of rap sheet (so to speak)?
Look, if you're going to call yourself a revolutionary artist- like, if you're wanting to posture yourself in this way, I think you should be held up to the task. Not saying you're a bad person or anything else, but if we want to be revolutionary, let's really get in the tank and figure out what works to make that happen. But my attempt to reach out has not amounted to successful struggle so far. I need to figure out better ways to try to reach out in these ways though, as it is that I believe in things getting better and I want to work toward that end as much as I can. I don't hate you or anyone else. I am still learning strategy and finding what (doesn't) work(s).
=== 3 ===
Starlink propaganda ad.connect everywhere (Context is, this was an ad that was constantly playing on in-flight display; I mostly saw it on other people's screens, though, as I didn't turn mine on until the very end of the flight).
What are the images of everywhere? Arab desert; Amazon jungle etc. That is, wilderness/remote/foreign/Orient. Yet it's always also presented as if it were a car ad. REI backpacker as limit of who we see being there (or tour guide on camel, at best). A question then of, who is this wifi for? Wifi, which the ad announces repeatedly is so cheap (so affordable) and so everywhere (supposedly). By which, what I mean to intone is, it's cheap and available for settlers/tourists/whatever else u want to call it.
Who made this ad? Like i know it's Starlink, but I'm curious about, what person, what human being is editing this; what is the review process like for that; what is involved in getting it from being made to being installed default on all these televisions in the airplane to loop before things get moving?
And then, a context of, Starlink notoriously sucks, costs a lot of money, and is just further examples of capitalist ecological destruction as these satellites will soon fall out of space and all this potential for being everywhere (this imperial dream) will vanish like the mirage it always has been; defenders win ties, yknow; don't buy the Civ V tech tree lie of deceit
=== 3 ===
love island ... USA? [this as some show what had caught my eye on the screen of the person across the aisle from me two rows up] Opening/entrance of episode 1 @ industrial/intermodal shipping containers. Cut back and forth with a drone shot of the container ship in this capacity & sequence too. Objectification, yes, but also saying out loud that these bodies are sending messages (sent by capital, for capital). That is, semiotics are able to give useful info, it's just that the conventional deployment of them a la Big Joel or whoever else media analysis type often goes nowhere much. (As another productive deployment of them, I'm having in mind Dr. Jared Ball's reading of the cover of Trevor Noah's autiobiography Born a Crime ).
=== 3 ===
Save Ferris I've not seen Ferris Bueler's Day Off in a bit,,, That being said, this is another video text I've absorbed vicariously @ this most recent flight (courtesy of one row up, across the aisle; who may have been sneak taking pictures of me, but we'll put that aside for now). I'm also having in mind with the recent episode of Millennials are Killing Capitalism Live! / The Imperial Eighties which was about this movie .
Presently, though, I'm wondering about this "Save Ferris." What does this even mean? I know he's supposed to be sick or whatever in the movie, but I still think this is one of, if not the hardest parts to take seriously in the film. (That this is believed by the people of this world; that this belief is then taken seriously, jokingly-seriously, to the extent that it parlays into some ??? campaign that Save Ferris is; like, what does that mean or do, though?). It's an empty statement from the very beginning, of course, because Ferris is pre-saved (he faked being sick).
But then I got to thinking about how I'd had a Save Ferris t-shirt that I guess I wore periodically during, well at least during high school. (I Think I maybe got it as an X-mas present). It had always felt awkward wearing it, I remember. Though I also remember getting props for it from peers at school (who likewise had a vague, fuwafuwa, inherited relation to the film, as I can remember at least). I ended up retiring it in part due to that it was the same bleh grey cotton type shirt as many others I had, plus I had no allegiance to the design (only some cringe).
It was a physical thing which was manufactured somewhere. Save Ferris > Southeast Asian sweatshop laborers; empty indeed. But revealing too, no? Ideology of affluenza et cetera.
=== 3 ===
Japanese state hates Zainichi (Korean people) so much they won't even let me send money to North Korea if I exchange it from their facilities*Most likely this is because of US anti-communist influence too, but the anti-Zainichi is a convenient biproduct of this.
=== 4 ===
Whenever im going anywhere and I see someone else also going the same direction for even a second, im like. Omg. We're going to the same place. I should ask them about this.
=== 4 ===
I've maybe never seen this mant babies on a planeAll jumping to the back, where I am satTo the extent that the flight attendant was carrying around a tray of airplane toys for babiesJust short of a dozenAnd such that some of the babies did known each other
=== 4 ===
Walked past a real estate discourse scouting out a demolished building, making plans as such
=== 4 ===
Finicky situation with the light switches (hallway turns hallway off, one in room turns hallway off,, such that cant have all switches in house turned same way and have that be either meaning all off or all on) (always will be a remainder...)
=== 4 ===
My whole routine id developed of brandishing a hammer is having to be retooled now that, well, font have hammer (yet), tentatively trying to do brandishing a spoon, will update on progress in the future
=== 4 ===
Anywayss, hope you're all doing well (as those things go), wish you the best and so forth- ~Giuliana ^_^